“Read the dedication,” I told him. “Especially the name at the bottom.”
Two hundred soldiers had gone quiet.
I watched his lips move.
And I watched the color drain out of his face when he reached the last line.
Chapter 2: The Name at the Bottom
The big blue letters were the battalion motto.
Beneath them, a bronze dedication plate, the kind that gets bolted to a wall and then forgotten by everyone who passes it every day:
THIS HALL IS DEDICATED TO 1ST LT. OPAL BRADFORD, ARMY NURSE CORPS — WHO ON THE NIGHT OF 14 NOVEMBER 1969 REFUSED EVACUATION AND KEPT FORTY-THREE WOUNDED SOLDIERS OF THIS BATTALION ALIVE UNTIL DAWN.
Doyle read my name off the wall.
Then he looked at the pin on my coat.
Then at my face.
Then back at the wall, as if one of the three would change and spare him.
None of them did.
“You—” he started, and stopped, because there was no end to that sentence that would help him.
