Soldier of the Horse

by Robert W. Mackay

Tom lifted his glass in return, and drank.

  “That’s Squire Barkley. He owns half the town,” said Clara.

  “That’s decent of him.”

  “He lost his only son in France. He’d likely buy for anyone in uniform, but your Canada badges help, I expect. Coming to the rescue of the Old Country and all.”

  A painting of the Duke of Wellington on horseback hung over the bar. The duke gazed, stern-faced, at a field where a square of red-coated British infantry was surrounded by the blue and grey of a Napoleonic horde. How times have changed, Tom thought. Ranks of infantrymen firing muskets at each other from ranges of fifty or seventy-five yards had given way to the five-hundred-round-a-minute machine guns of the Great War. Artillery killed and maimed at impossible ranges, but at times the fighting still came down to crazed men, face to face. Stabbing and clubbing, blood flowing.

  Clara sipped at her half-pint. “Tell me what you did before you enlisted.”

  Tom pulled his mind back to the present. “I was on my way to a career in the law, until it caught up with me.”

  “Now what does that mean?”

  “Just that there was a mixup, and I came out of it on the wrong end.”

  “Will you go back to practising law?”

  “Not for all the tea in China. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I won’t do that.” The words slipped out before he even thought about them. When he had dared consider his future, and the possibility of surviving the war, the question of his career had hovered at the edge of his consciousness. For a long time he had not been sure but now, suddenly, he was, and he felt as though he had floated free from a weight that was dragging him down. As far as he was concerned the law was arbitrary and lawyers were untrustworthy. He was done with it.

  “So what will you do?”

  “Depends on how long it takes for me to get out of this chair. How did you end up as a nurse? Are you from around here?”

  “No. I was raised in Devon down on the south coast.” Clara looked around the room, then back at Tom. “I was engaged to be married. He enlisted. Jeremy and I—we all thought it would be over by Christmas. He used to write something every week. Now he writes once a month, if at all. It’s too depressing.” She tossed her head as if to dispel her mood. She had let her hair down from the tight bun she wore at the hospital and it was a blonde cascade that swept her shoulders, much lighter than it looked when it was confined.

  Clara and Tom talked about the men in Tom’s ward, keeping the conversation breezy. Tom breathed in her faint perfume, which somehow hung in the air, lingering and cutting through the thickening smoke in the room. She had taken her coat off, and he basked in the presence of a woman, the tension in his body and mind easing. He was reminded of his lunch with Ellen in the Royal Alex back in Winnipeg. Would they do that again?

  Later, Clara trundled him through the quiet village in the direction of the hospital.

  “Don’t spare the horses,” Tom said, out of the blue.

  “What?”

  “These cobbles are awful hard on my condition.”

  “Condition?”

  “Condition. I drank a lot of beer and stayed stuck in this bloody chair. I appreciate the effort, but I’ve got to get back and find Herbert to give me a hand, quick.”

  “Oh, you poor man,” Clara laughed, and pushed faster.

  She summoned Herbert as soon as she got Tom up the ramp and into the lobby and Tom, to his intense relief, was wheeled into a washroom and assisted out of the chair. Hell of an end to the evening, he thought, his head spinning from the effects of the unaccustomed beer.

  When he made it back to the ward he was happy to be greeted by snores from the ranks of his fellow wounded. Herbert helped him get out of his clothes and he collapsed, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Tom heard from his mother. The word in Winnipeg was that Ellen was engaged to a new man in town. He wished again he hadn’t ripped up her last letter. Maybe he could glean from it a sliver of hope that she would not go through with this marriage—if that’s what was actually happening. But he didn’t have the letter, and he was left with the crucial line, which he could remember all too clearly: “I’m sorry, Tom, but you have been away so long. I feel I’ve waited half my life.”

  He chafed at his confinement, thousands of miles from home where he could have done something about Ellen. One day he would be hopeful, vowing to get back to Winnipeg, determined to obliterate all obstacles and make her his own. The next he would feel beaten down, fretting about his wounds and unsure he’d ever walk again. Hell, she might even be married by now.

