“An Iron Cross,” said Blackburn, touching it as though he couldn't believe it was real. The Iron Cross was the highest award for bravery a Hun could receive, earned on the field killing British soldiers. Some German had traded it for Mother Mary's protection.

  Cheevers placed a bullet at her feet. “It's the one meant for me. If I leave it here, my number won't come up.” I knew he was thinking of his brother. I thought of mine.

  “Poppycock!” Blackburn spouted. “It'll do nothing to alter your chances.”

  I reached in my pocket and found my mother's handkerchief. I couldn't leave that; Reverend Ashford had said it would bring me luck. I had to leave something, though. If I didn't, Mother Mary wouldn't smile on me and I'd surely die.

  I jammed my hand in my breast pocket and found Emily's locket. I took one look at her; she was more beautiful than the statue. I closed the lid and returned it to my pocket. I couldn't survive without being able to look at her.

  I reached inside my shirt and snapped off my green identity disk, the one that would be buried with my body. I placed it at Mary's feet, hoping she'd tell her son to watch over me.

  “It's nothing but superstition,” Blackburn hissed. “They'll probably sell everything after we're gone.”

  The nun turned her head, nodding rhythmically to herself. Her pupils were almost completely white, but she stared straight at us. I shuddered a bit. Was she somehow seeing our souls?

  “Let's get out of here,” Blackburn said. We followed him through the door and up into daylight.

  9

  A week of patrols passed. The weather was growing hotter, and both sides appeared to be happy playing one giant staring game. We knew it couldn't last. General Allenby was waiting for the Turks to blink.

  One evening, Pitts, horseshoes clinking in a sack, poked his head into our tent. “Bathe, these came for you.” He held out two letters.

  “Thanks! Thanks!” My heart raced at the mere sight of them.

  Cheevers didn't even lift his head. He just sat on his cot, spinning his saber.

  One letter was from Emily and had been sent some time earlier. It had probably been gathering dust in a depot in Cairo. I could have had it weeks earlier! The other was addressed in another woman's handwriting. I panicked for a moment, thinking it might be from the Daughters of the Empire regarding my father, but it had been stamped in Gnmsby. I couldn't think of anyone I knew there.

  I opened the envelope from Emily and caught a whiff of perfume.

  “Why the sniffing, Bathe? Did you let one go?” Cheevers asked.

  “Shut up, Cheevers!”

  I unfolded the letter.

  May 14, 1918

  Dear Edward,

  1 have finally found time to write you! How are you? 1 miss you. As always, we are kept extremely busy and 1 wish 1 had more time to write, to rest, or to breathe, even. But the Germans are within shelling distance. Aeroplanes buzz like wasps. One patient grabbed me with his good arm and hissed, “There's thousands of them coming. Thousands!” As proof of their advance, there are always more ambulance trains, more wounded to sort from the dead, the near dead, and those with a spark of life. Hard choices have to be made about whom to give attention.

  At night 1 stoke the fire in the patients' rooms, do rounds of bedpans, and prepare food on the beastly black oil stoves. But acute surgery, of which 1 have been doing more and more, is the hardest work. 1 have quick, sure hands, the doctors appreciate that, and 1 keep my wits about me, even though 1 am often staring down at some poor boy who has lost a leg, or his eyes, or who has been torn to shreds by shrapnel and become one large, living wound. Often, at the end of a night when we have only saved one or two men, I am wracked with despair. The cases of mustard gas are the worst, with their eyelids all stuck together, their lips blistered, their lungs fighting to breathe. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me sane is thinking of you.

  I know how you long to be in France, but I am so glad you are in Palestine. It must be safer than this. The cases of septic wounds and trench foot are horrible. We would not put our cattle in such conditions, and yet we force men to live and fight there.

  Please don't mistake me as completely downhearted. I do have hope. The day the guns finally stop will be a great one. Your letters have given me hope, too—hope that I will see you again, hope that the time when people just talk on benches about simple things will return. Like birthdays! You forgot mine; it was April 12. I guess I might have forgotten to tell you the date. I'll gladly accept a late present! I can't believe I'm … ha, I'm not telling you my age until I find out yours.

