MFair - We so need Ainslie and Freddie Abbott to meet. The no more ammo thing is most inconvenient. We need a tracer change of some sort to indicate 100 rounds remaining. Glad Ainslie made it home unscathed. Be careful. As for Breakfast, Fried eggs and SPAM over fried rice. That's heaven and a superb hangover cure. Alas, SPAM is 20 years off.
Carrick - Great screenshots especially the black tailed Albatros. Shelby's holding his own. Mind that pesky Gong Fairy though.
Fullofit - Ziggy's disappointment is understandable. Tough sledding having to fly a new machine... Stable, solid and dives like a stone. He'll be fine. Do Jasta 17 get Triplanes? That would be terrifying. Well done dodging the B/Z tactics of that annoying Franzmann and congrats on the kill. Will Ziggy make an Honor Cup for each victory a la the Baron?
Lou - Welcome back. I can only imagine what it was like to lose Swanny. I'm probably gonna find out at some point given the reckless nature of a certain love struck Yank. Fantastic opening story. I've known a couple kids like Freddy. This is gonna be good. If he lives, this one could be truly legendary. He's a British Forrest Gump, I think. Please keep the Gongs away from Oliver. Pretend Wing hates him or something.
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This chapter was a long time in the making. I've been grinding on this for a while. Scores of hours. I don’t know how real authors do it, talent I guess. Fortunately, I’ve still been flying missions so I’m not as far behind as it would appear.
Needing some background info for contemporary fashions of WW1, and remembering the rave reviews, I watched Testament of Youth. Gee, a memoir of the Great War where the heroine loses all her close friends, her fiance and her only brother. Beautifully filmed and I get to look at Alicia Vikander for 2 hours. How hard could this be to watch? Good Lord, it was the emotional equivalent of a Bas Rutten roundhouse kick to the liver. Staggering. Just staggering. If you have any unresolved loss issues, I’d strongly recommend having a grief counselor or therapist on an open line when you watch.
Note: During the Great War, British surgeons were addressed as “Mr.” instead of “Dr.” hence Mr. George Grey Turner mentioned in the episode below. A relic of the messy class history of the British medical establishment.
More info here for those interested:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119265/____________________________________________
18 May 1917 54 Squadron RFC
Flez, France
A whirlwind 36 hours. Still trying to come to grips with all that happened.
I made it to Corbie and the café at 1130 on the 17th bringing with me another letter to Madame de Rochefort from her ‘cher Roman.’ Her reaction was just as effusive as the last time. I took a seat by the window and ordered coffee. By 1500 I’d fought a series of pitched battles with an unquiet mind. My initial excitement of having an entire day with Eliza turned briefly to worry then to an ever-increasing agitation. Had something happened to her? Did she change her mind? Did we get our signals wrong?
Madame left the café to her daughters and withdrew to rest before dinner.
“You will still dine with us
ce soir, Lieutenant?” she asked.
“Oui, Madame. As we discussed, I hope to have a young lady as my dinner companion. She has been detained in some manner.”
“
C’est la Guerre,” she said, patting my hand sympathetically.
The Café was on a side street three doors off the Rue Faidherbe. From my spot at the window I could see the stream of traffic coming from the direction of Peronne. On and on came the ambulances and each one continued past. I walked to the intersection, standing under the umbrella and practicing the breathing Smokey taught me. Something must have happened. This was not good. I’d been there five or ten minutes when yet another ambulance approached but unlike the scores who’d taunted me all afternoon, this one slowed and came to a halt at the corner. The driver wore a nursing uniform. She smiled at me and nodded just as Eliza hopped out of the passenger door.
There she was. I hadn’t seen Eliza in civilian clothes since
Laconia, almost 10 months ago. The change was breathtaking. The nurse’s veil, cape, smock and apron traded for a blue wool jacket open at the throat showing a white V-necked blouse. The jacket was cut long with large buttons down the front. It fell over a skirt of similar style all held together by a wool sash belt joined with a metal clasp. Her hair was up underneath blue wool cloche hat.
She ran over to the shelter of my umbrella and threw her arms around my neck. One hand on the umbrella and the other around her waist I picked her up as momentum carried her. Eliza’s eyes flashed right though me for a second before refocusing.
