The Mersey Angels

by Sheila Riley

Tallulah sang louder, beckoning the audience to join in, to drown out the occasional cannon boom a mile or two further down the line. For she and the approving audience were trying their best to ignore the offensive, which was now at its height.

  A couple of hours later, exhausted, and exhilarated, Daisy knew that tomorrow she would be taking some of these men to the casualty clearing station, or to the hospital ship. It was only right she should give them a good time tonight. She finished her repartee as she always did, with a rousing rendition of ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. When she finished there was not a dry eye in the house.

  The following day, Anna, Daisy and Ellie were chattering like magpies, reliving the wonderful concert, laughing as they left the farmhouse.

  ‘You dark horse, Daisy,’ Ellie said, ‘you did not tell us you had such a sublime voice, absolutely wonderful.’

  Daisy basked in Ellie’s rare praise.

  ‘The concert was wonderful, Daisy, you had those soldiers eating out of your hand,’ Anna agreed.

  ‘And the officers too,’ Ellie shrieked delightedly. Daisy and Ellie had now become best friends.

  ‘For as much as I would love to sit here chatting,’ Anna, always the sensible one, said, ‘Sister will organise a firing squad for us going absent without leave, if we do not move ourselves.’

  ‘Oh, hark at her, Daisy,’ Ellie laughed, ‘she’s missing her Ned, so we have to excuse her.’

  ‘I forgive everybody anything.’ Daisy’s eyes were alight with joyful elation. ‘Because I am the one who is taking my Sam back to where we both belong.’

  As they left, the farmhouse door, dragged from Anna’s hand by the strong wind, blew against the wall of the farmhouse. They had to hold on to their wimpled headdress, as any further conversation was impossible through the lashing rain, accompanied by the noise of the bombardment. Daisy jumped into her ambulance out of the rain, and it juddered and shook. Suddenly, Anna felt her bag whip from her hand by the swirling wind. She bent down to pick it up.

  ‘I’m a right giddy kipper, lately.’ She laughed; thrilled Daisy was taking her brother back home to England. ‘Butter fingers, that’s me,’ she said trying to grip the mud-soaked handles as the lashing rain saturated her right through in no time.

  Standing up, she triumphantly held up her bag. A few steps further on and she would be on her way to pick up casualties but then noticed Ellie’s wide-eyed expression of horror, her mouth open as if in a silent scream. Anna did not turn her head to the place where Ellie’s finger pointed. Instead, she hurried over and hugged her. Too afraid of what she might see.

  ‘The ambulance was right there behind you,’ Ellie gasped, shaking her head in denial. Anna turned her head, as if in slow motion, her petrified eyes taking in the acres of mud, the skeletal trees, and the melancholy sky, and the tank that had pushed the ambulance against the wall of the building they had just left and crushed it like a piece of paper into a mangled wreck no human being could possibly survive.

  Gazing in disbelief, Anna initially refused to take in the sight of the place where Daisy had been only moments before. She felt the blood drain from her face and a small cry escaped her lips. Her body rigid. She could not move.

  Daisy’s eyes were wide open when the medics dragged her from behind the crumpled wheel of her beloved Bessie and looking as if she had been given the worst kind of news. Stunned, Anna saw there was not a mark on Daisy, but the crush had killed her instantly. Her wonderful friend, who brought such joy to so many, was dead!

  A stinging slap across her cheek caught Anna by surprise. Nevertheless, it terminated the strident, high-pitched scream emanating from her mouth, as whizz-bangs, with devastating accuracy, whistled loudly overhead, cutting off further communication as Ellie dragged her to the floor.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph pray for her.' Tears streamed down Anna’s cheeks, and she made the sign of the cross in the thick, slimy mud.

  ‘Let’s get her to the clearing station,’ Ellie said, quickly coming to her senses and taking control.

  ‘There’s nothing they can do for her in the clearing station now. There is nothing any of us can do.’ Anna kneeled beside Daisy’s lifeless body and she gently stroked her cheek. Closing Daisy’s eyes for the last time, it didn’t seem possible that not five minutes ago she was her usual effervescent, cheerful self.

