Page 42 of Two Wars and a Wedding

It was only what any gentleman would do. But Betsy was very afraid that, with him, she was no lady.

Monsieur de Robecourt let his arm drop. “If you won’t take my escort, will you at least return yourself? I hope we can be friends, and you will accept the well-meaning advice of a friend.”

Betsy knew what Ava would tell her to do. To walk away. As she ought to have walked away at the Stoa of the Athenians.

But Ava wasn’t here. Betsy wasn’t even sure if Ava would accept the tickets she’d sent.

It would be different this time, she told herself. No more embraces in the ruins. No more talk of love.

Pushing her bicycle out of the way, Betsy slid her arm through his. “I can’t say I’ll accept the advice—my friend Ava will tell you I seldom do—but I would be a fool to refuse a friend.”

Chapter Eleven

After a harrowing landing through the surf, the sisters of the Red Cross discovered no lack of need for their services. The first battle had been fought on the Friday, and the number of sick and wounded far exceeded expectations. The most seriously wounded were taken to the hospital ship Olivette, but that left over a hundred still without care. No hospital had been established, no preparations made. Instead, the wounded were taken to an old warehouse and deposited on the hard floor, not a cot among them.

The Red Cross immediately offered their services and supplies, but the surgeon in charge declined, claiming they were in no need of assistance. The Red Cross then went to the Cuban hospital, where they were met with the warmest welcome. There is no need to describe how quickly sleeves were rolled up, aprons pinned back, and men made comfortable, with clean linens and heartening gruel. When asked if they were glad to see the Red Cross sisters, one man told me, “Glad to see them? We were never so glad to see anyone.”

The surgeons of the US Army fail to share that view. Although we had been refused admittance, the Red Cross sent supplies to the US Army hospital, only to discover that the blankets and pillows were left in a heap on the floor as no one had issued an order to distribute them and the men lay still on bare boards, beset by vermin, the flies buzzing about them, sweating in the merciless heat, some sharing a blanket between them, others without even that meager comfort. It strains my pen to describe the horror of that place. The men have had no food but army rations, no change of clothing, no baths. They lie in their own filth and blood. The stench is indescribable. One man told me, “It is hard to be sick in this place.”

Our hearts break for our suffering countrymen and the severe want of management that has caused their current crisis. The Red Cross stands ready to aid them should the opportunity arise. . . .

—Miss Katherine Carson for the St. Louis Star Ledger, June 30, 1898

* * *

Las Guasimas, Cuba

June 25, 1898

“To lost friends.” Paul raised his tin cup in a salute to the night sky.

The Rough Riders clustered in small groups around their tents and campfires, mourning their own in their own way. Some talked. Some sang. Many drank.

“Lost friends,” echoed Holt, although they hadn’t been his friends, not really. Lost acquaintances didn’t have quite the same ring to it. Comrades in arms. That was better. They’d eaten together, slept together, fought together, but he hadn’t known any more of them than they had of him.

If he fell, Paul would mourn him as a friend, not realizing he’d never known him in the slightest. Not even his real name.

Holt tipped his cup back and was surprised when the rest of him tipped back too. He was, he realized, more than a bit drunk. Paul had traded a can of bully beef for a generous portion of rum. Holt had drunk too much too fast, trying to silence the pain in his leg and his head.

It hadn’t worked. He could still see Ham Fish lying there on the trail, Dr. Stringfellow red to the elbows. And above it all, the hectoring voice of Paul’s old Yale prom date.

The man next to you might be the one to fall. Or it might be you.

Behind them, one of the men at the campfire had started singing in a pure, clear tenor, one of the old ballads of the Civil War. Everyone knew “The Vacant Chair.” It was a commonplace of after-dinner entertainment, one of those songs girls sang when they were trying to make an impression on the company.

But he’d never heard it like this before. Not with the tang of blood fresh in the air, the dirt newly turned.

“We shall meet, but we shall miss him . . . There will be one vacant chair.”

There wasn’t one vacant chair but seven. Seven men laid in a common grave, wrapped in blue blankets to thwart the vultures that circled above.

“We did what we had to do,” Holt said, hoping it was true, that those men in their graves felt it too. “We did what was right.”

Even if you win you lose, chided Miss Hayes. Holt wondered why she had taken up residence in his head and how much rum it would take to make her go away. Too much, he suspected.

Paul waved his tin cup in the general direction of Las Guasimas. “We’ll get our revenge. We’ll make ’em pay tenfold for every friend we’ve lost. Don’t you worry.”

Fireflies danced in front of Holt, the shifting lights making him blink. “Revenge? We’re soldiers. That’s what happens in a war. We knew the risks going in.”