Redemption - Leon Uris [260]
“Flynn.”
“Yo.”
“You’re the big man here till further notice.”
I nodded to the Ghurka convention outside the Major’s office and entered.
“There you are, Landers,” Chris said, standing behind his desk. The light colonel was a slender chap with a thin varnished moustache and slick black hair, as one would have if he were a dandy officer in Alexandria. Well, he’d get that uniform messed up if he hung around here long enough.
Next to him was a Ghurka captain.
“Subaltern Landers, I’d like you to meet a fellow New Zealander, Lieutenant Colonel Calvin Norman. His assistant, Captain Shurhum.”
“Doctor will do fine,” the colonel said. I clamored to get a grip on myself.
I winced aloud and maybe got to trembling.
“Damned stitches from the bayonet wound sort of cramp up on me at the damnedest times. Sorry, sir, pleased to meet you, Doctor. I would say welcome aboard, but this place hardly warrants it.”
Calvin Norman cracked a tenth of an inch smile at the corner of his lip, which lasted a second and a quarter. His steel-spring handshake told me he was a surgeon. My chest felt crushed. Air was hard to come by. I needed to settle down and regain my composure.
“Lift up your shirt,” he commanded, and as I groped for it he pulled it up.
“Frightful, sloppy work. Who did that?”
“I sewed myself up. The medics were very busy.”
“You’re fortunate this didn’t go septic on you.”
“Oh, I poured a whole bottle of iodine into it,” I said.
Doctor Norman winced. “See me later. I’ll tidy it up.”
“Landers has been recommended for a citation of valor during the Turkish counterattack. The legend goes that he chopped down nearly a hundred Turks with pistol, bayonet, rifle, and machine gun,” Chris said in that fucking pommy way.
“You’re embarrassing me now. How can I be of service to you, Doctor?”
“Too many men are dying between the evacuation and the time they arrive in Alexandria.”
I wanted to shriek. Damned nice of you people to take notice.
Norman obviously caught my expression. “Let’s understand something, shall we? As a New Zealander I am disgusted with what was probably the most inept evacuation plan in British military history. There are arms, legs, torsos, heads, and mules from Gallipoli floating across the entire Mediterranean and washing up by the hundreds on the beaches of Egypt and the coast of Africa. Let’s see if something better can be done.”
It was a sobering but clear moment for me. No matter what my personal animus, he was here on the most needed mission we had.
Chester knocked and entered. As I introduced him, Norman gazed at him as if to say, “Didn’t realize we had little drummer boys here.” That was…until Chester spoke up.
“Colonel Norman,” Chester said.
“Doctor would be preferable.”
“Doctor, I suggest the first thing we do is sit down and familiarize you with the big picture by map. I can also provide the average number of daily casualties from the major posts, types of wounds, and evacuation procedures.”
“That will be helpful. I didn’t realize you kept a ledger, what with all the chaos and casualties.”
“I don’t, sir. I carry it in my head,” Chester said.
As we continued to the Corps map room, Norman introduced his Ghurka surgical teams, good fellows all. I could envision Dr. Shurhum trailing Norman as he walked through the hospital ward, hands clasped behind him, snipping out orders.
Norman’s eyes played over the paddocks and the cave dwellings, a concentration of flies and stink and dung and filth, with bloody waters just beyond.
“We’ll see if we can’t start by instituting basic field sanitation.”
Christopher took Norman by the arm and nodded for me to come with them. “Doctor, I respectfully submit that you don’t break your skull trying to change what cannot be changed. We are in the most difficult military situation on the planet. I think your energies best be concentrated in your stated purpose of getting more men alive to Alexandria.”
Calvin Norman’s expression could break rocks, but Christopher Hubble was a British aristocrat speaking