They should be going due east, which sounded simple, but it was difficult trying to find their way in this dense fog, or make sense of the destroyed terrain.
Burdened by their sodden packs and clothes that soaked up water like so many sponges, the men slogged through the greasy mud that came up to their ankles, then to their knees, then to their thighs.
The German guns had opened up. Men were falling all around and others coming up behind them couldn’t help treading them into the mud. Men who’d been blown up and landed on the German wire flapped like ghastly washing as machine gun bullets peppered them.
The company was well spread out and hopefully still making for the farmhouse. But the mist was even denser now, and all Alex saw were looming shapes. The noise of battle, the relentless rat-tat-tat of gunfire, the whining of the shells flying overhead was deafening, drowning out the screams of men who fell. So he thought he had imagined the sharp yell of panic on his left.
He knew he shouldn’t stop. It was up to stretcher bearers coming up behind him to rescue wounded men. Then he heard the scream again.
He squelched a few feet back into the mist, then almost walked into the crater into which the man had either fallen or been blown.
The second wave of infantry was coming over now, and Alex knew a man trapped in the mud would certainly be trampled, trodden down by his own side. There was just a minute, maybe less, before the two of them were overwhelmed.
He held out his right hand. The soldier grabbed it, but the sucking mud refused to let its victim go.
‘I can’t get out,’ he gasped, and the sheer dead weight of him threatened to pull Alex in as well.
He knew the voice. He recognised the face beneath the mud. ‘You’ve got to help yourself!’ He glared at Michael Easton. ‘Push your feet against the side and try to walk up, can’t you?’
Michael floundered helplessly, and Alex thought he’d have to let him drown, but then he managed to brace himself against the marginally more solid rim, and Alex hauled him out.
‘You’ll be all right,’ yelled Alex, as Michael dripped and shivered. ‘Come on, we’ve got to catch up with the others, they’ll be miles ahead by now.’
Michael didn’t move, so Alex slapped him. ‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Listen, Easton! If you don’t shift yourself, I’ll shove you back into the hole and watch you drown!’
‘Bastard.’ There was too much noise to hear, but Alex saw him mouth the word, and a second later Michael took a swing at him.
Alex parried it, then punched him hard. A thin streak of blood gleamed red on Michael’s muddy cheekbone, but he gulped and gasped as if it were a mortal wound. He fell at Alex’s feet and lay there shuddering and whimpering like a child.
Alex heard the second wave of infantry approaching. If he stayed here, he would be mown down. He pulled Michael upright, then heaved his wet, dead weight on to his shoulders in a fireman’s lift.
He began to stagger across the swamp towards the ruined farmhouse, doubting if he’d reach it and telling himself that he must be the biggest fool alive.
Chapter Eighteen
‘I suppose it’s raining?’ muttered Elsie, from the relative comfort of her camp bed.
‘Yes, I’m afraid it’s tipping down. I’d stay in bed if I were you. You’re not on shift until this afternoon.’ Rose pulled on her galoshes, slung her mackintosh cape around her shoulders, then sloshed across the fields towards the wooden huts that loomed out of the mist and rain.
The summer had been warm and sunny, and wounded men had sat outside the huts or big marquees, their faces turned towards the healing sun. The more adventurous had gone for walks around the ruined countryside. But now torrential autumn rains had turned the whole of Belgium into one vast sea of mud.
Rose walked into the hut shaking the rain out of her hair, and found the ward sister sticking pins and tape into a map of Flanders that was hung up in the office, marking the front line. ‘We’re doing well,’ she smiled.
‘That’s good,’ said Rose, who couldn’t help but think about the cost in young men’s lives. They were coming down in thousands from the Ypres salient. Their injuries were horrible and stank of putrefaction, for in the mud of Flanders even trivial wounds became infected. Even a small cut could mean an otherwise healthy limb developed gangrene, and the only way to deal with that was amputation.
It rained and rained, and filthy water swirled around the huts. In spite of off-duty sappers digging trenches to drain off the surplus water, the wards were often deep in muck and slime.
