Song of Songs

by Beverley Hughesdon

  I whispered, ‘Yes, Hugh – but – don’t talk like that – you’ll be going on leave soon, you can tell her yourself.’

  He gazed at the long line of huts and said flatly, ‘No. My number’s up this time, I can feel it in my bones. So tell her, Hellie, please.’ He turned and walked away, just one square-shouldered figure in khaki amidst all the others.

  It was Papa who wrote to tell me: ‘Hugh is posted missing, but after what happened with Conan, Alice has not given up hope.’

  But I had. We had had our one miracle; I doubted that we were due for another.

  Papa wrote again three days later. A corporal who had been with Hugh had come round in a CCS and reported that the same shell which had wounded him had blown Captain Knowles to bits. I picked up my pen and began to write my letter to Alice.

  Chapter Seven

  Nanny wrote to tell me that Guy’s third son had been born and he was to be called Hugh. I thought of Pansy with her three babies in the nursery – Lance, Edwin and now little Hugh – and I wondered bitterly how many more sons she would have to bear in order to replace the men who were being killed.

  Rumours from the battlefront talked of advances – but pitifully small ones, and the men who had paid the price were carried into us day and night. Then one Monday morning there were different rumours – of events much closer at hand – there had been a riot at Three Arch Bridge just outside Étaples – that bridge which was always guarded by redcaps to stop men from the camp entering the village. It was said that stones and sticks had been thrown at the sentries the previous afternoon – the New Zealanders were involved and a Gordon Highlander corporal on the fringe of the crowd had been shot in the head by one of the police. We knew this last story was true because he had been brought into Tilney’s ward just as she had been going off duty that evening; by next morning he was dead. Later the rioters were supposed to have come back and stormed the bridge and forced their way through into the village. We were still discussing it all when Matron came into the mess; we listened in silence as she announced that we were confined to the hospital compound until further notice. As she finished speaking we looked at each other uneasily – so it was true.

  Tilney set herself the task of discovering exactly what was going on; she had read history at Oxford before volunteering as a VAD and she had a sharp, inquisitive brain which revelled in ferreting out information. Each evening in the mess, she regaled us with the fruits of her research and we listened eagerly – it was a diversion from the war. Most of us had a sneaking sympathy for the men who had finally turned on their tormentors after enduring the sadistic bullying of the Bull Ring, and I was angry when Tilney argued that technically they were mutineers. We all knew the French Army had mutinied after the agony of Verdun, but our men were still fighting and dying in the hell around Ypres.

  Matron kept us confined to camp until the middle of October, though the whole affair seemed to have died down after a fortnight; but by then it made no difference to me as I had been transferred to the theatre and had no off-duty anyway.

  The two theatre huts squatted close together in the centre of the hospital, next to the reception hut and near to the acute surgical wards. It was raining as I slithered over the slippery duckboards the first evening and the weather seemed to reflect my mood – I was miserable as well as nervous. But there was no operation in progress and Sister was in there alone, cleaning instruments. She was young and brisk and showed me how to operate the sterilizer before setting me to pack drums of dressings. When I had finished she said, ‘You’d better turn in early tonight, Nurse Girvan – there’s a convoy due first thing, so we’ll be very busy.’

  I did not sleep well that night – I did not know what would be expected of me – and suppose I was too slow and got in the way of Sister and the surgeons – or made some dreadful mistake? I was dozing uneasily when the theatre orderly banged on our hut door. ‘It’s five-thirty Nurse, Sister Saunders says you’re to come over at once.’ Sick with apprehension I fumbled for my clothes; it was still dark and I had to dress by the light of my electric torch. Aylmer stirred. ‘Girvan – there are some biscuits in the tin on my shelf – eat a couple now.’

  I whispered, ‘I’m not hungry, thank you.’

  She swung her legs out of bed, reached down the tin, opened it and thrust two biscuits into my hand. ‘Don’t be silly – you may not be able to get over to breakfast, it’s bound to be hectic at first.’

