CHAPTER 44
As the percussive discharge of the explosion rocked the marquee the Reverend Timothy Grafton found himself flung to the ground by the force of the blast. As flames licked all around him, and dense choking smoke filled the enclosed space, Grafton raised his head to take in the scene of c*****e. Patients had been literally thrown from their beds by the force of the blast, and many lay dead or dying, bleeding their lives away on the duck-boarded floor of the ward. Most of the dead had been close to the epicentre of the explosion, which Grafton assumed to have been the heating stove which had stood in the centre of the ward. Of the stove, nothing remained, and the beds where the patients had lain burned with a fierce intensity. He was horrified to see one man, barely recognisable,
