Before very long the marching column broke up, and Frank’s group was led to a series of field hospitals, tents erected in the fields. The MP who brought them there briskly summarised orders he read from a sheet. ‘Get yourselves set up. You’ve got a water supply and oil heaters, or should do, check it all over. Tents over here, beds over there, supplies and whatnot over there. Bandages and a blood store, and knock-out drops and surgeons’ saws…’
Not all the medical staff were terribly experienced, Frank saw, and some of them paled as these words were delivered with gruesome relish. ‘That’s enough, Corporal, we get the idea.’
‘Then get to it.’ At the last minute the MP remembered to salute his senior officer, and made to turn away.
‘Hold on,’ Frank said. ‘What about the rest of it?’
‘What rest of it?’
‘We’ve been on our feet all day.’
‘And I’ve been walking around shouting at people, sir, and you don’t hear me complaining.’
‘We’ve only eaten once—’
‘Field kitchens over there.’ He pointed. ‘You can work out your own rota for that. Lavatories thataway.’
Frank looked around again; he had the sinking feeling he was missing something obvious, and was on the point of making a fool of himself. ‘Yes, but – where do we sleep, Corporal?’
The MP stared at him, and grinned. ‘No sleep for any of us tonight, Captain. Balloon goes up at midnight. Or rather, something big and fat and heavy from Mars comes down at midnight. Then we’ve got the nineteen-hour window, and when that’s done – why, then I reckon we’ll all be due a good kip.’
Midnight, Frank thought. So they were coming at midnight, just like before – just as Walter had noted. Looking around at the young, apprehensive faces around him – many of them could only have been children last time – he kept his sudden nervousness to himself. Nineteen-hour window, though: what could that mean?
It was late afternoon and the light was already fading. Seeing that he would get no more from the MP, he briskly set Verity, the junior MOs and the rest to organising the field hospitals and their equipment – hoping very much that he gave the impression that he knew what he was talking about – and then went stomping off to find ‘somebody in charge’, as he would later note in his journal.
He came upon a kind of command post: a lot of senior officers, and map tables and field telephones and wireless units and telegraphs, and a coffee urn. It took some moments before a young officer called Fairfield, a lieutenant-colonel, took pity on him. ‘Sorry about this, Doctor – Captain. The trouble is we are running around a bit to get organised, and you MO types don’t fit easily into the command structure.’ He was perhaps a decade younger than Frank, with a clipped public school accent and an air of wry amusement. ‘Coffee?’
‘No, thank you, sir.’
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘You do?’
‘Good job it’s not raining, what? Although it will be raining Martians soon enough.’
‘Where, sir? Where is the cylinder coming down? I know the telescopic spotters have been tracking them.’
Fairfield raised an eyebrow. ‘Not so much “cylinder” as “cylinders”, Doctor. But the one that interests us seems to be heading slap bang for the middle of Uxbridge, which is bad luck for that unlovely town. Population’s already been evacuated, by the way, off to the north, so you don’t need to worry about them.’ He glanced up. ‘Closer to the hour we’ll have planes up there, even a Zeppelin I’m told, courtesy of the Kaiser. They might give us a better fix.’ He eyed Frank. ‘To be honest I’m not sure how well you’ve been briefed.’
‘Hardly at all.’
‘Well, that’s typical. What you do need to know is that a regular arrangement for treating the wounded has already been established. You have aid posts at the front itself – that is, the site where we have our best guess about where the cylinder will come down – and behind that, within stretcher-bearer distance, you have casualty clearing stations, and behind that it’s ambulances back to the field hospitals, which is where you come in. You haven’t drawn the short straw, you see, Doctor – the forward staff, the MOs and the rest, are already at the front-line clearing stations.’
Frank nodded. ‘Thank you. That’s clear enough. The MP said a couple of other things. Nineteen hours ’
‘He has been talkative, hasn’t he? I’m told that after the first cylinder fell last time, near Woking—’
‘At Horsell Common.’
‘It took that long, you see, for the Martians to unscrew the bally thing, and for the Heat-Ray gun and other nasties to start poking out, and for those fighting-machines to climb out and stretch their legs and get to work. So this time we should have that window of opportunity, to shell the thing while they’re helpless.’
Frank felt suspicious of his confident tone. ‘If all goes as it did last time—’
‘Of course I would hope we will finish the thing off in two hours, not nearly twenty.’ He asked blandly, ‘Is there anything else, Doctor?’
‘You said “cylinders”. There was only one at a time before.’
‘Ah. Well, that is something new. The astronomers have been definite about this, if a little late in the day. Can’t blame them for that, I suppose.’ He faced Frank. ‘There are more than fifty of ’em coming in, all across this part of the country.’
Fifty. Frank remembered his brother’s talk of the array of cannons spread across Mars, firing night after night, and the fleets of cylinders perhaps forming up in space. And now that deadly barrage had crossed interplanetary space and was about to fall here. Fifty together! And from what Walter had said there would be another fifty following after…
The Lieutenant-Colonel clapped his shoulder. ‘Anyhow, we only have one to worry about.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Now look, if there’s nothing else urgent…’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Carry on, Captain Jenkins.’
Once the sun had gone down, it felt like a long wait until midnight.
Frank’s staff had got the field hospital organised as well as it could be, and he was relieved there had been no significant balls-up with the supplies. But there was only so often he could check and recheck it all. At about seven, he gratefully accepted Verity’s idea of mounting a few exercises, with volunteers playing the roles of incoming wounded. The VADs especially went at this with a will, if inexpertly. Frank knew that there could be gruesome accidents at munitions plants, but he had the impression that most of the VADs had little experience much beyond their training.
At nine he encouraged those who felt like it to use the hospital beds to nap. Few could sleep, though several lay down.
At ten he ordered his people to eat, have coffee or water. He caught one of the junior doctors with a hip flask, which he confiscated and locked away in a chest, promising to hand it back after the ‘battle’, as they were calling it – unless some wounded had a greater need of the rather good brandy it contained.
At eleven he ordered his staff to use the latrines, in a rota. He murmured to Verity, ‘But of course I’m expecting rather a few loose bladders before the night is out, come what may.’
As midnight approached, the two of them tucked in behind a barricade of sand bags, looking north-west. They both had medical bags at their sides, and they wore regulation steel helmets. The sky was clear that Sunday night, with only a light mist obscuring the stars.