by Maggie Holt
Tucking his walking stick under her left arm and linking her right in his, they retraced their steps and reached Battersea Bridge Road where a bus was due to arrive.
But suddenly there was tension in the air, the threat of approaching danger: people were pointing up into the cloudless blue sky, and when the bus appeared the conductor was hanging on to the rail and bending backwards, staring up at something above the city.
Then Mabel saw them, high and silvery, like great gleaming insects coming over in formation.
‘Them are ours!’ cried a woman.
‘No, they ain’t, they’re Jerries!’ shouted a man. ‘Better take cover!’
The bus came to a halt and both driver and conductor leapt off, yelling the same message.
Mabel could now hear the noise of the bombers, the menacing woe-woe-woe-woe-woe of German Gothas. People were getting off the bus and standing around uncertainly, while Mabel wondered how on earth she was going to get Harry home and still be back on duty in time.
And then they heard the explosions, the sickening thuds as the bombs hit the ground some distance away: it shook beneath their feet.
‘Lie down, keep low!’ roared the conductor, throwing himself flat on the pavement, while others ran for the shelter of buildings, the shops, pubs, barbers – any cover from the air raid. Mabel dragged Harry into a newsagent’s, where he made a tremendous effort not to show his fear, though he could not stop himself from shaking. It was only for a few minutes, and when the raid was over a police car slowed down and an officer told the gaping crowd that the danger had passed.
‘Ye’ve missed it round here!’ he said. ‘They’ve copped it out Stepney and Poplar way – Jerry must’ve been goin’ for the docks.’
Mabel froze. What about Shadwell? Oh, God have mercy, let not the children’s hospital be hit, please, God, please.
‘Harry, I’ll have to go back straight away,’ she said through trembling lips. ‘Ye’ll have to get home on yer own.’
‘N – n – n – n – no!’
‘Yes, Harry, ye’ll have to manage,’ she insisted, silently thanking Mrs Drover for the stick.
He clung to her arm and she looked wildly round as passengers re-boarded the bus.
‘Can somebody take care o’ him an’ see him home to Falcon Terrace, Battersea?’ she called out and the conductor, seeing her uniform, nodded reassuringly.
‘What? Where’s ’e goin’? The Falcon? Ah, an’ ’e’s lorst an arm, poor devil. Been out the Front, ’as ‘e? Don’t worry, nurse, I’ll put ’im down an’ see ’im right.’
‘Thank yer, that’s good o’ yer, only I got to get back to me hospital at Shadwell,’ gasped Mabel. She kissed Harry quickly. ‘He’ll take care o’ yer, dear – here’s yer stick – I must go.’
She had to wrench herself free of his arm and literally ran across the road to jump on a bus going towards Kennington Lane and the Elephant and Castle. Here she got on another bus which took her up to Tower Bridge, over it and into the Highway, past Wapping Docks and there, oh, there was the East London Hospital up on Glamis Road, above the Shadwell Basin, solid and untouched! Heaven be praised! She got off at the corner and began to run . . .
And then she saw the white vans with the red crosses on their sides, the police cars, the milling crowds around the building.
‘They’re all in the Outpatients’ Hall, Nurse Court!’ somebody called, and she found the side doors blocked by men and women shouting, weeping and calling out the names of their children. Policemen, firemen and Salvation Army officers were all caught up in the confusion, and everywhere she looked she saw grief and terror on faces; in dread of what might lie ahead of her, she elbowed her way forward.
‘Excuse me – please let me through – I’m on duty!’ she cried, raising her voice and pushing past the doors until she was in the familiar Outpatients’ Hall. Only it was no longer familiar, for she was confronted by a scene such as she had never imagined possible, nor ever thought to set eyes upon.
