The Woman at the Front

by Lecia Cornwall

  She looked out at the ragged caravan valiantly struggling toward the railhead, and hope. Behind them, she saw the terrible black pall of smoke, and she felt the impact of every shell that shook the world.

  She thought of Captain Wilmot, who’d been in France for less than a fortnight, and the four nurses and three patients who’d died along with him at the CCS. She grieved for David Blair’s brother, and for David, caught in this maelstrom somewhere. Was he gone, too? And beside her, Colonel Bellford moaned, hovering somewhere between life and death.

  They all were.

  Now she was gripped by the sheer terror of waking in the night to find bombs falling around her. For a moment she thought it was simply the weight of fear crushing the air from her lungs, but it was so much more than that. The matron’s compliment, laid atop the terrible danger, suffering, and death, tipped the scales and shattered her.

  You’re a good doctor. Was she? She didn’t know anymore. The terrible secret, the loss of everything she thought she was, fear for Fraser, and the horrors of war had taken her pride, her strength, her nerve, and left her hollow. It wasn’t enough—she wasn’t enough. Tears slid down her cheeks, and she let them drop unchecked. She felt shame and fear and she was so terribly tired.

  “Buck up. It’s just shock. I meant it,” the matron said. “Without you, Colonel Bellford would be dead. So would Lieutenant Findlay, and many others, I suspect.”

  But Eleanor felt everything rushing upward. “But I’m not. I cheated,” she said, the terrible admission bursting out at last. Had she known all along, suspected what Edward had done? Was the sin hers after all? She should have realized . . . “I shouldn’t be a doctor—shouldn’t be here.”

  If she expected the nurse to call her an imposter, to rail at her, it didn’t happen. She simply waited for her to continue. Now it was out at last, and there was no taking it back. The admission had tumbled out, shaken loose by everything she’d endured, as if the bombs had opened her soul and exposed the truth to light at last.

  “I’ve wanted to be a doctor for as long as I could remember. I’d watch my father heal the sick, listen as he spoke of it. He taught us—my brother and me—how the body works, spoke of setting bones and new medicines. He taught us that there is no nobler calling than medicine, no better way to serve humanity, and I believed him.

  “I didn’t realize he didn’t mean me, a girl. He meant my brother, Edward. He intended all along for Edward to be a doctor, to follow in his footsteps, make him proud. I was simply expected to marry a doctor. But I didn’t know that. When my father spoke of university and medical school, I assumed I’d go with Edward to take the entrance exam, that I’d train beside my brother, that we’d both become doctors.” She studied her hands. “I found out later that my father only allowed me to write the exam to prick Edward’s pride, to shame him into working harder so he wouldn’t be outdone by a mere girl. My father only let me write the exam because he was sure I’d fail, learn my place at last, and that would be the end of it.”

  “But you didn’t fail,” Matron Connolly said.

  Eleanor shut her eyes. “I did fail. I studied, I was ready, I knew everything. But when I walked into the examination hall with Edward, I was the only woman there. The proctor tried to send me home. The men around me hated me on sight, just for being there, for daring—” She swallowed. “I—I lost my nerve. I couldn’t remember anything. I struggled with the simplest of questions, things I knew the answers to. I froze. When the exam ended I knew I’d failed.”

  “So what did you do?”

  She clenched her hands into helpless fists, just as she’d done that day. “My brother was waiting for me after the exam. I knew by the look on his face he’d done well. Edward has always been so sure of himself, so charming, so good with people, all the things I’m not. What could I do? I set my booklet on the pile with the others and left the room. Edward said he’d forgotten something and went back. I was devastated, and I barely noticed. Then we went home to wait for the results. It took a month, and I spent all those days wondering what I was going to do now, who I’d be if I couldn’t be a doctor. I didn’t know. I still don’t know what I would have done, or what I’ll do if . . .” She swallowed hard, her throat closing.

  “And?” the matron prompted.

