Chapter 16
Rain continued for days and days, turning the pockmarked landscape into a series of murky pools big enough to swim across. Everyone was sick and tired of being wet, so when Dusty came down the trench looking for a runner, Cooper groaned. “I just changed my socks.”
“You’re a footballer, man. Don’t you play in the rain all the time?” Blake teased.
“Course not. That’s what second string is for.”
“I’ll go,” Ash offered. She was pretty sure even buried deep within her rucksack, her clean socks were already damp with rain.
“I owe you,” Cooper told her. “We all do.”
“What do you owe me?” she teased.
Coop looked at Blake and Tom. “What do you reckon, lads? One million jars of strawberry jam?”
“We never get strawberry,” Ash sighed.
“Cause they nick them all further up the line,” TomTom grumbled.
“Cherry then,” Cooper laughed.
“I hate cherries.”
It turned out to be an easy run despite the weather—most likely on account of the weather keeping German snipers and patrolmen huddled in their dugouts. Still, there were only a few hours for a nap by the time Ashley collapsed against some sandbags, muddy as a crab and just as crabby.
When Reveille was called what felt like moments later, her feet were so cold she couldn’t feel them except for the burning prick of pins and needles as she stumbled to the fire step with Tom.
“Been at the rum already, Little Bird?” Rook teased, a wary smile on his face, his strong brow forever creased with concern.
“Drank your share,” she whispered, and he coughed out a laugh.
They stood at attention as dawn drew near, peering through the misty shroud in case of an enemy raid that never came, but at least the rain had stopped.
Finally, they were given the order to stand down and have their rations, and Ashley stumbled off the fire step, the heaviness in her feet even worse than it was before.
“Private?” Captain Davies asked, approaching them with Sergeant Major Chapman and Lieutenant Napier in tow. “Are you unwell?”
“No, sir. Sorry, sir. Only a touch clumsy this morning is all.”
“Why’s that?”
“Bit numb. I’ll stamp the cold out before breakfast and get the blood moving properly again.”
The officers’ faces contorted into matching scowls that mirrored Rook’s.
“You can’t feel your feet?” Lieutenant Napier snapped.
“I’m fine, sir.”
“How long have they been numb?” the captain asked, and Ashley glanced nervously at Tom.
“I’m sure I heard the captain ask you a question,” Napier said.
“Just this morning,” Ash replied, glancing from face to face. “Maybe a little bit last night. I can’t remember.”
“How did they look? When you changed your socks this morning? Any redness?” the captain pressed her.
“I didn’t—”
“Last night then?” Davies interrupted with rare impatience. “After your run.”
“I—I forgot, sir.”
“Yesterday morning?”
She shook her head.
“Private, when did you last change your bloody socks?” Sergeant Major Chapman bellowed.
Ash tried to think back through the fog of embarrassment and endless days of rain, but she was so tired. It might have been the day before yesterday. It might as easily have been last week.
“Private?” Lieutenant Napier prodded.
“I can’t remember, sir.”
“Did you suffer a head wound yesterday?” Chapman demanded, but the captain held up a hand for silence.
Ashley was so ashamed, she wished the muddy earth would open up and swallow her alive. No wonder none but Tom had discovered she was a girl, when her hygiene was the worst of the whole lot. What must Rook think of her now?
“I suppose I didn’t see much point when they’d just get drenched all over again. I thought it was safer to keep my dry socks dry for when it stopped,” she tried to explain, cheeks burning as she stared down at her bloated soggy boots.
“Didn’t see the bloody point?” Sergeant Major Chapman sputtered, but Captain Davies quieted him once more.
“I’m certain Private Ashley sees the point most clearly now,” he said softly. “Tomasson?”
“Sir?”
“Please assist Private Ashley to the forward dressing station immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Really, it’s nothing,” Ash protested.
“I pray that’s true,” the captain said, turning to continue down the line.
“They’re just cold,” she told Tom as he shouldered her rifle along with his own. “They’ll be fine before we even reach the dressing station,” she added, glancing back at Rook as Tom led her away.
Rook nodded, grim-faced, as he watched them go.
“This is silly,” Ash whined.
“Mate, you’ve got trench foot,” Tom told her.
“What?”
He looked down at her miserably. “We were supposed to check each other’s feet for signs.”
“They’re just cold,” she protested again, but panic was rising up her throat.
“They’re numb, you said.”
“Yes.”
“Pins and needles?”
Ash didn’t want to answer. He was scaring her. But finally she admitted, “Some.”
“Do they itch or burn or ache?”
“Yes…” she whispered.
