The man with the broken leg was the last of Maura's shift. All day a steady stream of wounded men had trickled in through the doors of Casualty Clearing Station Five and Maura had treated everything from superficial shrapnel wounds, to a more serious double amputation. By seven o'clock she was dead on her feet.
The evening air outside was thick with heat, but she took great gulps of it to rid her lungs of the stench of fresh blood and unwashed soldiers. As she breathed an unruly curl escaped the pins in her hair to swing before her sharp hazel eyes; eyes that roved the mercifully quiet lane outside the station and missed nothing. She saw yet another stretcher case in the distance being shouldered towards them by four medics, but Korsak had told her she was not to work another man until she'd had a few hours rest so Maura stepped to the other side of the road to the shade proferred by a crumbling stone wall and began to walk down the lane.
Somewhere a brave insect was chirruping a pitifully lonely song, and far off at the front several guns rumbled. Maura passed several soldiers playing a game of two-up and ignored their catcalls with a weary flip of her hand. A team of four horses plodded by dragging a howitzer, followed by several mules carrying eight heavy rounds apiece.
There was no colour anywhere, Maura mused. Everything was grey or brown or the drab olive colour of the soldier's uniforms. Even the ruins lay desolate under a mantle of dirt and powder. Nothing stirred in the intese heat but the great machine of war, a machine that ground on and on and spat out its used parts in the form of the broken men Maura laboured over day and night. The station was the only place with any colour and it was the shocking scarlet of a boy's perforated abdomen, or a farmer's nicked jugular. War was an artist.
Maura's bivvy loomed a dozen yards ahead. It was one of just a handful of unscathed buildings this side of town, closest to the frontline. It had once been a schoolhouse with one small room, a blackboard, several bookshelves and a collection of slate and pencils. The children had been evacuated years before when the fighting first came to their doorstep and the desks replaced with beds for the nurses of Armentieres.
As desperate as she was for sleep, Maura bypassed the small door of the schoolhouse and carried on another hundred yards until she found the mess tent. It was mercifully empty save for a handful of runners from C Company who were huddled in a corner hunched over their mess tins. Dinner was a watery soup with several carrots and questionable lumps of potato floating on the filmy surface. Maura also managed to weasel a quarter loaf of bread from the cook, a rotund little man with a walrus moustache and a fondness for the tough American nurse who liked to listen to his stories.
On the way back to her bivvy Maura was nearly struck down by a staff car being driven far too quickly. She shouted out as she dived out of the way but the stiff-necked officer in the backseat didn't look back. Maura was still brushing dust from her stained apron when she clomped up the schoolhouse steps and walked inside.
If there hadn't been a war on Maura thought she would have liked to be a teacher. There was something magical in the stillness of a schoolroom, in the way the dust particles eddied in the sunlight streaming through the high windows and the smell of chalk and paper that lingered even now, three years after it last heard the laughter of eager little students. She took a deep breath and a small smile came to her lips.
There were fourteen beds. Hers was right by the door, the sheets folded neatly and turned over at the top, the heavy woollen blanket resting at the foot. The other beds were similarly made, although only three of them were occupied. The other ten waited a fresh shipment of nurses to replace those injured or killed. The attrition rate was high even among nurses. There had been fifteen of them originally. Two had been killed by German shelling as they helped the medics retrieve injured soldiers close to the frontline. Six had been injured, both from enemy action and from simple accidents, and had been sent back to England. Two had died of diseases contracted from ill soldiers. And one girl had a brief love affair with a soldier and fell pregnant. She had been sent home and he was killed the next week in a trench raid.
Maura had enlisted in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry immedately after war broke out in July of 1914. She had trained in England before being sent to France and attached to a British division in a field hospital. However, she felt she could do more if she worked closer to the front and put together a team of likeminded nurses headed by an older gentlemanly doctor by the name of Vince Korsak, who was also an American. He had married an English girl and moved to London where he set up a practise. At the outbreak of war he offered his services to the army, who said he was too old for service. Unperturbed, Korsak had paid his way across the channel into France and set up a volunteer aid station. With the help of Maura and her nurses he moved the station to Armentieres in the Ypres sector. They worked tirelessly during the First Battle of Ypres and after the major hostilities had ceased the army recognised their efforts by officialising their aid station and ensuring a steady supply of medics, field ambulances, bandages and medicine.
The station had weathered another major offensive at Ypres in 1915, before enjoying a relatively quiet year by comparison in 1916. Although they continued to be supplied they had yet to be reinforced by more nurses. There were four of them left, including Maura. Two of the other girls were English, and the fourth was an older woman from Edinburgh who the three younger women affectionately called "Mother". They got along well enough, though the long and unpredictable hours they worked meant they rarely had the time or energy to do more than eat and sleep.
None of them were home when Maura entered the schoolhouse. She knew that Eliza and Beth, the two young English women, were driving field ambulances today, and Gwynn, "Mother", was working with Korsak in Maura's absence. After the stink and chaos of working in a busy aid station Maura relished the solitude. She collapsed onto her bed fully clothed, and in two minutes was fast asleep.
