The Stolen Years

“We need to know what’s happening.” Gavin jumped back down into the squelching mud and took charge. “Summers, stand to.” He ordered. “Marshall, keep the end bay covered.” He shouted orders as the noise increased and the men hastened as best they could, taking up their positions.

Then an eerie hum approached. Too late he realized what was about to happen. “Move,” he shouted, pushing Angus down into the mud in the split second before the explosion. Then pain tore through him. His body jerked up before it was thrown into a tangled mass of torn limbs, ripped flesh and horrifying screams.

For a while, he thought he was dead. Then, gradually, consciousness returned and he heard cries, smelled the bitter, acrid smoke. He tried to move but pain shot through his hip and thigh; he tried to open his eyes but they stung. Everything was hazy. He felt about him in a daze, all at once aware that the soft, wet substance he was touching must be flesh, and choked, as horror, gas and blood filled his lungs and he tried vainly to move.

Little by little he extracted his left hand from the sticky warmth below, gripped by nausea when he realized he was lying on Jonathan Parker’s dead body. He gasped, trying to catch his breath. Trying to think. He was alive. He had to stay alive. But where was Angus? Making a superhuman effort, he heaved the mangled pile of blood-soaked remains that lay across him, hearing the sound they made as they sank into the mud. The effort left him exhausted. But he focused now, and the rush of relief when he saw Angus staring down at him, apparently unharmed, was overwhelming. Thank God. He tried desperately to speak, but his lips wouldn’t move. To motion, but his arm wouldn’t budge.

Angus stared at him, expression detached. Gavin shouted but no sound emerged. Couldn’t Angus see him, damn it? He closed his eyes against a whiff of gas. When he was able to open them once more, Angus’s face still loomed impassively over him, an expressionless mask. Why didn’t he pull him out of here instead of just standing there? “Angus,” his mind screamed. “Help me, for Christ’s sake!”

But Angus made no gesture, no motion. Instead, he crouched beside him, wearing the cold, half-amused, disinterested gaze of a spectator. Desperately, Gavin reached his left arm toward his brother in a frantic effort, daggers searing through his hip and upper body as he grasped the gold chain and cross swinging from his twin’s neck, clutching it.

But Angus made no move and the chain gave way. Gavin reeled back, collapsing once more in the mire of blood, mud and misery. As his head sank into Jonathan Parker’s open guts and everything went black, his last conscious image was of Angus, watching calmly as he sank into oblivion.

3

Etaples, France, 1917

“Nurse, we need to vacate the facility immediately. There’s a new convoy coming in from the front lines. They’re bringing in the wounded as we speak.”

“Yes, Sister.” Flora hurried around the ward, which she and Ana, another V.A.D., ran with virtually no assistance, and helped the patients who could walk to other wards. Once they’d all been shifted to the next building, Flora hurried back to prepare beds and blankets for the new arrivals. As she tucked in the last sheet, she heard the ambulances drawing up and sighed, realizing it would be another long night. Every spare hand was needed and getting to the wounds before they festered and required amputation had become a grilling challenge.

She dumped the dirty laundry in a corner and prepared for the onslaught, forcing herself to stay calm, pushing away the fear that each new batch of arrivals brought. Inevitably she searched each incoming stretcher for his face, praying it wouldn’t be there. Flora sighed again. She’d had less news in the two months she’d been here than all the time back home.

She pulled herself together as the wounded began pouring in, and the usual frenzy of dressing wounds, injecting morphine and preparing the dying began. There were plenty of those today, she realized, horrified.

The doctor approached, face exhausted and eyes bloodshot, his white coat splattered with muted bloodstains that no amount of washing erased. He looked at the wound. “Better to put a bullet through the poor bugger,” he muttered angrily before setting to work. The priest and the chaplain stood nearby; they had long since stopped bothering about denominations, instead simply murmuring prayers in a desperate effort to bring solace to those last remaining moments, leaning close to catch final messages whispered from barely moving lips.

Flora worked nonstop. There would be countless letters to write to the soldiers’ families, she thought sadly. It was the only tribute she could pay to the young men who’d died so valiantly in her arms. At least she could give their loved ones the treasure of their last words. When there were none, she took it upon herself to invent them, sure that what mattered most was that a parent or a wife be given something to cling to.

“Pass the morphine, Nurse. I’m afraid we’ll have to amputate,” the doctor said above the moans and agitation. Flora glanced at him, his young face prematurely lined, marked by three years of battling disease, death and devastation.

She handed him the bottle as a young orderly came up to her. “Nurse, we have a bad case of shell shock. Where should we put him?”

“Oh my goodness. Is he wounded?” she asked distractedly, preparing for the operation that was about to take place.

“No.”

“Then put him in number ten and I’ll get to him whenever I can. I’m afraid I can’t do anything about it at the moment.” He nodded and left, and Flora prepared the patient for amputation, trying to overcome the nauseous smell and increasing heat in the ward. The hospital back home had seemed bad, but here life was hell. There was none of the priggish, ordered behavior of regular hospital life, with the petty rules and hierarchies of the matron. All of that was forgotten in a common effort to save as many lives as they could.

