30th. November 1917 - London

The sun rose weakly over a misty Waterloo Bridge as two boys playing truant were scrambling around amongst the piles of rubble on a recently bombed building.  Although actively discouraged by the growls of local passing law enforcement officers, they kept their heads down and were in search for items of value to either keep for themselves or sell on. Whilst almost all the larger items contained within this particular unit had been smashed during it's collapse, or burned during the resulting fire, careful scouring of the area had already revealed a miscellanea of interesting pickings.

This was therefore the second occasions of the boy's visit, which was to take them past the charred remains of the ceiling joists and roof trusses towards the back of the site where the far wall of the building was still standing along with a substantial part of the adjoining West facing wall.  Complete with a centrally situated painted wood fireplace, extra strength for the structure had been afforded by the chimney stack which had enabled the wall to remain in position even after the side of the building facing the river had collapsed inwards.

An electrical outlet socket alongside the fire surround on the splintered remains of the cream skirting board still had a brown bakelite plug inserted. The brown twisted flex angled sharply down into the remains of the hearth had attracted the attention of the taller of the two boys.

As he carefully picked his way over towards the back wall he wondered what kind of appliance might be on the other end. Most likely to be a reading lamp of course, but it might still just have the stem and holder intact, perhaps worth a few pennies to the proprietor of the second-hand dealer they frequented?  His eye then caught sight of a collection of coloured objects over to his left, against a pile of splintered wood and plaster. A recently placed conglomeration of domestic rubbish in the form of kitchen scraps, some old curtain material, opened food cans and old cardboard boxes had been dumped in a position that was not visible from the road. Perhaps if he had not moved closer to look at a couple of old books that lay open nearby, he would not have noticed that there was a human arm just visible, protruding from under some thick brown curtain material.

"Tom!" he called out to his friend. "I think I found a body!"

The other boy was soon standing alongside him.

"Poo!" he remarked. " What's that smell?"

"Death!" retorted the other. "There's a body under that cloth."

The two moved a couple of the boxes and revealed the head and shoulders of a young woman. The younger boy reached down for a short length of splintered wood and was about to see if she was still alive when the other grabbed his arm.

"If she's dead we 'aint touched her right? You start poking her with that stick and we'll rightly be in trouble!"

The smaller boy dropped he stick, stood back up and stared at the body.

"What to do then? We just pretend we've not seen her?"

"Nope." said the other as he cautiously nudged the girl's left shoulder with the toe of his boot. "Look 'ere. She's a gonner mate. My Dad would give me the strap if he knew we didn't call a copper right away."

"Call a copper?"

"That's right mate. You go get a copper now an' I'll wait here by the body."

Some twenty minutes later, two medical assistants and a police constable had just finished unearthing the body as the doctor knelt down and picked up the limp, blueish, mottled hand. It was icy cold.

He quickly ascertained that the completely naked body was of a young woman of about 19 or 20 years of age. She was sprawled in an awkward head-downwards position with her thickly matted long brown hair spread out towards him. A cursory glance revealed that the whole body was disfigured with a plethora of small scratches and scuff marks, with a large hand-size purple bruise on the side of her rib cage, just under her right arm. The arm itself being trapped underneath the body when the torso met up with a large piece of stonework as the body was clearly flung onto the rubble.

The doctor instinctively placed his fingers up again the carotid artery.

"She's not been dead long." he said inspecting the sunken facial features, dry lips and the almost fleshless shoulders. "Unless..." his words tailed off as he concentrated hard then quickly donned his stethoscope, "It's very weak; but yes, she's still alive. Not sure how long for though. I'd say at a guess, we have a case of acute starvation and dehydration here."

He paused for a second to wipe one of the drops of clear amber liquid with his finger that had traced vertical streaks in the dirt and dust covering the girl's body.

"Strange." he murmured as he sniffed and recognised the familiar sharp smell on the tip of his finger. "You two!" he said addressing the two assistants. "Lets get her onto that stretcher and see her off to hospital straight away."

The doctor rose to his feet and stepped back a few paces.

"Was it you who found her?" he asked, having turning his attention to the policeman who was busily writing notes in his small black book.

The policeman looked around him, but the two boys had vanished.

"Eh? Not I." was the reply. "Two lads reported it. They was here only a minute ago." he paused. "Been a bit of a nuisance on these bombed out plots too, but perhaps on this occasion,"  he watched as the stretcher from the ambulance was laid open on the uneven ground, "something good came of it." then added thoughtfully, "I can't think when the body was brought here though. Maybe last night?"

The doctor shook his head as the medical assistants carefully lifted the emaciated girl onto the stretcher and quickly covered her with a grey wool blanket.

"The cold would have finished her off last night. I'd say very early this morning; probably only a few hours ago. I presume that nobody else has come forward to report this apart from the two boys?"