Right after breakfast on the twenty-first, Emmie Van Alden and I started out in the jitney for Verlaines, where she was holding classes and I was visiting. As we got close, we began to meet refugees fleeing from Ham. You can’t imagine the state of those roads. The army retreating, the infantry so tired it hurt to look at them, great guns, wagons full of supplies and equipment, ambulances evacuating hospitals, and, along with them all, hundreds and hundreds of refugees, pushing wheelbarrows or leading a mule with a wagon if they were lucky enough to have one.
In spite of all the racket, it never entered our heads that the Boche could possibly break through. . . .
—Miss Alice Patton, ’10, to her sister, Mrs. Gilbert Thomas
March 1918
Grécourt, France
Emmie knew something was wrong even before they got to Verlaines.
The road from Ham to Verlaines was crowded with people, dozens of them, hundreds of them, heads down, shoulders bent, old women pushing wheelbarrows piled high with linens, agitated mothers pulling children by the hand, trying to keep out of the way of the military trucks bumping toward the front, the dispatch riders on their motorbikes whizzing to and fro.
“What’s happened?” Emmie called out, leaning out the side of the truck.
No one really seemed to know. All they knew was that the Boche were coming and they were getting out, as far as the road would take them.
“Have you been evacuated?” asked Emmie, exchanging an alarmed look with Alice, who had pulled the jitney to a stop by the side of the road.
They hadn’t been evacuated. They were just leaving. The army was too busy to bother with them, and why should they bother waiting for the British Army? It was safer just to go.
Alice’s lips were very white. “Do you think it’s serious?” she whispered.
“I don’t hear the guns.” Emmie looked at the people with their bundles, all their worldly possessions piled on their backs. “It might just be an excess of caution—but maybe we ought to go to Ham and find out. So we can tell our people what to do.”
If Ham was in danger . . . but it probably wasn’t, Emmie told herself hastily. Will was there holding the line. Will and all those brave boys whom they’d had to tea and impromptu dances with a temperamental Victrola and rubber boots for dancing slippers.
“If you go on to Verlaines,” Emmie told the woman she’d been talking to, “you can get something to eat and drink—and we’ll take you on after if you need to go on.”
A camion honked sharply at them.
“All right, all right,” muttered Alice, her hands trembling on the wheel.
She’d had a harder time than any of them with the bombardment; Emmie had found her resorting more than once to her little silver flask of sherry, writing endless letters home that she always crumpled up again.
Alice managed to get them back on the road, weaving her way between the refugees going one way and trucks going the other. They were all of a quarter of a mile from Ham, but at this rate it would take them an hour. It was worse than Fifth Avenue on an opera night.
“What’s taking so long?”
“Ambulances,” said Alice, her lips barely moving. “Can’t you see them? Up there.”
The jitney inched forward and Emmie saw it, the steady line of ambulances bumping into Ham, battle-scarred, shell-marked, mud-smeared ambulances, tires shot out, riding on their rims, pulling forward one by one to a makeshift casualty clearing station. Alice swung the jitney to the side so they could go around, past the row of ambulances, into the town. As they passed, Emmie could see stretchers being unloaded, endless, endless rows of men on stretchers, men in pain, moaning and calling out, men with limbs twisted at strange angles, faces covered with mud and gore, as the stretcher bearers worked stolidly on, carrying more and more and more.
Emmie heard someone make a noise and realized it was her. In all their time in the war zone, she had never seen anything like this. The copper stench of blood clung to the back of her throat. Thick black flies buzzed around them, their sound horrible in her ears.
On and on and on they came, the blessés, each ambulance turning and going back to the front for more, as Tommies, blank-faced with exhaustion, wrestled with sticks and canvas to make more tents to house the onslaught of wounded.
Was Will somewhere, in one of those tents? Emmie had never asked him, she realized with sudden panic. She’d never asked him what exactly they did at the front, where he was to be stationed, how he was to serve. They’d never talked about that, only about nonsense. He was in the Durham Light Infantry, he’d told her that much, with its insignia of a bugle surmounted by a crown. But she had no idea what any of that actually meant, where he was, what his part had been in whatever battle had taken place.
Why hadn’t she asked?
Because he couldn’t tell her, because he wasn’t allowed to tell her, and because neither of them had wanted to think about it, about the reality of all this, only the newly harrowed fields and the latest exploits of Zélie’s pet goat and the woman Emmie had found in Douilly who hadn’t any bed but somehow, for some inexplicable reason, had ten chairs, all piled one on top of the other.