“I am so sorry, Oliver. We had wounded come just after you left. It’s been quiet lately and most of the staff are up north, closer to the fighting. We were short-handed so I was in surgery for the last 18 hours. It was an endless rush. Surgeons usually deal with the deep life-threatening internal wounds and surgical nurses the external wounds, suturing, putting in drains, that sort of thing, but today was different. Oliver, there was one man with an abdominal wound, we were removing bits of shrapnel when he started hemorrhaging and then everything slowed down. It was incredible. Almost like we were in a dance, just me and Mr. Grey-Turner tracking down the bleeds – find, clamp, suture. He was on one side, I was on the other, both of us doing the work of surgeons! When he was halfway done sewing the abdomen closed, he turned to me and asked me if I would finish closing. I’ve been studying and I’ve sewn thousands of sutures on skin wounds these past months, but this was the first time he let me close. He watched but didn’t say anything. Just nodded approvingly when I was done.
“It was incredible, Oliver! Did I say that already?”
Her voice held a fevered cadence and her eyes shone with the animation and clarity of someone come through intense and transformative experience. I knew that feeling all too well. Her blood was up, her face still flushed with the electricity and excitement of all she’d just done. Amazing after all this time, but I knew it wouldn’t last.
“I’m babbling. I’m so sorry I’m late,” she repeated. “This the famous Café Fou?”
“Yes. Are you hungry?”
“Not at all. Let’s walk.” she said. “I need to move, and I’ve never seen Corbie.”
Eliza, stepped away from me, spun on her toe, arms out like a ballerina, letting the rain fall on her face, then slipped gracefully back to my side and took my arm.
As we moved down the Rue de Faidherbe poking into a shop here and there, her arm grew heavier on mine. She was done in.
“Come on. Let me show you something.” I said.
We walked back toward the café and around the corner to the tall gate. Her eyes widened as we crossed the courtyard and entered L’Hotel.
“What have you done, Oliver?”
We stopped before the door to the 3rd floor apartment. “Close your eyes,” I said, then opened the door, took her hand, and led her inside. “You can look now.”
She wandered on ahead gazing in astonishment. “It’s spectacular! But where will you sleep?” she asked.
Eliza turned, saw the look on my face, and smiled her mischievous smile.
“Give me your coat. Come see the rest of it,” I said.
“Oliver, this must have cost you a fortune.”
“I wanted it to be special.”
“How marvelous!” she said with look of wonder and spun on her toe again.
I caught her on the second turn, and we danced about the room for a minute, laughing. She was still giddy. We plunked down on the couch opposite the window next to the fireplace. Eliza undid her shoes, tucked her feet to one side and curled up against me like a cat, arm across my stomach, and her ear on my chest. Her hair kept tickling my nose as I held her and listened to the rain. In a minute she was fast asleep.
It’s ok there’s time. Twilight’s dark glow lit the clouds and the failing light filtered through the tall windows. My arm was painfully asleep, but I dared not move for fear of waking her. The unceasing toil of the nursing sisters always astounded me. Day after day, long shifts and then little to no rest at all when a big show was on. They lived rough too, under canvas year-round with just a tiny stove for heat. My happy hut was a palace by comparison and excepting the 5 hours a day when I might be shot to death or burnt alive by Huns, my war was an easy job.
In the end it was my growling stomach that woke her.
“That was lovely,” she said woozily. “You’re extremely comfortable.”
She stretched languorously and then sat up, fully awake. “I’m starving,” she said, “and by the sound of it, so are you.”
_____________________________
Eliza spoke perfect French (of course she did), and most courteously greeted Madame de Rochefort in her native tongue. I lost the track of their fast-paced conversation rather quickly, but it didn’t continue for long before Madame had hold of Eliza’s hand and they were chatting like old pals.
I’d spoken to Madame about dinner when I was waiting for Eliza. I knew almost nothing about French wine, so I left everything to her.
The binge lunch I’d enjoyed with 54 was an extravagantly gluttonous parade of food catered to drunken fellows looking for something different than meat and two veg. That said, it was one of the better meals I’d ever tasted. What Madame cooked for us was a more nuanced affair with all ingredients masterfully balanced in each fully realized dish. Simple, elegantly prepared, and spaced to satisfy our hunger without overwhelming. It didn’t take more than a few bites for the both of us to realize this was something truly out of the ordinary. I never even looked at the label on the wine. Whatever it was it was perfect.
Eliza was by no means a finicky eater. Uncontained joy would be the best description of her reactions, along with an occasional eye roll of ecstatic wonderment as Madame’s creations revealed themselves to the palette.
“You’ve no idea what a treat this is, Oliver. Just to get away from the war, if only for a day. One week blends into another at a Clearing Station and nursing sisters don’t get out very often.
“I have some news. I’ve been training at the base hospital in Rouen with Mr. Grey-Turner. That’s why I was gone for so many days. All manner of surgeries, I learned so much.
