‘It is imperative that you strengthen the southern walls of Ashar. If Basra falls then the oilfields are in danger. There will be nothing to stop the Turks march—’
‘Yes, yes. I heard you the first time, Lieutenant. Now, you claim that you are attached to the 2nd Mendip Light Infantry …’ He raised his head and regarded Lock. ‘Where is your regiment now?’
‘Shaiba. But—’
‘Then you and your men must return there immediately.’
Lock took a deep breath, and clenched his right fist. ‘I cannot return, sir. The barrage …’ He felt he was stating the obvious.
The staff captain frowned and rubbed his thin lips thoughtfully. He picked up his telephone and wound the handle. He waited for a few moments until the exchange answered.
‘Captain Winslade here … Get me Lieutenant Colonel Godwinson … of the 2nd Mendips … Yes, at Shaiba … What? … I don’t care … Well, keep trying!’ He scowled and put the receiver down. He gazed at Lock impassively. ‘It appears the line is cut to the fort. The shelling I presume …’ He picked up the receiver once more and wound the handle. ‘Major Hall, Dorsetshire Regiment, please … Certainly …’ He began to drum his fingers on the tabletop. ‘Ah, sir, Winslade here … No, sir … Yes, sir … I … Yes, Lock, sir … No, Lock … L-O-C-K … Yes, sir, like a canal … Beg pardon, sir …’ Winslade was scowling as he listened. ‘Very good, sir … At once. Thank you, sir.’ He placed the receiver down and smiled thinly up at Lock.
‘You are to report to the Western Gate in Basra city, you and your men, where you will be transported to Shaiba—’
‘Look,’ Lock said, ‘I can’t just leave—’
‘You can and you will, Lieutenant. Those are direct orders to you from a senior commanding officer,’ Winslade said.
Lock pursed his lips and squeezed his injured hand tighter, dripping more blood onto the floor.
Winslade glanced at Lock’s bandaged hand. ‘Run along to the hospital first and get that hand seen to. And while you are about it, get yourself properly dressed! You are a disgrace to the uniform, man!’
‘And the southern wall at Ashar?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Winslade waved his hand dismissively.
Lock stared down at the staff officer in disbelief. But what could he do? He couldn’t force the captain to act. He was powerless. Where was Ross? Even Underhill would be a help. But Lock had no idea where the sergeant major was either. He uttered a foul curse and turned on his heels.
‘What did you say?’ Winslade spluttered after him. ‘Lieutenant!’
Lock ignored the captain and moved towards the door just as it opened. A staff sergeant entered. Lock barged past him.
‘Sarnt! Stop that man!’ Winslade yelled shrilly.
‘Sir? Sir?’ the sergeant called after Lock, pulling him back by the shoulder.
Lock spun round. ‘Sod off!’ he said.
The sergeant stared into Lock’s eyes and held his palms up, stepping back a pace.
Lock smiled wryly. ‘Nothing personal, Sergeant, but that … base-wallah behind the desk hasn’t the first idea of what’s going on, or what he’s doing. Now, I’m leaving to go and fight the Turks. If he or anyone else gets in my way, I’ll kill them. Now, you best get Captain “Yes Yes” … another cup of char.’ He mockingly saluted Winslade, who was standing with his mouth agape. ‘Sir,’ he said, then turned, pushed past the two watching sepoys, and left.
‘I’ll report this … this insubordination. Not befitting of an officer … even a damned colonial one … if you are an officer at all … Report to the Western Gate, or you will be arrested! Do you hear me, Lock?’ Winslade shouted after him.
Once he stepped outside, Lock hesitated, took a deep breath, then kicked at the dirt on the ground. ‘Bollocks!’ He needed to find someone who would listen, who had the power to do something. He needed to find Ross. And Winslade’s comments about him looking like a Buddoo irregular were right. To get himself taken seriously, and listened to, in this damned fool army, Lock at least needed to look like an officer.
He made his way over to a covered walkway where Singh and the others were gathered. The sepoys dozed whilst Elsworth blew gently away on a mouth organ. Lock grunted, recognising the ditty. It was ‘I Don’t Want to be a Soldier’. He slumped against the dusty wall and threw down his hat. He winced. His hand was getting stiff.
‘You best get that cleaned up, sahib,’ Singh said. ‘The hospital is not far from here. I saw some sisters whilst you were inside talking with the brass hats.’
