Two Women Went to War

by L E Pembroke

  CHAPTER 8

  Three months later, sitting in my room after coming off-duty, I felt strange, not sick, but not well. Definitely something was the matter. I tried to take my mind off my discomfort by reading the paper. Page after page described the latest fighting at Gallipoli. The casualty list on page 2 was extensive, two whole columns. I glanced through it, hoping not to find a familiar name from our town.

  A fierce stabbing pain ripped through my abdomen – all the more agonising because it was so unexpected. I let out an involuntary yelp and jumped to my feet. That made it worse. I sat down again and bent forward to try to ameliorate the pain. From the waist down I was on fire. My first thought was acute appendicitis, then, no, worse than that – peritonitis. The last thing on my mind was spontaneous abortion.

  The reality hit me. My mind slid back to the night five months before, to my happiness and to his words. ‘Let go, darling. No need to worry. I love you and I’ll take precautions.’ So this was going to be the end of it.

  I felt as though my insides were being torn apart. I thought I would vomit. The pores of my skin opened up like a tap. A relentless force pressed onto the base of my uterus. Sticky waters spilled down my legs – the eighteen-week foetus was racing towards oblivion.

  I had to get to the bathroom quickly. No one must know.

  It was agony pulling off my uniform. All movement was agony. I fumbled in the small wardrobe for my dressing gown, pulled a sheet off my bed, took hold of the newspaper and grabbed a towel.

  I hadn’t put on much weight and was fairly certain nobody suspected I was pregnant. If I could get to the bathroom without being seen, no one would ever know. I poked my head out of my room; the corridor was empty. But the bathroom was far away, at the other end of the Nurses’ Home. I hobbled along as fast as the situation would allow, praying silently, ‘Don’t let anything come out of my body or anyone come along before I reach the bathroom.’

  On reaching my goal, I entered the stark-white room, turned the key in the lock, collapsed on the floor and moaned. Crawling over the painted cement, I heedlessly dropped sheet, towel, newspaper and robe as I approached the bath. I grabbed at its side and heaved myself into its depth. Crouching naked, I awaited the arrival of the half-formed infant being so violently rejected by my body.

  I whimpered, ‘Can’t someone help me?’ Just an involuntary call for help. The last thing I wanted was to be found in that terrible situation. I jammed the rubber bath plug into my mouth and clamped my teeth down onto it. Began panting like a dog – that helped. The remorseless pressure built.

  A knock on the door. ‘How long are you going to be in there?’

  I tried to control my quavering voice. ‘Sorry, vomiting. Be out as soon as I can.’

  I watched the bloody fluid leak out of my body, followed by the dead baby, a small, easily distinguishable bundle, perhaps eight ounces in weight and five or six inches in length. Tears swam down my face while peering at the shape sliding inexorably towards the plug hole. They doubled when I saw the minuscule fingers and toes.

  The sac of afterbirth soon followed. It was all over. My lower body and legs were aching with my effort, and the bath was heavily blood-spattered. All I wanted to do was collapse in a heap with exhaustion and forget about the tragedy of my dead and half-formed infant. In the back of my mind I felt relieved that it was all over. At the same time, I felt guilty that I was relieved.

  Before cleaning everything, there was important work to be done. I had to give the baby a decent burial. I plugged the outlet. Wearily I climbed out, grabbed the towel and placed it in the bath. I enclosed the small, slimy dead foetus in my hands, placed it on the towel and wrapped it. The afterbirth I flushed down the lavatory, then began swabbing myself, the bath and the floor with the sheet and newspaper.

  I felt so dreadfully weak. My legs trembled. My gait was unsteady as I made my way back to my room and forced myself to get on with the job. I put the wet and bloody sheet, newspaper and towel out of sight – to be dealt with tomorrow. Only two priorities for tonight. First, I had to make a coffin and bury the foetus and second, try to sleep.

