Chapter 26 twenty four

November 5, 1916 Queen's Castle France, Somme * The fragments came from a seventy-seven-mm shell, which was Fritsch.Manufactured at the armory of Friedrich Krupp AG in Essen.Shells were fired from a Feldkanone 96n.A. field gun four kilometers behind the German lines, operating a team of five from the 54th Field Artillery Regiment of the Neumarkisches, drenched from the inside out, their skin clammy and clammy .The men had their hair shaved off under their hats, they had mustaches, and the hair on their upper lips was stained by dirt, rain, and sweat. Griffith.Otto.Baker pulled the matchlock of the field gun and backed away for cover as the barrel rebounded and fired the shell to the west.Baker crouched on the dirt floor, wondering when the supply soldiers would bring their lunch.All he had eaten since dawn was a loaf of black bread and pickled herring, and the herring made him thirsty.

The 6.8kg artillery shell flew four kilometers at supersonic speed and crossed the German front, and the faint sound when it cut through the air appeared earlier than the blasting sound of the muzzle.The shell exploded three meters above the ground in no man's land, ejecting three hundred eleven-gram lead bullets at a slow speed.Ashley.Worthingham was just facing the exploding shells as he drew his pistol and strode towards the Fortitude trench.He heard no shells. One of the small lead bullets that exploded pierced Ashley's neck two inches above the collarbone on the right side, passed through his trachea and esophagus, and caused massive bleeding.At the same time, Ashley's right thigh was also penetrated by four small balls. Although the wounds were not deep, bright red blood began to ooze from the upper half of his trousers, soaking the khaki cloth more and more wet.He collapsed on the ground, bleeding from his mouth.In Ashley's eyes, the color of the blood looked terrifyingly bright.He lost consciousness almost immediately.

Private Mayhew was a few yards behind Ashley, his head dropped just as the shell exploded.A buckshot bounced off the rim of Mayhew's helmet with a bang, but luckily missed his face.Mayhew was hit in the right arm and shoulder by several lead bullets.He put one hand on his shoulder, although his fingers felt blood, but it seemed to be only a skin trauma.Not too painful. Meixiu knelt beside Ashley.Half of Ashley's face was blackened by the mud, and blood flowed down his chin.Meixiu carried Ashley on his back, with one arm and one leg on his shoulders.He staggered fifty yards to what was barely a crater, staggering from an unsteady center of gravity.He could smell urine on Ashley's pants, and his neck felt wet.After arriving at the crater, Mayhew put Ashley on the ground.He looks around.The crater was like a shallow cauldron of blasted earth, less than three feet deep, the outer edges of which became increasingly blurred under successive bombardments.High-explosive shells whizzed overhead and hit somewhere nearby, and machine guns swept across the horizon, whether it was far or near.

Meixiu knelt in front of Ashley, groping inside Ashley's shirt.The battlefield first aid kit is sewn inside.Meixiu cut the sutures with a pocket knife and scratched the khaki packaging of the first aid kit.Inside were two sterile pads, two rolls of bandages, and a small bottle of iodine.Mei Xiu cut open Ashley's pants, then broke the top of the vial, and sprinkled the liquid on the wounds on Ashley's neck and legs, a few drops of golden liquid dripped into a sea of ​​red.He used cotton pads to press the two wounds to stop the bleeding. Ashley moved because of the pain, but he didn't wake up.Blood immediately soaked the dressing.

Meixiu raised Ashley's head, skillfully wrapped the bandage around his throat, and then wrapped it back in the opposite direction, so that the force on the cotton sheet was even.He cuts off the bandage, securing the ends with safety pins.He treated Ashley's thigh in the same way, then lay on the ground and took a moment to think.Another shell exploded nearby, spewing fragments into his back.One of his legs felt hot, probably from a slight cut.His ears were ringing. There is still some distance to the British line from here, so they should wait here until dusk.Mei Xiu felt that he should also deal with his own wounds.The blood was slick on his forearm, and had flowed from the cuff to the wrist.

Two hours after dusk, Private Mei Xiu, with the help of a Durham Legion soldier, brought Ashley to the legion's medical station.The two of them carried Ashley, who was limp and lifeless, and moved forward with difficulty, and had to stop from time to time to let other soldiers and stretcher bearers enter the traffic trench. When the two arrived at the medical station, they put Ashley down and leaned on a sandbag.He slumped like a rag doll, with a hardened dark blood clot under his chin.The helping soldiers left to find their own regiments.The military doctor glanced at Ashley, then shook his head.