  So you whisper to your horse about me. How sweet! As I hope you know by now, I do think of you often, and I wonder if we are perhaps falling in love, even though we are so far apart. I don't know, but I hope so. See, I have hope. I hope to hold you again; then I will know. I hope to go to your ranch, to look out across the prairie and see the sun rise. There, I said it, or wrote it. I have hope.

  You are good, Edward. As simple as that. And in this world we have to hang on to the things that are good. I understand that more than ever now.

  I miss you greatly,

  Emily

  I read the letter again and read the last paragraph three times. I wanted to write her back immediately, to say I was feeling the same way about us. I even considered shelling out the money for a cable. I had hope, too. And love.

  Then I remembered the other letter. Still stunned and in bliss from Emily's words, I opened it and read:

  May 23, 1918

  Dear Edward,

  You don't know me. I'm Vera Falls, and I used to work with Emily in Grimsby and later at Etaples. I know you were a good friend of hers. In fact, on a number of occasions, she spoke of you as “my trooper” or “that handsome colonial.”

  I have sad news. I don't know how to say this. There is only one way, I guess. Emily died a week ago, on the 19th of May. She was attending to her duty in surgery, operating on a wounded soldier. We were overcrowded with patients; we always are. Our camp was bombed by a Hun plane, and even though the bombs were heard approaching, she refused to give up her post. I'm afraid our ward was hit, and she, the doctor, and the patient were killed outright. Her body was sent back to Cleethorpes and she was buried near her family home.

  I have no words to express how much I miss her. I am sure you feel the same way. She worked very hard. She was an excellent nurse. She made us laugh. I am truly sorry to have to pass this news on to you. If there is anything further I can do, please contact me.

  Sincerely,

  Vera Falls

  I began to shake uncontrollably. The harder I tried to stop it, the more I shook. I tried to wet my throat so that I could cough, but to no avail.

  Emily was dead. Dead. One bomb, falling out of the sky, just like that. I knew about explosions now. I knew what they did to the body. I'd seen it on the Mercian. Her face torn; her arms shattered. Her beautiful legs. Gone.

  Her eyes. Her lips. Her laugh. Gone, forever.

  I shook and sobbed as quietly as I could. Flies landed on me, sucking my sweat. She had died weeks earlier and I hadn't felt it in my heart. How could that be?

  “Edward.” A whisper. I couldn't tell if it was Blackburn or Cheevers. Tears stained my cheeks. I didn't want to face them.

  “Edward, are you all right?”

  A hand touched my shoulder. I turned to find Blackburn looking down at me. I lowered the letter.

  Blackburn sat back down on his cot. Cheevers looked over at me. I rubbed my arm across my eyes; my mother's face flashed inside my eyelids. How I longed for her to hold me.

  “What is it?” Blackburn's voice was surprisingly gentle. “News from home?”

  “She's dead. My girl.”

  “That's hard news.” Cheevers reached out and patted my arm. “Really tough to hear. How'd it happen?”

  “A bomb. A Hun bomb.” It was so difficult to spit it out.

  “Oh, I'm so sorry,” Blackburn said. “I know … I know you were very enamored of her. She must've been a fine girl.”

  I folded the letter.

  “If you need anything,” Blackburn said, “just ask, Edward. Anything.” I had never seen him so concerned. He always had his disdainful nose in a book. Not now.

  “We'll get our revenge!” Cheevers promised.

  The tent was too small. I rushed outside, not bothering to close the netting properly. The pitiless sun was finally setting. Some troopers were shoveling holes; others were hauling water. I walked to the picket line, my head down. When I found Buke, I wrapped my arms around his neck and sobbed, hoping no one would hear. He stood still, his heart beating, his neck warm, his familiar smell a comfort. “She's dead, Buke, she's dead.”

  I dabbed my eyes with my mother's handkerchief. I would never see Emily again; God had taken her, claimed her for his own. It was the crudest thing I could imagine.

  10

  A month later, in July, I was sent to hell. Somewhere high above us General Allenby had uttered a command, and next thing we knew we were riding through the Judean hills toward the Jordan Valley.

