Salvation Equation - Chapter 23. Please Come Back Alive

It was difficult to concentrate on days when there was no reply to the letters she sent. On those days, Madeline had to work harder and study harder. Isabel was a reliable partner, but Madeline couldn’t tell her her secrets.

 

One day, Isabel poked Madeline on the side and they had

sweet milk tea and talked all night long.

 

“It’s so sad that this isn’t whiskey. His distribution.”

 

“… ha.”

 

Alcohol was scarce during the war. This was because all the raw materials were used as disinfectants. The two chatted for a while. Isabel murmured.

 

“I don’t want to talk about this, do you have a man?”

 

“A man?”

 

“Not my brother. I’m not curious about that.”

 

“….”

 

Isabel chuckled as Madeline’s face turned red.

 

“lan only sends me postcards. ‘Everything is going well, it’s okay… Take good care of the house and take good care of mother’. That’s it.” (Isabel)

 

Isabel lifted her fingers as if she was craving for cigarettes. She posed a sensible question.

 

“Aren’t you doing well with my brother?”

 

“What?”

 

“I’ve never seen lan act like that.”

 

Isabel shrugged. Her intelligent green eyes twinkled darkly.

 

“My brother is a conservative person. He never acts against his interests.”

 

“….”

 

“He’s not the type to send letters to a woman who refused his proposal. Besides, he’s on the battlefield.”

 

“It’s for comfort. And Isabel. Mr. Nottingham and I are good friends now.”

 

“Friends.”

 

Isabel opened her mouth in surprise. Madeline shook her head.

 

“Well, I hope you have a beautiful friendship. Honestly, I don’t understand it from my point of view.”

 

“Do you think there is no camaraderie between a man and a woman, Isabel?”

 

“Then I have nothing to say.”

 

Isabel wrinkled her nose and smiled. She whispered to Madeline.

 

“When the war is over, I will live with my lover. There will be things you can do based on what you learn here.”

 

Can she answer that question? Madeline just nodded cautiously.

 

It was hard to fathom what kind of fire of passion was burning behind Isabel’s splendid and intelligent face.

 

Madeline felt a little envious. Jealousy, envy. Whatever it was called, it was just a shabby feeling.

 

‘Can I shine like this?’

 

But Madeline didn’t have the courage.

 

***

 

There was a great battle on the banks of the Som River. A battle in a war, a battle that ripped horizontally and vertically between boring trench warfare and everyday life.

 

Killing in battle. The smell of filth and blood and chlorine gas. It was not possible to bury all the human corpses when they swept the ground.

 

The rats ate the corpses and gained weight and attacked the soldiers. The mines explode from the ground. The shattered ashes of their comrades would be scattered over their heads.

 

There were no gods and no honor of the country.

 

****

 

Madeline looked at her hands. It was rough, hard hands. Working man’s hands.

 

She became very friendly with the people she was working with. She became close friends with Isabel, Emma and Carla.

 

Now, about two years after the outbreak of the war, the mansion had been transformed into a complete hospital.

 

Madeline was stunned. The castle of the monster that lived in her previous life turned into a clean and bustling hospital.

 

It felt like the trajectory of her life had changed drastically.

 

Madeline put her outstretched hand back on the handle of the wheelchair. Sergeant James Gordon was a delightful man.

 

He would be a much nicer person if he wasn’t always flirting because he wanted to smoke. Without two legs, he always liked to take a walk on a wheelchair like this.

 

“I want to go back to my home, Miss nurse.”

 

James murmured as he looked up at the horizon hill.

 

“Me too.”

 

Madeline said somberly. Loenfield Mansion. A place she would never see again.

 

Madeline quietly recalled the old days. The seemingly never-ending social season, the colorfully dressed nobles, and their high-spirited vanity. She missed it a little.

 

“I don’t think there’s anything like a cigarette to remember my hometown.”

 

“Ha….”

 

Madeline sighed.

 

She looked around.  They went for a walk quite a distance from the hospital, and there were no other people around.

 

She pulled out a pack of cigarettes that she had secretly hidden from her pocket. Cigarettes were difficult to obtain in the private sector at a time like these days.

 

“Here you go.”

 

“Wow!”

 

“Never tell other people.”

 

James put a cigarette in his mouth and then lit it with a lighter. He smiled as he exhaled a cool breeze of cigarette smoke. He then snorted.

 

“Why are you being so nice to me? Also, I’m handsome…”

 

“You will be discharged soon.”

 

Of course, Madeleine never accepted anyone’s proposal. The two chatted for a while.

 

***

 

—Officers took the lead. We started firing. And all you have to do is load and reload the ammunition. They fell by the hundreds. There was no need to aim.

