Emma took a long time to pull her rip cord, but she finally did and the chute opened sharply, then she drifted gently down clear of the tree line. This was the part she had hated most in their training, but she made a smooth landing and got rid of her chute quickly, under a thicket of bushes. There was no sound of gunshots nearby, although they could hear heavy artillery in the distance. And another C-47 was going to have to pick up the wounded Pru’s flight wouldn’t reach now. She made a sharper landing than Emma but got rid of her chute swiftly too. They headed into the trees as silently as they could. Pru put a finger to her lips and Emma nodded. They started walking away from the German front toward where they believed the British line was, near the French border. But technically, they were behind enemy lines now. The plane had come down hard in a field, and damaged a wing, but there was no explosion. The crew had made a smooth getaway too, in the opposite direction. They knew to spread out rapidly. Pru and Emma had no idea where they were and didn’t see them again after they landed.

They walked steadily until nightfall, but didn’t see any houses or farms. They wouldn’t have approached them anyway, since they were in occupied territory on the frontier of France.

They had no idea where they were by the time it was fully dark, and they hadn’t stopped to eat all day. They finally sat down and ate some of their meager supplies, then sipped some of the water. Pru figured they had a long walk ahead of them the next day. They weren’t far from a road, and heard a German patrol go by that night.

By then, everyone on the base knew what had happened, from the fighter pilots who had seen it all, and reported to the base immediately, to the commander of the evac unit. The nurses were worried about them. They hadn’t had a plane go down in months, but at least their fighter escort said there had been no sound of ground fire after everyone bailed out of the plane. It was a tense night while everyone waited for the two nurses and their crew to show up somewhere and make contact.

By midmorning the next day, the pilot, copilot, and corpsmen had made it to a safe house on the border. They had been picked up and were back safely by that night. But Emma and Pru still hadn’t turned up. Lizzie, Audrey, Alex, and Louise were worried sick about them, as were the other nurses in their squadron. Two days later, three since they’d bailed out of the plane, they were officially listed as missing in action by the War Office, and Pru’s parents were notified. Two more days, and their squadron leader was fairly sure they’d been picked up by a German patrol or there would have been some sign of them along the way. They used a reconnaissance plane, and the other C-47s were keeping an eye out for them. They were the first women who would have been picked up by the Germans. By six days after bailout, it seemed fairly certain that they were either dead or in a German prison camp by then, and had probably been moved deeper into Germany.