Dead Man's Land

by Robert Ryan

  Watson passed through the curtain from the officers’ ward and into a small passageway that opened up into another high-ceilinged room, but with larger windows and more natural light. A former refectory, perhaps, although a porous one: metal buckets caught drips from the leaking roof, pinging and plopping in an almost musical sequence. The arrangement was much the same as the officers’ ward, with twin rows of bedsteads facing each other. There was only one heater, though, along with an as-yet unlit potbelly stove, and there was a bite to the air.

  ‘Major Watson! Is tha’ you, sir?’

  He turned to his right. It took him a second to recognize the sergeant as the man’s left eye was heavily bandaged and it obscured most of his face. The nose was unmistakable, though.

  ‘Sergeant Shipobottom?’

  ‘Aye, sir. It’s Shipobottom. ’Ow do?’

  ‘Your captain said you’d been injured. But we didn’t have the opportunity to chat further. What on earth are the Leigh Pals doing here?’ He spoke up, as always when dealing with the mill workers, whose hearing had been ruined by the constant clatter of machinery. It made them very adept lip readers, a useful skill in the trenches.

  Shipobottom pointed at his dressing. ‘Ah took one in the stomach. And a shell splinter in m’ eye—’

  ‘No, no, man,’ said Watson with a laugh. ‘I mean here. Belgium. You were in Egypt, last I saw, marked for the Dardanelles.’

  ‘That’s right, but we were away about a month after thee, sir.’ There was a time when Watson had been unable to understand the thick ‘Lanky’ accent of the Leigh Pals, or ‘the Lobby Gobblers’ as they were sometimes known, but a few months as their temporary MO – where, for a shilling a time and a tot of rum, they had acted as willing subjects for his transfusion experiments – had cured him of that. One curious side effect of the war was that it had thrown together men of different regions and classes who would never have had cause to converse before. This breaching of national (and to some extent, class) boundaries, Watson had come to believe, could only be a welcome development. Even if it made for difficult conversations sometimes.

  ‘Are you all right, sir? No more of that ague?’

  ‘I am, thank you.’ Watson had come down with a mild case of malaria, debilitating enough to have him repatriated. ‘Quite recovered. No recurring fevers yet, fingers crossed. So you shipped here straight from Egypt?’

  ‘Aye. Like you said, we expected Dardanelles, like . . . but they brought us t’ this place. Get us green ones used to trench life, so they say.’

  Watson caught a whiff of something on the man’s breath. ‘Have you been drinking, Shipobottom?’

  The man gawped at him, his expression as comical as his name, which he claimed was derived from ‘man-who-looks-after-sheep-in-meadow-with-a-stream-at-the-bottom’.

  He looked ready to deny it, but then relented. ‘Aye. Just a drop, like. Don’t tell on me, sir.’

  ‘I won’t. But it’s not a good idea right now. Not in here. No more. Understood?’’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And how are the men?’

  He looked sombre. ‘Bearing up. We lost Captain Leverton, though. A right shame it were.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ It was true. He had been a fine officer, a good few years older than most. Maturity was in short supply in the British Army. ‘How did he . . . ?’

  ‘He got some gypo disease. Terrible it was in the end. Reckon you could’ve saved him.’

  Dysentery, enteric fever and, as he knew, malaria, were rife out there. ‘I’m sure they did everything they could.’

  Shipobottom’s unbandaged eye looked doubtful. ‘They’ve given yon de Griffon a field commission to captain. We all thought it must be because his family is bow-legged with brass. Rich, like. And a nestle-cock we reckoned. But no, the lad done well. I reckon he’ll keep the promotion, n’ all.’

  ‘I’m sure he will. He seemed very concerned about you.’ He knew de Griffon was from a well-to-do family, but he had a common touch that the men liked. What was a nestle-cock, though? Someone used to a little mollycoddling was his best guess. ‘And here in France? You’ve seen much action?’

  ‘Nah. The guns, like. Always the bloody guns throwin’ shells at us. Worse thing being the trench foot. Some of the boys, they take their boots off and their feet swell like a freshly baked loaf. I told ’em, you have to keep your boots and puttees loose and rub the whale oil on, but it don’t half pong. Dunno how whales put up with the stink. And then this happens to me. Just a scratch under the bandage, so Dr Myles says. I’ll be back with lads soon enough, I suppose.’