‘This winter’s going to be foul,’ said Elsie, as she and Rose slopped home again at the end of yet another shift.
‘Ghastly,’ Rose agreed, despondently. Living in a flooded tent and working in a flooded hospital, she almost wished herself back on the trains.
Then she thought of Alex and what he must be suffering in the east, and was ashamed. She must write tonight, she thought, a bright and breezy letter telling him about her trip with several other nurses to the coast, where they’d had a freezing swim, their first and last that year.
But it was hard to write to Alex, and getting harder all the time. She suspected – no, she knew – he must have someone else. They hadn’t seen each other since they’d returned to France, and although he’d written in June suggesting they might meet, she had not dared to ask for any leave. The hospital was full to overflowing. A few snatched hours in a café in St Omer and that day trip to Bolougne with Elsie was all the holiday she would have that year.
Celia had written a month ago, and mentioned that he’d been to visit Henry in the summer. Mrs Sefton and a friend had spotted him out walking with the bailiff’s eldest daughter.
‘She is by all accounts a rather forward sort of person, who always has an eye to the main chance,’ continued Celia. ‘My mother wouldn’t be at all surprised to find she’s angling after Alex Denham, even though he’s married. She’s that sort of girl.’
Rose shook her head. The bailiff’s daughter had a pretty face and neat, trim figure. Seventeen or eighteen now, she was in the bloom of youth and beauty. But Rose was a haggard twenty-one, who felt she must look more like forty-five.
Although the German bombs had failed to kill her, they had put their mark on her for life. She had long red weals across her stomach that would never fade, and her face was scarred by flying glass. Once white and soft, her hands were red and ruined. The nails were cracked, the knuckles raw.
She might have been attractive once, but she was not a beauty now.
When she came off shift one evening later that week, she met Elsie trudging through the mud, looking even gloomier than Rose felt. ‘What’s the matter, Elsie?’ she began.
‘I’ve had a letter from my father. God knows how he got it past the censor, but he did. Rose, I feel so tired! I don’t know how I’ll stay awake tonight.’
‘You’ll be all right,’ said Rose. ‘What did your father have to say?’
‘The Germans are moving troops out of the east. The new Russian government has made peace with Germany, so Jerry will soon make mincemeat out of us.’
‘How does your father know?’
‘He’s been on the Staff since last July. It might be just a rumour, I suppose. But my mother wants me back in Kent.’
‘When will you be leaving?’
‘I’m not going home! Both my brothers are still in Flanders, and I won’t have James and Matthew saying I got the wind up.’ Elsie looked at Rose. ‘But I don’t know how we’re going to beat them. Where will we find the men?’
‘I don’t know.’ Rose would never have believed the mighty Allied army could be defeated by a bunch of Prussians. But it seemed it might.
The rumour that the German government had made peace with Russia was all round the wards by eight o’clock the following morning. Two days later, rumour turned out to be fact.
‘We’re bound to be evacuated soon,’ said Elsie hopefully, as she wrung out the hem of her blue dress. ‘They can’t leave us
here like sitting ducks, waiting for the Germans to arrive. A nice, warm chateau near the coast. That’s where I’d like to be.’
December came, then January. All leave was cancelled, nurses who were sick or couldn’t cope went home to England, and although the hospital was ready to pack up and leave, the order never came. Rose hoped it never would. It would be a nightmare, trying to evacuate a thousand wounded men through the January mud and slime.
‘You mustn’t worry, Sister,’ said a burly sergeant, as Rose changed the dressing on his leg one freezing day. ‘If the Jerries come, me and the lads will make it quick for you. We’ll shoot you nurses dead.’
‘Letters for you, Sister Courtenay.’ The ward orderly handed Rose a bundle, and when she saw Alex’s handwriting her heart began to sing, because if he could write, he was alive.
She slit the envelope. The letter was very short and to the point. ‘We have to meet,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’
After begging, pleading and finally inventing a sick brother in hospital in Boulogne, Rose managed to get leave. Alex said he’d be in Steenvoorde the next Saturday.
