At Some Disputed Barricade (3 page)

“We’ll all be busy soon enough,” Penhaligon said with a twist of his mouth. “There’s going to be a pretty big push forward, starting in a day or so.”

“They’ve been saying that ever since the spring,” Joseph replied truthfully.

“Mean it this time,” Penhaligon told him, his eyes steady, trying to see if Joseph understood him beyond the mere words. “Afraid you’ll have a lot to do.”

The morning sun was hot already, but Joseph was chilled inside. He wanted to tell Penhaligon that the men were not ready, some of them not even willing anymore. He had no idea how many others there were like Morel.

Joseph became aware that Penhaligon was watching him, expecting him to speak. He wanted to warn him about Morel, but he had given his word that it ranked as a confession and was sacred. But Penhaligon was commanding a unit with an officer in it who was trying to subvert the entire campaign. Did what Joseph had overheard amount to mutiny? Or was it still only an exaggerated example of the kind of grumbling that was everywhere? The men were exhausted, emotionally and physically—and casualties were almost uncountable. What man of any spirit at all would not question the sanity of this, and think of rebelling against a useless death?

“Chaplain?” Penhaligon prompted him. “Is there something else?”

“No, sir,” Joseph said decisively. Morel had not spoken of any specific intent, simply complained of the violent senselessness of it all. Men had to be free to do that. Even if he thought of anything like refusing to obey an order, he was a Lancashire man born and bred, the Cambridgeshires would never follow him against other Englishmen. “Just thinking about what lies ahead, that’s all.”

Penhaligon smiled bleakly. “It’ll cost us a bit, but apparently it’ll be a real strategic advantage if we take Passchendaele. Damned if I know why. Just one more wretched hell, as far as I can see.”

Joseph did not answer.

The advance began the next morning, July 31. Judith Reavley stood with the men eating their last hot breakfast before the ration parties returned. Her stomach, like theirs, burned with hot tea and the fire of a tot of rum. At ten minutes to four, half an hour before the summer sunrise, the whistles blew and she watched in awe and misery as almost a million men moved forward over the plowed and torn-up fields, slick with mud after the occasional drizzle of the last few days. They threw up pontoons over the canals and poured across the water and up the other side. They moved on through the few still-standing copses of trees and small woods. The noise of guns was deafening and murderous fire mowed down whole platoons, tearing them apart, gouging up the earth.

By midmorning it began to rain in earnest, and a mist descended so that even four or five hundred yards away she could see that the outline of Kitchener’s Wood was no more than a smudge in the gloom.

Two hours later she was struggling to drive her ambulance over the sodden, rutted land to get it as close as she could to the makeshift first aid post to which the wounded were being carried. The road was bombed out and there was nothing but a track left. The shelling was very heavy and in the rain the mud was getting worse. The heavy clouds made it gray in spite of it being close to midday. She was afraid of being bogged down, or even tipping sideways into a crater and breaking an axle. It took all the strength she had to wrestle with the wheel and to peer through the murk to see where she was going.

Beside her was Wil Sloan, the young American who had volunteered at the beginning of the war, long before his country had joined only a matter of months ago. He had left his hometown in the Midwest and hitched a ride on the railroad to the East Coast. From there he had worked to earn his passage across the Atlantic. Once in England he had offered his time—his life, if need be—to help the troops in any way he could. He was not the only one. Judith had met several American drivers and medical orderlies like Wil, and nurses like Marie O’Day, doctors, even soldiers who had enlisted in the British Army, simply because they believed it was right.

Since January America itself had joined the Allies, but there were no American forces in this stretch of the line.

She knew there were shadows in Wil’s life. His blazing temper had run out of control more than once before, and had finally forced him to leave his home. He had never told her how serious the breach had been, but he had hinted at it. Perhaps because they were close enough friends that honesty compelled him, he could not pose to her as an unblemished hero.

Now he was sitting beside her, calling out warning and encouragement alternately as they bucked and slewed over the rough ground, trying to discern through the mist and rain where to stop for the wounded.