  ‘And the wife? And family?’

  He beamed. ‘Peg is champion and the boys an’ all, thankee. I wrote ’em a lazy card and had got three letters back.’

  A ‘lazy card’ was a sheet with a set of stock phrases to be crossed out as appropriate. ‘Have been wounded in the arm/leg/face/body.’ ‘Am doing well/better than expected/poorly’, and space for the location of the CCS or hospital. Shipobottom, he suspected, couldn’t manage much more.

  As he looked into Shipobottom’s face, a glint in the white of the good eye caught his attention. ‘Sergeant, can I just look at the area around your pupil?’

  ‘Sir.’

  Watson took finger and forefinger and separated the upper and lower lids. Something was odd there. Amid the reticulate pattern of red veins, he could see tiny flecks of blue. Which meant what? Was it some side effect from the metal that had penetrated his body? He made a mental note to check the other eye, once the bandage was off.

  ‘Is it all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘I was wishin’ for some leave home after all this, you know. I’m right jiggered.’

  Watson could hear an unfamiliar trembling in the big man’s voice. Shipobottom, the robust, foul-mouthed (when no officer was around) force of nature was genuinely scared. He didn’t want to go back up the line. The near-miss seemed to have shattered his nerves.

  ‘But soldiers like this one are too valuable to let go. Right, Sergeant?’

  It was Caspar Myles, from over Watson’s shoulder.

  Shipobottom pulled himself together. ‘Yes, Dr Myles, thankee. I’m still a bit mazey, though. A terrible yedwarch, an’ all.’

  ‘Mazey?’ Myles turned to Watson. ‘I only get about one word in three as it is.’

  ‘Dizzy,’ Watson translated. ‘Light-headed. And a yedwarch is a headache. Did he lose much blood?’

  ‘From the stomach wound, yes,’ said Myles. ‘He’s had saline.’

  Watson was all too aware that saline often brought about a remarkable recovery initially, but could be followed by a spectacular collapse. ‘You could give him some of the citrated blood I collected. It can work wonders.’ He turned back to the patient. ‘As the sergeant saw first-hand in Egypt.’

  ‘Do I get me shillin’ and a tot this time?’ Shipobottom asked cheekily.

  ‘I think you know the answer to that, Sergeant.’

  Shipobottom nodded with mock contrition. ‘Aye, Doctor.’

  Watson turned to Myles. ‘Won’t take me a second to select the right grouping. You simply have to be sure there will be agglutination or haemolysis in the donor blood.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Sergeant, you don’t recall your group, do you?’

  ‘Aye, I was group one. The tops.’

  Watson had tried to tell this group of guinea pigs that group I blood was in no way superior to group IV – it was simply a terminology associated with cross-matching, but they wouldn’t have it. ‘Well, there you have it. He can accept any blood – a universal recipient. You simply infuse the citrated blood like saline.’ Watson had to be careful. It was a disaster to suggest a fellow physician was in any way deficient or not familiar with current practice.

  ‘So I heard,’ Myles said evenly.

  ‘If the sergeant feels up to it, you could move him to the transfusion tent. Some privacy, the VADs can do the monitoring rather than take up valuable time here. Also, w
ith the lamps turned down, it would be a perfect environment to remove the eye bandage. No windows.’ It would also be a good place away from big ears and prying eyes for Watson to have a quiet word about Shipobottom’s mental state.

  ‘Excellent thought.’ Myles cleared his throat. ‘Dr Watson, can I have a word?’

  Myles steered him to the centre of the room and lowered his voice. ‘I just want to ask you a question,’ he said furtively.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Watson asked, automatically reducing his own speech to a whisper.

  ‘Staff Nurse Jennings.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You were with her yesterday. In the reception tent.’ Watson nodded. ‘What do you think of her?’

  Watson considered, not sure how the question was weighted. Perhaps he was considering recommending her for promotion or a mention in dispatches. ‘I think she has the makings of a fine nurse, Doctor. A sister-in-charge at least. Of course, she’s young—’

  ‘No, I mean.’ A conspiratorial huskiness crept into the voice. ‘What do you think of her? Not as a nurse.’

  ‘I don’t think of her as anything other than as a nurse.’

