And what if I was wrong?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WE HADN’T GONE two miles when a shout went up, followed by the appearance seemingly out of nowhere of a patrol. I heard Hugh Morton groan, and Trelawney spoke swiftly, hardly moving his lips, “What do we do? Sister?”
“Stop the motorcar. Have your papers ready. Private Morris, I hope your disks save you now. There’s nothing more I can do.”
We waited, listening to the shelling, to the sound of a motorcycle runner heading forward to the Front, to barked commands by officers steadying their men in the line.
The company quick marched toward us, and by the time they reached the motorcar, I had taken out my papers from the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service and had them ready. Trelawney had produced his own, and Hugh Morton, his face pale but set, held his false identity disks in one hand.
The Sergeant in charge of the patrol went over our papers carefully, then looked at the disks that Hugh Morton presented.
Turning to me, he asked, “He’s wounded?”
“Yes. As you can see. I was taking him back to be looked at. An ambulance couldn’t be spared for one patient.”
He insisted on seeing the bandaged wound, then frowned, as if something about Hugh Morton registered in his memory. I prayed his hadn’t been the patrol that had fired on the Welshman when he was foraging. Deserters and looters got short shrift from the Army.
After what seemed like an interminable wait, the Sergeant nodded and told us where to find our next destination.
Trelawney thanked him and moved off under the Sergeant’s eye. And he continued to watch us out of sight, as if worried about our presence here in the midst of troop movements. Our own guns were replying to the German artillery, the noise deafening.
We reached the aid station and I presented my credentials to the young, harassed sister in charge.
Supplies were being stowed, and the few patients with trench foot, gassed lungs, and minor wounds were being sent back by ambulance to clear the station for the major wounds to come.
I could see Hugh Morton-Private Morris-being sent to join the queue, and I asked Trelawney to keep an eye on him until I’d thought of a way to prevent it.
But I needn’t have worried. Sister Wharton was anxious about the pending attack and how prepared she was to deal with it. In the end I decided to leave her to handle the influx of wounded on her own, with her staff to help her, rather than become the Senior Nursing Sister in her place. I’d learned my own strengths in her shoes, and I knew from the brief conversation I had with her that she would cope very well and be the stronger for it, knowing she had.
We were all so young, I thought as we drove away, the men who came to us and the sisters who treated them. I had seen and done things that my grandmother would have wondered at, but I had also discovered that courage was the ability to face what had to be faced, when it was impossible to run away.
At a rear hospital, I asked one of the doctors to have a look at Private Morris’s wound.
He examined it, nodded, and said, “Well done, Sister. I’ve given him something for the pain. Let him rest for an hour or two, and we’ll send him on to Rouen.”
I thanked him, dealt with my patient, asked Trelawney to sit with him-receiving a thunderous frown for my trouble-then started toward the wards. At that moment a courier came through, on his way to HQ. Stopping by the sister in charge of sorting patients, he showed her his wrist. She examined it briefly and pointed to a bench where others were waiting for attention. He argued with her, but she shook her head and moved on to the next man in her line.
The courier looked around, spotted me, and walked toward me. Where his goggles had been were two pale circles around hazel eyes. The rest of his face appeared to have black measles, it was so splotched from hunching over his machine as he sped cross-country.
“Sister? I spun out in the mud and I think I’ve sprained my wrist. Will you have a look at it? I’m overdue as it is-I can’t wait with that lot.”
I glanced across at Sister Henry. She was busy with the line. “Come this way,” I said, and took him a little apart, where I examined his wrist-it was painful but not broken-and taped it so that he could be gone. “But you must promise to see to it as soon as you can,” I admonished him.
“I promise, Sister. Thank you.”
He was about to turn away when I seized the opportunity. “Could I add a message to your pouch?”
“Hurry! I can’t wait.”
There was paper and pen in my valise. I wrote my father’s name and rank on the outside of the envelope, and inside simply scribbled a single word: Nothing.
It would reassure and disappoint him at the same time.
The messenger gingerly drew his gauntlets on over the tape, adjusted his goggles, and walked away to where he’d left his machine.
On the spur of the moment, I went after him, calling, “You said HQ. Have you encountered a Colonel Prescott there?”
“No. Should I have?”
I shook my head. “I was just curious. I appear to have missed him at every turn.”
He nodded, started his machine with a roar, then cut back on the throttle. “Prescott, you say?”
“Yes, that’s right. A big man with startlingly pale eyes.”
“That sounds more like Major Carson.”
I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice. “Then perhaps my information was wrong. Where did you see him?”
He resettled his goggles. “Rouen. He’s returning to England. He stopped me to ask if I’d been given his orders.”
There was no time to rewrite the message for my father.
“Do you usually carry such orders?”
“These were especially cut. From Colonel Crawford, he said.”
I felt cold.
“Did you-were you asked if there were orders in your satchel for other officers?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact he did ask if there were any others. He was worried that his had been mislaid. But there weren’t. Not that time.” He gunned the motor, eager to be off now.
“I can’t explain,” I began, “but don’t look for Major Carson the next time you’re in Rouen. He’s-” I couldn’t think of a good reason to disparage the Major, except of course for the fact that he was dead and someone had assumed his identity. “He’s not in good odor at HQ. That could be the reason why his orders are not yet cut. Colonel Crawford could well wish him to cool his heels for a time.”
“How do you know this?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.
“I’m Colonel Crawford’s daughter. If you look in your pouch, you’ll see his direction on the letter I gave you.” I offered him my best smile. “Just-be careful, will you?”
He regarded me for a long moment, nodded, and then was gone in a roar.
I went to find Trelawney as quickly as I could.
“The man I’m looking for. He’s in Rouen. We must leave as soon as we can.”
But there were already wounded coming in, strafing injuries from a low-flying aircraft as well as shrapnel from exploding shells. The guns were busy, and it was baptism by fire for the raw recruits facing death for the first time. I held one boy of seventeen while the doctor dug shrapnel out of his legs, and I pretended not to see when he wept with the pain.
I worked late into the night, and I rose early in the morning, before sunrise, as the long lines of ambulances and an overburdened lorry brought us more and more wounded. A hardened veteran, watching the long lines being sorted by one of the sisters, said, “There’ll be no one left in England over the age of sixteen.”
I worked long into the night again, and when I came off duty, Trelawney said, “Morton is gone. He slipped into one of the ambulances heading for Rouen.”
“Hardly unexpected.” I sighed, remembering my own predicament over proper passes. “If they don’t pick him up at the port, he’ll be very lucky.”
“Aye, that’s so.”