by Peggy Savage
It was late September and still warm and dry. The countryside looked peaceful enough as they drove along the long straight roads of northern France. The lines of tall, straight poplars filtered the bright sunlight and it flickered on their faces as they drove by. It seemed almost normal, a normal day in a normal country, until they came across the trenches dug by the roadside. They passed a lorry that had been burned out and abandoned, and a dead horse that had been pulled into a ditch, one leg sticking up in a grotesque salute. The sweet, nauseating smell of death thickened the air and she tried not to breathe as they went by. They passed through villages that seemed lost and deserted but once or twice, as they approached, they saw a woman clutch her child and run into the nearest house. How dreadful it must be, Amy thought, to have such fear for your children.
She watched the countryside going by, trying not to feel anything. Beside her Bill was silent, but she could see beads of sweat standing on his brow. He drove steadily, but his eyes constantly swept each side of the road, constantly watchful. Amy thought that they were well away from the enemy lines, but you could never be quite sure. Sometimes even the troops they met didn’t know. Sometimes they saw an aircraft above them, a swooping biplane, never knowing whether it was friend or foe.
Amy looked about her. The fields and pastures looked so lush, so beautiful, but further on, she knew, the land itself was as shattered and wounded as the men. She had often wondered what France would be like, in those days that were so far away now. Holidays with her father had always been in England. She remembered how excited she had been as a child, taking the overnight train from Paddington to Cornwall, or the train up from Euston to the Lakes. Then when she was older, she had so wanted to travel, especially to France, but they never really had enough money, and she could never spare the time; her studies were all consuming. She had thought then to see a beautiful country, contented farms, prosperous towns and a Paris that led the world in fashion, sophistication and chic. She had never expected to see France like this, battered, exhausted, running with blood.
‘Barricade,’ Bill said. Amy jerked back to the present.
Every few miles they were stopped at a barricade and the ambulance searched by French or English soldiers, and they were able to ask directions. Some of the English soldiers they met were cheerful enough; they were wearing fresh, clean uniforms, joking and laughing. They’ve just come, Amy thought. They haven’t been to the trenches yet. They were very grateful for the Woodbines and the books she brought with her.
One of them, a cheery, rosy-cheeked boy, came up to the ambulance window. ‘Thanks a lot, miss,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the fags.’
Amy leant out. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Cheshire. Worked on a farm.’ He glanced about him. ‘Nice land here. I never knew France was so like England. I’d like to come back after the war – have a look round.’
Come back? Amy looked at his open, innocent face, her heart contracting. What were his chances of coming back? ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Best of luck.’
‘Won’t be long,’ he grinned. ‘We’ll soon get rid of them Huns. They can’t beat us Tommies.’
He saluted and went back to his friends. They gave her the thumbs up sign, broad grins, and letters to be posted to England when she got back to Paris.
Amy watched them as they drove on, battling with her feelings of horror and despair. She knew, perhaps better than they did, what was in store for them. She had seen the results, the remnants. How did they do it? How did they make themselves do it? They must know the facts about what was happening. They had to shut their minds to it; they had no choice. They had to shut their minds to the likelihood of being killed or maimed among the trenches, the barbed wire, the shells, the machine-guns. She turned to Bill to say as much but the words stuck in her throat. Bill had been there and had lost half his left hand. He wouldn’t want to hear her thoughts.
How do I do it, she thought, and Helen and all the others? There wasn’t a single thing in her life that had prepared her for this. Her contacts with suffering humanity had taken place in the best conditions. She had no experience of raw, bestial, pain and death. She felt a wave of homesickness for the solid, comfortable house in Bromley, the sweet smell of her father’s pipe tobacco. It had been so peaceful, so serene. They had thought it would go on for ever.
They passed more men marching in single file along the road. She looked at their faces as they drove by. Some of them looked so young. How long before they were wounded or dead, or went mad? Some of them did go mad, as she well knew. She cared for men with broken minds as well as broken bodies. Sometimes her personal rage was almost insupportable. She watched the doctors at the unit struggling to cope with endless waves of shattered men, knowing that she could have helped so much more. Sometimes the effort was almost too great, the effort not to step forward, to reveal herself.