  He wrote to her, just this one last time, he promised himself. He vacillated about mailing the letter but finally asked Herbert to post it for him. “Hope to be home soon, as soon as I can get the docs to clear me for travel and His Majesty finds room for me on a ship.”

  The newspapers trumpeted Allied advances, and rumours flew around the hospital. A final push. German collapse. Heavy fighting, heavy losses. The war would be over tomorrow, the war would be over by Christmas. Tom had heard it all before and discounted most of it. Behind the stories, he knew, the fighting went on, and men died. More hospitals were being opened, existing ones expanded. Ambulances came and went. Ambulances and hearses.

  Tom asked Clara to go with him for a walk around the village on her next day off, and she agreed. It was a beautiful summer Sunday, a few clouds in the sky adding to the lustre of the scene, with its blue sky, green meadows, and villagers enjoying a quiet day. Wanting to test himself, Tom had held off on his painkillers. For the first hour, as they made their way along hard-packed paths and quiet streets, he was able to propel himself, but slowly the pain in his legs forced its way into his awareness.

  “I can’t make the connection,” he blurted irritably. “I know damn well men are getting blown up or shot to bits in France and Belgium, but you’d never think it looking around here.”

  “I sometimes have the same feeling. But, you know, it’s not like that. People look normal, but they’re all suffering. It’s been four years of war. Everybody I know has lost family members.”

  She’s right, Tom thought. I’m letting it get to me. I shouldn’t be whining; I won’t be fighting again. But what about Bruce, and Gordon Ferguson, and . . .

  “I’ve overdone it,” he muttered, pain crowding out his thoughts. “Can you take over?”

  Clara pushed him back to the hospital, where he was happy to take the painkillers when the duty nurse came to see him.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  On their next afternoon foray, Romeo went with them. Tom was able to wheel himself along, and Clara pushed Romeo, who was propped up in his chair with pillows. At Tom’s request, she had brought a bottle of rum and three glasses. They found a secluded place by the edge of the common overlooking a pond, and Tom poured them each a tot.

  Romeo had progressed to where he could eat liquefied food, but he was deaf in one ear and very weak. It was obvious his soldiering days were over; as soon as he was strong enough he’d be discharged. They toasted his survival and watched ducks paddling in the still water. Buzzing insects, the quiet scene, and the rum combined to make Romeo doze off, his head tilting to rest on a pillow.

  Almost by accident, it seemed to Tom, Clara kissed him. He tasted the warmth of her mouth on his, her breath sweetened by the rum.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  A new nurse named Sheila Standing appeared, a no-nonsense type with short hair and strong hands. She wheeled Tom to an exercise room where she gave him light dumbbells to exercise his arms and shoulders. His legs, though, could not be exercised, not until his grafts and open wounds had more time to heal.

  He developed bedsores, open fissures in his skin caused by the pressure of his body on the bed, made worse because his circulation was impaired by damaged blood vessels in his legs. A team of doctors and students came to examine him.

  “You see the problem,” the chief surgeon, Smythe, pontificated. “A healthy man to st
art with, and we were able to beat the gas gangrene.”

  Sure you did, you son of a bitch, Tom growled to himself. If I had let the sawbones have their way, I wouldn’t have any legs at all.

  The younger doctors crowded around and stared at Tom’s exposed legs, scarred and scabbed from ankles to hips, the remaining open wounds lightly dressed.

  “Now, gentlemen, a new problem. Bedsores. So it’s a balancing act for . . .” he glanced at the chart in his hand, “. . . Macrae here. We’ll need to get him up, move him around, do what we can for circulation. Ease the pressure on the sores. But not interfere with healing.”

  He gestured to Nurse Standing. “Get him up every day. Gentle exercise. Ease pressure on the legs but protect the wounds.”

  Tom spent as many hours a day as he could out in the fresh air, in his chair, a blanket over his lap against the cooling fall air. At times he was distracted by activity in distant fields, where he saw farmers hauling hay for winter forage. He read dozens of books provided to the hospital patients by the local library. Clara went on leave to visit her parents in Devon.

