“Of course not. I’m sorry. It really doesn’t matter just when. The point is, when he does go, I want to go with him.”
“There’s nothing much I can do about that.” Isabelle settled back in her chair. “You’ll have to win the right to go. Anyway, that’s my guess. And I might add, you’ve got a pretty swell start.”
“What do you know about all that?” Gale demanded.
“Everything,” was the quiet reply. “I’m the colonel’s secretary. There isn’t much I can tell you, but I guess it won’t hurt if I just whisper a word or two.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Lieutenant Hatch was in the colonel’s headquarters late this afternoon and raised a merry fuss about some WAC who knows, it seems, all there is to know about radar, and who, this very afternoon, somehow got mixed up in the messy and dangerous business of shooting down a poor little Jap bomber. Perhaps you know who that WAC was.”
“Perhaps I do,” Gale agreed.
“That’s fine,” Isabelle beamed. “Let’s not mention her name.”
“We won’t,” Gale agreed. “But the colonel—how did he—”
“How’d he stand the storm?” Isabelle laughed happily. “How does he stand any storm? How did he stand defeat in Burma? How did he stand the long tough retreat? Like a man and a colonel, that’s how. And I don’t think—” the words came slowly—“I don’t think anyone is going to tell him how he is to use men and women under his command.”
“That,” said Gale, “is swell.”
Just then a miniature cyclone hit the place. That is to say Gale’s other roommate breezed in and with her was Than Shwe, the little Burmese nurse.