I no longer have a stretcher bearer.They're all out, God knows where.Is his pulse steady? I don't know, sir. What's his name?is that funny Mr Worthingham. That's right. The military doctor squatted beside Ashley and felt the pulse in his neck. Who treated these wounds? It's me, sir. The military doctor looked back at Mei Xiu.He called in a paramedic from the Royal Army Surgeon Corps to attend to Ashley before moving on to the next patient, a captain whose face had nearly been blown off by a high-explosive bomb.The captain is still alive.He used to work as a lawyer in a village called Ambrock, but now his face is gone, and someone has covered him with a rubber sheet.The medic pulled up the rubber sheet and looked under it, then put it back down again.

Mayhew watched as the orderly tended to Ashley.He unbuttoned Ashley's jacket and pulled out his military identification tag, which was a red disc made of hardened asbestos fibers, with a thread passing through the hole in the middle and around Ashley's neck.The orderly wrote Ashley's name, regiment affiliation, and injury on a tag.He tied the tag around Ashley's arm, then looked at Mayhew. Is there a problem? Mayhew didn't answer.Someone gave him a water bottle, he drank it right away, and handed it back.He spat into the mud, slung the rifle back over his shoulder, and went away.

An hour before midnight the colonel of the unit came with his assistants to round up the infirmary.Ashley was spread out on a dirty stretcher next to the sandbags, with both hands and feet bent.The disgraced captain lay beside him, the cloth still covering his head.The colonel walked slowly towards the captain and pulled up the cloth.White teeth and eyeballs shimmered, everything else was pink.The colonel covered the cloth back.The two officers turned to Ashley, his chest heaving obviously due to his labored breathing.Paramedics of the Royal Army Surgeon Corps injecting a corporal in the leg to avoid poisoning from sepsis.

The colonel called for the orderly. Why is Mr. Worthingham lying here?Did no one move him? The corporal was so absorbed in the injection that he didn't look at the two officers.He thought they were asking about the faceless captain. Seriously understaffed, sir.The corporal said: Doctor Hall says he won't survive tonight.We gave him a lot of morphine He's still breathing. Maybe so, sir, but Doctor Hall did a lot of beating for him. very good. The assistant took out a small notebook and pencil from his pocket.He put Walsingham on the list. At three o'clock in the morning, Ashley was finally taken away from the army medical station.He didn't wake up, so he didn't see the four men carrying him away.He didn't wake up, so he didn't see that the disgraced captain was not breathing.

