When the Lights Go on Again Read Online Free PDF Page B

Have you ever felt like that, Katie?’
    All Katie could do was hug her tightly, but Gerry’s anguished outburst had filled her with concern, and she knew she had to say something.
    Taking a deep breath she told Gerry quietly, as she released her, ‘I do understand how you feel and, well, I think I’d feel the same, but we can’t always just think of ourselves, Gerry.’
    The other girl was looking at her now.
    ‘You are all your parents have left, Gerry. You are the future of your family. You and the children you will have, not just for yourself but for your brothers as well. Sometimes it takes more courage to live than it does to die. Your brothers were incredibly brave and I know that you can be just as brave.’
    For a moment Katie thought she had done the wrong thing. Tears were pouring silently down Gerry’s face, but then Gerry flung herself into Katie’s arms.
    ‘I just don’t deserve a friend as good as you, Katie,’ she wept. ‘You’re right. The boys would be furious with me for being such a coward. From now on things are going to change. I am going to change.’
    They hugged again, Katie close to tears herself.
    Later on, as she stood in her own room, her hands wrapped round the comforting warmth of her mug of cocoa, Kate reflected sadly on the effect that the war was having on the emotions of young women, herself included. Some, like Gerry, sought escape from its harsh realities in drink and ‘having fun’; others, like Katie herself, avoided anything other than friendship with young men, for fear of the emotional pain of losing them, whilst women like Peggy Groves, engaged or married, prayed every night that their men would return home safely. If she and Luke Campion had still been engaged, she too would have been one of those waiting and praying and hoping against hope.
    But she was not still engaged to Luke, Katie reminded herself. That was over and in the past, just like the despair she had suffered when Luke had first broken off their engagement. But ending it had been the right thing for both of them. As much as she had loved Luke – and she had – she had found his dark moods and jealousy difficult to cope with. The turbulence of her parents’ marriage had left her yearning for the calm of a love based more on the comfort provided by friendship than passion, Katie admitted, but she had not known herself well enough then to be able to see that. She had not known herself and she had not really known Luke either; they had never properly discussed themselves with one another. No, she no longer wept for their broken engagement or her own broken heart.
    ‘What do you reckon, Corp? Think we’re going to make it?’ Andy asked Luke as they kept their heads down, waiting for the landing craft they were on to get close enough to Salerno’s beachhead for them to disembark.
    Luke and Andy had joined up virtually together, trained together, and fought together in the desert, and now here they were about to disembark onto Italian soil.
    Their unit, along with the remnants of other British units, were now being deployed in Italy under the command of General Mark Clark, of the American Fifth Army, the aim, to break through the German defences and push all the way to Rome.
    Right now, though, Luke reflected, as he tried not to let the screams and moans from a landing craft that had just been hit by a German shell, get through the protective wall that every soldier learned to draw around himself, for some odd reason it was Katie who was at the forefront of his mind. Determinedly he pushed her image away to focus on his men and his responsibility to them.
    On the beach ahead of them men from the advanced landing craft had started up a smoke screen to protect the landing of the infantry and the equipment.
    The sergeant in charge of their troop was giving the command for the men to make for the beach. Wading through churning water, Luke chivvied his own men on, ignoring the sight of a corpse floating in the