Two Women Went to War

by L E Pembroke

  And what about Andrew Osborne? I was fairly certain Andrew would have enjoyed exploring London with me, and how much I would have loved to have him by my side. Not holding hands, though, which was against the rules while both were in uniform. I would have been happy simply to share experiences that would draw us closer together in future. It was strange that Andrew and Tom were friends for they were totally different types; Tom, aloof, reclusive, cold, similar to our mother, completely different from our father. Andrew, empathic, warm, enthusiastic. Well, that was the impression he’d given me in Cairo.

  There had been so many diverse experiences in the last eighteen months, although no romance in my life. In my heart of hearts I knew that’s what I wanted. Twenty-four, not bad looking, yet feeling abandoned and forlorn. When I listened to Madeleine talk of her love for Charles I was green with envy and felt much older than my years, dull and dispirited.

  Lunchtime; I turned into Lower Oxford Street. In front of me was one of the Lyons Corner Houses. The weather was cold, the wind blustery; a bowl of soup was just what I wanted. I stepped into the warm and crowded café and stood looking around for a seat. A surge of sound trumpeted across the room. I turned towards the familiar voice.

  ‘Over here, Sis. Come and join me.’

  People looked up and smiled. I could see them watching with interest the Colonel in uniform with the Australian insignia waving his arms about to attract my attention. I recognised him at once. I waved an acknowledgement and began threading my way past the other customers. A broad smile lit up my face and his.

  Dr Alistair Bear stood up. ‘What a bit of luck! Feeling a bit lonely, looked up and there you were. Sit down, Genevieve. I have to say you’re looking chipper.’

  I admitted that I too had been feeling lonely, and asked him how life had been treating him since he left Cairo.

  ‘I’ve had a few ups and downs, to tell you the truth.’ He brushed aside what I realised were rather mournful thoughts. ‘What are you having, Genevieve?’

  ‘I was thinking about soup and toast.’

  He said he’d have the same and ordered two helpings of Brown Windsor. He turned to me and said he wasn’t sure what a Brown Windsor was, but it seemed to be popular over here. He sat back and tucked his napkin between the buttons of his shirt. ‘Well, Genevieve, a far cry from the ships, eh? What a time we had! Busiest time of my life.’

  I agreed, but added that at times France was rather hectic.

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  I noticed he sounded rueful. ‘What are you doing now, Alistair?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve had rather a bad time since that last medical evacuation and the few weeks in Cairo. However, I don’t want to burden you with my problems, Genevieve.’

  I’ve always believed in sharing one’s woes with a friend, although not when I was pregnant, of course. ‘Why ever not? Often it helps to talk about one’s worries. You must know that, and we have known one another for some time.’

  He seemed relieved, and I could see that he wanted to talk about whatever it was that was disturbing him. ‘There seems to be a common belief among men that we should suppress our feelings. It’s wrong, you know.’

  I strongly agreed with that. I’d seen so many wounded soldiers trying to keep a stiff upper lip and was certain it would be so much better for them if they revealed their pain or their worries.

  The soup came. I thought it was rather tasteless, a bit like Bonox, which they served on the ships for sea-sickness. I waited for him to tell me his story in his own time, and suddenly, like water pouring from a tap, it all came out. He began by saying he was posted to London and not to France and that wasn’t too good for his ego because he wanted to go to France, to be in the thick of it.

  ‘You know, Genevieve, deep down most men still want to be a warrior, a caveman, a hero. The instinct to fight for territory – well, it’s what we’re doing now, isn’t it? – is alive and well. Although the instinct to fight for a mate is no longer acceptable in our supposedly civilised society, yet it’s what many men yearn for.’

  I was a little uncomfortable with his words and said so. I didn’t think women really relished the thought of being dragged off by the hair, kicking and screaming, before being violated into submission.

  ‘Maybe not, but quintessentially men want to hunt for their women, and they also want to be dominant. Men are like peacocks; they need to be admired for their maleness.’

