him near the gun and two horses harnessed to the gun carriage.
Judith pulled the ambulance to a halt as close as she could and the soldier was at her side immediately.
“Can you ’elp me, miss? Private ’Oskins is ’urt pretty bad. That bloody gun just pitched back into the mud and none of us could shift it, even with the ’orses. ’E’s gonna die if we don’t ’elp ’im. Both ’is legs is bust an’ ’is back’s gorn. I dunno ’ow ter move the thing wi’out makin’ it even worse. Please…”
Judith turned off the engine. “Yes, of course we will,” she said, climbing out without hesitation. “Come on.” She gestured to Mason, then hurried around to the back just as Wil Sloan opened the door and looked out. “We need help, Wil,” she told him. “Man trapped under a field gun. You’d better get tourniquets, and splints, and a stretcher.” She turned to Mason. “You come with me.” It was an order. Without seeing if he would obey, she picked up her skirts and waded through the ditch, in water up to her thighs. With a hand from the soldier she climbed out, then floundered across the thick, plowed clay to the crater. There, the other soldiers were trying to hold the gun from sliding even deeper, keeping the weary, patient horses leaning against the harness.
The injured man was almost submerged in the filthy water. Another man, who looked to be no more than sixteen or seventeen, held his head up, his eyes wide with terror. He was losing. He could feel the weight of the man slipping out of his grasp, slimy with mud and blood, and he was helpless to prevent it.
Mason dropped in beside him without even thinking about it, and grasped them both. They were freezing. The shock of it took his own breath away. A moment later Wil Sloan appeared with the stretcher. Judith was giving orders. “Hitch it tighter, move forward, slowly! Steady!”
There was a great squelch of mud and running water. Someone shouted, and the gun reared up. Mason put all his strength to pulling the wounded man, lost his footing, and fell back deeper into the crater himself. He thrashed around, suddenly terrified of drowning also. The clay held him. Water was in his eyes, in his mouth, over his head. It was vile, stinking of death. Someone caught hold of him and he was in the air again, gasping, filling his lungs. His hands still held the blouse of the wounded soldier. Wil Sloan was heaving on them both and one of the other soldiers as well.
They scrambled up onto the bank. Without even examining the wounds, Wil was binding tourniquets. Judith still held the horses.
“Hurry!” she shouted. “This gun’s going to slide backward any minute. I’ll have to cut the horses loose or they’ll go, too!”
“Stretcher!” Wil bellowed. Mason staggered to his feet and grasped it. Together they rolled the wounded man onto it, and then raised it up. They were a couple of yards clear when Judith cut the harness. The gun and carriage both fell back into the crater, sending up a wave of mud and water that drenched them, even at that distance.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” a voice shouted furiously.
Mason looked at the captain who stood on the side of the road glaring at them. He was a slender man, his wide, dark eyes seeming overlarge in his haggard face.
“Whose damn fool idea was it to take a gun across a field full of mud?” he demanded.
The corporal snapped to attention as well as he could, standing in the gouged-up clay and over his knees in mud. “Orders of Major Northrup, Captain Morel. I told ’im we’d get stuck, but ’e wouldn’t listen.”
Morel turned to Judith. “Get that man to the nearest field station. Cavan’s only about a mile forward. Be quick.”
“Yes, sir.” Judith waved at Wil to go on, then climbed into the ambulance, her sodden skirts slapping mud everywhere, and took her place behind the wheel. “Will you have one of the men turn the crank for me?” she requested.
Wil slammed the door shut from inside with the wounded man. Morel himself turned the crank and the engine fired.
Judith looked quickly at Mason and he shook his head. There was a story here he had to find, and perhaps to tell. He hoped she understood. There was no chance to tell her.
She nodded briefly, then gave all her attention to driving.
Mason stood in the road and watched them go. He would speak to Cavan another time.
Captain Morel was tight with fury. His features were pinched and white except for two spots of color on his cheeks. His movements were jerky, his muscles locked hard.
“Leave it, Corporal!” he shouted at the man with the gun. “Save the horses and get them out of there.”
“But, sir, Major Northrup told us—”
“To hell with Major Northrup!” Morel snapped back, his voice shaking. “The man’s a bloody idiot! I’m telling you to get the horses out and rejoin your platoon.”
The corporal stood where he was, torn with indecision. Mason could see that he was terrified of what Northrup, who outranked Morel, would do to him for disobeying his order.
Morel saw it, too. He made an intense effort to control his fury. His face softened into pity so naked Mason felt almost indecent to have seen it. He wanted to look away, yet his own emotion held him. He was involved whether he wanted to be or not. Equally, he was helpless. This was one tiny instance of idiocy in a hundred thousand times as much.
“Corporal,” Morel said quietly, ignoring the rain running down his face. “I outrank you and I am giving you a direct order. You have no choice but to obey me, unless you want to be court-martialed. If Northrup questions you, tell him that. I’ll answer for it; you have my word.”
The corporal’s face flooded with relief. He was no more than eighteen or nineteen. “Thank you, sir.” He gulped.
Morel nodded. “Do it.” He turned away, then, realizing Mason was still there, he faced him. His eyes were hard and belligerent, ready to attack if Mason criticized him.
Mason looked at him more closely. Everything about him spoke of a terrible weariness. He was probably in his mid-twenties, a public school boy, and later, judging by his accent, a student at Cambridge. A wounded idealist, betrayed by circumstances and blind stupidity that no sane man could have conceived of.
Mason thought of all the Frenchmen, also betrayed and slaughtered. Would the man in front of him mutiny, too? There was a rage in him too fragile, too close to snapping.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Morel demanded.
“Richard Mason, war correspondent,” Mason replied. “Who is Northrup?”
Morel let out his breath slowly. “Major Penhaligon was killed on the first day of Passchendaele. Northrup’s his replacement.”
“I see.”
“I doubt it.” Morel glanced up the road the way the ambulance had gone. “You’ll have to walk. Follow the stench. You can’t get lost. Although it doesn’t matter a damn if you do. It’s all the same.”
“I know.”
Morel hesitated, then shrugged and turned away back to his own men and the staff car still parked on the edge of the road. After the driver cranked it up, Morel climbed in and they drove off.
Mason started to walk.
How should he write up this incident? Should he record it at all? It was a classic example of the idiocy of some of the officers now in command and, as always, it was the ordinary men who paid the price. Thanks to Judith’s intervention, this one would only have two smashed legs. He might even walk again, if it hadn’t caught his back as well. Others would be less fortunate.
He could see Judith in his mind’s eye, ordering the soldiers to lift, stand, hold. Her voice had been perfectly calm, but he had seen the tension in her. She knew what she was doing, and the risks. If one of the horses had slipped or she had lost control of it, the gun carriage would have rolled back into the crater and crushed the soldier to death.
She had not seemed to give reason even a passing thought. Morel’s fury had had no visible effect on her. She could have been a good nanny watching a small child throw a tantrum, simply waiting for it to pass before she told him to pull himself together and behave properly. It had not entered her head to rebel against the madness.
Why not? Did she lack the imagination? Was she conditioned to obedience, unquestioning loyalty no matter how idiotic the cause? Perhaps. John Reavley had stolen the treaty, and she was his daughter. Joseph Reavley was her brother. Maybe sticking to ideals regardless of pain or futility, in defiance of the evidence, was considered an evidence of faith, or some other virtue, in the family? She had been taught it when she was too young to question, and now to do so would feel like a betrayal of those she loved.
