men coming in on her. She’s big enough. Normal capacity is four hundred eighteen,” the man said. He said the Solace might have to wait in the bay for several hours, before they were ready to receive her in the port. “They usually let them dock around seven or eight in the morning. We try to unload the men in daylight.” He made the injured men sound like so much cargo.
The last two days were the longest of all since the telegram had arrived seventeen days before with the cryptic message, and so little information for her to go on. She had thought of nothing else since she got the telegram.
The morning of January 16, Eleanor took an early morning bus to the Embarcadero where the ships docked, so she’d have time to find the right one before he got there. There were laborers, construction workers, and dockworkers on the bus with her, and no one questioned what she was doing there. She was the only woman on the bus. She was a young and attractive woman and obviously had a mission of some kind, or maybe a job. The bus made a stop several blocks from the docks, and she got out and began walking at a brisk pace. It was still dark, and she had left Camille with her neighbor the night before, and explained that her husband was being sent home from the war. Her neighbor’s brother was an infantryman in Europe, and her husband had a heart defect and was at home.
She reached the port on foot at six in the morning, and saw a huge red cross painted on a white background to indicate where the hospital ship would come in. There were longshoremen standing around, and military personnel. When she asked, they told her where to go. They said they didn’t know what time the Solace would dock, but it might not be for a while, although they were expecting her that morning. There was a heavy mist and it was damp. She could hear the foghorns in the distance. She took refuge in a doorway, and by eight o’clock, she saw a long string of military ambulances begin to arrive, and park haphazardly near the docks. In another hour, the area was bustling with activity. There were wagons with red crosses on them, a line of buses, more ambulances, military vehicles. And then in the distance, she saw the ship moving slowly through the bay with her precious cargo.
It was ten before she docked, and by then Eleanor had been there for four hours. She was freezing and her clothes were damp from the mist and a light rain, but she didn’t care. Before the ship even docked, suddenly there were a swarm of medics and ambulance drivers, doctors, nurses, a sea of medical and military personnel crowding toward the dock to receive the wounded men. She didn’t see how she would get through them to find Alex, but she pushed her way into the crowd, and moved as far forward as she could as the ship approached.
It looked huge to her, and it was nearly eleven before the ship with the enormous red cross painted on its side was securely tied up at the dock, as the medical personnel crowded forward, and half a dozen gangplanks were set up, and a number of the medics went on board carrying stretchers to bring off the most severely injured men first. She could see why they had told her she might miss him at the dock, but she was determined to find him. She prayed he wasn’t one of the men being brought off on stretchers. She positioned herself where she could see many of them as they were carried past her, but none of them looked like Alex, although some were so heavily bandaged you couldn’t tell. They were covered with army blankets, with their few belongings lying on top of them. There were a number of army and navy nurses in the crowd and men guiding the stretcher bearers toward the ambulances. It was a long time before men on crutches began to file past her, being assisted in many cases, and when she saw them, Eleanor began calling his name, hoping he could hear her in the crowd.
“Alex Allen…Alex Allen…” There was so much noise she had to shout, and she had brought a photograph of him to show anyone who could help her find him.
There were hundreds of