by Jerry Sacher
“Comrade Breselov, I was wondering if I could have a word with you.”
Sergei hesitated, but he agreed and followed him back onto the ship. Sergei waited impatiently while the first officer fumbled with the sleeve of his jacket, which was too long for his arm. Finally he smoothed out his sleeve and looked into Sergei’s eyes.
“I was wondering if you would like another job, Comrade?”
Sergei almost couldn’t believe his ears. “A job, sir? What does this job entail?”
“Patience, Comrade, and I’ll explain.” The officer reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper and showed it to Sergei. “There’s a convoy of trucks at the end of the dock filled with medical supplies and equipment that are needed in Passchendaele. If you would like to be part of the caravan to get the delivery through, there’s some extra money in it for you. I would give you time to think about it, but they want to leave immediately. I’ll get you a French Army uniform, it wouldn’t look good for you to travel like an ordinary laborer.”
“I don’t need any time to think about it, sir, I’ll take it.”
Sergei shook the first officer’s hand and followed him off the ship and down to the entrance of the docks, where a dozen trucks, engines idling and piled high with canvas-covered crates, were waiting. Sergei was introduced to a French soldier named Marcel, who, after fitting him with a uniform, put him on one of the trucks with several men. One of the men made room for Sergei next to the covered boxes. One of the other men spoke to him, but Sergei didn’t understand most of what was being said to him, so he had to rely on hand gestures to be understood. Realizing that Sergei didn’t comprehend him, the man ignored him altogether after that. Sergei noticed that they eyed him suspiciously his lack of their language. He felt that maybe they thought he was a spy, but nobody treated him as such, so he was relieved about that. The only problem was finding Benjamin in this strange country.
Sergei leaned back against the canvas. This whole situation was very strange, and almost too good to be true. He was in France on a mission carrying cargo from a Russian ship. What did the boxes, tightly covered in canvas sheets, contain?
The convoy was delayed while soldiers walked around the trucks, flipping through papers, pulling dozens of times on the ropes that secured the crates, smoking and talking rapidly. Then finally the trucks began to move. Sergei was relieved when the convoy began moving through the town and into the countryside, past signs pointing the direction to French towns he never heard of. He sat back again and closed his eyes. This job, whatever it was—because as yet he hadn’t done anything—was a blessing. It would pay for further passage across the Channel to London, and he would be closer to his Benjamin.
He realized that he hadn’t sent a letter in months to explain what had happened to him, so perhaps his angel had forgotten him. If Benjamin had forgotten him and moved on, of course he wouldn’t blame him for finding someone else. He had deserved it for not going with Benjamin when he’d had the chance to do so.
The truck was carrying him across rough dirt roads to what Sergei knew, from talk on the ship and back home in Petrograd, was another battlefield.
Passchendaele, France
November 1917
BENJAMIN WAS almost thrown off of his feet by the explosion that rattled the hospital, and he thought instantly of the torpedo striking the HMHS Pendennis. He leaned over the wounded soldier, who was probably still a teenager, to shield him from the paint and wood chips that fell from above them in a fine powder. Benjamin straightened himself up, only to hear the whine and boom of another falling shell. He continued working even when it felt like the hospital would crumble from the constant bombardment.
He moved to another patient, a young man with an abdominal wound, which needed a fresh dressing. He smiled at Benjamin from under the pillow he was using to shield his eyes from the debris. In the silence between explosions, he said to Benjamin, “The Jerries are awake again, mate. We can’t let them get through to England….” He muttered something else that Benjamin didn’t understand. Throwing the pillow aside, he tried to lift himself up, but Benjamin pressed him back down on the cot. He remembered he’d done that for Sergei once, so long ago. Was it on a train?
“We won’t let the Huns get to England—even now we’re beating them back,” Benjamin reassured him, and set to work changing bandages.
He was startled by a voice at the end of the bed.
“Ben, what do you think of all this?” It was John standing at the foot of the bed, pointing out the rattling window.
“All I’m thinking about is keeping the wounded safe from this shelling!” Benjamin replied sharply.
John stood, quiet, and then he moved around the bed to help Benjamin with the next soldier, a man with a head and arm injury.
SERGEI LIFTED his head and listened closely. He heard a rumbling from far away that he believed was thunder. He saw the soldiers and other men in his truck exchange glances. They were speaking French and pointing toward the west. It didn’t take Sergei very long to realize that they weren’t nearing an approaching thunderstorm; he recognized the sounds of battle, and from that sound he reckoned it was still many miles ahead of them.
A soldier sitting across from him pulled a rifle from the inside of a long case concealed under the canvas and handed it to Sergei.
“This is ironic. I left the Russian Army, but nobody told me I’d signed up for the French Army, unless I was tricked by that first officer.” Sergei was actually happy for the first time in months to be back in the fight, but he never thought it would be for the army of another country.
The other men heard Sergei speak out loud, but none of them understood what he was trying to tell them. Sergei sat back against a box and placed the rifle over his knee.
