Free The Secret Rescue by Cate Lineberry Page A

They also knew that though they had landed in a place that felt as foreign to them as almost any place could, they were not that far from Italy, which was just across the Adriatic Sea. The partisans seemed to be doing their best to help them, and going it alone in such a rugged country didn’t seem safe or even possible. After a long discussion, the group figured its best chance of escape was to get to the coast with the aid of the partisans and find a boat that could take them back to Italy.
    By late that afternoon, the Americans had grown hungry, and Baggs asked Gina if there was any food for them. Meanwhile some of the medics thought it would be best to offer the crude toilet to the nurses while they made use of the outdoors. When Gina came back to the room several hours later, he carried a tray filled with chunks of flat cornbread made solely from cornmeal and water. A few of the men helped Shumway sit up so he could eat as they all took pieces. Though Hayes was hungry and grateful for the food, he gagged when he first tried the bread, which he thought tasted like a handful of dried field corn rather than the cakelike cornbread his mother had made in Indianola. Some of the nurses and medics also had difficulty eating the bread, which would end up sustaining them in the coming weeks, but they were glad to have something in their bellies.
    As they ate, a young boy came in and played a few notes on a kaval, a long, end-blown flute, doing his best to piece together a song. The group politely applauded him when he was finished, recognizing the efforts the boy and the partisans were making to help them. Gina then brought a tray of small chunks of sour white cheese, which was as unpalatable to the Americans as the cornbread, but they ate it with gratitude.
    The evening wore on, and the fire that flickered in the fireplace and cast shadows on the walls helped warm them as the temperature dropped. Some of the nurses gave the liners from their field coats to the medics to use as blankets, since their thinner field jackets didn’t provide much warmth. Hayes stretched out as best he could in the cramped quarters and decided to leave his glasses on rather than risk someone stepping on them. Worn out from the day’s events, he was soon asleep. Jens, one of a few who had to sleep sitting up with their backs to the wall, detached the hood of her field coat and used it as a makeshift pillow. She fell asleep, but was eventually awakened by the sound of a man’s voice. Fearing for a few moments that the Germans had found them, she started to panic but quickly realized that one of the medics, Hornsby from the 802nd, was talking in his sleep. She had to resist throwing a shoe at him. She looked at the glowing dial from her Army watch and saw that it was about one thirty in the morning and wondered how many more nights they would spend in Albania. The room had gotten colder, and she reached across the row of bodies lying next to her to get a piece of wood for the fire. She hoped sleep, which usually came so easily to her, would offer some comfort from the many worries running through her mind.
    The same day the plane crash-landed, the 807th in Catania received radiograms from Philip Voigt, the 807th flight surgeon stationed at Bari, and Edward Phillips, the 807th flight surgeon manning the station in Grottaglie, asking again for attendants. It didn’t make any sense to those in Catania, who replied by stating that the plane had left that morning. When word later came that the nurses and medics still hadn’t arrived, worry set in. McKnight flew from Catania to Bari the next day to see what he could learn, while reconnaissance planes searched for any signs of the Americans or the missing C-53D.
    As the disheveled and exhausted group woke in the village in the morning and found that the rain had cleared, one of the medics stumbled onto the porch and yelled, “Someone has been in my musette bag!” Others quickly poured onto the porch to see