“No, it’s Claudette Colbert,” Pru said with a grin.

“Oh shut up, did you eat?” she asked, lying down again. They took care of each other since no one else did. They were combat buddies in the best sense of the word.

“No, I went to the hospital to check on one of our boys. We almost lost him on the way back.”

“I lost one today,” Emma said sadly, wide-awake now, when she thought of it. “We tried everything. Terrible chest wound. He died halfway back. We should have taken off sooner, but we didn’t have a full load yet, and they took too long to bring the others on.”

“You can’t guess at that, Em. He might have died anyway. I lost one like that last month. It happens.”

“He was twenty years old, just a kid.”

“They’re all kids. There are no old men on the battlefields. They’re all boys, who should never have to be there.” Emma nodded and didn’t speak for a minute.

“A load of Americans arrived today. I saw them when I came in. They talk and laugh a lot,” Emma commented, and Pru smiled.

“That’ll liven the place up. I met a few of them on my way in. They were nice.” The Australians were usually jolly too, and good fun.

“I guess so.” Emma was slower to warm up to people than Pru was, and she was always a little suspicious of new faces in their midst.

“We should try to get to meet them. We’ll be flying with them soon,” Pru commented.

“I hope they’re good,” Emma said seriously.

“I’m sure they will be. And in the end, we all figure it out as we go.” Emma nodded agreement and closed her eyes again. “Get some sleep. You look knackered,” Pru told her.

“I am. I have to be up at three-thirty. We fly at four tomorrow.”

“Me too.”

“Wake me, if I don’t get up,” Emma said, as she turned on her side, and was already half asleep again.

“Night, Em. Sleep tight,” Pru whispered and closed her eyes, trying to forget the images of the day. She didn’t know how she’d survive it sometimes, if it weren’t for her friends, like Emma and Ed. They gave each other the strength to do it all again every day. She wondered if any of the Americans who had arrived would turn out to be good friends too. Time would tell.

The alarm Emma had set the night before went off at three-thirty, which gave them both just enough time to roll out of bed and into their flight clothes, head down the hall to brush their teeth, wash their faces, and comb their hair, and then run down the stairs, and grab a cup of coffee, rush out to a car and head to the tarmac less than a mile away. Or if there was no car, they ran there. They had the time calculated down to the last second, without a minute to spare, to get every last second of sleep they could before facing another day.