It was a battlefield – or rather, the field after the battle. Except that the bloodied bodies were not men’s but children’s, spread out on the floor, more or less in rows, lying on mattresses, blankets, coats, some in their parents’ arms. Some were still and quiet, others were screaming, some were wailing and moaning, and adults were talking to them, whispering, murmuring, men’s voices, women’s voices, an extraordinary orchestration of human sounds. Doctors and nurses walked among them, parents sat beside them, there were clerics from all the churches, Salvation Army officers of both sexes, members of the Ladies’ Association with cups of tea, Matron Rowe and Mr Wilcox the hospital secretary, all trying to make some kind of order out of chaos. Everybody looked grimy, grubby, dirty-faced like chimney-sweeps, and a pervasive smell hung over the hall, a blend of blood, dirt, soap, carbolic and something indefinable, a smoky smell, the very odour of pain and fear, or so it seemed to Mabel, now seized with a sense of horror, of being caught in a nightmare from which there was no escape.
And there was Sister Colledge, the lighthouse in the middle of it all, holding a chart with names and numbers on. Her face was flushed and her apron blood-streaked, but apart from sounding slightly breathless her voice was steady as she spoke to Mabel. ‘Ah, Nurse Court, there you are, good. You’re to stay here for the rest of the day. We must all be strong and keep a cool head – think about Miss Nightingale at Scutari, how she rose above all the suffering around her – and we must do the same.’
‘B-but – these are children,’ stammered Mabel, white-lipped, but Sister Colledge was already telling her what had to be done.
‘Now, these children here on this side have just arrived and need cleaning up a bit – yes, over there, please, beside the dressing-station –’ she gestured to an ambulance man carrying a child in his arms, followed by a white-faced woman. ‘Right, Nurse Court, Mr Cowell and Dr Dunn are seeing the worst injured, Dr Knowles and Dr Lamarr are doing assessments on the rest, and I’ve put you down to assist Dr Lamarr, with Nurse Watkins to help you. Put saline dressings on wounds until the doctors can attend to them. Keep the patients warm, keep air passages clear, report haemorrhage – and see that each child has a label with name and address and any medication given. They’re mostly aged between five and seven, it was a direct hit on a school in Poplar. There are dressings, towels and saline solution for cleaning – and the dispensary staff are making up morphia injections in one-eighth and one-twelfth of a grain, ready to give straight away, only you must get a signed slip from Dr Lamarr if he orders one. Oh, and I’ve put Mr Thompson the student with you as well, so you’re a team of four.’
Where to begin? Mabel faced the row of the latest admissions and saw Lamarr talking to the parents of the first one, a boy with a gash across his scalp and bruising of his chest. On his legs he wore calipers and his father was saying that these had saved his legs from being crushed.
‘Dahn the cellar they was, sixty of ’em, poor little blighters, the bomb must’ve gorn frough three floors, doctor – they was bringin’ ’em aht when we got there, an’ the ambulance bloke said it was the calipers what saved ’is legs.’
‘Right, let’s get that scalp wound cleaned up – the skull’s not fractured and we’ll put some stitches in later.’ Lamarr nodded. Nurse Watkins, a second-year, picked up an enamel bowl and they moved on.
An unnatural calmness descended upon Mabel. Her hands were steady and her voice clear as she spoke to the children and their relatives. The muscles of her face settled into an automatic smile as she approached the next case. It was another boy, his ribs crushed and his chest punctured. He was blue-faced and breathing with difficulty. Mr Thompson’s face paled.
‘Oh, dear.’ Lamarr got down to look at the chest wound. ‘Cover it over with a big square of cotton-wool gauze, Nurse Court – make a note for Dr Dunn to see him as soon as he’s available.’
Mabel could see that the child was dying and touched the mother’s hand. ‘D’ye want to see a chaplain, dear?’ The woman sta
red back with despairing eyes, her last hope gone. And they had to pass on to the next one, a girl with a dislocated shoulder and probable fractured collarbone. There was a lot of swelling over the area and she was in a great deal of pain.
‘That will need a sling for the time being until we can reduce it under an anaesthetic. Can you get her arm out of the sleeve, nurse?’
‘What about morphia, Dr Lamarr, say a twelfth of a grain?’ asked Mabel.
‘Well, yes –’
‘Then will yer sign her card for it?’ He did so and Thompson was sent off to the dispensary where he got the ready-mixed injection, and Mabel took it from him to administer to the girl; now was no time for students’ fumblings.
