Free Dead Man's Land by Robert Ryan Page A

my girls. It’s bad for morale.’
    ‘You could always let your nurses have a cavort or two.’
    She frowned at such flippancy. ‘I quote Matron-in-Charge Challenger: are we here to go dancing or save lives?’
    Can’t one do both, he wondered, but the fight wasn’t in him. He felt woozy. Alcohol on an empty stomach, perhaps.
    ‘And a lot of these VADs hold dangerous political views. I don’t want them to poison the minds of my nurses.’
    ‘What sort of political views?’
    ‘Radical suffragettes.’ She said it with a sneer.
    ‘You don’t believe in suffrage?’
    ‘Your Mrs Gregson—’
    Why did she keep using that possessive? ‘She isn’t mine.’
    ‘Mrs Gregson strikes me very much as the sort who would have all treated equally. Nurses and VADs. Do you really think a servant should have exactly the same vote as her mistress?’
    Sister Spence was clearly a great believer in hierarchy and the natural order of things.
    ‘Actually, I do. Just as the valet’s opinion counts as much as his master’s views.’
    She looked surprised. ‘How terribly modern of you.’
    Watson smiled to himself. That’s not what Emily would have called him. Quite the opposite. But he had adopted some of her more progressive ideas. ‘I should be going, Sister. Thank you for the chocolate. Most welcome.’ He stood, a little unsteadily. ‘As was the rum.’
    ‘Good. I’m sorry if I was rude. You see where politics can get us? I meant no offence.’
    ‘None was taken.’
    ‘Can I offer a word of advice, Major? Medical advice. Just an observation.’
    ‘I am a newcomer hereabouts, Sister, advice would be most welcome.’
    ‘You have to concentrate on the viable ones. You can’t save them all.’
    ‘We tried to in Afghanistan.’
    ‘There weren’t as many,’ she said coldly. ‘Nor were the injuries anything like as heinous, I’ll wager. Staff Nurse Jennings told me about the poor chap with half a face. I went to see him. There was no possibility on God’s earth he could have survived. And I think you knew that. It goes against all our training and ethics—’
    ‘He’s dead? Lovat?’
    ‘I am afraid so.’
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘In the mortuary tent awaiting burial, I would imagine. Why?’
    ‘He’s evidence.’
    ‘Of?’
    He explained his suspicions about the wound and the smell of garlic. That something abominable was being used to inflict such disfiguring wounds. Wounds that would always prove fatal.
    ‘You’ll have to take that up with Brigade. There are channels for such information.’
    ‘I thought as much. I’m now beginning to wonder if I imagined it.’
    Nonsense.
    He yawned and determined to ignore the bogus inner voice.
    ‘Good night, Sister. Sleep well.’
    ‘I will, once I have read some more of these,’ she tapped the stack of letters, ‘and suffered yet more very bad poetry indeed. Sometimes I think I should leave the war-sensitive material in and scribble out the doggerel. It would be a blessing for the recipients.’
    He managed a tired smile. ‘Good night,’ he repeated and was half out into the chill night air before he turned and asked: ‘Where is Brigade for this section of the line?’
    ‘Plug Street. Or Ploegsteert, to be more correct. At a place called Somerset House. Not its real name, of course.’
    ‘No,’ he agreed. The naming of every inch of the country with familiar landmarks was just another example of homesick men trying to make sense of a world gone mad. ‘Sleep well.’
    As he pulled at the tape to let the tent flap fall closed, Watson saw Sister Spence reaching for the telegram concerning her brother, no doubt hoping that in the past few hours the words had magically rearranged themselves into a less devastating message.

NINE
    Staff Nurse Jennings put a brave face on having to share with the new arrivals. She had wondered if Sister Spence had engineered it deliberately, but in fact, being the only nurse with a bell tent all to herself, and a large one at