“I think I’m going to be ill,” said Alice faintly. She was holding the steering wheel very hard, her hands as white as wax.
Emmie took one of Alice’s hands between her own. “You’re not going to be ill. Let’s go to headquarters and find out what’s going on.”
At headquarters, everyone was packing up, hastily sweeping documents into dispatch boxes, yanking out telephones and telegraph wires, running this way and that and bumping into each other. Emmie managed to catch the arm of a lieutenant who had been to tea at Grécourt. She couldn’t remember his name, but he had a friendly, freckled face.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
“Oh, Miss—” He couldn’t remember her name either. “You didn’t hear? The Boche have pushed down from Saint-Quentin. We’re trying to pack up and move HQ to Nesle before the Boche get here.”
“How long?” Emmie thought of all those people on the road, all the people in Verlaines and Eppeville and Villette who had no idea what was coming toward them.
“I don’t know—you’d have to ask—”
“What is this? A tea party?” His commanding officer strode in, staring at Emmie and Alice with unconcealed fury. It was the horrible major who had interviewed them all back in January, to make sure they weren’t spies. “What in the devil are you doing here? This is no place for women! We sent a messenger. You were meant to clear out—not walk right into the path of the ruddy Germans!”
“Wait.” Emmie grabbed him by the arm. “What about the neighboring villages? Have they been warned to evacuate?”
“How the devil would I know? They’re like rats, they can tell when to leave the sinking ship—but you clearly can’t, so I’m telling you now. Get. Out.”
They got.
“We need to get back to Grécourt and warn them,” said Alice, turning the crank of the jitney with all her might.
“No.” Emmie wasn’t sure where the certainty came from; she just knew. She knew what she had to do, even if she was scared out of her wits. “Didn’t he say someone had sent a messenger? They’ll be all right at Grécourt. But the people of Verlaines won’t. Once the Germans take Ham, the next place they’ll go is Verlaines. We can’t just leave them there.”
Alice paused, her hand on the crank. “But the major told us to get out.”
“He told us to get out of Ham. He didn’t say anything about Verlaines.” They’d been with their people this long; they couldn’t abandon them now. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. The British Army clearly has a great deal on its hands right now. I say we leave them to their work and we do ours. We can move people in the jitney faster and farther than any of them can go on foot.”
Alice straightened, her eyes meeting Emmie’s. “We’ll need gasoline,” she said, and Emmie felt her heart lift, a crazy sort of energy pulsing through her. “I think I know where we can get some.”
The boys at the supply dump were packing up, but when Alice explained the need, they stumped up fifty gallons of essence, strictly under the table, no ration books required.
“Saves us carrying it,” they said, and Emmie had to resist the urge to hug them.
All along the road to Verlaines, they stopped to pick people up—women with toddlers clinging to their hips, an old woman clutching a sack of linens, an elderly man hobbling with a stick who told them he had lost his leg in the last war against the Prussians and he’d be damned if he’d let them take another one—until the springs of the jitney were groaning with the weight and Alice warned Emmie that the old truck couldn’t possibly manage another. They decanted their burden in the town square of Verlaines, urging them to wait, that they would take them on farther when they could.
They’d never seen Verlaines like this before. The square was pulsing with troops and refugees, with frightened people running out of their houses, begging for news. When the jitney pulled in, they were inundated with a rush of children. Emmie hugged and hugged and hugged them, holding as many of them close as she could, telling them not to worry, it would all be all right, they would make it all right, and could they please, please tell their mothers to pack up anything they needed and come to the square?
A horrible booming filled the air, closer than any guns Emmie had ever heard before, followed by a dreadful whistling noise.
“A shell,” whispered Alice, staring at the sky as though she might see it, even though the mist had burned off and the sky was fine and clear and there was nothing at all to be seen. “That has to be a shell.”
They’d never been close enough to hear the actual shells before. Only the thrum of the guns firing them.
Verlaines was only three miles from Ham, and the Boche were nearly at Ham.
Emmie could feel her palms go cold with sweat. A girl started crying, and Emmie cuddled her close, a toddler boy bumping his head against her shin to get her to hold him too. She wasn’t strong enough for this. She wanted to curl up with the children, curl up and shake.