‘There we are, dear, ye’ll feel better soon.’ Mabel felt cut off from any kind of emotion and seemed to be following the dictates of reason alone, as if her heart had no part in it. She willed herself to consider each child in co-operation with Lamarr who glanced at her to see if she agreed with his recommendations before passing on to the next case. They looked upon terrible bruising, lacerations, splinters of wood embedded in flesh – and silent, beseeching eyes of children too badly injured to cry. She heard herself speaking in the same controlled tones and knew that if she allowed herself to think deeply about any one of these cases – these suffering children – she would not be able to leave them and pass on to the next one.
They stopped by a girl whose face had been cut by glass, all down one cheek. It extended up to her left lower eyelid which was split in two, revealing the lower part of the eyeball, except that because of the blood filling the cavity, the extent of the injury could not be estimated.
‘Put a saline dressing over her face on that side and ask Mr Cowell to see her urgently,’ muttered Lamarr and they passed on to a boy lying passively on his back.
‘’E can’t move ’is legs, doctor,’ said the old lady who was with the boy, presumably his grandmother.
Lamarr got down beside the boy. ‘Hello, old chap. Does it hurt anywhere? Can you lift your head? Your arms? Can you feel this? And this?’
There was neither movement nor sensation below an identifiable point halfway down the back and spinal injury was all too obvious.
Lamarr stood up. ‘Keep him warm, still and lying flat – and we’ll get one of the specialists to see him as soon as one’s available.’
The next patient was a boy with mouth injuries, with bleeding lips and broken teeth. Lamarr felt his jaw, and the boy screamed, literally bubbling through blood and mucus. Mabel rushed for a rubber suction catheter and a bowl from the dressing-station, and placing the end of the tube in the boy’s mouth, she sucked at it until she felt the warm liquid matter in her own mouth, and spat it out into the bowl. ‘Now fetch me some saline gauze to clean his mouth, Nurse Watkins,’ she said. ‘If his jaw’s broken, yer still need to keep the air goin’ in an’ out.’
‘Is he goin’ to be all right?’ asked the boy’s mother with imploring eyes.
‘Yes, dear, only he needs his mouth kept clear,’ replied Mabel. ‘Yer saw what I did just now – well, I’m goin’ to ask you to do it if his mouth fills up again, just like I did, see?’
Lamarr and Thompson exchanged a glance and they passed on to the next child, a girl. She was pale and clammy, and her eyes stared up at them mutely, while the woman at her side introduced herself as a teacher. It was another shoulder injury and, on uncovering the towel that had been put over the child, the arm was seen to be almost entirely severed and the humerus bone was broken and visible. Lamarr gasped.
‘The – er – books would say put a tourniquet round the upper part of the arm, Thompson,’ he muttered, ‘but I don’t think – er –’
No answer came. Thompson had swayed, put his hand to his mouth and mumbled his excuses before lurching away to sit down, his face as white as a sheet. Mabel placed a clean towel over the child’s shoulder. ‘This little girl’d better have some morphia, too – can yer write it up for her, doctor?’
‘Yes, yes – here –’ Lamarr scribbled on the card. ‘And we’d better ask for the surgeons to see her straight away.’
‘Soon as they can,’ murmured Mabel, seeing that the child was at the point of death and only wanting her to be free of pain.
Going from one injured child to the next, having lost all sense of time, was like walking through a scene out of hell. Mr Thompson rejoined them after a few minutes, shamefaced and apologetic, with a tell-tale whiff of whisky on his breath.
‘I’d have had to give up my training if I couldn’t cope with this, Nurse Court,’ he muttered.
They reached the end of the row and met with the two other teams who had been assessing the forty-five children admitted. Mabel heard that twelve had been killed outright, their little bodies dismembered by the blast, and of those brought into the East London, thirty were considered seriously injured in various degrees. The rest had escaped with relatively minor cuts and bruises, though the mental scars would stay with them for life.
For the first time that day Mabel found herself face to face with Stephen Knowles, who like herself looked dishevelled, dirty and blood-smeared at the end of assessing injuries.
‘So, Mabel, you’ve been called upon to nurse the wounded after all.’ The words were said very quietly, for her ears only. Not daring to show the slightest sign of emotion, she merely nodded and turned her head away.