  I suppose you could say my subsequent actions and thoughts were an out-of-this world experience that I find difficult to describe. I mean, well, cutting up a cardboard shoe box in which I planned to bury a half-formed infant created in a moment of passion. Not love, but an almost uncontrollable, unstoppable mating urge, no different from the stock at Bellara.

  I remember thinking, attempting to assuage my feelings of guilt, that I had been released from a terrible burden. And that I was meant to do something in my life to atone for my iniquity. I truly believed I had done an evil thing and I had to seek redemption.

  In dressing gown and slippers, I raided the kitchen and stole a serving spoon that would become my gardener’s trowel. Carrying the cardboard coffin, I went through the rear door to the rose garden. It had been raining. The soil was soft. I buried the baby, hoping I’d made the grave deep enough to be safe from marauding dogs, garden forks and spades.

  Dry-eyed, I stood beside the garden. What’s the matter with me? I’m dead inside; I can’t feel anything for that little, half-finished human except relief that it’s gone. All I want to do is sleep and forget the whole tragic episode. Before turning away I took one more glance at the garden. Was it only a year ago we met? It felt like a lifetime. Ironically, it was here, on this very spot, that he first kissed me. Don’t think about it, ever again. Leave the hospital, leave the country. Care for wounded and dying soldiers. That will be my atonement.

  Part 3

  The War, 1915–17

  CHAPTER 9

  GENEVIEVE

  The hospital ship always stood well out in the wide bay. The wounded were brought to us on unwieldy horse-boats that wallowed in the choppy seas. Cloudless nights were the worst as the boats, always crowded with wounded soldiers, were such easy targets for enemy shells.

  Soon after my arrival in Egypt I was sent to work on hospital ships. I liked my job, didn’t suffer from sea-sickness and especially enjoyed the comradeship of the surgeons and sisters in the theatres. For six months, the hospital ships ran from Gallipoli to Egypt. And, in between shifts, I stayed, with other nurses and doctors, on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea. We had a tented hospital there.

  On nights when we picked up the wounded, they usually arrived about 2100 hours. The medical staff used cluster on deck with hearts in mouths praying that nothing would go wrong as the clumsy boats bobbed in the sea next to our ship. This was the most vulnerable time for our wounded if searchlights were directed on them enabling shells to rain down. Sailors threw rope ladders down to the boats for those mobile enough to climb to the deck. But before that, for those immobilised by severe wounds, our sailors lowered canvas slings, which were kept on deck at such times. On the horse-boats, as soon as the patients were strapped into the slings, the signal was given to ‘hoist away’. In rough weather the task of getting the badly wounded onto the deck was often almost impossible. The swell of the sea and gusts of wind took hold of the slings, swinging them sideways and sometimes forcing them to crash into the ship’s side. In the dark, cursing softly and stumbling against each other, the walking wounded waited their turn to climb the rope ladders.

  My closest friend on the ship was a surgeon who coincidentally I had first met at the hospital in Sydney. He was a general surgeon, and during my last months at Prince Alfred we worked together in our theatres. His name was Alistair Edward Bear, and his colleagues sometimes called him Teddy because he was a popular doctor and always amiable. Colonel Bear and I were the only Australians on the staff of this particular British hospital ship; we worked together frequently and had a soft spot for one another. No more than that. Teddy Bear was at least twenty years older than me, and anyway the last thing I had on my mind at that stage, so soon after my affair and miscarriage, was another love affair.

  It was necessary to be ready and waiting down in the theatres so we always left the
deck as soon as they started hauling up the patients. The worst off were brought straight down to us, but the walking wounded remained on deck throughout the journey. Some were disembarked at Lemnos, others went on to Cairo.

  Theatre work suited me. I responded well to the drama of surgery on the high seas, to the challenge of standing, feet braced against the pitching deck, next to a patient strapped on a narrow operating table; while the surgeon, scalpel in hand, stood poised waiting for a lull in the ship’s movement.

  On one occasion, when I came out of theatres and removed my mask, an excited voice from one of the ante-rooms called to me. ‘Sister – Genevieve Howard – it is you, isn’t it?’

