Strawberry Red

Chapter 6 Ruby

Ruby woke up earlier than usual for the upcoming mission. She had wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck and over her head. The icy and cold morning air was blowing against her cheeks as she rode her bike to the base. As usually she headed straight to the red cross volunteer's barrack.

"Good morning, Ruby," said Helen and handed her a steaming cup of coffee.

"Morning." Ruby accepted the coffee and took a small sip. "So, who needs to be woken up?"

"Here's a list. You've got to wake up the pilots in barrack five and six." Helen handed her a list with names.

"Alright, thanks. What's the target for today?", asked Ruby while putting the list away into her pocket.

"Bremen. It's the first target in Germany of the 100th." Helen and Ruby went outside.

"Bremen is heavily protected because of the importance to the military." Ruby rubbed her cold hands together to get them to warm up a little bit.

"Yeah, it's going to be a though mission." Helen nodded. "I'll see you later! You promised me to hand out coffee and doughnuts with me."

"How could I forget?" asked Ruby teasingly. "See you."

Ruby headed over to barrack five where some of the pilots slept. She wondered how many of the men she was waking up would make it. Helen was totally right; Bremen was a really tough and dangerous mission. Ruby knew the Germans had a concentrated net of flak in that area and multiple fighter crews. She pushed those thoughts far away and tried to focus on the task at hand, waking the crews up, feed them and get them ready to fly out.

Ruby sneaked into the barrack like a sly cat and walked over to Bucks bunk bed. Carefully she kneed beside him and gently shook his shoulders.

"Buck, wake up. You're flying today," she whispered trying not to wake up the all of the other pilots.

"I'm up," came his raspy response. He slowly sat up in his bed and rubbed over his face.

"Are you feeling well?", asked Ruby.

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled sleepily.

"Good, get ready then. Breakfast ends in an hour." Ruby walked over to Bucky's bunk and woke him up too. Although he wasn't going on mission, she still had to wake him as he was the Air Exec.

Ruby went on to wake Biddick and DeMarco as well and left as quietly as she had come in. The men didn't even realize that she had left. While the crews were changing into flying gear, Ruby went to the kitchen to see if they needed help preparing breakfast. They sent her away and told her to help loading up the planes. She spent half an hour lifting air bottles into the planes. When they were finally done, she just wanted to sit down, so she took the short cut through the mess hall to reach the coffee and doughnut truck faster. There she could probably sit down and rest for a while.

She entered the mess hall and Meatball spotted her first. He started to run towards her. Ruby rummaged through her pockets and found a dog treat to give to him. Meatball happily ate the treat and licked all over Ruby's hand. She grabbed his leash and brought him back over to DeMarco.

"Can you look after him today? I don't want to take him on mission although he loves to fly," asked Benny whilst petting Meatballs head. "Don't you, my boy?"

"Of course. I rather enjoy his company." Ruby stole a chair from the table beside them and sat down next to DeMarco. Meatball took this as an opportunity to lay his head on her thighs.

"Aren't you hungry, Buck?" asked Ruby when she noticed that Buck didn't have any breakfast.

"Looking at the food, no, I am not," he answered and wrinkled his nose.