CHAPTER 45
Lieutenant James Rose led his contingent of troops into Olney with a look of total disbelief on his face. The scene that greeted him and his men resembled something from a war zone, straight from a battlefield. A heavy pall of smoke continued to rise from the site of the first explosion, and both smoke and flames still issued from the remains of the field hospital. What horrified the new arrivals most, however, was the unmistakeable smell of burned flesh. The stench hung in the air, and the sight of stunned villagers standing looking on in trance-like horror as harried medical staff worked in the open gave the whole place a surreal appearance. It didn’t take a genius to work out that a number of people had met their deaths by the most terrible of means imaginable.
Rose and his
