Frontline Nurses On Duty

by Holly Green

  ‘I don’t understand how you come to be here. What happened to Iannis?’

  The child in her arms woke up and began to cry. She produced a crust of dry bread from her pocket and gave it to him and he grabbed it in a small, pink fist and gnawed at it.

  ‘When the fighting was over and Adrianople surrendered and there was a peace treaty we thought everything would go back to being as it was. The Turks still held Gallipoli but Krithia had always been mainly Serb and Greek. Iannis’s old mother was still here and he felt he should go back. He was the only doctor and he knew people needed him. So we came back, and to begin with it all seemed fine. People were glad to see him. Even the Turks were grateful, because he treated them too. So we settled down and Anton was born; we opened at dispensary and I acted as nurse and midwife. But then this new war started. To begin with it didn’t seem as if it concerned us, but, when Turkey declared on the side of the Germans, people became suspicious of each other. Then you arrived—’ she gestured towards the ships out in the bay ‘—and the Turkish garrison was reinforced. Someone, I don’t know who, must have had a grudge against Iannis. They went to the commander and told him that Iannis had gone over to the other side in the first war. He was arrested and shot as a traitor.’

  Luke put out a hand and touched her arm. She had related the story in such a calm, detached fashion that she might have been talking about someone else. ‘Sophie, I am so sorry. When did this happen?’

  ‘Three weeks ago, a little more. Since then I have lived in fear. I was sure that soon they would come for me. Then, when I saw you being marched into the village, it was like a miracle. I thought if only I could get to you and set you free, you would bring me here, away from that place, somewhere safe …’ Her voice broke at last and he put his arm round her.

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be all right here. I promise you.’ She bit her lip and nodded and he said, ‘You drugged him, didn’t you? The guard?’

  ‘Yes. I still had the key to the dispensary and I knew what to mix into his drink – and what to give Anton, to make sure that he slept all through. It was a risk. I wasn’t sure of the dosage for such a young child, but he is all right.’ She kissed the child’s forehead and he gurgled happily. ‘You are all right, my precious. You are safe now.’

  The orderly came to the flap of the tent to tell them that the colonel was ready to see them. Malone was heavy-eyed and dyspeptic, annoyed at being dragged out of bed.

  ‘Where the hell have you been, Pavel? We’d made up our minds you were dead or captured. And who the devil is this?’

  Luke told his story and before he had finished the child began to cry, a loud, insistent howl.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Malone exclaimed. ‘I can’t hear myself think.’

  Sophie looked at him with appealing eyes. ‘He is hungry, colonel. Is there any milk I could give him?’

  Malone harrumphed once or twice, then shouted for his orderly and told him to find some milk for the child. The orderly, an older man with a gentle, almost motherly nature, disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a cup and a spoon.

  ‘It’s condensed milk, I’m afraid. That’s all we have. But I’ve diluted it with some boiled water, so I hope it will be all right.’

  While Sophie fed the little boy, Malone summoned Luke to one side with a jerk of his head.

  ‘This is all very well, Pavel, and I can see why you had to bring her with you, but what am I going to do with her now?’

  ‘Can’t we send her back to Wellington, sir?’ Luke suggested. ‘I’m sure my folks would be happy to take her in.’

  ‘Good God, man! What do you think I’m running here? A passenger cruise line?’

  Sophie looked up. ‘I am a nurse, colonel. I have seen the boats taking your wounded out to the hospital ship. I think they must need all the help they can get. If you can send me out I promise you I can make myself useful.’

  ‘It’s true, sir,’ Luke put in. ‘I worked with her in the hospital at Adrianople. She is fully qualified and very good at her job.’

  A look of relief crossed the colonel’s face. ‘Excellent! I’ll send for the MO and get him to arrange transport.’

  The medical officer, when summoned, was clearly delighted to have another pair of hands to help with the work and immediately took charge of Sophie and her child. As he led them out, Sophie turned to Luke and put out her hand.

  ‘Thank you …’ her lips trembled as if she wanted to say more but all she managed was to repeat, ‘thank you, thank you!’

