Nancy Dale, Army Nurse

by Ruby Lorraine Radford

Drowsiness was creeping over her when she caught the low tones of two men behind her. The fact that they were speaking in a foreign tongue pricked her to alertness. She leaned closer to the window and concentrated. They were talking almost in whispers, but she heard the gutteral syllables of several German words. She had studied a little German in her high school days in order to sing some selections from the Wagnerian operas. Now she caught the words, ute Abend and acht Kusches.

“Tonight ... eight cars,” she translated.

The Pullman conductor came down the aisle, and the men fell silent. If they hadn’t become so abruptly silent at his approach, Nancy might have thought little of the whispered conversation. Though she tried to dismiss her suspicions, attributing her sensitiveness to the fact that she had just entered the service, she could not forget the two men speaking German fluently who sat behind her.

After an interval Nancy decided to take a look at the pair. She started down the aisle under pretense of getting a drink of water. The man nearest the aisle had the broad face and blond complexion of a typical German, though he wore the uniform of an American soldier. The other was in civilian clothes, and wore a small mustache. All Nancy could glean in her hasty inspection was that he had a lean countenance, dark coloring, and wore dark-rimmed glasses. On her return she noticed that the blond had a corporal’s stripes on his sleeve.

If he was a spy, surely the army would have detected it before making him a corporal, she thought, and promptly tried to dismiss her suspicions. Not until eleven o’clock that night when she was hurrying with the crowd to go aboard the west-bound train, did she again think of those words spoken in German behind her. Her Pullman was at the end of a very long train. Soldiers were filing into the front coaches. She counted eight cars ahead of hers.

Suddenly she recalled the words she had heard behind her at the beginning of her journey, acht Kusches. And here they were, eight coaches of service men. Again she thought of their words, ute Abend. Tonight! Could there possibly be any connection between those words and this troop train?

Nancy followed the redcap to her Pullman seat with a feeling of uneasiness. She knew that spies all over the country were busy trying to get information about the movements of troop trains and transports. She pressed her eyes to the window and looked out at the milling crowd. Then suddenly she saw the blond corporal. He did not get aboard the train, but watched the troops marching down the paved walk between the tracks. Then he turned sharply and hurried back toward the station. The man in civilian clothes was not with him.

Nancy tried to shake off the nagging uneasiness that haunted her even after she was comfortably stretched in her berth, and the train was rushing out across the red Georgia hills. But her interest in what lay ahead was too keen for her to remain depressed. Several times she raised the shade to peep out when the train slowed at small towns where street lights twinkled sleepily, but at last the hum of the wheels lulled her to sleep.

Then suddenly, several hours before dawn, there came a terrific crash and jolt. Nancy caught wildly at the clothes hammock to keep from being hurled into the aisle, as the Pullman crashed to a stop and toppled slightly to the right. Screams and moans were heard above the grinding noises.

Nancy clung to the hammock a moment, too stunned to move. She expected the tilting coach to crash to earth any moment. Lights had vanished beyond the cracks of her curtain. With shaking hands she found her flashlight in the zipper bag left at the foot of her berth. She opened the curtain and turned the light up and down the aisle. Several who hadn’t been thrown from their berths were climbing out, wanting to know what had happened. Groans, curses and cries only added to the confusion.