[legendsport]

November 11, 1918 - Reserve Lazarett II, Frankfurt, Germany:

Nurse Claudia Neumann looked at the clock. Nearly noon - and that meant she would need to see to her rounds.

She sighed, thinking about how little she had with which to work. The four-plus years of war and the strangling blockade had left Germans with very little, and what little they had was only begrudgingly made available for prisoners of war. Good, healthy food was nearly impossible to find and even basic medical needs such as bandages were rare.

Germany was in dire straits. Though the position of the army on the Western Front was still tenable (she had heard two of the doctors discussing this), there had been a revolt by sailors at Wilhelmshaven and the Kaiser himself had abdicated two days earlier. It was rumored that the new government was already pursuing a negoatiated peace.

It was ironic that her prisoners, nearly all British, were suffering from the privations caused by their own navy's blockade. The few prisoners who were not British were a mish-mash of other English speakers, Canadians, Australians, and even some Americans, though they were late arrivals. And one in particular... Nurse Claudia chided herself: it was not fitting to think such thoughts.

She quickly finished assembling her meager supplies on her cart and had placed a hand on it when a voice called out to her, "Sister Claudia! A moment please."

Recognizing the voice, she closed her eyes and mentally steeled herself before turning and saying with an unnatural smile on her face, "Yes, Doctor?"

Dr. Ernst von Bertrab smiled back. His smile was decided predatory and the nurse forced herself to keep her disgust off her face.

"Have you heard? An armistice has been signed."

Nurse Claudia felt a wave of relief wash over her. On the one hand, the news was welcome - it meant the blockade would end and perhaps life would return to a sense of normalcy that she could only vaguely rememeber. And it also meant that the doctor had stopped her not to make one of his clumsy passes at her, but rather to pass on the news.

"This is good - we will have peace with honor. We were not defeated - this is an armistice, not a surrender," the doctor continued, then stopped and looked at her expectantly.

She was not sure what she was supposed to say in reply. So she pointed to her cart and murmured, "It is time for my rounds."

The doctor scowled and waved a hand. "Ah yes, I suppose you must still tend to your wretches. I'm afraid it will take me some time to not see them as the enemy." He spun and stalked away.

She frowned at his back, and then turned and wheeled her cart into the ward.

She passed out some of her dwindling supply of pain medications and re-dressed the wounds that were most in need of it. There simply were not enough bandages to change them all, so she was forced to examine each patient critically and use her judgement.

She spoke to each man kindly - Claudia Neumann took her calling as a nurse seriously. These men may have been the enemy, but they needed medical assistance and they would get it.

Her once-merely-passable English had improved greatly and she now considered herself nearly fluent, thanks to her daily exposure to the patients (she forced herself not to refer to them as prisoners, though of course that is exactly what they were).

She reached the end of the row where a good looking brown-haired man whose twinkling eyes captivated her (much to her chagrin) was talking rapidly to the man in the next bed, moving his hands around as he spoke. She watched him with a small smile she wasn't aware of, trying to understand what he was saying. His speech was rapid... maybe her English wasn't that great after all. She was pretty sure he was talking about flying something called a... thirteen?

"Ah, Nurse Claudia! Good to see you!" said the other man, an English captain who, like the man in the bed beside her, was a pilot.

"Good day, Captain Duffie," she said in her best professional tone. She looked down at the grinning brown-haired man, who had turned those eyes on her so she had to fight desperately not to grin in return as she continued, "And to you as well, Lieutenant Barrell."

For his part, Jimmy Barrell thought Nurse Claudia was one fine-looking woman. And he also believed that she genuinely liked him too. That might have been the only good thing to come out of his getting shot down and captured.

After slamming his SPAD XIII into the trees of the Argonne, Jimmy had shown particularly good (although also completely unintentional) timing by groaning a bit just before a German had been able to put a "let's make sure" bullet in him as he slumped in his cockpit. Instead, the startled soldiers had yelled at him in rapid-fire German. He painfully put his arms up and muttered one of the few words he'd picked up: "Kamerad!"

He had been taken to Germany: first to Trier, where he had been roughly patched up. He had three broken ribs, a leg broken in two places, a fractured collarbone and a severely sprained ego. After a few days in a hospital there, a gruff doctor had signed a form, given him a half-smile and handed him crutches. "Train," he said and pointed to where a couple of soldiers (neither looking a day over 16) waited in the doorway.

A train ride to Frankfurt was followed by a ride in a horsecart to his current lodgings at the Reserve Lazerett II. The entire trip had been a painful ordeal as his broken ribs shot needles of pain into his chest with every breath. Using crutches with a broken collarbone had been no picnic either.

In Frankfurt he had made friends with another banged up flier in Andy Duffie and they spent their days reliving their aerial exploits. Duffie was an ace as well - and had been shot down by the Flying Circus (the Red Baron's old outfit). Still, the only break in the monotony was the lovely nurse who visited the ward three times a day.

Jimmy, employing the "skills" he had built up in France with his darling Marie (and others), chatted up the lovely Nurse Claudia and then endured the hazing from Duffie and the others after she left the ward.

"Better be careful, mate," said one of the other officers (all the men in his ward were officers) - "you don't want to be caught fraternizing with the enemy!"

"That one might be worth a court martial!" said one of the others.

"Bloody Americans, she wouldn't give me the time of day!" complained a third.

Jimmy laughed and then groaned in pain. Laughing with broken ribs was definitely a no-no, he learned.

"I have heard just now that the war is over," Nurse Claudia told Jimmy and Duffie. This news snapped Jimmy out of his reverie and a wave of stunned silence momentarily filled the ward.

"What? How? When?" he asked as several other voices also began shouting questions.

The nurse raised a hand. "Please!" she said in her sternest voice. The men quieted down and she explained the little that she knew: at 11 am Paris time, an armistice had gone into effect. She had no further information and did not know when the men would be freed.

Claudia knew her country still held Russian prisoners even though Russia had surrendered over a year earlier (and then promptly descended into revolution). She didn't think this was right (if the war is over, the soldiers should go home, she thought). With a shock, she found that the thought of Lieutenant Barrell leaving the ward was surprisingly upsetting to her.