by Charles Todd
“He’s down. Crashed behind his own lines. Word has it that his leg was broken in the crash, and he won’t be flying again. A pity. He was a fine pilot.”
I thought about Alex Craig, who wouldn’t fly again either. “Why is it soldiers always respect the abilities of their enemies?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Simon grinned. “That’s how we came to have the Gurkha battalions. They were such fine enemies, we decided to recruit them for our own ranks.”
I’d been brought up on the stories.
Simon finished his tea. “Thanks for this. I feel much better.” He looked better as well. “I must go.” He got to his feet.
We walked to the door, and as we opened it, Matron came in. She looked at me, at the tall man beside me in his uniform of a Sergeant-Major, and she frowned.
I had to think fast.
I smiled. “Matron. May I present Sergeant-Major Brandon? He’s just brought me word from Colonel Crawford. I haven’t been able to reach my father for some time. It was worrying.”
She knew, of course, who my father was. I had never kept it particularly secret, but I hadn’t used it to my advantage either.
“Indeed,” she said, smiling up at Simon. “Give the Colonel my regards, please, Sergeant-Major.”
“Thank you, Matron. Sister Crawford, I’ll escort you to the hospital before leaving.”
“Thank you.”
We escaped without a lecture from Matron. Out of earshot, I said, “Between you and Sergeant Lassiter, I shall have no reputation left by the time the war ends.”
I expected him to smile with me. Instead, his eyes were bleak.
“It will be an Armistice, Bess. Not a victory.”
An Armistice. After all the bloodshed and the suffering. It hardly seemed worth four years of fighting to end in a draw.
Well. It would be over. That’s what mattered.
“Keep in touch,” I said as he prepared to leave. “And find Britton.”
And then he was gone, my connection with home and my parents gone with him.
I was the attending Sister in surgery when they brought in a man who had been battered almost beyond recognition.
The doctor working on a shattered leg was cursing under his breath as he looked at the incision he’d just made.
“He’ll never walk again,” he said grimly. “Not with this leg.”
But I wondered if he would survive at all, whether whatever had happened to this soldier was too traumatic to survive. There must surely be severe concussion . . .
We worked well into the night before the doctor straightened his back and said, “All right. Take him to recovery. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
I removed my apron and went to wash my hands. Another Sister came to wheel away the stretcher on which the patient was lying.
The doctor turned to me. “Get yourself some food, Sister. It’s well after dinner.”
I thanked him and took his advice, crossing through the cold, clear air to the canteen. For some reason I was reminded of sitting here with Simon, and I went to that table with my meal. I was too tired to eat anything, instead letting the quiet seep through me and trying to summon the strength to take my dishes back to the counter.
Sister Anderson came in just then, asking for tea, and then bringing it over to where I was sitting. I really didn’t feel like talking to anyone, but it was clear that she needed company.
“Captain Taylor died.” It was a stark comment.
“I am so sorry,” I said. I knew how she felt. That sense of helplessness in the face of death. “He seemed to be better this morning.”
“Yes, that’s what’s so hard, isn’t it?” She put her head in her hands for a moment. “You’d think, wouldn’t you, that it would be easier after a while. But it isn’t.” After a moment or two, she raised her head and reached for her cup. “What has kept you up this late?”
“A surgical case was brought in earlier.” We were an influenza hospital, but we couldn’t turn away emergencies. “I don’t know if he’s going to live.”
“The corporal? I saw the ambulance that brought him in. What happened to him?”
“I wasn’t told.”
“I looked at the chart earlier. Someone found him in one of the communication trenches, but it wasn’t his own sector. No one quite knows how he got there.”
“It looked as if someone had attacked him. Bruises and cuts and a badly broken leg. A concussion.”
“He had enemies,” she said.
“How do you know? Who was he?”
“The name is Britton. Charles Davis Britton. But wounds like that aren’t from fighting. It’s retaliation.”
I stared at her. “Are you sure?”
“His name was there on the chart.”
But that wasn’t what I’d asked.
I rose, starting toward the counter. I needed to speak to Britton straightaway. And then I remembered: the surgery. He wouldn’t be awake for some hours.
I stopped, turning back to Sister Anderson. “Sorry, I just remembered something I have to do.”
“Then go to bed. Do you know how late it is? I’m going myself in a bit.”
I took her advice, setting my internal alarm clock to wake me in two hours.
But it was nearly three before I opened my eyes. I bathed my face, dressed hastily, and went back to the wards.
Matron had put the corporal in isolation, where he was less likely to contract influenza before he could be moved to another hospital. I stepped in and looked at the patient.
If I could have recognized him before, I surely couldn’t now. I leaned closer in the dim light to be sure. Yes, I thought it was the Corporal Britton I’d treated for trench foot and who must have tried to kill Sister Morris.
He was moving restlessly. The doctors had been wary of giving him too much to ease his pain until they could determine the extent of his concussion.
