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December 28, 1941

The heavy bombing began overhead just as patients in cumbersome Balkan frames were lifted into the large army trucks, which were to convey them to convents and colleges. Those helpless patients were an open target for the bombers above.

In the midst of all this fear, confusion, and deafening noise, Major Greene sidled up to me and shouted into my ear, “Are you doing anything tonight?” He was watching me and leering like a wicked satyr.

What a guy! I thought.

“Arent you nervous?” I asked.

He touched his generous paunch tenderly and answered, “I never did like butterflies.”

When we wheeled our poor doomed Lizzie out of the ward, he wept like a child and we wept with him. I gave him a stiff opiate and promised to visit him, but I never saw him again.

The less wounded were not apprehensive. Happy Harris, as usual, joked about the fun he would have living in a convent for the first time in his twenty-one years.