The bugle sounded, the flag was lowered. Feet shuffled on gravel.
The silence was broken by the diesel engine of a barge. They didn’t close the canal anymore.
Some her mother had nursed back to full health, some never recovered. One her mother married.
Twenty years later she was alongside her mother as men repeated the same mistakes. She remembered the faces, the blood, the screams. The cost of war.
She was the last of them, the nurses of the Hôpital Temporaire d’Arc-en-Barrois.
Would anyone remember those men once she was gone?
The barge carried on along the canal.
Written as part of the Friday Fictioneers challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (more details HERE). The idea is to write a short story of 100 words based on the photo prompt (above).
To read stories of 100 words based on this week’s prompt, visit HERE.
IAIN KELLY 
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