  “I ear no white man has ever made it through a summer there!” said Pitts, giving Brush Me a kick. His horse was already wasted in the sun.

  “If we're there, it'll spread out the Turks' right flank,” Blackburn explained, as though he were talking to schoolchildren.

  “It'll roast our flanks,” Cheevers said, trying to sound lighthearted. I couldn't even find the strength to chuckle.

  We passed a Roman aqueduct that hadn't seen water in centuries. The sun blazed closer, brighter, and hotter. Heavy air hung over us like a shroud, forcing the sweat from our backs. Chaplain Holmes pointed toward Jericho, excited to see the city, but all I saw were waves of heat.

  As the sun set, we trotted down a long ravine that led to the bottom of the valley. The air became chokingly hot. My uniform was a sweat rag. The trail became so narrow that we moved off the road, waiting by the rums of a solitary stone house for the regiment we were replacing to pass. There was no sign of them in the darkness.

  “Someone was jolter-headed enough to build a home here,” Cheevers scoffed.

  Blackburn laughed. “Wonder if they all died of sunstroke?”

  I sat on one of the stones, holding Buke's reins. A mosquito landed on my arm and I watched it suck my blood. I was too tired to give it a swat. How many had bitten me by then? A thousand?

  Blackburn waved his hand at the swarm. “Our little winged pests will dictate our battle tactics.”

  Cheevers nudged me. “Ears up, Bathe! Blackburn is giving us another lecture.”

  “Don't get smart! I'm just saying it takes ten days or so for a trooper to succumb to malaria. Once we cross into the Turk trenches, hordes of mosquitoes will be waiting for us with new strains of malaria.”

  “Mosquitoes?” Cheevers gave me another nudge. “Oh, no!”

  “Allenby is thinking about them. He's probably calculated he'll only have ten days or so to bust up the Turk lines because by that time, half his force will have malaria.”

  Watching several mosquitoes suck at my hand, I said, “Unless we all get it before the big push starts.”

  “He spoke!” Cheevers gave me another nudge, and I nearly smacked him. “Did you hear that, Blackburn? Bathe actually squeaked! He's been silent as a worm for weeks.”

  Before I could say anything the cloppmg of hundreds of hooves echoed from the trail. Riders in slouch hats appeared—Aussie Light Horsemen.

  “What news from the Valley of Death?” Cheevers called out as they passed.

  The Aussies stared ahead as though they might teeter off their horses if they took their eyes off the path. Their Walers, which stood taller than our mounts, were thin, the men even thinner. I'd never seen so many Aussies in such a dour mood.

  “What outfit are you?” another trooper shouted.

  Again, no reply. At the tail end of the column was a line of twelve ambulance wagons with three men per wagon laying squashed together, eyes closed. I couldn't tell if they were sick or dead. Finally, from the back of the last wagon, one lone voice could be heard, singing so terribly out of tune I nearly covered my ears:

  “The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling

  For you but not for me;

  And the little devils, how they sing-a-ling-a-ling

  For you but not for me.

  O Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling,

  O Grave, thy victor-ee?

  The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling

  For you but not for me.”

  As we lost sight of the men, the squeaking wheels and tuneless voice slowly faded away.

  One last straggling Aussie on a pack mule clopped past us. “It's all yours, Tommies,” he said hoarsely, “the land that God forgot.”

  With his words echoing in our ears, we mounted and followed the path into the valley. On the other side of the rums, Dr. Purves and two orderlies tried to wake up a trooper who appeared to have fainted.

  It was a long ride before the Jordan Valley opened around us, distant shadowy hills lit by moonlight. It was well past midnight, but still it grew hotter. I had to work to suck in the heavy air.

  We found our camp of bell tents, and it dawned on me that the Aussies had left the place hours before. The Turks could have moved in while we were in the hills.

  “Can't wait for daylight,” Cheevers said. “I'm sure that'll bring a break from this heat.”