  Luke squeezed her hand. ‘You don’t have to thank me. You saved my life. Take care.’

  ‘Will we meet again, I wonder?’

  ‘I’m sure we will, sometime.’

  She nodded and gripped his fingers briefly. Then she turned and followed the officer out of the tent.

  ‘Right!’ Malone said. ‘Now we can get to business. What have you got to report?’

  Luke told him what he had seen and when he finished Malone was frowning. ‘No weak points anywhere?’

  ‘Not that I could see, sir. The trenches go right across the peninsular and the defences are deep, too. A frontal attack means walking straight into their guns.’

  Malone nodded grimly. ‘Well, at least we know. You’d better go and get some sleep. You look dead on your feet.’

  It was true. Luke suddenly realised that he had not really slept for 48 hours. He went to the dugout he shared with the rest of his platoon, lay down in the dust and fell into a deep sleep that even the heat and the flies could not disturb.

  *

  Next morning, the order came round that they were to attack that day. There would be an artillery barrage from the ships in the harbour and then the infantry were to go in. Full frontal attack! Luke was on the verge of voicing his incredulity, then he thought better of it. What was the point? It was on a par with the way the rest of the operation had been run. Why expect anything to change now?

  The Wellingtons stood to at midday, on the left of the line, making their way up through the spider’s web of trenches, which had already acquired names given to them by the British contingent: ‘Clapham Junction’; ‘Holborn Circus’; ‘Lancashire Street’. The artillery barrage had gone on all morning. The noise was deafening and it was hard to imagine how anyone could have survived under that intensity of shelling. Some of the men were predicting cheerfully that they would be able to walk into the Turkish lines without firing a shot.

  Luke was not convinced. As he stood on the fire step, waiting for the order to advance, his throat was parched and his belly burned with the rum ration that had been handed round a few minutes earlier. He knew that he was probably experiencing the last few minutes of his life and he wondered if he should pray; but he had never been religious and right now he saw no reason to appeal to the God of Battles. If God was on their side, and Allah was on the side of the Turks, what sense did that make? Were they not the same deity? He thought he should have written a last letter to his parents, but what could he have said? No heroic, self-sacrificing sentiments came to mind. If he’d had time to write it would probably have been ‘Here I am, about to chuck my life away, at the order of a High Command that cares less for us than we care for the sheep we send to slaughter.’

  The whistles blew all along the trenches and Luke launched himself out of the trench.

  ‘Come on, lads! Let’s give it to the bastards!’

  The illusion that the Turks had been shelled into submission was immediately dispelled by a hail of bullets. Luke ran forward, hearing the zip of bullets passing his ear, the whine of ricochets, the thud as they hit home in living flesh. He was aware of men falling on both sides, but he remained miraculously unscathed. Then a new artillery barrage started up from behind him. He saw shells bursting on the Turkish trenches but many of them were falling short and he saw men from his own unit just ahead of him being felled. He flung himself to the ground behind a low, thorny bush and flattened himself as much as possible. Two others of his platoo
n crashed down beside him, one of them bleeding profusely from a wound to the side of his head.

  ‘What now, Sarge?’ the other one asked breathlessly.

  ‘Dig in here, as well as we can,’ Luke replied. ‘There’s no point in trying to go on any further.’

  He squirmed round to look behind him. They had gained about 400 yards and the ground between was littered with casualties. As he turned back he felt a sudden sensation, as if some unseen hand had given him a glancing blow, and realised that his hat had disappeared.

  ‘Streuth, sarge! Keep your head down. That was a close one!’ said his companion.

  They scraped a shallow pit with their entrenching tools and lay flat in it. The slightest attempt to raise a head provoked a well-aimed bullet. It was mid afternoon and the sun beat down. Luke thought he knew what hot weather was, but he had never experienced anything like the ferocity of the sun on this bare hillside. Without his hat he began to feel as if his brain was being fried. The man next to him, with the head wound, became delirious and Luke had to restrain him to prevent him getting up and walking straight into the Turkish fire.

  ‘What do we do now, Sarge?’ the other man asked.

  ‘Stay here till dark, then hope we can get back to the trenches.’