I thought perhaps he was rousing up from the surgery, and I waited. After a time, he opened his eyes and said, “Am I alive?”
“You are,” I answered. He was trying to see me, but his eyes were swollen and I expect my face appeared blurred to him.
He lapsed into unconsciousness again, then roused once more. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m the Sister who assisted the doctor during your surgery. Your leg—it has been splinted. You must leave it that way for a while. But it’s still there.” I didn’t add, At least for now. But that’s what his chart indicated.
He lifted a hand and put his arm across his eyes. “My head aches like the very devil,” he said, more a statement than a complaint.
“We can’t give you too much to ease that until we know whether you have a concussion or not.”
“Everything hurts. But the head is worse. Worse even than my leg.”
He drifted again. I said, “What happened to you?”
“I was set upon. Out of the blue. That’s all I remember. The next thing I knew, I came to here. I don’t know where here is.”
I told him, then I asked, “Why did you hunt down Sergeant Rollins?”
“Who is Sergeant Rollins?”
I couldn’t judge whether he really didn’t know—or if he was awake enough to try to confuse me. I said, “The tank man you killed.”
His mind had clouded again. It was still too soon after the ether to expect him to make sense.
“Did you see who did this to you?” My fear was, he’d tell me it was Sergeant Lassiter.
“I don’t know.”
But I thought he did. I got nowhere, although I tried several more times to find out if he was the man I thought he must be. To find out why he had wanted to kill Sergeant Rollins.
“Do you know anyone in Kent? In a village called Cranbourne?” I asked finally.
And
the bleary eyes stared sharply at me. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious,” I said.
He turned his face to the wall then, and wouldn’t speak to me.
I stood there for a moment longer and then quietly left the little room.
The next morning he was gone.
I got up early to look in on him, and found the room cleared and cleaned.
“What’s become of our surgical patient?” I asked Matron later in the morning. “Surely he hasn’t been put in one of the wards, with the influenza cases.”
“You were in the theater with Dr. Browning, weren’t you? Yes. We had an ambulance going on to Rouen. We sent him with it. He didn’t belong here, they’ll manage his care better in Rouen.”
More disappointed than I could say, I nodded. “Thank you, Matron. If there is news of him, I’d like to hear it. I watched Dr. Browning attend to that leg. I’d like to know if the surgery was successful.”
“Yes, of course, Sister Crawford. I’ll keep that in mind.” And she went on her way.
Frustrated by my missed opportunity, I sought out Dr. Browning, and asked him what had happened to our patient before he’d been brought in.
Dr. Browning shook his head. “I was told he was found in that condition and we were the nearest facility that could deal with that leg.”
It was later in the day, almost dusk, when I heard the sound of the kookaburra bird.
Sergeant Lassiter.
I had a number of questions to put to him. And I was worried about the answers I was going to receive.
I was just crossing to the tree where I’d first seen Simon when a line of ambulances appeared in the distance, and I heard an orderly call out for a Sister to evaluate the incoming patients.
There was nothing I could do but turn and await their arrival.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sergeant Lassiter just stepping into the meager shelter of the leafless branches. I could only hope that he’d wait.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IT WAS WELL after dark before I’d finished, and rain was coming down in buckets as we got the last of the new arrivals settled in cots. Three of them were critical, another five were in the early stages of contagion, and ten of them were already showing signs of heavy lung congestion.
I washed my hands, settled my cap into place, and walked toward the hospital’s main door. I could see the tree from the doorway, and there was no one standing beneath it.
Where was Sergeant Lassiter?
I considered crossing over to the canteen, but one look at the heavy rain, and I decided against it. Where then would he go, if not the canteen? The small chapel?
I went there to look, and found him asleep on one of the benches.
Waking him with a light touch, I said, “Sergeant?”
He leapt to his feet, ready for action, then relaxed when he realized who it was. I had seen more than one soldier come out of a deep sleep in just this way.
“I’m sorry,” I began, but he shook his head.
“I didn’t intend to nod off. Not here. But it was warm and dry, and nobody about.”
“Have you come about Corporal Britton?”
“Aye, I have. Where is he? Word was, he’d been brought here.”
“Someone gave him a nasty beating, Sergeant. There was surgery on his leg, for one thing, and worry about concussion for another.”
“Well, I’m not feeling sorry for the bas— for the bloke. Not after what he did. I reckon he thought it was near enough to the end of the war for it not to matter if our best tank man was killed. But it hurt morale, Bess. Rollins had been at Cambrai. The Old Man.”
It was a common term in the trenches for someone who had survived impossible battles and charges and hand-to-hand fighting, used with reverence. Whether he was barely twenty or pressing forty didn’t matter.
“Is that what you’re telling me, that Britton was beaten senseless for shooting Sergeant Rollins?”
“He swore it was a mistake. That’s what I was told. But of course it wasn’t. You know that as well as I do.”
“But was it you and your mates who taught him a sharp lesson?”
Sergeant Lassiter drew himself up to his full height, his face suddenly stern.