  Tom’s mates on the ward changed. Wisecracking Romeo was discharged to a different hospital and would soon be on his way home. Sykes was gone, never having spoken again. Clara had commented it was real shame: how would his family cope with him? Tom was now one of the healthier men on the ward and he wanted out, but an officer told him he’d only be shipped home once he was healed.

  Clara came back from her leave, and after a night shift she sat with Tom in a secluded corner of the hospital grounds. It was a clear, early fall morning, leaves fluttering to the ground. She was solemn and thoughtful.

  “How was Devon?” Tom asked.

  “Devon was fine. But it took me back to a different reality, to things outside the hospital. This time it really hit me, how many people are living a normal life out there. But I don’t need that right now. I need to concentrate on my work.” She thought a moment. “I’ve heard nothing from Jeremy for two months. He may be dead. He may be like Sykes.”

  Tom’s heart melted. He wished he could comfort her, but he wasn’t sure how. “Don’t assume anything about Jeremy, Clara. There could be a hundred reasons why he hasn’t written. Maybe he has, and the letters have been lost.” His words sounded hollow even to him.

  “Sometimes I wish we had married. I’d have something to hold on to.”

  Tom felt bereft, her words reflecting his own thoughts of Ellen. They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Clara stood.

  Tom reached over and took her hand. “It’ll work out.” He certainly hoped so, for both of them.

  “Good luck, Canada,” she said, as she turned, slowly walking away up the path to the hospital.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “All right, soldier, let’s have you then.” Sheila Standing, the exercise nurse, loomed over his bed. Standing. Tom was sure there was a joke there somewhere, but it eluded him for the moment. His name must have been at the top of her list of victims, because she was at his bedside each day before he had finished breakfast. She whipped back his blanket and sheet and whisked him into his chair, her sturdy frame and square, business-like hands manoeuvring his emaciated body with ease.

  “They sure raise skinny kids in Canada,” she snorted.

  “Canadian kids aren’t used to English food,” Tom snapped. “And I can wheel myself.”

  “While I’m looking after you, I do the wheeling,” Standing laughed, with a breezy shake of her head as they went flying down a hall to an elevator.

  On the ground floor, she swept him into a large room with windows that looked out on a courtyard garden, all close-clipped green lawn and well-tended flower beds. “Welcome to the torture chamber. After a week here you’ll be begging to be sent back to the front.”

  Tom doubted that.

  She wheeled him up to an apparatus with assorted handgrips, and rails that ran parallel at various heights. Locking his chair in place, she guided his hands to grasp overhead bars. “Pull yourself up.”

  Tom tightened his grip and pulled on the bars, slowly easing himself up to a standing position, spindly legs shaking. Sheila helped him maintain his balance for a few seconds, then eased him back down.

  “Not bad,” she noted.

  “Not bad? I thought it was excellent.”

  She unlocked his wheels and swung him into the open. Sitting on a low stool, she stretched out his legs, one at a time. Then, on her instructions, he bent them as far as he could while she provided gentle assistance.

  Massage of feet, calves, and thighs followed. Tom had almost no feeling in much of his legs, but they did start to tingle after a half-hour of manipulation. They throbbed as her efforts went on, and by the time she ran him up to his ward again he felt drained.

  The worst of Tom’s bedsores improved, and the smaller ones healed, leaving discoloured patches on his battered legs. Sheila worked on him for the first hour of every day, careful not to overstretch his healing wounds. At the end of every session, she helped him to his feet, steadied him, and handed him crutches. He could stand, legs shaking with the effort, for half a minute. Then it was into his chair and back to the ward.

  Clara dropped by to tell him she had requested a hospital posting closer to home. Later the same day, Matron came to see him. A short, stout woman with a commanding air, she deferred only to doctors and not always to them. She stood at the foot of Tom’s bed, clipboard in hand. A faint but distinct scent of carbolic soap and disinfectant wafted Tom’s way. He had developed a grudging respect for her.