  At last the sun began to dip but suddenly the barrage started up again and Luke heard a clatter of boots on stones behind him. Lieutenant Franklin threw himself down between the two of them, his head swathed in a blood-soaked bandage.

  ‘Orders from the General. There’s to be another attack.’

  ‘Another attack!’ Luke stared at the officer incredulously. ‘Has he got any idea what it’s like out here?’

  ‘The colonel queried the order,’ the lieutenant said grimly, ‘but we’ve been told to go ahead. Nothing to be done, I’m afraid.’

  Once more the whistles blew, and across the blighted landscape dusty figures rose up and ran forwards. This time they made another fifty yards before the unremitting fire forced them to the ground. Luke scraped a new pit and lay down, with only one thought in his mind. He was still alive and soon it would be dark.

  Chapter 12

  To Leo, the summer at Kragujevac took on an almost idyllic quality. It was true that the work she was doing was very much the same as the work at Lamarck. Most of the patients were typhus cases and required the same intensive care, but there was something about the surroundings that lifted the spirit. In the distance there were mountains, covered in forests of oak and beech and maple. In the valleys, wheat and oats were ripening and as the summer progressed the trees in the orchards bent under the weight of plums and vines clothed the hillsides in between. Above all, she had a sense of homecoming. It was a comfort to hear Serbian spoken again and in the evenings the men who were convalescing sat around the campfire and the inevitable gusla was produced and the old songs sung. And then, those who were well enough would get to their feet and form a circle, linking arms for the solemn steps of the kolo. Leo knew that some of her colleagues groaned when they heard the drone of the gusla but to her it possessed a romance that no other music could evoke, bringing back evenings around the fire at Adrianople when she was still masquerading as an aide-de-camp to Colonel ‘Sasha’ Malkovic.

  Several times she was tempted, when men were being discharged to go back to their units, to ask them to carry a letter, or perhaps to deliver a message. It was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘If you happen to meet Colonel Malkovic, tell him that Leo is here, working as a nurse, and sends her best wishes.’ But she never spoke the words. She could not explain to herself what restrained her. Partly it was an honourable reticence, a feeling that he had enough to think about without concerning himself with her presence. Partly it was a much less noble fear that his response would be to tell her to go home, or to disclaim any further connection – or that there would be no response at all. Overlying all this was a sense that, if fate intended them to meet, it would somehow occur without her intervention, so all she had to do was wait.

  Meanwhile, there was plenty to occupy her time. Reveille was at 5.30 a.m. so that the heavy work of carrying water and cleaning could be done before the heat of the day. Then there were patients to be bathed and dressings to be done before lunch at 11.30. Tea was a 4 pm, supper at 6.30 and all lights were out by 9.30.

  Every morning Leo anointed herself from head to toe with paraffin to deter the lice that carried the typhus infection and put on protective overalls and a bathing cap. Every new patient was stripped, washed and coated with paraffin, too, and his clothes were burned before he was give a clean nightshirt and tucked up between clean sheets. All the nurses had all been inoculated against the disease before leaving London, but in spite of all precautions some of them contracted the less serious typhoid and most of them, Leo included, habitually suffered from a sore throat and ran a low-level fever.

  They were reminded periodically that the Austrians might have changed their minds about invading but the war was still going on. On several occasions they were bombed by Austrian Taube bi-planes. Fortunately for the hospital the main target was the nearby town, but they had one or two near misses.

  The weather varied between extreme heat and violent storms, which turned the camp into a sea of mud. When this happened Leo reverted to her old habit of discarding her skirt in favour of breeches and boots, and very soon Mabel Stobart and some of the others followed her example.

  Although the hospital had been set up to treat the soldiers, it soon became known in the villages round about and a steady stream of civilians came to beg for treatment for a variety of diseases. Some had typhus, but others were suffering from diphtheria, TB or even smallpox. Realising that there were virtually no medical services available to these people, Mabel Stobart decided to set up roadside dispensaries and Leo was often detailed to take charge of one of these, as she was one of the few who could speak the language.