  We fed and watered our horses, working through the night because the day would be too hot for us to lift a finger. As the sun rose it revealed a desolation only the Devil could've dreamed up: a low, flat valley of white marl and salt, spotted with swamp, stony plain, patches of dense scrub, and a thin layer of dry grass. The land had never known ram. Lumps of dried flesh—dead camels—lay here and there as though dropped from the sky, a sky that had never seen a cloud. A hot breath of wind drove the salty dust into my eyes. Occasionally, a thirteen-pounder gun would roar just to let the Turks know that His Majesty's troops were still here.

  Our section spent the morning oiling open water to kill the mosquito larvae. Flies and hornets attacked us, and under every stone lurked spiders, scorpions, or centipedes with huge pincers, the true rulers of this valley.

  When we returned to our tents we learned that the man who had passed out in the valley had died. “Just gave up the ghost,” Pitts said. “Bembridge from B Squadron. His constitution couldn't take it. They'll bury him at Jericho.”

  We were too sluggish to do much more than nod sadly. Had I known him? Trooper Bembridge. Poor sod.

  It became so hot that we were ordered to rest in our tents. I stripped naked, but that only gave the sand flies more flesh to feast on. I tried to imagine playing hockey or making angels in the snow, to little effect. Even Cheevers couldn't get a wink in.

  It didn't matter; whenever I closed my eyes I saw Emily, with a sad smile on her face. She'd been tattooed to my eyelids, to my thoughts. I couldn't escape the weight of my sorrow. I had often written letters to her in my head, but now I had no words for anyone, and no future to think about.

  I recalled the moment I'd set my identification disk at Mother Mary's feet. I'd prayed for my safety, but why hadn't I prayed for Emily's? If I had, perhaps God would have tapped the bomb and turned it into a dud. It would have taken only the slightest effort for him to save her. Nothing more than a flick of the wrist. A bile filled my mouth.

  Reveille sounded in the late afternoon, and I stumbled out into the oven, blinking away sweat. I passed a thermometer on a post. At the 115-degree mark someone had drawn an arrow and written: This is where brains boil. The thermometer read 132.

  We layered three blankets on our horses' backs to prevent heatstroke. Buke's dark color sucked up every ounce of sweltering hotness, and he looked as though he'd been galloping for hours.

  At lunch we had tea, which somehow seemed to cool my insides. When I opened my tin of bully beef I discovered that the meat had melted into a dripping soggy blob of fat. A mass of buzzing, fighting vermin attacked it, and I shook them off the tin, quickly forking two bites. The flies beat about inside my mouth, forcing me to spit it out.

  “Don't waste food, Bathe.” Hargreaves was standing over me, holding two halters. “You and Cheevers, come along. We have to get the lieutenant's horses.”

  I left my half-empty tin to the flies, and we trudged up a hill peppered with lava rock. Below us, troopers on horseback and lines of wagons trotted through the valley, raising a column of dust. “That's a ruse, to make the Turks think we're a battalion,” Hargreaves explained. “Don't get on my bad side or you'll be eating dust with them.” He laughed. It seemed as if ten years had passed since he'd killed that Turk.

  We walked by a thousand or so horses made of reeds, complete with fake saddles and feed bags. It looked as though they were grazing on the hillside. The few Hun planes that spied on us would surely be fooled. Hargreaves kicked one of the horses over. “If the Turks have fallen for it, we'll be outnumbered three or four to one, but don't let that bother you.”

  “Bother me?” Cheevers said. “I'd welcome a tea party with Johnny Turk. We could stick bayonets in their bellies and use them as parasols.”

  Hargreaves clapped him on the back and handed across the halters. “We need more ugly buggers like you! Go get the horses.”

  Cheevers charged up the hill, and Hargreaves squinted toward the Turkish side of the valley. “Won't be long before we give 'em all a good pounding, Bathe. Then we can get out of this hell hole they call the Holy Land.”

  I wasn't sure if he was trying to begin a conversation or not, so I kept quiet.

  “Are you gettm' on well these days?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Good. I want my men to be fightm' fit and ready to spit fire. If you have any complaints, come to me. Do you understand?” He put a hand on my shoulder and I cringed a little.