All the Lights Above Us Read online

  All the Lights Above Us

    A novel inspired by the women of D-Day

  M. B. Henry

  This book is dedicated to all participants, in and out of uniform, home and abroad, of the Mighty Endeavor on June 6, 1944. It’s their story. I’m just the typist.

  VISION OF INVASION

  Mildred

  BERLIN

  MAY 1944

  The scratch of a record player startled Mildred, causing her to drop her pen on the polished coffee table. Ink smeared across the stack of papers that had fresh writing on every page.

  She leaned back and rubbed her temple, fumbling for a pack of cigarettes. Considering the hard times ensnaring Germany, her apartment boasted luxurious furniture: plush couches, oriental rugs, a few decanters of French cognac. Mildred got a lot of it from the black market. Because unlike most, she could afford it.

  She took a long inhale of smoke to clear her mind, then crossed her bare legs. Everyone always admired her legs. The rest of her wasn’t so bad either, especially in her trademark black skirts and heels.

  The horrid screeching of the record player faded into the song “Lili Marlene.” Mildred snapped her head up and glared at Max, still fussing with the record. “You’re incorrigible.”

  Max Otto Koischwitz, a handsome, older German man in an immaculate suit that made him look crisp, grinned at her. Not a single strand of his silver hair was out of place. He picked up her decanter, leaned over the coffee table, and topped off her glass.

  “The theme song of my star radio personality grates on her nerves?”

  “Of course it does.”

  “And the play?” He tapped the stack of papers. “What do you think?”

  Mildred spread them out. “It reads well to me. You want me to play the mother? Evelyn?”

  “I do, my sweet.” Max sat down beside her. His latest radio play told the story of a bloody, violent amphibious invasion gone badly wrong. Mildred’s role, a psychic mother named Evelyn who tries to save her shipwrecked soldier son, wasn’t even the starring one. Flurries of gunfire, dead bodies, and screaming people. A play unlike any Max had ever penned.

  Perhaps that’s what spawned Mildred’s worsening headache. Too much had happened in the last few years, not just to him, but to them both.

  Then, of course, there was the pending invasion. The constant talk of the dreaded second front, the spearhead to Hitler’s center. No one knew where or when it would happen, but it would happen. That much was certain, and it was all Berlin discussed. Everyone at the radio station constantly spoke of it, even the head of Nazi propaganda himself, Joseph Goebbels.

  More than anyone else, Mildred worried about the coming invasion. Her own countrymen would be the ones storming those beaches. Boys from her old American homeland would soon upend her new one. She tried not to let that bother her too much. She’d chosen her side a long time ago and she wasn’t ashamed. She may have been born in America, but her destiny had forever linked her to Max. Wherever he was, she would be there too.

  For now, that was Berlin. She was an employee at the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft German radio, the RRG, along with Max. He wrote her plays and radio segments, and she read them into the microphone, broadcasting her voice all over the Reich. In a week or so, she would read this latest radio play, one that sounded an awful lot like propaganda.

  Mildred hated the word “propaganda.” She carefully avoided it when she described her job. Oh sure, she said some pretty nasty things into that microphone. She slammed the Allies. She railed against the Jews just like everyone else. And she did it all with a smile. Politics wasn’t her business. The Jewish troubles didn’t involve her. She was a radio actress, a famous one at that. The Germans paid her a lot of money to read whatever words were put in front of her, more money than she had ever made in America.

  It wasn’t like it was treason. Not the way Mildred looked at it. She didn’t give away troop positions or spout Army secrets. She had never put any American lives in danger. That’s what Mildred always told herself, the lullaby she sang every night to go to sleep.

  I’m just an actress.

  It’s not propaganda.

  It’s just my job.

  She turned to Max and her headache melted a little. The radio station had also given her this man she loved so much. She would do anything for him, follow him anywhere, even into hell. In many ways, she already had.

  He ran a hand up the silky stockings that covered her legs—another luxury many German women had to do without. “Shall we go over some of your lines?”

