Among the Poppies

by J'nell Ciesielski

  “Everything appears in order, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dormer didn’t budge.

  William flipped his gaze up. Trouble brewed on his sergeant’s face. “Is there something else?”

  “Sattler is low on canteens and field socks, sir. He sent a request in last month, but the stores are stretched too thin.”

  William frowned. Men without water and dry feet were as good as dead in this festering hole. “Why isn’t this in the report?”

  “Because he knows where he can get some.”

  A groan rumbled in William’s throat. His quartermaster was as clever as they came. The man could find a speck of bread in a snowstorm, though sometimes his greatest restocks came after a battle when the ground was littered with fallen articles. “We haven’t had a confrontation in this area in over a week.”

  “No, sir. It’s not one of those sources.”

  Realization dawned. “Ah. One of his other means.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  William crossed his arms, tucking his hands underneath for warmth. He didn’t like restocking from unknown and possibly questionable sources, but Sattler had yet to fail at acquiring the goods.

  “See if he can scrounge for something better than this sludge they’re calling coffee while he’s at it.”

  Roland leaned smugly against the wood brace supporting the roof as Dormer tromped off. “Thought you forbade anything not army supplied.”

  “I’m against my men getting trench foot and going without water.”

  “But using Sattler’s methods? He’s got a market from here all the way back to Liverpool black enough to color the sky like coal.”

  “I also notice those are rather new-looking gloves covering your delicate fingers. Lined with fleece, are they? Funny enough, I don’t remember any like that in the gift baskets sent by the sweet little ladies of Oxfordshire.”

  “As sweet as they are, those little ladies can’t darn a properly warm mitten.” Roland held out a hand and examined his well-ensconced fingers. “Besides, I don’t have Sir Philip Crawford sitting on my shoulder and poking my conscience at every turn.”

  William creased sharp folds into the morning report. No, his father would wait until the army supplied his men because that’s what a good soldier did. He would expect no less from his commanding-officer son. In the meantime, the entire unit’s feet could rot and fall off.

  Duty and honor. Two words drilled into William from the day he first took a breath. The words had always presented a black-and-white world to him, but war had introduced him to shades of gray. He was honor-bound to serve, and that service directed his duties to his men. How could he serve them without providing for them?

  He slid a final crease into the paper and tossed it into the pile to be burned. “Have the men gather their items. The reserves should come in next—” A whistle trilled the air. “Did you hear that?”

  “I hear only the rejoicing of my heart that we’ll leave this bog soon.”

  Every muscle in William’s body went rigid as he strained to hear the warning again. Tweeet! He knocked Roland out of the way and barreled down the bay. “At the ready!”

  Men scrambled to their feet, throwing rifles to their shoulders.

  “At the ready! Keep your heads down!”

  A shell screamed overhead, exploding in the ground behind them. Metal fragments covered in mud shattered everywhere, pinging off helmets. Screams stabbed the air as men crumpled to the ground.

  A boy, no more than nineteen, sagged into a wall of sandbags.

  William caught him before he collapsed. “Stretcher!”

  The storage door creaked open. A chilling breeze ruffled the pages of Gwyn’s book.

  “Who there’s letting in that cold?” Eugenie bellowed from the workbench. “Don’t you know—oh, it’s you, your ladyship, I mean Miss Hale.”

  Cecelia stomped in and closed the door behind her. Her red face was barely visible beneath the green silk scarf wrapped around her head. “Cecelia, please. No use for formalities over here.” She unwound the scarf and stuffed it into a pocket of her cream-colored fur coat. “What on earth are you two doing out here? You’ll freeze to death.”

  “Hence the reason we’re sitting next to a stove.” Gwyn turned a page. Huckleberry Finn. A childhood favorite.

  Perching on the edge of a stool, Cecelia held her hands in front of the potbelly stove. Red embers glowed as bright as her nose. “There are plenty of fires inside where the wind doesn’t howl through cracks, and it doesn’t smell like … whatever this smell is.”

