He climbed the steps to the ground floor of the hospital, still in his theatre whites which were stained red. For a moment he wondered whether to change before searching out Abby, but decided not. He needed to see her, to know that she was all right. Medical staff were getting injured all the time and her safety was a constant worry at the back of his mind.
A shell impacted close to the building as he walked on, throwing up a great cloud of dirt and rock. The night sky was lit with far-off gun flashes, and for a moment Nicholas found himself wondering if the world would ever be quiet again. He had taken silence for granted before the last days, the luxury of peaceful, untroubled sleep. If he survived the war he would never do so again. There were lots of things, if it came to it, that he would never take for granted again . . .
He shook himself, willing the weariness, that was causing his mind to wander, back under control. It was always the same when he took a break. While he was busy operating he could keep his mind focused on the matter in hand and the needs of the patient took priority, but as soon as he left the theatre exhaustion would hit.
He ran his hand through his hair, rotating his stiff neck a few times to ease aching muscles. Come on, Nick, he told himself silently. Stay with it, man.
Abby had been working in a ward at the far end of the building for the last couple of days and so he made for there. It wasn’t easy. Every available inch of space had a bed or a piece of equipment wedged into it. Corridors had become makeshift wards, along with storage facilities, bathrooms and even the pharmacist’s store. The hospital’s gas and electricity supplies had failed and even the emergency water tanks had been holed by shrapnel. The building was without heating, and the sterilizers, kettles and X-ray machines would no longer work.
He was just in the process of easing his way round a number of beds situated in the corridor outside the ward where he believed Abby was, when he heard the whine of the bomb and he knew it was going to be close. He caught the terrified gaze of a young soldier who couldn’t be more than eighteen years old, and who had clearly been badly injured. Instinctively Nicholas threw himself to the side of the young man’s bed so he was lying partly over him on the window side of the corridor, in an effort to protect the lad from the worst of the impact.
The blast was deafening; shattered window glazing flew in all directions, along with plaster, chunks of masonry, bits of the wooden shutters that kept the corridors cool in the heat of the day and red-hot spears of shrapnel.
Screams and moans of the injured and dying filled the air but Nicholas knew nothing about it, still lying across the soldier as their blood turned the white sheets red . . .
Chapter Twenty-Three
In Abby’s ward, any glass that remained in the windows had shattered, showering a few unfortunate patients with razor-sharp shards, but as she and some of the other nursing staff emerged into the corridor, a scene of utter carnage met their eyes. The bomb must have landed practically at the base of the wall of the building, and a gaping hole halfway along the corridor showed where the worst of the impact had been. Any patients in that immediate area had had no chance of survival. At either end of the corridor there was movement and men were crying out, but the dust was heavy in the air and this, combined with the deepening twilight, made it difficult to see clearly.
Abby saw the form of a doctor lying over a patient close to the ward door almost immediately, and winced as she took in the large piece of glass wedged in the man’s back. It was like a huge icicle in shape and had been driven deep into the flesh, and both the doctor and patient were covered in other debris and thick powdery dirt. When she saw the patient try to move she called a VAD to help her, and together they lifted the doctor, who they both presumed was dead such was the extent of his injuries, off the young soldier.
It was as the doctor’s face came into view that Abby felt the world stop spinning. For a horrifying, chilling moment all she could do was to stare down at him.
‘He was trying to help me.’ The soldier was crying openly. ‘He covered me with his own body. Is he dead?’
Nicholas. Oh, oh, Nicholas. She couldn’t answer the patient such was her terror. Instead she felt for a pulse, and then, when there was the slightest of tremors beneath her fingers, her legs went weak. They were holding Nicholas half on and half off the bed, and as the VAD went to remove the glass, Abby stopped her with a sharp ‘No!’ adding more softly, ‘Leave it, please. He’s still alive and you might cause more injury trying to take it out.’
There was so much blood. Abby’s mouth was dry. And after Nicholas, John was the best surgeon in the hospital but he and Delia, along with several other doctors and QAs, had been transferred to support smaller hospitals when the bombardment had begun. But regardless of that, Nicholas would have to be operated on immediately because her husband was dying in front of her eyes.
The next hours were ones of endless waiting for Abby.
In the last day or so and with great reluctance, a decision had been made that with no electricity, all operations would have to cease once darkness fell. The basement windows gave limited light as it was, but with the aid of oil lamps they got through during the day. Now, as Nicholas’s colleagues fought to save him, they worked by the light of oil lamps and candles which tested the surgeon, in particular, to the limit. But he did his best, and his best meant Nicholas was still alive when dawn broke, although deeply unconscious.
It was later that morning when Abby saw Nicholas’s lieutenant colonel walking towards her and immediately thought the worst. She knew the officer thought a great deal of Nicholas and assumed he had come to break bad news personally.
Seeing her white face, the lieutenant colonel said quickly, ‘It’s all right, m’dear, he’s still alive, but I need to talk to you.’ Drawing her away from the patient she had been dealing with, he led her to a quiet corner, clearing his throat before he spoke and obviously uncomfortable. ‘The thing is,’ he said softly, ‘the doctor who operated has informed me there is no hope if your husband remains here. Dangerous though it would be to move him, the amount of shrapnel inside him means more operations are necessary and this would involve specialized care. Do you understand me?’