  She welcomed his hand as it grazed her inner thigh. “Not with your hand up my skirt.”

  He kissed her behind her ear. “Axis Sally, you’re no fun anymore.”

  Mildred couldn’t hide the smirk creeping across her lips.

  Axis Sally … Another gift from the radio station. She’d worked for fame all her life, and now, at long last, she was somebody. Thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers and GIs in war-battered Italy tuned in to her show every evening. With a hint of reverence in their voices, they called her things like “Axis Sally” and “my gal Sal.” Some of the wittier GIs dubbed her “the Berlin Bitch.”

  Offensive perhaps, but to Mildred Gillars, fame was fame, be it insults or praise. She had what she wanted. She had a promising career in entertainment (not propaganda). She had renown, money, and Max on top of it.

  His hand moved gently up her thigh, right to the top of her stocking. She struggled to focus, reading her opening line off the first page. “Everyone knows that the invasion is suicide. Even the simplest person knows that.” She read it again, this time in a more dramatic tone. It sounded dreadful.

  “It won’t be just empty dialogue, Midge,” Max said. “I’m going to fill in the background with battle noises. Gunfire, tanks, artillery, and screaming.”

  Mildred read more. “We could have done a lot about it. Have we got a government by the people or not? Roosevelt had no right to go to war.”

  That line gave her a chill. It was unveiled slander against the president of United States. Max usually kept criticism of her country more subtle, to protect her if nothing else.

  Max inched his hand higher. Then higher. “Midge.” There was something in his voice. Something conflicting with his flirtatious hand.

  Mildred’s eyes flicked to his.

  Indeed, his demeanor had shifted. He looked worn, the playfulness was gone. “Do you ever regret it?” he said.

  “What?”

  “America. I mean, I’ve been indicted over there.”

  “You were born in Germany. What business does the U.S. have indicting you?”

  “Born here, yes, but a citizen there too. I lived and taught in New York for years. So yes, they’ve indicted me. And if the invasion does succeed …”

  Fear shot through her. “It won’t.”

  “Well … you could be next, you know.”

  “What have they got against me? I’m a radio personality. Nothing more.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, Midge. Don’t be so naïve.”

  “I’m an American with a home and a job in Germany. That’s not a crime, Max.”

  “Whatever helps you sleep, my dear.”

  Mildred’s eyes sharpened. “The consulate seized my passport, just because I told them I work at RRG. What would they have me do without my passport? Walk penniless through the streets and beg for food from Nazis? I needed a job and I have one. That’s all.”

  “And the slander? The Jew baiting?”

  “Just words.”

  “Midge, it’s the German agenda. The Nazi agenda. It’s prop—”

  She clamped her hand over his mouth. “I’ve never said anything that would hurt those boys.”

&nb
sp; “But you’re okay with hurting everyone else?”

  Mildred turned back to the play. She held the title page in her hands. Vision of Invasion. Max had written it to sway the Americans away from going through with the invasion. He spared no details. He described the seventy to ninety percent casualties of the soldiers who dared to attack Hitler’s troops. The dead bodies like “roasted geese” and “heads of cabbage” on the beaches. The sinking ships and bloodied beaches. He called the invasion suicide. D of D-Day stands for Doom and Disaster, Death and Defeat.

  A knot tightened in her chest. This kind of writing did smack of the “P” word she tried so hard to avoid. Reading it aloud, to thousands of listeners, could make the difference between wayward citizen and treasonous defector.

  Max smashed his cigarette into the ashtray, then rubbed his tired eyes. “Sometimes these walls feel a bit close, don’t they?”

  Mildred tossed back the dregs from her glass. Max’s words echoed in her head along with the last lines of “Lili Marlene.”

  “You could be next …”

  She shuffled the papers on the coffee table into a tidy pile. Despite the dicey language, she would read it on the radio. She would do what she had to, just as both of them had for so long.