  Anna’s heart stuttered, everything was moving in slow motion, and she was watching the battle raging from the side-line of her worst nightmare, remembering this same feeling the night their house in Queen Street was deliberately set alight by Jerky Woods, and nearly her whole family were taken from her. ‘I’m not leaving her here to be trampled into the mud by another passing tank.’

  ‘Too right,’ Ellie said as tears streamed down her face and Anna went to fetch an unaccompanied stretcher, closing her mind down to the possibilities of where its handler would be. It was something Ellie had learned to do quite quickly. If she could stop herself from thinking. Wondering. Imagining. She could do her job. Men were dying all round them. They could not relinquish their duties. They had to carry on no matter how mechanically.

  30

  November, 1917

  The long battle of Passchendaele had now ended with a victory for the allies but Sam had taken a turn for the worse and had been unable to travel to the ship which would take him back to Liverpool. Knowing that the depths of the night were the worst time for dying, Anna spent many nights sitting beside her brother’s bed, watching his every breath, willing him to survive as his breathing became more laboured. If Sam were going to survive, he would need round-the-clock care and if, God forbid, he was going to die, she was going to be right here at his side.

  Through the long slim window, she watched a new day dawn and noticed Sam’s eyelids flicker. He murmured something. Anna could not understand what he was saying. Leaning forward, she listened carefully, trying to make out his words.

  Sam, with some effort, lifted his hand. His fingers curling round the locket she wore always under her stiff white collar and which had now worked its way out of her pale blue uniform dress. The locket was the one Sam had bought for their mother on that fateful Christmas Eve and Ruby had passed it on to Anna, after she retrieved it from the priest who had taken it from Sam before he was sent to the orphanage.

  ‘Hello Sam, it’s me Anna,’ she whispered as tears filled her eyes, ‘you’re going to be fine. Ellie… you haven’t met her yet, but she knows all the high-up officers who make the decisions… she had a word and guess what? I can take you home after all.’ Her brother was going to make it. She would make sure of that and for a fleeting moment, Sam’s eyes flickered open and registered the eyes of the sister he had been separated from for seven long years. Then, a faint smile lifted his lips and as his eyelids closed, a single stray tear rolled down his face.

  He seemed to be sleeping more soundly now, comfortable due to the heavy sedation he had been given. She knew the medical team had done a terrific job, but he was still in a bad way. Her eyelids grew heavy in the silence of the long bed-lined ward. The beds were crammed so closely together, there was just enough room either side of each bed for a nurse to administer the care these heroic men needed. A small rustle at the bottom of the bed caused her eyelids to open quickly and she looked round in the direction of the hushed whisper.

  ‘He is going to be fine, Anna, trust me.’

  Anna was surprised, but not alarmed when she saw Daisy standing there at the bottom of Sam’s bed. She was hallucinating through lack of sleep. She must be. Daisy had died and had been buried here, a final resting place for the madcap ambulance driver with the exquisite voice and the raucous laugh who paid no heed to titles and was one gifted medic.

  ‘Daisy?’ Anna reached out, but Daisy’s image evaporated like smoke from a cigarette into the air. ‘Oh, Daisy I will miss you. We would have been the best of friends.’ Anna wondered a few minutes later, if she had been dreaming, until, somewhere in the distance she received the proof that Daisy had
come back to say goodbye when she heard the familiar golden voice along the corridor…

  ‘What’s the use of worrying. It never was worthwhile. So…’

  And, not questioning how or why she knew, she just did. Daisy was in a better place.

  ‘Come along, Sister,’ Matron said, putting a gentle hand on Anna’s shoulder, ‘you could both do with some rest now.’

  Her body aching, Anna stood up and began to pace the ward in an effort to get some feeling back in her stiff limbs. This place, in sharp contrast to the battlefield, was an oasis of calm efficiency, and gazing through eyes half-hypnotised through fatigue, she blinked at the men whose shattered limbs were bound together with splints. Bandages covered faces with no eyes. They were all asleep now, most were knocked out with morphia to begin the long job of healing.

