Daughters of War

by Lizzie Page

  Bonnie dashing around, wearing her old cap instead of the new veils we wore now, and for once Matron saying nothing. Matron slopping the floor, over and over. Gordon exhausted, arguing with anyone who came near, clutching some poor visiting officer by the collar. ‘This has got to stop NOW.’ Talk of court martials flung out like bullets.

  Snatching sleep: four hours here, four hours there. Daylight and night-time merging. Kittie and Bonnie in my tent so their tent could be given over to the injured. Katherine, Beryl, Lucille and Millicent sharing a tent too. Dreams of bombs and shells and engineers on day trips, tins of meat, howitzer guns called Mother. I dreamt my mother was in England, looking for me everywhere, and when she found me, I was so coated in mud that she didn’t recognise me. Kitty giving me some medicinal spirits to keep me going. The appearance of the mailman, blood running down the side of one cheek. A short note from Elsie like finding treasure on a desert island. You must be in the thick of it, dear girl, stay strong, be safe.

  * * *

  Gordon rarely panicked, but he was panicking now: Colonel Hurd was coming in to see his youngest son. His eldest had died in Arras. His second had died in Turkey. Did anyone know where his son, the youngest Hurd, was?

  I knew. I’d held the youngest son’s hand when he’d arrived in surgery without a hope in hell and after an hour or so, I’d slipped the name-band onto his slender wrist. I went out the back of the hospital where the bodies were, and I wiped every bit of mud I could from the youngest Hurd’s beautiful face. I doubted the lad had started shaving yet. I closed his dark eyes and closed his soft mouth. I made him as clean and presentable as possible under the circumstances.

  When his father came in, he sobbed and at first, he couldn’t look and then he said gruffly, ‘Did you do this?’

  Had I done something wrong? I said nothing, just stood there with my head bowed.

  ‘Did you clean him up?’

  I admitted I had.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said softly and then he fell onto his son. After a few minutes, I put my hand on him and he let himself be guided away. I held him. Yes, I know, you can’t hold a colonel… But I did.

  ‘He was my son,’ he sobbed into my shoulder. ‘My last son.’

  It rapidly became apparent that I would not be going anywhere. England would have to wait. The diplodocus would have to wait. My darling daughters would have to wait. The hospital had become our trench and we could not get free. The war had come to the Somme. That was the evening – or was it the next, I can’t remember – I woke up the telegraph operator. He was slumped, asleep, over his machine in a tent with all kinds of stains up the wall.

  ‘Two telegrams for England, please.’

  I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t leave this place. The medium had warned me, but I had never taken her seriously and I didn’t then. What I didn’t realise at the time was that, for me, this was the end of everything.

  One day in July: Field Hospital 19, Bray-sur-Somme

  Private Collins

  Private Rawlinson

  2nd Lieutenant Rodgers

  Sergeant Salt

  Private Rodgers

  Private Lewinson

  Private Fishburn

  Private Thorpe

  Private Jameson

  Driver Bridges

  Sapper S. Jones

  Sapper Turkington

  Rifleman Hart

  Temporary Colonel Hawkins

  Private Davis

  Private Lewis

  Sergeant Morrison

  Unknown

  Unknown

  Unknown

  Unknown.

  32

  Two teenage girls, daughters of a local orderly, arrived. They couldn’t have been much older than Leona and Joy. Long and thin, they reminded me of the weasels in The Wind in the Willows. Strange thoughts. Gordon and the orderly were talking rapidly as the girls stood trembling next to them. Then Gordon turned to me.

  ‘They’ll do dressings. It’ll free you and Bonnie to join us in surgery.’

  The girls were both nearly in tears.

  ‘No,’ I said. I wasn’t thinking of myself, I was thinking of them. They shouldn’t have to see what we were seeing. Why weren’t they at school?

  ‘Nurse Turner,’ barked Gordon. ‘This is not up for debate. Train them up, then you and Bonnie join me.’