 

– A German machine gunner, recalling the Battle of Som.

 

After a while, no one stood still.

 

-Edmund Blundon, Recalling the Battle of Som.

 

Source: [World War I Trapped in the Trench]

 

—-

 

Every time Madeline heard the news of the battle in the Som River, her blood felt dry. Thousands of people have died in nearly a month. Thousands of people! They collapsed in vain in front of Gatling machine guns.

 

Charge, forward. It was a step towards death.

 

The letters continued to be written like a daily prayer. It didn’t matter if there was no reply. Today she saw a certain patient, the weather was so beautiful, she ate this kind of food, etc.

 

They were useless stories, but she hoped that the daily life of the home country written in print would give Ian meaning even as much as a grain of dust. She didn’t know maybe she could feel a kind of friendship that goes beyond sympathizing with the man or feeling responsible.

 

Friendship, fellowship..such things. Just as she endured him for 6 years, she wanted to thank you for enduring her, too.

 

‘Please come back alive… Come back alive…’

 

And what?

 

Unfinished sentences hung on the tip of her tongue. What was she going to do if Ian came back alive?

 

She couldn’t answer. An unfinished sentence hung around her throat.

 

****

 

The squad advancing in front was nowhere to be seen. Everyone was divided by the majesty of the machine guns. It was hell. Contrary to the hype of the top leaders who were confident that the artillery units had already shaken the enemy’s positions, the German army was already in line. Even the barbed wire and land mines were intact. The army, who tried to break through the destroyed places, was rather a good prey.

 

They managed to cover the squad, but it was almost impossible to come back alive.

 

‘If you come together, you die.’

 

Just by grinding machine guns from side to side, the British army was only falling like leaves.

 

They managed to hide the soldiers behind the terrain, but were not sure if they would survive in the future. Behind them, the soldiers began to cry. When organizing a regiment or a squad, there was a lot of trauma to the barrel composed of people from the same country. It wouldn’t be okay to watch the local friends die right in front of them.

 

“Don’t cry. Listen to me.”

 

Although he was a first-time officer in the front line, the duty to somehow make the people in front of him survive somehow put pressure on the man’s shoulders. lan cried out loudly.

 

“From now on, spread out. Run with all your might to the 3rd trench in front. Use cover, never band together.”

 

Boom!

 

And at that moment, with a roar, filth and dirty soil poured down on the soldiers. There was no time.

 

“Everyone marches forward!”

 

***

 

After the battle, the smoky land was full of corpses. It was a time of crows, rats, and ticks.

 

lan sat in the trench and scribbled something.

 

There were letters that could not be sent. His mind was falling apart day by day but he couldn’t express it.

 

If he collapsed, the soldiers below him would also collapse.

 

Duties of nobility. A noble responsibility didn’t matter.

 

Falling down also meant death. And when you die, you can’t go back. This is where they become food for the rats.

 

After going to the trench, he didn’t know how many times he went back and forth in uninhabited areas to rescue the fallen. He did not have time to praise for a heroic deed.

 

They just laid the bodies roughly in the trenches.

 

There was a kind of paralysis in the uninhabited area. A blank state of mind, without fear or bravery.

 

[Why did you save me?]

 

The soldier with no lower body said that and died. His body had to be thrown outside. Because they couldn’t contaminate the trenches.

 

lan knew that the confidence that had been within him had already disappeared. The progress of mankind and the future of Europe were different from the ideals he had dreamed of.

 

He knew that he was not the one who led the board, but that he was also a subordinate within it.

 

He thought of Madeline sometimes. The woman with her dark honey hair told a shy yet daring story.

 

His eyes were shining with longing, and his mouth was moist as if it were lusting for something he did not know.

 

It was clear what something was.

 

lan smiled bitterly. It was fortunate that he rejected Madeline’s proposal* and that Madeline had rejected his proposal.

 

(*Madeline’s proposal was on the rainy night before Ian went to war. She said that if they’re married, she wanted Ian not to go to war.)

 

Because it seemed like he couldn’t go back from this.

 

He put away the newspaper in front of him. Poems praising the meanness of the Germans and the bravery of the soldiers were disgusting.

 

Rather, he wanted to play a card game at that time.

 

Gambling on the battlefield was a frenzy. The surviving soldiers wanted to prove their luck over and over again. The women’s story was next.

 

lan closed his eyes and slept leaning against the wall of the trench for 10 minutes. With a letter in his hand that had been read and read several times, the paper crumbled.

 

He had a dream. The moment he opened his eyes, he couldn’t remember it.

 

***