  Their bodies may mend, she thought, but their minds would need a bit more work. Anna wondered who could recover from such unbearable injuries and be the same as they were before? Some of these men had young families, only joining the war for the pay it brought. What price a life? she wondered. These soldiers had no axe to grind, no personal argument with the enemy. All they did was follow orders.

  ‘Nurse? Nurse!’ The voice belonged to an officer at the end of the ward.

  ‘He is having electric shock treatment in the morning, poor soul,’ Matron told Anna, who knew the treatment terrified most patients. ‘He lost the use of his legs,’ Matron explained, carrying a treatment tray containing bandages and the obligatory syringe of morphia.

  ‘Shot or infection?’ Anna asked, admiring the calm efficiency of her fellow nurse, silently admitting that these men were in the best possible hands.

  ‘Shellshock,’ answered Sister. ‘He came in screaming in pain after going over the top. Most of his men were killed.’

  ‘I’ve heard many similar tales of officers who felt impotent and scared but were not allowed to show it,’ Anna said, knowing that natural emotions were forbidden on the battlefield and the officers developed symptoms that doctors could not yet explain. ‘Will he be sent home?’

  ‘He is being sent to Moss Side Military Hospital in Maghull,’ Matron informed her, and Anna’s eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘That’s not far from Ashland Hall,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard good things about the treatment the officers and men are receiving.’

  ‘It’s one of the first institutions in the world to recognise shellshock as a medical condition, not a weakness of character,’ Sister said with authority. ‘This fellow made a bit of a name for himself as a daredevil, and the powers-that-be considered his actions reckless, maybe even downright dangerous.’

  ‘And his legs?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Some say his lameness is a ploy to avoid being shot for putting the lives of his battalion at risk,’ Sister continued. ‘The doctors cannot find anything physically wrong with his legs.’

  ‘I feel so sorry for them all,’ Anna said. She knew she could not sit here and do nothing when nurses looked to be rushed off their feet at any moment and she did what she was trained to do in these circumstances. She made herself useful.

  31

  Late December 1917

  Sam’s condition was beginning to stabilise so Anna was hoping that arrangements could soon be made for him to be taken down river to the port when she was called to see sister.

  ‘I think, under the circumstances, you and Nurse Harrington have both done your duty out here, Anna,’ Sister said, ‘now you must both take your brother home.’

  Too full to speak, Anna could only nod. She needed time with her family. And Sam would need her now.

  Her nerves in shreds, Anna did not think she could take many more shocks. But this was one of the better ones to be leaving this place with both her best friend and her beloved brother. She knew, if it had not been for the wind, or losing her grip on her bag, or stooping to pick it up, she would have been the one being buried, instead of poor Daisy. Her funny, irreverent, courageous friend who was buried with full military honours in a tranquil spot near the sea she so loved.

  Daisy, fun-loving and full of life, had plans for the future. She loved her work and paid no heed to pompous bureaucracy if the situation was uncalled for. Nevertheless, she was the kindest, most generous person Anna had come to know. Daisy did not judge anybody, not even Ellie, with whom she had become good friends. She did not whinge and whine. Daisy was a heroine and Anna was proud to call her a close friend. She would be the one to tell Sam, as gently as she knew how, what happened to her.

  Just before Christmas, Anna and Ellie accompanied Sam on the barge, a very gentle journey, where the seriously injured moved slowly down the river towards the hospital ship. Throughout all of the five-hour journey along the river, Anna prayed while she and Ellie held Sam’s hand.

  ‘I won’t let you die, Sam,’ she cried, ‘I’ll look after you now.’ As she gazed down at his fair lashes resting on alabaster cheeks, she wondered how many more lives would be sacrificed before this damned senseless war was over. The sooner she got him out of here, the better.

  As they neared the port the sound of anti-artillery fire became louder and when they arrived at the berth of the hospital ship that would carry Sam back home all lights were out on board.