‘Here we are then, Miss Amy.’ Bill stopped the ambulance in the village street. He took out his revolver and laid it across his knee, ready to hand.
Amy looked about her through the dusty windows. The village lay in a hollow with low hills all round, hills that could conceal anything. It looked dilapidated, shaken. This village couldn’t be anywhere but in France, she thought. The whitewashed houses, close together, ran in a single file along each side of the roughly paved road. A covered washhouse stood at the end of the village, fed, Amy assumed, by a stream that must run behind the houses. Often they found the wounded in the washhouse, close to the source of water.
The houses were shrouded and empty looking, although it was the middle of the morning. A sign – Café Bar – hung in the still air, but the café was deserted. Athin black cat crept around a corner and fled when it saw them.
The silence stretched. Amy couldn’t judge whether it was menacing or merely defensive.
‘Where is everybody?’ she said softly.
Bill shrugged. ‘Must be somebody here somewhere.’ One or two curtains twitched in the few windows that were unshuttered.
‘There’s someone in the houses,’ Amy said. ‘I’ll get out first. Even if they think we’re Germans I don’t suppose they’d do anything to a woman.’
Bill picked up his revolver. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’
She opened the door and got out into the dusty street and stood beside the big red cross on the ambulance. She supposed that no one here would recognize her uniform. It was not one of the regular service uniforms. It seemed to be well known in Paris now, but here it might arouse some suspicion.
She waited. The silence stretched and the heat seemed to grow more intense. The light was clear and brilliant and cast deep sharp shadows beneath the eaves and in the doorways. In the field behind the houses a horse stood as still as a statue. She began to feel as if it were all unreal, as if they had driven into a static moment of time that would never change. Then one of the shutters moved a little and somewhere she heard the cry of a child that was suddenly silenced. She had no doubt that several hidden pairs of eyes were inspecting her. She broke out in a sweat and could feel it running down between her shoulder blades. She closed her eyes against the sun, and against whatever horror might erupt from these silent houses.
What am I doing here, she thought? Is this all there is for me? Perhaps I’ll be shot. Perhaps I’ll die here beside this ambulance before I have achieved anything, before my life is worth anything. The silence was more and more intimidating. Maybe this village had been occupied. Maybe these were German eyes watching her.
‘You’re a woman,’ her father had said, trying, for the last time, to dissuade her. ‘There are worse things for a woman than dying.’ For a few moments she couldn’t think what he meant and then she blushed and turned away. She must not ever think of horrors that might happen. The evil she could see was enough.
‘There’s someone coming,’ Bill said. Amy opened her eyes and saw his hand appear at the window, holding his revolver.
‘It’s all right,’ she said hurriedly. ‘It�
�s a priest.’
‘I hope he speaks English.’ Bill withdrew the revolver.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘We’ll find the men.’
The priest stopped beside her and held out his hand. ‘Bonjour,’ he said.
Amy shook his hand. ‘Do you speak English? Parlez-vous anglais?’
‘Yes, mam’selle,’ he said. ‘We are very glad that you have come. The men are very sick.’
He looks dreadful, she thought. He was gaunt, tense with strain, grubby and unshaven. His cassock was stained and dirty. Some of the stains were dark and stiff. Blood, she thought, always blood.
Slowly, some of the doors of the houses opened and the people came out hesitantly, looking at each other and at the priest for reassurance. Amy noticed, as she always did, that the few men were old, wearing the rough trousers and shirts of farm labourers. The women were almost all in black, some with a white scarf at the neck, and the children clung to their mothers’ skirts, silent and unsmiling, their little faces wiped blank with sights that no child should ever see. The priest gestured to them to come out, that it was safe, and spoke to them in French that was too rapid for Amy to understand. They came out, smiling a shy, troubled welcome. Some of them brought gifts, a half bottle of wine, a small piece of cheese resting in a spotless linen handkerchief. An old woman, grey and bent and leaning on a stick, took Amy’s hand and kissed it. ‘Thank you,’ she said in careful English. ‘Thank you.’ Amy’s eyes filled with tears.