  I crossed to the patient. It was Douglas, husband of Rose and brother of Gordon McCann – my nemesis. I grasped his hand, delighted to see him safe and away from Gallipoli. I asked him how he was.

  ‘Bullet in the thigh, bone might be in a mess. Just as long as I can stay with the Light Horse that’s all I care about. Did you know, Genevieve, that I brought Billy with me? He’s stabled in Cairo.’

  I wanted to know what the Light Horse troops were doing on Gallipoli. He told me the Australian forces were running out of volunteers and the Mounted Rifles were sent over to give the infantry a hand.

  That wasn’t surprising; some of us thought the government would have to introduce conscription once the word got out about what Gallipoli was like. I asked Doug if he’d heard from Rose recently. ‘Not for a few weeks,’ he said with a rueful expression on his face. ‘I guess she’ll have had our baby by now. I’m pretty excited about it.’

  ‘Well, you would be, wouldn’t you?’ I was thinking, ‘Please God, don’t let Douglas ever find out the truth about Rose’s baby.’ My thoughts then dwelt momentarily on Gordon McCann, and coincidentally Doug asked whether I’d happened to bump into his brother. ‘Don’t know if he’s still on Gallipoli, didn’t see him myself.’

  At that time I hadn’t seen Gordon, and I hoped I never would. A month later, it happened. Even now, all these years later, when I think of that encounter, my face burns with humiliation and I try to put the episode out of my mind. I don’t really expect to ever forget it.

  We were just a day out of Gallipoli. I had been in theatres all the previous night, and I went on deck for a breath of fresh air, before going to bed. The walking wounded were on deck – no room for them below, didn’t matter, they didn’t have serious problems, and we had deck staff watching over them. I approached a group of soldiers. I hesitated; confused and utterly embarrassed.. He was standing just a few feet in front of me. He recognised me. My heart was pumping; what to do? I decided I had to walk on, get past him and go below. I couldn’t turn around and run like a fugitive. I drew almost level.

  ‘G’day, Jen. How you doing? Been a long time, eh?’

  I didn’t say a word, walked past him, poker-faced. Then I heard his words to his mates. ‘Old girlfriend of mine. Pretty good lay.’

  One or two subdued chuckles drifted towards me. My face was burning. I felt sick with disgust and mortification. My steps faltered; I grasped the handrail and left the deck.

  *

  For six months I travelled back and forth across the Mediterranean from Gallipoli to Egypt. Sometimes, several of us, patients and nurses, were dropped off near Mudros on Lemnos in the Aegean Sea. This was an unprepossessing, treeless, hilly island, which we nevertheless thought of as our very own bastion from the war. We slept in small tents adjacent to the tented hospital. When we were off duty, we behaved like girls at a holiday camp by the sea and put out of our minds many of the grim sights we’d encountered on the ships. We frolicked on small patches of sandy beach and became absorbed in the sounds of nature – water lapping onto our rocky shore, the caw of sea birds overhead and the howl of turbulent wind whipping off our veils and spiralling into our tents, filling our bedclothes with sand and grit.

  Following the abandonment of the Gallipoli campaign and the evacuation of all allied forces, I was posted to Cairo, which was military headquarters and the social centre for the soldiers from Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand who had been sent to the Middle East. What a time that was!

  My involvement with mass tragedy over the previous six months had taught me that my own personal tragedy was not so terrible when compared with what so many had endured since the beginning of this war. There was nothing unusual about my experience. Thousands of girls had been involved with men who had lied to them and left them. Babies were born. Babies died. Daughters were estranged from their mothers. Such things were happening all over the world and, I thought, especially during a war.

