**WARNING**
This particular chapter is incredibly graphic. If you have a weak stomach or prefer not to read gory things I highly suggest skipping this chapter. I have made it so that nothing important happens between characters, so you won't miss anything by not reading this particular part of the story. This chapter is intended to set a darker tone for later.
I will include a glossary of terms used at the bottom of the chapter.
April melted quickly into May. Jane soon settled into her new role as a field ambulance driver with Badr reporting that she was quick, efficient and very gutsy. One evening there was a particularly fierce bombardment of the trenches closest to the town. The shrapnel was so fierce that it was nearly impossible to get medics close enough to rescue wounded men. Many of the stretcher-bearers who went forward to help became casualties themselves. Jane and Badr were the only ambulance team to brave the tempest, making several trips and saving nearly fifty men. For these actions both were awarded the British Military Medal. Badr strutted around for a week, proud of the medal not because it was awarded for bravery, but because it was given by the country he idolised.
In contrast May rolled into June with very little action in their sector. It rained heavily so the trenches were largely quiet. Most of the cases brought to the station were for hypothermia and trench foot, so the nurses were all able to have a little free time. They spent time together in the schoolhouse, laughing and chatting. A few knitted or darned socks and scarves for themselves or soldiers, the others just relished time away from the chaos of the station. It was during this time that Maura learnt a little more about Jane.
Jane was from a reasonably well off Italian family and had lived her entire life in Boston. She had two brothers, both younger. The youngest helped their father run a bank in New York while the middle brother was a baseball player with aims at making the majors. Her mother owned several restaurants that she had inherited as the only child of an Italian chef who had immigrated to America in 1875, so the family was prominent in the upper echelon of society. Jane's debutante ball had over six hundred attendees and made the morning paper. She was a very beautiful girl, and incredibly popular among the young men her parents knew. They'd both attempted to match her with sons of high ranking bankers and other businessmen, but Jane had stubbornly insisted on attending college before considering marriage. She'd been in her first year at Radcliffe when America joined the war.
"The second we heard that we were in it my friends and I signed up as nurses," Jane said. "My mother was pissed. She told me I was just doing it to disappoint her and asked me why I couldn't be a 'normal girl with a husband and children'."
Jane laughed her distinctive, throaty laugh. The other young nurses laughed as well, eyeing the confident, daring woman with a mixture of awe and jealousy. A few chimed in with their own stories about how they'd been expected to marry but had instead joined up. One or two were married and had enlisted because their husbands were now in the service. Alexandra - a stocky, pretty blonde girl from Philadelphia - had three young children but had left them with her parents so that she could nurse with the army.
"I want to see the world, you know?" she said. "Ryan and I never have the money to go anywhere, and I've always wanted to come here – to Europe. This is my chance. I'll nurse until the war is over and then I'll go back. But first I want to experience another culture."
Maura just shook her head. The reinforcements had been nursing for two months. They had seen a few horrific injuries, but they were yet to experience the horror of nursing after a big attack. It was still the honeymoon phase. They were yet to discover the true brutality of war. She was about to open her mouth and say something, but Jane beat her to the punch.
"Shut the fuck up, Alex. You're an idiot," she snapped. "This isn't a working holiday. You're not some nanny to a rich family, accompanying them to Nice or fucking Paris or some shit. This is war. Some poor fucker up the lines copped it and died just now, while you're sitting here safe and warm in your bed gushing about seeing the fucking world."
Alexandra looked shocked. No doubt she'd told her story in the hopes of impressing Jane and the others, instead she'd just been torn apart.
"You haven't been near the trenches yet, have you?" Jane continued, sitting up straight on her bed and leaning forwards, subconsciously making herself more threatening. "Well I'll tell you what they're like. Mud. Mud and blood and bodies. Bits of wire and broken boards. Rats as big as house cats running over men who are so fucking tired they just drop down and sleep where they fall. Lice everywhere. We all have lice," the other nurses nodded, one or two scratching absentmindedly at themselves, "but the lice up the lines are far worse. British men have little white lice. Everyone gets them. But the Germans have these big red fuckers. Some of the British guys get both, especially if they've been in the lines a while. When they're not sleeping or eating or shitting their guts out they're sitting around frying these lice in pans held over naked flames. They use the fat from melted lice to make candles.