  The girls took our seats and we showed them what to do. Then Bonnie and I went to the worst place in the hospital, where Gordon worked. You weren’t allowed to call it an abattoir or mention its resemblance to one in any way. There was a line of men, mostly lying on stretchers, a few lying or sitting on the ground. Most of them were drenched in blood. They were very quiet. I knew Kitty and Gordon’s work was terrible, but… Bonnie’s hand was shaking next to mine.

  ‘Think you can do it?’

  I thought of the card from Elsie a year and a half ago, when she was moving to her little cellar house – the faster the treatment, the better. I nodded, ‘I can do it, Doctor Collins.’

  * * *

  The young girls managed well. Between them, they did two hundred dressings a day those weeks, while Bonnie and I learnt how to administer a man morphine, pull out shrapnel from his body as he lay on a stretcher and then sew him up. All the while he would be apologising for being a bother.

  As Gordon walked by me one evening, he handed me something.

  ‘Better late than never.’

  ‘What is it?’ I said. I looked and found it was a tiny American flag. It was 6 or 7 July, I think.

  I couldn’t even find the words to say thank you. I had forgotten how to speak, I didn’t know gratitude. I didn’t know how to express anything anymore. I would one day sew it onto my coat or my blanket or somewhere. Gordon meant it to be nice, a touch of home, but I had to blink back tears. The little Stars and Stripes said, ‘What are you doing in this hellhole? You don’t belong here, you don’t even have to be here.’

  I caught up with him.

  ‘When did you get this?’ I asked.

  ‘Before,’ he said, with his palms up, which told me nothing because I had no recollection of a time before this.

  How could the men be living, breathing, walking and dreaming one moment, and then be turned into just a number, a number in a larger number of fatalities, the next? Each and every single one of them was a tragedy.

  * * *

  Louis’ car pulled up, some time later. I seemed to have lost count of the days. I had lost count of the nights. Maybe he had been in Paris all this time? Or London? I had lost track of him altogether. I was on a twenty-minute break and was outside, pegging up my aprons. Some were so ruined with blood or mud, they would have to be destroyed. Some I’d do my best to save. I remembered when sixteen aprons had seemed a lot. Now I could have done with double that amount. I was still in a daze. Ever since 1 July, I had felt like an automated thing, a machine, a clockwork ballerina going through the motions. Even Louis’ boots sounded healthy as he squelched across the mud towards me.

  ‘My love,’ he said. As I turned to look at him, he took a deep breath, then with his habitual honesty, said, ‘Good Lord, you look terrible!’

  I had only slept in four-hour snatches for the past month. ‘Terrible’ was probably a compliment, ‘ravaged’ might have been closer to the truth. But I didn’t care. I had never cared less about my looks. I fixed my blurry eyes on him. Louis looked the very picture of vitality. A man who is not physically broken, I thought. How rare to see that! I had been among sick and dying men for so long that Louis seemed to glow. He appeared almost magical. It would not have been a surprise to see him in a halo sprouting golden wings. I thought, ah, perhaps this is why in the olden days people thought they saw angels. I nodded at him, then carried on with my work, automatically, unthinkingly.

  ‘Can I have five minutes, May?’

  ‘I’m working,’ I protested. I accidentally dropped some of my aprons into the mud. Louis bent and helped me pick them up and I went to the outside sink and washed them s
ilently again. He followed me and stood next to me, and I tried to think of something to say to him. I had forgotten how people had normal conversations. It seemed to me that Louis belonged to a different species.

  Finally, they were pinned out to dry. Beautiful sight that, white aprons flapping in the wind: a pure and unblemished sight in a world that wasn’t. As I stood to admire my handiwork, I had almost forgotten he was there.

  ‘May,’ he said. ‘Talk to me.’

  I stared at my pocket watch.

  ‘I’m working,’ I repeated.

  * * *

  He followed me into the hospital tent. It used to be the convalescence tent but now it was anything goes. The beds were all full, naturally, and there were men on the floor between each of them. This was not as crowded as it had been, but I think for Louis maybe this was the first moment he realised how bad things actually were.

