The War That Saved My Life (The War That Saved My Life, #1)

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

In the end, 330,000 British soldiers were saved. Winston Churchill called it England’s “finest hour.” It was hard, listening to him on the radio, safely home with Jamie once again, to think that there had been anything fine about the shiploads of desperate and dying men. But at the same time, I felt different. There was a Before Dunkirk version of me and an After Dunkirk version. The After Dunkirk version was stronger, less afraid. It had been awful, but I hadn’t quit. I had persisted. In battle I had won.

“Everyone still thinks I should send you away,” Susan said. I nodded. Lady Thorton said so often. I went to Susan’s WVS meetings sometimes, to help sew, and Lady Thorton made a noise in the back of her throat every time she saw me. “Part of me does agree,” Susan continued. “I know they mean well. But I also understand now why some of the mothers from London took their evacuated children back so soon. Some things you’ve got to face as a family.”

Across the living room, out the back door. Jamie ducked into the Anderson shelter and stuffed Bovril into his basket. The cat howled. He sounded like a baby screaming in pain. I stood at the door of the shelter. I’d never yet gone inside. I hated it, it scared me, it was so much like the cabinet under the sink at home. The one with the roaches. I could never see them or stop them. “Ada,” Susan said, behind me, “MOVE.” I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go inside. Not into that damp shelter, that smelled exactly like the cabinet. Not into that darkness. Not into that pain. The siren wailed. Jamie shouted, “Ada, hurry!” A noise like the plane exploding. Bombs. Real bombs, here in Kent, German bombs everyone feared. Here in the cabinet under the sink— Susan picked me up and carried me down the stairs. The smell enveloped me. I could feel the cramped cabinet, the roaches. I could hear Mam laughing while I screamed. I screamed. Another bomb. More screams. From Jamie? From me? How would I know? The memory of the cabinet seemed real, seemed to be happening right at that moment. I could see the cabinet, feel myself being shoved inside. Terror enveloped my brain. Suddenly I felt something tight around me. A blanket, a rough wool blanket. Susan wrapped me in it the way she had on Christmas Eve, tight, round and round. “Shh,” she said. “Shh.” She put her arms around me and laid me on a bench and then half sat on me, squishing me between her backside and the shelter wall. “We’re all here, w...

It was hard enough to cope with Susan. How would I ever cope without her?

“There’s things worse than bombs,” I said, remembering what I’d heard her say before. “I think so,” Susan said. “And Kent’s a big place, they can’t bomb every inch of it.” But she looked out the window toward the airfield, and her eyes creased with worry.

You could get used to anything. After a few weeks, I didn’t panic when I went into the shelter. I quit worrying about the invasion. I put Jamie up behind me on Butter and we searched the fields for shrapnel or bullets or bombs.

The army had found the suitcase buried in the sand. It contained a radio transmitter, the sort spies used to send coded messages across the channel. The perfect Englishman really had been a spy.

It was as if I’d been born in the village. As if I’d been born with two strong feet. As if I really was someone important, someone loved.

“Say it again,” Jamie said, giggling. “Tell me what you told the first officer.” “He looked at my bad foot,” I said, “and I said, ‘my foot’s a long way from my brain.’”

I understood why I’d been upset on Christmas. I’d felt overwhelmed; I really couldn’t help myself. But now, thinking back, it seemed a little silly to be unhappy about a dress when the pilots were dead. If I had it to do over, I would at least have learned their names.

We had to win this battle, Susan said, or we would lose the war. On the radio Prime Minister Churchill said, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” It meant the pilots were saving us all. It meant they were the only thing keeping the Germans away.

She wanted me to be a cripple. It didn’t make sense. The moon rose. I watched the patterns its light made on the ceiling. A cripple, and nothing but a cripple. “Jamie,” I said, poking him, “I caught a spy.” “I know,” he said. “And I learned to ride Butter, and we jumped the stone wall. Fred needs me.” “Mmmm,” said Jamie, rolling over. “And I can read and write, and knit, and sew. I helped the soldiers during Dunkirk week. And Maggie and Daisy like me,” I said. “Susan loves you,” Jamie said. “She loves both of us,” I said. “I know,” said Jamie. He sniffed. “I want Bovril.” I didn’t reply. I drifted off to sleep, sometime before Mam came home, and as I did, I thought one word. War. At last I understood what I was fighting, and why. And Mam had no idea how strong a fighter I’d become.

I said, “You never wanted us. You don’t want us now.” Mam’s eyes blazed. She said, “You’re right, I don’t.” “You never wanted us,” I said. “And why would I?” Mam said. “It was all him, calling me unnatural, wanting babies all the time. Then I got stuck with a cripple. And then a baby. And then no husband. I never wanted either of you.” Jamie made a little noise. I knew he was crying but I couldn’t look at him yet. I said, “So you don’t need to keep us now. You won’t have to pay. We’ll be gone in the morning. We’ll be gone for good.” Mam got up. She took her purse and hat. She turned back to look at me. “I can get rid of you without paying anything?” I nodded. She grinned. It was her stuffing-Ada-into-the – cabinet grin. “Is that a promise?” she said. All of my life I would remember those words. I said, “Yes.”

I had a more important question. “Why? Why did you come for us, after you let us go?” Susan stirred her tea with a spoon, round and round, looking thoughtful. The restaurant had sugar on the table, but it was bad manners to take more than a bit. “You’ll find out,” she said at last, “that there are different kinds of truth. It’s true your mother has a right to you. I was thinking of that when I let you go. “But then I couldn’t sleep. I sat in the shelter with the wretched cat and I realized that no matter what the rules were, I should have kept you. Because it was also true that you belonged to me. Do you understand that? Can you?” I said, “We were coming back to you this morning.” She nodded. “Good.”

Someday I’d tell her the whole story, what I’d said to Mam and what she’d said to me, but not now. Maybe not for a long time. It tore a hole through my heart just to think about it.

Then she put her arms around Jamie and looked directly at me. “It’s lucky I went after you,” she said. “The two of you saved my life, you did.” I slipped my hand into hers. A strange and unfamiliar feeling ran through me. It felt like the ocean, like sunlight, like horses. Like love. I searched my mind and found the name for it. Joy. “So now we’re even,” I said.