‘I didn’t get to talk with the general,’ Lock said. ‘Bloody staff officers! Bloody army protocol! I’ll have the provosts after me now.’
‘But what of the southern wall, sahib?’
‘Well, I guess we will have to use our own initiative, won’t we?’ Lock said. ‘Take the lads back there, find some buckshee supplies on the way: lanterns, ammo, anything you can lay your hands on. Oh, and a couple more star lights for that flare gun I gave to Indar. Go and set up an observation line. Cajole as many other men as you can find, stragglers, whatever. Say it’s a direct order from Major Ross if you get any backchat. I will be along as soon as I get this hand sorted.’
‘And the major, sahib?’
‘Sweet FA. I’m hoping the sergeant major got him to the hospital. I’m going there now. There’s someone else I want to see, too.’
‘Sahib?’
‘Never mind.’
Singh and Lock got to their feet. Singh shouldered his rifle and went and spoke a few words in Punjabi to the resting sepoys. They groaned, but wearily pulled themselves up.
‘Sorry, lads,’ Lock said. ‘Private Elsworth, you tag along with me. I need someone who knows his way around this bloody place.’
Elsworth tapped the spit from his mouth organ and jumped to his feet. ‘Where to, sir?’ he said enthusiastically.
Lock raised his injured hand. ‘Hospital. To repair your damage. Ram Lal … you best come with us.’
Ram Lal looked to Singh.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lock said.
‘Sahib, Ram Lal should report to the Indian hospital,’ Singh said.
‘Nonsense! He’s coming with me. That’s an order!’
Singh nodded, then Ram Lal picked up his rifle and moved over to Lock’s side.
Outside the main entrance to the British Hospital, which looked more like a grand Victorian railway station than a medical centre, with its cupolas, porticoes, large arched windows and entranceway, Lock watched as the true horrors of war unfolded before him. A pretty nurse, her uniform splattered with blood, ran out from the main entrance to where a number of ambulances were beginning to arrive in the courtyard. The headlamps of the vehicles were shining brightly, casting eerie shadows upon the walls of the building. A group of wounded khaki-clad figures stumbled by, wrapped in blankets, bandaged, mostly caked in dried blood, dust and salt sweat. Labels were attached to their tunics. Curious, Lock stopped one private, who gazed back at him vacantly. Lock turned his label over. It gave brief details of the man’s injuries, scribbled in pencil. Lock let the soldier shuffle on.
‘Wounded from Shaiba, sir,’ Elsworth said grimly. ‘Can’t believe there’s so many. The Turk offensive is barely a day old! And this is just one of three hospitals.’
Lock watched the nurse with the blood-splattered uniform move from soldier to soldier, reading their labels, trying to smile at the men reassuringly. One man, his left leg bare and bound with blood-soaked bandages, stumbled as he tried to make his way from one of the ambulances to the hospital door. The nurse reached out and steadied him, then all but carried him inside. Lock, Elsworth and Ram Lal followed them into the already crowded reception hall. The nurse helped the wounded soldier through the stone-floored foyer and into the first ward. She guided him down into an empty chair next to one of the occupied beds.
The ward was full yet eerily silent. It had an overriding stench of death, a sickening cocktail of sweat, blood, pus and mud. It was all Lock cou
ld do to stop gagging. Most of the soldiers were pale and shivering. Nobody complained or cried out, no one even seemed to have the energy to talk; they all appeared to be utterly spent and, Lock guessed, glad to be away from the fighting. Most simply looked numb. Even the soldiers without a bed or a seat just leant against the walls, clearly so exhausted that they somehow managed to sleep without toppling forward.
Lock called out to the nurse but she didn’t appear to hear him. He followed her through to the next ward. Here, the smell of antiseptic was the first thing he noticed. He glanced at the uncomplaining men laid out on metal frame beds in neat rows, and tried not to focus on their shattered heads, or their hideously disfigured faces and their blind eyes that would never see a sunrise again.
‘Miss?’ A soldier, half his face bandaged, stretched out his hand weakly and the nurse stopped and leant over him. ‘Can you spare a smoke?’ She shook her head and Lock stepped forward.
‘Here.’ He handed the pasty soldier a cigarette and struck a match for him.