  “Grease and rubber,” Eugenie said, using a wire brush to scrub a pile of screws. “Her ladyship’s staff don’t reckon how to keep a garage in proper working condition.

  Cecelia wrinkled her nose. “So I see.”

  “Smell or not, someone must always be on duty should the call come.” Gwyn turned another page. Huck and Jim needed to row for their lives on the flooding Mississippi if they had a hope of surviving. “And the cranks freeze if they’re not turned often. How are the patients doing?”

  “Better,” Cecelia said. “We almost lost Private Collier last night, but Lucille managed to get the bleeding under control. She always seems to know what to do.”

  Gwyn looked up at the quiver in her friend’s voice. She dog-eared her page and closed the book. “It takes time to learn these things. Lucille’s mother was a nurse, was she not?”

  Cecelia turned her hands over in front of the stove and nodded.

  “Maybe you can stand beside her the next time and observe, or ask to be on the same shift.”

  “We are on the same shift. She took over for me when I fumbled the dressing.”

  “Everyone blunders from time to time, CeCe.” Gwyn leaned forward and dropped her voice. “This morning I was giving the cranks a turn, and I sneezed. Wound up tighter than a spring, the crank flew out of my hand and nearly took off Eugenie’s head. Can you imagine? Where would I find a replacement driver this late?”

  A small smile perked the corners of Cecelia’s mouth. “That’s horribly twisted.”

  “I only mean—” A ring rattled the air. Gwyn jumped up, knocking her stool back and lunging for the telephone.

  A dispatcher’s voice crackled on the other end. “Attack ten miles northeast. Several wounded and three critical. Ambulances requested.”

  “Got it.” Gwyn hung up the phone and scanned the map tacked to the wall. “We’re up. Attack at Longueval.”

  “Good luck to you,” Cecelia said as she dashed back to the house. “Back safe!”

  Gwyn yanked her wool knit cap on top of her head and ran outside, tugging on her gloves as Eugenie sounded the siren. The girls sprinted out of the house and to their cars, cranking away until the engines choked to life. Gwyn shouted instructions and jumped behind the wheel. Blood raced through her veins, but she kept steady lest her eagerness kill the old Royce before they got out of the gate.

  Wind burned her cheeks as she turned onto the open road. First in the convoy, she had the advantage of seeing every rut and turn, but it also meant she had nothing to block the wind sweeping through the valley and down the hills. She yanked the driving goggles over her dry eyes before they froze and tucked her chin down into her thick fur coat.

  Gwyn turned off the main road that led to the small town and onto a makeshift lane of frozen dirt and mud pits. “Leave it to the army to make things more difficult than need be.” She gripped the wheel as the uneven terrain threatened to rip it from her grasp and send her careening into a tree trunk. The wheels squealed in protest against the sucking mud.

  “Come on, Rosie girl. We’re not going to let a little mud stop us now, are we?”

  Punching the throttle as far as Gwyn could, Rosie jerked ahead and chugged on. More squealing sounded behind her, but Gwyn didn’t stop to see who it was. The wounded needed her. The drivers knew what to do in an emergency.

  Wind billowed in the treetops, clacking branches together and snapping twigs that tumble
d to the ground. Soon low rumbles punctuated the wind. Louder and louder they grew, like approaching thunder, as Gwyn drove on.

  Her pulse pounded. This was it. The moment she’d prepared for. Her chance to prove herself.

  The trees gave way to a barren field bisected with trenches like a horrific quilt. Shell holes large enough to drive a lorry through gaped black in the ground. Gray smoke floated around as bullets fired between the opposing front lines. Gwyn’s breath stuttered in her lungs at the stench of sulfur, burnt metal, and something she did not want to identify. The khaki lumps scattered across the ground left little doubt as to its origin.

  Dear God in heaven. She pulled her gaze away and focused on the path in front of her. Those men may be gone, but some with a chance waited for her.

  To the rear of the trenches and out of shell range, three tents stood surrounded by sandbags and piles of earth. A crude sign with a faded red cross stood in front. Pulling to a stop near the first tent, a private with a medic badge around his arm scowled at her. “You ain’t the RAMC.”