She found him waiting at the railhead. Their eyes met briefly and he nodded. Then he looked away.
She tried to smile, but her face was frozen. She longed to hug him, kiss him, but she didn’t dare – he might push her away. ‘H-how are things?’ she faltered.
‘Looking bad for us,’ he said.
‘You mean we’re going to lose the war?’
‘I don’t see how we’re going to win.’
‘I thought the Americans were coming?’
‘Where are they, then?’ said Alex. ‘We haven’t seen any in our sector, and it’s the busiest part of the whole line.’
Rose didn’t want to talk about the war or the Americans. ‘You look tired,’ she told him.
‘So do you.’ He looked at her and scowled. ‘You’re far too thin. I wish you hadn’t cut your hair.’
‘I do, too. My neck’s been cold all winter. But I’m letting it grow again, and I–’
‘You’re dangerously close to the front line,’ said Alex, suddenly interrupting. ‘Why don’t you go home?’
‘You mean go back to England?’ Rose felt hollow and afraid. She looked at him, but now Alex wouldn’t meet her gaze. ‘I d-don’t think I could. We’re so short of nurses.’
‘But if the Germans come–’
‘I’d be a match for any German.’ Rose tried to meet his eyes again, but failed. ‘In any case, they couldn’t do anything terrible to me. I’m a British nurse, and I’m protected.’
‘Rose, all prisoners are protected, too. But they get shot – and worse.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ insisted Rose. ‘I’m miles and miles behind the line. Alex, it’s so nice to see you. Let’s go and find a café and have something to eat.’
She led him down a narrow street of bombed-out Flemish houses. As they walked, she tucked her arm though his and laid her hand upon his sleeve. There was nobody about, and he could have kissed her if he’d wished.
But he didn’t seem to wish, so when she let him go to stoop and tie her bootlace, she didn’t take his arm again.
They failed to find a café, and soon they were walking back towards the railhead. ‘I have to go,’ said Alex. ‘Rose, listen to me. I want you to go home.’
‘I can’t, I’m needed here.’
‘You won’t be any use to anybody if you’re dead.’
‘They won’t get me,’ said Rose.
‘You never listen to reason, do you?’ Alex glared at her, his dark eyes burning. ‘Rose, your trouble is you’re spoiled, and much too fond of your own way. You never think anyone else might have a point – much less be right.’
‘If we’re told to leave, of course I’ll go.’ Rose looked at him and screwed her courage to the sticking point. ‘Alex, I must ask you–’
‘I came here to tell you to go home, not be asked a lot of questions!’ Alex glowered at Rose. ‘I don’t know why I bothered. This afternoon has been a waste of time.’
As the train came puffing down the line, he turned and walked away, leaving Rose to stare in disbelief.
She wouldn’t cry. There was no point in crying for Alex Denham. She’d known all along it was hopeless, that he would break her heart.
‘They’ve broken through!’ cried Elsie, running into the tent they shared and shaking Rose awake.
It was a cold March morning. Rose had done a twenty-four hour shift and was exhausted. ‘What’s happened?’ she demanded, as she grabbed her clothes and started scrambling into them.
‘The Germans have come through near Albert, thousands of them, our boys couldn’t stop them. They’ve retaken Passchendaele, they’ll recapture all the Ypres salient–’
‘But Elsie, how–’
‘Rose, get your flipping boots on! It doesn’t matter about your cap. The Germans are less than fifteen miles from here, and we have to get the men away.’
The lorries – not enough of them – drew up outside the huts. Orderlies carried stretcher cases into them. Nurses helped the walking wounded climb into the wagons commandeered from neighbouring towns and villages.
When all the men were loaded, there was no room for nurses, so they started walking west. Columns of marching soldiers overtook them, and sometimes they got lifts in cars or lorries. Then they would be dumped beside the road.
‘I’m sorry, Sisters,’ a harassed-looking officer would say. ‘We have to dig in here and wait for Jerry. You keep going west. If any of our convoys come this way, I’ll ask them to watch out for you.’