  I still couldn’t find the words. Small talk seemed impossible. ‘Are you all right, May?’ he asked.

  I don’t know. I lost myself in the Somme.

  I wiped the face of a patient, a dear chap from Cornwall. He had been in surgery last night and had lost his leg.

  ‘He’s keeping his arm though,’ I said to Louis. He flushed, and kind of muttered, ‘Good to hear.’

  I nodded. I left the boy, washed up, then walked to the front of the tent. In front of us, stretcher-bearers were coming up. The ambulances were creating their own mud piles.

  Louis pulled at my shoulder.

  ‘May, talk to me.’

  ‘What’s there to say? It’s a disaster,’ I said.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said. I stared at him in amazement. ‘Listen to me,’ he said urgently. ‘It’s going well, we’re winning.’

  I don’t think I had ever felt fury as I did then. I pulled his arm, and I led him behind the hospital tent. He was protesting as we went, and we both sank into the mud. Then we were there, where the bodies were, where the orderlies tried to give the dead as much dignity as possible. I couldn’t speak. Well, in which universe was this going well? Louis looked out into the nightmare, then paled. ‘What are they all doing here?’

  ‘They’ll be buried tonight.’

  ‘But there’s so many,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s going well,’ he said as though I hadn’t spoken at all. ‘The commanders are pleased.’ He seemed desperate to deny what was going on in front of his eyes. ‘The French are thrilled, it’s going better than Verdun.’

  ‘Thrilled?’

  ‘Well, we are.’ He turned away from the view. ‘The numbers we have in aren’t bad at all… yet.’

  ‘The stories are terrible.’

  ‘There will always be terrible stories in wartime.’

  I couldn’t see the bigger picture. I couldn’t see what was happening ‘out there’. I could only see two stretcher-men struggling in, and a boy who appeared to have lost one side of his head.

  Back in my ward, a patient was whimpering. I knew this one. We had done all we could for him but he still liked to talk. We said usually that hearing was the last to go. Not with this poor chap. I leaned over him to hear what he said. I grabbed the notepad in case it was for a letter to his wife or his mother. You had to tell yourself, not everyone gets the chance to have their last words heard. It was a privilege in this strange bastard world.

  ‘The barbed wire was still up. Didn’t stand a chance,’ the soldier said.

  Louis sat by his side. I nodded that he could take the man’s hand and he did. ‘Where are you from, sir?’

  ‘I’m a reservist. Lancaster.’

  ‘You’ve been very brave, sir,’ said Louis.

  ‘The barbed wire was still up…’ the man repeated incredulously. ‘We were slaughtered like pigs.’

  ‘You did your best,’ I said. Louis was now gulping air, lost for words.

  Gradually, the man’s breathing became shallower and even as we watched, his eyes glazed over. I knew what was happening, but I don’t think Louis did.

  ‘Do something,’ he hissed. ‘May?’

  I felt the poor man’s forehead and I told him he was loved. I held his fingers while Louis glared at me as though this was my fault. We just stood there. Him and me across the poor dying soldier. There was nothing good, nothing comforting to come out of this. There was only nothingness. Louis swallowed, again and again. His Adam’s apple going up and down was the only thing that moved. When it was over, I called for an orderly. He knew: tone of voice, a wry expression did that job.

  ‘I’ll write to his mother,’ I told Louis as I went to the sink.

  Louis gripped my arm. ‘They need to be wearing wire-cutters at all times. It’s part of their uniform. Why weren’t they?’

  He was asking me?

  The orderlies took the body. Bonnie took the old sheets and spread the new sheets. An orderly came out with the mop. While Louis was still standing around shaking his head, a new fella, with only one leg, was given the bed. Another patient wanted to be heard. He sat up in bed. I had assisted with the amputation of his arm three days ago. He was recovering nicely but he was so angry, I regret that most of us kept away from him.

