SOMEWHERE NEAR CAMBRAI, 30 NOVEMBER 1917
Jean and Major Galbraith automatically dropped to the ground next to him. The major pulled out his pistol. Sapper Mealworm too held a pistol on one hand, the other pressing a wound at his hip.
Bandages, disinfectant, thought Jean vaguely, while undoing her overalls and tucking up her skirts to untie the ribbons that held her petticoat. She tore down one seam and began to wriggle it out from around her waist.
Another shot, from somewhere to their right, and two more, from Mealworm and the major. A dim figure a few yards away jerked, then lay still.
Jean pressed the petticoat into a wad over Sapper Mealworm’s wound, then arranged his hands firmly over it, then undid his belt and pulled it tight over the wadding in case he passed out, and fastened it again. Major Galbraith was already stumbling ahead, carrying the transmitter. She glanced down at Mealworm, saw rather than heard him say, ‘Go!’ then pushed her skirts back into her overalls and followed the major.
An ambulance will come, she thought. Medical orderlies will come. They’ll take Mealworm back to an aide post. Except this battle had covered so much territory that there would not be enough ambulances, enough orderlies, enough time, perhaps, to save him.
It occurred to her that she probably had as much chance of surviving today as Sapper Mealworm. Even if they got the message through, what then? They were in uncharted territory, with no way of knowing where safety lay. Any trench might contain allies or enemies; nor could they know which till they exposed themselves.
Do not retreat, she thought. Do not retreat. Do not retreat. Reinforcements are coming.
If only she was a carrier pigeon. A pigeon had more chance of getting the message through today. But she was just a sparrow, sending chirps through the chaos — if she could find the cable, if the cable was intact . . .
Suddenly Major Galbraith stopped, holding up his hand to stop her too. An almost perfectly circular shell hole lay in front of them. He began to clamber down, reaching up for her hand to help her, but once he held her hand, he did not let it go. Each second, she waited for him to release her hand, as he perhaps was waiting for the slightest tug that meant she wanted it free.
They reached the base of the hole still hand in hand. A burst of red lit the sky, enough to see what was before them, and there was the end of the cable, just possibly unbroken from here to the Front.
The message might yet get through.