The Mersey Angels

by Sheila Riley

  Even though she was exhausted, Anna could not relax. She prowled the field hospitals and clearing stations, but she could not find him. In the end, she wondered if she had imagined it. In the theatre of war, anything was possible.

  Returning to her billet, she began to write a letter to Ned. She would tell him of the strange happening. He would understand…

  When the next call came, she was up and out before Ellie was even half-awake.

  ‘Come on, slowcoach,’ Anna beckoned Ellie. ‘I’ve got some wonderful news to tell you.’

  ‘I am coming,’ Ellie said, hardly hurrying at all, and Anna knew that if Matron caught her dallying there would be hell to pay. However, grabbing her arm, they were soon on their way. Anna had hardly any time to wonder what was in store for them.

  What is it you have to tell me, Anna?’ said Ellie as they got settled.

  Anna, still buzzing with excitement could hardly get the words out. ‘Sam’s alive, Ellie. I saw him yesterday. He’s a medic here at the hospital and a good one too. I am so relieved to find him. He thought I had died in the hospital before he left for Canada so he was overjoyed to see me. Hopefully, I will be able to see more of him while we’re here.’

  Behind the wheel, Daisy looked both ways as they approached a crossroads. They had been travelling through the night, helping injured soldiers. She took the road to the right and suddenly all was quiet again. Anna heaved a sigh, but the silence unnerved her more than the shellfire did.

  ‘Maybe the enemy have all gone home for a kip,’ Daisy said and, relieved, they laughed as the weak morning sun broke through the clouds. Soon, they discovered a group of wounded French soldiers, who informed them that there were more injured troops further on. All three medics continued on foot and Anna found the casualties without difficulty, and after taking them to the clearing station, Daisy, Anna and Ellie quickly got back in the ambulance and were on their way again.

  ‘Looks like we’re here,’ said Anna in a low voice, as a vibrant discharge of adrenaline shot through her, hitting her heart with such force it pumped fiercely in her chest. The gunfire was now deafening. It was obvious they were getting nearer to the Front. The action was uninterrupted as Daisy threw her ambulance round every corner.

  ‘Just another fine day at the infirmary,’ Daisy called from the front of her ambulance, emblazoned with the words; ‘Presented by St. John’s, Newfoundland. For service with the British Armies in the field.’

  ‘I am so tired I could sleep standing up,’ Anna said, wanting to flop down on a comfortable bed. Anna now driving her own ambulance was fighting to stay awake. Her sleepless night had caught up with her so that the windscreen wipers which were fighting a losing battle against the torrential rain were having a hypnotising effect on her eyes.

  ‘Not one dry day since the beginning of July,’ Daisy said, having jumped into Anna’s ambulance for a hasty sandwich. ‘Bloody relentless it is.’ Officially known as the third battle of Ypres, Passchendaele saw a huge scale of casualties, but a girl had to eat. ‘It’s the mud that gets you down,’ Daisy said, ‘bloody sticky and it stinks like shit.’ Her colourful language went over Anna’s head these days, it was the only respite from the dreadful conditions they worked in, and Daisy used it with enthusiasm. ‘The German blockade could soon cripple the British war effort,’ Daisy said knowingly. ‘I heard some of the soldiers saying Haig wants to reach the Belgian coast, to destroy German submarine bases there.’

  ‘I hope they do,’ Anna said with feeling. ‘Our boys seem encouraged by the success of the attack on Messines Ridge in June. It must have been some sight when nineteen mines exploded simultaneously,’

  ‘They were placed at the end of long tunnels under the German front lines, that must have been a real confidence boost to our boys,’ Ellie replied, not to be outdone in the knowledge stakes. ‘As well as one hell of a firework display.’

  ‘Although, unlike Verdun, Ypres is not a specially constructed fortress.’

  ‘Yes, but it is a key point in the Flanders line of defence,’ Anna countered, ‘as it blocked German access to Calais and Boulogne.’

  The girls, competitive now, trying to outdo each other in giving information, had become very knowledgeable since they had come to nurse so close to the front line.

