by Phillip Rock
“Stand down,” Charles ordered. Any further attack would be less than futile.
Out between the wire somewhere, in a shell hole or abandoned sap, a man was screaming—ragged shrieks and sobs. The sound went on and on, rising and falling, dwindling at times but never ending. 0830. When night came, he would send out the stretcher bearers. He prayed fervently that the shrieking man would be hours dead by then.
Colonel Robin Mackendric completed his first surgical shift of the day and went to the mess tent for a mug of tea and a late breakfast. He did not wear his colonel’s crown and stars on his uniform because he was oblivious to rank. It was purely a by-the-book promotion, due to the army’s obsession with having the proper rank in the proper job. Commanders of casualty clearing stations were supposed to be colonels, and so, finally, the War Office papers had caught up with him just as his team was shifted from Kemmel to the Somme. Being a colonel instead of a major had not affected his duties in any way, and so he hadn’t bothered to remove the old badges and have new ones sewn onto his shoulder straps. Not so Captain Ronald David Vale, who had been upped to major. He wore the crown badges on his underwear—or so it was rumored.
“Had a funny one just now, Mac,” Vale said as he joined Mackendric at the table. “Skull furrow . . . clear to the bone and all the way around. A perfect circle. Bullet penetrated the chap’s helmet and just bucketed around inside of it like a buzz saw. He’ll go through life with a nice groove to rest his hat on.”
Mackendric eyed him sourly and sipped his tea. “You’re collecting some marvelous tales for your dotage.”
Vale grinned and reached for a plate of buns. “Well, to tell you the truth, it didn’t go all the way around, but it was quite miraculous.”
“We can use a few miracles.”
“Yes,” Vale said, suddenly subdued. “I had more than my share of horrors yesterday. You were lucky to be in Amiens.”
“I heard all about it.”
“Yes . . . well, the point is, Mac, I don’t see how it can get better before it gets a damn sight worse. Are they going to keep on butting their heads against a wall here, or blow the bloody whistle and call time?”
“They’re going to keep butting.” Mackendric dunked a bun in his tea and munched on it slowly. “That was the gist of the meeting yesterday. The French medical services have gone to pot . . . just worn out by Verdun. Haig and Rawlinson are afraid the same sort of wear and tear will break us. We all told them that it wouldn’t, and then they began to drop dark hints that we could expect even heavier casualties between now and November.”
“Three hundred thousand isn’t enough for Haig?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Vale. I pity the man in a way. He’s got Joffre on his back like the old man of the sea. . . . Attack . . . attack . . . attack. It’s a war of attrition now—that’s obvious. We lose three hundred thousand and the Germans lose four hundred thousand. That spells victory to some minds.”
Vale shoved the plate away as though the idea of eating a bun was repugnant.
“Last man on his feet wins the war, I suppose.”
“Something on that order. Don’t try to make any sense out of it. Just go on doing your job.”
“Oh, I do, Mac, I do. I really love the army, that’s the joke of it. I’d rather be a battalion MO than a Harley Street surgeon any day in the week. I think that’s why I’m more bitter than you are about all this waste—or, anyway, more vocal about it. You hide everything behind that infuriating Scottish stoicism of yours. But if it keeps you sane, why should I care?”
Afternoons were worse than the mornings. The ambulances bearing the casualties of dawn attacks rolled into Corbie from the battalion aid posts and dressing stations in Albert, Ginchy, Mametz, and Bazentin. Number 85 CCS received its full share.
Mackendric was taking his turn as triage officer, examining, with three sisters to aid him, each stretcher case that was brought in, sorting out those men who needed immediate surgery and might live because of it; those who needed surgery but would die no matter what was done; and those who could be sent “as is” to the hospital trains and dealt with at one of the base hospitals in Rouen. The first group were carried to the surgical huts, the second to the moribund ward where they would be kept under heavy sedation in clean beds until they died without pain, and the last carried back to the ambulances for the short ride to Corbie Junction. It was not a job that anyone wanted, but none of the doctors shirked it. The number of men being sent to the moribund ward seemed to increase daily.
“The men are getting reckless,” a battalion medical officer had told Mackendric one day. “They’ve lost all sense of caution. It’s as if they didn’t give a damn if they’re hit or not.”
He was checking his sixtieth case when Captain O’Fallon hurried up to him.
“I’ll take over, Mac. Vale’s in a bit of trouble. Better take a look-see . . . hut six.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Military Police.”
Two sergeant MP’s and an elderly captain stood in number 6 surgical hut. They were watching, grim-faced, as Major Vale worked to close a massive axillary wound. The two sergeants continued to stare intently at the procedure, but the captain turned angrily to face Mackendric when he strolled in.
“Are you in command here, Major?”
“Colonel, actually,” Mackendric said, fingering his tunic flaps. “Haven’t had time to add the pips. But I am in command, yes.”
The provost marshal was slightly abashed. “Oh, I see. . . . Well, Colonel, I shall be forced to register a complaint, sir. I brought in a prisoner for official confirmation of self-inflicted wound, and this man, this doctor—” His contempt and anger rendered him momentarily speechless.
“Major Vale, do you mean?”
