A Breath of Fresh Western Air

By Burr Cook

In this work of fiction a young man returns from World War I after being poison gassed in a trench in France. He falls in love with a nurse and moves to Arizona where he can breathe and get better on a sheep ranch.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312413207

Book preview

A Breath of Fresh Western Air

A Breath of Fresh Western Air

Copyright 2014 Burr Cook

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781312413207

Chapter I War and Sickness

Tim McAlister was seated in a comfortable deck chair on board a British transport somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. He wasn’t sure of the date, it didn’t matter anyway. He knew that it was early in the year 1919 and he had just spent more than two months in a military hospital in London. He had been transferred there from a facility in France which was not equipped to handle anywhere near the number of sick that were sent there. It was way overcrowded. He was one of many soldiers suffering from damaged lungs caused by poison gas attacks in the French trenches. In the British hospital he had been treated for the most part by American doctors. It was still, however, overcrowded. On board the transport, also overcrowded he was being monitored by the ships doctors. He was still quite ill and was unable to engage in much physical activity.

The girl he was engaged to marry hadn’t written in over a year. He assumed that she had found someone that was more readily available. Most likely he was a slacker who had found a way out of going overseas, a real coward no doubt. He had heard that there were many of them and some even got rich off the backs of those who went.

He had been away for almost two years. Tim was, before the war, a very active youth engaging in sports like football, hockey, wrestling and even some boxing. About six feet tall, he was a handsome specimen with brown hair and blue eyes. He would still be attractive were it not for all of the weight he had lost. He no longer had much of an appetite for food.

Lulled into a day dreaming state by the constant rolling of the vessel his mind wandered back to his life just before getting into the war. His father was a minister and he himself had studied to follow the same path if he was ever able to work again. The doctors were not very encouraging when he brought up the subject, however. They didn’t really come right out and say he would not get better but they certainly didn’t say that he would recover.

Tim was sometimes called Mac by his friends although for the most part he had not made many lasting friendships in the trenches. There had been too much turn over in personnel and just when you did begin friendships they would be ended by artillery, machine gun fire or poison gas attacks so it was not wise to get too close to anyone. He did have one friend whom he had known before the war and had stayed with throughout most of the war and in fact this friend Roger Barrett was on the same transport. They had joined up together and were going home together. They suffered from much the same illness. They would be receiving some rehabilitation in a New York facility before returning to their homes in Toledo, Ohio.

Tim’s reverie was interrupted by the arrival of his friend Roger who had taken the chair next to his. Just like Tim he was wrapped in a blanket as it was