“Oliver, you won’t believe it, one patient had a bullet in his heart for 18 days. He was shielding his eyes from the sun when he was shot from distance, so the bullet passed through his wrist first then his notebook. That’s why it didn’t kill him instantly. You could see it on the radiograph, the bullet lodged in the septum with the tip poking around in the left ventricle, swirling with the heartbeat. Mr Grey-Turner opened his left chest and tried to remove it. I’ve never seen anything like it. No one touches the heart; it just isn’t done. He couldn’t get at the bullet. We poked with a needle, tried everything, then he turned the heart over, and it stopped entirely. It gave us all a fright. Mr. Grey Turner started palpating the heart but couldn’t fit both his hands in the incision, so I did it. Oliver, I held that man’s lifeless heart in my hands, and when I squeezed, it started beating again. Just like that! It was…I just don’t have the words. Is it horrible of me to say how exhilarating, how fascinating, how thrilling that was?”
“Will he live?”
“Yes, I think so. After the heart started again Mr. Grey Turner sewed up the entry wound in the pericardium and beat a hasty retreat.” The man had already had the bullet in there for 18 days so if it doesn’t infect, he should be fine.” [1]
A man’s living heart in her hand. Extraordinary “Oliver, I’m good at this. Very good. I’ve studied and practiced, that’s true, but everything just comes naturally, almost without thought. I see what I want to do with instruments, and my hands make it happen. I have an opportunity. Mr. Grey Turner is willing to take me on as his surgical assistant at the base hospitals in Rouen.”
“But…”
“The AEF is coming too. There’s talk of promotion if I transfer, nothing specific yet.”
“Wasn’t doctoring your path before the war? What do you want, Eliza?”
“Why are you smiling like that?” she asked.
“When you talk about doing surgery you know who you sound like? Me, when I talk about aeroplanes and flying.”
She said nothing, just took a sip of her wine.
The rain had stopped so we took the long way back to L'Hotel.
This could be our one night together, for all I knew. I took extra care to go slowly. Eliza unbuckled the Sam Browne, her eyes never leaving mine. I did the same with the buttons of her blouse, one, then another then another interrupted with a kiss, a touch, as we each slowly undressed the other in a delicate back and forth, like the slow mating ritual of wild things.
I’d dreamed about this moment so many times but when we stood naked, kissing each other with the violent hunger of our thwarted passions it was no longer fantasy. We were lovers entwined and that was all.
____________________________________________
“It’s too much! It hurts. I can’t… Ow!!”
“Breathe Eliza, try to relax.”
“Gently Oliver,” she gasped. “Go slowly!
“Better?”
“Oh yes! Right there. Oh that’s marvelous!”
We sat at opposite ends of the enormous tub as the scalding water worked its magic. I had hold of Eliza’s right foot working out a knot in her instep. She wore a grin of relaxed contentment on her face, like a lioness dozing, but I kept a weather eye out for any change of expression that might augur violence. At present, her left foot meandered affectionately along my hip and thigh but it’s reflexive kick had nearly cracked a rib not long ago, when I’d pressed her too strongly, so I was taking no chances.
Hours unnumbered on her feet had taken their toll these past 9 months. Nine months, and three of those were the second half of the Somme battle. I’d been a mere 6 weeks at the front. I smoothed my palm up the long muscles below the calf. Her eyes flew open, brows furrowing in a triangle of pained outrage.
“Sorry! Too much?” I said, bracing for the kick that never came. “Those heeled boot things you wear aren’t helping, you know. They look like something for binding the feet of Imperial concubines.”
“Oliver, you’ll never understand. Even in war, a girl needs her shoes. Are you acquainted with Imperial concubines?
“No, but one hears things.”
“Oh I see. It’s one of those ‘things.’ Like sailors having a girl in every port. Did you leave a trail of broken hearts across the Pacific? Hmmmm, now that I think about it that doesn’t sound like you.
“I wonder,” she continued, “did some lovely break yours?”
Oh, how that happened.
My 18th birthday present from Smokey. It didn’t turn out quite the way he’d planned, and he felt bad about it afterwards.
“I thought you knew. It’s my fault, I should’ve told you up front. It was supposed to be a few days and nights of fun. I never thought you’d get feelings for her. I’m sorry, kid. Take it for what it was, then. Remember her and what she taught you.”
As if I could ever forget.Now was not the time for that tale. Her crooked pinkie would be my undoing, so I held out both my hands. She reached forward and taking them, pulled herself forward to my end of the tub. I sat up to meet her with a soft kiss. Time stopped again, then she turned round and settled back against me. I gathered her up and pulled her to me. She closed her right hand over mine and placed it on her heart. I could feel the rise and fall of her chest and smell the lavender in her hair. Our heartbeats slowed and we sat in the piping hot water, drifting in its warm embrace, and listening to the frogs calling the rain.