But she couldn’t. They were depending on her, these children. All of them. Emmie forced back her panic. What would Kate do? She had to think like Kate.
“Take them to Ercheu. It’s only . . .” Emmie did the mental math. “It’s eight miles. That should be far enough to be safer but not so far we can’t get there and back. If you ferry the first load, I can pack people up. We’ll be faster that way. All of you,” she said to the children, “go, now, tell your mothers it’s time to go. I have candies in my bag for everyone who does what I say.”
The magic word had its usual effect. Propelled by the power of sweets, the children scattered to their homes, the homes they had worked so hard to rebuild, and that the Germans were threatening, again. They had worked so hard for this, all those long, backbreaking days of hauling furniture and tacking up canvas and tramping through miles of mud and fighting with the trucks when they broke down, and now it was all going to be knocked down again in moments, all their hard, hard work. Anger lent Emmie new energy. If the kaiser thought they’d roll over, he had no idea. They’d get everyone out, everyone, and then come back and build it up again, even better this time, and serve the kaiser right. He had no business being here in the first place.
Buoyed with righteous fury, Emmie stalked to the nearest home, a hut that had once been a tabac, and began the lengthy process of coaxing the inhabitants to pack enough, but only just enough, and no, they couldn’t really take the stove with them, and yes, it was a lovely stove, but it would be here for them—hopefully—when they got back. She helped them pack their clothes and chase their hens; she held babies and soothed anxious children as the shells whistled overhead and the guns got louder and louder and Emmie wondered where on earth Alice was and why it was taking her so long.
Alice came back from her first run with the jitney loaded with bread, milk, and eggs. “For the refugees—we can at least give them a solid meal. I stopped back home,” she added defensively. “That’s where I picked up all this. You were right. They’d been warned. They’re all fine there. Kate says to carry on and Godspeed.”
Emmie was beginning to understand how Kate felt. But we didn’t have time! she wanted to scream, but it was too late for that, the time was spent, and they could use the food. She had only so much chocolate in her bag.
“It was clever of you to think of food,” she said as calmly as she could, and knew she’d done the right thing when she saw Alice’s shoulders relax. “I’ve got the next bunch waiting for you.”
The town was thick with English troops, setting up headquarters in Anne’s beloved social center, pulling down the white-and-yellow curtains of which Anne was so proud, tossing aside her rag rugs.
They were very understanding about Emmie coming in and collecting all the books and medical supplies. “God bless,” they told her. And “good luck.” Many of the men were familiar. These were the men with whom they’d watched the makeshift cinema in Hombleux, officers who had drunk tea in the barrack with them, and Tommies who had helped lay their duckwalk. Soot-stained men now. Scarred, bloody, battle-weary men, getting ready to fight again.
“Do you know if the Durham Light Infantry was in the battle?” Emmie couldn’t help asking as she piled books into her rucksack.
Their captain shook his head. He was friends with Florence, Emmie knew. He’d loaned Florence his mare for riding, since he couldn’t use it at the front. “It was all such confusion. They came on us out of the mist. We never saw them coming.” He looked at Emmie, his face twisted in anguish. “They got our guns.”
“You’ll get them back,” said Emmie, as she might have to one of the children. “If there’s anything we Americans know about old England, it’s that you never let go of what you think is yours.”
The captain mustered a weary grin. “And if there’s anything we know about you Yanks, it’s that you never let well enough alone—and thank goodness for it.” They both snapped upright as a dispatch rider hurried in. “Yes? What news?”
“What is it?” Emmie asked anxiously as the captain scanned the short message, his face going very, very still. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. She mentally began to calculate how many loads they had left. Alice had gone three rounds so far.
“We’re to retreat,” he said, looking around at his weary men. “They’re five miles away—or were, half an hour ago. All right, men. Onward.”
From house to house Emmie went, urging people out, trying to stay calm and reassuring even as the sound of the guns became louder, knowing that every minute brought the Boche closer to Verlaines.
“Would you like a book for the journey?” she asked, knowing that Nell would understand, that she wouldn’t mind her books being given away. It broke Emmie’s heart to see a fourteen-year-old boy hug a battered book of fairy tales close to his chest, holding tight to the book as he was forced to leave his home, again, never knowing if he would ever come back or what there would be to come back to.