  Myles winked. ‘Is that right? I thought there might be the age factor, but you never know. Famous writers, eh? Might fancy their chances despite . . .’ He cleared his throat, thinking better of finishing the sentence. ‘So you don’t mind if I have crack at her?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A crack. A run at the barn door. Been considering it for a while. Then I saw you two being, well, intimate. Hold on a cotton-pickin’ minute. What’s this? But I was imagining things, you say. Just thought I’d check.’

  Watson felt himself blinking, too fast and too often. ‘Dr Myles, if Staff Nurse Jennings has any dealings with you in that sense, Sister Spence will have your—’

  ‘Whoa, now.’ Myles pointed at his own chest. ‘Doctor. Yes? Not army. Not an officer. The rules don’t apply to me.’

  Watson wasn’t certain that was true. Or at least, that Sister Spence would make any exceptions where her charges were concerned. ‘But they do to Staff Nurse Jennings.’

  ‘I’d argue that in a court of law.’

  ‘And why are you telling me this?’

  ‘As I say, I just thought you were gearing yourself up for a pass of your own. I wanted to make sure that I’m not . . . what do you say? Queering the pitch? I did see her first, y’see.’

  ‘Dr Myles—’

  ‘Caspar.’

  ‘Dr Myles. There is no pitch to queer. But I promise you if you endanger that girl in any way, either morally or professionally—’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a stuffed shirt.’

  ‘ – I’ll have you run out and returned to your unit. The All-Harvards or whatever they were called.’ Myles didn’t look too concerned at this rather empty threat. ‘I have a suggestion to make.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Find yourself a Canadian nurse. They might be more to your liking. Now if you will excuse me, Doctor, I have to prepare blood for your patient and locate my driver.’

  Watson turned on his heel and left before Myles could reply.

  It was only when he got back to his room and tore off his collar and tie in exasperation, that Watson realized that, in his hotheaded response, he’d forgotten to ask Myles for a second opinion on those blue flecks in Sergeant Shipobottom’s eye.

  FOURTEEN

  Brindle was weeping. He sat on the bed in the transfusion tent, head in hands, his body shaking with grief. Water was streaming off his hair and dripping onto the floor, his clothes were mud-stained and rain-soaked, showing he had been out in the squall that was spitting its last.

  Watson, now back in uniform, had entered the ward just in time to hear him emit a terrible wail. Miss Pippery was trying to feed the inconsolable man a mug of hot, sweet tea. Both nurses had some kind of over-smock covering their uniform that appeared to be covered in blobs of dried paint.

  ‘What’s happening here, Mrs Gregson?’ Watson demanded.

  ‘We found him round the back of the greenhouse we were meant to paint.’

  ‘Paint?’ Watson tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice. ‘But—’

  ‘Ask Sister Spence. It seems poor Brindle here recognized one of the bodies he had to bury. We brought him here to calm down. I suppose we should get rid . . .’ she forced the smock over her headdress, ‘. . . of these things.’ Miss Pippery followed suit.

  When Brindle looked up his eyes were crazed by an unsettling intensity. It was the stare of the madhouse. ‘He should not be buried in a mass grave. I told them that. Cornelius deserved better than that.’ He put his unnaturally long fingers over his face.

  Watson moved across and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You knew Cornelius Lovat?’

  He managed to nod between sobs.

  ‘Look, Brindle, he couldn’t have lived like that. Not with those injuries.’

  Again the head came up. ‘You don’t understand. I could have made him a mask. A beautiful mask.’ He mimed an act of creation with his hands. ‘I knew every inch of his face. They make new ones in London, don’t they? At Wandsworth. New faces made of the thinnest copper. I would have done my finest work. He could have been handsome again.’

  Watson squeezed his shoulder. The man wasn’t listening. The tissue damage was simply too extensive for him to have lived. Sister Spence had been absolutely correct about that. ‘How did you know him?’

  ‘From St Martins. He was in the year ahead of me.’

  ‘You’re a sculptor?’ Mrs Gregson surmised.

  ‘And Cornelius was a painter. A fine one.’

  Watson, to his shame, realized he knew very little about the orderly who had been assigned to him. Many of the drivers and dogsbodies, the stretcher-bearers and the gravediggers, were pacifists of one stripe or another, willing to help win the war, unwilling to kill. But now he looked at those fingers again, tracing a human visage in thin air, he appreciated this man had an artist’s hands. He hadn’t been looking at what was right under his nose. A cardinal sin. He half expected to hear a nagging voice in his ear, telling how he was looking but not observing.