“Yes . . . if that is his name.”
“Bugger off,” Vale muttered as he tied a ligature around the axillary artery and prepared to pluck shards of the smashed humerus from the cavity.
“What exactly seems to be the matter?” Mackendric asked politely.
The provost marshal turned his back on the operation and stepped out into the corridor of the tar-paper and wood building.
“I need hardly tell you, sir, that a self-inflicted wound is a most serious matter. The . . . creature on that table is suspected of shooting himself in the armpit with a revolver.”
“Suspected?”
“No one actually saw him do it, but his platoon leader told us that the edges of the wound were scorched. Powder burns, sir.”
Mackendric rubbed the side of his jaw. “Well, now, difficult to say . . . could have been dirt, you know.”
The captain stiffened. “Precisely what your Major Vale said when he sliced the evidence away and tossed the flesh into a bucket! I have been in the service for twenty-three years, sir. I know the difference between dirt and powder burns.”
“Major Vale is a first-rate surgeon. I can hardly question his judgment. If he claims it was dirt, then I must respect his opinion. I would suggest that you do not pursue this matter any further.”
“Quite so,” the captain said, eyeing Mackendric frigidly. “May I remind the colonel that it is the duty of the medical service to report all incidents of self-inflicted wounds to the provost marshal’s office. This . . . epidemic of Blighty wounds done by one’s own hand must be stopped. It is un-English, sir, and a disgrace to our heritage. I served in the South African war, and not once during that conflict did I hear of a soldier being so craven as to shoot himself.”
The provost marshal strode off and the two MP sergeants followed him, still looking suitably grim-faced. Mackendric glanced into the operating room.
“Will he lose the arm, do you think?”
“Oh, hell no,” Vale snapped irritably. “But it won’t be worth a damn. Smack in the armpit with a Webley! Stupid sod.”
“Take the afternoon off. Go into Corbie and have a brandy or two.”
“I bloody well intended to do just that. I might even hav
e three.”
It was evening before Major Vale got back to the CCS. He was not drunk, but he was far from sober. His breath, Mackendric noted, smelled like a brewery floor.
“Gave up on the brandy, I take it,” Mackendric said as the young surgeon came into his room and slumped happily into a canvas chair.
“Met some Australian chaps . . . marvelous fellows. . . . Knew of an estaminet near the junction that serves real English beer . . . none of that pallid French stuff. Sat . . . talked . . . watched the trains go by.”
Mackendric sat on his cot in his pajamas, reading a book.
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.”
“One of the Aussies—a colonel—used to be a barrister in Melbourne. . . . He said that he could prove, without a doubt, that the whole bloody war is illegal. Think of that.”
“Fascinating. Why don’t you go to bed?”
“Yes . . . might do that little thing . . . have a decent sleep for a change. Popped in here for some reason . . . had something in mind to say.”
“The illegality of it all. In Australia, at least.”
“More than that.” He got clumsily to his feet, yawning, tugging at one ear. “Ah, yes . . . spotted an absolutely smashing QA in the junction off one of the hospital trains. . . . She was buying some apples at the canteen. Blonde stunner . . . seen her before.”
Mackendric lowered his book and peered over the wire rims of his eyeglasses. “Oh?”
“Yes . . . Couldn’t be two faces like hers . . . or two figures when it comes to that. Positive I’d seen her before—but I wasn’t sure, you see, didn’t want to make a fool of myself. But I’d swear it was the same girl who came up to Kemmel last year . . . the one who went bonkers on us. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“Friend of yours or something, wasn’t she?”
“Something like that.”
He stayed awake far into the night, trying to read, but forgetting to turn the pages. There were sounds all about him—the rattle of the dressing carts in the wards down the corridor, the rumble of gunfire from the direction of Delville Wood—but he heard nothing. He was miles away, walking hand in hand with her along the rue Saint-Honoré, window shopping the afternoon after that first night. Had that really been him? He felt old and tired. There was a good deal of gray creeping into his hair. His eyes were giving him a few problems—too much straining in the inadequate light of the operating room—and his fingers ached constantly from clenching instruments for too many hours a day, too many days at a time. Burning himself out. Thirty-three and he felt like an old man. She would be what now? Twenty? She had taken his advice and undertaken the training to become a nurse. Perhaps she had taken the rest of his advice as well and had met a handsome man of her own age and forgotten all about him. A possibility. He would never know unless he talked to her. He could contrive a way to do that easily enough. Hospital Trains Detachment. A telephone call to Captain Frazier in Rouen. Frazier arranged the complex train schedules and would know to the lowliest orderly who was on which train and when and at what time. His little corner of the war.
“Greville, Alexandra, QA’s. Train ninety-six. Rouen to Corbie via Amiens . . . Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday runs. Know the woman, Mackendric?”
Yes. He knew her and needed her. But did she need him?
Sister Pilbeam dipped ether onto the nose cone. Vale clutched the rib spreaders while Mackendric excised a shell-shredded lung. He kept glancing at the wall clock as he finished off.
“You in a hurry to catch a train?” Vale quipped.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “as a matter of fact, I am.”