  ‘The channel ports are essential to the British Expeditionary Force,’ Ellie said, ‘especially in keeping reinforcements and supplies and, like now, for evacuating the wounded.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Anna answered wryly, she had been out on every ambulance shout, and was well aware of the need to evacuate the wounded.

  The continuous, relentless shelling churned the clay soil that actually smashed the drainage systems. After the hot and sultry July came the heaviest rain for thirty years, which turned the soil into a quagmire, producing thick mud that clogged up rifles and immobilised tanks.

  Thousands of men fell. Drowning in mud was as much of a possibility as dying by bullets. The men were not just fighting the enemy, they were fighting the extreme torrential rain. The combination of massive bombardment of the battlefield and the relentless mud made conditions not just impossible but also horrific.

  Troops had to fight across what had become a dark muddy honeycomb of deep cells, which, if fallen into, Anna was horrified to discover, men and horses were drowning in, unless pulled out immediately by their pals. When Anna and Ellie came to Passchendaele, they met the war head on. It was chaotic; there were bodies all over the place.

  ‘It seems impossible,’ Anna said, ‘one minute we are travelling a beautiful country lane, then driving into the jaws of hell the next.’ Scrambling from the ambulance now, they quickly headed out to the boggy morass.

  ‘Do not leave your equipment there.’ A voice barked behind them.

  When Anna turned, she saw a nursing sister, efficiently organising wounded men into lines. The most urgent cases placed at the side of the ambulance ready for dispatch.

  ‘Send the walking wounded over there,’ another nurse called to Anna, ‘to the farmhouse.’

  ‘Where shall I dump the grazed and terrified?’ Ellie asked, checking a wounded soldier as she spoke.

  ‘Anywhere you like but get straight back here.’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ Anna said, ‘there’s a convoy of gassed soldiers coming down now.’

  ‘We need all the hands we can get,’ Sister shouted.

  Anna assumed she had been on duty since the beginning of the war if her tired face was anything to go by.

  ‘And put your gas masks on!’

  ‘They don’t give you much time for rehearsals,’ Anna told an unconscious soldier.

  ‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ Daisy offered, coming towards her, ‘there are no gas masks.’ Then reaching into the khaki knapsack she wore over her shoulder, Daisy brought out a package, ‘Here, take these, I’ve got them from medical stores.’ She passed Anna a packet of sanitary towels. ‘They’re better than nothing, and I’m sure they will do the job. You put the loops around your ears.’

  ‘So I gathered,’ Anna’s face turned every shade of pink through to puce, as she put a pad across her own face and that of the soldier, who was now beginning to come round.

  ‘Modesty aside,’ Daisy told her, ‘these could be the things that save your life.’

  ‘Looks like it’s straight on with the show then,’ Anna took the pulse of the soldier, just as a body landed at her feet. She quelled the desire to scream as, quickly and efficiently, she bent down to estimate the seriousness of his wounds, all banter now forgotten. Deciding little could be done, she went on to the next one.

  ‘You don’t want to mind Sister Bronwyn,’ Daisy said, helping to load another soldier onto a stretcher, ‘she’s a good sort really.’

  ‘She doesn’t frighten me,’ said Anna, ‘I was born in Liverpool docklands.’ The conversation hid her fear as they ministered to the wounded.

  Back at the hospital, Ellie stood by the canvas flap used as a door to the billet. ‘I must go and
see if there is anywhere more suitable for us to sleep. We can’t be expected to do a full day’s work if we do not get proper sleep.’ With a sniff, she turned away.

  ‘I wish you luck with that one,’ Daisy said, ‘and if you are successful ask if we can all have a comfy bed and a connecting bathroom, if you please.’

  Anna, amused by the very nature of this young woman, who seemed to hurtle through life and rattle the status quo, enjoyed sharing the tent. Daisy’s bed was festooned with feather boas and other artistic paraphernalia, a vanity case full of colourful theatre make-up, wigs and… daringly, a red silk dress. She wondered how on earth Daisy managed to bring all this kit with her.

  ‘Does this place have to look like something resembling the stage of a low-grade music hall?’ Ellie asked, when she realised, she was stuck with the situation.