  “And the results arrived, and somehow I’d passed.”

  “How?” Matron Connolly asked.

  Eleanor shut her eyes. She remembered Edward’s face as he’d told her, the terrible haughtiness. “My brother and I have the same first initial, you see, and a similar second one. Both of us are E. Atherton. He went back in and wrote ‘Miss’ in front of his own initials. They mistook his examination for mine.”

  “And you had no idea?”

  She shook her head. “I should have suspected, I suppose. I knew I hadn’t done well, but I wanted to go to university. I was . . . surprised . . . to say the least, but it felt like a miracle, a sign that I was, indeed, meant to be a doctor. Edward took the terrible dressing-down my father gave him for failing. He didn’t say a word to me. I didn’t think—perhaps I didn’t want to know. I promised myself I’d make it up to Edward somehow, and to my father, that I’d become a good doctor, a great doctor, and prove to everyone that I could do it. Edward left for Cambridge a few days later with Louis Chastaine. They’ve always been close friends.”

  “When did you know?”

  “Not until recently. Edward wanted me to sign the order for Louis’s release from the CCS. He said if I didn’t, he’d tell everyone, write to the university, to our father, tell Colonel Bellford that I’m a fraud.”

  “As I recall, it wasn’t your signature on the order he handed me,” the matron said.

  “I refused to do it; I couldn’t. Louis wasn’t ready to go, and I feared he’d suffer permanent damage, even death. Edward signed it himself.”

  The matron’s eyes were cool, her expression flat and unreadable. Eleanor felt her cheeks flame. What had she expected? There could be no absolution for such a sin. Rules were rules, and she’d broken all the ones the matron held most sacred.

  “I suppose you’ll use this in your report,” Eleanor said. She realized it didn’t matter, not now, not after she’d proven she was a doctor, a good doctor, despite fear and war and guilt. The weight lifted.

  The matron’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think you’re the only woman who’s had to fight for what she wants? Every nurse, every female doctor walks a fine line. Those who blunder over that line into a man’s preserve face scorn and worse. You can’t afford to be less than perfect, or they’ll eat you alive.” She raised her chin. “Why did you tell me this, Dr. Atherton? Do you expect me to offer you forgiveness, to say it’s all right? It’s not my place. You can save a hundred lives, prove you deserve to be here, but still you’ll never be accepted.” The nurse was silent for a few moments. “If you were a military nurse, I’d send you home at once, report you, and make certain you could not work in the profession ever again—but you’re not a nurse. Truly, I don’t know what I will do. I shall have to consider the matter.”

  A patient behind the matron gasped for air, and she turned to check on him. “Doctor? Patient needs you,” someone called to Eleanor, and she nodded and climbed down from the vehicle. She adjusted a bandage on a wounded leg, gave the patient morphine and said a few kind words, and the column shuffled on. For a long moment she stood by the side of the road, listening to the sounds of the war and the approaching enemy and watching the wounded, the volunteers and orderlies, and the nurses of 46/CCS flow past her.

  “All right, miss?” a soldier on crutches asked, stopping beside her, following her gaze back toward the front lines now bearing down upon them. “They’re in the thick of it now, up there,” he said.

  “Do you suppose we’ll lose the war?” Eleanor asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. The Huns are winning for now, but that’s been the way
of this war. As long as we’ve got the strength, there’s hope. We’ll push back. It’s not the falling down, miss—it’s the getting back up.” He glanced at the wounded men hobbling past, men who needed treatment and care, and hope, and fell back into line.

  Eleanor had no idea what Matron Connolly would do now, or Edward. She couldn’t change the past, or the future. She could only do her best, here and now. She’d proven to herself that she was a doctor. She’d saved lives. She could save more. She’d go on and do her best.