“There!” he shouted, pointing to what looked like a level spot slightly below a rise in the slope. There was a mound of some sort, and a man standing near it, waving his arms.

“Right!” she answered, but her voice was drowned by a shell exploding fifty yards away, sending mud and earth up like a gout of water. The debris fell on them, battering the roof and sides of the ambulance and flying in, striking both of them through the open part of the front above the windshield and the door.

She kept on with her hand on the accelerator. There was nothing to gain, or lose, by stopping before they reached the post. Finally she slithered to a halt, a few yards short of the level she had been aiming for. Almost immediately a soldier was beside her, shouting something she could barely hear, and gesticulating behind him.

Wil leaped out and splashed through the mud and rain to start helping the first wounded into the back. He would take only those too badly injured to walk. They could carry five, maybe six at the most. God only knew how many there were. He could do something to stanch bleeding—pack a wound, put on a tourniquet—but that was about all. If an artery was lacerated very often a man bled to death and there was little anyone could do about it. But if a limb was torn off completely, the artery constricted and the blood loss was far less. If they could prevent him dying of shock, there was a good chance of saving him.

Now Judith kept the engine running while Wil and several other men loaded in the wounded. As soon as they gave the signal, she could turn and begin the difficult journey back to the nearest clearing station. She had already made two trips, and she would go on as long as she could, all day and all night if necessary. She did not think that far ahead. One ambulance had been blown to pieces already today, killing everyone in it, and a crater had broken both axles of another.

Wil shouted and she felt the jolt as the door was slammed shut. She moved her hand and accelerated. The wheels spun, sending mud flying. She tried again, and again, then reversed before she could get them to grip.

The journey back was a nightmare. Twice, shells exploded close enough to them to batter them with debris. Once they got stuck, and Wil and the two injured who could stand had to get out to lighten the weight. By the time they reached the clearing station, one of the wounded men was dead. Wil had done everything he could, but it was not enough.

“Shock,” Wil said briefly, his face drawn under the smears of earth and blood. He shrugged. “Should be used to it,” he added, as if it were self-criticism, but his voice wavered.

She smiled at him, and said nothing. They knew each other well enough that he would understand, remember the words from the countless times they had done it all before.

They went back again and again all day, breaking only long enough to eat a little bread and a tin of Maconachie’s stew and hot tea out of a Dixie tin. It all tasted of oil and stale water, but they barely noticed.

By dusk, they were unloading wounded and helping to carry them into a makeshift operating theater in a tent somewhere in an open field. Everything was shrouded in rain. She could see a copse of trees about fifty yards away, but she had no idea which of the many woods it was. All that mattered was to get the men to some kind of help.

Inside the tent, medical orderlies were looking at the newcomers, trying to assess who to treat first, whose wounds could wait, and who was beyond saving anyway. The injured half-sat, half-lay, ashen faced, waiting with the terrible, hopeless patience of those who have looked at horror so often they can no longer struggle against it. They were trying to absorb the reality that their arms or legs were gone or their intestines spilling out into their blood-soaked hands.

Judith was half-carrying a man whose left leg was ripped open by shrapnel which they had bandaged as well as they could. His more important wound was his left arm, which was gone from the elbow down.

The surgeon came over to her. His coat was soaked with blood, his fair hair plastered back. His eyes were sunken and dark-ringed with exhaustion. She had worked with him countless times before.

“We’ve done what we can, Captain Cavan, but he was injured several hours ago,” she said. “He’s pretty cold and shaken up.” It was a magnificent understatement, but everyone dealt in understatement; it was a matter of honor. Ask any man how he was, and he would say, “Not too bad. Be all right in a while,” even if an hour later he was dead.

“Right.” Cavan acknowledged her with a brief smile, a momentary warmth to the eyes, then he moved to the other side of the man and supported him over to the corner inside the tent where he could lie until they could take him onto the table. “Come on, old son,” he said gently. The man was perhaps seventeen, his beard hardly grown. “We’ll have you sorted in a minute or two.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” the man responded hoarsely. “It’s not too bad. Actually I can’t feel it much. Leg hurts a bit.” He tried to smile. “Suppose I won’t be playing the violin now.”

