Murder on the Titanic

by Evelyn Weiss

Kitchener’s Wood, we were issued with these.” From the pocket of his greatcoat he pulls out a small wadded white square.

  “And how does this help you, Sergeant?”

  “We’re to use them as masks, so we don’t inhale the fumes.”

  “A wad of cotton wool? Is that all?”

  “Well – we have our instructions, too.” Dr Bernard looks at the sergeant, unimpressed. He carries on explaining to her, with a air of embarrassment. “Ah… ammonia. Ammonia neutralises the fumes. If we see gas coming towards us, the soldiers relieve themselves…”

  “I understand you, sergeant. A soldier sees gas coming. So he gets out his penis, urinates on the cotton wool, and then puts the wool over his face. This is your British Army answer to chemical warfare?”

  The sergeant is surprised at the language coming from Dr Bernard’s mouth. “Yes, ma’am. It’s all we’ve got, I’m afraid.”

  “You defend yourselves with your own piss, Sergeant! I am heartily sorry for you.”

  Sergeant Bowers is silent: I can tell that he feels as if the Army has abandoned him and his men to their fate. Dr Bernard continues. “I can do nothing for you here, but I solemnly say: when I get back to Ypres, I will write to your generals, with extreme urgency. If you do not have more effective measures against the poison gas, the Germans will annihilate the British forces.”

  A dim light has been growing for the past few minutes: the outlines of the uniforms and the sandbags along the parapet seem to glow in the gloom. Dr Bernard turns to Oberleutnant Seydlitz. “It’s time to be going. Come along with us.”

  Corporal Tasker leads us back along the trench. I follow him in the dark, our captive walks along behind me, then Dr Bernard. Behind her walks another British soldier, one of Tasker’s team. I don’t know his name and I can’t see his face in the blackness. I realise that I’ve not seen the other two members of the team at all. We carry on along the trench, wading again through sludge, and then I see the squat outline of the ambulance against a lightening sky.

  “Miss Frocester.” Dr Bernard turns to look at me. “You will go in the back of the ambulance, with Oberleutnant Seydlitz. I will lock you both in. It is foolish nonsense – but, if I lock the ambulance door, then General Haig can’t say that we gave this so-called casualty an opportunity to escape.”

  I step up into the back of the ambulance. There’s a wooden bench along one side, and Walther Seydlitz steps up too and sits beside me. Dr Bernard shuts the door and I hear a key turn in the lock. I hear her saying goodbye to Corporal Tasker and his silent companion, and then climbing up into the cab and shutting the door. The engine starts up. As we start to move, Seydlitz speaks.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m following orders, I don’t understand what I’m doing here.”

  “But I must thank you, all the same. Because you’ve rescued me, after a manner of speaking. You’ve saved something: something very important to me.”

  I’m puzzled at his strange words. “Saved something, Oberleutnant Seydlitz?”

  “Yes. You and the doctor – and Corporal Tasker and his men. You have all saved my conscience. Whether I live or die, I can know from now on that I have indeed acted rightly. Indeed, I feel that you’ve saved even more than my conscience. You have saved my soul.”

  It’s pitch-black in the ambulance, but all the same I stare, as if to see his face in the dark. “What do you mean?”

  But there’s no answer, because another jolt in the road throws us from our seats. I hear Dr Bernard cursing in the driver’s cab.

  “Bloody, bloody craters! This road is now blocked too! We can’t get back to Ypres.”

  I hear her coming round to the back door and unlocking it. As she does, she gestures frantically to us, beckoning us out of the ambulance. “Come out and see. What in God’s name can we do now?”

  A moment later the three of us are standing alongside the van. The front wheels are over the edge of a crater, its rim of broken earth lit by the growing light around us. But despite what Dr Bernard says, it’s obvious what we have to do: the three of us bend our shoulders and, bit by bit, we push the ambulance backwards, until its wheels are out of the hole. Then I speak.

  “It’s getting light, Dr Bernard. We have to get back to Ypres. There was another road, just a few yards back there, branching off to the left.”

  We look back along the road, and across the desolate landscape all around us. The sun is not yet up, but the pre-dawn light reveals a flat country of open, hedgeless fields: bare, brown earth: no crops are growing yet, and I guess none have been sown, or will be sown, this year. Here and there a broken edge of soil shows the outline of a crater. Away to our right, I see a line of sandbags and here and there dark dots: the heads of soldiers, crouched behind the low parapet, awaiting the German attack.