Ashley woke up only once throughout the night.When he awoke, they were looking for directions in a blocked traffic trench on the backup route.A wooden cart and a field gun were engulfed in mud and blocked the way.The stretcher bearers debated whether to go left or right.One of the men carrying the stretcher in the rear, a German prisoner of war, was also involved in the dispute.The German was a senior sergeant and he thought the British soldiers were stupid. Links, the Germans say: Links! What is he saying? Frieze told us to go left. fuck him. It was at this moment that Ashley woke up with a start, his throat and lungs constricted more and more tightly, as if he was wearing a corset and couldn't breathe.He was suffocating. Ashley opened his eyes.At one point he couldn't breathe at all.Because of the lack of air, he twitched hard and couldn't move.There were so many clouds above him that not a single star could be seen, not even exploding cannonballs or flares, just vast, dismal darkness.The darkness seemed boundless, almost nothing.Ashley desperately wanted to breathe air, and blood foam formed from his mouth.He gurgled, but so softly that no one could hear him. The stretcher bearer goes right.They walked slowly, hunched over, knee-deep in the mud, sinking wherever they landed.The stretcher kept shaking.They had tried to keep the stretcher above the mud.Ashley reluctantly took another breath.The stretcher jumped and the two stretcher-bearers in front grunted. Does he smell like urine?It stinks to death. The taste is even worse here.A little bit of piss does wonders for trenches, more cleansing power than Pierce soap.I call this Somme Cologne. Urine smells. Five days later, on the morning of November 10, 1916, Yin Mozhen.SOAMS/Anderson walks down the carpeted steps at his home in Cavendish Square.She was on her way to Charing Cross Road to pick up a collection of poems by the French poet Jules Laforgue, which she had ordered at a French bookstore a month earlier.She had forgotten the book, but it suddenly occurred to her this morning, and she was so happy that it must have been waiting for her in the shop.Although Yin Mozhen made an appointment with a friend to meet at ten o'clock, she thought she would be able to make it on time after picking up the books. The maid stopped her in the hall with a letter. The letter is from lawyers Downing and Mr Hooper.Yin Mozhen tore it apart hastily, thinking it was business related to her father. □□□ dear miss, Sorry to inform you, A. E．Second Lieutenant Worthingham was mortally wounded in action in France on November 5. The news was reported by W.Letter from Captain Toth confirms.My deepest condolences to you.Perhaps this will give you some comfort, Captain Toth said that Ensign Walsingham was a very brave soldier and our best officer. I am the executor of Mr. Worthingham's estate, and I have been instructed to notify you of his death.Could you please stop by our office in Bedford Street?There is something special about an estate that I would like to discuss with you in person. If you need any help, please let us know at any time. p. l.Sincerely, Tang Ning Yin Mozhen barely made a sound.She stood in the hall, read the letter twice, then went upstairs to her room and tore up the paper.She threw the fragments into the fireplace, and the papers burned, flickering, until they burned out. Yin Mozhen went to bed, then climbed down again, threw all the pillows, sheets, and duvet on the floor, stifling her crying, because no one knew how stupid she was, nor how stupid he was.She went into the toilet, flushed her face with water, and paced in the corridor in a daze, while the maid watched Yin Mozhen wipe her face with her sleeve from the corner of the stairs downstairs, crying and talking softly to herself. The power that I don't believe in at all talks strange words and bargains.This is most likely just a mistake.It's a lawyer trick.Probably just a soldier with a similar name, some short-sighted clerk from the War Department Ten minutes later, Yin Mozhen's mother entered the room and found her daughter curled up on a pile of bedding on the floor. gosh.What happened? She grabbed Yin Mozhen's shoulder and asked again and again.But Yin Mozhen didn't even look at her. On the same day, Ashley was lying on a metal frame bed in Albert's No. 17 permanent hospital.He has been in hospital for four days.During this time, Ashley seldom woke up, and even if he did, he was dizzy.A sharp pain ran up and down his windpipe, as if the tendons in his throat were being torn.He couldn't swallow, but he felt like swallowing again, so the thing in his throat seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, and it was about to suffocate him.But when his throat muscles tightened and he was about to swallow, the pain was so painful that he had to stop.So Ashley lay quietly. The hospital was originally a big house on the edge of the town, a country-style building, which was converted into a hospital in June, shortly before the Somme offensive.Ashley's ward is on the long corridor and is the largest room in the house.The interior has soaring ceilings and ornate wood paneling; a marble fireplace sits beneath a large mirror.The beds are neatly arranged, and every injured person is wrapped in white sheets and covers.A vase of flowers sits on the steel bedside table.Medical forms are clipped to the wall above each wounded head.Ashley couldn't see his form. A redheaded nurse noticed his eyes were open.Her white pointed hat appeared and disappeared from his view.The nurse looked very young, but her voice was steady, and she leaned towards him and said: I know you can't talk, she said: and you shouldn't.If you need anything, write it here. The girl put a pencil and a small stack of paper into his hands.Ashley discovered that she was not a nurse, but a VAD, that is, a nurse's assistant who came to volunteer to help.The girl wore a stiff white apron with a paper collar and a dark dress that reached almost to her ankles.She has a bright red cross in the center above her apron.To Ashley, she was like the saintly Breton peasant woman in Gauguin's paintings.He held the pencil and wrote a few