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It seemed like hours passed before the bombing raid ended and the roar of planes faded into the distance. The rattling antiaircraft fire and wailing sirens ceased. For a moment, the silence that fell seemed as deafening as the bombs. No one moved. Then a commotion started up in the hallway outside the ward. The lights were still off, but I heard telephones ringing and people running. I went to the door and saw doctors and nurses and nuns scurrying around. The matron beckoned to me and I joined a group that had gathered around her in the corridor. “Reports are coming in of catastrophic civilian casualties in Mortsel. At least two schools filled with children were hit. Every available doctor and nurse is needed.”
Ruthie’s school was in Mortsel.
There was no question that I would volunteer. But I felt such a rush of fear and dread that I wasn’t sure how much help I would be. My hands trembled so violently I couldn’t manage the buttons on my jacket as I prepared to go. I wobbled when I walked, my legs like jelly. I couldn’t string two coherent thoughts together. I followed the others and did what I was told, quickly packing emergency kits and bandages and morphine, then crushing into the back of an ambulance with the other nurses and doctors.
One of the surgeons, Dr. Janssens, briefed us as we drove. “The Americans must have been targeting the Luftwaffe installation but something went terribly wrong. Hundreds of bombs fell on the center of Mortsel, in the area called Oude God. We have calls from four schools now, and the town’s residential areas were also heavily hit.”
I closed my eyes and prayed for my sister as we hurtled through the streets, alarm bells clanging. At last we halted. So much rubble clogged the streets that the ambulances couldn’t get any closer. I struggled to push my dizziness and shock aside, grabbing my supplies and following the others, walking forward as if in a nightmare. I had seen Mortsel and the Oude God area a few months ago when I’d tried to visit Ruthie, but it was unrecognizable now. It resembled a scene from hell, bombed into oblivion. Bodies and parts of bodies lay scattered everywhere. Shouts from the workers along with pitiful screams and cries for help filled the air.
I struggled to concentrate as Dr. Janssens issued orders. He told us to do whatever we could to bring aid: apply tourniquets to stop bleeding, assess wounds, give injections of morphine, stabilize broken bones, perform triage to decide who needed surgery first. The medical personnel were told to spread out to the hardest-hit areas, and I was assigned to go with Dr. Janssens and three other nurses to St.Vincent School. We set off in that direction, dodging huge chunks of debris and downed trolley lines. Thick smoke from burning cars made my eyes water. I knew I needed to pull myself together, but all I could think about was Ruthie. Surely God wouldn’t take her from me, too. Not after all we’d been through. Not in such a horrifying way.
We reached what was left of the school, and the sight of three small, lifeless bodies lying in the street overwhelmed me. I froze, paralyzed with horror. Workers were digging more bodies out of the rubble while teachers and distraught parents, blackened with soot and dust, screamed and wept. Someone grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Nurse! Get ahold of yourself! You’re needed over here.” A group of children that the workers had rescued from the rubble were still alive. I prayed for strength and clarity of mind and went to work, applying all of my skill and training to help each child as if she were Ruthie.
Hours passed. I did what I could. We transported the most desperate cases to the hospital, with volunteers carrying them through the debris to the ambulances on stretchers. We set up a makeshift field hospital for those who didn’t need immediate surgery or life support. We cleaned and stitched and bandaged thousands of wounds. But the image I knew would haunt my dreams for a long time was that of a mother sitting in the street, holding her lifeless child in her arms. “They were American planes,” she wailed. “They were supposed to save us, not kill us!”
It was growing dark and there was no electricity. I was exhausted. Dr. Janssens offered to arrange a ride back to the hospital for me, but I couldn’t leave until I found my sister. I asked one of the volunteers who had been digging in the rubble if the children from the orphanage attended this school. He nodded grimly and said, “Yes—poor little beggars.”
