by Evelyn Weiss
Colonel Hampshire. You can depend on me, sir.”
I’m standing up, at last. I take a single unsteady step: my sight feels blurred, my head reels, but I realise that I have to open the corridor door, cross the lobby, go back in the treatment room again. I must apologize, and offer to do whatever the nurses need me to do. ‘They need me. Do it now’ I say to myself. As I grasp the door handle I hear a jeering voice in my mind, calling out names. ‘Cowardy-custard Agnes. Cowardy, cowardy-custard’ the voice says, and I see again in my mind the custard-like yellow froth erupting, splattering over me. That froth, I realise, has now become dried, part-bleached stains on my uniform. I open the door, step forward, and enter the treatment room.
3.The General’s instructions
A hand is shaking my shoulder, waking me from sleep.
“Miss Frocester. Please wake, dress and be ready to accompany me in five minutes.”
The voice is Dr Bernard’s. A few minutes later, I’m waiting in the lobby of the hotel. It’s now April 24th, and it’s two o’clock in the morning, but every few minutes the night is cut by a scream of agony from one of the twenty-seven North African soldiers now occupying almost every bed in the treatment room. After that first casualty, another was brought in that evening. We treated both with the bicarbonate, and put them in a sitting position in the hope that at least the upper parts of their lungs might drain of fluid and continue to function. Then the following morning a stream of others arrived in ones and twos. All through yesterday, Dr Bernard, the other staff and I worked to treat them all, and I collapsed into bed about nine o’clock: a single military nurse remains on duty overnight. We’ve now run out of bicarbonate, but each of the gassed soldiers is now sitting up in bed, and they are breathing more easily. But their pain is still extraordinary.
I look out through the entrance into the moonlit town square, its cobbled surface covered with fragments of brick and broken glass. Yet something makes me glance back at the reception desk. Yes, there’s a figure standing there, exactly where Dr Bernard stood the day before yesterday, when she watched me cross the lobby.
“Hello?”
“Hello.” A voice speaks from the shadows, then a man’s figure emerges towards me. “Good to meet you. You’re Volunteer Frocester, I guess? I’m Colonel Hampshire.”
“Good to meet you too, Colonel.” He’s several inches taller then me. The light from the entrance catches on the buttons of his uniform, and his eyes shine too, looking at me with curious interest. He seems remarkably young for a colonel – perhaps only a few years older than me: in war, I guess, promotions come quickly.
“You’re American. Your country is, happily, at peace. What made you come here, to the most hellish place on earth?” In the gloom, I sense a slight smile on his lips and a warmth in his voice.
“If you mean what made me come to Ypres – I was sent here, Colonel. If you mean why I’m involved in the Great War, then the reason is: I was in England already, and I wanted to help. To do something of use.”
“A noble motivation. If I were you, I would have been tempted to head back to Connecticut. You could work in a civilian hospital, or better still nurse some rich old lady for a fat salary.”
“Well, I’m here now, so I may as well do my best. I’m being sent to the St Julien Dressing Station. But I have a question for you, Colonel, if it’s permitted.”
“Ask away.”
“How do you know I’m from Connecticut?”
“I – happened to see something. Something about you. You are highly recommended, you know. Most Volunteer Auxiliaries have no medical background.”
“Training is one thing: being able to cope on the Western Front is another. I think the jury is still out as to whether I can do the latter.”
“Have confidence, Miss Frocester. I’m sure you’ll be invaluable at St Julien.” And then, the most unexpected thing in the world happens. The Colonel looks down at me from under his cap and in the dim light I see his mustache curving in a smile. He stands close to me and takes both my hands. His fingers caress my palms – gently, but I sense the strength in his hands. As he continues to hold on to me, his lips move, close to my face, and his words are even odder than his actions.
“Come back safe – Agnes.”
“I will, Colonel.” As I speak, I pull my hands gently from his grasp. I take a step back, but I smile at him: I don’t want him to think I’m offended. I just don’t want anything personal to happen. I’ve never been kissed in my life, and I’d like the first time to be with someone I know enough to trust.
As I pull back from Colonel Hampshire, I hear a very different voice in my ears.