‘The Germans have been through here twice,’ the priest said. ‘They took everything.’
Amy glanced up at the surrounding hills. God knew what was concealed, waiting, up there.
‘We’d better get going then,’ she said. ‘Where are the men?’
The priest turned to lead the way. They walked down a little lane with high hedges on each side where blackberries were growing, gleaming like dark jewels, nearly ready for the villagers to pick. It looked so much like England that Amy was swept again with homesickness, longing to be in a quiet English country lane, her basket on her arm.
She needn’t have asked where the men were. As they walked towards the church the foul smell of infected wounds rolled out and enveloped them. She gagged and swallowed. She could never get used to the smell and never seemed to be able to get rid of it. It seemed to cling in her hair and clothes and stay in her nostrils for days, sour and rotting.
The priest led her through a little cemetery beside the church. There were a few ancient gravestones, but most of the graves had simple wooden crosses. One of the graves was decorated with a wreath made entirely of beads that shone and glittered in the sun. Who had made that, she wondered? It was a work of art, a reminder of days of peace and leisure. Between the graves the grass was mown and here and there a late, lost poppy was still in bloom. At first sight the little graveyard seemed filled with peace, with loving memories of villagers of the past, villagers who had died in the love and care of their families. But there were two fresh graves, each with a bunch of wild flowers in a jar. Amy stopped beside the graves. Often she was able to take the name and rank of the dead. At least their suffering families would know where they were.
‘Two British soldiers,’ the priest said. ‘We don’t know who they are. They only had half their clothes, and nothing to say who they are.’
Amy felt an immense sadness. These two young men had died here, far from home, with only strangers to bury them. They had mothers at home, back in England, who didn’t know what had happened to them, who would probably never know.
They came to a tall, rusty cross, with a figure of Christ that had lost its head.
The priest stopped. ‘A bullet,’ he said. ‘It was a bullet.’
The head with its crown of thorns looked up at her from the grass. She shivered, for a few moments unable to move on.
She steadied herself against the cross. The little churchyard reminded her of home. She saw herself going to church with her father every Sunday as a matter of course, but she had had doubts before. Her work at the hospital and the occasional suffragist meeting had opened her eyes to the dreadful privations of the poor in England. One Sunday, an idea, almost a blasphemy, had come into her head and shocked her. Did God only live in comfortable places? Was He really in the slums and workhouses? Was He here on the battlefields? What kind of God would make a world like this? The face, looking up from the grass, had no answer to give her.
Over the hills there came a sound, a tearing, crashing boom, a shriek, a rumbling; the sound of great guns. The priest winced and shuddered. ‘This way,’ he said.
The door of the church was open and a cloud of fat, bloated flies buzzed around it. As she approached the foul smell hit her again like a blow, a solid wall of pestilence and putrefaction. She hesitated and slowed. For a few moments she was overcome. She began to tremble and leant against the church wall. She wanted to run away, run to the ambulance and drive away, away anywhere, as long as it was away from here. Slowly she gathered her strength and walked inside.
A dozen men, French and English, were lying in the straw on the floor. They lay close together, their uniforms tattered and filthy. Some of them were moaning in pain, some muttering and calling out in delirium. One man was laughing, a continuous high-pitched manic laugh behind empty, staring eyes. His left arm was in a crude sling and he held up his right hand as if he were holding a gun. He pointed it at Amy. ‘Bang,’ he said, and then the manic laugh again. An orderly from the RAMC and some of the village women were handing out tin mugs of water. Every head turned towards her. Some of the men gave a faint, ragged cheer. One man, an older man by the look of him, in a sergeant’s uniform, called out, ‘Thank God. God bless you.’
