An Unmarked Grave

D
EDICATION

For the National World War I Museum in Kansas City—for gathering in one place the record of a war that changed a generation and even a century.

In gratitude for asking us to speak there and for hours exploring a remarkable and moving collection.

C
ONTENTS

C
HAPTER
O
NE

France, Spring, 1918

I
STOPPED JUST
outside the ward and leaned my head against the cool wood of the doorframe. I couldn’t remember when last I’d slept, or, for that matter, eaten anything more than a few biscuits now and again with a hasty cup of tea.

The Spanish Influenza had already cut down three of our nursing sisters, and two doctors were not expected to live through the night. The rest of us were struggling to keep men alive in the crowded wards and losing the battle hourly. Depressing to watch the bodies being carried out, one more soldier lost to an enemy we couldn’t even see.

It was an insidious killer, this influenza. I’d watched men in the best of health in the afternoon gasping for breath by the next morning, tossing with fever, lying too ill to speak, then fighting to draw a next breath. I’d watched nurses and orderlies work with patients for days on end without showing a single sign of illness, only to collapse unexpectedly and join the ranks of the dying. The young were particularly vulnerable. On the other hand, Private Wilson, close to forty, seemed to be spared, even though he handled the dead, gently wrapping them in their soiled sheets and carrying them out to await interment. The shed just beyond the wards was filled with bodies, sometimes stacked like lumber. The burial details couldn’t keep up. And those men too were dying.

The influenza epidemic was already being spoken of as a twentieth-century plague, and no one was safe. I feared for my parents—there had been no word from Somerset for over a fortnight. Even Simon Brandon hadn’t written, and that was more worrying. Was he too ill? Or trying to find a way to tell me that the Colonel Sahib and my mother had died? Every post seemed to bring sad news to the wounded or the staff, and word was that people in Britain as well as France were dropping in the streets or dying before they could reach hospital, entire families wiped out. Matron had told me that the posts were delayed because so many of the censors had fallen ill and there was no one to take their place. Cold comfort, but all I had. And as time went on, I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to hear.

Sister Burrows came out the door, and I moved aside. She slipped off her mask as I had done and took a deep breath of the evening air.

“Dear God,” she said, and it was half a prayer. “I don’t know how much more I can face. There’s nothing we can do for them. Nothing. And there are the wounded to nurse as well. It’s—it’s rather overwhelming.”

She was pale with exhaustion, dark circles beneath her eyes. A mirror of my face, I thought. If I had had the time to look at my own reflection.

“I ache with weariness,” she went on after a moment. “How are you bearing up?”

“As well as anyone else,” I answered. “It will have to end soon. The influenza. There will be no one else to infect.”

Two officers leaning on canes limped past, nodding to us, and another man, turning his back to us, disappeared into the canteen. His shoulder was swathed in bandages, and I couldn’t help but notice how stained and ragged they were. I knew I ought to hurry after him and ask to have a look at the wound, but I didn’t have the energy. Let him drink his tea undisturbed, then report to Matron.

“Today we received more influenza patients than battlefield wounded,” I commented as the heavy odor of French tobacco followed in the wake of an orderly carrying a mop and pail.

“I hope the Germans are suffering as badly as we are. If not, in a few weeks they’ll be able to walk unimpeded to Paris.”

I smiled. “If they try, they’ll be struck down as well. All the lines are reporting influenza cases.” On a more somber note I said, “Seeing that orderly reminds me. When he has time, Private Wilson has been carrying linens to the laundry and bringing back fresh supplies. And still we’re running short.”

“I’ll pass the word,” she said, “when he comes back this way.” She cocked her head to one side. “I can hear the guns again. You’d think the Germans would have the decency to stop fighting until this influenza is over.”

“There was an hour of blessed silence earlier. I even heard a lark somewhere.” I pulled my mask back into place. “I must look in on the Major. His fever is soaring.”

“Go on. I’ll bring cool water to you to bathe his face.”

I thanked her and went inside. We did what we could to help each other as well as our patients. Even Matron had taken her turn bringing round the tray of tea.

