Prologue
Western Front, France
1918
The pinkish glow of dawn brought danger, not hope.
American Rose Van Etten wasn’t following protocol as she and her converted Model T hurtled through the salmon and golden hues. Dawn meant the return of enemy aircraft and a renewed intensity of shelling. Yesterday’s casualties had been high—horribly high even for this terrible war. Rose still had patients—or blessés, as her French military superiors called them—at the poste de secours. Not only had the small field dressing station been overwhelmed, but it was equipped to handle only bandaging and the crudest, most rudimentary forms of triage. Severely wounded French infantrymen, or poilus, needed to be moved to a hospital, and she was their only means of transport.
Rose heard the angry roar of the airplane first. Energy slammed into her exhausted body—the only emotion that seemed to break through her husk of numbness. Leaning over the steering wheel, she glanced upward into the brilliantly colored sky. In the swirl of gilded coral, she spied a flash of true red: the nose of a Fokker flown by a pilot in the elite and deadly Jagdgeschwader I—the Flying Circus.
The scout was out hunting, and she was the prey.
Rose didn’t have time to allow dread to freeze her like a cottontail. Instead, her muscles tensed like a jackrabbit’s, and she prepared for the mad dash to the relative safety of the poste de secours.
The first bullets hit the ground to the left of Rose’s Ford. Dirt struck her shoulder and rained against her tilted metal helmet. She swung to the right, thankful she was driving the nimble Tin Lizzie rather than the bulkier GMCs, Rovers, or Rolls-Royces. Her heart pumping like an overworked piston, Rose darted back to the left, knowing the airman would expect her to continue right.
She refused to contemplate her demise—or perhaps she’d just stopped considering it after being steeped in death for years. Rose didn’t think about living either—at least not really. All that was inside her was the bare instinct for survival, a need that even years of war couldn’t quash.
Her pursuer strafed the ground to Rose’s right. Loud metallic pops slammed against her eardrums as bullets shredded the passenger side. Fortunately, none appeared to strike the engine, and the trusty Ford kept on roaring.
Rose could see the entrance to the underground poste de secours now, but so could the German scout. He knew where she planned on heading ... or he thought he did.
Rose yanked the wheel, bringing the vehicle around in a tight turn. Her right tires lifted and then landed with a thud she felt in her chest. She yanked down the throttle, jammed the T into high gear, and shot forward like a seemingly scared, confused bunny. If the pilot had recognized her as female, all the better for her ploy.
She kept in a straight line, providing a tempting target in the desolate landscape marked only by burnt tree stumps and cratered ground. As soon as the Fokker banked and swooped in her direction, she yanked the hand brake, bringing the car to a skidding stop. A moment later, she jammed her foot on the Tin Lizzie’s reverse pedal and shot backward. Rose hit a few shell-blasted divots, but she made fast progress.
By the time the scout realized what she’d done, Rose had already made it into the protected area where they kept the vehicles. Slumping back against her seat, she allowed one shaky intake of air. Just one. It wouldn’t do to acknowledge what had just happened.
If Rose did, she might crumble and never collect the pieces—a sad Humpty-Dumpty brought down not by a fall but by endless tiny fractures.
Rose reached for the case where she kept her cigarettes, then flipped over the latch and cursed. She’d smoked her last ration during the endless night as she’d traveled back and forth on the road crammed with supply wagons, troops, and other ambulances. At a loss for what to do with her right hand, which normally held the roll of tobacco, she drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as she waited for the pilot to leave in search of more exciting targets.
There was a chance she knew him—this unseen German bent on extinguishing her. She had hobnobbed with many of Europe’s elites before the war when she’d competed in motorcar races. Closed-circuit ones, road courses, hill climbs—she’d done them all. Perhaps she had even raced against the scout during the Herkomer Trials. Back then they would have been competitors but not enemies. They could very well have been comrades and shared a laugh. She might have even drunk a beer with him as she tried to stave off the hollowness inside her.
But then the war had come—the purposeless, endless war, which she’d joined as a relief volunteer in a misguided attempt to find meaning in her own life. But there was nomeaninghere. Just death and destruction and unspeakable violence.
Here Rose was—nearly dying to save men who might have already died from their wounds. No matter how many poilus she brought to hospitals or train stations or ports for further transport, there were still more wounded, broken souls waiting to be reshuffled among the wards of France and England.
Attempting to shake off the dismal thoughts with a roll of her shoulders, Rose shifted her body and stepped from the Ford. The pilot was likely gone, and she could make it to the poste de secours.
Alert for the sound of the airplane’s engine, she cautiously stuck her head outside the shelter. The sky had lightened even more, making a drive back to the hospital impossible until the evening. She could see the grayish-brown lumps of the enemy observation balloons lurking in the blue sky like ugly behemoths ready to bring the troubles of Job upon them. Everything, though, seemed relatively quiet, so she began her dash to the field station.
The first shell hit when Rose was halfway to the poste de secours. The impact reverberated through her body, and she swore her ribs clattered together like Parcheesi dice. When the second shell sent dirt spraying all over her, a fierce need to survive surged forth, forcing her muscles into action. Holding on to her helmet, she pounded toward the safety of the underground field dressing station. Mud from yesterday’s rain splashed over her uniform, and her foot slipped. Just as she was about to topple over, the door in front of her flew open, and a soldier pulled her roughly inside.
“There were to be no more ambulance runs until tonight,” the man scolded in French. “Are you mad, mademoiselle?”
Before the war, Rose would have blithely saidoui. She’d always pursued peril for the fun of it, and she’d loved every minute ... until she hadn’t.
“Je ne sais pas.” Rose shrugged as she told the man the truth. She really didn’t know anymore.
The dressing station was small, but she managed to find an out-of-the-way corner near one of the unconscious blessés swathed in bandages. Slumping onto the floor, she glanced around the small space filled with the smell of unwashed bodies, infected wounds, and blood.
“Why are any of us in this mess?” Rose muttered in English as she stared unseeingly before her.
“American?” The shaky, hoarse word came from the man on the cot nearest to her. White strips of material covered nearly every inch of him, and Rose could see evidence of blood, both fresh and dried, that had seeped through the wrappings. She did not know which stunned her more: that the severely wounded man had managed to talk or that he spoke with an upper-class British accent.
But those things did not matter, not when the man lay so close to death. Rose jumped to her feet, forgetting her own weariness.
