“Have you taken your own temperature, Doctor-Major?”
He hesitates, bites his lip. “One hundred point five. And yes, my head aches and my muscles as well. I pray it is not typhus or who will care for these men? It is only me.”
He pulls a blanket from a man who, Frangie now sees, is dead. He spreads the blanket out on the filthy floor, lies down, mutters something about rationing the water, they always want water, and falls asleep.
Wasser. That was the German word for water. There is a tin ten-gallon tank bolted to the wall behind one of the seated men. A tin cup hangs from a chain and rattles softly.
Schwarze, give me water . . .
I want morphine, kaffer, this pain . . .
I am so cold . . .
They are the enemy, and they have come down with this disease as a consequence of attacking a village and raping the women. They are abusive, despite being sick, arrogant though prone. These are not fresh recruits, that is clear from their disease-yellowed tans, the ancient scars, and the tattoos that proudly advertise the names of battles they fought against the British and the French before them.
First: love. That was what my faith has taught me.
Love even those that hate you.
Well, Frangie Marr is nowhere near summoning love for these men, but she can dole out water and hold the bucket for men who vomited, and she can spoon-feed potted meat and rehydrated cabbage to the men who can eat. She can do that.
Hour after hour the column lurches on. An especially sharp jolt wakes the Doctor-Major, who rises groggily to check on his patients. A new one arrives to be manhandled into the back of the ambulance, and is laid on the blanket the Doctor-Major had vacated, both Frangie and the German doctor straining weary muscles.
Frangie leaves the door swinging open, squeaking and banging as the ambulance hits ruts and gullies and climbs soft hillocks of sand with grinding gears. The fresh air is worth the noise. Night has long since come and is now threatened by just a hint of gray in the east. A half-track is behind them and to one side, headlights slitted, machine limned by silver starlight.
“How much longer?” Frangie asks.
The Doctor-Major has slept seven hours and awakened at last to find his charges all well cared for. And the
mood has changed. Frangie is no longer Schwarze, at least for some of the men, she has become Schwester: sister.
Nurse.
The Doctor-Major shakes his head. “I don’t know. We are to rendezvous with a tank unit. But that is only the next step, America, it never ends, you know. It never ends, this war. You’ll see.”
But two hours later, as Frangie sits scrunched in a corner catching a catnap, it does end, at least for most of the men around her.
The first explosion wakes her.
The rattle of gunfire propels her to her feet.
“What’s happening?”
“War,” the Doctor-Major says sourly.
The rear door is still open. Frangie shoots a terrified glance at the Doctor-Major and at the door, now an eerie red rectangle in the light of the flares.
“No,” the Doctor-Major snaps, grabbing her by the back of the neck. “There will be more wounded, and I cannot—”
A noise, several rapid sounds like a knife being stabbed into a tin can, and red holes appear in the side of the ambulance and spray blood across Frangie’s chest and arm.
It is a sheer panic reflex that sends her stumbling out through the open door to land hard on the sand.
In a shocked instant she takes it all in: a burning vehicle up ahead, shouts, a storm of rifle and machine gun fire coming from the left, the zing of bullets flying in search of soft targets.
She begins to stand up but thinks better of it and lies flat, her belly in the dirt. Tracer rounds pierce the ambulance again and again, like flaming arrows. The men on the stretchers twitch and jerk, try to stand and fall, collapse, roll out of the back of the ambulance to crawl or lie still on the cold ground.
She sees the Doctor-Major twist, slap at a hole in his buttock made by a .30 caliber round, then drop to his knees as more rounds pierce him again and again.