No convoys came, so Rose and Elsie and a couple of dozen other nurses walked for three whole days, begging food from villagers who had hardly anything themselves, sleeping in barns and stables, and washing and drinking from the troughs and wells in stableyards.
All along the route they heard the same appalling stories. The British army was retreating. Millions of prisoners had been taken, and nothing could stop the Germans winning now.
The attack had been a sudden storm, a typhoon of terror that had scattered Alex’s company and left small huddles of survivors sheltering in ditches, ruined barns or up against brick walls.
Some of his men were wounded and some been taken prisoner, but most of them were dead. The whole division was falling back in disarray, leaving behind it ammunition dumps and tanks that would soon be turned against the British, whom he could see were beaten anyway.
He was so afraid for Rose that he had no fear to spare for anybody else, even himself. Finding he was the senior officer in a raggle-taggle of men from half a dozen regiments, he realised they could run, surrender – or dig in and fight.
‘We’ll dig in here,’ he told the men. He had regrouped them in a battered village square, ten miles or more behind last week’s original British line. The houses had been flattened by the hurricane bombardment, and dead men and horses lay in grotesque attitudes everywhere. The village stood on a low rise from which they could survey the Ypres salient. They could see the enemy approaching, a grey mass of infantry and lumbering German tanks, following in the wake of the most deafening and terrifying bombardment Alex had ever known.
‘They’ll have to bring their lorries and heavy armoured cars along this road,’ he said to the men, who looked at him like sheep, or dogs expecting to be fed. ‘If we get the cobbles up and dig a row of trenches, we can hold them up for hours, or maybe even days.’
Stripping off his jacket, he picked up an entrenching tool someone had left lying in the road, and started hacking at the cobbles.
A sergeant found a spade and began hacking at the pavement next to him, and two minutes later the men had all found tools of some sort and begun to dig.
‘I reckon we could mount an ambush,’ said a sergeant-major, who was digging hard by Alex’s side. ‘If we booby-trap these holes–’
‘With what?’ demanded Alex, testily. ‘We don’t have any shells, trench mortars–’
‘But we’ve
got grenades. The lads have their Lee Enfields, and you have your revolver. We can’t blow their convoy up, but we could make it hot for them.’
‘We’ll all be killed,’ said Alex, who was himself resigned to dying, but always hated losing men.
‘I dare say we will,’ agreed the sergeant-major calmly. ‘But if they take us prisoner, they’ll probably bayonet us anyway. Sir, there are hospitals five miles from here. If we can make things difficult for Jerry, the nurses might have time to get some wounded blokes away – and to escape themselves.’
‘We’ll do it,’ said Alex grimly, and dug on.
Rose’s boots disintegrated on the cobbled roads of Flanders, and she walked the last few miles to freedom wearing wooden pattens given her by a farmer’s wife. By the time she reached Boulogne, she had weeping sores the size of florins on her insteps. But these were nothing compared with the soreness in her heart.
As she and her friends had walked, they’d heard appalling, frightening stories. Hospitals had been shelled and nurses killed. Lorry loads of wounded had been bombed, and the survivors shot or bayoneted in cold blood.
In Boulogne, the nurses who had walked from Rose’s hospital had two days to recuperate, then were needed on the wards again. Rose and Elsie found themselves in a converted chateau, doing dressings underneath enormous chandeliers and the disapproving gaze of nymphs who stared down outraged from elaborate painted ceilings.
As Rose was doing a ward round one May morning, Elsie came in grinning. ‘We’ve beaten off the Hun!’ she cried.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Rose, who was concentrating on a very awkward dressing.
‘We’ve turned the tide!’ Elsie was beaming like a summer beacon. ‘The Jerries have overreached themselves, our boys have got them on the run. Rose, we’re going to win this war!’
‘Good,’ said Rose, without expression.
‘Rose, what’s the matter with you today? Don’t you realise it’s a blooming miracle?’
‘Elsie, could you move out of my light?’ Rose frowned down at her work. ‘I’m sorry, Captain Russell. This next bit’s going to be a bit uncomfortable for you.’
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