“Lass. You surely aren’t thinking that I had a hand in this business.”
“London has sent someone out to look into what happened. I have to ask,” I said soberly, hoping he would understand. “It’s Simon Brandon, Sergeant. He won’t stop until he knows the full story. And he knows I’ve turned to you for help, that I told you about Sister Morris. I have to ask. For my sake and yours.”
“You must ask Britton.”
“I can’t.”
“Is he dead?”
“Not dead. They moved him to Rouen, because this is an influenza hospital.”
He relented. “I can see your dilemma.”
“I don’t want to see you and Simon clash. Not over something like this. Not if it’s not needed.”
“Word has it that when the rumor spread about who shot Rollins—that it was one of us, not a sniper—some of the men in the tank corps went looking for answers when they were taken out of the line for a rest. They looked up to Sergeant Rollins. He kept them safe, and when they weren’t safe, he pulled them out of their burning tanks. I don’t know how they got on to Britton. Someone claimed Rollins himself had seen who shot him and told his mates. Another story was, his mates recognized the man and cursed him all the way to hospital. I also heard that his own company turned Britton in. However it was, I expect Agatha’s crew wanted to teach him a lesson, as you said, and got carried away. They saw that he got medical attention afterward. Someone had a conscience.”
I’d witnessed, over and over again, the odd way information made the rounds of the Front. I’d used this bush telegraph myself to find people. Britton had pushed his luck too far, and somehow word had got out.
More relieved than I wanted to admit, I said, “Then what do we do now?”
“Find Brandon and tell him where to look for Britton. He’ll have learned the rest by the time he reaches Rouen.”
Simon was very good at putting two and two together.
“Can you put out the word?”
“If that’s what you want.”
I realized what he was saying.
“How did you come here, Sergeant?”
“I borrowed a motorcycle.”
“How far is it to Rouen?”
“We could make it tonight. If we started now.”
“I’ll speak to Matron. Stay here.”
“Lass, I should stay with the motorcycle, not here. Out beyond the ambulance lines there’s what’s left of a cattle byre. I’ll be there.”
I knew the place. The roof was gone, but part of the wall still stood, an ugly reminder of what war did to people and places. This had been someone’s farmhouse, stone built and old, but sturdy and good for another hundred years. A ranging shell had put paid to that.
“Give me a quarter of an hour.”
He nodded as we made our way from the chapel toward the outer door.
Apparently my question still rankled. As we were parting company, Sergeant Lassiter put a hand on my shoulder. “Did you seriously believe I’d done that to Britton?”
“I could think of only two reasons for such a beating. His killing Sergeant Rollins, and the fact that you knew he’d tried to kill me. I had to ask.”
It was the third time I’d said that. And he looked off into the distance, as if weighing the words.
After a moment he turned back to me. “I think I understand. And I’m grateful you cared enough to ask.”
I didn’t want him to mistake my intentions. I tried for lightness. “You’re far too tall for a firing squad, and you’re too big to hang. Neither would be a pre
tty sight.”
He laughed then and, without another word, walked away.
But as he disappeared behind the ambulance lines, I heard that cheeky call of the kookaburra bird. It sounded quite pleased with itself.
I had only minutes to think of an excuse to ask for a brief leave. I knew several of the nurses at the American Base Hospital, and I knew a houseful of nuns and orphaned children. Neither would weigh very heavily with Matron, faced with wards full of ill and dying men and only half the staff she truly needed to cope with all of them.
In the end, I decided on honesty.
Running her to earth in her office, I simply asked if I might have the day off.
She looked at me for a moment, and then to my astonishment, she said, “That surgery was long and exhausting. You need a break before resuming your duties, Sister. We can’t have you collapsing with this influenza. It would be bad for morale and it would prove that immunity isn’t very lasting.” But she smiled as she said the words. A tired smile, and I found myself thinking that if anyone needed or deserved a day of rest, it was this woman. I felt a surge of guilt for even asking.
“Go on, take your holiday. And come back refreshed.”
It was hardly going to be refreshing to ride a motorcycle through this rain as far as Rouen, but I returned the smile and promised that I would do just that.
Another few minutes I spent digging out my winter boots and a jumper to go under my coat. I found a knitted cap as well, took off my uniform cap, and carefully folded it before putting it into my apron pocket. I looked at myself in the mirror. With my hair hidden, no one would mistake me for Sister Crawford now. I didn’t want word getting back to Matron that one of her supposedly exhausted staff was on the back of a motorcycle with a man from the ranks flying down the Rouen road. And then I went to find Sergeant Lassiter.
From somewhere he’d liberated a length of canvas, which he fashioned like a cloak around me, to keep out the worst of the rain and the mud.
“I wish I had a sidecar, but this was the best I could do at the time, and the need for a lady’s carriage hadn’t occurred to me.”
He got into the saddle in front of me, and asked, “Are you set, lass? Then hold on tight. I don’t want to lose you on the road somewhere.”