Free Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Lawrence Page A

quiet. (Personally, I think they must be deaf! There's not an hour when a Moaning Minnie doesn't shriek overhead, or a bullet whistle past.) But the word is that the fighting will soon spread to our sector.
    The other night, just after sunset, we heard Fritz marching. Thousands of boots marked thousands of steps along the duckboards of his trenches. It was a sound more terrible than the shells or the bullets, and it lasted all night long. At dawn we stood to, sure that the Boche would come up with the sun, pouring over no-man's-land like a river of gray.
    But he didn't come then, and he didn't come this morning. Our only company are the rats and the lice. Frankly, I'd rather have those than Huns.
    Sooner or later, though, they're bound to come. And the waiting is very hard. It's driving some men nearly mad. You can see it in their eyes, the strain of always waiting—for the next bullet, the next shell, the battle still ahead. They clean their rifles over and over, and volunteer for any duty at all from digging latrines to raiding trenches.
    I'm glad I can sit here and whittle. I've spent the entire night, when I should have been sleeping, making an ambulance that you will find enclosed. You might find it rather familiar, son. At least I've solved the mystery of where all the buses have gone from London. Your little men will have to ride on top, but I don't suppose they'll mind.
    Well, it's raining now, but it might change to snow very soon. I hope it does. I'd put up with a blizzard if it meant an end to this terrible mud.
    Another shell just exploded on my right. A rush of men are going by with shovels and picks. A great deal of the trench gave way, but no surprises this time. The most astonishing things sometimes turn up when the parapet collapses.
    I miss you dreadfully and wish I was there.
    All my love,
    Dad
    Auntie Ivy folded the letter. She saved all of them in a little wooden box that she kept on a shelf above the stove, between her tea and her peppermint drops. She took her chair from the table and carried it there.
    “Do you think Dad knew my Pierre got hurt?” I asked.
    “How could he?” she said.
    “Then why do you think he sent an ambulance?”
    She stepped up on the seat. “I imagine he thought you might like it.”
    I tore the package open, and I smiled at first; the ambulance was beautiful. On its sides, Dad had painted the advertisements it would have carried as a bus. He'd put seats on the open roof, then smeared it all with mud and smoke.
    But when I turned it over, I saw that one of the wheels was oddly twisted and smaller than the others. I blinked at it, suddenly sad. For the first time ever, my dad had made a toy that wasn't perfect, and I was glad that Auntie Ivy hadn't asked to see it.
    “You'll be visiting Mr. Tuttle tonight,” she said, taking the box from the shelf. She put the new letter inside. “Why don't you ask him to come and see your soldiers?”
    “I'm not sure he'd want to,” I said.
    “Would it hurt you to ask?”
    “No, Auntie.” I took the ambulance out to the garden. I put it down in the mud, behind the British lines, and drove it toward the wall. It tilted over the ground, up and down through the shell craters that Sarah and I had made with our stones. I wondered if the bus conductor would still be standing at the door.
    The ambulance stopped at the trench. “Any wounded?” the conductor shouted. “All wounded aboard.” Then he pressed his little bell—“Ding, ding!”— and the driver started up.
    I heard a laugh, and Sarah was there at the wall. “That's silly,” she said. “They don't do it like that.”
    “They might,” I said.
    “They
carry
the wounded,” she said. “How can youclimb on a bus if your arms are shot away? How can you walk if you haven't any legs?”
    “Maybe they were only a little bit wounded,” I said.
    “You're
funny,
Johnny.” She shook her head, just like my mum might have done. “No one's a
little
bit wounded. When the shells