Normandy to Paris - Book Three

You settle a new place with your hands before you settle it with your heart.

Book Three of the Six Triple Eight Saga.

Rouen, France, May 1945. The war in Europe is over, and the 6888th has landed in a bombed-out city with a two-year backlog waiting for it and the victory mail of seven million soldiers about to come down on top of it like weather. Staff Sergeant Millie Dunn and her battalion move into the ruins the way they do everything: audited, organized, and singing before the dust is down.

The French line the streets with flowers. The battalion stands in the square where Joan of Arc burned. And then the Rouen road takes three of their own, and the Army will not pay to bury them, so the women of the 6888th pool their own pay and lay their sisters to rest at Colleville-sur-Mer, above Omaha Beach.

Paris follows: the hotels, the final shift, Charity Adams promoted to lieutenant colonel. And then the voyage home, where there is no band at the pier and the bus is still segregated.

Twenty-seven chapters, from the ruins of Rouen to the segregated bus. Every dated event is drawn from the record, and the author’s note at the close of the book separates record from invention, item by item.

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