She was busy, as he knew she would be. After coming empty into Corbie, the trains had been shunted onto a spur at the junction where the ambulances and the walking wounded were waiting. He spotted her among a score of other nurses as he walked along the platform past two hundred New Zealanders lying patiently on their stretchers. Bearers and orderlies moved among them, lighting cigarettes, helping the wounded men fill in Field Service postcards:
Strike out what does not apply:
I am quite well
I have been admitted into hospital:
sick and am getting on well
wounded and hope to be discharged soon
“How do I tell my mum I lost a foot?”
“You don’t, mate. Save it as a surprise.”
She was giving ATS shots with cool proficiency, checking dressings, telling the bearers in which car to place the men that she had checked and tagged. Rain thudded off the corrugated iron roof of the long platform. The train glistened dark olive green, the red crosses bright on a white field.
“Your efficiency is to be commended, Sister.”
She paused in what she was doing but did not look up at him.
“Hello, Robbie.”
“I shan’t keep you from your work, Alex. Bit of a surprise seeing you again . . . a happy surprise.”
She nodded, bending lower over a stretcher which rested on two sawhorses, her hands sure and knowing on a dirty scrap of bandage covering a mud-encrusted leg.
He leaned closer to the wounded man. “Calf wounds. Not serious.”
“Hurt like ruddy fire,” the wounded man said.
“Dare say, but you’ll be kicking a football with that leg in three weeks’ time.”
He watched Alexandra wash an area of flesh around the jagged, blood-clotted holes with green soap solution and then wrap a clean bandage around the leg. She made a motion with one hand, and the bearers lifted the stretcher and carried it into the train.
“Next,” she said, straightening up. Her eyes met Mackendric’s for the first time. It was like an embrace. “You’re good to see, Robbie.”
“Do you mean that, Alex?” His voice was solemn.
She nodded fiercely. “Yes . . . yes, I do. Now please go away or I shan’t be able to concentrate. If . . . if you can get away this Saturday . . .”
“I will,” he said flatly.
“To Rouen . . . number fifty-two train. I could meet you at the station.”
“I shall be there.”
“And no lectures this time, Robbie. No telling me what’s best for me.”
“No. I’ve stopped giving advice.”
“And there would be nights when we could be together . . . in some charming country inn.”
He could remember her saying that on a Sunday morning in Paris. No country inn, charming or otherwise, in the Ypres salient. But this was Normandy. Apple trees and rich earth between the great loops of the Seine. Clusters of villages with stone houses. Inns with rooms facing the orchards and the banks of the river. Clean linens and feather beds. He held her tightly, watching the sunset through the windows, one hand drifting idly down her naked back. She turned slightly in his arms and moved her lips across his chest.
“I shall never give you up,” she whispered.
“I won’t talk you out of it . . . although I should at least try.”
“It would only be a gesture. You want me, Robbie.”
“Yes. I want you.” He held her silently, gently stroking her back, the curve of a hip. Then he said: “I didn’t tell you about Dennis. He’s in Ottawa . . . flying instructor. Got shot down last April near Abbeville and walked away from the crash. He might not be so lucky next time. I’m glad he’s in Canada.”
“So am I,” she murmured.
“He wrote me a long letter . . . about Canada . . . the people. . . . Quite a different world. You know, I’d already decided that I couldn’t go back to England. If this war ever does end, I want a new sort of life. I’d go to Toronto . . . or west to Vancouver. I wrote my wife that and asked her for a divorce . . . Be the best thing for her, too. What she really wants is a respectable sort of chap who stays home, makes lots of money, and votes Conservative. We were never a good match.”
She pulled back from him, her breasts resting lightly against his chest.
“Will she give you a divorce?”
“I don’t know
.” He began to caress her nipples, tracing the rosy circles with his finger tips, the taut buds. “I hope to God she does, but Catherine could deny it out of pure spite.”
“It won’t matter,” she said, her voice husky. “I don’t care. I’ll go with you, Robbie . . . live with you . . . married or not.”
“You might regret that one day, Alex.”
“Never . . .”
Never . . . never, she thought, moving her body in a slow rhythm with his. And not because of this, not the feel of him inside of her, the pleasure mounting in gentle spirals. It went beyond passion. Their lives had meshed and become one. She would go with him wherever he went and live with him without shame. And Mama and Papa? They would never understand why, never comprehend that her need for him was inextricably woven with his greater need for her.
“I love you, Alex. . . .”
“Yes,” she said, “yes . . . yes.”
Martin noticed a certain chill as he walked into the brigade headquarters in Bazentin village. One of the officers who had always been friendly and generous with information pretended to be too busy to say hello. The HQ, with its tunnels and rooms cut into the chalk hill behind the ruins of the village, was located in one of the deep German galleries captured in late August. Two brigades had their headquarters there, as well as a signaling company, a dressing station, and stored supplies of all kinds. It made for a crowded, noisy place, the tunnels and rooms lit by electric lights which burned day and night.
“Is the colonel too busy to see me?” Martin asked.
The officer who was usually so talkative began to shift papers around on his tiny desk.
“Afraid he is, yes.”
“All I need from him is a pass to go up to the line.”