  ‘Aren’t you reducing the ideal of love to rampant lust?’

  ‘Without rampant lust, or at least an initial strong sexual interest, love would never grow. Anyway, this isn’t the time to philosophise; I just wanted to explain why I’m in London. I guess I’m just one of those blokes who find it difficult to accept my mortality, even to accept that I might be slowing down.’

  He went on to say that he supposed it was a bit unrealistic to think that he could be of much use doing the hard stuff because he was, after all, forty-six, so he had to be content with setting up a convalescent hospital in North London for the Australian Imperial Force. Then Alistair told me of meeting a woman with whom he fell instantly and madly in love. I could hear the tremble in his voice as poignant memories came flooding back. They married within weeks of meeting and bought a house in St John’s Wood, and every day he thanked God he didn’t have to go to France – how ironical.

  He paused; I remember the pain in his face being patently obvious. I felt it, leant forward, took his hand. ‘What happened, Teddy?’

  His face screwed up. I hated seeing men trying to hold back, hide their feelings; I saw a lot of that in the war. I could almost feel the suffocating lump in his throat, the difficulty he experienced in getting the words out.

  ‘She died after two months. She was killed, a casualty of war. Did you know the Huns sent zeppelins over London? Not too many, just a few stray bombs, not many killed. Eleanor was one of the few.’ He looked away. I waited.

  ‘Sorry, Genevieve. I just needed a sympathetic ear. It happened six months ago; I’m getting over it.’

  What do you say to a close friend who lost his new wife under such tragic circumstances? I tried to reassure him that the pain of his loss would diminish in time.

  ‘I know that, especially if one keeps busy. Well, I’m keeping busy. That’s the unique thing about this war, isn’t it? The death toll has been so great that our emotional reactions have become numbed to some extent. Everybody’s just getting on with the job. No time for mourning.’

  He suggested that we spend the day and evening together, so we did. We went to the National Gallery and had dinner in Soho. The following day I returned to France.

  CHAPTER 11

  After that leave I returned to Boulogne but only stayed there until April 1917. I was then reposted to a casualty clearing station near Ypres in Belgium – very close to the front-line trenches, and a really grim experience.

  The clearing station was a small tented hospital behind which were several smaller tents for the hospital kitchen, messing and sleeping quarters for the staff. As the troops advanced or fell back so did the clearing station. The theatre, used only for emergencies, was a small and primitive adjunct to the ward area, separated from it by walls made of hessian dipped in cement. The operating table had been scrubbed so often that the wood was white. Basins, bowls, kidney dishes and instruments, sterilised in a copper-like structure, were piled on field tables and covered with sheeting.

  One day in September 1917, I received a further posting order. I was being sent to one of the big military hospitals in Calais. I was delighted; I couldn’t wait to get away from the devastating scenes that surrounded the clearing station. That day had been slow. Only one urgent operation in the morning: a soldier whose stomach was ripped open by machine-gun fire, which was common enough. The remainder of the patients were being treated for illness (bronchitis, trench foot, rat bites and so on). Most would soon be back in the line.

  The respite was welcome because we’d been through som
e gruelling times. After an action, we sometimes had up to five hundred soldiers pass through within twenty-four hours. Those badly burned or blinded by gas, together with other badly wounded, we sent by train to the rear for long-term hospitalisation. To the critically wounded, those beyond medical help, we gave morphine, and someone sat beside their beds, holding their hands, trying to comfort them. We tried to never let them die alone.

  In September 1917 the Third Battle of Ypres was well underway; much of the action taking place along the Menin Road and around the village of Passchendaele. The clearing station was near enough to the front for the ground under it to shake regularly from exploding shells, and the smell of cordite entrapped in the bleak and heavy atmosphere permeated the hospital surrounds. I wondered whether I would ever forget the most heart-wrenching scenes: figures blurred in grey mist and smoke; figures stumbling towards us crying out for assistance as acid burnt through uniforms or gas wreathed into their nostrils and seared lung tissue. Always grey, always damp and muddy, this low-lying Belgian countryside, now bare of trees, was without doubt the most depressing place in which I had ever served.