  She took the arm of a faltering soldier with a wounded hand and carried on toward the railhead.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  March 25, 1918

  David Blair followed the retreating troops to the new location of 46/CCS, now housed in the storage sheds at the railhead. He could smell the blood and the sweat and the unwashed bodies mixed with the heavy stench of gas and gunpowder as he approached, perched on the back bumper of an overloaded ambulance. A legion of casualties waited on the platform and alongside the tracks for evacuation or treatment.

  Corporal Swiftwood was picking his way among the wounded, giving out water and checking dressings. He smiled tiredly at David. “Welcome back, Captain Blair. We’d almost given up on you, but you’ve come just in time.” He looked around. “We’re working flat out, and more keep coming. There’s no space left, no supplies, and the bloody hospital train is delayed—bomb damage to the tracks. They’ve been evacuating the nurses along with the wounded, and we’re short of able bodies.”

  David wondered where the hell to even start. “Where’s Colonel Bellford?”

  Swiftwood shook his head. “He was evacuated with the other wounded three days ago.”

  “Wounded?” David had seen the destruction of the abandoned CCS, had passed by it shortly before the Germans had pushed through. There hadn’t been time to stop. By now the enemy had probably taken over the site and whatever supplies had been left behind. He’d heard the line was holding firm less than three miles away and the British were still in retreat, if not here, then at other places along the front lines. Reliable information was scanty.

  “Who’s in charge?” he asked.

  “Dr. Atherton. Or you, I suppose, now you’re back.”

  “Eleanor?” He recalled joking that he half expected her to be in charge by the time he returned to the CCS. He hadn’t meant it.

  Swiftwood nodded. “Aye. She operated on the colonel, saved his life. I think we might have been wrong about her.” Not “we,” David almost said.

  “Where is she?” David asked, looking around for the glint of red hair.

  “Inside.”

  He pointed to a storage shed, and David went toward it, threading his way through the wounded to reach it. Inside, almost every inch of floor was covered with men sitting, standing, or lying. Gibbons and two orderlies were shifting stretchers, trying to keep a path clear for the nurses to move between the rows. David gaped. They needed a whole battalion of surgeons and doctors to cope with just the most urgent surgeries, and three trains to evacuate all the wounded. The hospitals behind the lines must be struggling as well, choked with casualties. He’d heard rumors that at least one hospital had been bombed, doctors and nurses killed. Still the barrages went on, bringing more business, more broken bodies. Half a dozen CCSs had been forced to close or move back; the whole system was in chaos under the German onslaught.

  “Captain Blair.” He turned to find Matron Connolly behind him, as calm, stiff, and starchy as ever, though her uniform was wrinkled and stained and there was blood on her apron. Did nothing ruffle the woman? “It’s good to see you back with us again. We need help.”

  “I can see that. I understand Eleanor is—”

  She puffed like a grouse. “Dr. Atherton is operating.” She pointed to a curtained area at the end of the building. “Reverend Strong is giving anesthetic. There are dozens waiting for surgery. I’ve just sent two orderlies up the line to look for transportation, be it trains or trucks.” She paused a moment. “We’ve had orders to move back, but there’s no way to leave. Where have you arrived from? Is it bad? Are the Germans—”

  “They’re close,” he said. “For now, the Canadians are holding the line a few miles away, but . . .” He looked around, wondered how in the hell they could get everyone out before they were overrun. The women would have to leave first, starting with Eleanor, as a civilian. The rest—he made his way through the stretchers to the makeshift surgical theater and peered around the curtain. Eleanor Atherton, gowned and masked, was standing over a desk that had been turned into an operating table. Reverend Strong was patiently dripping ether onto a mask over the patient’s face.

  David stopped an orderly. “I need water to wash with, and get me a gown.”

  “We haven’t got any gowns left. We’re using the ones we did have for bandages, and as for water, there’s some in the pot on the stove, but not much. We’re nearly out. We sent a pair of men out to look for a well an hour ago.”

  “It’s like the bloody Middle Ages,” David grumbled. “Alcohol then, or carbolic—or rum, even—anything to kill germs.”