Tom was silent for a bit as they wound their way along the zigzagged avenue. “I’m sorry for not checking,” he finally told her. “It felt sort of… wrong? And, I suppose I was afraid if someone came along while I was doing it and saw your feet they might… you know… know.”
“Do you think the doctor will know?” she asked, beginning to feel faint with this additional new worry, but TomTom simply shrugged.
Trench foot. Would they cut off her feet? They’d likely have to—and then what would she do, footless and sent home without even a Thank you for your service?
“I don’t want to be a nun,” she whimpered.
“A nun? Making deals with the Lord already, are you?”
“If they cut off my feet, who else would have me but the church?”
Tom was silent for a long moment, and the fact that he didn’t immediately swear they wouldn’t cut them off made Ashley’s panic ratchet higher.
“I would,” he said, ever so softly.
Ash turned sharply, searching his eyes for signs of teasing, but none were there. She had meant a job, not… that.
“I know you fancy Rook, but I—”
“I don’t!” she protested.
He gave her a look of ardent skepticism.
“Anyway, feet or no, you’ll do all right.
You’re as good as any man and better’n most. So if they take them—which they won’t—but if they do, and you find yourself bound for the convent, just you send word for me, and I’ll be there to take you anywhere else you want to go. ”
Ash stared at him with tears in her eyes, not quite sure what to say.
She loved Tom dearly—as a brother, a pal.
He turned away from her searching gaze, neck flushed and ears burning, and shoved his eyeglasses further up his nose. “Hurry up, now, before they fall off by themselves,” he said.
“Feet?” the triage nurse asked before Ash could even remove her arm from around Tom’s neck. “Twelfth case this week.” She shook her head and pointed to a bed before shooing Tom back to the trenches.
“See, Ash?” he called over his shoulder as he was leaving. “You’re not even special.”
“You too, shoo!” the nurse told Max, who must have followed silently along behind them just like she had the last time Ash was sent for medical attention. Matted and muddy and hangdog though she was, she wagged her tail the moment Ashley looked her way. “Go on,” the nurse said, waving her off.
“Please,” Ash begged. “She’s one of us.”
“It’s not hygienic. You’ll have to wait outside,” the nurse told Max, who seemed to smile before trotting back out of the tent to wait.
“I’ll get this one. It’s time you had a break,” another nurse said, bustling over with a tray full of fresh white bandages. She set them down and adjusted her cap, and recognition dawned for Ashley—it was dear Nurse Jo.
“Sure as I take a break, Hamish will be back with another load of men,” the nurse griped, but she scurried off anyway, stretching out her neck.
“Back again?” Nurse Jo asked. “How’s the anemia?”
“All right. This time it’s my feet.” Ashley’s voice broke on the word feet, and she bit down on her lip.
“Take off your boots and socks. Let’s have a look.” Jo squeezed her shoulder before picking up a clipboard and filling out a form with the information from Ashley’s identity disc.
Ash unlaced her muddy boots, but her feet were so swollen Jo had to help her pry them off. When her socks were pulled away, Ashley gasped—at both the horrific odor and the slightly blue color. Her nails were very nearly purple, and there were blisters between her toes and red sores along the arch.
“I’ve seen worse,” Nurse Jo assured her, bringing a basin of warm water for each foot to soak in, acting as though she didn’t even notice the putrid stench as she gently washed them.
She held up a bottle of disinfectant.
“This will likely sting,” she warned before applying it to the blisters, but Ash didn’t feel a thing, which made her panic grow.
“Will they be cut off?”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that, runner,” Jo said softly, before wrapping Ashley’s feet with a warm compress and elevating them on a towel-covered pillow. “Would you like to write a letter home?” she suggested, offering Ash a printed postcard and a pencil before hurrying away to tend another lad.
Ash didn’t want to worry her mother, so she jotted down a quick, generic note, ending with a plea to send more socks.
It was a nice distraction.
She requested more postcards and continued to scrawl idly, trying to trick her brain into forgetting the stabbing pains that otherwise made her catch her breath.
Soon her scribbles turned to letters and the letters turned to words, the lines pouring out of her like tears she couldn’t cry.
Ash allowed the pain and grief to wash over her, just enough so it coursed through her veins and out her pencil, coalescing into something like a poem.
She filled up all the white space of the postcard and started another, refining the words one final time until her mind was completely spent.
After nearly a year in trenches sleeping catch as catch can, cramped into holes or on the ground in billets, the dressing station cot felt like floating on a cloud, and Ashley drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
Sometime in the night, she was awakened by the most piteous cries for, “Water. Please, have mercy. Water!”