Angel of the Somme: The Great War, Book 1 (23 page)

When he tried to extend his arm, it moved so slowly that it took Sam a moment to realize that he was in water.

The hospital convoy was just a few hundred yards away, still celebrating with flickering lights and cheers while he watched from his watery vantage point. The destroyer circled through the water, spotlight flickering over the water’s surface, searching for survivors.

Sam’s headache screamed around his ears as he turned his head. It seemed he’d landed a short distance from the point of impact. A surprisingly small amount of wreckage of the U-Boat floated around him in the water, but Sam knew, and dreaded, that bit of flotsam that he should be expecting.

He found the man quite easily. Only a few feet away, bobbing in the wreckage. The German sailor was young, early twenties—a handsome blond lad with his entire life before him. As he met Sam’s eyes, his expression wasn’t one of an enemy combatant, nor of fear. It was a look of absolute defeat.

The sailor lifted his chin toward Sam, as an acknowledgement. Then he lifted his gaze to the dark night sky, exhaled a long sigh completely emptying his lungs of air and sank beneath the waves.

Touch him. He wants to die. Just reach out and give him what he wants.

Sam knew he should swim toward the sailor, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t bear to be thrust into the role of Grim Reaper, yet again. But the list of reasons to reach out to the sailor were compelling.

This man was the enemy, for one thing. For another, he clearly did not want to live. If Sam were to touch him, it would simply be a matter of easing a man who wanted to die. Finally, and most compelling, Sam knew that if he did nothing, then he would perish as well.

Can you let Lily down in this?

Sam dove down beneath the waves in pursuit of the soldier. The German wasn’t hard to find. He simply floated along just beneath the surface of the water. There was so much debris just beneath the surface of the water that it was, oddly, difficult water to drown in. Not that the sailor wasn’t giving it his all.

Reach out, Sam. Grant him his wish and live. You’re lying on the deck of the ship now, seizing, not breathing. Dying. Touch him, Sam.

And yet, somehow, he couldn’t force himself to do it. Neither could he watch the man drown himself. This bloody war had brought about so much death.
Sam
had brought about so much death.

He couldn’t bear being responsible for one more. Even if it was his last conscious action on earth.

Sam’s headache pulsed painfully behind his eyes, but he pushed it back. The German was a little lower in the water now, motionless flotsam. Sam reached out and grabbed a handful of the sailor’s uniform, just behind the neck. He was careful not to touch the man’s skin. The German stirred at that and moved his head slightly. It was too dark underwater to gauge his expression.

Sam kicked his feet as hard as he was able, pulling the dead weight of his enemy toward the surface. He burst through the waves and with a mighty tug, the German soldier followed—sputtering and taking in great, noisy lungfuls of air.

“Not…today,” Sam gasped. “Going to save a goddamned life, if it kills me. Even if it’s yours.”

The German looked at Sam, his expression utterly without hope.
“Lass mich doch einfach ersaufen.”

“I’ll just assume that’s German for ‘thank you’. You’re welcome.” Sam kept a firm grip on the sailor’s uniform. “Ahoy there!” Sam shouted toward the Destroyer, still searching the water. It had moved closer to them at this point and its searchlight beam was now trained on waters only a few feet away. “Got a rescue for you, boys!”

The spotlight jerked toward the sound of Sam’s voice. When the beam of light hit Sam, his head exploded in light and pain and a shower of red sparks.

He turned to look at the German, but the man had disappeared, and so, Sam noticed, had the water.

Sam suddenly vomited in a great, noisy gush. As he expelled the contents of his stomach, the curtain of red and blinding white dimmed a little. He saw bodies above him, shouting at him, and strong arms holding him down. His back was pressed firmly against the deck of the ship. The plump sister hovered only inches from his face, a look of terror on her face.

“Sir? Are you all right?”

Sam tried to respond, but his throat was too constricted to speak. He trembled and turned on his side, breathing in a huge gulp of cold air.

Alive.

He was alive, and so was the man he’d been sent to take. He’d made it through. He’d made it on his terms.

A wave of hope broke over Sam. It was a small wave, more like a ripple in a pond, but he held onto it with all his determination. He closed his eyes and let the black carry him away.

Chapter Thirty

Lily buttoned up her coat and pushed out of the hotel lobby, onto the gray streets of Rouen. The December skies had threatened rain for days and were about ready to deliver on their promise. A bitter gust blew up the street, plastering her dress to her legs. She leaned into the wind and pushed toward the hospital.

She knew she was lucky. In many base hospitals, staff had to make do in tents, even in weather like this. Her quarters at Rouen were nothing if not posh: a large hotel room that had been renovated just prior to the outbreak of war. But she missed her little barred cell at New Bedlam.

Reassignment should have been wonderful in dozens of ways. Lily was now part of a unit which specialized in respiratory ailments and they boasted an impressive success rate. In addition, Matron Faulkner oversaw this hospital and staff relations were much friendlier. The nursing sisters treated VADs as comrades in arms instead of underlings.

