Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

Then, coughing, he sought out one of the navy boys, to see if he could hitch a ride to the base hospital.

Maybe Hilda was there.

At the Lakehurst Naval Air Station’s small, single-story hospital, Charteris roamed the corridors like a man in a trance. His sport jacket had been lost en route, and his yellow sport shirt and tan slacks were scorched and torn; he looked like a hobo who’d had a particularly rough night of it.

The scene was one approaching battlefield horror. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies swarmed like white blood corpuscles fighting infection, hallways lined with burn victims on stretchers; in small doorless rooms, other casualties slumped in chairs and sat on examining tables, as doctors had a look and nurses dressed wounds. One somewhat larger room had badly burned bodies littering the floor like unearthed mummies.

Some of the victims had “M’s” written on their foreheads with grease pencil-an orderly with a syringe the size of a Roman candle was administering morphine, and hastily marking those who’d had theirs. Screams and whimpers and howls and moans resounded, and men with bloody burns, clothes in charred tatters, wandered vacant-eyed like zombies, looking for friends and loved ones. The wounded cried out, in German mostly, for their mothers, their wives, their husbands, their priests. And a priest was threading through the carnage, delivering last rites like a postman does the mail.

The smell of burned human flesh and burned clothing hung like a foul curtain; odors of alcohol and Lysol added to the nasty bouquet. Charteris began to cough-apparently he’d inhaled more smoke than he realized-and suddenly a gentle hand was on his arm, as a nurse shuffled the dazed author into an examining room and onto its white-papered table.

A fleshy, bespectacled, kindly-faced doctor in his thirties gave Charteris a quick exam.

“You’re one of the luckiest I’ve seen,” he told Charteris, who was putting his scorched shirt back on. “The nurse will apply some picric acid to your hands-couple of nasty little burns.”

“Is everyone being brought here?”

“To the first-aid station? Yes, but we immediately shuttle the worst cases to Paul Kimball Hospital-it’s close by in Lakewood.”

“Does anyone have a list?”

“Of who’s injured and who’s survived?”

“Yes.”

A commotion in the hall, accompanied by louder howls, signaled the arrival of more injured, who were still being carted over from the crash site by ambulance and auto.

“No list I’m afraid,” the doctor said, already halfway out the door, “much too early for that… if you’ll excuse me.”

Almost immediately a nurse came in with a small bottle of picric acid and some gauze and wet down his palms. She was a brunette of perhaps twenty-five, with a gentle plain face.

“Nurse, do you remember treating or even just noticing a pretty German girl with braided blonde hair, blue eyes?”

“Why yes-I didn’t deal with her personally, but I’m fairly sure she’s fine, just minor burns, like yourself. Your wife?”

“Is she still here?”

“I’m not sure. As negligible as her injuries are, she was probably discharged… is that better?”

“It’s fine. Where did you see her?”

“Down the hall to the left-she was standing next to a boy on a stretcher who was very badly burned, comforting him, sweet girl. He may have been taken to Paul Kimball Hospital, or… he may have died.”

Then she produced a clipboard and asked Charteris if he could sign his name; either the burns weren’t bad or he was in shock, because he had no trouble.

In the hallway he ran into Leonhard and Gertrude Adelt; their clothes were scorched rather worse than his, Leonhard’s nearly in tatters. Both of them had severe burns on their arms and faces, and Leonhard’s scalp looked to be burned to the bone.

“Thank God you’re all right, Leslie!” Leonhard said, over the moans around them.

“Have you seen a doctor yet?”

“No. We’re just on our way out-getting out of this madhouse!”

“You two need to see a doctor.”

The journalist shook his head. “My brothers are just outside and they’ll take care of us.”

Gertrude reached out, not touching him-her hand was too burned for that. “We’ll be fine, Leslie. Did you see Hilda?”

“No, I was just looking for her.”

“She’s barely scratched.” Smiling wearily, Gertrude gestured with her head. “She’s down at the end of the hall. Go to her-I think she’s in shock.”

As if the Adelts weren’t.

He told them good-bye, said, “Get to a doctor!” and made his way down the corridor, lined as it was with burn victims on stretchers, weaving around nurses, doctors, orderlies.

Shoulders slumped, head down, she was standing next to an empty, bloodstained, smoke-grimy stretcher. Her braids had come untangled and blonde locks dangled alongside her soot-smudged heart-shaped face, her white crepe dress torn here and there, new dabs of black added to its red-and-pink-and-black floral pattern.

“So they took him away, huh?” Charteris said.

She glanced up sharply. “Leslie… thank God!”

“You’ve been looking for me, then? Frantically?”

Wincing, she said, “What is it?”

“Good-bye, Hilda.”

Soon he was standing in the cool, rain-misted evening, his back to the small hospital, where ambulances and autos were still bringing in more wounded. Across the airfield the wailing sirens of fire trucks and police cars and ambulances had mostly died. The voluminous plumes of black smoke were beginning to get lost in the darkening dusk, and-from this distance at least-the orange flames were little more than a campfire, smoldering in the twisted glowing skeleton of the ship, around which the cops and firefighters could warm themselves. The hook-and-ladder trucks had dispensed their water and were disinterested onlookers, now.

“Leslie…”

Hilda’s husky voice.

He didn’t turn. “My condolences.”

Then she was next to him, as he stood staring out at the fuming, smoldering wreckage across the airfield. The sky was a vast emptiness, overcast, no stars.

“What do you mean?”

“Funny.” He patted his cigarette case of Gauloises in his shirt pocket. “These things made the trip, and I could use a smoke right now… but I haven’t got a light.”

Wind blew the strands of hair. “Why are you mad at me?”

Not looking at her, Charteris said, “I’m surprised he lived through it long enough even to make it to this first-aid station. I’m surprised there was anything left to identify.”

“Who?” Her brow was knit. “Who are you talking about?”

Now he turned to her, looked down into the deep blue eyes in the lovely black-splotched face. “Eric Spehl-your boyfriend.”

She frowned-and he realized she was deciding whether or not to continue the masquerade; but the day, the evening, had gone on too long, and they had been through too much, together and apart. And, most of all, they were both just too damned tired. Sighing, her eyelids at half-mast, she all but said, No games, no more games.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“I write mystery stories, remember?”

“ How, Leslie? How do you know?”

He shrugged. “No one big thing-several small things, Beatrice… That is your real name, isn’t it? Beatrice Schmidt?”

That he knew this much unsettled her, clearly; but she recovered, saying, “Yes… but I have rather come to like ‘Hilda.’”

“I… I’d rather come to like Hilda, myself.” He twitched half a smile. “I am a little disappointed. You’d think a German girl, at least, would be a natural blonde. You’re the ‘older’ woman, the dark-haired leftist ‘tramp’ who turned young Eric Spehl political.”