“I just wanted to tell you that we, downstairs, are very proud of you. I am proud of you. My family is in Paris, living the Occupation. My nephew is in the Maquis, the Resistance, in the South. My brother has been in prison in Marseilles for three years for speaking against the Nazis and dropping leaflets in the streets. Some of our neighbors, Jews, have lost their homes and been sent to work camps, even children. The people in Europe need the Americans to help them get free again, and as a nurse, if they send you to Europe, you will help many. You’re a brave woman. You were even as a little girl, and you know the right thing to do. Thank you,” she said, bowed, and made a rapid exit before Alex could even react or comment, but there were tears in her eyes when she finished the glass of champagne. What Brigitte said had touched her profoundly. She had a feeling that conditions in Europe were even worse than they suspected, and she hoped that she would be part of the forces who were coming to help them. Brigitte was right. They needed American troops to free them. And those same troops needed Alex and the other nurses to keep them alive. Whatever her family believed, she was doing something important, and nothing was going to stop her. She didn’t even care if it cost her her life in the process.

From everything Alex could see, she had nothing to come home to. The one thing she knew was that she could never return to this world after the war, or live this life again. She would rather die in Europe than waste her life in New York. All she could see around her was the shame of indolence, snobbery, and false values. She wanted to go to Europe with the Army Air Forces for Brigitte, her family and friends, and others like them. More than ever, it all made sense. And she was about to take her first step toward her goal with her flight training class in Kentucky.

Chapter 7

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Louise Jackson had already been a practicing registered nurse for a year and a half. She had graduated from nursing school in June of 1940 at twenty-one, and as a Black woman she had attended a segregated but very respected school for Black women. She had grown up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and got a job at a respected all-Black hospital, Saint Agnes, as an operating-room nurse. Her father was a cardiologist, and her mother was the superintendent of a segregated school. Aside from their focus on education, the Jacksons’ origins were distinguished ones. Blanche Jackson’s family was originally Ethiopian, and Louise had the exquisitely fine features of her maternal ancestors. Ted Jackson had been able to trace his ancestors’ arrival on one of the original eighteenth-century slave ships that came to Virginia.