  “Miss Frocester, you are correct. I will turn the ambulance around and try to get onto that other road. It should lead us southwards, and then we can look for another road leading west, back into Ypres. Please sit in the cab with me and help me look out at the road, warn me of any obstacles you see. Oberleutnant, I can hardly think you want to escape us. So I won’t bother to lock the back door of the ambulance.”

  Turning the ambulance in the road takes several tries, but eventually we set off again, back along the road we came on, then left along the other road, through the empty fields. At least we’re heading away from the front lines, I think. But rather than turning west towards Ypres, this road – a mere track through the farmland, really – curves further south, then east. Soon we are heading straight east, towards the lightest part of the dawning sky. We pass an abandoned farm, silhouetted black against the sky, and then we see a crazy outline of shattered ruins, the remains of a village, directly ahead of us. I can tell that as well as concentrating on the road, Dr Bernard is pondering our situation. She speaks, as if thinking aloud.

  “We are heading straight into the village of St Julien. We will have to take Seydlitz to the Advance Dressing Station there, and then send communication to Major Jardine that we have been delayed. Perhaps they can send some troops out to accompany us on foot back to Ypres. If we are lucky, Volunteer Frocester, the troops could take Seydlitz, without you and I. Then, we can do some useful medical work at St Julien, where we will be away from Major Jardine and the rest of them, and their ridiculous orders.”

  Her voice sounds almost hopeful. But I look to the right of the ruined village, and all along the horizon there I see low, broken silhouettes, shapes and dots against the early morning sky. I can guess what those shapes and dots are. Trenches, fortifications, and the helmets of soldiers. We’ve crossed the width of the bulge, the ‘thumb’. Now, all around to the east and south of us is the front line. The soldiers that we can see must be the other battalions of the Canadian Division. As we drive along towards St Julien, I gaze at the long line of trenches, stretching southwards as far as the eye can see. I forget for a moment to look at the road immediately in front of me. I hear Dr Bernard’s voice, swearing yet again.

  “Another –damned – crater.” I look out of the side window of the cab. One wheel has gone right down into a muddy hole. I hear Seydlitz’s voice from the back.

  “Why have we stopped? Are we there yet?”

  Dr Bernard’s voice is almost playful. “You sound like a child on a family outing, Oberleutnant. No, we are not even near ‘there’. We are stuck in another crater, and nowhere near Ypres. Can you get out and help us push?”

  Although this crater is much smaller than the last one, our pushing seems to have no effect this time, and after just one minute Dr Bernard pauses. “Miss Frocester, please get up into the cab again. Let’s try with the engine, like we did last night.”

  I get up into the cab. Ahead of us, through the windscreen, I gaze into a blaze of light: the sun is coming up, like a Turner sunrise. It looks extraordinary: a ball of orange fire rising above strange green mists that hang all along the horizon, beyond the Canadian trenches.
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br />   I let the clutch out, slowly. But even so, the ambulance doesn’t move: I can sense the wheels spinning in the mud.

  “Try again!”

  I try a second time. Slowly, slowly. As I let the clutch out again, something else, something completely different, is registering dimly in my brain. Again the wheels spin: we’re still stuck. Dr Bernard shouts furiously. But I’m not listening, because I’m realising what has been disturbing my thoughts. Long ago when I was a little girl, I got up early one morning and the sun was rising. The orange disk was too bright to look at, but somehow I sensed something was unusual. I got a coloured glass bottle and looked through it at the rising sun, and there was a big bite out of it. An eclipse.

  But this time, it’s not the sun itself that looks wrong: it’s the mist.

  A mist that was not there five minutes ago. And I notice a brisk, steady breeze, blowing towards us from the direction of the rising sun.

  “Dr Bernard! Oberleutnant Seydlitz! I think there is gas. Poison gas, coming at us from the east.”

  Dr Bernard steps up into the cab alongside me and looks out. “Where?”

  “That line of mist.” And indeed we can now see wisps and skeins of yellow-green fumes, weaving like blurry serpents into the lines of the Canadian trenches.

  “Oh Christ. Oh dear Christ, Miss Frocester. We have to get away from here. Try the engine