I took my nurse’s bag and what was left of my supplies and walked to the orphanage on the edge of town. It seemed undamaged from the outside but without electricity. A few flickering candles shone from inside. No one stopped me at the door this time. I was still wearing my uniform, filthy with dirt and blood, so I walked inside. The large, barren room that seemed to serve as a lounge was in chaos. There weren’t nearly enough sisters to soothe the hysterical children. Those who weren’t crying sat dazed with shock, staring straight ahead and shivering. Some held their hands over their ears. I scanned all the faces in the dim light for Ruthie’s, but I didn’t see her. One of the nuns hurried over to me, carrying a candle. “May I ask who you are and what you’re doing here?”
“I-I’m looking for one of the orphans. Ruth... Ruth Anne...” I couldn’t remember her phony surname.
“You’ll need to speak with Sister Marie. This way please.”
She was in the orphanage’s infirmary where the most seriously injured students had been taken. Sister Marie turned to face me. “Did the hospital send you to help?” she asked brusquely. But then she recognized me. She marched out to the hallway, motioning for me to follow her. I spoke before she could.
“I will be very glad to help in any way I can. I’ve been treating casualties at St.Vincent School all afternoon, but I had to come and make sure Ruthie—”
“She’s fine. She was with a group of older students who were on a nature hike today.” I leaned against the wall, then slid all the way to the floor, thanking God. “But if you were at St.Vincent, Miss Maes, then you know that dozens of our children have been injured. Many are still missing. A few are confirmed dead. All of them have been traumatized. They saw their friends and teachers injured and dying. We’re trying our best to calm them down.” She said all of this in a voice tinged with anger, as if it would help me understand why I needed to leave.
I looked up at her from where I sat on the floor. “I’m not leaving until I see my sister. I need to see for myself that she’s okay.”
“Go into my office.” She pointed down the hall. I crawled to my feet and waited in the office doorway, watching for Ruthie. I didn’t recognize her at first. Her beautiful, dark hair had been chopped short and she hobbled toward me like an old woman, her legs so thin her knee socks wouldn’t stay up. I pulled her into the office and she clung to me as if she’d never let go. She would turn fifteen in a few days, but she looked no more than twelve.
“Thank God. Thank God,” I murmured. I couldn’t remember thanking Him for anything in a very long time. “Are you okay?” I asked when we finally pulled apart. She nodded. Her eyes in the darkened room were large and filled with sorrow. She had Vati’s eyes. His had looked this way when we’d said goodbye. “You weren’t hurt when the bombs...?”
“Our teacher took us on a nature walk,” she said in a whispery voice. “We heard the planes and then the explosions...” Her eyes filled with tears.
I pulled her close again. “Oh, Ruthie!”
“Please don’t leave me again, Gisela! Take me with you, please! I don’t want to be alone again!”
“I know. I know.” I waited for her sobs to die away and led her to the window seat behind Sister Marie’s desk. The window was a huge, dark rectangle that showed our reflection, and I wondered how the night could have fallen so swiftly. Then I realized that the window had been painted for the blackout. “If there was any way I could take you with me and we could be together, I would do it, Ruthie. I swear! But we can’t let anyone see us together.”
“I can stay inside and hide. I don’t mind. It’s so cold and dark and crowded here.”
“I share a room with two other nurses. It’s just as dark and crowded there. The radiators don’t work very well and the food isn’t very good. Believe me, if I knew of another way...”
“I don’t want to go back to school. I’m scared!”
I stroked her cropped hair the way Mutti used to do when she comforted us. “Your school was destroyed today,” I said gently. “No one will be able to go back. It will be summer soon.”
“What if they bomb us again?”
“It was a mistake. They meant to bomb the factory where the Nazis repair their airplanes, but something went wrong, and the bombs fell in the wrong place.” I rocked her a little longer, rubbing her back.
“When will this war ever end?” she asked.
“We’re all asking that question, Ruthie. Right now, no one knows the answer. But did you see all those airplanes the Americans sent today?” A shudder rocked through her as she nodded. “They are just as strong as the Nazis are. Everyone says that the Americans are going to defeat them soon. We just need to be patient.”
