Never Just a Memory by Gloria Cook

Author:Gloria Cook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Books
Published: 2018-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

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Nate didn’t know that children could make so much noise, that they could shriek shriller than a prairie cat, that they could work up the energy to outrival a cattle stampede, but he was having a whole lot of fun. He had not been particularly looking forward to this afternoon. Children from all around the area of Devoran, which was four miles from Truro, seven miles from Falmouth, had been collected by a convoy of trucks and brought to the village hall for a Christmas party. Used to wide open spaces and very few people at home, the lack of privacy and constant activity at the camp was often a bind, but to see the joy and delight on these kids’ faces made every second worthwhile.

He’d help lift them down off the trucks. Families of kids sharing the same features, clutching hands, apprehensive, some tearful, in woollen balaclavas and pixie bonnets and white ankle socks. Some spoke with different or foreign accents, signifying that they were evacuees or refugees. ‘Poor kids,’ Herv had said, handing out fistfuls of chocolate. ‘Some have never seen a candy bar. It’s a cold winter ahead for most of them. Guess some have lost their daddies. Hey, kids! We’ve got Santa Claus coming to see ya, and the Old Man from the North. You haven’t heard of him, have you? There’s no need to be scared. He’ll be wearing a big hat and will have a nice long black beard.’

The children’s eyes had grown wide in amazement over the wealth of food, roast turkey and trimmings, although one or two hadn’t been sure about putting cranberry sauce on their meat, unshakeable in their belief it was really jam. They had devoured basins of traditional pudding and mock cream. Afterwards, Nate had sat with two children on his knees, the hall in silence at first, while Herv had run the film The Reluctant Dragon. Then the sighs of enchantment had been replaced with lusty screams of glee as the story unfolded of good overcoming evil.

‘You going to help us overcome Hitler, mister?’ a little boy asked Nate when he was stacking the chairs away. ‘Like the dragon got rid of the evil people?’

Nate knelt down to him. ‘I sure am going to try, sonny.’ He gave the boy a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum, thinking about how the coming huge operation he and his comrades were training for would take him away from Lottie. Some time, not too far into the future, he would be called on to use his skills not in the comparative safety of the field hospital here, where he saw only cases of accidental wounds, routine operations like an appendectomy, and cracked heads from the occasional drunken brawl, but he’d be launched into the theatre of battle.

His hands were suddenly filled with smaller ones and he was hauled off to dance around the eight-foot-high decorated fir tree. When it was time for the children to be buttoned back into their

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