Abby nodded. Patients were dying every day, and the noise and dirt and overcrowding meant specialized care was impossible.
‘The Japanese are going to be in Kowloon very soon, and after that any hope of getting him away will be gone.’
‘Away?’ Abby stared at the officer. ‘Away where?’
‘What I am proposing is risky, Mrs Jefferson-Price. Very risky, but it gives the captain a slim chance. There is a submarine waiting some way out of the harbour and a very important intelligence officer is to be taken to it tonight by means of a small boat. There is absolutely no guarantee that the boat won’t be blown out of the water, the submarine too, come to that, but the documents in the officer’s possession are considered vital enough to merit the risk. The journey home will be difficult and hazardous but there are, of course, medical personnel on board to attend to the captain.’
‘But . . .’ Abby was so taken aback she couldn’t think. ‘How . . . how do you know they would agree to take Nicholas?’
‘The intelligence officer in question is my son-in-law.’
‘Oh.’ Abby blinked. ‘I see.’
‘It would be strictly a passage for just two men, Mrs Jefferson-Price.’
He was telling her she wouldn’t be able to accompany Nicholas, Abby thought, not that she had been thinking that far in her confusion anyway. She tried to clear her head.
‘I’m sure I have no need to say this is in the strictest confidence, m’dear.’
Abby nodded. ‘Of course, yes.’ She took a deep breath. It was Nicholas’s only hope. ‘Thank you, sir. May . . . may I see him before he leaves?’
‘Of course.’ The lieutenant colonel cleared his throat again. He was an army man through and through, and normally kept his soft centre well hidden. ‘And well done, m’dear. Well done,’ he said g
ruffly.
Abby wasn’t quite sure what she was being complimented on but she said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ anyway, before following him out of the ward.
Nicholas was lying in a small anteroom off one of the wards. It was supposed to be for one bed, but had three crammed into the small space and each occupant was desperately sick. He hadn’t regained consciousness but she hadn’t expected him to. His face and lips were as white as the sheet covering his still form and again she put her fingers to his wrist to feel his pulse and see if he was still alive.
‘Oh, my darling.’ Desolation flooded her. He was too ill to be moved – in normal circumstances it would have been unheard of – but what other choice was there? They were running out of medical supplies, had little food and practically no water. Blood and dirt and dust was everywhere, and on top of that Nicholas would need further operations by a skilled surgeon in the future. She had to let him go. It was his only chance. But the thought of him dying alone, without her there . . .
She bent and kissed the cool white lips, her eyes streaming with tears. He wouldn’t die. If there was any justice, any good left in this awful world, he wouldn’t die. He had been injured trying to protect that young soldier, surely God would spare him because of that? He had to, He had to. She couldn’t live without him. Oh, God, God, please help him. I’ll do anything, put up with anything, but please don’t let him die.
How long she stood there she didn’t know, the tears blinding her as she held his limp hand and prayed as she had never prayed before. Eventually she left the anteroom and stood for a moment drying her face and trying to compose herself. Her anguish was such that it was almost as though he had died already, and it was this thought that brought her self-control to the fore. He was going to be all right, he was. She had to believe that and go on believing it or else she might as well lie down and give up right now, because she wouldn’t want to go on without him.
Nicholas was spirited away that night. The lieutenant colonel came to see Abby the following morning and told her that as far as he was aware all had gone according to plan. Of course, nothing was certain, he added gently. Not in times such as these.
Abby nodded, thanked him and continued with her work, her heart breaking.
The following day the Japanese army reached Kowloon and five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese flag flew over Kowloon hospital. The Japanese immediately hauled artillery batteries into position along the coast and opened a devastating fire on Hong Kong island’s north shore as they prepared to make an amphibious assault crossing of the harbour. Within hours of the enemy reaching Kowloon, Abby and the other medical staff were told that from now on, owing to snipers, everyone would need to be especially vigilant.
Their particular hospital was built on a slope overlooking Victoria Harbour and was directly in the firing line as the Japanese pounded them from the mainland. The QAs were told to change into dark slacks and shirts with merely a Red Cross brassard to state they were nurses. Now the enemy were so close they were watching the nurses go about their business through binoculars, the CO warned, and the women’s white uniforms made them easy targets. It was clear the Japanese were specifically targeting medics, ambulances and aid stations now in flagrant violation of the Rules of War, and not differentiating between combatants and non-combatants.
Abby and the other nurses looked at each other as the matron read out the CO’s instructions, the stories they had heard about the Japanese atrocities towards the Chinese flashing through every woman’s mind. Abby wished Delia was here with her. She had other friends among her colleagues, but Delia had many of Sybil’s attributes and the two of them had got on so well. But there was no time for such thoughts, overwhelmed as they were by injured and dying patients.
