The Saint Great War AU.

[titusnowl]

My darling Patricia,

You know I'm not much of a correspondent - I'd much rather being making the news than reporting it - but something has happened that I know will never make the paper, and it deserves to be commemorated.

Yesterday in the early evening, the Boches were shelling us pretty heavily, that being their idea of a fine weekend entertainment; and someone from one of the other companies had somehow gotten himself stuck out in No Man's Land while the Germans considered going over the top and we all considered sneaking out the back way. Roger and Norman and I went out to extricate the poor old thing, but a shell struck just in front of us as we were on our way up.

When the dust cleared, we were more or less alright - all of us alive, at any rate, and in a nice new sheltering crater - but one look at Norman's leg and you knew the lad was for it. "Well, there's a Blighty one for you," Roger told him; and it would have been that, if there were a snowball's chance of getting him off to the medics in time; so I did what I could with my flask and his bandages, trying to build stretchers in my mind the whole time, but I swear to you, lass, when I looked at Norman he was smiling.

"They're calling retreat," said Roger a moment later; and I stuck my nose out of our crater for a looky-loo, and he was right. The Jerries had taken the nearest trench, and our boys were piling back; I don't know how we three had been overlooked in the mess, unless it were just one of those mad bits of luck that you'll find in this bloody war, but we'd got put behind the new enemy line somehow.

Now, if the three of us had been whole, we would have had just about that forementioned snowball's chance, and we would have taken it immediately - jumping up like jack-in-the-boxes and whooping "All for one and one for all" and throwing ourselves through that line with all the vim and vigor and joy in battle that we shopsoiled musketeers can still muster after these months in the trenches; but with Norman's leg shattered as it was, there was no question.

But I told you, love, that he was smiling. His face was white as death, his fingers were twisted up in the sleeve of my tunic like they'd been set in molten lead, and his eyes were like saucers, but he was smiling. He got his hands loose of my uniform and put them to work checking the bolt of his rifle; and he looked at Roger, and he looked at me, and he said: "Go."

And so, God help us, we went.

I don't know what I thought. Maybe I thought he was planning to lie low, that we could come back for him or something. Maybe I thought - perish the idea as below me, and particularly below Norman Kent - he was going to surrender in hopes of getting some medical attention. Maybe I didn't think anything at all. But we went.

And behind us, as soon as we'd begun, we heard Norman's Enfield start to work.

By God, he held the line.

His fire broke the Boches up, and Roger and I plunging through them in the wrong direction broke them more, and our lads saw their chance and stopped the retreat and took back that trench. By God, Norman held the line.

In all of the confusion, I couldn't tell when that one lone rifle ceased its fire; but we found him afterward, empty clips all around, bayonet fixed; still smiling.

What did we gain for his sacrifice?  One bloody trench, that we'll probably fight and kill and die for all over again tomorrow.  But, by God, he held it while he could.




I'm fine.  So is Roger.  Give our love to Orace.

Yours,
Cpt. Simon Templar