A DEATH AT THE WALDORF
An Achille Poirot Mystery
Sunday, 12 May 1918, 2:00 A.M.
Fear has a most definite scent. It is viscous and leaves a copper taste in your mouth. Fear causes your last meal to dance at the back of your throat and scald your tongue with the bitter taste of bile.
Fear hung all around us as we huddled knee deep in the boot-sucking mud of a trench dug just a few meters from the putrid Yser Canal. I felt the fear shuddering in the shoulders of the corporal beside me. Yes, we were all freezing as the sky did its best to drown us. However, this unrelenting shuddering from fear was felt far deeper than our blue-tinged skin. This sort of quaking came from the very core of a person's soul.
“Christ above!” a corporal shouted as the earth shook from yet another artillery round that struck just over the lip of our trench and rained hot mud down upon our cowering heads.
“Where is our damn evacuation, Lieutenant Poirot?”
I looked around desperately at the filth spattered corpsmen around me. There were five of us huddling in the midst of over a dozen injured comrades. Our ambulance lay in a smoking ruin, just thirty yards behind our trench.
As my mind grappled to comprehend our situation, I thought back to our leaving the base camp two hours before dawn. Our mission was to evacuate a wounded officer while dropping off fresh supplies. Several divisions of brave Belgian boys had held this northern bend in the Ypres for most of the war. With the German advance dug in only a little over 50 meters away, this area was gaining the ominous title of Le Boyau De La Mort - The Trench of Death.
As our transport truck approached the footbridge leading towards Lettenburg, I felt the front of our vehicle lift into the air. Those of us riding in the back were tossed towards the rear of the ambulance. As I fell backwards, I saw our driver and his assistant disappear in blinding flash of shrieking metal and gore as another round exploded. In the next instant, I was rolling in the mud, slapping at the flames of burning petrol on my wool overcoat. Thank God for that coat.
With the flames on me extinguished, I looked around to survey our situation. Eight of us were thrown clear of the burning wreckage. While I watched helplessly from the muck, the flames of the transport overtook two men. A sergeant who came up with me from Liege, jumped up and ran for the rear of the ambulance. Three badly wounded men tried to crawl away from the rapidly gaining inferno. As soon as the sergeant gained his feet, the puddles around him sprung to life as if a heavy rainstorm peppered the ground. However, when I saw two jagged, crimson holes open in the sergeant’s chest, I knew the incoming rain was made of German lead. He twisted in the air in a grotesque kind of death dance and fell face forward into the mire.
I called out to a nearby corporal. “Sapper! help me get those men to the trenches.”
Three other boys regained their senses and joined our effort to move everyone to the relative safety of the flooded trenches. Although German rounds stitched the earth around us, we somehow managed to move the men that were still breathing away from the burning hulk and over the lip of the sandbags. We slid down as far as we could into the deep scars in the earth and gulped in air like drowning fish.
An eerie silence fell upon us. All that we could hear was the crackling of the ruined truck on fire and the moaning of the injured.
“They will come for us. They know we are here,” I muttered through chattering teeth.
Looking over at the poor young lads on the stretchers, I could see we fought a losing battle with time. Precious lifeblood leaked from filthy bandages and mixed with the rank puddles pooling around our frozen boots. My grimy, bare fingers rested protectively over the eyes of a young boy in the stretcher next to me as I attempted to keep the muck and rain from his eyes. However, when I removed my hand to check on him, the eyes staring up at me no longer saw anything in this world. I closed his eyelids and bowed my head in a silent prayer.
As I prayed for the boy’s soul and my own deliverance, I heard sirens sound far off in the distance. Maybe the medieval walls of nearby Diksmuide were being bombarded again. With my eyes still closed, I tried to envision a time before this carnage. It was no use. A shell exploded behind me and the world was muffled by my ringing ears. Shouts came from far away and I felt myself rise up out of my body. It felt like death and I welcomed it with open arms.
A forceful thump shook me, and I opened my eyes to darkness. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, the shape of white walls came into focus, my walls. I breathed deep and recognized the scent of my own room. There was no rain, no mud. As I stretched out my feet, I felt the pressure of my crisp linens. I was home. I was awake and the latest nightmare was over. As my breathing slowed to normal, the horrors of my visions started to fade as I drifted towards sleep again. Still, just as I lost touch with consciousness, I thought I heard another far off wail of a siren creeping closer in the dark.