  For both their sakes, it was time to sing that lullaby again.

  “I think it might help the Americans. The play.”

  He lifted his gaze to hers. “Is that so?”

  Mildred put her hand on his knee with a wink. To hide her own fear, she needed to pull off the hardest acting performance of her life. “We both know the invasion will fail. Germany is too strong. There’s no reason to send those boys through the meat grinder, is there?” She gathered the papers into a neat stack and held it out to him. “You’re warning them, Max. Trying to talk some sense into them. Saving lives, or at least attempting to. What’s traitorous about that?”

  Max grinned, ran his hand back up her thigh, and this time it didn’t stop. He attacked her neck with his lips and pressed her down on the couch.

  The record player scratched again, but Mildred ignored it. She tried to focus on the passion of the moment. But her headache lingered, even with Max making love to her with fervor. Her body felt heavy. She was afraid of everything to come—and even more afraid of showing it. Especially in a place where “defeatist talk” could be the end of her.

  Theda

  PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND

  JUNE 1, 1944

  Theda Brown had never seen such a ruckus. The noise echoed down the coastline. Men spilling from tanks, marching in columns, and roaring past in fully armed vehicles. All of them headed for their loading positions.

  The battle to come wasn’t much of a secret. At least not in Portsmouth, a busy little port town just off the English Channel. Soldiers and stockpiles for the pending invasion of France had been building around here for months. British soldiers by the thousands were buttoned up into hastily built barracks near the port. Supplies of all kinds were stacked in all the dockyards, tanks and vehicles parked in every alleyway. Hordes of ships in each harbor slip. Enough planes had been amassed to blacken the skies of Europe. Sometimes on her daily walks, Theda stumbled upon troops of combat-clad soldiers prowling about the countryside on practice maneuvers.

  This morning’s activities suggested this was no drill. The clouds had gathered for the storm, and not just in the overcast, dreary Portsmouth sky.

  She turned her head at the sound of giggling behind her. Two fellow nurses at the Voluntary Aid Detachment (“VADs” for short) from the nearby Queen Alexandra Hospital stood around her. One was Carolyn, a twenty-something, pastel-swaddled and stylish-heeled blonde. The other was Sheila, with her lips painted fire-engine red to match her nails. Both girls had lined the backs of their legs with ink to mimic the presence of stockings. They had also pinched their cheeks pink and coated their eyes with makeup.

  There was no makeup for Theda, and a plain, polka-dot day dress did just fine. She didn’t care about her appearance, outside of looking professional for work. Even though she was twenty-six, and the specter of spinsterhood had learned her name, she had other priorities. She relished the idea of answering only to herself and living her life exactly the way she wanted. With or without a handsome soldier boy of her own.

  Besides, the wild soldiers annoyed Theda more than anything, including the ones gathered here today. British infantry, engineers, glider troops, and sailors. Royal Air Force fighter pilots waltzed around with a swagger. Swarms of bodyguards and aides huddled around the four- and five-star generals. Administrative personnel, looking haggard, stood with clipboards. Then there were the medics, marines, divers, cooks, and artillerymen. Every rank and file, young and old, man and boy. All of them, from all over the world, converged on this one spot.

  The men were just one part of the invasion force. There were ships as big as small cities, destroyers armed to the teeth, sleek and deadly submarines, and medical ships with the newest life-saving equipment. There were planes too—bombers, fighters, escorts, and cargo planes.

  Then came the supplies. Food, medicine, fresh water, bridge equipment, artillery, armor, weapons, and ammunition. Oh, the ammunition. Stacks of ammunition taller than the cliffs of Dover. Piles of artillery shells that rivaled Mount Olympus. Boxes upon boxes stashed in every corner, with machine guns, mortars, grenades, and rifles.

  It was like the hundreds of thousands of English troops, and their anti-Nazi counterparts from all corners of the earth, planned to start a whole new civilization on some hostile, foreign planet. In a way, Theda hoped they would. Hitler’s hordes had turned continental Europe into a terrifying and terrible place. Perhaps they really should start over.

