Tim looked toward the big guns. “Captain,” he said, “I wonder if I could see the field beyond the parapet?”
The captain lowered his eyes. “It’s a heartbreaking sight,” he said, and he raised his eyes and held Tim’s gaze, as if he wished he could say more.
The two men walked toward the parapet, the boy tagging along behind. The Rebel soldiers gawked, and one big sergeant spat hard on the blackened sand.
“Save your spit for the next assault,” the captain said with a look of towering disgust. As they reached the gun he turned to Tim. “There’s an armistice in effect,” he said, “to give your men a chance to carry off the wounded and bury the dead. The boy and I will stay back here. I’ve seen enough today.”
Tim moved up beside a gun and looked across the plain. The dusky, shadowy world of early morning had given way to a sunlit day. There were no shellbursts or knifelike tongues of flame—just silence and the litter of death, scattered in terrible profusion on the sand.
Under a flag of truce ambulances moved along the beach, hurrying to gather up the wounded before they were claimed by the incoming tide. A surgeon who was working at the edge of the moat signaled to a driver. “Here’s one alive,” he called. An ambulance creaked and rattled to where the man lay. The surgeon and the driver lifted the wounded man gently into the canvas-covered vehicle.
With sickening dread Tim’s eyes moved across the distance, studying the men who lay on the sand. He fancied he saw a red-haired officer lying in the distance with his feet to the sun, but he couldn’t be sure. Men lay at the base of the parapet, almost covered by the waters of the moat which was fed by the ocean tides. Tim suddenly wondered what had happened to Private Greene.
He looked once more across the plain at the dead and broken and dying. Then he turned to the captain and the boy who stood by his side.
“There are other prisoners waiting by the sally port,” Chichester said. He looked down at the boy. “Billy Moore will show you the way.”
“Thank you for your courtesy, sir.”