Though Matron Marshall had come to Rouen along with the rest of New Bedlam’s staff, she’d been promoted off the ward floor and to an upper management office. It was the best place for her, really. And for all the staff.

It had been nearly three months since Sam had left her, since the bomb had blown up so many lives. He wrote with startling regularity. His letters waited at the hotel reception desk every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In the beginning they were in Evie’s familiar script. He began with reassurances that he was improving and that his seizures were far behind him. Then he would mention a few details of life on the farm. He always closed by saying that he ‘thought of her with fondness’. He was terribly formal, but he was dictating them to his sister, after all, and Lily knew she could hardly expect tender intimacies in such a situation.

Three weeks ago, however, his letters were written in a new hand—one that was a little bit untidy and had great looping upper case letters. She’d never seen his handwriting before and traced the capital letter ‘L’ in her name, following the loops and curls with her fingertip—like a silly schoolgirl. Evie had been correct in her assessment about Sam’s writing. He had a tendency to over-punctuate. Although letters by his own hand were longer, they were not much more intimate than the ones he’d dictated.

Lily tried not to let his distance wound her. In her time at New Bedlam, she’d seen dozens of wartime romances blossom and die. An alliance forged in such an intense life and death atmosphere couldn’t really be expected to flourish under the expectations of a normal life.

Lily wrote letters to him, but her new duties in the respiratory unit left her with precious little time of her own. And she’d always been horrible at writing letters. Even her own father only heard from her once a month at best. As much as she longed for Sam, when pen touched paper, she found her feelings and words too elusive. Since Sam remained so formal in his correspondence, it only seemed natural that she should follow suit. Besides, if she divulged how much she missed him, he might feel an even greater obligation to keep in touch with her. She shuddered to think that she’d ever hold him to words that he might have come to regret.

The wind whipped against her legs as she turned the corner and approached the hospital’s rear entrance, where the offices were located. She’d been so lost in thought about Sam that she’d momentarily forgotten to feel dread. Just as she’d gotten off duty yesterday, she’d been told to report to Matron Marshall first thing in the morning. Lily had never had a conversation with the woman that hadn’t ended in a scolding.

She walked down the corridor until she reached the matron’s office. She rapped on the door.

“Come in,” the matron called from within. Lily turned the knob and entered the small room. The matron was crammed behind a battered metal desk which was crowded with papers, files and a large, nearly-dead lemon tree. Only a handful of leaves still stubbornly clung to Henry’s thin branches now.

Since there wasn’t enough space for a chair, Lily stood before the desk. The matron seemed smaller somehow, diminished.

Lily gave a polite nod. “You wanted to see me, ma’am?”

“I did at that.” Matron Marshall had never been one for conversation and for once, Lily was glad of it. Whatever was to come, it would be best to have at it directly, like yanking the bandage from a wound.

“I have a request from Dr. Raye. Do you know anything about it?” The matron tapped a small stack of papers lying on top of her desk.

“Not a thing, ma’am.”

The matron eyed Lily skeptically before continuing. “They’re regarding your transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps Headquarters in London.”

“London?” Lily stammered. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it, I assure you. I did not request any such transfer.”

“Perhaps not,” the matron replied. She drummed her fingers on her desktop as she narrowed her eyes toward Lily. “What do you plan to do about it?”

“Well, I should refuse, ma’am.”

Matron Marshall crossed her arms over her ample chest. “And why is that?”

“Because I’m needed here,” Lily replied. “We’re having great success with my respiratory unit and I should like to remain. I signed up to help the men, not to hide away in London.”

Lily should have known better than to expect something like approval from the matron, but she was shocked at the look of derision the woman was sending her way.

“Then you are an idiot,” Matron Marshall said.

“What?”

“You heard me. I’d thought many things of you before now. You are proud, stubborn and far too willing to bend the rules. But you’ve never before struck me as a fool.”

“I’m a fool because I don’t wish to shirk my duty?”

“You’re a fool because you’re blind to the big picture. You’re like a general who insists on staying in the trenches with the lads instead of climbing up to where he can better direct the battle. You want to change things, Miss Curtis, to make a real difference with all your blood typing nonsense and modern ideas, the place to do that would be with Dr. Raye at RAMC HQ.”

The matron shook her head. She rifled through the sheets of paper, then signed her name at the bottom.

“Ma’am?” Lily asked.

“I’m approving your transfer.” The matron did not look up. “It is the best place for you, whether or not you can see that now.”

Lily felt pulled in several directions at once. And though she felt anchored to her duties, another current pulled her toward London, toward a chance to enact real change at Dr. Raye’s side. Toward Sam.

Lily leaned down and squeezed Matron Marshall’s hand. The woman jumped a little in response and gave Lily a startled glance.

