"Fuck, it's dark." Jane's voice was raspier than normal. She scuffed a boot against the wet dirt, soaked by a storm earlier in the night, and fumbled in her pockets for her cigarettes. Maura watched as she lit up and took a long draw on the cheap fag, one of the kind British soldiers called 'coffin nails'. She offered Badr one and he, too, lit up. Then Jane held the packet towards Maura.
"No thanks," Maura said.
"Three on a match is unlucky," Badr explained.
"Why?" Jane asked, dropping the match and extinguishing it with her heel.
"Well," Badr replied, "first light the sniper spots you, second light he gets a bead on it, third light ..." he imitated the noise of a gunshot.
"Third light you end up in the back of this," Maura said, indicating the field ambulance they stood beside.
They fell to silence after that. Jane and Badr dragged on their cigarettes, hunched over a little against the unusually chilly summer night. Maura moved a little ways away to the rear of the ambulance and looked around it towards where the low hump that was Messines Ridge stood silhouetted against a deep night sky. She squinted at her watch, tilting it a little to read the hands by the starlight. There was no moon.
"Can't be long now, it's three ack emma," she said, using common phonetic slang for 'A.M.' "When do they hop the bags?" *
"Ten more minutes," Jane replied, taking one last drag before discarding the glowing stub.
Silence again. Maura leaned her back against the ambulance and looked back at the row of vehicles all parked near the wood. They were parked some six klicks north of Armentieres just outside of Ploegsteert, or Plugstreet as it was unaffectionately known. There were no lights but Maura could see vague dark shapes milling around and hear their lulled voices. Every now and then a tiny red dot bounced along as someone smoking a cigarette walked past. They were all waiting for zero hour, when the uneasy calm would be shattered with fire and noise.
Ten minutes seemed to drag on. Maura found herself staring idly at Jane, who stood off a ways chatting in a low voice with Badr. The two were close friends by then, and a good team. Badr seemed to tolerate Jane's brash personality and apparent death wish and she obviously enjoyed being around the friendly Moroccan. Jane didn't seem to notice Badr's intense infatuation for her, however, and if she did she dismissed it. Maura felt sorry for Badr but at the same time felt an inexplicable sense of satisfaction that Jane was not spoken for.
She couldn't explain what intrigued her so much about Jane. The Boston woman drove Maura crazy with her tardiness, disrespect for authority and attitude, yet Maura still caught herself watching Jane at odd moments. She loved the way Jane used her elegant hands, and how her unruly black hair often escaped its bun and fell across her sharp face. Sometimes Maura made excuses so that she and Jane had the same shifts. And she would make sure she was the first one to rush out and help unload the wounded when Jane and Badr returned from a trip to the trenches. Once, she and Jane brushed hands when handling a stretcher. The chill it gave her almost caused Maura to drop the poor soldier. Maura's eyes half-closed as she recalled the feeling.
"Here we go!" Jane called out.
It was 3:10. The air began to hum as, in the distance, explosions sounded. All of a sudden the night was ripped apart as one of the mines detonated on the ridge directly before them. The ground lurched underfoot and Maura dropped to her knees, slapping her hands to her ears to block out the thundering BOOM that split her head and shock the trees. The shockwave felt like a punch to her chest. She fell back against the rear wheel of the ambulance with a thud.
The darkness was chased away by violent colour. The red flame of the mine explosion illuminated a vast convex chunk of earth that had been lifted high above the ridge. Somewhere in that howling tempest were the bodies of German soldiers, and Maura felt a quick pang of empathy for the German nurses who must now be rushing to their positions, possibly woken from a few hours sleep and now expected to patch together victims of the British onslaught. If the Allied troops advanced far enough those nurses might themselves become casualties.
Someone's hands groped at Maura's collar as the explosion from the mine faded and the barrage began. It was Jane. She hauled Maura to feet, yelling something. But even with her face a few inches away Maura couldn't hear Jane over the ringing in her ears. The night was suddenly bright as day as hundreds of tonnes of artillery flew overhead and began to rain down upon the distant German lines. Maura could smell the cordite thick on the breeze.
Eventually Maura's hearing returned, and she realised Jane was shouting her name, still shaking her. "Maura! Maura! Can you hear me? Maura!"
"Yes … yes, I'm fine," Maura said shakily, struggling back to her feet half thanks to Jane's vice-grip on her lapels, half of her own volition. She'd forgotten what a real bombardment sounded like. The noise was deafening. It hit her like a brick wall now that her hearing was back.
"Good, I was worried," Jane said, a look of relief washing over her handsome face. Maura felt her heart leap in her chest and couldn't help returning Jane's wide smile.
Jane and Maura sat in the back of the truck talking, or rather shouting, as they waited for the first lot of wounded men to reach them. Jane offered Maura a cigarette again and this time she took it. They chatted freely about trivial things like their families and their favourite places to go in the summer, ludicrous topics considering the devilish orchestra of fire and death raging not a few klicks away. Shells screamed overhead as Maura explained the finer points of hunting on horseback, and Jane laughed as she recounted the time she stole her father's new car and drove it into a lake. Maura was thoroughly enjoying their time together, but then the first wave of wounded began to arrive and the two of them had to go to work.
It was going to be a long day.
* Hop the bags - military slang for an assault, so named because the soldiers would have to climb over the sandbags in the parapet in order to advance