Decisions had to be made about the deployment of staff, and Matron Rowe held a hasty consultation with Mr Wilcox and senior consultants. A few patients were transferred to other hospitals and a small number were discharged home. The most serious cases stayed at the East London, though by the end of the day three had died. Extra medical and theatre staff were sent over from the London Hospital and at half past two operations began.
The worst cases, including eye injuries, were taken up to the theatre, but minor surgery such as suturing of lacerations was done in two examination rooms, using the couches as operating tables. Stephen Knowles spent the next few hours giving anaesthetics, sitting at the patient’s head while the surgeons stood. One theatre sister came down to help and Staff Nurse Court acted as a second theatre nurse, cleaning wounds, handing sponges and threading catgut, snipping and tidying up after the surgeon’s stitching, while Thompson assisted him, his confidence improved by having something definite to do. Mabel performed her tasks with armour-plated calm, unaware of fatigue, feeling neither hunger nor thirst, though Sister Colledge sent her off at some point that evening to have a drink and go to the lavatory. She came straight back and resumed her post, aware of Knowles’s eye on her over the top of his face mask, his almost imperceptible nods of encouragement. The brief contact of eyes conveyed an alliance between them, a mutual acknowledgement of what they were being called upon to do.
‘A lot of these wounds are going to get infected,’ remarked one of the surgeons as he sponged and stitched. ‘Can we open up the Pavilion and put a few in there? Get some sunlight to them?’
‘I believe Wilcox is getting it organised,’ answered Knowles. ‘We’ve admitted seven to Enfield Ward and a couple to Heckford, but they’ve got nasal diphtheria on Mary, so that’s off limits. Nine have been sent to the Queen’s in Hackney Road.’
‘And three to the mortuary, and another couple likely to follow, I believe.’
Knowles shrugged. ‘We’ll be left with about twenty-one or -two of the original admissions. All right, Nurse Court? You’ve been standing for a hell of a long time.’
By eight o’clock the operations were completed, and by nine the Outpatients’ Hall was empty.
‘Right, Nurse Court, you’re off duty,’ said Sister Colledge. ‘Time to go over to the dining-room – there’s a special late meal prepared for all of us.’
Mabel’s head was swimming and her stomach churned. The very thought of food was nauseating. And yet she did not want to go to her room and her bed in the nurses’ home. She wanted to get away, to escape – to ‘take the wings of the morning’, like the Psalmist, �
�and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea’ . . .
It was still light, being nearly midsummer, and she was tempted to walk out of the hospital and go down to the river. It would be frowned upon as foolish, for there were some very dubious characters around the Highway at this time of day, and besides, her knees were curiously weak. The sensible thing would be to go to bed: tomorrow would be another long and no doubt harrowing day on Heckford Ward.
Heckford! How many of the victims had been sent there? Two? She knew that the girl with the nearly severed arm had died, and so had the boy with the crushed chest. What about the girl with all the glass lacerations of her face? Would she lose the sight of her injured eye? Mabel knew that she had to see that girl again before she slept, and so made her way along the bottom corridor and up the stairs.
‘Mabel!’ Violet Stoke-Marriner was in charge of Heckford that right and spoke in a whisper. ‘Oh, Mabel, what a day. You’ve been in Outpatients’, haven’t you?’
Mabel managed to croak, ‘The girl with the cut face – the cut eye – is she here?’
Violet put a finger to her lips. ‘Yes, in the side ward. Only we have to be very, very quiet.’
She led the way to the small room where very ill and dying children were put for quietness. There were two small beds, both occupied. One held the girl Mabel sought and by the dim electric light on the wall, she saw that the child’s head was swathed in bandages, though the right eye was left exposed so that she would be able to see a little, in spite of its being bruised and swollen. Her mouth and nostrils were free, though crusted with blood. She lay in a morphia-induced slumber, briefly and mercifully oblivious of the disaster that had overtaken her.
‘Mr Cowell says that the eye should be all right,’ whispered Nurse Marriner. ‘He sewed the eyelid together with thin silk and says the blood will disperse in time from the socket. The eyeball may be bruised, but he’s hopeful. Of course, her face will be scarred for life, but –’
They stood looking down at the sleeping child, not daring to disturb her short respite.