“You make me very happy, Oliver.”
Let this last foreverThe night drifted on and in time the water started cooling.
“I wish we could stay here,” she said at last.
“We can come here again, so long as I remain in Madame’s good graces, that is. The enigmatic Monsieur du Guesclin waxed ominous about the fickle nature of a lady’s favor.”
“As well he should.” she replied, “And how exactly did you obtain Madame’s grace?”
“I don’t know. It’s all rather dumbfounding. It must have been Ackers putting in a good word for me since he and Madame are lovers. I can think of no other reason.”
“This house seems rather grand, yet it’s tucked away, almost like it was deliberately hidden here behind the courtyard. Do you think Madame de Rochefort was someone’s mistress, long ago? Like in the story, maybe her lover was some star-crossed count, or a general. This was the place he built for them, and then fate intervened, they parted, or he died tragically. She married ultimately, had the four girls, then Monsieur de Rochefort died in the war. That's so sad. Don’t you feel a sense of melancholy from Madame?”
I did. I also remembered the fear in her countenance when I’d come to give her Ackers first letter and she thought something had happened to her ‘Cher Roman.’
“Is the scandalously modern Eliza Ludlow a romantic after all?”
“Why can’t I be both? she replied. “The water’s going cold and my fingers are wrinkly. Should we add more hot?”
“Let’s get out,” I replied, “but I’m wide awake now and I don’t want to sleep. Do you know this is the most time I’ve ever spent with you, Eliza? We’ve only had seven hours before today. The walk around
Laconia, then the two times we met at Grovetown. You’re 8 miles up the road, yet I can never see you. I may run mad, you know.”
“This will be the way for us, Oliver. We’ll seize moments from the war and live in that stolen time.”
“And I’m not tired either. Whatever shall we do if we stay up all night?” she asked coyly.
“We could hold hands and think about the King, or President Wilson.” I said.
“And after that?”
“I have an idea.”
________________________________________
I’d catch my own transport back to Flez. Eliza tried to convince me to ride with her on the ambulance, but I didn’t want tongues wagging.
The Ambulance slowed as it drove past us then stopped 10 yards up the road. We strolled arm in arm toward the Crossley that would take her from me. As I walked her to the passenger door my heart was pounding in my chest and I could hear the pulse beat in my ears.
She turned to me and touched my cheek. “Thank you for this, Oliver.”
I had to say something. I took her hand in mine and kissed it.
“Eliza, there’s something I need to tell you.”
My mind went completely blank. Words fled.
Please not now. Why always in these moments? What do I say?
“For never before has love for any goddess or woman
so melted about the heart inside me, broken it to submission,
as now…”
Do not quote Zeus to her, you moron. Just tell her!“Oliver, you’re trembling.” she said.
Say it! Say it now! “Eliza…I…” she put her fingers to my lips and stilled them.
“I know, Oliver. You don’t need to say it. Please...”
“Let me speak the words in life, Eliza, and not in a letter you read when I’m killed. I couldn’t tell you last night because it would have sounded like pillow talk. I’ve known for a while now. Yes, it’s all rather sudden but that doesn’t change the truth of it.”
“I know, Oliver. How could I not?”
Her eyes implored me to silence. Brown eyes suddenly full of pain and pleading, slowly brimmed with tears. She kept trying to wipe them away with the palms of her hands. I handed her my handkerchief.
“Eliza, what’s wrong?”
Her fingers covered my lips again then she hugged me fiercely. I could feel her tears running on my neck. I just held her against me there as her sobs fled in sharp, tiny gasps, growing ever smaller as she eventually mastered herself. Our lips met again, my hand lingered on her face as she backed away, then she was on the lorry and gone.
___________________________________
I made it back the squadron in good time. The bottle of wine I’d bought helped overcome any qualms the supply boys had about having an officer along for the ride.
What a glorious time it was with her, yet all I could think on now was our parting. I would give her my heart with warm, living hands, and not in some death letter. Why would she stop me like that? I’d never forget the look on her face when she thought I might say it anyway. This was an old wound of hers, unhealed.
A glorious day, an unforgettable night. Eliza was no nervous virgin, that was for sure. How she acquired such facility in the arts of love I could only guess, and for once in my fool life had the good sense not to ask. For her to give herself so completely, so unreservedly was humbling, electric, magical. For the first time, I knew the clouds and rain with a woman I truly loved. All the others, all save one, were just so many playful couplings, swept into irrelevance by the winds that blew now.
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1. The patient survived at least another 23 years and was living when George Grey Turner reported his findings in the Lancet, October 19, 1940.