  Obediently I began to nibble at a biscuit, and I was still swallowing the last mouthful as I came into the brightly lit theatre hut. Sister glanced up from the sterilizer. ‘Had something to eat? Good girl, I meant to warn you. I’ve lit this thing and sent the orderly for water, so there’s just time to snatch a cup of tea in the night bunk.’ The bugles were sounding as we swallowed our last mouthfuls of tea and came out into the cold morning air, and the first ambulance was already backing up to the reception hut, while another was being waved on to the wards. I knew only the most serious cases would come straight to the theatre, and my stomach lurched. I tied on my clean overall with trembling hands, wiped out a bowl with meths, set a match to it and watched the flame spurt up, then I put it ready on the trestle.

  The MOs came in in pairs: surgeon and anaesthetist together – Captain Adams and Mr Casson, Captain Blaymire and Mr Morris. ‘They’re on their way, Sister.’ Mr Casson pulled out his stool and perched on it at the head of the table, waiting. The orderlies brought the first stretcher alongside. I saw the man’s eyes, staring and frightened, as I moved forward to help the orderlies slide him off the stretcher – his left leg was a mass of stained bandages, and it stank.

  ‘All right, old man, just breathe in now, easy does it.’ The mask in Mr Casson’s hand came down as Sister told me to unroll the bandages. The flesh exposed was swollen and green. ‘Slit the rest of his trouser leg, Girvan.’ I picked up the scissors and laid bare the travesty of a leg.

  ‘Must have been lying out some time – poor bastard – it’ll have to come off, then…’ Captain Adams shrugged as he eased on his gloves. ‘Nurse, get hold of that foot and play tug-of-war with it – pull back as hard as you can.’

  I took a deep breath and reached out for the green foot; it squelched unpleasantly under my fingers, but I tightened my grip until I felt the bone under the gangrenous flesh and then I pulled hard. At the next table the orderly was unwrapping another stinking leg as Mr Morris crooned, ‘Easy old man, easy,’ and Captain Blaymire pulled on his gloves.

  Sister stood between the two surgeons, eyes swivelling from one to the other. The scalpel flashed as she handed it to Captain Adams, and I watched a scarlet slit appear in the green of the leg. ‘I can’t go any further up, dammit – he must have been out there for days. I suppose we’ve been driven back again.’ He was slicing into the muscle as he spoke, and Sister was handling artery forceps with the speed of a juggler, soon they dangled from the gash like an obscene metal fringe. I watched the sweat bead on the surgeon’s forehead as the saw grated through the bone. Foul yellow pus began to pour out of the leg, and then the saw on the other table picked up the refrain. Captain Adams began chanting the bawdiest version of ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres’ with his eyes fixed on the bone, ‘Oh, yes, I have a daughter fair – pull harder, Nurse – With lily-white breasts and golden hair… I pulled until my arms ached and then there was a sickening crunch and I reeled back and thudded into the wooden wall, the severed leg clutched to my breasts. I pulled myself upright again and ran to stuff the leg in the dustbin in the corner. When I got back to the table Captain Adams was sewing up the severed veins and arteries with quick delicate stitches. At the next table the orderly staggered back, grunted and took a second leg to the dustbin.

  The stretcher bearers were ready to empty the table; a second frightened-eyed man was waiting his turn. As the voice ordered, ‘Take a deep breath old man, easy does it,’ I began to unwrap the swollen bandages from another rotting leg.

  All the early cases were gas gangrene
– the CCSs had dressed them, injected anti-tetanic serum and morphia, then sent them down in hope while they concentrated on the chests and the heads and the abdominals that must be operated on at once – the urgent cases but by the time they reached us these men had become urgent cases in their turn.

  The stretchers followed each other relentlessly: I became light-headed from the fumes of the chloroform, and my feet slipped in the blood and creosote on the floor – but still the stretchers came in. The sterilizers hissed and bubbled over their Primus stoves and the hut became hotter and hotter. We did rush over for food – we had to – but we swallowed without tasting, and as soon as we got back another man was lifted on to the table.

  By mid-afternoon there was a slight slackening in the pace, because the desperate cases had been dealt with; now those from the wards were being carried over. I could catch my breath while the surgeons peered at X-ray plates, then scrubbed their hands with perchloride before beginning their careful cutting and probing.