  ‘You really should practise your beautiful smile more,’ Daisy told Ellie, ‘it doesn’t hurt a bit.’

  Anna tried hard not to giggle, but it was impossible; Daisy was instantly likeable, as long as you were not Ellie.

  ‘Tell me, Daisy,’ Ellie said peevishly, ‘what made you take up driving an ambulance instead of going onto the stage?’

  Daisy looked quietly at Ellie for a long moment. Then her eyes filled with a sadness neither Ellie nor Anna could contemplate and with no hint of joviality she said: ‘I wanted to get back home… It seemed the quickest way to get out of Canada.’

  27

  Even though the work could be back-breaking sometimes, Anna noticed that Daisy never once complained. Nothing was any trouble.

  ‘D’you think I’ll get a chance to move from the ambulances, and work in the clearing station or the hospital?’ Daisy said one night during a lull in shelling. ‘I could work on male surgical.’ Anna and Ellie had just finished mopping, sterilising, and emptying bedpans in the sluice room. Anna, heading towards her thin iron bed, grimaced; knowing the last thing she wanted to think about now was the operating room. Daisy was lying on her bed staring at the top of the white tent. ‘I’m not complaining but I’m sure I would sleep much easier, if I had a few male bed-baths to look forward to in the morning.’

  ‘Daisy, is that you not complaining?’ Anna laughed as she changed out of her uniform for the first time in two days. Slipping into her winceyette nightdress and warm, woollen dressing gown, all she wanted to do was snuggle up in her bed, get out her pen and paper and write a letter.

  She missed Ruby and Archie, but most of all she longed to see Ned. He was out there somewhere. His letters still made her laugh in this godforsaken place, and if she could not talk to him, all she wanted to do was write this letter, snuggle down under her bedclothes and dream of their last hours together. However, Daisy seemed to have other ideas.

  ‘Ah no,’ Daisy giggled, ‘I just want to see what a real live willy looks like.’

  Anna and Ellie shrieked with laughter, unable to believe what they had just heard.

  ‘You are incorrigible, Flynny,’ Ellie laughed, ‘you do not mean to tell me that you have never seen a…’ she was unable to say the word.

  ‘I only drive the poor buggers to the casualty station,’ Daisy looked affronted, ‘they never let me near the goods.’ More shrieks ensued, and Daisy looked perplexed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not curious?’ she said, obviously put out.

  ‘It may have escaped your notice, Dais,’ Anna laughed, ‘but we are nurses, we see things like that all the time.’

  ‘You have a great way with the Tommies, I must say,’ Daisy answered, making Anna feel a few inches taller, ‘but they won’t do a thing I ask. Only the other day, I was driving at breakneck speed to get them to the first aid, dodging bullets, and bombs, picking up wounded soldiers at every turn. Then, one asked for a bottle. Then another one asked, then another until they all wanted one. It was stop, start, stop, start. I felt like a hiccup.’ They all laughed now. Anything to take their minds from the carnage around them. ‘Sister was only a whisker off putting me on a charge when I got back.’

  Even though Anna knew respectable women did not smoke, she could not hide her fascination as she watched Daisy release a slow sophisticated stream of tobacco smoke that mixed with the smell of cordite in the air.

  Daisy shook her head and ground out the discarded stump of the lit cheroot under the heel of her black-buttoned boot. ‘I could have throttled them all. P.B.I., my foot’

  ‘You’re better than a tonic, you are, Daisy,’ Anna continued.

  ‘You have a rare gift for calming the younger ones down,’ said Ellie, ‘even the older, more unruly soldiers can be calmed with a kind word.’

  ‘I threaten to sing them a lullaby, that’s why.’ Daisy laughed now.

  ‘Are you going to nurse until you get married?’ Ellie was eager to find good-quality marriageable males.

  ‘Married?’ Daisy gave a huge shudder. ‘Have you lost your mind.’ She pounded her pillow to a pulp, and eventually settling down, she said: ‘If we keep losing men at this rate, there’ll be none left to marry.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure,’ Ellie said, opening a copy of Jane Eyre.