“Then, ma’am, since I don’t have any choice in the matter, I should thank you.” Lily gave her a warm smile.

“Well, yes.” Matron Marshall looked back at her papers, clearly uncomfortable with the familiarity. She thrust them toward Lily.

“Off with you now. You do know where to file these, don’t you?” The edge of the matron’s mouth curved up. If Lily didn’t know better, she’d think the matron was smiling, or trying to. Her lips seemed unaccustomed to the sensation and twitched nervously.

“I do know where to file them, ma’am,” Lily said as she turned to leave. “I may be an idiot, but I believe there’s hope for me yet.”

Just as Lily closed the door behind her, she heard something that sounded like a chuckle. She didn’t turn around and risk spoiling the illusion.

Lily’s boots crunched along the gravel pathway of the small park near her office. She often took her lunch hour there. Though the park was deep in a winter sleep, there was something comforting about the open spaces and the trees lining the avenues. The cold February air turned her breath into puffy little clouds, which reminded her of the steam of the hospital trains that used to be such a part of her life just a few months ago.

She’d been in London for nearly two months. Settled in at her new job and ensconced in a one bedroom apartment—she should have been quite content at her new lot in life. She kicked idly at the gravel as she walked. Funny that no matter where she went, no matter what activity she engaged in, she found her mind returning to New Bedlam, to Rose, to Gordy and to Sam.

She’d tried to write to Sam with the news about her transfer to London, but whenever she set pen to paper, she sounded so desperate, so clingy, that she ended up scrunching the paper into an angry wad. Sam had always been earnest to do the right thing and be a man of his word that he’d honor any wartime promise, no matter how foolishly given.

Sam’s letters to her were forwarded at first, but they took longer now as they were routed through France. They still held a vaguely formal tone, but now began to ask why Lily hadn’t written, in the most considerate way he could manage. His attempts at appearing casual felt like a knife in her heart.
Haven’t heard from you in a while. You must be terribly busy.
And
If you have a moment, I’d love to get a line or two from you.

She couldn’t write to him. Her apparent thoughtlessness might seem unkind, but what alternative did she have? Forcing him to continue a relationship out of a sense of duty would be far worse—for both of them. Waiting was the best thing to do in the long run of things. No matter how much her heart might be aching.

Two weeks ago, she’d received an unusually thick envelope from him. Instead of writing about his farm, this time he’d written about his new job. He’d accepted a position with something called the War Agriculture Executive Committees where he would be assessing which crops were needed for the war effort and coordinating efforts to mobilize farmers to better supply the troops. As self-depreciating as ever, he insisted that this mostly translated to telling farmers ‘more potatoes.’ Lily smiled while reading it. Dear, sweet Sam, finally making a real difference at last. In closing, instead of hinting that he’d like to hear from her, he ended by wishing her well. He thanked her and extended his hope that she have a happy life.

He hadn’t come right out and said it, but the letter sounded very much like goodbye. She’d cried for an hour.

She received no further letters from Sam.

Lily blinked back the tears that formed whenever she thought about him. She walked past a cement pool that she assumed must have held a fountain in warmer weather. It was much fancier than the little cistern out in back of New Bedlam. She gave a sad smile which she carefully hid with the back of her hand.

It was good he was getting on with his life. She was doing the same.

Despite the wreck she’d made of any chance of happiness with Sam, her efforts at RAMC been going extremely well. Dr. Raye had been right, and she begrudgingly had to admit, the matron had been right as well. Being at Headquarters meant pushing forward for real changes that would impact the lives of thousands of wounded men.

While Dr. Raye worked with innovating sterilization techniques, he’d left Lily alone to pursue her passion: standardized blood typing procedures. She spent most of her waking hours on the task, staying at the office long after most of her colleagues had returned home. As it turned out, her years spent as her father’s nurse proved to be key to approaching the higher ups with a new procedure. Since the RAMC was staffed with men of science, Lily convinced them with the one thing they couldn’t resist: thick medical journals of unassailable facts. They had no choice but to agree that they needed to change their approach regarding transfusions. Once she had them on board with the need for innovation, the rest of the process fell into place. She wrote up a simple, standardized procedure and researched how to requisition the supplies.

By the end, she had two sets of blood typing to recommend—a complete typing kit for base hospitals, and a more basic unit which could be utilized for field hospitals and dressing stations. She also wrote a manual for training staff and standardizing the procedure.

Her work had been exhausting but extremely rewarding. The late hours hadn’t quite been enough to pull her mind from Sam, but it left her drained enough to find sleep every night. And to ease her heartache, she had the comfort of knowing her efforts would make a real difference for the Tommies in the trenches. At last she could save lives instead of playing God in triage.

Sweet Rose would have been so proud of her.

Lily smiled wistfully and made her way out of the park. Lunch hour was over and it was time to get on with her duty. Time to do what she must. She walked along the wide London avenue, feeling a thousand miles away from the war that once was.