I wasn’t sure whether it was in the middle of the night or early morning when Lieutenant Benson died. I had sat by his bed for an hour or more, knowing the end was near but refusing to give up. My head ached from leaning forward to hold his hand at the last as he’d asked me to do, and I was rather dizzy from missing my dinner, but there had been no time to spare for it.

Lieutenant Benson’s death had not been a tranquil one—influenza never lets its victims slip easily away—and as I closed his eyes, I felt a crushing sadness.

Dr. Timmons came then and confirmed that the patient was dead. I went to ask the orderlies to bring the stretcher to our ward.

Private Wilson was on duty, as he so often seemed to be, and as he followed me back to the Lieutenant’s bedside with his stretcher bearers in tow, he leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Sister, will you come to the shed with us?”

I couldn’t bear the thought. “The next time, perhaps,” I offered.

“Please, Sister Crawford,” he said, urgency in his voice as he quickly looked over his shoulder. I reluctantly nodded. It wasn’t like Private Wilson to be so insistent or so secretive.

The Lieutenant was carefully placed on the stretcher, covered by a sheet, and our wretched little party made its way between the rows of cots to the ward door.

Private Wilson passed his torch to me, and in the chilly darkness I led the way across to the shed, a distance of about forty feet. Opening the doors for the others to pass inside, I shone the torch ahead of them, trying not to think about the men who lay here, men I had watched die. I waited, uncertain why I was supposed to be in this place but still trusting Private Wilson’s judgment, while the Lieutenant was added to the rows of the dead.

When it was done, Private Wilson cast a glance in my direction, then turned to his stretcher bearers. They were as hollow-eyed with fatigue as the rest of us. “Take yourselves off for a cigarette, lads. The Sister wishes to say a few words over the dead. This one was special, like.”

I nearly denied it but caught myself in time. Simon Brandon would have called Private Wilson a steady man. Whatever he was about, he wanted privacy.

Grateful for the opportunity, his men touched their caps to me and disappeared in the direction of the canteen. When they were out of hearing, Private Wilson said in a low voice, “Sister, what I’m about to ask you to do won’t be pleasant. But I think you’ll agree afterward that it’s necessary.”

Mystified, I said, “Very well.”

He guided me deeper inside the shed. The torch beam picked out the sheet-shrouded remains on either side of me. “This way,” he said and took me to the back row in the far left corner. In spite of the disinfectant, the shed smelled of death, and I felt like turning on my heel and hurrying out again as quickly as I could. But I followed him as he added, “The burial detail will be here in an hour. And he’ll be gone.”

Who would be gone?

He steadied the beam of the torch and then knelt. Over his shoulder I could see a man’s arm just visible in an opening in the sheet wrapping him. I was surprised. And then I realized why the sheet was unwinding—it hadn’t been done up properly in the first place. Reaching beneath the corpse above, Private Wilson managed to uncover the body so that I could just pick out a shoulder, throat, and, finally, the side of a face.

“He’s not an influenza victim,” Private Wilson said. “Look at him.”

He reached out to pull the sheet wider for a better view, shifting the body above this one and nearly starting an avalanche of the dead. I caught my breath until the swaying stopped.

He was right.

This one corpse among so many showed none of the darkening of the skin of the Spanish Influenza victim. Instead his head lolled as Private Wilson worked with him, and I realized that his neck must have been broken.

That was odd. For one thing, we seldom saw such a wound, and for another, he would have died instantly. There would have been no reason for the forward aid station to send him on to us.

“I don’t understand—” I began doubtfully, then stopped as Private Wilson’s torch settled on the face of the corpse.

I knew this man!

Even in the shielded light of the torch, I was sure.

And I was just as sure that he’d never been a patient here. I would have recognized him straightaway. Or if he’d been in another ward, one of the other sisters would have said something to me. They knew I was always on the lookout for anyone who served in my father’s old regiment. Then why was he lying among our dead?

I stood there, my tired mind trying to absorb this shock. Finally it occurred to me that he’d indeed been wounded and that in the ambulance something had happened—a freak accident when the driver hit a deep hole, a fall from the upper berth onto the steel floor. But if that was true, where were the bruises to support it?