  “No, we’re a private unit.” Gwyn jumped down. She didn’t have time to deal with this nonsense. “The nearest Royal Army Medical Corps is too far from here to respond. Where are your wounded?”

  Eugenie and two other drivers popped up next to her, red-faced and goggles fogged over.

  “What’s a bunch of females going to do, eh?” The private sneered.

  Gwyn took a step forward, ready to knock him aside if necessary. “Get your soldiers out of here and to a hospital unless you’d rather them bleed to death while you run your mouth.”

  His pimpled face twisted. “You three over there. You, girly, follow me.”

  Gwyn ducked into the first tent. A concoction of blood and chloroform smacked her in the face.

  A major with a blood-smeared apron came around the side of an operating table. “You the ambulance?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Brown eyes looked her up and down. “Not what I was expecting, but I’ll not split hairs if you have a transport.”

  “I have four. Two stretchers each or six men sitting.”

  He waved her further into the tent and pointed at the two tables that occupied most of the room. “I’ve got three stretcher cases and seven that can manage upright. Sergeant Boller here”—he pointed to the man with a bright red bandage wrapped around his thigh— “is my most critical. He needs an amputation, I’m afraid.”

  Boller rocked up from the table, sweat pouring down his face. “No! I won’t let you take it.”

  Two medical assistants pushed him back down and restrained him as the major dribbled chloroform onto a cloth and pressed it gently over the thrashing man’s thick nose. Boller twitched, then relaxed.

  “It’s not much, but it’ll take the edge off.” The major sagged. He ran a hand over his face, pressing the edges of his trim black mustache down. “If he rouses on the way, hit him in the head with a rock. It’ll be less painful than that shrapnel in his bone.”

  Movement rustled outside the tent. Loud voices clashed as heavy objects hit the ground. The tent flap yanked back.

  “Major Bennett, I have four more men for you to look at, one with a broken leg, and I’d like a report on my men that have already been brought in. Why are they still here, sir?”

  Surprise charged down Gwyn’s spine. Of all the medical tents in the field. “We’re loading the men as quickly as we can, Captain Crawford.”

  “Gwyn? I mean, Miss Ruthers. You’re the medical detail?” Splattered in mud and reeking of sweat, William was a far cry from the starched uniform and polished boots of London. He turned to the doctor with a furrowed brow. “I thought the RAMC was covering us.”

  “They have their hands full with that little skirmish north.” Bennett’s eyes narrowed at Gwyn. “Is there an issue with Lady Dowling’s services?”

  “Of course not.” Gwyn curled her fingers tight against the fur pockets of her coat. “We have every available resource that a base hospital has.”

  “Except that you’re not a hospital. Not a military one at least, and once my men are taken into private care, it will make it that much more difficult for me to keep track of them outside the system.” William took off his tin helmet and ran a hand through his dirty hair. Without the use of brilliantine, it flopped across his forehead. “I’m sure Lady Dowling has the best services she can offer, but what if the patients need a clearing station, or more, a train or boat to a port embarkation? Has that system been set up?”

  Gwyn wanted to defend their capabilities but could not because they had never discussed taking the men further than Maison du Jardins. She uncurled her fingers to release the building pressure. “If the men require additional transport, then we will see to it without delay. Whatever it takes.”

  William’s jaw worked back and forth. Gwyn needed to cut him off before the brewing argument spewed out. “Captain, I’m afraid that our talking is hindering my assignment to get these men to care, and one is in immediate need of an amputation.”

  “An amputation. Who?”

  “Sergeant Boller,” the doctor announced without looking up from his examination of a new man. “Entire left leg. Shrapnel.”

  The skin around William’s mouth pinched white. “Get him out of here as quickly as you can.”

  Without wasting another second, Gwyn had the wounded loaded into the ambulances. Tags hung from their buttonholes so the new doctors would know their conditions and what precautions the field medics had taken. Her transfers tucked safely inside, she shut the door.