The truck jostled over roads that bore the ruts of countless tires and finally turned a curve in the road past the ruins of a brick wall. The line of trucks came to a halt in front of a building that had once been a farmer’s house before the war. A tall man with dark hair and wearing a khaki uniform opened the door and stepped outside. Sergei sensed that he must have been someone of importance, because all the men suddenly scrambled out of the trucks and assembled in orderly rows in front of him. Sergei stood in the back row, trying to remain unassuming.
It turned out the man was one of the commanders in the French Army; Sergei saw that by the stripes he wore on his collar. The commander paced back and forth in front of the men, beating the farmhouse wall with a stick whenever he wanted to drive a point home. Sergei didn’t understand a word, but followed the example of the others. Sergei noticed with some relief that he hadn’t heard any bombs for some time, but it would be too good to last.
The commander was still speaking when he was interrupted by a low whistling sound that got louder. Everyone began to scramble, and Sergei dived under one of the trucks when the farmhouse was shelled, wood and bricks raining down everywhere. Sergei crawled out from under the truck and ran toward the rear of the house just as another shell hit—this time it took out one of the trucks in the convoy.
Sergei jumped into a ditch just as another one fell; this one was only forty feet away from where he was crouching. The ground shook and dirt came down on top of him, and then it was suddenly silent.
Slowly, Sergei stood up and looked through the dust and smoke, and walked back to the smoldering ruins of the house and the trucks. It was eerily quiet—no signs of life, and not even the wind was moving. The commander and soldiers, even the drivers and other men, were nowhere in sight. He didn’t even see which direction they all went. He was alone.
Sergei made his way back down the road and found one or two of the trucks undamaged, and in one of them the driver had left the keys. Sergei got behind the wheel and steered the truck around the shell holes, out of the yard, and down what appeared to be a main road. He didn’t know where he was going, but he had to take the chance and see where the road led.
Sergei only made it three miles down the ro
ad before he ran into a roadblock of civilians and soldiers, all heading in the same direction. More people flooded in from every direction until the truck was surrounded and could move no further. He shut it off and got out, walking down the road and among the mob, trying to find out what was happening. Finally, he found an Army officer who was helping an injured comrade. Sergei offered to get him back to the truck, for which the officer was grateful.
While they made their way there, the soldier explained to Sergei. “We’re evacuating.”
“Where are you heading?”
“To Le Havre—there’s hospital ships there.”
The sound of screaming shells was coming closer, so he had no time to make anyone comfortable. Sergei helped the two men and some civilians onto the truck, abandoning the boxes in a muddy ditch.
The drive along the crowded roads, when Sergei was able to get the truck moving again, was an adventure he would never forget. He maneuvered over rutted dirt lanes and through crowds of people that hung onto the sides of the truck, trying to climb aboard. The enemy was shelling again, the truck narrowly escaped being hit by falling bombs, and he had to swerve to avoid hitting anyone. Several times he almost lost control of the wheel, and almost overturned in ditches or over the rocks blocking the road. Sergei thought he was dreaming when he saw a bullet-riddled sign that pointed the way: Le Havre. Sergei crossed himself, and wiped away the sweat that stood out on his forehead.
Fewer people were on the road by the time Sergei reached the town gates, just in time for the truck to sputter and die. It was out of petrol and was going no farther. Sergei climbed out of the truck and went around back to find that the wounded soldier and his companion were already gone. Sergei had been so intent on the highways that he didn’t know the two men had abandoned the truck twelve miles back, during one of the shell bombardments.
Sergei leaned on the back of the truck for a moment, secretly relieved that he didn’t have to worry about them. He could concentrate on somehow finding Benjamin.
Finding Benjamin… how was he going to find Benjamin? Sergei was hopeful, but had his doubts that he would ever see Benjamin again, separated by thousands of miles as they were at this moment. Just then he heard the familiar blast of a ship’s whistle in the distance.
Sergei walked away from the truck, through the city gate, and went in search of the wharf.
BENJAMIN WALKED back toward the hospital from the wharf. He had returned to Le Havre, having evacuated the soldiers from the battlefield hospital. Many had been placed aboard the hospital ships bound for England.
Somewhere out in the wide world was Sergei, and it made Benjamin sad to think that he might never see Sergei again.
Toward evening, John took Benjamin out for dinner at a café near the hospital. When the waiter left them with their coffee, John took a sip and pushed it aside. “What’s wrong with you, Ben? You’ve been in a mood all day.”
Benjamin looked up from his untouched cup as if he had been wakened from sleep. “I’m sorry, John. I was just thinking about Sergei. Well, I guess I always seem to be thinking about him lately. I had a letter from my parents today, war news mostly. With the Americans in the war, it may well be over soon, and there’s still no news about Sergei.”
“Russia’s in the middle of a revolution and a possible civil war. It can’t be easy to find out anything right now.”
“That’s what everyone tells me, but if I could only get back there to find him….” Benjamin paused, and let out a nervous laugh, then continued speaking. “The only thing is, I wouldn’t know where to begin looking. I can’t go back to the house in Petrograd—and it’s occurred to me that we never agreed on a place to meet, ever.”