  ‘Have you seen the size of the wire?’ he said accusingly to Louis. ‘The cutters wouldn’t cut it, we needed bombs to bring that down. They told us they’d be down, for feck’s sake!’

  I was glad Louis didn’t shy away but I was also nervous that he went over to this temperamental man. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I was next line, hung back ten seconds then just ran out to get the fella in front… I wasn’t going to leave them out there to be riddled with more holes than a colander.’

  Louis straightened. He looked for a place on the man’s arm that wasn’t bandaged, gave up and patted his shoulder lightly.

  ‘You’ve done a great thing for your country.’

  The man grunted. ‘What’s my country done for me?’

  Of course, I knew by then that my Louis was an emotional man, but still, when, in the middle of our great field hospital, he burst into hot, choking tears, it took me by surprise. We hugged. He snorted on my shoulder.

  The angry soldier piped up. ‘Do you need those wire-cutters, sir?’

  And suddenly we were shaking and crying with laughter as though it were something hilarious instead of the utter carnage that it was.

  Places where mud gets

  The beard

  The crotch

  Between the toes

  Behind the ears

  The lungs.

  33

  The stretcher-bearers had gone out for a soldier stuck in a ditch and had been gone for a while, so the orderly had said he’d go and see what the hold-up was. None of them had returned.

  I had some idea where they might have gone so I popped out to look for them. The rain had turned this side of the hospital into a mudslide. And still it rained on. I made out some figures at the end of a once-grassy slope, now entirely churned-up mud. I slid down to them, glad of my outdoor boots. The poor soldier had already gone, submerged in it. The stretcher-bearers were now stuck themselves, trapped and sinking further in. One still had a hand free, but they were both of them up to their chins. The orderly was now up to his waist, he didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Leave us here,’ one of them begged. ‘Save yourself.’ I recognised his voice: it was the father of the teenage girls. It was an impossible scene. Each time he moved, he went further and further in. I blew on my whistle, hard as I could. I knew we didn’t have time to wait for help though. And probably no one would hear in this torrential rain anyway.

  ‘You’re coming out.’

  The orderly managed to take off his jacket. He threw it to the first stretcher-bearer while I took off my apron and with it, tied myself to a tree. Then we all pulled, an elaborate tug of war. I went further in but my apron held. The second stretcher-bearer was stuck fast, like a cork in a bottle, but we heaved and we hauled. I wasn’t scared I would get sucked in myself (that fea
r would come when I went over it to myself later). Pulling and tugging and crying and cursing my lack of strength. Do it for the girls, I told myself. Do it.

  They are not going to drown, not on my watch, I whispered to myself, over and over again.

  Finally, the first stretcher-bearer was freed and in a position to help pull out the other man, who was now swallowing mud. We all of us clambered out the mudbank like prehistoric creatures. The orderly got one of the men onto the stretcher and I took one end, telling the other man lying on the bank, ‘We’ll be back in minutes, hang on.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he kept saying.

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ I told him. ‘If only I’d got here earlier…’

  Gordon met us; he helped the rescued man off the stretcher, glanced over at me.

  ‘You’ll be due a medal for that one, May.’ But I was too weary even to respond. I went back down to the riverbank with two fresh stretcher-bearers, and we dragged the other man to the hospital.

  As I dropped into bed that evening, I remembered suddenly that today was the day Elizabeth was swimming across the Channel. I had missed that as well.

  * * *

  Mid-August, correspondence came from George. I would have recognised his scrappy handwriting anywhere. If I had seen that writing before I married him, maybe we wouldn’t have got that far. George pressed hard on his pen. Each letter was an act of violence inflicted on the defenceless paper. He was overly disposed to CAPITALS. The page was blighted with ink blobs. I took the envelope enthusiastically though, for through George I would have news of Joy and Leona, and I was ravenous for information.

  I sat down next to a man from Bristol who had lost both his legs. (You never did one task at a time, you always tried to do at least three.) He was a commanding officer, but he was like a small boy now, and hated being alone. Some came out as men and left like children.