‘Thank you,’ the nurse said. She was so young, hardly more than a schoolgirl. Then she spotted Lock’s blood-soaked, bandaged hand. ‘Are you hurt?’ There was concern in her voice.
‘It’s nothing,’ Lock said with a gentle smile. ‘Actually, I’m looking for someone, an officer. He’s about—’
The nurse smiled wearily. ‘I’m sorry. You’ll have to go back to reception. Perhaps at the desk? Or even the Officers’ Hospital.’ She turned and paused at the door at the far end of the ward. She took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
Lock followed, with Elsworth and Ram Lal a few paces behind, and peered through the glass observation window. It showed another ward, again full of men all lying neatly on beds, again in neat rows along the wall, like graves in a cemetery. Some of the patients were conscious and watched, their mouths drawn at the corners, while the newly arrived nurse conferred with her colleague, who was sat at a desk in the middle of the ward. She looked ashen as she talked and indicated to the men under her charge.
Lock turned away. ‘Come on, let’s find the major ourselves.’
Elsworth glanced at Ram Lal, who just shrugged. Both men followed Lock down the crowded corridor further into the hospital. They passed through a set of double doors and came out onto another corridor. Only this one was deserted. A sign pinned to the yellowing wall said that it led to the operating theatres.
A door opened a little way up the corridor and a nurse wearing a cotton mask over her nose and mouth rushed out with a bowl in her hands. She disappeared through another door further down.
‘You lads sit and wait here,’ Lock said, seeing that there were a couple of chairs pushed up against one wall. ‘I’ll go and speak to that nurse.’
Elsworth and Ram Lal slumped into the chairs, and Lock continued along the corridor to the room from which the masked nurse had appeared. He put his face to the small observation window in the door. Blood covered most of the surfaces inside and a soldier was lying on the operating table. A masked doctor was sawing away at his patient’s leg above the knee. Lock’s gaze was drawn to a dark and bloody pile in the corner of the room. It reminded him of a compost heap, only, as he stared, he could make out familiar shapes: a hand, a foot, a leg. He realised with horror that it was a pile of severed limbs.
‘Jesus,’ Lock muttered, ‘this isn’t a hospital, it’s a slaughterhouse.’
‘What are you doing here?’ the masked nurse snapped, purposefully striding up to Lock, brown eyes wide and full of fury.
Lock smiled. ‘I’m … er … was told to report here.’ He raised his bloody, bandaged hand.
The nurse scowled at him. ‘To be amputated?’ she said, her voice tinged with a Lancashire lilt. ‘In there. But you’ll have to wait.’
She indicated to the room further down the corridor and quickly brushed past Lock and darted back into the operating room. The sound of the saw briefly assaulted Lock’s ears. He winced and walked away.
Lock sat quietly in the treatment room as the nurse, the same nurse who had scowled at him earlier from behind her mask, dressed his hand. He watched her with interest: a brown-haired girl in her early twenties. Her face was as pale as milk and she had a delicate, small nose and beautiful, sensual lips. They were slightly open and Lock could see her tongue move across the tips of her teeth as she concentrated on what she was doing. Lock was filled with a sudden desire to pull her to him and kiss her hard.
The nurse glanced up and caught Lock staring at her. She dropped her eyes again. Lock wondered what she was thinking, but any unspoken question was lost when a familiar voice called out his name from the corridor.
He looked up to see Lady Townshend standing in the doorway. She was wearing a sister’s uniform of grey and scarlet, with a red shoulder cape and white veil, quite different from the glamorous woman he had first met at Amy’s party. How long ago was it now? It seemed like years. But she was still a handsome woman and her eyes, those same emerald green eyes, were her daughter’s.
‘It is all right, Nurse Owen, I will take over now,’ she said softly, as she entered the room. ‘Bonjour, Lieutenant Lock. Fancy meeting you here.’
Lock made to pull himself to his feet, but Lady Townshend waved him back up onto the treatment table.
‘Sit, sit. Let me finish that dressing.’ She held her hand out and Nurse Owen gave her the bandages and scissors. ‘Nothing too serious, I hope? Merci, Nurse. Go and take some refreshment.’