The orderly came towards her. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ he said. He was small and thickset, with a strong Northern accent, Lancashire, perhaps, or Cumberland. He had a bloodstained bandage around his head.
‘You’re hit yourself,’ Amy said.
‘Just a scratch. Nothing to worry about.’ His voice was light and cheerful, but behind that his face was deathly pale and his hands were shaking. He put them hurriedly in his pockets. His eyes seemed to have sunk, set back in their sockets, as if they didn’t want to see the sights before them.
He’s probably a Quaker, Amy thought. She had met several Quakers now; they often came from the North, from the Lakes. They wouldn’t kill, but they were in the thick of it, caring for the wounded.
Her voice shook. ‘How long have they been here?’
‘Since yesterday morning.’
Bill gasped, ‘My God,’ and ran outside the door and Amy could hear him retching.
With a familiar effort, she faced what she had to do now. For a moment she closed her eyes. She tried to force down every feeling, every emotion. Pity and compassion had to be put by, stored away for another time, another need. What was needed now was efficiency, common sense. She steeled herself not to listen to the voices begging for help. She must take the men who could stand the journey; the men who had a chance of survival.
‘Can any of you walk, or sit up?’ she said. One or two hands were raised, one or two voices called out. Bill came in behind her with the stretchers and a few of the men from the village. She selected as many as the ambulance could take, some on stretchers, some sitting, a few able to walk with help. She gave morphine to those in severe pain and a measure of brandy in their dirty tin cups.
She came to a young man who was lying silently, his bottom lip bruised and bleeding from his biting, his muscles tense as he struggled not to move with every breath that he took. He was covered in filth and his left thigh was covered roughly with a blood-soaked bandage.
‘We’ll take this man, Bill,’ she said.
‘No you won’t.’ His voice, wrenched out from between set teeth, was cultured, confident and firm – used to command. Amy saw that his tattered rags were the remains of an officer’s uniform – a lieutenant. ‘Take the men,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait.’ His fair hair was thic
k with mud and his face stretched with pain but the blue eyes were clear and hard.
She knelt down beside him. ‘I have to take whoever can stand the journey,’ she said softly. ‘I have to decide.’
‘Take the men,’ he said. ‘That is an order.’
She met his eyes, hostile and angry. ‘I’m going to give you some morphine,’ she said. ‘At least I can ease the pain.’ She took out the syringe and morphine. Dr Hanfield had carefully taught the orderlies how to give injections, and she had allowed herself to be taught, carefully silent.
His eyes remained fixed on her as she filled the syringe, staring at her, glittering. She slipped the needle into his arm. She watched, as she had so often, as the lines of pain began to slide from his face. For the hundredth time she thanked God, or man, or both, for the drugs that eased pain. He continued to stare at her but soon his hard gaze changed to a look of puzzlement, as if trying to place her. Then, as the pain that was his overwhelming stimulus eased away, his eyes filmed and closed and he lost consciousness. His head fell forward.
‘He’s unconscious, Bill,’ she said. ‘We can take him now. He’s probably got a fractured femur. We’ll need a splint and we must be very careful. We don’t want to damage his femoral artery.’ Bill gave her a look that was half enquiring, half surprised, but he went off to get the splint without comment. I don’t care, she thought, if he thinks I know more than I should. She and the army orderly fitted the splint and they lifted the young officer carefully on to a stretcher.
They loaded the ambulance, cramming in as many as they could. Amy said goodbye to the priest. She turned to the orderly.
‘I’ll send someone for the others,’ she said. ‘as soon as I can.’ He looked grim, but said nothing. He didn’t have to. ‘Tomorrow,’ she added hurriedly. His eyes glistened. They both knew the reality. Some of these men would not last the night. There would be more graves in the little cemetery.
Bill turned the ambulance carefully in the narrow street and they set off again, back the way they had come. He drove more slowly now and with care, but Amy winced at every jolt, thinking of the men behind her.