  It was nearly midnight before we finished, then Sister and I and the orderly had to stay behind to prepare the theatre for a six o’clock start next morning. Tired though I was, I stumbled to the ablutions hut and scrubbed myself all over – I felt as if I would never be clean again.

  On the morning of the fourth day I realized that the cases coming in were less serious, and then there was only one more stretcher waiting outside. As I bent over him he said, ‘My lady.’ I looked round, my tired brain not understanding. Then he spoke again: ‘It is Lady Helena, isn’t it?’ And I realized he meant me. There was something familiar about the fair young face and I smiled at him and nodded, ‘Yes – yes, it is.’

  ‘I’ve often seen you, my lady – my father’s the stationmaster at Hareford.’

  ‘Why, of course – I recognize you now – I am so glad to see you.’

  Then I realized the boy was lying on the floor of a stinking, slimy hut – and that I must have sounded absolutely ridiculous. But he looked quite pleased. As we lifted him up on the table I said quickly, ‘I’ll write to your father and tell him I’ve seen you.’

  As Mr Casson’s mask came down the boy said, ‘Thank you, my lady…’ and trailed off into a gurgle as his eyelids dropped.

  Captain Adams reached for his scalpel. ‘Nothing like a bit of social chit-chat to start the op on the right footing, eh, Nurse – or should I say “my lady”?’ His red-rimmed eyes grinned at me as I began to unpin the bandage.

  Luckily there were only a few small pieces of shrapnel in young Shepherd’s buttock and I was able to write reassuringly to his parents; they sent me a touchingly grateful reply.

  We lived to a different rhythm in the theatre hut: several frantic days would follow each other, then there would be an oasis of calm while we cleaned instruments and packed drums and went early to our beds to prepare for the next onslaught.

  At the end of the month Matron called me into her office and presented me with a strip of braid; it was one of the new scarlet proficiency stripes. That evening as I sat unpicking the white service ones from my sleeves to replace them with the red braid I thought of Hugh. I remembered how he had noticed my first white stripes and congratulated me on it; I remembered his comforting arm round my shoulders as I had been sick among the sand dunes – and I remembered his courage as he had walked away, back to the charnel house of Ypres, knowing he would never leave it. Dear Hugh. My tears dropped on the red braid and darkened it, before it was even attached. But two days later my tears were of relief; Robbie had written to say he had been moved back from Ypres.

  Later in October they shifted us into more sturdy wooden huts for the winter; Aylmer and I chose to stay together. Several sisters and staff nurses had left for Casualty Clearing Stations: they went cheerfully, undeterred by the stories of bombings nearer the line. One wrote back to Mac and in her letter she had drawn a little sketch of a stick nurse in gas helmet and steel hat – underneath she had written: ‘The latest Paris fashions – we all wear them here.’

  But it was not just the CCSs which were under attack – on 1 November we heard that St Omer had been bombed the night before, and there had been casualties at No. 58 General Hospital – Innes’ hospital. I was busy in the theatre all day; the numbers of cases were tailing off now, but we still had plenty to do – so it was suppertime before Tilney told me, in a shocked murmur, that eighteen patients and a staff nurse had been killed – and two VADs. The staff nurse had been singing to a frightened patient, trying to calm him, when she had been hit, Tilney said. I shivered as I thought of Innes’ pale face and gentle smile. I wrote at once, and waited sickly for my letter to be returned unopened – but it was Innes’ own handwriting on the envelope which came back.

  She said simply that she had been very frightened and they were all distressed by the deaths, but there was nothing to do except carry on. Her father had written that day ordering her to come home – ‘I have never disobeyed Papa before, but on this matter I feel I must do so; after all, he has other daughers.’ She finished her letter with the hope that we might sometime be able to arrange a meeting.

