“It gives our lives purpose, and meaning. We know why we’re here. We have a mission, and we fulfill it many times. We have a chance to win again every day, and save lives.”

“And when we don’t, it hurts like hell.” She thought of Emma the night before, and the sadness in her eyes over the boy they had lost. She didn’t know him, they never did. It didn’t matter. The boy’s life was precious. They all were. Pru thought sometimes that she’d never want children after this. She had already lost too many. She didn’t know how their parents, or the parents who had lost little children in the bombings in London, survived it. She couldn’t have borne it, and never wanted to be this brave again. She longed for peacetime. She had grown up with war. It had gone on for too long. The plane took a sharp turn then, and they dropped altitude sharply. She looked at Reggie, the pilot. He was watching the sky intently.

“I saw something.” A moment later they saw a fighter plane heading toward a target, with two more behind it, and they dropped lower. No one spoke as Reggie maneuvered, waiting for the fighter planes to come after them and attack. They saw the sky light up when the bombs hit the ground in the distance. Death had come early in the day to the people below them. They took another sharp turn and stayed well below the fighter planes that kept heading into the distance. They didn’t bother to come after the big cargo plane. They had completed their mission and headed back to Germany. Prudence and her crew had been lucky this time. The fighter planes could have come after them, but they didn’t. Pru and Ed and the pilot watched the fires grow beneath them as the bombs did their damage, and they headed toward their mission to pick up twenty-four men who might get lucky that day. Some lived and some died, some would be saved, and some couldn’t be. It was all in a day’s work for Pru and the men she flew with.

“Ten minutes,” the pilot said a little while later. The copilot took out a map and confirmed that they were almost at their destination, while Pru and Ed, and Charlie, the other corpsman, got everything set for their pickup. Her heart was pounding as they got ready to land and start another day. The sky was slowly turning purple with pink streaks starting across it. The pilot brought down the landing gear as they descended, and Ed smiled at Pru.

“It’ll be a good day,” he predicted, and as they touched down on an old rutted runway, with the loaded litters lying on the grass beside it, she hoped he was right.