Emmie hurried people to the town square, distributing milk and boiled eggs as they waited for Alice to return with the jitney, hunting up one woman’s missing hens and another’s misplaced sack of clothes, trying to guess how many more loads it would take, how many people they could fit on the jitney before the springs gave way. One elderly couple refused to leave. Emmie begged and pleaded but they were obdurate.
“My wife is ill,” said Monsieur Philippot. “She is dying. I cannot move her.”
“I’ll take her on the mattress,” Emmie promised recklessly, hoping they could fit the mattress into the jitney. She’d deal with that when they came to it.
Monsieur Philippot shook his head. He had been a prosperous man before the war and his dignity hung around him like an old suit that was too large for his wasted frame. “This is our marriage bed, the bed in which our children were born. She cannot leave and I will not leave her.”
Emmie left them some milk and bread and begged them to come to the town square if they reconsidered. The jitney was loaded and loaded again, packed as full as the springs would bear, but it wasn’t enough, they couldn’t fit everyone on, especially not when Mme Lebrun refused to be separated from her prize hens. Emmie might have fought with her over it, but there was no point to it; they’d have to do another round anyway.
It was a terrifying feeling watching Alice drive away, trying to be bright and cheerful for the group that remained, who all looked as terrified as Emmie felt.
Emmie looked for her watch, which she always kept pinned to her breast, but it must have come off somewhere, abandoned with all the other debris of lives interrupted. Not knowing the time made it worse somehow; she was aware of time working against her, every minute stretching into hours as the shadows grew longer and the guns grew louder. A Boche plane flew so low over their heads that Emmie could see the black cross on the tail.
How long did it take a German army to march? How much time did they have left?
Even with books and toys scrounged from the social center, the adults were getting anxious, the children restless. Some were threatening to just return to their houses, others to take to the road by themselves. The British troops were marching out, all of them. Emmie had never felt anything like the fear that came with the sound of those retreating feet, knowing that at any moment they might be left to their own devices with the German army pushing down upon them.
Where was Alice?
The jitney rattled into the square, looking even more dilapidated than usual.
Alice was covered head to toe with dust, her lace collar askew, thoroughly frazzled. “I didn’t mean to take so long—the roads are nearly impassable. Everyone in the world seems to be going in both directions at once.” She looked down at Emmie, suppressed fear in her eyes. “One of the men told me they’re sending every man they can to the front.”
Emmie took a deep breath. “Can we fit everyone on, do you think?”
The sun was setting already, the village abandoned except for the Philippots, back there in their marriage bed, waiting for the Germans to come. Emmie just managed to cram everyone on, the jitney riding low on its sorely pressed springs. Somehow, it moved. Slowly, but it moved. The road from Verlaines to Ercheu had never been so lovely. It seemed unfair that it should be so beautiful, just now, when they had to leave it, when a German army was coming to wreck it all. The sky was rose and gold and purple over the fields they’d worked so hard to plow, those fields with all their promise.
It was twilight, that most melancholy hour of the day. Her crazy rush of energy was gone; Emmie felt her spirits plummeting with the sun, as the warmth of the day waned, leaving her cold and spent, here in this broken-down truck filled with people who had lost their homes yet again, who they had tried so hard to help, only for it to come to this.
“Mademoiselle Aimée?” It was one of her students, nine years old but suddenly very young again. Emmie could see she was trying not to cry, hugging a makeshift sack to her chest like a doll. “Mademoiselle Aimée, will we come home again?”
“As soon as the English get rid of the Boche for us,” Emmie said, trying to sound as encouraging as she could.
But it was hard. It was so hard. She’d never seen anything so weary as the British troops they passed as they made the achingly slow journey from Verlaines to Ercheu.
They were lovely, those troops. They moved aside to let the jitney go through, lifting their hats when they could, waving, and raising ragged cheers.
“Good old America!” called out one officer, lifting his cap to them as he and his men rumbled past in an open truck, and Emmie waved back, trying not to cry.
“It’s nice to be appreciated,” she said, to cheer herself as much as Alice.
“Ye-es,” said Alice, looking worriedly over her shoulder. There were shells whizzing overhead, English shells, aimed at the Germans. “But I’ll be very glad to get back. They won’t make it as far as Grécourt, will they?”
“They can’t,” said Emmie, but they’d only just dropped that last group at Ercheu, painfully late, nearly nine, when they heard the rumble of a big gun coming from quite the wrong direction.