“Miss Frocester! Come with me. As you’ve been told, only you and I are involved in this mission to St Julien. I will be driving us.”
The voice barks from behind me: I turn to see Dr Bernard’s mannish figure silhouetted in the hotel entrance. I smile my goodbyes at Colonel Hampshire, and Dr Bernard and I descend the hotel steps to the town square. In front of us is a motor-ambulance. In the moonlight I see the large red cross painted on its side. I open the passenger door and climb into the cab. Dr Bernard gives the starting-handle a few turns: the engine jerks into life. She steps up into the driver’s seat.
“Thank you, Miss Frocester. You have had a few hours’ sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Good. All staff here must get some sleep, or they will start to make mistakes. And I have had to leave detailed written instructions for the other medical staff, even though I am no expert in this gas poisoning. I have no idea whether any of those soldiers lying in the hospital are destined to live or to die.”
She puts the ambulance into gear, and we start to move off through the deserted streets. Ypres is a ghost town: the dead bones of a once living community. Every building is ruined: piles of brick, stone and wreckage are lit like skeletons by the stark moonlight. The main road out of town is completely blocked by a collapsed house, and we turn down a side street.
“So we are going to the St Julien Advance Dressing Station?”
“Yes. Just you, me, and this motor-ambulance. I have checked inside the back of the vehicle. It’s nearly empty of medical supplies, but I hope there will be proper supplies at St Julien. That spineless idiot Jardine told me he had ordered a dispatch of medical equipment to the Advance Dressing Station.”
“I don’t really understand…”
“I feel exactly the same, Miss Frocester. You and I, we volunteered for this stupid foreign war, in order to treat the sick. But now, we have both been ordered away from a ward of dying men, in the middle of the night. What greater priority could there be, than trying to save those men’s lives? I have no idea why we are being sent away, or what the British Army expects us to do in St Julien.”
“Neither do I. Except –” I hesitate. I realise that I dare not tell the Swiss doctor about the overheard conversation between Jardine and Hampshire. Dr Bernard continues.
“I did not know what to expect when volunteering my services to the British Red Cross. I tried to be ready for whatever the war might throw at me. But I did not expect this. From the start, I have been kept utterly in the dark about what I am supposed to be doing. But that is the way that the British Army seems to operate. They have told me literally nothing, except this.”
Her fingers on the steering wheel point to a piece of paper stuck onto the dashboard. It’s a map of the roads around Ypres, marking the location of the St Julien Advance Dressing Station. We’re rejoined the main road, and I look ahead of us: the headlamps of our ambulance shine feebly in the gloom as we leave the ruins of the town behind. The road is now barely visible, a darkened dirt track across open fields. We judder along over bumps and ruts in the blackness. Despite Dr Bernard at my side, I feel desolate and utterly alone. I think about the whispered rumours of the Rape of Belgium: horrors beyond imagination. I suddenly feel a huge pang of longing for my home in Putnam, Connecticut: my parents, my brother, my friends and family, my neighbourhood. In my mind I
see a troop of soldiers coming into Putnam. They go into every home, take the men outside into the village square, and ready their rifles. Now the soldiers are coming into our drugstore, they take hold of my father. They are taking him out into the village square too. My mother clings to him, screaming, but a soldier pulls her away, and starts, almost methodically, to tear her clothes apart. She shrieks, but an officer stands in the middle of our shop, pointing his revolver at her face. He pulls the trigger.
Dr Bernard drives differently from anyone else I’ve seen. She hunches over the wheel and her head is in constant movement, checking the road ahead, the mirrors behind. The calm assurance she has when dealing with patients is replaced by a nervous energy; her eyes dart about, scanning the road ahead. The road is uneven and covered with mud, but fortunately seems free from shell craters. Suddenly we jolt to a halt.
“Miss Frocester. There’s a hole in the road.”
She opens her door and gets out, and I do the same. She switches on a flashlight. She’s right: on the verge of the road there’s a pothole, and one of our wheels is in it: easily avoidable in normal conditions, but I guess in this mud we must have slid across to the edge of the road. I make a suggestion.
“How about if I push while you drive?”
She looks at me, as if assessing my physical