George is terribly tired. It is rather like drunkenness. No hiding it.
‘Don’t let me go to sleep, for pity’s sake.’
‘Right you are,’ says Lou, the stretcher-bearer who sits in the front with him, watching the road and skies. The moon is close to full, making life both easier and more worrying. The front line keeps shifting. ‘I’ll keep talking. Just you try and stop me.’
‘Ha, ha!’ laughs George obligingly, wondering how much more he can stand. Not of Lou’s chirpiness, which he finds impressive. Just, well, all this.
‘I been thinking about a new invention. Might patent it when I get back home. A special clip, to keep your eyelids open. You could set it for different levels. Maybe just the one eye would do the trick in certain situations. What do you reckon?’
‘Quite an idea. Attractive, even. You know, the wide-eyed look?’
‘Oh yes, that’s lovely in a woman, ain’t it? Sort of startled?’
‘Precisely. Actually, I can see this catching on . . .’
‘You’re telling me. Look at the call for it. Night shifts.’
‘Train drivers. Nurses.’
‘Think of the next war, mate. I quite fancy myself as a profiteer.’ Lou’s laughter breaks off before it gets going. He slaps the dashboard. ‘Pull over, mate. Someone over there. Up there. I saw something move.’
George swings the ambulance across to the other verge, and listens for the usual calls. Camilleros? Sanitarios? Nothing. Not so much as a groan filters through the hum of cicadas. They both squint into the shadows.
‘You stay with the meat wagon. I’ll go have a look-see.’
Lou strides off the road and into the bushes. George imagines him tightening a fist on his grenade. He feels for his own small pistol. Then he calls to Bert, who has jumped down from the back and is starting to pull out the first stretcher.
‘Not sure what we’ve got yet. Lou’s gone to check.’
‘Shall I go after him?’
George’s nerves are returning. A pall of smoke has been rising all day, veiling the hill. They’re expecting the worst night’s haul yet.
‘Yes. Go on. Watch yourself.’
George paces the road, breathing deeply, sending oxygen to his befuddled brain. The smell of rosemary makes him think of mutton and Sunday lunches. Eventually he hears muttering and grunting through the bushes, and the scrape of feet dragging on scree.
Bert and Lou emerge, a body slung between them. When the slope becomes more gentle they lay him down and go for the stretcher. A voice comes from another shape in the shadows.
‘They sent me with him. I tried to carry him, on my back. I did my best. I couldn’t keep going though. They’d got me too you see. I did my best. Guess it’s over for me now. Guess I’m going home. Bloody useless. But look. Still got my machine gun. No ammo. But got my gun.’
‘How many more up there?’ George asks.
‘Oh, a good few. A good few.’
Bert and Lou strap the unconscious man onto the stretcher, while George helps the other one into the back of the ambulance, and shines a torch over him. The bandage round his neck is black with blood.
There isn’t much sign of life in the other fellow, but they slide him in all the same.
‘I’ll get these two as far as the river,’ says George. ‘Meet me back here?’
‘We’ll try,’ says Lou stoutly. ‘Cheerio.’
Lou and Bert set off back up the hillside with a second stretcher. George checks his passengers again. Neck-wound has fallen silent: in shock, most likely. George’s cheek hovers over the other patient’s mouth while he watches his chest for movement. He’ll have to move fast with this one. It was always a hard call. Keep going and look for others, or make tracks with those you’ve got.
‘Can you open your eyes?’ He speaks clearly into the man’s ear. No reaction. But he’s definitely alive. It was worth a try. George is about to hurry back to the driving seat when something stops him, something he recognises about this soldier. He can’t pin it down. Ah well, can hardly ask him now. But George is sure he’s seen him somewhere before. Madrid, perhaps? Maybe that was it. That blood transfusion place.
The situation at the river is worse than he had expected. Most of the planks joining the boats have either been destroyed or swept away. Not a hope of walking over the pontoon now, let alone driving. There are injured men in the water, swimming from boat to boat.
George calls for help. A sloshing in the reeds, and a bare-chested man emerges and takes the other end of the stretcher. Between them they sling it across a rowing boat, ready to tow across to the other side.
Thigh-deep in water near the bank, George hesitates, one hand still on the boat. He’d promised Felix.
‘Un momento, camarada,’ he says, pulling his pencil from his breast pocket. He scrawls a hasty note on the back of an envelope, writes her name, and sticks it inside the patient’s jacket. This fellow’s bound to end up on an operating table. Fingers crossed it’ll be hers.
All well. See you soon. Chin up. George. x.
George makes six more trips to the battlefield during the night. He is back at the river at dawn when a new air raid begins. He quickly gets into the ambulance and drives away with the door still swinging on its hinges. In his far wing mirror, he catches sight of a great dark mass of water and debris bursting into the air, tinted red by the rising sun.
Through the window of his cockpit floor, the last departing Stuka pilot spots the movement of George’s vehicle. He rolls into a lazy dive and releases his one remaining bomb.
George has already braked. He’s on the running board when it hits him.