It was dark now, full dark, the night broken only by the flashing lights of airplanes overhead, battling to the death. Emmie squinted into the darkness, feeling cold to the bone. “Was that—did that come from Grécourt?”
“It can’t be,” said Alice, but she coaxed the jitney as fast as it could go. She made a little noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I’d go faster if I could, but I’m not sure the poor old jitney could take it.”
“They’re all right—I’m sure they’re all right.” It was impossible to think of the Germans at Grécourt, their Grécourt. This was their little bit of Smith in France, and to think of it being invaded was like trying to imagine the Germans marching their way into Northampton. Emmie harbored a momentary fantasy of a phalanx of professors fighting off the Germans, beating them off with umbrellas and Latin textbooks.
There was an army camion stuck in the ditch by the gate—a British one. Emmie felt light-headed with relief. She’d half expected to find the Germans there, ready to march them off into a German prison. This was a Grécourt transformed, dotted with lights, like something out of a fairy tale, people moving about, carrying flashlights, striking tents. The area around the moat was so thick with vehicles Alice could barely get the truck through. It was like every tea and every dance they’d ever had multiplied by ten, the courtyard swarming with uniformed men, except that their guests didn’t usually bring a giant antiaircraft gun with them.
Kate came hurrying out. “As you can see, we have visitors, about two hundred of them.” She paused by the side of the jitney, working very hard at refraining from expressing alarm or concern or relief. “Alice said you were taking villagers from Verlaines. You got them all out?”
“All except Monsieur and Madame Philippot. They wouldn’t go.” Emmie lowered herself out of the jitney, feeling about a hundred years old, every muscle aching. “Poor Anne—we had to abandon her curtains. And I gave away Nell’s books.”
“They’ll understand,” said Kate. She started to reach for Emmie and then let her hand fall. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have you back. Both of you.”
Emmie swallowed hard and gave Kate a big hug, as if they were at Smith again, when life was simpler. In a muffled voice, she said, “We heard the gun and thought Grécourt was under siege.”
Kate swiped at her eyes and gave a crooked smile. “You could call it that. We have two hundred hungry Tommies billeted on us. Julia is dealing with scratches and fevers, Nell is making up beds, and Anne is running the canteen. I’ve sent our basse-cour people on to Roye, with Marie to boss them.” Some of Kate’s brave facade crumpled. “Zélie may never forgive me for parting her from Minerva. She had to be carried protesting into the wagon. I felt like Lady Macbeth.”
“It had to be done—they couldn’t possibly have taken the goat with them. You can’t imagine what the roads are like. You did it for her own good.” With all the khaki uniforms bustling about around them, their insignia indistinguishable in the darkness, Emmie couldn’t help but ask, “Will—Captain DeWitt—he’s not here, is he?”
“No, he’s not,” said Kate with genuine regret. “He did come by this morning—he wanted to make sure we knew the Germans were coming. He came riding out of the mist like something out of one of your books. Young Lochinvar and the Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled into one. Poor man. It was utterly wasted on me—he pretended he was here for all of us, but it was you he wanted.”
It was so hard when Kate was being kind. “Did he leave any message for me? Did he say where he would be?”
“He had to go back to the line. He told me to tell you something about compasses,” Kate added as an afterthought. “The points of the compass always come together in the end.”
“It’s John Donne,” said Emmie, her throat scratchy. “‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.’ The two points of the compass always come together in the end, so true lovers can never really be parted, even when they run around in circles.”
Except in the poem, the author was speaking about death. Emmie didn’t want to think about death. It was all very well to talk about not loving as sublunary lovers love and expansion of souls and all that, but she’d really rather not have to commune with a soul. She wanted the whole person back.
He’d been alive this morning, which meant he’d survived the dawn assault, but if he’d gone back to the line . . .
“There’s been no word since?”
Kate shook her head. “No one really seems to know anything. Only that there was heavy fighting. You were closer to it than we were.”
Emmie thought about the ambulances, those endless ambulances, bearing their gruesome burden.
“I’m sorry,” said Kate.
She couldn’t let herself cry now. Not when there was so much to be done. Will was away somewhere, but these men were still alive and needed her. Emmie blinked hard. “What can I do?”
“You’ve done so much today already. . . .” Kate saw the expression on Emmie’s face and quickly changed whatever she had been about to say to “Anne could use the help—she’s in the kitchen.”