  Eleanor looked up at the sound of his voice, her eyes widening above her mask. “David!” she said. He watched relief bloom in her eyes and felt like a hero.

  “What have you got?” he asked, coming to the table.

  “Broken jaw. There’s shrapnel embedded in his back teeth.”

  “No time to be fancy. Take the teeth out and bandage him for transport.”

  “What transport?” she asked dryly.

  He looked down at the ruins of the patient’s face. He was young.

  “His boots are still new,” Eleanor said. “He hasn’t been here long.”

  The chaplain nodded to David. “Praise be you’re safe, Captain.”

  Matron Connolly was already directing the construction of a second operating table, jerry-rigged from a pile of crates with long boards stretched across the top of them. The last board was scarcely in place before the orderlies carried in a patient with a blood-soaked dressing over his belly.

  “I’ll do anesthetic,” Matron Connolly said, and she took her place at the head of the table.

  “Are we safe?” Eleanor asked when the patient was unconscious.

  David kept his eyes on the belly, assessing the damage. “For now,” he murmured. As long as their side was able to slow the German advance, and if the rail lines were repaired, and if miracles were still possible. They fell silent, concentrating. Outside, the battle lines continued to shift. Men fought and died, the wounded kept on coming, and the bloody war went on.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  April 10, 1918

  As spring brought warmer days, the German offensive continued.

  The staff of 46/CCS became expert at loading up trucks or trains or carts and moving back at a moment’s notice, day or night, saving themselves, the wounded in their care, and whatever supplies they could carry. Everyone was exhausted, afraid, and desperate for good news.

  But the news grew worse—there were reports of German planes firing on clearly marked hospitals behind the lines, killing doctors, nurses, and patients.

  Eleanor worked side by side with David Blair and Matron Connolly and the orderlies and nurses from 46/CCS. They moved into whatever space they could find—a school, an abandoned dairy, an open field next to a road where they set up in patched, battle-scarred tents and drew red crosses on them with iodine.

  A new enemy appeared. Influenza indiscriminately claimed soldiers, civilians, doctors, and nurses by the score. Someone who was healthy in the morning might collapse in the afternoon with fever and die before the next dawn.

  Retreating units of all the allied armies came through their doors—Australians, Canadians, French, and Americans. Surgeons and doctors came, too, helped when they could, and moved on with their own men far too soon. The hospitals in the rear w
ere entirely overwhelmed. Understaffed CCS units amalgamated to make the most of limited resources, and forty-six merged with a Canadian CCS in early April.

  Eleanor heard the British casualties had been counted in the tens of thousands in the first week of the attack, with just twelve undermanned British divisions facing over forty German divisions of crack troops, all specially chosen and trained for this final assault, a last attempt to break the stalemate and win the war. The French casualties were higher still. The civilian costs were inestimable. Women and children, sick and wounded, frightened and malnourished, flooded the CCSs looking for safety, medical care, and food.

  Eleanor watched every incoming ambulance, every convoy of walking wounded for Fraser. She held her breath as she watched them unload their terrible cargo, hoping to see his tall, rangy form jumping out of the first vehicle, or the second, but he wasn’t among the bearers or the wounded. Three weeks had passed since she’d seen him at the aid post, watched him walk away from her. The war made it feel like a lifetime.

  “Have you seen a stretcher bearer named MacLeod, a Scot, tall, with red hair?” she’d ask every wounded man who could speak.

  “Aren’t all Scots tall and red-haired?” exhausted soldiers would ask.

  Others shook their heads solemnly. “No. It’s chaos up there. Have you seen my mates, miss? We’re West Kents.” Or Liverpool Scottish, or 31st Canadians . . .

  She wanted to go herself to look for him, but she was needed here, and there was no question of her leaving. She doubted HQ knew or cared now that there was a female doctor treating the wounded. No one had time to file complaints or reports. No one asked what she was doing here or reviled her for being female. She was competent, a vital pair of hands, and that was all that mattered.