"And the noise," Jane went on, ignoring the shocked looks on the young nurses' faces. "You can hear the bigger guns from here. But up the lines you hear much more. Crumps that hit the earth and explode with so much force they lift it a few feet off the ground. Whizz-bangs that whistle and seem to split your head when they detonate. Shrapnel rattling on tin hats and peppering the earth. Very lights fizzing up into the sky. Trench mortars that take off with a flat thock. Small arms barking like angry dogs. Machine guns - the Lewis guns stutter metallically, the German Spandaus rattle with a burr-burr. They stitch the sandbags right over your head with a sound like books dropping onto a wooden floor."
Jane picked up a book from the small table beside her bed and dropped it to make her point. It hit the wood with a sharp slap.
"Men laughing. Men swearing. Men muttering. Men screaming. Gamblers hollering. Someone shouting to make room for a stretcher team. 'Keep left! Keep left!' Men hitting cartridges on their helmets, banging mess tins to clear them of dirt, hitting rats with trench shovels, boots thudding on the duckboards. Everything slimy and wet and grey. Puddles that suck at your boots, some deep enough to swallow a man whole. And the stench! Sweat, blood and shit mixed with cordite and smoke. Something is always burning. And that horrible stink of death from the corpses in front of the bags. They swell up out there. They get fat with gases, the skin goes black, then explodes. That's why the rats are so big. There are so many bodies for them to eat."
By now all of the new girls were green at the gills. Maura had to hide a smile.
"This isn't some kind of fucking sight-seeing trip," Jane spat at Alex, who looked like she wanted to be sick. "You're here to help the men those trenches chew up and spit out. When the war ends you can skip off to eat at fine restaurants in Paris, or ski in the mountains, but for now you are a nurse in the United States Army. So start fucking acting like one."
The room went silent after Jane's tirade ended. The only sound was the constant low rumble of guns from the front and Gwynn's knitting needles clacking together (she hadn't missed a beat during the entire speech). It was Maura who broke the hush.
"You forgot the gas," she said quietly. Everyone turned to look at her. Most of the girls looked like they hoped she wouldn't elaborate. But Maura continued.
"The gas," she went on in a slow, haunted voice, staring off at nothing. "You're up there with the men and suddenly the gas bell starts ringing and men start shouting 'gas! gas! gas!' You hear that hiss and see the cloud creeping towards you. So you pull your mask on as quick as you can, but some aren't quick enough and you get the screaming. It's not like any kind of screaming I've heard before. It's high pitched, keening. It's a sound straight from Hell itself - piercing your ears and tearing at your chest. Some poor bastard hasn't got his mask on in time. He comes staggering up towards you, eyes sunken and wide in his head, mouth open, dragging at the air trying to find the oxygen. His hands are pinched and clawed. He grabs at his throat and falls down, death rattling. Gas doesn't kill often, usually it just wounds the men. But when it does kill, when you see it kill, it's terrible."
If the room had been silent before, it was doubly so now. Maura felt a cold shroud steal over her at the memory of the boy's death. She felt Jane's eyes on her and abruptly stood up.
"War isn't a game," she said, then pivoted on her heel and left the room.
Glossary (in order of story appearance)
Crumps - a slang term for shells (explosive projectiles).
Whizz-bangs - another slang term for shells. These shells were named after the distinctive sound they made.
Shrapnel - metal shards sprayed from shells designed to inflict injuries to large amounts of men. Less destructive than HEs (high explosives).
Very light - a kind of flare used to illuminate No Mans Land in search of enemy troops, or to signal to men out on patrol how much time they had been out or had left.
Trench mortar - a small, portable device operated by a handful of men from the frontline trenches that flung grenade-type explosives to the enemy trenches opposite.
Small arms - rifles and hand guns.
Duckboards - slabs of wood laid on the bottom of trenches and over muddy sections of land so that men and supplies could be moved safely through the mud.
Cordite - a propellant designed in Britain to replace gunpowder.