  How much longer? That’s what we all asked, again and again. The Americans had joined in at last, but they were inexperienced raw recruits. How were they coping in the trenches when pitted against the seasoned Hun?

  But what was of most concern to me was how was Madeleine coping. I remember Madeleine returning to Boulogne in January 1917, two weeks after I did. And I remember her in late March. I recall her joy as she raced into the sisters’ sitting room waving the latest letter from Charles.

  ‘He’s going home for Easter and – listen to this, Genevieve.’ Madeleine read from Charles’s letter:

  As you know, my darling, I’ve been in France and Belgium since the beginning. The CO now says that it’s about time I went home. There’s a job going as instructor at the School of Infantry down near Salisbury. I can’t describe my feelings, Maddy darling. I can’t believe I’ve survived and will be out of it within a month. Every day until I see you again will seem like a year.

  Better get home as soon as you can, sweetheart, and book

  the church.

  ‘There’s an awful lot more, of course,’ Madeleine had said, hugging the letter to her bosom, ‘but that’s sort of private. So, Genevieve, you’ll have to get back to England for the wedding.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll miss it, Madeleine. I’ve been posted, too. I’m going to Belgium.’

  *

  I kept in touch with Madeleine; we had become close friends. She left her ambulance duties near Boulogne and returned to London at the beginning of April. While she waited for Charles’s arrival she worked with the FANY there doing administration jobs and meeting, with cups of tea and buns, troop-carrying ships arriving at various ports in southern England.

  Then Charles’s mother turned up at Eaton Square with the dreaded telegram. It was only a week before he was due back. The telegram was brief and impersonal. It said that Captain Phillips was missing presumed killed.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Madeleine said in her letter to me. I could tell that was pure bravado; her letter was covered with blotches, tears falling on to ink making her words almost indecipherable. Again and again she wrote: ‘I don’t believe it. Nobody saw him die. He wasn’t involved in a raid or an assault. His commanding officer said he simply disappeared. He’s a prisoner of war somewhere, and he’s safe – I just know it – and soon I’ll hear from the Red Cross.’

  Madeleine left England, and by June 1917 she was back in Calais. We met again that September when I finished my stint in Belgium. It was an emotional meeting; nothing had been heard of Charles. I remember hugging her tightly, tears ran down our faces. I was convinced that Charles had been killed months before. How could I comfort her?

  ‘I still don’t believe it. When this bloody war is over, he’ll come back to me.’

  Gently I tried to dissuade her; pointing out that it had been five months and she would have been notified by now if he was in a prisoner of war camp.

  ‘Not necessarily. There are plenty of stories of maladministration in the camps. I tell you, Genevieve, Charlie is alive. I just know it, and nothing will convince me otherwise.’

  CHAPTER 12

  CHARLES

  In April 1917, I was called to Battalion Headquarters, situated on the northern outskirts of Ypres, to attend an Orders Group. I used the most usual form of individual transport: the motor bike. I took the more circuitous northerly route because shelling had made the southern route virtually impassable.

  For a change, I was in remarkably good humour. In two weeks time my tour of duty in Belgium would be over, forever, I hoped. I had written to Madeleine about that marvellous news. After nearly three years of gruelling service on the Western Front, I had been reposted, as an instructor, at an army school at Netheravon, a small village on Salisbury Plain. My trench war was practically over. I could hardly believe my luck, first that I’d survived and second, that I was physically intact. On top of that, within a month I would marry the woman with whom I was deeply in love.

  I roared past isolated farm buildings, some fallen into partial disrepair as Belgian wives tried to cope while husbands were away at war. I glanced at the local landscape, felt sorry for those who lived there permanently. We frequently saw elderly subsistence farmers (the younger ones being at war) trudging along the lanes or working in fields of sugar beet, oats and barley.

