Who would be gone?

He steadied the beam of the torch and then knelt. Over his shoulder I could see a man’s arm just visible in an opening in the sheet wrapping him. I was surprised. And then I realized why the sheet was unwinding-it hadn’t been done up properly in the first place. Reaching beneath the corpse above, Private Wilson managed to uncover the body so that I could just pick out a shoulder, throat, and, finally, the side of a face.

“He’s not an influenza victim,” Private Wilson said. “Look at him.”

He reached out to pull the sheet wider for a better view, shifting the body above this one and nearly starting an avalanche of the dead. I caught my breath until the swaying stopped.

He was right.

This one corpse among so many showed none of the darkening of the skin of the Spanish Influenza victim. Instead his head lolled as Private Wilson worked with him, and I realized that his neck must have been broken.

That was odd. For one thing, we seldom saw such a wound, and for another, he would have died instantly. There would have been no reason for the forward aid station to send him on to us.

“I don’t understand-” I began doubtfully, then stopped as Private Wilson’s torch settled on the face of the corpse.

I knew this man!

Even in the shielded light of the torch, I was sure.

And I was just as sure that he’d never been a patient here. I would have recognized him straightaway. Or if he’d been in another ward, one of the other sisters would have said something to me. They knew I was always on the lookout for anyone who served in my father’s old regiment. Then why was he lying among our dead?

I stood there, my tired mind trying to absorb this shock. Finally it occurred to me that he’d indeed been wounded and that in the ambulance something had happened-a freak accident when the driver hit a deep hole, a fall from the upper berth onto the steel floor. But if that was true, where were the bruises to support it?