I leaned forward to search for an identification tag. To my surprise, there was none. And he wasn’t in uniform. It was true, we sometimes got patients so badly wounded we had no idea who they were or what regiment they’d served with. A tunic already torn in the trenches, cut off in the forward aid station for a better look at the site, or removed entirely for emergency surgery, and any hope of identifying him could be lost well before a man arrived in our ward. But as a rule, the ambulance driver could tell us his unit, or there were other wounded from his sector who could give us a name and rank until the patient was able to speak for himself.

“Please, I need a little more light,” I whispered, trying to see where he’d been wounded.

“We need to mind the time, Sister. The burial detail will be here soon. And we don’t want to attract anyone else’s attention.” Still, he brought the light nearer. I couldn’t find any other marks on the man’s body, except for a few scars, some of them half healed, others from before the war. I looked at him again. Death had changed his features, of course, but not so much that I could have doubted the evidence of my own eyes. I hadn’t been wrong. And there was only one conclusion I could draw.

I stepped back, thoroughly shaken.

“Dear God.” It was all I could manage to say.

What should I do? My first inclination was to call someone and have the Major’s body taken out of the shed to somewhere the circumstances of his death could be looked into.

It was then I realized that he hadn’t been dead for very long. Rigor hadn’t set in yet. Which meant that whoever had killed him was very likely still somewhere in the vicinity. But who could have done this? Why should Major Carson have been murdered?

There. I had put it into words.
Murder
.

Private Wilson had already come to that conclusion. He’d brought me here to be his witness.

My mind refused to function. Where to start? Matron, of course.
Begin with Matron,
I told myself.

Pulling the sheet back over the body and then the face, I said, “How did you discover him?”

“By accident,” Private Wilson answered. “I was doing a count of the bodies, as I always do, for the burial detail’s records, and I found there were fifty-seven, not fifty-six. I started again, and actually walked by each of the rows, to be sure. That’s when I saw the arm. He wasn’t put here by my men, Sister. I see to it that those who died of their wounds are on the far side of the shed, the influenza patients over here. It’s been my way of doing things since this epidemic began in earnest.”

“How did he come to be here in the first place? This far behind the lines?”

“That’s a very good question. My guess is, it’s likely whoever killed him thought to hide him here. But he didn’t know how it was done, did he? How to wind the sheet properly, or which side to put him on, or that my count would be off.” He hesitated. “Do you know him, Sister? Can you put a name to him?”

“I— It’s been quite a few years. But he was a Lieutenant in my father’s old regiment. I’d been told that he’d been promoted again and was now a Major. His name is Vincent Carson.”

“I didn’t wish to speak to anyone else about this business until I’d talked to someone I could trust. I didn’t wish to find myself accused of putting him here. After all, I’m the one in charge of the dead, you might say.”

“No, of course, I understand. Matron is finally sleeping. I’m to wake her in an hour’s time. I’ll tell her then. She’ll know what’s best to do. Can you put off the burial detail? Just for a bit? Once he’s taken away, there’s no hope of proving he was here, how he died, or even who he is. He’ll be in an unmarked grave.”

“I’ll do my best. Perhaps we shouldn’t wait—perhaps we should go to one of the doctors.”

I shook my head. “They’ve got their hands full with the living. More wounded just arrived. No, Matron is the best choice. I’ve seen her cope in every sort of emergency you can imagine.” But could she cope with murder? It was my turn to hesitate. “You do understand, don’t you? It hasn’t been very long since Major Carson was killed. Whoever put him here could be one of us—an orderly, someone from the canteen, you, me, one of the ambulance drivers.”

“Not a pleasant thought, is it?” Private Wilson said.

He helped me finish wrapping the Major as best we could, so that he appeared to look more or less like his neighbors. I’d been dizzy before, but the disinfectant in here seemed to be aggravating it. I was finding it hard to concentrate, was eager to leave the shed and step out into the fresh air to clear my head. But duty was duty.

I stood there for a moment longer, remembering Lieutenant Carson. He’d been young and eager, his shock of unruly red hair setting him apart, and his grin had been contagious. Now his hair was short-cropped and showing signs of graying, and it was a man’s face I’d looked into, thinner, deeply etched by his years in the trenches, dark circles beneath his eyes from lack of sleep and too many horrors witnessed. The face of war, my father had called it.