  ‘Who in their right mind wants to scrimp and scrape and pop babies out at a rate of knots anyway?’ Daisy said. ‘Not me, that’s for sure. Life is for living, not for drudgery.’

  ‘Methinks you doth protest too much,’ Anna smiled, discarding her pen and paper, vowing to write her letter when these two comedians were asleep. She could not write beautiful prose in this music hall atmosphere. With blankets tucked under her arms, she picked up her stocking to darn a hole in the toe.

  ‘Weren’t you one of those suffragettes, who march round with banners, chaining themselves to railings, Ellie?’ Daisy asked, combing one of her dark stage wigs. ‘I never got the time for all that militant stuff.’ Daisy did not go into detail. ‘But I admired their gumption.’

  ‘No,’ said Ellie, ‘I was a suffragist, not a suffragette. There is a difference.’

  ‘You are a case, you, Daisy,’ Anna said in local Liverpool vernacular.

  ‘You sound like me mam, so I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?’ Daisy scrambled into her little iron bed, pulling the blankets to her chin and sighed. Then she smiled mischievously, ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t like men, though.’

  ‘You would scare the pants off a docker,’ Anna laughed. But beneath all the bluff and bluster, she got the distinct feeling that Daisy was not as happy as she made out.

  ‘If I got the chance, I would, but I didn’t know that was how you did it.’ They all laughed, even Ellie, and Daisy’s blue eyes opened wide. She sat up suddenly, put her hands on her heart, and said with a theatrical flourish, ‘Will I ever get back to Blighty at this rate?’

  28

  July - November 1917, Passchendaele

  ‘Wipers has got to be the arse-end of the world,’ Daisy said, describing the third battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele. One of the major battles of the war to date. Daisy, Anna, and Ellie had hardly slept for three days and nights, grabbing only a fleeting shuteye when there was a bit of a miraculous and all-too-rapid lull in the bombardment. ‘Surely between the British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and South Africans, we can beat the shit out of the German army,’ she said, thoroughly fed up now.

  ‘We’ll take control, Daisy, don’t lose heart.’ Anna was watching the Belgium part of West Flanders light up like a massive bonfire. The air choked with thick black smoke in an effort to drive a hole in the German lines. British troops, intending to advance to the Belgian coast and capture the German submarine bases there, were under heavy fire and they were expecting massive amounts of casualties. Another explosion close to the white hospital tents sent them scurrying to action stations. They had moved closer to the battle ground and were stationed at a field hospital nearby.

  ‘It’s getting pretty fierce down here,’ Anna said, attending a soldier who was writhing in pain.

  ‘Sister said no time for chatter.’ Ellie, her nerves in shreds, threw
her arms over her head as another horrendous bombardment broke out above them.

  ‘I have to get these men in the ambolance.’ Daisy, whose pronunciation of the word, ambulance, always raised a smile, could see there was no hope for the soldier she was tending. She went on to the next. Those who showed any sign of life went straight to the casualty clearing station. Anguish was not an option. There was no time.

  ‘A bit of chatter gets you through, Ellie,’ Anna gently admonished her friend, knowing if she wanted to survive in this rain-soaked country for longer than five minutes, she would have to have her wits about her. Passchendaele was a quagmire that did not suit Ellie’s home-comfort nature. As most of this battle was taking place on reclaimed marshland, it was swampy even in dry weather.

  Persistent heavy rain made life miserable for all of them, producing an impassable morass of deep liquid mud. They knew that already thousands of soldiers had drowned. Anna had never seen such devastation. Even the newly developed tanks silted up and had become almost impossible to use.

  ‘Arse or elbow?’ Daisy asked, bringing a stretcher. They had not stopped collecting casualties for the last twenty-seven hours, and it seemed there would be no let-up any time soon.

  Anna took hold of the stretcher and helped carry the young infantryman to the tent at the other side of the boggy field. Putting him on the floor, she knew he would have to wait his turn, no matter how gravely injured he was.

  Every operating table was full. The doctors were working flat out, and there was an endless stream of casualties coming in all the time. Anna wanted to scream at the futility of it. All this slaughter for a couple of inches of gained land. It had to be bloody well worth it