Cry Wolf

"Excellency, the line to Sardi is open. Will you speak? Lij

Mikhael turned back and went to where a field telephone had been hooked

into the Sardi-Dessie telephone line. The copper wires dangled down

from the telegraph poles overhead, and Lij Mikhael took the handset

that the officer handed him and spoke quietly into the mouthpiece.

Beside the station master's office in the railway yards of Sardi town

stood the long cavernous warehouse used for the storage of grain and

other goods. The roof and walls were clad with corrugated galvanized

iron which had been daubed a dull rusty red with oxide paint.

The floor was of raw concrete, and tire cold mountain wind whistled in

through the joints in the corrugated sheets.

At a hundred places, the roof leaked where the galvanizing had rusted

away, and the rain dripped steadily forming icy puddles on the bare

concrete floor.

There were almost six hundred wounded and dying men crowded into the

shed. There was no bedding or blankets, and empty grain bags served

the purpose. They lay in long lines on the hard concrete, and the cold

came up through the thin jute bags, and the rain dripped down upon them

from the high roof.

There was no sanitation, no bed pans, no ru

men were too weak to hobble out into the slush of the goods yard. The

stench was a solid tangible thing that permeated the clothing and clung

in a person's hair long after he had left the shed.

There was no antiseptic, no medicine not even a bottle of Lysol or a

packet of Aspro. The tiny store of medicines at the missionary

hospital had long ago been exhausted. The German doctor worked on into

each night with no anaesthetic and nothing to combat the secondary

infection.

Already the stink of putrefying wounds was almost as strong as the

other stench.

The most hideous injuries were the burns inflicted by the nitrogen

mustard. All that could be done was to smear the scalded and blistered

flesh with locomotive grease. They had found two drums of this in the

loco shed.

Vicky Camberwell had slept for three hours two days ago.

Since then, she had worked without ceasing amongst the long pitiful

lines of bodies. Her face was deadly pale in the gloom of the shed,

and her eyes had receded into dark bruised craters. Her feet were

swollen from standing so long, and her shoulders and her back ached

with a dull unremitting agony. Her linen dress was stained with specks

of dried blood, and other less savoury secretions and she worked on, in

despair that there was so little they could do for the hundreds of

casualties.

She could help them to drink the water they cried out for, clean those

that lay in their own filth, hold a black pleading hand as the man

died, and then pull the coarse jute sacking up over his face and signal

one of the over, worked male orderlies to carry him away and bring in

another from where they were already piling up on the open stoep of the

shed.

One of the orderlies stooped over her now, shaking her shoulder

urgently, and it was some seconds before she could understand what he

was saying. Then she pushed herself stiffly up off her knees, and

stood for a moment holding the small of her back with both hands while

the pain there eased, and the dark giddiness in her head abated. Then

she followed the orderly out across the muddy fouled yard to the

station office.

She lifted the telephone receiver to her ear and her voice was husky

and slurred as she said her name.

"Miss Camberwell, this is Lij Mikhael here." His voice was scratchy

and remote, and she could hardly catch the words, for the rain still

rattled on the iron roof above her head. "I am at the Dessie

crossroads."

"The train," she said, her voice firming. Lij Mikhael,

where is the train you promised? We must have medicine antiseptic,

anaesthetic don't you understand? There are six hundred wounded men

here. Their wounds are rotting, they are dying like animals." She

recognized the rising hysteria in her voice, and she cut herself off.

"Miss Camberwell. The train I am sorry. I sent it to you.

With supplies. Medicines. Another doctor. It left Dessie yesterday

morning, and passed the crossroads here yesterday evening on its way

down the gorge to Sardi-"

"Where is it, then?" demanded Vicky. "We must have it.

You don't know what it's like here."

"I'm sorry, Miss Camberwell.

The train will not reach you. It was derailed in the mountains fifteen

miles north of Sardi. Ras Kullah's men the Gallas were in ambush.

They had torn up the tracks, they have Fired everybody aboard and

burned the coaches." There was a long silence between them, only the

static hissed and buzzed across the wires.

"Miss Camberwell. Are you there?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand what

I am saying?"

"Yes, I understand."

"There will be no train." "No." Ras

Kullah has cut the road between here and Sardi."

"Yes."

"Nobody can reach you and there is no escape from Sardi up the railway

line.

Ras Kullah has five thousand men to hold it. His position in the

mountains is impregnable. He can hold the road against an army."

"We are cut off," said Vicky thickly. "The Italians in front of us.

The

Gallas behind us." Again the silence between them, then Lij Mikhael

asked, "Where are the Italians now, Miss Camberwell?"

"They are almost at the head of the gorge, where the last waterfall

crosses the road-"

She paused and listened intently, removing the receiver from her ear.

Then she lifted it again. "You can hear the Italian guns. They are

firing all the time now. So very close."

"Miss Camberwell, can you get a message to Major Swales?"

"Yes."

"Tell him I need another eighteen hours. If he can hold the Italians

until noon tomorrow, then they ca

dark tomorrow night. It will give me another day and two nights. If

he can hold until noon, he will have discharged with honour all his

obligations to me, and you will all have earned the undying gratitude

of the Emperor and all the peoples of Ethiopia. You, Mr. Barton and

Major Swales."

"Yes," said

Vicky. Each word was an effort.

"Tell him that at noon tomorrow I shall have made the best arrangements

I can for your evacuation from Sardi. Tell him to hold hard until

noon, and then I will spare no effort to get all of you out of

there."

"I will tell him."

"Tell him that at noon tomorrow he is to order all the remaining

Ethiopian troops to disperse into the mountains, and I will speak to

you again on this telephone to tell you what arrangements I have been

able to make for your safety." Lij

Mikhael, what about the wounded, the ones who ca

hills?" The silence again, and then the Prince's voice, quiet but

heavy with grief.

"It would be best if they fell into the hands of the Italians rather

than the Gallas."

"Yes,"she agreed quietly.

"There is one other thing, Miss Camberwell." The Prince hesitated,

and then went on firmly, "Under no circumstances are you to surrender