Chapter 12. Tenting in an Apple Orchard

Just an hour or two later my heavenly sleep in the pup tent ended when a loud male voice shouted, “Wake up.  Pack up.  Make it fast.  We’re moving on!”  Wow!  Lighted with my trusty flashlight supplied by batteries brought from home, I threw on my clothes, stuffed my ditty bag and stepped out ready for the next move.  It was cold.  Thank heaven for my cozy, now dry, wool Eisenhower-jacketed pantsuit and the ankle length GI issue raincoat.  Unlined—not yet winter, the lining was packed away in my footlocker travelling with the hospital supplies somewhere.

Soon we found ourselves on the road in the dark night.  With other olive-drabbed females we were tightly packed on each of the two side benches which face each other on the open air truck—the Armored Personnel Carrier.

Horrors, a cold drizzle was starting.  We already felt a bit chilly and it was just the early part of the night.  On and on we drove in the black night, sitting straight up, no way to change position.  I don’t recall that anyone said a word the whole night.  Each of us was trying not to increase the misery of the others maybe.

First we shivered and our teeth chattered.  After a while we were aware that our raincoats were soaked and the moisture was creeping in from the outside.  Then the continual drizzle on the face caused a little rivulet to form and flow from the nose, down the neck, between the breasts and on down the center of the body.  A whole night to face in that straitjacket of torture—some 8 or 9 hours of unbearable cold, wondering “Can I survive?”

Finally as dawn started creeping up we saw as well as felt torture.  On either side of the road nothing was whole—rubbish from war damage everywhere.  Dead animals: dogs, cows and calves, horses, other farm animals as well as shattered pieces of building, holes in the road.  Almost no building left standing.  Animals were strewn on the ground here and there, in bushes, on piles of shattered lumber.  One black and white milk cow, still appearing alive and undamaged, had been blown about 2 stories high up in a tree with her belly resting comfortably on a large branch of the tree, legs dangling on each side to balance her perfectly.

In the morning light we entered a city that was obliterated by bombs and each of us knew instantly where we were.  On our left, so often photographed, was the real-time view of the sunlight streaming through the bomb hole in the bell tower of the Saint-Lô Church, the only remaining part of the building.  By then the drizzle had stopped.  The sky, as well as the entire professional staff of the 95^th General Hospital, was colored blue.

Not long after Saint-Lô, we stopped on the main road from Normandy to Paris in what was unmistakably an apple orchard―our dwelling place in the Lison area of Normandy.  Busily scurrying around were our mess GIs preparing an open-air breakfast surrounded by a number of huge tents in the orchard rectangle.  Apparently the GIs had been brought ahead from the beach to prepare for us.

After stumbling out of the Armored Personnel Carriers, we all compared our bluish-purple coloring and the depth of the ridges on our hands, which looked as if we had spent too long in the bath.  We looked less than human!

Our tent city filled about half of the former apple orchard.  Instead of hedgerows of shrubs to mark off an area in England, apple trees in France formed the boundaries of the apple orchards.  The trees inside had been removed in order to grow crops, so our new home was among the weeds and grasses.

          We were so glad that the rain had stopped and the sun came out.  It seemed we had arrived in heaven—sunny, warmer, smell of food and alive!