. BECKY’S EXPERIENCE IN THE WAR
. cw: war, medical mention, injuries, death
. BECKY NEVER ACTUALLY saw the combat as it was happening, but she could hear it. Having been stationed in one of the field hospitals that was closest to an active front line, she could often hear the gunfire, especially on otherwise still days in the countryside. While she was in several hospitals during her time in Europe, she more or less stayed in Ally field hospitals and surgical hospitals along one similar line outside of occupied France.
While there, Becky treated mostly American, British, Canadian, and French soldiers, though she saw her fair share of many Ally soldiers. The first soldier who she knew she could never forget, however, was the first soldier to die while she treated him. When he came in, it was already a dire circumstance. His first field dressings — sterile gauze that was distributed to all soldiers as a first line to dress their wounds as quickly as they could to stave off infection — had bled straight through to the point of dripping, and the wound in his leg ( what was left of his leg, at least ) already looked infected. He had been dragged — at some points literally dragged — through the mud for almost two miles before they’d finally gotten him to a hospital, and she had been the first person to him.
She did what she could for him, but there was only so much she could do. She was prepping him to see the surgeon when he died, but it wasn’t the act of death that she knew she’d never forget: it was the quiet moments before he’d gone. He’d given her a little smile and had asked her what her name was. He told her he was from Canada, some place far west she didn’t quite catch the name of. He told her he was scared, and that he wanted to go home. He asked her to hold his hand before he went into surgery, and then he closed his eyes.
Many days during the war, Becky felt like she experienced more losses than victories. While she was able to treat and help so many young men, while she was able to dress wounds and stave off infection and make them comfortable until they were able to be transferred even further out of the combat zone, there were just as many young men whose hands she held as they passed. Sometimes, if they called out for their mother, or their sister, or their sweetheart, or Mother Mary herself, Becky just held them and said I’m here. She was fighting a different kind of war than they were, than her brother was. She was fighting against time and blood and infection, and the experience quietly and surely softened so many of the sharp edges she had gained while growing.
She was proposed to about half a dozen times. She said yes to each young man, just so he’d have a smile on his face before he passed, or before he was put under for surgery, or before he fell asleep to finally escape the pain his injury was causing. She even received a handful of letters of young men who had been sent home from their injuries, reaching out to thank the nurse who had been there in the middle of their personal hell.
After months in the hospital, Becky started losing track of who the real enemy was. She knew there were named and labeled enemies they were at war with, but she spent her whole time at war against time, and blood, and infection. She saw boys still alive after losing half of themselves, and she had to convince them that their hearts were still beating, and that that was a good thing. It wasn’t a war she ever felt like she could win.
She remembers so many of them, though her nightmares often put her brother’s face or Steve’s face on top of theirs when it makes her relive what she went through. Her mind runs through scenarios where she hadn’t been able to help a boy, and suddenly, she looks up and it’s her brother. It isn’t Jacky from New Hampshire anymore. It isn’t Claude, or Gary, and Ernest, or Paul. It’s Steve, his chest gaping from where he had been hit with a field gun. Or it’s Jimmy, talking to her one moment about how he wants to go home and then gone, just like that.
After she arrived home, she received only a few more letters, but after failing to write back to so many of them, the letters eventually stopped. When she’s brought to the present, she thinks about those boys often. She looks up the ones whose names she can remember, just to see if they ended up happy. She sees obituaries of old men, and some men far younger than she’d like to consider. Some of them went on to get married, and had children and a job and a summer softball league. Some didn’t. She carries pieces of each of them in places she’d carved herself out.
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