“That V.A.D. was a plucky girl, and persistent—they sent her home afterwards in disgrace—and she talked on until the matron agreed to take a look at Binny. I think she was staggered when she saw him sitting up in bed and heard him cursing the orderlies, who had come back by that time. But she couldn’t do anything. She wasn’t really a bad sort of woman, and I don’t suggest for a moment that she wanted to have Binny buried alive. But she had no authority. She could not alter an order. And there the thing was in black and white. However, she persuaded the orderlies to wait another half-hour. She went off and found one of the surgeons. He was a decent sort of fellow, but young, and he didn’t see his way to interfering. There had been several mistakes made in that hospital, and the C.O. had been rather heavily strafed, which meant of course that everyone under him was strafed worse, on the good old principle of passing it on. That surgeon’s idea was to avoid trouble, if possible. Somebody, he said, had made a mistake, but it was too late, then, to set things right, and the best thing to do was to say nothing about it. He was sorry for Binny, but he couldn’t do anything.
“When the V.A.D. girl heard that, she lost her temper. She said she’d write home and tell her father about it, and that her father was a Member of Parliament and would raise hell about it She didn’t, of course, say hell!”
“She couldn’t do that,” said Mackintosh. “The censor wouldn’t pass a letter with a story like that in it.”
“Quite right,” said the padre, “and it wouldn’t have been any good if her father had got the letter. He couldn’t have done anything. If he’d asked a question in Parliament he’d simply have been told a lie of some kind. It was a silly sort of threat to make. The V.A.D. saw that herself and began to cry.
“That upset the surgeon so much that he went round and took a look at Binny. The man was pale by that time and in the deuce of a funk. But he wasn’t in the least dead. The surgeon felt that it was a hard case, and said he’d take the risk of speaking to the C.O. about it.
“The C.O. of No. 97 General at that time was an oldish man, who suffered from suppressed gout, which is the regular medical name for unsuppressed temper. He said emphatically that Private Binny was reported dead, marked dead, removed from the hospital books, and must stay dead. The whole system of the R.A.M.C. would break down, he said, and things would drift into chaos if dead men were allowed to come to life again whenever they chose.
“The surgeon was a plucky young fellow in his way. Remembering how pretty the V.A.D. looked when she cried, he pressed Binny’s case on the C.O. The old gentleman said he might have done something two hours sooner; but the hospital returns had gone to the D.D.M.S. and couldn’t possibly be got back again or altered. In the end, after a lot more talk about regulations and discipline, he said he’d telephone to the D.D.M.S. office and see if anything could be done. It is greatly to his credit that he did telephone, explaining the case as well as he could over a faulty wire. The staff colonel in the office was perfectly civil, but said that the returns had been forwarded by a motor dispatch rider to G.H.Q. and could not be recalled by any possibility. The C.O., who seems to have begun to realize the horrible position of Binny, asked advice as to what he ought to do. The staff colonel said he’d never come across a case of the kind before, but it seemed plain to him that Binny was dead, that is to say, officially dead. The Chaplain’s Department, he thought, might be able to do something for a man after he was dead. If not nobody could.
“That,” said O’Byrne with a smile, “is where I came in. The C.O. sent for me at once.”
“I suppose,” said Mackintosh, “that you straightened the whole thing out without difficulty?”
Mackintosh is always irritated at a suggestion that anyone connected with the medical profession can possibly make a mistake. When irritated he is apt to attempt a kind of heavy sarcasm which O’Byrne sucks in with obvious delight.