The bumpy wagon that seemed to find every crevice and pothole in the road gave Mariana a new appreciation for the train. The railroad was smooth as a glass highway by comparison.
The field hospital was about twenty miles to the south, but the treacherous steep roads, now clogged with mud because it was the rainy season in Manchuria, made it a lengthy journey. They were traveling at the rear of the battle, but that was not a total guarantee of safety. She hoped that the huge red cross, the internationally accepted emblem for neutrality painted on the side of their wagon, would afford them safe passage. It took them two days to make the trip, and never once did the sound of distant gunfire and artillery cease.
Mariana’s traveling companions in the cramped wagon included Ludmilla, also assigned to the field hospital, the driver, and two soldiers along as escort. Around midmorning of their second day they were caught in a torrential rain. Because there was no place near to go for shelter, not even a shanty, the driver opted to continue. They were only a few miles from a village, he assured them. But he was finally forced to stop when the wagon wheels became mired in mud.
All the passengers climbed out of the wagon to ply their shoulders to the task of freeing the wagon. It was wet, miserable work, and when the wagon was finally mobile again, the party found little comfort within the leaky canvas shelter of the wagon. They were a little happier when the sun came out an hour later. They lifted the side flap of the wagon to allow the blazing sun to dry their soaked clothing. Once they were dry, however, the sun became almost unbearable.
Mariana had begun to lose track of time, but the rumbling in her stomach indicated it must be near lunchtime. The driver had said they ought to reach their destination about this time, but so far there was nothing in sight resembling a field hospital. She hoped they would get there soon because, by the look of the sky, they were in for another drenching. Suddenly they heard loud bursts of artillery fire—much too close for the “rear” of a battle. And the sound was getting closer, not farther away.
“How close is the hospital to the front?” Mariana asked one of the guards who was riding in the wagon. She made a concerted effort to quell the tremor in her voice.
“Half a day’s ride, at least,” he said in a patronizing tone. He and his comrade had spent most of the morning flirting with the two nurses, but Mariana’s comment caused him to take closer note of their position. His complexion paled. He nudged his comrade. “What’s going on?”
They shouted to the driver to stop.
“You’re heading the wrong way,” accused the soldier. “There’s fighting a mile from here, if that.”
The driver began to defend himself. “We had to alter our course a bit because of the rain—”
“Do you have any idea of where we are?”
“Well . . . we might have gone a little past the hospital.” The driver drew up the reins and looked back at his passengers apologetically. “We’ll get back on track, don’t worry.”
Fifteen minutes later it became quite apparent that the driver was thoroughly lost and had no idea where the correct road was. The gunfire had stopped, but it was still disconcerting not knowing if they had stumbled into “no-man’s-land.”
A few minutes later they came upon a squadron of Russian soldiers.
“By the saints!” shouted one. “This is close to being a true miracle.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ludmilla.
“We were just hit pretty bad, and we have wounded. Never thought an ambulance would get here this fast.”
“We aren’t exactly an ambulance,” said the driver. “I’m transporting personnel to the field hospital.”
“You’re going in the wrong direction for that. The hospital is about six or seven miles in the other direction. You’re right in the middle of a battle zone now.”
“Which way to the hospital?” asked the driver, ready to turn around and race away as quickly as possible.
“Just a minute!” The soldier grabbed the harness. “We have wounded to be evacuated, and there’s no reason why you can’t take them. Our dressing station was hit pretty badly. Our surgeon’s dead, and two of our medics are wounded. They have more casualties than they can handle.”
The driver was none too eager to comply. He was strictly a part of the rear echelon and hadn’t been this close to the front the entire war. But Mariana and Ludmilla insisted they help out. The two guards supported the nurses.
Thus, the driver reluctantly proceeded to the camp headquarters of the squadron. The captain in command welcomed them, then took them to the battered dressing station—little more than a ragged tent to house the wounded. There they found about fifty stretcher cases, two dozen ambulatory wounded, and twenty men who only needed minor patching in order to be returned to their posts. On duty were four feldshers—highly trained male nurses able to assume many of a physician’s lighter duties. Female nurses were only slightly less trained than feldshers, but there were none at this particular station. There were six attendants, untrained male personnel that performed mostly menial tasks as opposed to direct patient care. The ten workers had their hands quite full, especially with the loss of their only surgeon. They crowded four of the most critical patients on the wagon, but the frantic atmosphere in the tent continued unabated.
The head feldsher, whose name was Kask, greeted the women as they entered the tent. “Help at last! And Red Cross nurses, too. Very good!” He was a stocky, round-faced man, and in any other setting he might have appeared quite jolly. But at this moment there was such a grim aspect to his cherubic face that it had a most depressing effect.
He set the girls to work immediately. When he found out they hadn’t been officially sent to him, he just shrugged and told the driver to unload their baggage and report to the field hospital that he was “borrowing” the nurses for a while.
“By the time they object,” he said offhandedly, “it’ll be too late.”
Mariana wondered fleetingly if she should tell Kask they were novices. But he seemed too busy to notice their inexperience and too desperate to care.