  William caught her arm as she climbed onto the driver’s bench. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, bright blue against the dirt smeared across his face. “My intentions were not to discredit you in there.”

  The weight of his hand settled through the thickness of her coat. The bluster from earlier disappeared. “You’re only looking after your men, Captain. I expect no less.”

  “You looked ready to go toe-to-toe with me.”

  “If that’s what it took.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted, reminding her of the man she’d clinked teacups with a hundred lifetimes ago. The man who had waited for her in the rain. She pulled her arm from his grasp and grabbed the throttle. Rosie roared into action.

  William stepped back. “I’ll be on the reserve line in a few days. I’d like to come by and see my men if possible.”

  Gwyn nodded, tamping down her eagerness to see him again. Only there was someone else anxious to see him as well. “We’ll give you a full tour of the facility. Cecelia will be glad to see you.”

  The corner of his mouth fell. “I—yes, of course.”

  “Until then, Captain. God be with you.” She eased onto the clutch and pulled away. Away from the blood-stained tents, the bullet-strewn field, the helmets being collected, the man standing motionless where she left him.

  Gwyn yanked the goggles over her eyes. Enough of that. She had plenty of men to deal with at the moment.

  Gwyn sagged onto her cot. The single candle on the nightstand flickered dimly against the damask wallpaper and heavy silk drapes pulled across the windows. Silence enveloped her as if the room desired to match the trudging of her heart.

  Sergeant Boller never made it off the operating table. The shrapnel had worked its way into his femoral artery. Though the doctor had assured her it was inevitable, she knew each tire bounce—every mud-slicked rut—had caused it.

  A hot tear burned down her cheek. Then another. They rolled off her chin and landed with soft plops in her lap. Crying wouldn’t help. It never did.

  Crying hadn’t brought her mother back. Buckets of tears, and Gwyn’s mother remained as lost to her as the moment she took her last breath. She swiped the tears with the back of her hand. Never a handkerchief handy when she needed one.

  With exhaustion pulling at her, Gwyn turned to the only thing that ever brought her comfort. Books.

  She glanced at the trunk at the end of her bed. Tales of adventure, mystery, brot
herhood, far off places, kings and queens. For the first time, none of it stirred the ache from her heart. Nor the dread of knowing William was out there. It could have been him bleeding in the back of her ambulance. Bloodless lips, cold fingers, vacant eyes.

  She shook off the chill clawing at her, but the uneasy pounding of her heart wasn’t so easily shunned.

  The candle flickered again, drawing her attention to the nightstand and the worn book lying under her pocket toolkit. Scooting to the edge of the cot, she picked up the book and ran her fingers over its worn cover. Not even the coolness drifting in from the window cracks could rob the old leather of its warmth. She flipped open the cover and ran a fingertip over the beautifully scratched words in the top left corner.

  To my darling wife, Amelia, on the birth of our daughter.

  I may not be able to shower you in the riches you deserve,

  but I hope to shower you in the riches of our Father’s love.

  May His words never leave your heart.

  Forever,

  Bernard

  A new tear slipped down Gwyn’s cheek as she smiled. Dear Papa. He had made sure this eternal book was packed on top of all the others. And tonight, it called to her.

  CHAPTER 8

  Giggles floated down the hallway from the salon-turned-patient quarters. Gwyn paused before turning the corner and checked her reflection in a full-length gilded mirror. Rumpled clothes, hair flattened on top and sticking out on the sides, heavy eyelids, and a smudge of oil along her jaw. Not having seen a hot bath and warm bed in over twenty-four hours, this was as good as it would get.

  Licking the tips of her fingers, she tried to tame the worst offending hairs, but back out they sprang. She dropped her hand in frustration, more at herself than the hairs. Why should she be expected to look ballroom-ready? Was there not pride in coming off an all-night shift? Of course, coming off a shift normally meant she met the next crew. But today … she pinned a strand behind her ear, willing it in place. A smile crept over her face.

  Rounding the corner, she nearly ran into a handful of tittering off-duty drivers and nurses crowded around the door to the patients’ quarters. “Don’t you girls have anything better to do?”