  Soon after, the Canadians captured the village of Passchendaele, and I gathered from Robbie’s letters that the bloody campaign fought in the mud in front of Ypres was finally over. ‘God knows what this show was supposed to be worth, Hellie – I just don’t care any more. Those of us that are left sit around in the mess and argue about which mud was the stickiest, Wipers or the Somme. I’d like to pick up the brass hats by the scruffs of their necks and roll them in both to let them decide – except that they’d sink without a trace and then we’d never know the answer.’

  The news was not good: the main body of troops of our new ally, America, still had to be trained and cross the Atlantic; in the meantime our old ally, Russia, had stopped fighting after a second revolution. Now the Kaiser was free to concentrate all his forces on the western front – on us.

  With the coming of winter and the ending of the Ypres battles, two theatres were no longer needed, so our hut was closed down and I was sent to a surgical ward. B.4 was housed in a marquee, and Tilney had been sent there on nights the previous week, so I was able to have a few minutes’ chat with her evening and morning – and find out all the gossip. I was glad to get back to the familiar routine of washings, temperatures, pulses, medicines, dressings – and bed pans. There was only one orderly now and he was surly and uncooperative. Sister’s nagging had little effect so I did not even try. Besides, he was rough and careless with the men, so I preferred to do everything for them myself, with the help of the occasional obliging convalescent.

  Chapter Eight

  We were still nursing the last shocked survivors from Flanders when a ripple of excitement ran through the camp – the enemy had been driven back at Cambrai – we had gained several miles in a single day. Mac, arriving back from leave, said the church bells had been rung in London, and people were saying the war would soon be over. I wanted to believe this, but I could not. And as December opened the rumours were bad again: the Germans had counter-attacked, we had lost the land so recently captured – and more. When orders came that all those men who were fit to travel were to be evacuated to Blighty then we knew the rumours were true – the brief period of victory was over.

  As soon as we had said goodbye to our patients we began to prepare the empty wards: scrubbing out lockers, making beds, putting up fresh charts. Sister told me the day staff would be called back in the night when the convoy arrived, so we knew things must be bad up the line if the wounded were coming to us unwashed and still in their khaki. As I started laying the brown reception blankets over the clean sheets my skin began to itch in anticipation. I reached up to scratch a tickle at the back of my neck, and saw Sister doing the same as she picked up one of the planks for a fracture bed. She caught my eye and smiled ruefully, ‘I’ll douse myself in Keating’s tonight – but I think those wretched lice just eat it!’

  I grinned back. ‘That’s what my brother says – you can alw
ays tell a louse that’s been fed on Keating’s, because it looks so fat and healthy!’ I tucked in the edge of the brown blanket tightly.

  We were sent off duty early, but it was too cold in the hut to go to bed at once, so Aylmer and I huddled either side of the stove writing letters until it warmed up. As I addressed my envelope to Robbie I wondered where he was now – I knew he had gone back up to the line, but not to Ypres – I prayed it was in a quiet sector. He and his men had surely suffered enough.

  At last the hut was warm and cosy, so we began to undress – with luck we should be able to snatch several hours’ sleep before we were called out. I sat on the edge of the bed, brushing my hair with slow, rhythmical strokes – it was very soothing – then the bugle sounded. It was ‘Fall in’. My hand stilled and my hairbrush stood suspended, its oval shadow motionless against the wall, then, clear in the night air came the second call: ‘At the double’. I began to plait, frantically, as Aylmer reached for her vest. We scrabbled for coats and gumboots, turned out the stove and shivered as the cold air came to meet us.

  The camp was already alive as we scurried over the duckboards; two acetylene flares streamed up into the blackness outside the reception hut and an ambulance was crawling forward – as it swung round to back up to the waiting orderlies I caught a glimpse of the set face behind the wheel and recognized Bim. By the time I came level her cargo had been unloaded and with a burst of acceleration she sped off into the darkness to collect another load.

  The walking wounded were already staggering out of the hut towards the marquees: grotesque, blundering figures in the shadows cast by the flares – hung around with packs and gas masks and steel helmets they stumbled towards the shelter. One huddled trio stood out for a moment as they passed under the light – two men with a useless arm apiece slung up under their greatcoats, both supporting a third who hopped between with one leg stuck out stiffly in front of him – a leg which ended too short in a dirty bandage.