Ludmilla drew the worst duty—a soldier whose right leg had been shattered. He was bleeding profusely, and the fragmented bone in his upper leg was perforating his skin in several places. His wound, combined with the summer heat and the surrounding horror, would have been enough to sicken many a veteran—much less a novice. Ludmilla tried gallantly to hang on, despite her trembling knees. Then the feldsher she was assisting pulled a bone fragment from the patient’s hip.
“This isn’t a femur,” he said upon examining the bone. Then, after giving the patient a quick appraisal, he exclaimed, “Dear Lord! This isn’t even his bone!”
Ludmilla crumpled to the floor.
In spite of her concern for her friend, Mariana was too busy to stop and help. She was assisting Kask in setting a dislocated shoulder. In the next stretcher a man with a terrible abdominal wound was screaming in pain.
“Can’t we do something for him?” Mariana asked, appalled that no one was attending the man.
Kask shook his head. “He’s a goner. We can’t waste our time on him when there are others we can save.”
When the shoulder popped into place, Kask grinned. “There you go, fellow! You’ll be back on the line tomorrow.” Kask turned to Mariana and, indicating the man in the next stretcher, said, “Give him an injection of morphine, a quarter grain.” Then he moved to another patient.
Mariana stood immobile for a moment, shocked at the medic’s brusque, matter-of-fact attitude. Then she saw two attendants carrying Ludmilla out of the tent.
“Ludmilla!” she cried and started after her.
Kask stopped her. “She’ll be fine—just couldn’t take it, that’s all.” He stopped and peered closely at Mariana. “You’re not going to break on me, too, are you?”
Mariana had no answer to that. Her knees were weak, and the dying man’s screams echoed horribly in her head. A huge knot in her throat made her speechless. She just shook her head rather unconvincingly. Where she found the inner stamina to go to the medicine chest, draw up an injection of morphine and administer it to the soldier, she never knew. Somehow, though, she kept going, her actions dreamlike and detached. The screams of the dying man continued to haunt her long after he had died and was carried away by an attendant.
Carts finally began arriving to take the patients to the field hospital, but evacuation was a slow process. Ambulance wagons were rarely used in Manchuria; instead, a two-wheeled cart called a dvukolk, drawn by one or two horses, was the primary means of transportation. There was room in the cart for four slightly wounded men who could sit up, but only two stretcher cases would fit—and the patients had to lie on their sides with their knees flexed so their feet didn’t hang over the end. There wasn’t even a seat for the driver; he walked alongside the cart. Thus, the removal of patients could not keep up with new arrivals, which seemed to come in by droves. The war showed no mercy to an untried girl fresh from her papa’s home.
Shortly after nightfall, Kask nudged Mariana aside to eat dinner and take a short break, but he returned for her long before she was rested. There were no more breaks for the rest of the night.
Around midnight a soldier came in with a hemorrhaging chest wound. Even if a surgeon had been present, this man needed the better equipped facilities of a field hospital. Kask, who was not only the head nurse but also the most experienced of the staff, did what he could for the man, but Mariana knew it might not be enough.
“He needs to go to the field hospital,” he said, “but he’ll surely die if we move him.”
“We could move him if we stopped the bleeding, couldn’t we?” asked Mariana.
“That could take hours, and I can’t spare the personnel. There are others who have a better chance of surviving. Didn’t they teach you anything about triage?”
“Please, Kask, give me an hour with him. If there is no change, then . . . well, at least I’ll know we tried.”
“Maybe that’s the only way you’ll learn.”
“Thank you. Just tell me what to do.”
Kask snorted dryly. “Are new-trained nurses all they have left to send us?”
“Remember, no one sent me,” Mariana corrected with as much audacity as she could muster. “I shouldn’t even be here.”
“Then I should be grateful,” Kask said. Mariana couldn’t tell if this was a statement or a question. Either way, he was far from enthusiastic. “Go attend to your patient. We haven’t time for this chatter.”
Mariana put her hour to good use. By applying continuous pressure to the wound, she managed to slow the bleeding, though it by no means stopped. The young man, named Yakov, was conscious and in great pain despite heavy doses of morphine. As Mariana worked on the wound, she talked to him constantly, trying to distract him. She hated to leave him when her allotted hour was up, but Kask had other pressing duties for her. She put a pressure bandage on the wound and found it only needed changing two or three times an hour after that. Kask examined her efforts and grunted, a sound Mariana soon learned was his way of showing approval.
A surgeon arrived shortly before morning. No more feldshers, nurses, or attendants could be spared from the field hospital. The doctor praised Mariana for Yakov’s condition, saying he couldn’t have done more for him under these conditions. The young soldier was pronounced fit to be moved.
“Nurse,” Yakov called weakly to Mariana as the stretcher-bearers were about to take him to a cart. When Mariana leaned close to hear, he continued, “Thanks isn’t enough for what you did for me. I don’t even know your name so I can pray for you.”
“I’m sorry I never got around to introducing myself, Yakov. My name is Mariana Dmitrievna.”
“God bless you! I . . . won’t forget.”