not seen since 1910 or thereabouts: a nose cone with drops of chloroform.
The work went on and on. I wiped our table between patients, until the towel I was
using was so soaked with blood that it was doing more harm than good.
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Gretchen reported a spotty kill on the second wave – sixty bombers attacked,
forty-seven shot down. Thirteen bombers dropped at least one stick before being hit.
Gretchen’s girls were using particle beams and night-sight gear; the usual effect
was to blow up the planes gasoline tanks. Sometimes the bombs went off at the same
time; sometimes the bombs exploded on hitting the ground; sometimes the bombs did
not explode, leaving a touchy problem for bomb-disposal experts the next day.
But we saw none of this. Sometimes we would hear a bomb drop nearby and someone
would remark, `Close,’ and someone would answer, `Too close,’ and we would continue
working.
A shot-down plane makes a different sort of an explosion from a bomb… and a
fighter from a bomber. Mr Pratt said that he could tell the crash of a Spitfire from
the crash of a Messerschmidt. Probably he could. I could not.
The third wave broke into two formations, so Gretchen reported, and came in from
southwest and southeast. But her girls now had practice in using what was
essentially an infantry weapon against targets they were not used to, under
conditions where they must be sure that they had bombers in their sights, not
Spitfires. Gretchen described this one as a `skeet shoot’. I made a note to ask her
what that meant, but I never did.
There were lulls between waves, but not for us. As the night wore on we dropped
further and farther behind; they brought in victims faster than we could handle
them. Jubal grew more liberal in tagging, and routed to Ishtar and her teams more
and more of the less severely wounded. It made our help more blatant but it surely
saved more lives.
During the fourth wave of bombing, sometime early in the morning, I heard Gretchen
say, `Yeoman to Horse, emergency.’
`What is it, Gretchen?’
‘Something – a piece of a plane, probably – hit our gate.’
`Damage?’
`I don’t know. It disappeared. Whoof! Gone.’
`Horse to Yeoman, disengage. Evacuate via gate at aid station. Can you find it?
Range and bearing?’
`Yes, but -‘
‘Disengage and evacuate. Move.’
`But, Hazel, it is just our gate we’ve lost. We can still take out any bombers that
come over.’
‘Hold. Bright Cliffs, answer. Deety, wake up.’
`I am awake.’
`Research showed four waves, no more. Is Gretchen going to have any more targets?’
‘One moment -‘ (It was a long moment.) `Guy says she can’t see any bombers warming
up on the ground. We now have signs of dawn in the east.’
`Horse to all stations, disengage. Blood, wait for Yeoman, then evacuate… bringing
Prime with you. Use injector if necessary. All stations, report.’
`Cliffs to Horse, roger wilco; here we come!’
‘Yeoman to Horse, roger wilco. Father Schmidt is leading; I’m chasing.’
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`Blood to Horse, roger wilco. Hazel, tell Ishtar to get all cases back here now…
or she’s got some unscheduled immigrants.’
The next few minutes were hilarious, in a Grand Guignol fashion. First the terribly
burned cases came pouring back through the incoming gate, on their own feet and now
quite well. Surgery cases followed them, some with prostheses, some with grafts.
Even the last cases, ones that Galahad and Ishtar and other surgical teams were
currently working on, were patched up somehow, pushed through to Beulahland, there
to be finished and to stay for days or weeks – and then sent back through to
Coventry only minutes after Hazel ordered an end to the operation.
I know that it was only minutes because none of Gretchen’s troops had arrived from
less than a mile away. Those girls move at eight miles per hour at field trot (3.5
metres per second). They should have made it in about eight or nine minutes, plus
whatever time it took to get down that tower. I heard later that some of the civil