“We’ve been making gallons of tea,” said Anne distractedly, pushing a strand of ginger hair back behind her ear as Emmie poked through the canvas flap. Every pot they owned appeared to be in use, the big old stove smoking like anything. “They’ve been without rations for twenty-four hours, these poor boys. We’ve been cooking and cooking for them since three o’clock. We’ve opened every can of beans in the place and boiled every scrap of macaroni we could find. But mostly it’s tea they want, poor men. One nearly cried when I asked him if he wanted milk. He says he hasn’t seen milk for months.”
Emmie sliced bread and brewed tea and sliced more bread and brewed more tea, going back and forth to the dining room with tray after tray after tray as one group was fed and another came in.
Work helped. It was easier not to think of Will out there in the mist with the Germans coming upon them when her hands were busy making up beds or carrying trays. They were so grateful, those men. Emmie, Anne, and Nell went back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room, cooking, collecting dishes, washing dishes, and filling them up again, while Florence saw to the animals, and Kate and Alice turned the dining room and the Orangerie into makeshift dormitories, stripping the mattresses and blankets off their beds to make pallets for the soldiers.
“Was that really the last of them?” asked Anne, sitting down heavily on a stool, her feet sticking out in front of her. It was two in the morning and everyone had been fed and put to bed except the seven remaining members of the Smith Unit, who were collapsed in the kitchen, among a stack of dirty pots and dishes.
“Merciful heavens, I hope so,” said Nell, yawning. “If I never see another tin of beans, it will be too soon.”
Kate rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “They’ll need breakfast.”
Julia pushed herself off the wall against which she’d been leaning, half-asleep on her feet. “We’d best get started, then, hadn’t we?”
“Noooo . . .” said Nell, but Julia gave her a light shove.
“If I can make oatmeal,” said Julia, “so can you.”
Emmie had no idea what had happened between Julia and Kate in Paris, but whatever it was, she had never seen Julia pitch in like this before, like she was actually part of the Unit and not just there for medical experience. Julia tucked up her sleeves and boiled and scoured with the rest of them. Her sharp-tongued jibes galvanized them into moving when they needed it, and Emmie didn’t even mind the sting.
Oatmeal. Cauldrons of oatmeal. Lakes of coffee. They left it all sitting in buffet form in the Orangerie and staggered down the duckwalk to their barracks, only remembering just in time that they’d given up one barrack to officers, shoving Alice’s and Florence’s cots into Kate and Emmie’s room. There was barely room to move between the cots and their bulging duffel bags.
“You packed my duffel?” said Emmie, looking at Kate.
“Just in case.” Kate paused for a moment and then added, reluctantly, “The major said we should be ready to go if needed.”
Their eyes met. They both knew what that meant.
“They meant us to evacuate this morning,” said Emmie. “Alice and I just ignored them and carried on.”
“So did we—and then we weakened their resolve with tea and beans,” said Kate. “They were hardly going to insist once we started feeding them. But I doubt that will work again if the Germans come closer. We should get what sleep we can. While we can. Alice, what on earth are you doing?”
Alice shoved another paper into the fire. “I’m burning my letters so the Germans won’t get them.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Kate, nobly refraining from pointing out that the German infantry probably wasn’t terribly concerned with Alice’s private correspondence. Emmie had to tamp down an entirely ridiculous fit of the giggles at the thought of the Boche puzzling over Alice’s letters from her sister, looking for codes in crochet patterns.
“I’ve got the chickens in their crates,” said Florence heartily as she plumped down on her own bed. “And I’ve sent the cows and goats on to Moyencourt in care of Marie’s son. We don’t want the Boche to get them. Just a precaution, of course.”
All just a precaution. They knew it wasn’t, though. They’d moved past precaution somewhere around nine that morning.
Emmie lay down on the bare springs of her bed, pulling her coat over herself in lieu of a blanket. The mattress was currently on the floor of the dining room, as was the blanket, both being used by exhausted British soldiers who needed them far more than she did. She was still wearing the shirtwaist and uniform she had put on to teach a hygiene class in Verlaines a lifetime ago, before the world had exploded in blood and ash.
In the silence, Emmie thought she could hear the sound of marching feet, the German army, thousands of them, bearing down on Grécourt, pitiless, unstoppable, laying waste to everything in its path like a beast from a child’s nightmare.
“Good night,” she whispered, and closed her eyes and tried to pretend it was yesterday, when Will was well, and all was well, and the Germans weren’t marching inexorably toward them.