“Get the ambulance started,” Wil told her. “We’ll get everyone out that we can. It’ll be a hell of a crush, but we’ll get most of them, with two vehicles. Hurry. Don’t know how long we can hold them. This could be just the first of bloody thousands!”
She obeyed and, bending low, ran back to the tent. Half the wounded were gone already. All those who could stand had rifles. Cavan was at the operating table, still working. A man lay on it bleeding heavily, his belly ripped open. The anesthetist held the ether, but he was shaking so badly the mask seemed to jiggle in his hand.
“You’ve got to get out!” Judith shouted at them. “We’ve got two ambulances. We’ll get everyone in. Just hurry! There are at least a dozen Germans broken through and only five or six of us with guns. We can’t hold them off much longer.”
Cavan did not look up from his work of stitching. “We can’t go yet, Miss Reavley,” he said steadily. “If I leave this man, he’ll die. So will the others who have just been operated on. The journey under fire will tear their sutures open. Tell the men to stand fast. Then come back and help me. I’m afraid my orderly is dead.”
It was only then that Judith noticed the body on the floor. When she had turned to go outside five minutes ago he had been assisting Cavan. The bullets that had torn through the canvas had struck him in the chest.
“Be quick,” Cavan added. “I need you back here. I can’t keep on much longer without help.”
“Yes, sir.” She swiveled and went out, almost bumping into a lance corporal with a heavily bandaged leg. He was kneeling against a packing case firing round after round at the raiding party. One moment they were visible through the drifting rain only by the flicker of their rifle fire, then suddenly the wind gusted and they could see them clearly, more than a dozen of them pressing forward.
“Captain Cavan says to stand fast,” she said loudly. “Tell the ambulance drivers we’ve got to fight.”
He looked at her incredulously, his face slack with disbelief.
“You heard me, Corporal,” she replied. “We’ve got wounded men to defend.”
He swore under his breath, but he did not argue. “You’ll ’ave ter tell ’em yerself, miss. Oi can’t move. Oi don’t mean Oi won’t. Oi can’t!”
“Sorry,” she apologized, and bending low again she scrambled over to Wil and repeated Cavan’s order to him.
She gave him a pat on the shoulder and went back to the tent to help Cavan. She knew enough about field surgery to pass him the implements he asked for, even though she could not keep her hands steady. When she tried to thread the needle for him it was hopeless.
“Hold this,” he ordered, indicating the surgical clamp in his hand buried deep in the abdominal wound.
She took it and it slipped off the flesh, blood spurting up hot, catching her across the face. She had never been more ashamed of her inadequacy.
Cavan took the clamp from her and grasped the flesh again.
“Swab it,” he commanded.
She prayed under her breath and cursed herself. She tried to still her breathing, control her muscles. She must not be so stupid, so ineffectual. This was a man’s life she was holding. Her fingers steadied at last. She mopped up the blood, then threaded the needle and passed it to him.
He glanced upward and met her eyes. His look was warm for an instant, then he took the needle. She reached for the clamp.
The gunfire started again, louder and more rapid than before, volley after volley. It sounded as if it was just outside the tent flap. Cavan did not hesitate in his slow, steady work. “Keep swabbing,” he told her. “I need to see what I’m doing.”
A spray of bullets shredded the tent wall and the anesthetist collapsed silently, buckling to his knees, then sliding forward, his back scarlet. Through the ragged tear stepped a German soldier, rifle pointing at Cavan. Behind him were two more, their weapons pointing at Judith also.
“Stop!” the leader said clearly in almost unaccented English.
“If I do, he’ll bleed to death,” Cavan replied without looking up, his hands still working. “Swab, please, Miss Reavley.”
Imagining the bullets crashing into her, bringing instant white-hot death, Judith obeyed, soaking up the blood within the wound.
“Stop!” the German repeated, speaking to Cavan, not Judith.
“I have two more men to operate on,” Cavan replied. “Then we will withdraw.”
There was more rifle fire outside. Someone cried out. The German turned away.
Cavan went on stitching. He was almost finished. The bleeding was contained.
The German looked back. “Now you stop.”
The tent flap opened and one of the wounded men stood there. He was swaying slightly, blood streaming down his tunic where his left arm should be, a revolver in his right hand. He raised it and shot the first German soldier through the head. The other two fired at him at the same moment, hurling him back against the canvas. He was dead before he touched the tent wall, and slithered to the floor.
Cavan swung round and dived toward him, hands outstretched.
“It’s useless!” Judith shouted at him. One of the other soldiers raised his gun to aim at Cavan. She reached for the instrument tray, picked up a scalpel and drove it into the man’s neck. His bullet went through the ceiling.
Cavan was half on top of the dead soldier on the floor. He knew he could do nothing for him. It was his gun he was after. He rolled over, covered in blood, and shot the third soldier through the head.
The second one, gasping and spewing blood from his neck wound, staggered back through the tent the way he had come.
The gunfire outside never ceased.
“We have two more wounded we might save.” Cavan clambered to his feet, shaking, his face white.
“Only one now,” Judith corrected him. “Can…can we hold them off?”
“Of course we can,” he replied, his breath ragged, swaying a little. “But we’ve lost a scalpel.”
Joseph heard about it in the morning, standing in the wreckage of the forward trench, the parapet collapsed, mud up to their knees.
“It’s about the only good thing, Captain Reavley,” Barshey Gee said to him grimly as they stopped working on rebuilding the trench walls for a moment. “He’s some doc, eh, Cavan? There he was, cool as a cucumber, stitching away like there were nothing going on! An’ your sister with him. An’ that Yank ambulance driver, too.” Barshey was a tall man with thick hair. Before the war he had been slender; now he was gaunt and looked years older than twenty-four. “Got ’em out, they did. Didn’t leave a single live one behind.”
Joseph felt a wave of gratitude that Judith was still alive. It was so powerful he smiled fatuously in spite of his effort not to. He forced himself not to think about her most of the time. Everyone had friends, brothers, someone to lose. It would cripple one to think of it too much.
“I’m afraid Major Penhaligon’s dead, sir,” Barshey went on. “Pretty well half the brigade dead or wounded. The Canadians and the Aussies got it hard, too. Word is we could have lost around fifty thousand men….” His voice choked, words useless.
“This summer?” Joseph said. It was worse than he had thought.
“No, sir,” Barshey said hoarsely, the tears running down his cheeks. “Yesterday, sir.”
Joseph was numb. It could not be. He drew in his breath to say “Oh God,” but it died on his lips.
The battle of Passchendaele raged on and the rain continued, soaking the ground until it oozed mud and slime and the men staggered and sank in it.
On August 2, Major Howard Northrup arrived to replace Penhaligon. He was a slight man, stiffly upright with wide blue eyes and a precise manner.
“We’ve a hard job ahead of us, Captain Reavley,” he said when Joseph reported to him in his dugout. He did not invite Joseph to sit, even though he was obliged to bend because of the low ceiling.
“It’s your job to keep up morale,” Northrup went on. He appeared to be about twenty-five and wore his authority heavily. “Keep the men busy. Obedience must be absolute. Loyalty and obedience are the measure of a good soldier.”
“Our losses have been very heavy, sir,” Joseph pointed out. “Every man out there has lost friends….”
