Roses And Thorns | Thomas Barrow

1917

Having been recently relieved from a brutal stint at the front lines, Thomas and a small unit of medics are stationed at a secondary casualty station.

Thomas's cynical shell is cracked when a four-year-old girl named Rosie is brought in. The sole survivor of a direct hit on her family home, she has lost both legs below the knee and her parents in a single heartbeat. Major Clarkson, recognizing Thomas's meticulous (if distant) nature, assigns him to her constant care.

Initially, Thomas resents the "nanny" work but eventually something shifts. For the first time in his life, Thomas isn't performing for a master or scheming for a promotion; he is simply needed. He uses his "acquired" luxuries-chocolate and extra blankets-to coax her back to life.

As Rosie stabilizes, the camp receives a shipment of primitive prosthetic limbs. While the surgeons are busy with the endless stream of dying soldiers, Thomas takes it upon himself to be Rosie's legs. In the quiet hours between bombardments, he teaches her to balance, then to shuffle, and finally to walk. In Rosie's stubborn refusal to give up, Thomas finds a reflection of his own survival instinct-but hers is pure, untainted by the bitterness that has defined him. She becomes the only thing in France that makes him feel like a "good man."

Thomas realizes that as a Sergeant, he is bound to the mud until he is either dead or "broken." Desperate to stay with her, or at least be sent back to England where he might find a way to track her down, he looks at the flickering lights of the enemy line.

The shot that shatters his hand is his ticket home-and his greatest shame. As he is loaded onto a transport, he catches one last glimpse of Rosie watching from a distance, standing tall on the legs he taught her to use. He leaves behind the only person he has ever truly loved without conditions, carrying a permanent scar that will forever remind him of the cost of his humanity.