Hugh had planned to spend his two-day leave on the coast, where an officer who made it known that he was amenable to paying whatever the bill was might be sure of a plate of fresh oysters, a good roast dinner, and a bottle of red wine unearthed from the hotelier’s private cellar. How the hotels managed to produce their small luxuries in the midst of war was a mystery to Hugh, but on his last leave he had been brought almost to tears by the appearance on his plate of a chocolate truffle.
Instead of the coast, however, his meeting with Snout had prompted him to request a pass to tour the forward aid posts and inspect the transportation of the injured between the front and the hospital. A week later, pass in hand, he hitched a ride on an ambulance going east, hoping to reach his cousin’s billet by nightfall if Snout’s highly individual directions proved accurate.
“If you was to inspect us and find us wanting, do you think they’d have to send us home?” said the driver, a fleshy corporal with a stained jacket and an unlit cigarette, which he had stuck in his mouth as soon as they left the hospital checkpoint. He leaned forward to wipe the fog of condensation from the windscreen. Outside a misty rain added misery to the road’s bleak landscape of mud, dead trees, and apparently endless convoys of lorries, horses, and men moving slowly in both directions.
“It’s not really an inspection,” said Hugh, thinking that war seemed to consist too much of this endless parade of troops and vehicles forever marching somewhere else. “It’s just me having a look round, trying to get out of the operating room and get a better feel for how it all works.”
“He’s just having a look round, Archie,” repeated the driver, in a thick Cockney accent. “A day trip like?”
“We can give you the full tour, guvnor,” said Archie. “With a stop at the souvenir shop on the way home, right, Bill?” They both laughed, and Hugh heard the insubordination but knew how they felt. His casualty station was always being visited by dignitaries—from senior-ranking army officers to the occasional lady journalist—who seemed to have no problem getting orders that allowed them to poke around and interrupt even the operating rooms with ridiculous questions and requests to review reports and logbooks.
“My only cousin is a lieutenant somewhere over towards the ridge there,” he said, nodding forward to the dim line of low gray hills in the distance. “We haven’t heard from him in a while, so I’m hoping to see him.” There was a small pause, and then the driver, Bill, spoke in a less jocular tone.
“Been a rough time up there,” he said. “They had to call us in to help a few times, and we was piling ’em in, right, Archie?” Archie was quiet and looked out the window. Bill fumbled in his pocket and produced a match, which he struck against the dashboard and used to light his cigarette.
“I’m sorry,” said Hugh.
“We lost two of our stretcher bearers, and they lost more from who was up there already,” said Archie.
“Last week we seen a bearer come staggering out of the trenches, covered in blood,” said Bill. “A shell took out his partner and half the poor sod they was carrying, and he was so gone in the head he didn’t even notice.” He laughed and sucked hard on his cigarette.
“Is he going to be all right?” asked Hugh.
“We gave him a shot of brandy and a cup of tea and pointed him back in the right direction,” said Archie. “Long as you got both legs and both arms, you’re qualified to carry stretchers.”
“It’s been a bit quieter since,” said Bill. “Expect your cousin is holed up in a nice dry cellar, sir. Playing whist and eating mulligatawny.”
“I doubt that,” said Hugh.
“Some mix-up with the quartermasters,” said Archie. “Sent this area twenty thousand tins of mulligatawny. Everyone’s sick of it.”
“You can get two tins for a twist of baccy,” said Bill. “Not that we would be trading government supplies, of course.”
“Of course not,” said Hugh.
“Locals are sick of it too,” said Archie. “?‘I say, got any pandy burr?’ and they wave their hands about. ‘Non, non, pas di mully-tawnaay,’ they say.” Hugh smiled at Archie’s phonetic approximation of the French pain de beurre. It was surprising how quickly the British Tommies had adapted the French language for their own use, though their vocabularies seemed to cover only food, drinking, and cursing.
“I heard some enterprising lad pasted chicken soup labels on his mully tins and sold ’em to a local farmer for rabbits,” said Bill.
“I heard the locals been pasting on labels of everything from paté to spotted dick and selling to us right back,” said Archie. “Somewhere along the line someone’s going to get shot, if you ask me.”
“So are you fixing up the injured?” asked Bill. “We just drop the poor buggers off and never get no reports of whether they live or not.”
“We have a good system now from the casualty station onward,” said Hugh. “Of course some of them never get past us. If they are too far gone, we give them morphine and offer to pass on any messages to their families.”
“We got our own system,” said Bill. “Anything more than three quarters of a man and we bring him in. Less than that, we give him a cigarette and keep his morphine for some other poor sod. Funny thing, but they don’t seem to feel the pain when they’re that far gone.”
“Funny business all around,” said Archie. “Cigarette, guvnor?”
—
The ambulance let him off outside the ruins of a village that was little more than half a church and a huddle of cottages with all the thatch burned from the roofs. Beyond the village, shell-pocked woodlands rose gently to the low hills. An encampment of British army tents made a new village, clustered around a small barn on a riverbank.
Harry Wheaton looked up from a long trestle table and gave a shout of welcome as Hugh entered the barn. “Good God, you’re a sight for sore eyes, Grange,” he said. “Any news from home?”
“I had some letters yesterday,” said Hugh. “My aunt and uncle are doing well, but Miss Nash wrote to tell me, among other things, that your sister’s nanny is leaving in rather a hurry.”
“Letters from Miss Nash, you sly dog?” said Wheaton, raising an eyebrow. “So what does Miss Nash say about Fr?ulein?”
“Some whispers of suspicious activities and letters from Germany,” said Hugh, ignoring Wheaton’s insinuations. “Nothing proven, it seems, but enough fuss that your family found her a job in America and paid her passage.”
“Poor Fr?ulein,” said Wheaton. “I told Eleanor she would put the poor woman in difficulties.”
“What has Eleanor to do with espionage?” asked Hugh.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” said Wheaton. “Perhaps a few love letters. Perfectly harmless, but I told her she should not involve the German nanny.”
“I see,” said Hugh.
“Eleanor always does what she wants, as if no rules apply to her,” said Wheaton in a breezy tone. “I’m glad she is safe, and I’m sure Fr?ulein will love America.”
“Have you had letters?” asked Hugh.
“Been a bit hairy up this way,” said Wheaton, indicating his arm, which sported a large canvas sling. “Mail was the first casualty of the shelling. Still waiting for deliveries to resume.”
“Did a doctor look at it?” asked Hugh.
“Flesh wound,” said Wheaton. “Not enough to win leave. The old man has me in charge of putting on a full regimental dinner, like I’m a factotum from Claridge’s, but I suppose I should be grateful for the brief respite from the fire trench.” His face grew stiff and gray as he spoke, and Hugh could see that even Harry Wheaton could not pretend the front line was some sort of gentleman’s adventure.
“How is the Colonel?” he asked gently.
“Between you and me, he’s a bit old for this kind of war,” said Wheaton. “Impatient with all the digging in and wants to be in Berlin by Tuesday.”