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Ruth, her leg muscles burning, reached the crater and peered down at the wreckage. The front of the ambulance was smashed with the wheels twisted outward, and the cab was partially crumpled over the engine compartment, like a fold of an accordion. Both doors were wedged against the sides of the hole, and steam from a ruptured radiator spewed over the decimation. Fear flooded Ruth’s veins.

She lowered herself into the crater and peered through a hole in the broken windshield at her friend, slumped on the floor. “Lucette!”

Lucette lifted her head.

“Are you hurt?”

Lucette, using the steering wheel, pulled herself onto her knees and ran her hands over her limbs. “My ears are ringing and I have a cut on my forehead.” She looked up and pushed hair out of her eyes. “Nothing broken.”

“Thank goodness. Let’s get you—”

The grinding of an aircraft engine swelled.

Ruth looked up and froze.

The Stuka, high above the field, descended toward them. Its siren screamed.

“It’s come back!” Ruth tugged at the driver’s side door, but it—as well as the passenger door—was wedged shut by mounds of dirt.

“Go!” Lucette shouted.

“I’m not leaving you!” Ruth crawled onto the hood. “Cover your head!” She sat and kicked the windshield with the heel of her shoe, sending broken glass over the cab.

Lucette reached her hand through the opening.

Machine guns fired.

“Get down!” Ruth curled into a fetal position. She expected her body to be riddled with bullets. Instead, the sound of plane engines, deeper in pitch than the Stuka, shot overhead. She peered to the sky and discovered that the enemy aircraft had veered away and was being chased by three French fighter planes.

Lucette brushed shards of glass from the dashboard with the sleeve of her uniform and looked up through the open windshield. “They’re ours!”

Ruth clasped Lucette’s hands and pulled her from the wreckage. They climbed out of the crater and scurried to Ruth’s ambulance.

Ruth helped Lucette into the passenger seat, and then took her place behind the wheel. She removed a handkerchief from her pocket and gave it to Lucette. “Your forehead is bleeding, above your right eye.”

Lucette pressed the cloth to her laceration.

French cannonade erupted. Shock waves rolled like thunder over the field and through Ruth’s body. “Are you able to work?”

Oui—let’s go.”

Ruth started the engine and drove toward the soldiers. For the remainder of the day, the two worked as a team to evacuate injured soldiers away from the battlefront. Hundreds, if not thousands, of German air assaults were conducted on the Meuse Line, and at dusk the bombing raids were replaced by attacks from the German infantry. The French Army casualty count soared, overwhelming medics and the ambulance corps. Rumors soon spread through the field that German tanks had gotten behind them, and some of the soldiers fled their posts, leaving a wide void in the French defenses. By midnight, the German infantry penetrated eight kilometers into French territory and the hospital announced plans for evacuation. But Ruth and Lucette were committed to saving as many lives as possible, and they returned to the front again and again.

CHAPTER 13

SEDAN, FRANCE—MAY 14, 1940

It was their second sortie of the terrible morning. Jimmie, flying at fifteen thousand feet, adjusted the control stick of his Hurricane to maintain his position in the Green Section that included Benny and section leader Cobber. The trio were in new, upgraded Hurricanes that had been delivered to their squadron. For the first time since the war began, their fighter planes were nearly on par with the performance of a Messerschmitt 109.

Their mission, which was the same as the other sections of No. 73 Squadron, was to escort separate groups of Fairey Battles, single-engine light bombers, to a narrow section of the front, where German Panzer tanks had broken through the Meuse Line. Ahead and below his plane, ten Battles flew in a Vic formation. There were twelve bombers in the last sortie; two failed to return.

Jimmie peered through his canopy. Explosions flashed, and streams of smoke rose from the horizon, as if the Allied and German bombardments had cracked open the earth, creating a gateway to hell. Hundreds of Panzers, exchanging gunfire with divisions of French tanks, were advancing through a gap in the inferno.

“We should have bloody been here yesterday,” Benny said over the radio.

“Roger,” Cobber said. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. Stay alert and keep an eye out for bandits.”

“Wilco,” Benny said.

Jimmie’s pulse rate quickened, and he tightened his grip on the control stick. “Wilco.”

The day before, Air Chief Marshal Barratt, the officer in charge of the British air force in France, ordered a day of rest for the pilots after heavy losses incurred by the RAF in the Netherlands and Belgium. The pilots of No. 73 Squadron were infuriated with having to stand idle while their French allies flew alone to defend against the German invasion. And it sickened Jimmie to watch the French squadrons depart from the airfield and, two hours later, return with fewer planes.

Jimmie scanned the sky, and his adrenaline surged at the sight of six oncoming aircraft. “Messerschmitts—two o’clock high!”

“Roger,” Cobber said. “Tally-ho, Green Section!”

Jimmie pushed the throttle and the engine roared. “Tally-ho!”

The Green Section Hurricanes ascended, narrowing in on their target. Jimmie placed his thumb on the gun-firing button and peered through his gunsight. He maneuvered his plane, bringing a Messerschmitt into his sight, and fired his machine guns. Bullets streamed through the sky.

Gunfire erupted from his fellow wingmen.

The Messerschmitt fighters, veering in separate directions, fired their guns and shot past them.

Turbulence jolted Jimmie’s Hurricane. He banked hard right. G-force pressed him into his seat, and he dived toward a Messerschmitt that was closing in on a Fairey Battle.

The bomber’s air gunner, his head and torso protruding from the rear cockpit like a passenger in the dicky-seat of a roadster, swiveled his Vickers machine gun toward the Messerschmitt. He opened fire but missed.

Are sens

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