At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [32]
“Not quite the Savoy, is it?” she said drily, as if she had read his thoughts.
He felt the heat in his face. He wanted to look away from her, and could not. She would be gone too soon!
She was embarrassed also. “Come on!” she said quickly. “Get in!”
They spoke of general things. She asked him more about other battlefronts he had seen and he found it easy to tell her. He felt no more need to hide his feelings or his knowledge of casualties. He tried to describe the ravaged beauty of northern Italy with its exquisite skies over Venice and Trieste; the courage of partisan fighters in the mountains of Albania, particularly some of the women he had seen, struggling to get medical supplies to the wounded.
He even found himself explaining some of the moral dilemmas he faced as to how much or little he should tell the truth of certain events in his articles.
She listened with interest—and understood enough to offer no solutions.
It was a windy day with only a light rain. When they were two or three miles from the front, they saw a gun carriage on its side and a soldier standing beside it waving his arms in desperation. There were three others behind him near the gun and two horses harnessed to the gun carriage.
Judith pulled the ambulance to a halt as close as she could and the soldier was at her side immediately.
“Can you ’elp me, miss? Private ’Oskins is ’urt pretty bad. That bloody gun just pitched back into the mud and none of us could shift it, even with the ’orses. ’E’s gonna die if we don’t ’elp ’im. Both ’is legs is bust an’ ’is back’s gorn. I dunno ’ow ter move the thing wi’out makin’ it even worse. Please…”
Judith turned off the engine. “Yes, of course we will,” she said, climbing out without hesitation. “Come on.” She gestured to Mason, then hurried around to the back just as Wil Sloan opened the door and looked out. “We need help, Wil,” she told him. “Man trapped under a field gun. You’d better get tourniquets, and splints, and a stretcher.” She turned to Mason. “You come with me.” It was an order. Without seeing if he would obey, she picked up her skirts and waded through the ditch, in water up to her thighs. With a hand from the soldier she climbed out, then floundered across the thick, plowed clay to the crater. There, the other soldiers were trying to hold the gun from sliding even deeper, keeping the weary, patient horses leaning against the harness.
The injured man was almost submerged in the filthy water. Another man, who looked to be no more than sixteen or seventeen, held his head up, his eyes wide with terror. He was losing. He could feel the weight of the man slipping out of his grasp, slimy with mud and blood, and he was helpless to prevent it.
Mason dropped in beside him without even thinking about it, and grasped them both. They were freezing. The shock of it took his own breath away. A moment later Wil Sloan appeared with the stretcher. Judith was giving orders. “Hitch it tighter, move forward, slowly! Steady!”
There was a great squelch of mud and running water. Someone shouted, and the gun reared up. Mason put all his strength to pulling the wounded man, lost his footing, and fell back deeper into the crater himself. He thrashed around, suddenly terrified of drowning also. The clay held him. Water was in his eyes, in his mouth, over his head. It was vile, stinking of death. Someone caught hold of him and he was in the air again, gasping, filling his lungs. His hands still held the blouse of the wounded soldier. Wil Sloan was heaving on them both and one of the other soldiers as well.
They scrambled up onto the bank. Without even examining the wounds, Wil was binding tourniquets. Judith still held the horses.
“Hurry!” she shouted. “This gun’s going to slide backward any minute. I’ll have to cut the horses loose or they’ll go, too!”
“Stretcher!” Wil bellowed. Mason staggered to his feet and grasped it. Together they rolled the