“Soon, I hope. None of the female correspondents are allowed to stay over here yet.”

“Make sure you send me a note and come find me when you do. And,” he paused, “Victorine…”

“Is well and happy. I’ll go see her again, tell her you’re okay.”

“Thanks.”

She saw him waiting by the airstrip as the plane took off into the sky, not waving, just watching her leave, then, at last, turning around to go back to fighting to win a war. All the way back to England, she held her right hand—the one Dan had held—inside her left, but it didn’t comfort her the same way he had.

* * *

When Jess arrived back at the Savoy and handed her uniforms over for cleaning and delousing, she learned that Iris Carpenter had been court-martialed. Iris had strayed from the “beachhead” and the Ministry of Information was trying to make an example of her. As well as that news, there was a letter waiting from Martha.

I couldn’t sit around in a nurses’ training camp forever. So I managed to get out and I’m on my way to Naples. I don’t have any orders or papers or a goddamned passport—they took everything off me—but I can sweet-talk my way into anything. Everyone’s so focused on France I don’t think they’ll care about me all the way over in Italy. If I can find a unit of French or Canadians who’ll let me attach myself to them, then I can avoid the rules of the U.S. Army altogether.

You do a damn fine job of France and I’ll do a damn fine job of Italy.

Marty

Jess smiled as she read Martha’s words. It would have been nice to have Martha by her side. But Martha was right to go to Italy and escape Warren Stone. SHAEF had managed to get rid of one woman. Jess prayed they wouldn’t be able to get rid of any more with Iris’s trial.

Thankfully Iris had ambiguity and a colonel on her side. Nobody could define precisely what was meant by the beachhead. “Colonel Whitcomb, who gave me an escort to Cherbourg, told them the beachhead stretched as far as the town,” Iris told Jess over whiskey that night. “And none of the PROs were able to produce a different interpretation from anyone as high up as a colonel who’d actually been in France.”

“So they let you off? Will they let you back though?” Jess asked, moving from joy to hopelessness in the space of those two sentences.

Iris grinned. “Brigadier Turner told me, eyes bulging, that it would be a very long while before I got orders to go to Normandy again.”

“Why are you smiling, then?” Jess asked despairingly.

“Before I left Normandy, I had Colonel Whitcomb issue me orders to return to the beachhead as soon as possible.”

“Bravo!” Jess cheered, chinking her glass against Iris’s.

“I think you’ll find that, after this brouhaha, they’ll have to change something about the way they handle women over there,” Iris finished.