Nurse Owen smiled warmly at Lock then left. Lock recalled Amy mentioning that her mother was a sister with the VAD, but he was surprised to see General Townshend’s wife here in Basra without her husband. Then again, Captain Winslade could have been lying about the general …
‘I … Madame … Lady Town … Sister …’
‘Bon, that looks fine.’ Lady Townshend snipped the excess bandage away and put the tray with the iodine and scissors aside. ‘Lady Alice, Sister Alice if you prefer,’ she smiled, ‘but less formality, s’il vous plaît, Lieutenant Lock.’
‘Is the general with you? Here in Basra, I mean?’ Lock said, getting stiffly down from the table.
‘Non, not yet, I am afraid. In a few days, perhaps. I sailed on the troopship after yours. I thought it best to be near Amy sooner rather than later. Her father is still furious with her for joining the VAD, and furious with our Commandant-in-Chief, Katharine Furse, for letting Amy be posted to the front,’ she said. ‘Although it had nothing to do with her. But that is of no consequence, my husband wouldn’t dare write or say anything to Mme Furse, Amy would never forgive him!’
Lock had to smile at that. ‘How is she?’
‘Well, under the circumstances. I fear she is a little young for this kind of work, but then all the nurses are, not to mention the poor boys being stretchered in from the front. Young ladies shouldn’t have to see the horrors that go on in this place. Mais, Amy … Well, you know her well enough, Lieutenant Lock.’
Something in Lady Townshend’s expression made Lock wonder if she knew about their feelings for one another or, at least, the feelings that had developed on the Lucknow before the incident with Bingham-Smith.
‘She is off duty now, but I am sure she will welcome a visit from you.’ Lady Townshend leant forward and lowered her voice. ‘She seemed a little troubled at first and I am inclined to think that she may be having doubts about her suitor, young Monsieur Casper. You remember him? Lieutenant Bingham-Smith? Non? Although he is an assistant provost marshal now, I believe, here in the city.’
Lock was stunned by the news. Bingham-Smith promoted. How on earth had that happened? And in the provosts, too.
‘I’m sure that suits him fine, Lady Townshend. Keeps him away from the fighting,’ Lock said.
Lady Townshend gave Lock a disapproving look. ‘Someone has to protect the city, Lieutenant Lock.’
Lock scoffed inside. He’d already seen first-hand how well the city was protected. He also knew that that wasn’t what the provosts did. They were the polic
e, the lawmen to watch over the soldiers, and they were about as popular as syphilis in a brothel. A perfect career path for Bingham-Smith, he thought.
Elsworth appeared at the door with a jacket over his arm. ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said shyly.
‘Come in, Elsworth. Lady Alice, may I present Private Elsworth, one of the finest shots in the British army.’
‘How do you do?’ Lady Townshend said.
Elsworth blushed as he stood there in silence. ‘Ma’am,’ he eventually blurted out before turning to Lock. ‘Er … sir, a jacket for you. Australian, too. Found it in the … er … well, it’s a spare.’ He handed it over awkwardly.
‘Thank you, Elsworth. How is Ram Lal?’
‘All patched up and waiting for your orders, sir. He’s in the corridor.’
‘Will you rejoin your regiment?’ Lady Townshend asked, turning back to Lock.
‘No. The shelling makes it impossible at the moment. I guess we are stuck here for the time being. Besides, I need to find my major. Major Ross – you remember him?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, I seem to have mislaid him.’
‘My, that is rather careless,’ Lady Townshend said. ‘I will see if I can track him down for you. He may well be in the Officers’ Hospital, a different building. Now, I must be getting along. But tell me, have you boys had anything decent to eat recently?’
‘Not for days, your ladyship,’ Elsworth blurted out. He coloured again.
‘Well, wait here and I will get one of the nurses to rustle up some bread and cheese and hot tea for you.’
‘Thank you,’ Lock said.
‘Bonne chance, Lieutenant.’ She nodded to Elsworth and made her way out of the room.
Lock rolled down his shirtsleeve and opened and closed his injured hand. The bandages were restrictive, but it felt better. He picked up the found jacket Elsworth had passed him. It had the bronze ‘Australia’ badge on the shoulders and a purple square below it, which meant ‘the Engineers’. But there was no white flash this time. However, the cuff badges of rank had two stars instead of one. It was a full lieutenant’s jacket. Lock smiled to himself. So he’d been promoted for the time being. Then he stopped and stared. There was a hole above the left breast pocket and the area around it was stained. Someone had attempted to scrub off what he could only presume was blood. He put his finger through the hole.
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