  How I hated this interminably flat, freezing, muddy, low-lying area called Flanders. The earth was torn apart by innumerable shell holes all filled with brown oily water and sludge; a few still contained swollen corpses. The scattered copses of trees, which I first saw in 1914, had long gone; instead blackened, torn trunks, shortened and stripped of limbs by the inevitable destruction of war, stood like skeletal sentinels offering no protection to men or beasts.

  I was certain the worst was over; that the Germans were facing inevitable defeat. We had heard they were now conscripting fifteen-year-old boys. The rumour was that America would soon enter the war, fresh troops aiding exhausted allies and engaging a weary enemy. Surely that would put an end to Kaiser Wilhelm’s territorial ambitions.

  I shook my head as if to remove such thoughts, the way one tries to remove a persistent buzzing mosquito or a sticky fly. I thought, give yourself a break, Charlie; don’t think about the war, think about the near future, your new home in the quiet of the English countryside with your new wife.

  Madeleine was always on my mind. I tried to imagine what she was doing at that moment. Definitely, she would be back in England; doubtless rushing from one place to another – the church, the dressmaker, the hairdresser, the florist. She would be harassing the caterers about the reception and planning the honeymoon. Cornwall would be nice. I chuckled at the thought of my fiancée’s frenetic preparations for our future life together and felt like shouting for joy as my bike skidded and slewed across narrow rime-covered lanes.

  I heard the scream of a heavy shell. The ground erupted only twenty yards in front of me. The blast lifted me off my bike and hurled me through the air. I knew nothing more.

  CHAPTER 13

  GENEVIEVE

  The Australian General Hospital in Calais (the main port used by the British to support their forces in France) was only one of many, each handling the sick and wounded of a specific allied nation. Trains carrying casualties arrived every few hours from the front. One of Madeleine’s jobs was to meet the trains and transport the wounded to a specific hospital. When not driving an ambulance she assisted at the hospital for Belgians. She lived with a number of other FANYs in a house in the central part of town and often, when I came off duty, I visited her there.

  There were dozens of bars and brothels in Calais and, as the evenings closed in, it was rare to see pubescent girls on the street. Mothers, in the absence of fathers serving with the French Army, kept a tight rein on daughters in this town bursting with uniformed men seeking sexual relief. D
espite this, I never worried about my own safety; even at night, when I came off duty at the hospital and made my way through the town. I firmly believed nobody would ever molest me because Allied soldiers usually showed respect for nurses and nursing sisters.

  A few weeks after I arrived in Calais my brother turned up. He was a patient in the hospital in which I worked. Poor Tom had lost most of his right arm in the fighting.

  I had nursed so many amputees and had been in theatres time and time again as surgeons sawed through upper and lower legs or arms cut off at the elbow or at the top of the arm near the shoulder. Having seen trolleys, loaded with limbs, disappearing down hospital corridors headed for the dump, I didn’t expect to be so affected when I first saw my brother without his right arm. As I have said, we displayed very little affection to one another but, after all, he was my closest relative and I hated seeing him so disabled. I found it almost impossible to imagine him trying to handle an armful of sheep while drenching, castrating or branding. Yet others had managed. Tom was a determined fellow. He’d get on top of this. I knew I must be optimistic and reassuring. I mustn’t let him feel sorry for himself. Plenty of people cope well with a missing limb. He was lucky he wasn’t one of the thousands of unidentified dead lying mutilated all over France.

  *

  One evening towards the end of 1917 when I was visiting Madeleine at the FANY home, I suggested she come to the hospital with me to meet Tom. I thought she might cheer him up a little. She agreed, and suggested that we go the next day after she came off duty. Madeleine spoke with little enthusiasm, and again I noticed how listless she had become since hearing about Charles. It was all very well for her to insist that he was still alive, but deep down she must have known he had been killed.