  ‘Not tonight,’ Anna heard a male voice when she asked permission to board the ship, ‘what with the heavy raid and no moonlight.’ The voice seemed to come from a sky filled with searchlights and fragments from the bursting anti-aircraft artillery. This place of death was a live, seething mass of noise and activity. ‘You have to take him over to the hospital,’ said an orderly from the ship, ‘we can’t take patients until the raid is over, or ’til morning when it’s light.’ It was a bitter blow, but Anna had to admit that they knew what they were doing.

  She and Ellie went back to the barge and proceeded a short way down the river to the small cottage hospital, where Sam was taken onto a ward. Once Sam was settled, they would go in search of something to eat.

  ‘I am starving,’ said Ellie as they headed to the only place where they suspected there might be some food. The field kitchen was not particularly busy. By the look of things, the cook was not having the best of times.

  ‘Bloody bombs put my fire out, so dinner may be a little late tonight,’ a burly cook thundered as he grabbed a heavy pan and headed for safety in the stables across the field. ‘I suggest you take cover.’

  ‘Cook hates being disturbed when creating a culinary masterpiece,’ quipped the orderly and Anna was sorely disappointed, she could not remember when she’d last ate.

  ‘I could eat a horse between two mattresses,’ Ellie grumbled, shaking her fist to the frenetic sky. ‘Bloody Hun stop firing ’til I get some food.’

  ‘I bet you two nurses could sleep on a clothesline?’ The orderly’s conversation had to be shouted over the noise of the bombardment and Anna surmised he was going to talk until the shelling ended, or until he was, whichever came first.

  ‘I will concentrate on staying perpendicular for the moment.’ Anna gingerly picked her way through the chaos of war, not in the mood for a chat.

  ‘Righto,’ called the orderly, ‘mind that crater.’

  ‘Pardon?’ asked Anna, but it was too late, before she knew it, her feet were cart- wheeling down a slimy embankment as her body tried desperately to stay upright. Just in time, she was gripped by a strong hand that prevented her landing in a heap at the bottom of a gigantic muddy shell hole. Anna felt herself steadied.

  ‘You nurses never listen,’ said the orderly as he plonked her back on her feet and fixed the tin helmet back on her head.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ellie asked. ‘One minute you were there and the next you were hurtling.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Anna, the only thing that was hurt was her pride.

  Later, when she returned to the hospital where Sam was sleeping, she heard a man call painfully from further down the ward.

  ‘What can I get you, soldier?’ Anna said. Ignoring his horr
endous injuries, she tried to remain cheerful. ‘Can’t you sleep? Would you like me to wet your whistle?’

  ‘What are you doing Saturday night?’ He tried to pull himself up on the pillow.

  ‘Lie down this minute.’ Anna’s voice was immediately professional, and the soldier did as he was told. Just like little boys, some of them, she thought. ‘You don’t want to do yourself a mischief.’

  ‘Ahh, those domineering tones, Nurse. You sound just like my missus. How I have missed them.’ His face was badly swollen and a deep plum purple, almost black from lip to eyebrow, but he managed a half-smile. ‘You haven’t seen my eye rolling around anywhere, have you, Nurse? I lost it at Marne.’ He sounded almost cheerful in the dimness of the ward and Anna decided it was best to play along.

  ‘How careless can you get?’ she said, automatically straightening his covers, ‘but I have to say, you will look rather fetching with an eyepatch, and your wound has earned you a back-to-Blighty ticket.’

  ‘Do you think so, nurse? Do you really.’ His voice sounded like a young boy, eager to be reassured, and her heart went out to him. Then he said brightly, ‘You wouldn’t mind hopping in and giving me a little cuddle, just to keep me going ’til I get back to see the wife?’

  ‘I’ll give you a king-sized enema in a minute.’ Anna could not help but smile. She did not mind their impudent banter. It proved they were still alive.

  ‘Nurse, you do say the nicest things.’ He chuckled as Anna wet his lips with a little gauze soaked in water, knowing he was still not to have anything to eat or drink. Giving her hand a little squeeze, he was so pathetically grateful that she almost cried when she watched him grow weary, all bravado swept away on the morning breeze through the open window. She left him only when he was quietly sleeping.