They had no comfort for him, and Lij Mikhael listened with a great
weight growing in his chest.
At last he gestured for silence. "Is the telephone line to Sardi still
open? "he asked.
"The Gallas have not yet cut it. It does not follow the railway line
but crosses the spur of Ambo Sacal. They must have overlooked it."
"Have me connected with the Sardi station I must speak to somebody
there. I must know exactly what is happening in the gorge."
He left the group of officers beside the railway tracks and walked a
short way along the Sardi spur.
Down there, a few short miles away, the close members of his family his
father, his brothers, his daughter were risking their lives to buy him
the time he needed. He wondered what price they had already paid, and
suddenly, a mental picture of his daughter sprang into his mind Sara,
young and lithe and laughing. Firmly he thrust the thought aside and
he turned to look back at the endless file of bedraggled figures that
shuffled along the Dessie road. They were in no condition to defend
themselves, they were helpless as cattle "Until they could be
regrouped, fed and re-armed in spirit.
No, if the Italians came now it would be the end.
"Excellency, the line to Sardi is open. Will you speak? Lij
Mikhael turned back and went to where a field telephone had been hooked
into the Sardi-Dessie telephone line. The copper wires dangled down
from the telegraph poles overhead, and Lij Mikhael took the handset
that the officer handed him and spoke quietly into the mouthpiece.
Beside the station master's office in the railway yards of Sardi town
stood the long cavernous warehouse used for the storage of grain and
other goods. The roof and walls were clad with corrugated galvanized
iron which had been daubed a dull rusty red with oxide paint.
The floor was of raw concrete, and tire cold mountain wind whistled in
through the joints in the corrugated sheets.
At a hundred places, the roof leaked where the galvanizing had rusted
away, and the rain dripped steadily forming icy puddles on the bare
concrete floor.
There were almost six hundred wounded and dying men crowded into the
shed. There was no bedding or blankets, and empty grain bags served
the purpose. They lay in long lines on the hard concrete, and the cold
came up through the thin jute bags, and the rain dripped down upon them
from the high roof.
There was no sanitation, no bed pans, no running water, and most of the
men were too weak to hobble out into the slush of the goods yard. The
stench was a solid tangible thing that permeated the clothing and clung
in a person's hair long after he had left the shed.
There was no antiseptic, no medicine not even a bottle of Lysol or a
packet of Aspro. The tiny store of medicines at the missionary
hospital had long ago been exhausted. The German doctor worked on into
each night with no anaesthetic and nothing to combat the secondary
infection.
Already the stink of putrefying wounds was almost as strong as the
other stench.
The most hideous injuries were the burns inflicted by the nitrogen
mustard. All that could be done was to smear the scalded and blistered
flesh with locomotive grease. They had found two drums of this in the
loco shed.
Vicky Camberwell had slept for three hours two days ago.
Since then, she had worked without ceasing amongst the long pitiful
lines of bodies. Her face was deadly pale in the gloom of the shed,
and her eyes had receded into dark bruised craters. Her feet were
swollen from standing so long, and her shoulders and her back ached
with a dull unremitting agony. Her linen dress was stained with specks
of dried blood, and other less savoury secretions and she worked on, in
despair that there was so little they could do for the hundreds of
casualties.
She could help them to drink the water they cried out for, clean those
that lay in their own filth, hold a black pleading hand as the man
died, and then pull the coarse jute sacking up over his face and signal
one of the over, worked male orderlies to carry him away and bring in
another from where they were already piling up on the open stoep of the
shed.
One of the orderlies stooped over her now, shaking her shoulder
urgently, and it was some seconds before she could understand what he
was saying. Then she pushed herself stiffly up off her knees, and
stood for a moment holding the small of her back with both hands while
the pain there eased, and the dark giddiness in her head abated. Then
she followed the orderly out across the muddy fouled yard to the
station office.
She lifted the telephone receiver to her ear and her voice was husky
and slurred as she said her name.
"Miss Camberwell, this is Lij Mikhael here." His voice was scratchy
and remote, and she could hardly catch the words, for the rain still
rattled on the iron roof above her head. "I am at the Dessie
crossroads."
"The train," she said, her voice firming. Lij Mikhael,
where is the train you promised? We must have medicine antiseptic,
anaesthetic don't you understand? There are six hundred wounded men