“Listen, Ben, I don’t want to sound like Pollyanna and make everything all bright and cheery, but somehow you’ll find him. I believe that somehow, even in the midst of this war, you’ll see him again.”
John’s confidence cheered Benjamin enough to get him to smile.
“That’s better. You look like an angel when you smile—has anyone ever told you that?” John offered.
Benjamin told him that yes, someone had told him that, and he could still hear Sergei calling him by that term of endearment.
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter with their dinner, and Benjamin looked like he was in a better humor than before. When the meal was finished, John and Benjamin paid the bill and then retired outside for a cigarette. While they sat, leaning against a wall, several trucks rumbled through the streets heading toward the hospital.
“Well, Doctor John, looks like we are needed,” Benjamin observed, taking another drag on his cigarette.
“I knew it was too good to last.”
SERGEI ARRIVED at the docks just in time to see the smoke from a departing ship as it passed through the straits and finally disappeared. He swore out loud—he had missed a chance to board the vessel that was hopefully going to England, but of course there would be others arriving. In the meantime, what was he going to do in a country where he didn’t speak the language?
He walked away from the docks, past several military buildings: headquarters and medical units and supply sheds. Soldiers and refugees surrounded him; they would stop to stare at him from time to time and then move on about their various business.
Sergei wandered into a café near the docks, where he found more food than he had ever tasted back home in Russia lately. He overcame the language barrier by pointing to what he wanted on the menu, and when the waiter left him on his own, he stared out the window, watching more soldiers and townspeople on the street outside. Sergei searched for Ben’s face among the passing soldiers, and it was disappointing to him not to see the one he was looking for.
When Sergei finished his dinner and rose to leave, he exited the small café and turned the corner just as two soldiers, medical personnel, entered.
He had enough money to pay for a night’s lodging, and he was in his room ready to turn in for the night when he heard the rumbling of trucks in the street. He pushed the curtain aside to look outside, and his attention was drawn to the road below the window, where the trucks drove down the street toward the hospital he had passed earlier. In the flash of light from one of the trucks, he saw two soldiers on the other side of the street, and one of them looked like Benjamin. He threw open the window to call out Benjamin’s name, but by then, the soldiers were gone.
Sergei hoped he wasn’t having a hallucination. Could that really have been Benjamin he just saw with another young soldier, with Red Cross armbands on their sleeves? He pinched his arm until he nearly bruised it and knew he wasn’t dreaming. They were going toward the hospital and dock area, so maybe he could find out for sure if this was Benjamin or not. He threw on his clothes and ran out of the hotel, heading for the wharves.
When Sergei turned the corner and into a crowd of civilians, in flashes of light he saw two soldiers more than a dozen feet away from him, slowed by swarms of people. He hoped they would be slowed down enough for him to catch up with them. He found himself praying out loud. Nobody could hear him or understand him anyway.
Chapter 25
BENJAMIN AND John hurried from the café toward the hospital; around the corner they ran into a tide of English and French troops and civilians blocking the thoroughfare. As more trucks rumbled past, the babble of voices rose higher.
“It’ll take too long to reach the hospital on this road, there must be another way,” John shouted into Benjamin’s ear. Benjamin nodded and remembered a shortcut around the corner. He grabbed John’s sleeve, pulling him in another direction and shouting that he should follow him. When they turned the corner, they found that this way, too, was blocked, and just as they were ready to rush forward, Benjamin stopped. He swore that someone had just shouted his name; he strained to hear it again.
“Ben, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I thought I heard someone calling my name.”
Benjamin looked around, but he saw no one, only a
swirl of faces. He didn’t hear the voice calling out again. John grabbed his sleeve this time, and they reached the Army hospital to find everything in a state of confusion. The compound was crowded with soldiers, civilian refugees, and medical personnel that all sounded as if they were trying to talk at once. Benjamin and John looked around them.
“Who lifted the lid off of hell?” Benjamin said, quoting a famous philosopher of the day.
WHEN THE sun rose the next morning, everything was quiet. Benjamin opened his eyes and found himself dressed and lying in his cot, but he didn’t recall how he got there. John was in the neighboring cot, snoring, and Benjamin was careful not to disturb him as he left the room and closed the door behind him.
In the mess hall he was surprised to find coffee and breakfast set out, and doctors and nurses sitting at tables as if nothing had happened the night before. Benjamin wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing, especially when he had heard a familiar voice call out his name. He knew it was impossible, since Sergei was thousands of miles away in Petrograd.
Benjamin ate breakfast and then brought some to John, who was just waking up.
“It felt like last night was some kind of dream, but of course it was real…. You know, John, I thought for a minute I heard Sergei call my name.”
“I thought he was in Russia, so it must have been your imagination.”
“Perhaps… but still.” Benjamin didn’t finish his sentence but stood up and walked out of the room. He went outside and walked down to the wharf. Another hospital ship was anchored and was unloading supplies. Benjamin sat down on a nearby crate to watch.