but his Sergeant’s praise saw him through his ordeal.
The Sergeant then turned to me. “Ever find that lass you were looking for?” he asked again.
I was surprised he’d remembered our conversation.
“No luck so far.”
“You’re not going about it the right way,” he told me. “Put the word out, let others be on the lookout for her.”
I hesitated, for I realized that word could easily get back to Roger Ellis that an English nursing sister was searching for a fair-haired orphan. But even if it did, there wasn’t much he could do about it, was there?
“I’d like to find her,” I said over my shoulder as I bandaged another soldier’s back. “Someone I knew was set on finding her and bringing her back to England. He wasn’t the father, but he knew the father didn’t care enough to rescue her. Only he was killed before he could return to France.”
“Killed?” the Sergeant asked, frowning. “In England, you mean?”
“He was murdered,” I admitted. “It’s a long story, but never mind. I just want to find her, and then perhaps her family can be persuaded to bring her home. She’ll have a better life than she could have here in this war-torn country.”
“I’ll put the word out,” he told me. “Describe her again.”
I did. “It must seem quite fantastical, but she ought to be just that pretty.”
“If you’ve never set eyes on the lass, how do you know so clearly what she looks like?”
A perceptive question. I smiled.
“There’s a portrait of another child-a-a relative of this one. I was told she bears a strong family resemblance to Juliana. That’s how I know what to look for.”
“A needle in a haystack,” he said cheerfully, “but we’ll do what we can.”
One of his men began to scream as Sister Bedford probed for an elusive bit of shrapnel.
The Sergeant was there, saying, “Buck up, my lad, you don’t want those Tommies out there laughing up their sleeves at us.”
The soldier grinned sheepishly. “No, Sergeant. But it damned well
“You can scream at the Hun when we get back to our lines.”
That brought a shout of laughter from the others.
While I appreciated the Sergeant’s willingness to help-I was grateful, in fact-I rather thought he was enjoying flirting with me, and as soon as he and his company were back in the line, my orphan child would be forgotten.
The Sergeant himself took the painful digging in his shoulder stoically, tight lipped and teeth clenched. I could see the muscle in his jaw clearly.
When we’d finished, he ordered his men to follow him, and “stop cluttering up the sisters’ ward.”
I said, “Wait, where is the man with the head wound?”
He looked at me, then scanned his company. “The only one with the head wound didn’t make it, Sister,” he said, frowning. “Unless you’re counting Teddy, there, of course.”
He gestured to the private who had had bits of shrapnel in his scalp.
“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking that the man must have died outside the station. I added, “But I daresay your man Teddy will survive.”
“You’d better believe he will,” the Sergeant said, grinning. “I promised his mother special.”
And they were gone.
One of the sisters working on a stretcher case watched them walk away. “I do like tall men,” she commented. “And that one in particular.”
My next encounter with the Australian Sergeant was nearly a fortnight later, in the form of a message brought to me by a Scottish Corporal who had met him on a muddy road outside Ypres. The Corporal’s arm was in a makeshift sling, and I could tell before I had cut away his sleeve that it was badly broken. He said, his face pale with pain, “Is there a Sister here called Crawford?”
“I’m Sister Crawford,” I said as I finished with the scissors and laid bare the broken limb.
“I’m to gie ye this, then,” he answered, and with his good hand, he fished a slip of dirty paper from his blouse. “There’s a Sergeant Larimore fra’ Australia who’s been sending messages back by any wounded laddie he meets.”
“Ah, the Australian,” I said, smiling, taking the sheet and opening it. I found it was a list of orphanages that he’d somehow come up with by questioning everyone in sight, or so it appeared. I could never have collected such a list on my own, not without weeks of intense searching.
“Bless him,” I said, after scanning it.
The Corporal replied, “If it’s only a list that will make ye smile, I’ll draw up one masel’.”
Shaking my head, I said, “It’s not any list. I’m searching for a convent that used to be in a house on the road south of Ypres. They took in a number of orphans, but with the fighting had to move south to Calais. After that I’ve lost touch with them. There’s a child in that group of orphans that I’m trying to find, for a-a friend.”
“Ye’ll niver find one child in the hotch potch of religious houses,” he said earnestly. “Ye ken, there’s likely one on ivery corner.”
The doctor had come to have a look at his arm, and I prepared to move away.
“Is it important, Sister?” the Corporal asked. “Yon list.”
“Very.”
“Aye, well, I’ll pass the word back,” he told me, and I thanked him.
It was another week before I could take the few days coming to me and find a lift to Calais. An officer, a Major Fielding, was carrying dispatches to be sent on to London, something to do with ordnance, and as I got down near the harbor, he said, “Do you drive, Sister Crawford?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Then keep the motorcar, will you? I’ll be back from London in three days and I’d like to find it here whole, not commandeered or stripped of parts badly needed elsewhere. It’s my own motorcar, you see.”
“Thank you, sir! I’ll take good care of it.”
“See that you do. And meet me here on the dot of noon in three days’ time.”
I saw him off and gratefully turned the motorcar to go in search of the house where the nuns had taken shelter after leaving their convent on the road to Ypres.
Easier said than done. When I stopped a French priest and asked him where to look, he shrugged in that Gallic expression of ignorance.
“What can I say, Sister. There are so many houses dispossessed by this war. But if you go to the church two streets over, the one whose tower is visible from here, they may be able to help you.”
And so I found myself in the office of the monsignor of St. Catherine’s Church.
He was a thin man, prematurely aged by war and responsibility, but he took time to listen to me.
I showed him my list, courtesy of the Australian Sergeant, and he scanned it quickly.
“You permit?” he asked, pen poised over the sheet of paper. When I nodded, he began to make notes. “This house had only six elderly nuns,” he said, “And this one is now in Rouen, but I don’t know if they have orphans in their care. Their duty before the war was to the sick, much like yourself, and in particular, the care of the elderly and aged, many of whom have nowhere else to go. This next house is also in Rouen, and it may be the one you seek. But I make no promises. This and this and this house are now scattered.” He shrugged again. “Alas, I have no way of knowing where the rest may be. We are endeavoring to keep up with the displacement of religious houses, but there are so many, and I am one man.”
As I thanked him for his assistance, he asked, “What is your business with this child you seek?”
“I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “But it’s a charge I was given, to find her and make certain that she is safe.”
“Is the child’s mother French?”
“I was told that she was. Which is why the child is in an orphanage. The father, we believe he is an English officer, didn’t know that the mother of the child died, and by the time he discovered that, she was already in this