Getting to a wound in time had become an obsession, with heroes and enemy treated alike. And so it should be, Flora reflected, throwing out the slops and taking more bandages back into the ward, for how could you feel rancor toward young men as vulnerable and damaged as any of their own? It was tragic and intolerable to see a generation—whether German, British or any other—condemned to die, drowned in mud-filled trenches, buried under the rich earth of northern France that for over a thousand years had claimed her victims relentlessly. For an instant, she wondered what had happened to the Europe of before the war that all had believed would be over by the time the leaves fell, but that was more than three years old.

It took her five more hours to see all the patients, then Matron came on duty and forced her to go.

“You simply have to get a rest, Flora. You’ll be worn-out if you don’t. I’ll see you back at the hut. By the way, could you take a quick look at that shell shock case on your way out? I don’t seem to be able to get through to him at all, and you’re so good with those patients.”

“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be back at seven.”

“Right. But you must rest, dear, or you’ll be no use to anyone.”

“I will.” Stepping over stretchers of soldiers whose wounds were less urgent, she walked down the corridor and headed for the last ward, where a gramophone with a scratchy needle played a popular tune. There, some men sat in dressing gowns, smoking and playing cards at a rickety wooden table. They called to her as she entered.

“’Ey, Nurse, ’ow ye’ doin’? Goin’ ’ome, I am. Back to Liverpool, it is.”

“Good, Berty. I’m so glad. How about you, Harry, how’s your leg?”

“Oh, fair enough. Never be much good on the football field again, but at least I’ll be able to walk, which is more than most.”

She nodded, smiling to mask her exhaustion, and looked for the patient. “Have you seen a chap sent in with shell shock?” she asked Nancy, the V.A.D. in charge.

“He’s over in the corner.” She pointed to her left. “He seems unable to speak. Perhaps you can do something with him, poor man.”

Flora glanced at a chair that faced the far corner of the crowded ward, then walked toward it, filled with sudden foreboding. Gavin’s image flashed before her and she shuddered, her misgivings increasing as she approached the chair. The young man had his back to her, his head in his hands. Mustering every last ounce of strength, she dragged herself forward, dreaming of the hut she shared with three other V.A.D.s. and her bunk, longing to crawl into bed for a few precious hours of sleep before it all began again.

She came up behind him, gently touched his shoulder.

“I’ve come to help you,” she said softly. “Will you tell me who you are?” She came around and crouched at his side, seeing nothing but a thick shock of red hair falling over the hand that supported his forehead. At the sound of her voice, he raised his head. For a moment Flora simply stared, stunned. “Angus,” she gasped in amazement. “Is it really you?” Tears burst forth as she threw her arms around the stiff, motionless figure. Then, leaning back and holding his hands, she realized that his eyes were devoid of expression. “Angus.” She shook him anxiously. “Angus, it’s me, Flo. Say something, please.” She shook him again gently. Then another thought occurred. Gavin. Where was Gavin? She glanced around, as though expecting to see him among the group of men smoking and playing cards. Then she squeezed Angus’s hands once more.

“Angus, you’re all right now. You’re with me.” His eyes flickered and her heart leaped. “Oh, Angus, darling, please. Please come back. Please tell me where Gavin is,” she whispered almost to herself.

“Dead.” The voice was flat.

She stared at him, then shook her head. “No. It can’t be. No.” She shook her head again, her hands gripping his sleeve savagely. “Not Gavin.” She began shaking, then laughed hysterically. “People like Gavin don’t get killed, they’re immortal.”

“It should have been me,” he whispered.

Alerted by the tone of Flora’s wild laughter, Nancy came hurrying toward them.

“Flora? What is the matter?”

Unable to respond, she sank to the floor, clinging to Angus’s limp hands as though she might find some part of Gavin there, refusing to let go, to believe.

It took Nancy and two other nurses to pry her away. Half carrying her to the hut, they put her to bed and forced some pills down her throat. It was only when she woke, twenty-four hours later, from the heavily drugged sleep, that the truth hit home. He was gone. Gone forever.

She stared at the pegs that sagged under the weight of various clothes, wanting to cry, but she couldn’t. She, who had shed so many tears for all the others, was incapable of weeping for the man she loved. Now that it was his turn, she was numb. She dragged herself up in the narrow cot, pulled the brown blanket up to her chin and sat shivering, trying to visualize him, but her mind was blank, as though her memory had been wiped clean as a slate. She closed her eyes tight, desperately trying to conjure up his image, recall some feature, some peculiar expression that made him who he was, but the harder she tried, the more distant he became.

Duty and training dragged her out of bed. Legs trembling, she dressed, then returned to the ward, where another convoy of badly wounded was being brought in.

“Nurse! Thank goodness you’re here. Get this patient ready for surgery.” The doctor laid a hand on her arm. “He’s going to lose both legs, I’m afraid.”

She nodded automatically, senses blunted, gazing down at the young officer about to lose his limbs. Distantly, she felt thankful that Gavin had not gone through this. Their dreams and life were over, but at least he had not suffered the indignity of surviving as half a man.

She braced herself, refusing to allow her personal loss to keep her from her duty, and made her way over to the bed where the young man lay, his head bandaged but his eyes clear blue and lucid.

“I’m sorry to have to break the news, Captain,” she began, surprised to hear that her voice sounded calm and gentle.

He smiled thinly. “You don’t need to tell me, Nurse. I’ve been here too long and seen too much not to know. Is it one or both?”

“Both, I’m afraid. I’m so sorry.”