name was Lieutenant Thomas Hale.
He was twenty-five years old when I met him.
He had been assigned to help coordinate medical evacuations near our field hospital.
He was not a doctor.
He was not a nurse.
But he had a habit of appearing wherever someone needed help.
He carried wounded soldiers.
He held flashlights during emergency procedures.
He wrote letters for men who could no longer hold a pen.
And he had a terrible habit of making jokes at exactly the wrong moment.
When the shelling began, Thomas had
been helping move patients into a protected area.
I was working inside the medical tent.
The lights went out.
The windows shook.
Someone screamed.
I remember the floor moving beneath my feet.
I remember shouting for the other nurses.
And I remember Thomas running back into the building after the first explosion.
He had already made it outside.
He could have stayed there.
But he heard a soldier calling from the far end of the ward.
He went back.
He helped us carry three men out.
Then he went back