  It was distressing work because very often the cases that were brought to her were beyond help but among them there were many for whom she was able to provide medication that might cure, or at least alleviate, the sickness; and the gratitude of the families was touching. Often she was invited into their homes to partake of ‘slatko’, the ceremonial form of hospitality at which the guest was offered a dish of jam, followed by a tumbler of water. Looking around her at the women in their full tartan skirts and coloured bodices and headscarves and the men in their white tunics and trousers she often felt as if she had stepped into the pages of a child’s book of fairy tales.

  The idyll could not last. In September news came that the Bulgarians had agreed to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers and were once again massing on the borders. Troops had to be withdrawn from the Austrian frontier to meet this new threat and Mabel Stobart was given the command of a field hospital attached to the Schumadier Division. On Sept 30th they left Kragujevic, leaving a skeleton staff to man the hospital there, and set out for Pirot, near the Bulgarian border. It was an impressive cavalcade, led by Mrs Stobart herself mounted on a black horse, followed by ox-carts and horse-drawn wagons loaded with tents and supplies. Six motor ambulances brought up the rear. Three days later, at three in the morning, they finally arrived at Pirot and set up the tents.

  They were not to stay for long. Belgrade had already fallen to the Austrians. Soon they heard that the Serbian forces, hastily withdrawn from the Austrian front, had been unable to hold back the Bulgarians, who had been equipped with heavy weapons by Germany. Initially Stobart and the staff of the field hospital were ordered to retreat towards Nis, but then word came that help was desperately needed further south. After a hasty conference, it was agreed that Leo should lead a small detachment to Leskovac, on the road towards Kumanovo. She would be accompanied by one of the women doctors, Stella Patterson, five nurses, and two ox-carts and a wagon with their Serbian drivers, who would also act as orderlies.

  The weather was appalling. Autumn had brought strong winds and endless rain but that could not mask the thunder of th
e guns to the east. On reaching Leskovac they were directed to a field outside the town, where they struggled against the elements to set up the tents. Before they had even unloaded the wagons, wounded began to arrive, transported as they had been from Chataldzha in jolting ox-carts, with only the primary emergency dressings to cover their wounds. Looking at the faces of her five helpers, Leo realised that her previous experience was going to be invaluable.

  At dawn next morning, just as they were about to start the daily routine of feeding and bathing, an officer galloped into the camp on a lathered horse.

  ‘You must move at once! Pack up and move! The enemy will be here within hours!’

  There followed a period of chaos where one day seemed to blend into the next so that Leo lost track of time. Again and again they set up camp, off-loaded the wounded and began the work of caring for them, only to be told within hours that the Bulgarians were close at hand and they must move on again, through Lebane and Medveda to Pristina, along roads clogged with refugees, with their own retreating army at their heels.

  *

  Tom swore as the endless rain smudged the line he had just drawn. He rubbed it out and got up from the stool where he was crouching to squint through the periscope that gave him a view of the area beyond the trench. It was an unsatisfactory way of seeing the landscape he was trying to draw, but to raise his head above the parapet was to invite a bullet from a sniper in the enemy lines. He regarded it despondently. It reminded him of Mons; another vista of slag heaps and pithead cranes, at its centre the huge structure that the troops had nicknamed London Bridge, looming out of the mist. The difference was that now most of the buildings were ruins and the ground was pitted with water-filled shell holes, each one a glimmering reflection of the grey sky. Loos, that was the name of the place. The French pronounced it Loss. It struck him a gloomily appropriate.

  Tom finished his sketch and turned back through the pages of the pad. They were not all filled with the horror of war. The summer months had passed with a minimum of action on both sides. There had been time to enjoy the sunshine, to listen to the birds, write letters, draw – almost to relax. His pad was full of pictures of men laughing together over a shared joke, playing cards, smoking, mending socks. Their faces were worn and filthy but there was something in their eyes that he had struggled to catch; a look of optimism and hope and the warmth of shared comradeship. He had been touched, over and over again, by the evidence of the close bonds that had grown up, the sense of brotherhood engendered by life in the trenches. But now, the rumour was, that time of relative peace was almost over. There was to be one more big push, one decisive action before the winter set in.