SOMEWHERE NEAR CAMBRAI, 1 DECEMBER 1917
They scrambled up the far side of the shell hole, still hand in hand. Alan Galbraith let her hand go then as he took the knife and pliers from his belt, stripped the cable back and joined the wires to the transmitter’s knobs. She put on her headphones and heard static. Yes! She nodded frantically to Alan as she began to send from the filthy twist of paper Alan pulled from his pocket. She pushed at the keys, dot, dot, dash . . .
Do not retreat. Reinforcements are coming . . .
Firing erupted all around them now, but the message had been sent. Had anyone heard it? Would it matter if they did? She waited, desperate for an acknowledgement to come through, then began to repeat the message, in case . . .
In case what? Someone hadn’t copied it all? But mostly because she had no idea what else to do. Nowhere forwards, nowhere to retreat. The world had shrunk. She kept on pressing the keys, thinking only of them, the message, the man crouched beside her, pistol in his hand, surveying the edges of the crater as dawn lit the smoke yellow and pink. She had no pistol, no bayonet. She was a sparrow, defenceless, in the vastness of war.
Gunfire, four shots, five, six.
Alan fell, away from her.
She screamed, ‘No!’ as he rolled twice down the shell hole, landing on his stomach. She could see the blood spreading across his back. She began to scramble down to him. She didn’t even feel the pain at first when the shrapnel caught her, just cold. She looked at her bloodied hand and splintered bone, and thought, I can’t send messages now.
She managed to slide down to Alan. She thought he was breathing, but there was so much blood. She reached to turn him over.
That was when the bullet hit her shoulder. It hurled her back, away from Alan. She thought, Why can’t I go to him? She knew her legs weren’t hurt.
And then she thought, I’m dying. And then, I can’t die. I’ve never told Alan that I love him.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, but the sound was lost in the growing roar and burp of shellfire, the screams and shouts of men. Suddenly so many men.
‘I love you!’ she tried more loudly, but she had no breath or strength.
But there was one way . . .
She tried to move her right hand but felt herself sink so deep into pain she knew she’d never manage it. She scrabbled in the dirt around her with her intact left hand instead, looking for a rock.
No rock, but what was better, an empty shell, and then a splinter of metal. The world was growing darker, colder. How many seconds had she left? She grasped the bit of metal with her one good hand, not caring if it cut her, and began to beat upon the shell.
Di-di . . . di-dah-di-di dah-dah-dah di-di-di-dah di . . . dah-di-dah-dah dah-dah-dah di-di-dah.
I . . . love . . . you. Over and over, beating, beating, whispering his name again, hoping he heard, or even that his spirit heard. Perhaps, she thought, I am signalling this for me. My last message will be one of love.
The piece of shell dropped from her hand. Dimly she heard voices.
‘Sie ist ein Mädchen!’ She is a girl, out here in no-man’s-land, a girl in Signals insignia, a dead comrade at her side. A Morse code machine, a cable . . .
Had the message got through?
A stranger’s hand touched one of her remaining fingers. Pain so bad it felt more like cold spread through her at the movement. The voice said, ‘Nein. Sie ist eine Telegrafin.’
They had seen the tell-tale calluses from years of tapping code.
She was so cold . . .