Dead Man's Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

remembering what de Griffon had said. ‘An’ full kit tomorrow.’
    ‘Then, Joseph,’ said Platt to Tugman, ‘We’ll be off to see if we can find you a tart of your own.’
    Farrar laughed. ‘Well, yours and fifty other blokes. He likes it with others watchin’, as I heard tell.’
    Once again, the temperature dropped a notch in the funk hole and Tugman balled his fists. Moulton, too young to know what they were referring to, looked in puzzlement from one to another.
    ‘You still got that boil on your bum then?’ Tugman asked him. ‘Like a bloody beacon it were while you were tuppin’ that Frenchie. A reet chip off the old block you were. Y’re old man had a spotty arse’n’all.’
    Farrar tensed, as if about to leap across the alcove at Tugman. ‘What you talkin’ about?’
    ‘Don’t tell me he didn’t tell you,’ laughed Tugman. ‘ “Cock of the Woods” Farrah?’
    Shipobottom stood up, not quite to his full height. You were safer from snipers at the rear of the trench system, but it was a habit you kept up nevertheless. Otherwise, one day you might forget yourself in the wrong place. ‘Next man speaks out of turn gets my boot up his arse. And these are size thirteen. You’ll need a pick an’ a rope to get it out. Understand? Farrah? Tugman? Aye. You just keep quiet about all that. Faces and rifles,’ Shipobottom repeated. ‘Faces and rifles. And let’s try and get the fuck out of here in one piece.’

MONDAY

FOUR
    ‘I see you have spent some time in the West Indies, Staff Nurse Jennings.’
    The young nurse stopped her unloading of the blood transfusion kit and stared at the Royal Army Medical Corps major. ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘And that your family were in sugar.’
    She gave a small laugh of disbelief and put her hands on her hips. Her eyes widened, so they seemed almost too large for the delicate face. ‘How on earth can you know that?’
    ‘A parlour trick,’ said the major with a smile. ‘Forgive me.’
    ‘That hardly explains how you come to be familiar with my family history, Major Watson.’ She paused as a low rumble began, like thunder growling on some distant mountains. She put her head to one side and listened carefully. A curl of dark hair looped free from the headdress and she absent-mindedly tucked it away. ‘Their guns. Not ours. You soon learn the difference.’
    He frowned as the bright nickel instruments he was laying out on the folding table rattled softly in their steel kidney bowls.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘we’re out of range here of all but the big ones, and they tend to be used on the towns and marshalling yards. Not the evacuation railheads.’ The Casualty Clearing Station was half a mile from such a railhead, accessed by special wheeled stretchers that ran on a narrow-gauge track. From these improvised tramways, the wounded were transferred to regular ambulance trains.
    ‘I’m not concerned,’ said Watson. ‘But I have demonstrations to give and samples to stockpile, and I was told this was a quiet sector.’
    ‘Quiet,’ she explained patiently, ‘means less than a hundred casualties a month. There is no such thing as a totally safe place out here. The guns can start anywhere, anytime.’
    Although a relative novice to the front – it was little more than a week since his balloon ride – Watson knew what those falling shells meant. There would be wounded coming through. Casualty Clearing Stations always worked in pairs, and this one, the East Anglian, had been stood down for a few days to enable it to clear the backlog of cases, while another CCS in the same sector remained on alert. If that one, however, ran at or beyond its capacity, the East Anglian would come back into play.
    ‘And we hadn’t had a “hate session” from the enemy until three or four days ago,’ said Jennings, ‘when some foolish . . .’ She hesitated. Nurses were directed not to comment on anything but clinical matters, and even then, only if invited