  Theda rubbed the pale skin on her arms. She knew, deep in her heart, that this was history right in front of her eyes. Win or lose, it was unlikely the world would see anything of this magnitude ever again. If chaos and doom hadn’t ensnared half the globe, she might feel lucky to be alive at a time like this, to behold such a spectacle.

  She stood firm in the anxious shuffle, while Carolyn and Sheila were all giggles, eating up the catcalls from the rowdy troops. Theda did have to admit the boys looked charming. So young and carefree. So innocent. They sure didn’t act like they were about to face a bloody battle and imminent death. In fact, they didn’t act much like soldiers. They whistled and winked at the girls. A few even patted some unwitting nurses on the bum.

  Forward behavior like that just intimidated Theda. So did Carolyn and Sheila, whom she had grown up with in the countryside outside Portsmouth. Both seemed like naturals around those hell-raising young men. Their dresses perfectly hugged their dainty figures. They knew all the right dance steps and flirtatious words. Boys flocked to them in the pubs and restaurants, while Theda was left to her own devices, wondering why she didn’t quite fit in.

  The girls, of course, gave her plenty of reasons.

  “If you would just dress a little fresher,” Sheila had told her more than once. “Those polka dots are a bit tired.”

  Carolyn agreed. “Your figure could use a little reducing.”

  “Maybe a little rouge to perk up that pale skin?”

  “Perhaps a nice chignon instead of always leaving that dreadful long hair down.”

  “A little less talk about medicine and work, Theda, and more about music and movies.”

  And Theda’s personal favorite … “Soldiers don’t like bookish girls, Theda. They want girls to have fun.”

  When it came to the male gender, Theda figured Carolyn and Sheila knew better, and yet she didn’t take their advice. She couldn’t even if she wanted to. Everything about it felt foolish, even ridiculous. She had never been like the other girls, and she felt restless in cramped little Portsmouth. The urge to escape, to see the world, to travel to exotic places, had welled inside her ever since she was little.

  These days, Carolyn and Sheila, and most of the other young women in the nursing circle, just wanted to find a husband. While Theda craved
a lifelong career in medicine, they planned to quit after the war and start families. The only full-time job they wanted was motherhood. That they all had the same dreams, and had the same route planned out for their lives, made Theda feel left out of the club. Like something was wrong with her because she didn’t think and dream like them. Oh sure, Carolyn and Sheila were plenty nice to her. Everyone at the hospital was. But they had a way of making her feel like a stranger in her own hometown.

  As for the local soldier boys, Theda had long since given up on them too. They seemed much more interested in big busts than big books.

  Theda crossed her arms in the chilly breeze and watched the tanks roll by, shaking the ground beneath her. They were brand new, with shiny, white stars painted on the side. Polished guns jutted from their turrets like masts on a ship. Boys in olive and tan uniforms hung from their tops and off the sides. They waved to the gathered nurses and hospital personnel. They whistled at the girls and tossed them coins and goodies from their pockets.

  Sheila and Carolyn squealed and waved their delicate hands.

  Theda rolled her eyes. “If you girls act like dimwits, that’s what you’ll attract.”

  Sheila’s face wrinkled to a frown. “Theda Brown, there’s enough men here to satisfy every woman in England. Why don’t you make a play for one?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Carolyn scowled. “You’ll end up an old maid if you aren’t careful.”

  “Promise?”

  Sheila’s eyes flickered with irritation. That witty streak in Theda annoyed plenty of people. Even the doctors struggled to keep up with her.

  Before she could say anything else, the roar of a tank snapped up her attention. As it passed by, Theda caught eyes with a soldier leaning off the hatch. He looked a bit more subdued than the others, more worldly. He took in the crowds, but he didn’t cheer and jostle, he didn’t poke fun at the girls. There was a hint of deep understanding in those aquamarine eyes.

  Eyes just like William’s …