It was the first time he'd spent Christmas in hell.
Scott had known some other miserable Christmas Days. He recalled the Christmas he'd spent in boarding school. His grandfather was abroad and he'd had to stay at school for the holiday. The teachers did their best for the pupils who couldn't go home but it couldn't be the same. He'd missed his grandfather dreadfully and besides, there was the knowledge that the letter he'd sent in almost desperate loneliness to the father he had never met, had brought no reply. And the Christmases since his enlistment a little over two years ago had hardly been festive.
But even a battlefield was nothing compared to this: the slow wasting, the despair, the destruction of body and spirit in the prisoner-of-war camp could only have its match in hell.
LLLLLLLLLLL
"Forget it, Captain Lancer, there's nothing you can do there."
Scott looked at the soldier lying on a pitiful shred of a mattress. The sergeant was right, this fellow was beyond help. A few hours he might have at most, maybe only a few minutes. Half delirious with malarial ague, the best hope was that he might lose consciousness altogether and slip away peacefully. But the soldier's eyes were suddenly fixed on him, and Scott went over to where the dying man lay.
"Lancer," the man said, in a voice barely more than a hoarse croak. With an effort he lifted a hand out from under the thin blanket that covered him. Scott took the wasted hand in his own. There was one thing he could do for his fellow prisoner – not let him die alone.
The man was talking, half to Scott and half to himself.
"You stand on that ridge and you can see the whole valley. Stretches right away to the mountains. Green," he muttered. "Beautiful. Worked there. Was gonna go back." His eyes closed. "Won't go back now, I guess." He was silent and Scott wondered if it was the end. But the man's eyes opened once more and his gaze fixed on Scott.
"Think of me when you see it," he said. He smiled, a smile of peace that stayed on his face as his gaze grew more distant and the hand in Scott's grew limp.
Scott closed the man's eyes and drew the blanket up over the still face. He wondered where that valley was. It didn't matter. He was just thankful that, for some unknown reason, he had helped a soldier die with a vision of a green valley, instead of a prison camp hell, on Christmas Day.