The next morning, Abby, two other QAs and three orderlies were called to the matron’s office and told that some of the other hospitals were calling out for more trained staff. They were being sent to assist where needed most. Casualties among the British, Indian and volunteer troops were increasingly heavy as the deadly accuracy of the Japanese shelling, bombing and sniper attacks forced them from their fixed positions.
To Abby’s delight she discovered she was destined for a college on the south-east corner of the island. Originally built as a boys’ school in the heyday of the Empire, it had been converted into a military hospital at the outbreak of war. It was where Delia and John were working.
When Abby reached the hospital after a hair-raising ride in an ambulance that was fired on several times, she discovered the physical conditions were appalling. Many already injured patients had suffered further wounds from flying glass, and so every ward was shuttered, plunging the interior into permanent gloom. Even the hurricane lamps the medical staff had been using initially had made them too conspicuous from the air, and so now they worked by the light of pocket torches.
Delia found her almost immediately, flinging her arms round Abby and hugging her as she said, ‘Oh, am I pleased to see you. I’ve so missed you. We heard this morning we were getting some extra help and I prayed it’d be you although I knew the odds were against it, knowing how Nick likes to keep you with him. Is he all right?’ And then, at the look on her friend’s face, Delia’s eyes widened. ‘What have I said? What’s wrong?’
Amazingly, Abby managed to fill Delia in on what had gone on without weeping, and after more hugs, Delia led her to a building in the grounds of the college that was the nurses’ living quarters. Within half-an-hour Abby was back in the main building and at work, but feeling much better for being reunited with Delia. That evening John joined the two women and they ate together, each of them acutely aware of the missing member of their quartet. It was only as the three of them sat together talking that it dawned on Abby the matron had chosen her for this hospital knowing that Delia and John were good friends of her and Nicholas’s, and she wished she had realized in time to thank the matron for her kindness before she had left.
The hospital was full to overflowing with wounded British and Canadian soldiers, and again, every inch of space was being used. Even so, over the coming days, as the Allied forces on the island put up a cohesive resistance against an enemy riding high on victory, more patients were admitted.
The inevitable happened ten days after the beginning of the air attack when the Japanese landed at night on the north-east corner of the island. It was three days before news filtered through to other areas where the enemy had not yet reached, due to the determined and stubborn defence being put up by young British, Indian, Canadian and Chinese men, and when it did, Abby and Delia and their colleages found it hard to believe at first.
In Kowloon the behaviour of the Japanese towards medical personnel had been humane on the whole, according to the local radio station. This went off the air the day after the enemy landed on Hong Kong island, but news of a massacre at the Salesian Mission religious buildings at Shau Kei Wan, an advanced dressing station, soon became known. The mission buildings were very isolated, but it seemed the Japanese had stormed into the area and, in defiance of international convention, had begun an orgy of killing. All the medical staff had been herded outside and the men had been made to strip naked. Doctors and surgeons were made to kneel on the grass and then a Japanese officer walked down the line shooting each man in the back of the head with his pistol. Then eight young Canadian soldiers and a number of men from the RAMC, similarly stripped and with their hands tied behind their backs, were decapitated by Japanese officers while ordinary Japanese soldiers cheered and applauded with glee. The nurses at the hospital had been forced to stand and watch this happen, and then observe the butchering of wounded patients.
Abby and Delia stared at each other, and it was Delia who whispered, ‘The world has gone mad.’
They were standing with John and the rest of the hospital’s medical staff just outside the front doors of the college, after the hospital’s commanding officer had called them together to confirm the rumours that had reached them earlier tha
t day. ‘Let me make one thing clear.’ The CO, a middle-aged man, gazed round at the white distressed faces in front of him. ‘It seems the Japanese wanted some survivors to relay what occurred to cause collapse in morale. This will not happen.’ His mild blue eyes swept over the assembled company. ‘We will continue to do our job here to the best of our ability and let God take care of tomorrow. Is that understood? Good. Back to work.’
That same day, to the delight of Delia, who hadn’t had one of her gin fizzes since the shelling had begun, the nurses were told they were to be included in the daily tot of rum issued to the troops. Abby didn’t like rum but, desperately thirsty due to the acute shortage of water and worried to death about Nicholas, she drank her allowance as eagerly as the others. She found it was warming and comforting and did make a difference to morale.
Over the next two or three days it became impossible to do what they had done that afternoon and have a meeting outside the hospital. The surroundings were infested with snipers who made anything moving their target. And then, on the morning of Christmas Eve an hour or so after it had become light, a nurse ran into the ward where Abby was. The girl, a young VAD, called out in a trembling voice, ‘The Japs are here!’ and then burst into tears.
As the only QA present, Abby quickly took control. Leading the shaking teenager out of the ward after telling her VADs to carry on with their work, she took the girl to the area where her mother was working, also as a VAD, and left them together. On returning to her ward, Abby saw Japanese soldiers and Allied troops fighting on the lawn outside the hospital. The building had become the front line but the fight was a terribly uneven one and over within minutes, hordes of drunken Japanese soldiers bursting into the hospital shouting and screaming yells of victory.
It was the beginning of a nightmare that Abby was to remember for the rest of her life, each moment etched on her mind with terrible clarity.
Snowflakes in the Wind Page 26