  “Macrae,” she intoned. “I see you’ve been making some progress in your condition. It has also come to my attention that you’ve been seeing rather too much of one of my nurses. There will be no more of that foolishness.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said Tom with a grin.

  “Look here, soldier. What I say goes, in this facility. Out on the battlefield you may be a hero for all I know, but here you are a patient and you’ll obey the rules.” She waved an admonishing finger at him. “But that’s not why I’m here. We need your bed. We have wounded soldiers in more need of care than you are and I’ve been instructed to clear out anybody who can be treated outside the hospital. Your government wants to ship home anybody not useful to the army. And that means you. Get your things organized—transport is arranged for 1300 hours today.”

  The matron made a note on her list and moved away like a full-rigged clipper ship, white uniform billowing, down the row of beds, to talk to other patients.

  Tom’s head swirled. He would be happy to be done with the hospital, the army, and the war. But this—this was too sudden. He wanted to be recovered from his wounds before he went home. He still had open lesions, pus draining from two of them, others not totally healed. And he couldn’t walk.

  Then it struck him—he was going home! In one piece! His heart pounded, and he threw back his covers. He’d need help. Where was Herbert? Where was his uniform?

  The matron finished her rounds and approached Tom’s bed on her way out of the ward. “What—you still here?” she asked, a mock frown on her face.

  “Not for long, Matron. Where have you hidden my boots and saddle?”

  “Never mind your nonsense. Ambulances will take you to a hospital at Southampton. They’ll look after your medications. First class all the way, Sergeant. Maybe you’ll get a ride on a proper liner, back to Canada.”

  “That or a cattle ship, I reckon.”

  WINNIPEG

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The trip to Southampton got off to a slow start. Staff at the army hospital had the anxious patients waiting a half-hour early, but it was two hours before four ambulances turned up. Besides the drivers there were two medical assistants, one of whom was a corporal in charge of the whole show. Tom wanted to exert some authority, so he wangled his way into the noncom’s vehicle. Once they cleared the hospital grounds and were on the road, he talked the corporal into letting him ride up front, jammed between the driver and the corpo
ral, whose name was Smith. Tom’s legs hurt like hell, but the nurse on the ward had given him a shot of morphine, “to send you on your way,” and the edge was off the pain.

  Corporal Smith was a British Columbian, a casual sort who knew how lucky he was to be ferrying wounded around England and not dragging them out of No-Man’s-Land. Tom persuaded him to order a stop at a pub when it opened at 1600 hours; he collected money from his fellow patients’ pay-day savings and dispatched the amiable Smitty to purchase beer for all of them, plus a few extras to stave off any drying out that might occur during the remainder of the trip.

  Another stop was made for pork pies, which fortunately were available at yet another pub where they replenished the beer supply. Tom felt on top of the world, and he didn’t intend to let anything get him down. Smitty napped in the ambulance as they ground southwest toward Southampton. He had a document box with him and had told Tom it held medical records for the ambulance patients.

  Tom had never seen any of his own records, so he took advantage of the opportunity and pulled out his file while Smitty slept. The driver saw what he was doing, but shrugged and ignored him.

  The records were hard to follow, with pages of nearly illegible handwriting and obscure abbreviations. A diagnosis of “Multiple GSW both legs” he assumed meant gunshot wounds. He leafed through the loose sheets, and came to one headed “Prognosis.”

  Severe dislocation and damage to blood vessels. Currently wheelchair. May ambulate with assistance for a few years, then will require ongoing surgical attention. Amputation an option. Likely ongoing wheelchair afterward, with or without radical treatment.

  He sat unseeing and crumpled the page, then smoothed it and read it again. A black mood grabbed him by the throat; he thought he’d pass out. He knew his legs were bad, but this was a shock. God, he thought, maybe it’s true. He remembered the agony as he was carried off the battlefield, the surgery without anaesthetic, the pain that came with Nurse Standing’s ministrations. A glance down at his emaciated legs, like sticks in his uniform trousers, confirmed the medical opinion.