Cavan’s face registered a sudden pity.

“Sorry, sir,” the man apologized. “I never played it anyway. Don’t like the piano much, either, but my mam made me practice.”

Cavan relaxed. “I expect she’ll let you off now,” he said drily. “Wait there and I’ll be with you in a minute.” He eased the man down gently, then turned back to Judith.

She read in his eyes the struggle to conquer the emotions that wrenched at him. There was no time, and they served no purpose. The only help was practical, always practical: clean, scrub, stitch, pack a wound, find something to take the edge off the pain, ease the fear, move to the next man. There was always a next man, and the one after, and a hundred after him.

Judith turned and went back to help Wil with the next casualty.

Ten minutes later a VAD nurse with a plain, sallow face handed her a mug of tea. It was sour and oily, but it was hot and someone had been thoughtful enough to lace it with about half a shot of rum. It loosened some of the knots inside her.

Another ambulance arrived and she helped them unload it. The men were badly wounded and the driver had caught a piece of shrapnel in the shoulder.

“You can’t go out there again,” he said, wincing as he tried to lift his arm. “Jerry’s putting up a hell of a barrage and we’re too close to the front here. They’ll probably have to evacuate this as it is. They’ll need us for that, after they’ve patched up the worst. It’s a bloody shambles. Thousands are dead, and God knows how many wounded.”

Judith walked back into the tent and over to the table where Cavan was stitching up a lacerated arm on a soldier with dark hair.

“Another lot, sir,” she said quietly. “Looks to be three bad ones, and the driver’s got a shrapnel tear in his right shoulder. He says it’s pretty grim out there, and Jerry’s coming this way, so we’ll probably get told to retreat. Do you want us to stay here and help if we have to go suddenly?”

“I’ve got men I can’t move,” he replied without looking up at her. His voice was very quiet. “We’d better see what we can do to defend ourselves. If it’s only the odd raiding party we’ll be all right.” He tied off the last knot. “Right, soldier. That’ll do. You’d better start making it back. That bandage’ll hold till you get to the hospital.”

The man eased himself off the table and Cavan put out his arm to steady him. “Go with MacFie over there. You can hold each other up. You’ll just about make a good man between the two of you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The man swayed, gritted his teeth and went gray-white. Then he steadied himself and, swaying a little again, made his way over to MacFie.

Cavan started with the next man. The one after that was beyond his help. Judith brought him a mug of tea. “If you survive it, it’ll make a new man of you,” she said wryly.

“Then you’d better get a river of it.” He took the mug out of her hands gently, his fingers over hers for an instant. “We’re going to need a whole new bloody army after this. God Almighty! Whose idea was this attack?”

“Haig’s, I imagine,” she replied.

“I’d like to get a scalpel to him sometime,” he responded, pulling his mouth into an expression of disgust as he swallowed the tea. “This really is vile! What the hell do they put in it? No, don’t tell me.”

“I could do it with a bayonet,” she replied bitterly.

“Make the tea?” he asked in surprise.

“No, sir, perform a little surgery on General Haig.”

He smiled and it softened his eyes. She could glimpse the man he would have been in peacetime, at home in the green fields and quiet hills of Hertfordshire. “Good with bayonets, are you, Miss Reavley?” he asked.

“I thought all you had to do was charge, shoulders down and your weight behind it,” she replied. “Isn’t it enthusiasm that counts rather than accuracy?”

This time he laughed and his fingers rested gently on her arm. It was just a brief contact, almost as if he had changed his mind before he completed the movement. Only his eyes betrayed the warmth within him. “Those guns sound closer. Perhaps you’d better start getting the wounded out of here and back to the first aid posts.”

“They’re no closer than before, sir,” she told him. She was as used to the sound of them as he was.

“That’s an order, Miss Reavley.”

She hesitated, wondering whether she dared defy him, or if she even wanted to. It had been the worst day’s casualties she had experienced so far, even worse than the first gassings two years ago, but leaving now would look so much like running away.