  Brindle began to sob once more. Watson released his grip. He kneeled down and whispered a few words in the man’s ear before standing. It wasn’t much, but he hoped it helped.

  ‘Miss Pippery. Your convictions are showing. If Sister Spence sees that she’ll try and nail you to it,’ Mrs Gregson pointed at her friend’s neck. The gold cross had escaped and was hanging down the front of her VAD shift. Miss Pippery tucked it away. They weren’t allowed to display external signs of their own beliefs in front of the men. It might be a clue to their personality. And they weren’t meant to have one of those.

  ‘Right,’ said Mrs Gregson, ‘let’s get him out of those wet things and into pyjamas. Then hot-water bottles.’

  ‘And a bromide sedative,’ suggested Watson. ‘If you will, Miss Pippery?’

  But Miss Pippery’s gaze had slipped past him, to something over his shoulder. He turned to see two RAMC-uniformed officers had entered the tent behind him.

  ‘Major Watson? George Torrance.’ The CO of the Casualty Clearing Station extended a hand. He was shorter than Watson, with a flushed face, a tightly groomed oblong on his upper lip and a generous stomach pushing against his tunic buttons. ‘Good to meet you. May I introduce my adjutant, Captain Symonds.’ The junior officer and Watson also shook hands. ‘Sister tells me you did sterling work last night. It was kind of you to muck in.’

  ‘I think Sister Spence and your CCS would have managed quite well without me. It’s a tight ship.’

  Torrance smiled under his close-clipped toothbrush moustache. The man might be carrying a few extra pounds, but he was immaculately pressed and turned out. He looked as if he steam-ironed not only his uniform, underwear and his hair but Captain Symonds, too. His voice, though, was abrasive, part honk and part bark. Watson could see why sick men would struggle from their beds for his ins
pections. ‘You’ve met Caspar Myles, I assume?’

  ‘I have run into Dr Myles.’ Watson had tried not to bristle, but he clearly gave himself away somehow.

  ‘I know, I know, somewhat unorthodox. But a fine surgeon. He came to us by accident and, well, we’ve managed to hold on to him.’

  ‘We are very much looking forward to hearing about the new transfusion methods,’ interrupted Captain Symonds.

  ‘And it would be my pleasure to show you.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Torrance. ‘And perhaps a demonstration for Field Marshal Haig when he comes? Show him we aren’t still in the dark ages at the CCSs. I’m sure we have plenty of subjects—’

  ‘Perhaps we could discuss this later, Major Torrance? I’m going up to Brigade at Somerset House.’ Watson looked at his watch. Half the morning had gone. He cast a glance at Brindle, now being tucked into bed by Mrs Gregson, while Miss Pippery prepared the sleeping draught. Brindle had offered no resistance to Mrs Gregson; his limbs looked to be made of India rubber. The man was clearly going to be useless for some time. ‘However, I seem to have mislaid my driver.’

  Although Watson was quite capable of operating a motor car, it gave him no pleasure, and it certainly wasn’t the done thing for an officer to turn up at Brigade behind the wheel of his own vehicle.

  ‘Don’t worry, Major Watson. I’ve had enough of whitewash for one day. If it’s only a ride to Brigade you need,’ Mrs Gregson pulled off her VAD headdress and a riot of auburn hair sprang free. ‘I’ll drive you there.’

  FIFTEEN

  Bloch looked at the photograph of the man he had travelled across no man’s land and through enemy lines to kill. He did it dispassionately. To Bloch, he was already dead, an inanimate object. A ‘target’, pure and simple. It was one of the first things he had taught himself. Don’t think of them as people. They are walking bull’s-eyes. Don’t wonder if they had families, friends, lovers. Just do the job and get out.

  He shifted position slightly, as quietly as he could manage. He had come alarmingly close to being discovered several times. As the hours of darkness drew to a close, men, machines and animals were on the move, making one final hasty journey before the creeping light from the east betrayed them to the enemy. The munitions drays, the food and fresh water convoys, the tumbrils, the medical supply ambulances and the columns of reinforcements, and those being relieved, all took up their daylight positions, for, thanks to men like Bloch and his close contemporary, the artillery spotter, this was a war of armies and services that moved primarily at night.