  I made up my mind to enjoy my stint at an Australian military hospital in Cairo and to make the most of every day, for Cairo was a glamorous place in early 1916. This was an interregnum before we were sent on to deal with the horror and squalor of the Western Front. The city was crowded with servicemen, and I was never short of an invitation to dinner or a night of dancing in one of the hotels that had been converted into officers’ clubs. I met Teddy now and then, and we usually went to one or other of those clubs for a meal. He was a good friend, rather like an amusing, young and generous uncle – the sort that any children I might have would miss because Tom was such a serious fellow.

  Teddy left Egypt early in 1916. He was posted to England and, I presumed, would proceed to the Western Front. Of course, we all suspected it wouldn’t be long before most of us would go there. From Cairo, those who didn’t go to France – mostly the mounted troops – would fight in the nearby desert and further north in Mesopotamia.

  Early in 1916, my brother Tom arrived in Cairo. He was in camp at Tel el Kebir, not far out of the city, and on his first leave Tom visited me. We met in the opulent foyer of a pre-war hotel. Tom had just been commissioned and was now a lieutenant. Lanky and always reserved, he bent down awkwardly to greet me; his lips lightly brushed my cheek. I, recognising his restraint, took his arm and gave it an affectionate squeeze. I had never seen him looking better, sun-tanned and handsome, and in such a good mood. I told him so as we walked into the vast lounge to have afternoon tea. We had last met over a year before when he came to Sydney for my graduation when a very different atmosphere prevailed.

  After a while Tom asked what precisely had been the trouble between Mum and me. She, it seems, had never mentioned me since that day when I left Orange. I think Tom rather hoped he could patch up the differences between us. The last thing I wanted was to think or talk about the past. Telling him I didn’t want to discuss the matter, I pointed out that Mum and I had never been close, which was not of itself such an unusual circumstance between mothers and daughters. That is sad but, after all, there are no rules about feelings. I admitted only one thing. ‘I made a mistake, and behaved like a fool. I met a man who said he wanted to marry me, but he was a liar and a philanderer.’

  Tom was embarrassed. He didn’t want to hear any gory details about my love life, and I had no intention of telling him. Tom really started opening up to me, the sort of thing he rarely did, about how much he loved being in the army and how Mum had put every obstacle in his way to prevent him leaving Bellara. He said she was adamant that she couldn’t cope if he left.

  ‘You can imagine how badly I felt when all my friends had gone and some of them killed or wounded at Gallipoli. In the end I had to take a stand, and you know I rarely do that with Mum. When those country blokes on the Cooee March came through Orange on their way to Sydney to enlist, I was waiting for them. It was the greatest moment of my life when I joined their ranks and we marched on to Sydney, where I reckon half the population was waiting to cheer us on.’

  He said that it was the only thing that made sense; there were plenty of older blokes available to help out on the properties, and at Bellara they had a couple of the best. He then told me that only last week he had run into an old school friend. ‘You might even remember him; he came to Bellara on school holidays once. Must have been ten years ago at least.’

  I remembered
that particular holiday. I was about fourteen at the time when Tom asked his friend Andrew up for holidays. I thought he was wonderful because he bothered to talk to me. Seventeen-year-old boys are usually so busy chatting up seventeen-year-old girls that they tend to ignore ‘children’ three years or so younger. Of course that often changes later, and they end up marrying the younger ones. Andrew was the first boy I ever had a crush on. I asked Tom to tell me all about him, not because I was keen to know about a boy I’d liked ten years before but because I wanted to encourage Tom. It was such a change to have him voluble and showing such enthusiasm for army life. He had always been such a quiet, humourless man.

  How clearly I remembered those silent nights at Bellara, with Mother rarely speaking, often sewing for different charity stalls in town, Dad snoring in the rocker and Tom reading the newspaper. The only sound was the crackle and hiss of burning logs; nothing for me to do but read the novels I enjoyed so much.

  ‘In case you’ve forgotten, his name is Andrew Osborne. I’m really chuffed to have met up with him again. He’s a captain now, graduated from Duntroon, our new military college, just before Gallipoli.’

  ‘Yes, I remember Andrew clearly; I liked him very much – a short boy with unusual grey eyes.’