large characters on the paper slowly trembling. postcard That evening, he woke up again.Violet light slanted into the ward from the window.The nurse's thick heels tapped the irregularly patterned marble floor.Ashley raised his arms under the bed sheet, and the labor pains pulsated throughout his body.He stood still to let the pain go away, examining the blue flannel sleeves of his pajamas.He gently felt the wound on his leg through the sheets.There is a prominent raised continuous scab on the right thigh that is hard and dry.The wound is almost healed. Ashley guessed that he must not move his neck, so when he reached for the bedside table next to him, he deliberately kept his shoulders still.On the bedside table were the two letters he had kept in his coat pocket.Next to it was a brown postcard from the war, and a red pencil that was left over.Ashley carefully and laboriously picked up the postcard and pencil.He crossed out some sentences, leaving the message he wanted to convey. □□□ I am fine. I was taken to the hospital. Ill recovery is fine. The injured hope to be released soon, I was sent to base, letter date i got your telegram pack Write letters every chance you get. recent I haven't received your letter for a long time. Signature only. date Ashley thought about the date carefully before filling in the blanks.The red-haired assistant saw him writing and came to his bedside.She picked up the postcard. To the address on those letters? She pointed to the letter on the bedside table.Ashley picked up the paper and wrote slowly: same address.Please take morphine. The assistant shook his head. I have to ask the doctor. Three days later, on November thirteenth, the maid walked into the hall of the Soames-Anderson house in Cavendish Square with the brown postcard.As a result, there was no one in the living room.The maid turned and went upstairs, and halfway there, Eleanor happened to come in through the front door, holding a stack of magazines she had bought for Immogene. Hello, Lissie.I just met Mr. Postman.Is that the second email today? The maid held the card, looking uncertain.Eleanor went up the steps to her. what is that?You know very well that you shouldn't be reading Dad's letters.even if it's just a postcard Eleanor snatched the card and waved it in the air. If you don't tell, Eleanor teases her and says: I'll see you. At this time, Eleanor recognized the stamp on it and the words battlefield postcard.She read the card, then went upstairs to a window of the guest room and watched the postman cross the street and round the wrought-iron fence.Eleanor thought for a moment, tapping a finger on the card.The room had been hers before, and they hadn't touched anything except the pink curtains.But it still doesn't feel the same. Eleanor entered the hall, past Emmaine's room, a light from under the closed door, her sister probably asleep.Eleanor went into her mother's bedroom and closed the door.Her mother was writing a letter at the desk.Eleanor put the postcard in front of her. Oh my god!Has Yin Mozhen watched it? No.Just received it. Let's go tell her then. Eleanor shook her head, then knelt down beside her mother. But look at this address.I recognize his handwriting, having seen many of them before.This is written by someone else.It is possible that this was sent before death But that's a later date. Eleanor took her mother's hand. I hope this is true.Eleanor said: "I really hope it's true.But you think about what it would do to her if we said he was alive and it turned out he wasn't.It all happens again, only worse.She is at her most vulnerable now.Any slight disturbance would make her collapse. but keep it from her Just wait until we're sure. She sighed and returned the card to Eleanor. Then, do you want to call his companions, or write to the army to ask? I can do both. On the evening of November 17, the Soames/Anderson daughters were sitting in the living room waiting for dinner.The last rays of daylight filtered in through the lace curtains, illuminating an overgrown fern by the window.Eleanor reclined on a couch reading back issues of Burlington's Magazine.Yin Mozhen is playing the piano.Although the sheet music was in front of her, she played it from memory, a slow, mournful tune with choppy notes. Eleanor looked away from the magazine, and said over the sound of the piano: Really.You will break us all. Yin Mozhen did not answer.While her sister was flipping through the magazines, Yin Mozhen continued to play, looking at a pheasant puppet that seemed to be about to jump off the wooden frame on the wall.Eleanor put aside the magazine, walked to the piano chair, and put a hand on her sister's shoulder.Yin Mozhen stopped playing, but her fingers were still on the ivory keys. The doctor said, Yin Mozhen whispered, I should play the piano. Not playing this kind of thing.It sounds so bluesy. I don't feel very blue. Of course you don't think so.But you must work hard now. Yin Mozhen continued to play.Eleanor raised her hands in the air. Yinmozhen, if you don't want me here, then I'd be happy to go home.I want to help but I don't think listening to sad music for two hours is enough There was a soft knock on the door.The sister turned to see the maid crossing the threshold.She was cleaning the windows just now, and she was wearing chamois work gloves.She is holding an envelope. There is a telegram Eleanor snatched it from the handmaid. It's for Miss Inmogene.The maid finished speaking. Eleanor clutched the envelope in bewilderment, Yin Mozhen snatched it from her hand and tore it open, then stayed away from her sister and read the contents by herself.Yin Mozhen looked at Eleanor, then looked down at the telegram again.Then she rushed upstairs to her room, Eleanor calling her after her.Yin Mozhen locked the door.She sank down on the chair by the door, never taking her eyes off the telegram.Eleanor was knocking on the door, calling Immogene's name.Yin Mozhen read it again. □□□ November 17, 1916 Yin Mozhen.Soames︱Anderson 18 Cavendish Square, London W Albert XVII Hospital, injured but recovering Disregard any subsequent correspondence to the contrary Ashley, who is truly indestructible to you