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act of will. There were things to do today, things to keep the mind and the emotions busy. "I've been with Major Wetherall; I don't know where Charlie is."
    "Oi'll fin dim Bert said happily, knowing he carried the most precious thing on the whole battlefield.
    Joseph had only a quarter of an hour to wait before an ambulance showed up, and since they had only two injured to carry, he was able to beg a lift back to the casualty clearing station, which was, in effect, a small mobile hospital. They had just recently come into full use.
    He asked the first nurse he saw. She was a tall, striking-looking woman. Not until she spoke did he realize she was American.
    "Can I help you, Captain?"
    "Yes, please, nurse .. ." He hesitated, liking to call people by name.
    "Marie O'Day," she told him.
    "Irish?" he said with surprise. He must have mistaken the accent.
    She smiled, and it lit her face. "No, my husband's people were, way back. He drives one of the ambulances. Who are you looking for?"
    "Private Corliss, the sapper brought in with his hand crushed, yesterday."
    The light in her vanished. "Oh. It's pretty bad. I think three of his fingers are gone. He's not doing so well, Chaplain. He's very low. I'm glad you've come to see him." She hesitated, as if to say more, but was uncertain how to phrase it.
    The fear tightened inside Joseph, knotting his stomach. This was exactly what he was supposed to be able to help: the shock, the despair, the inward wounds the surgeons could not reach. "What is it, Mrs. O'Day? I need to know!"
    "I don't know how it happened, and I don't care," she answered, meeting his eyes with a fierce honesty. "I don't understand how any of these boys have the courage to go over the top, knowing what could happen to them, or along the tunnels under the ground. They're terrified sick, and yet they do it, and they make jokes." Without warning her eyes filled with tears and she turned half away from him. "Sometimes I hear them saying .. ."
    He reached out his hand to touch her arm, then changed his mind. It was too familiar. "What is it you want to tell me, Mrs. O'Day?"
    She blinked several times. "There's a young war correspondent hanging around asking questions. I know they have to, it's their job, and people at home have a right to know what's going on. But he's heard something about self-inflicted wounds, particularly to hands, and he's pushing it." The indecision was still in her face, the need to say more, or perhaps it was the will that he should understand without her doing so.
    Joseph remembered Sam's fear, and his own. He had seen men paralysed with terror, their bodies unable to move, or keep control of their functions. The underground tunnels were more than some men could take; the horror of being buried alive was worse than being shot for cowardice. He did not even know what Prentice was asking, or what he intended to write, and yet Joseph came close to hating him already.
    "I'll find him," he promised. "War correspondents don't have any rights to be this far forward. They're civilians. Any officer can order them out, and I will, if he's being a nuisance."
    Marie drew in her breath quickly to explain.
    "I know," he assured her. "We don't know how Corliss lost his fingers, and I'm not certain that we want to."
    She relaxed. It was what she needed. "Thank you, Captain. I'll take you to him." She turned and led the way out of the door, along a path of wooden boards and into another hut with cots along either side. Joseph knew already that it was immediately next to the operating theatre. He saw Corliss on one of the beds, lying on his side, his face turned away. The fair-haired figure of Prentice, in the middle of the floor, was easily recognizable by his clean uniform, if nothing else. He was talking to a soldier with his arm in a sling. He looked round as they came in and his face lit with anticipation.
    "Ah! The chaplain again," he said eagerly, dismissing the soldier and moving towards Joseph. "Have you