A Question of Honor by Charles Todd Page A

the move again. The worst of our cases had stabilized to the point that we could send many of the men back to England for extended care. I was given charge of the convoy.
    Amputees were difficult cases both medically and emotionally. For many of the men it was worse than dying. Keeping them alive was a matter of tending to their bodies and ministering to their minds. We took a chaplain back with us, and he comforted many of the patients. I held others while they cried.
    These men had marched off to war taking into account the fact that they might not come back. When their wounds were such that they had a fair chance of full recovery, they were often impatient to heal and rejoin their men or their comrades in the trenches.
    And while an amputation was a ticket home, in the eyes of the men, it was also failure. They could no longer fight. They had to leave behind friends who were still in the thick of the struggle. Their greatest fear was what they would read in the faces of parents or wives or children who remembered them whole and now saw them shattered. Many of them could never return to the work they had done before the war began. And charity—pity—was something they could not tolerate. The suicide rate was high, and constant vigilance was necessary
    We reached England without losing anyone. And that was only because these were recent amputees who had neither the strength nor the means to kill themselves. Still, there were three who worried me to the point that I gave instructions at the clinic they were sent to for a twenty-four-hour watch over them.
    I left my charges with a heavy heart, knowing the battle still ahead of them, and I was grateful to be given five days of leave before returning to France.
    I longed for home and something to take my mind off war. And so without even letting anyone know I was coming, when I reached London, I took the next train to Somerset. There I cajoled one of the farmers just leaving the town market at the end of the day to give me a lift to the house.
    Iris opened the door to my knock and stood there exclaiming in surprise.
    “Oh, Miss, and never a word—I can’t believe my eyes!”
    She took my kit from me and, still flustered, stood aside to let me step inside. “And your parents off to Oxford only this morning. They’ll be that upset. But I have the number here where they’re to be staying—it’s a funeral, Miss, another one, and your father to deliver the eulogy for the poor Captain—”
    It was clear she expected me to rush to the telephone in my father’s study and try to reach my parents at once. But I couldn’t. The Colonel Sahib never refused to speak for one of his men or anyone in the regiment. The present Colonel was in France, and so my father took on many of the formal duties for him. This meant so much to grieving families. The regiment was a family too.
    “And the Sergeant-Major? Is he in Oxford as well?”
    “I can’t say, Miss. But it’s very likely. It was Captain Saunders who died of his wounds. That’s the name your father left on his desk. Mrs. Saunders, The Beeches, Oxford.”
    He’d been a Lieutenant, Robert Saunders had, who rose quickly through the ranks. His care for his men had been legendary, and he’d been mentioned in dispatches countless times for bravery under fire. I felt his loss myself.
    “We’ll say nothing, Iris, agreed? It would be wrong to interfere with their plans. I need to sleep more than anything, and I can do that here as well as in London.”
    “Yes, Miss,” she said doubtfully.
    “I’ll just go up to my room, and perhaps you could bring me a light tea in a while? I’m starving.”
    “We have fresh eggs, Miss, and there’s vegetable marrow and leek soup that Cook made for dinner. And the last of the red currant jam with scones?”
    “It sounds heavenly.”
    She insisted on carrying my kit up to my room, assuring me that there were fresh sheets on the bed as always, just waiting for me.
    I tried to sleep. Truly I