Amy

by Peggy Savage

  He took her hand. ‘I know, but time heals, Amy. Don’t let this war destroy you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered again.

  He got up. ‘I’ll take you to the station. Go home to your father, Amy, and then go back to your work. Johnny admired you very much.’

  He saw her on to the train. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said.

  She left Johnny in the churchyard. She went home to her father and then she went back to France, taking Johnny’s free spirit with her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  1917–1918

  AMY arrived back in France and took the train to Étaples. Once again it was raining. Rain, she thought, endless rain, as if the whole world were weeping. Rain and mud.

  Helen was waiting for her in their hut. ‘Take off your coat,’ she said, ‘you’re soaking.’ She made a cup of tea. ‘Can I do anything, Amy?’

  Amy shook her head. ‘I’m glad I went. I don’t think I quite believed it before.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Amy.’

  Helen and Dan were concerned and kind, but there was no time for reflection or even for grieving. Only when she lay in bed could she think about Johnny and shed her private tears. The battle for Passchendaele went on in a nightmare of bullets, mud, and poison gas.

  They were getting more and more shell-shocked men; so many that they opened a ward for them in one of the tents. There were men who couldn’t stop screaming unless they were sedated into a restless sleep; men whose whole body shook and shuddered until they were skeletal and exhausted; men who couldn’t walk – whose legs let them down as they tried to stand; men who couldn’t see or hear, whose uninjured eyes and ears could no longer transmit their messages to a brain so stunned with horror that it would not receive them.

  She was surprised to see that there were a few French women and children in the camp, women from the farms, by the look of them, weary and distraught.

  ‘They’re refugees from the villages,’ Helen said. ‘They’ve started to come into Étaples, into the town. Some of them have come here looking for a doctor.’

  ‘Miss Osborne,’ Sister said one morning. ‘Captain Fielding wants you urgently in the female ward. There is an emergency there.’ Amy hurried across, wondering what the problem was. The nurses and orderlies got colds and flu but they hadn’t had a surgical emergency before.

  She found, to her surprise, a woman in labour. ‘She’s from one of the villages,’ Dan said. ‘One of the refugees. We’ll have to help her. She’s been in labour too long already and she isn’t getting anywhere.’

  Amy felt her abdomen. The baby’s head seemed to be lying freely to one side. She put on a glove and examined her. ‘There’s a limb down,’ she said.

  ‘Trouble,’ Dan said. ‘Is it an arm or a leg?’

  Amy paused. If the baby’s limb was a leg then it was a breech presentation and they could allow it to proceed normally. If it was an arm then the delivery was totally obstructed, the baby lying across the neck of the womb. In that case there was no way that the baby could be delivered normally. If they left her, the baby and probably the mother, would die. She felt again, her fingers touching the little limb. Was it a hand she was feeling, or a foot? She felt the tiny fingers move.

  ‘It’s a hand,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to do a section. It’s the only way.’

  Dan looked at her across the patient who was moaning in pain, the sweat standing on her brow. ‘Have you done one before?’

  She nodded. ‘Perhaps we could cross-match her and get a donor in case she needs blood. We’ll use Group O if there’s no match.’

  He nodded briefly. ‘Prepare her for theatre, Sister,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it organized. I’ll see you in theatre, Miss Osborne.’

  The last thing Amy expected was that she would be doing a Caesarean section here in this army camp filled with the weapons of destruction. Between them she and Sister managed to explain to the mother what they were going to do. They took her to theatre where Dan and the anaesthetist were waiting.

  Speed, Amy thought. Speed was essential. The baby’s pulse rate was already too high. The anaesthetist put the mother to sleep.

  She cut across the abdomen, through the muscles and the peritoneum. Then she cut through the uterus and the blood spurted, as she knew it would. She and Dan clamped off the bleeding vessels. She felt carefully for the baby’s head and gently lifted him out – a little boy. She clipped off and cut the cord and laid him in the nurse’s waiting arms. The afterbirth came away and she quickly began to repair the uterus and close the wound. Across the theatre she heard a little cough, and then the baby cried, a loud, healthy cry. She glanced up at Sister whose eyes were filled with tears.

  The baby cried. Amy felt an unaccustomed surge of pleasure and joy. Among all the cries she heard in this camp day after day, this was a cry to warm the heart, a cry of new life, of hope and happiness.

  ‘I hear you had a baby,’ Helen said. ‘How lovely,’ and then she laughed and blushed. ‘I’m so sorry. What a thing to say.’

  Amy smiled. ‘It’s all right, I know what you mean. Just don’t say it to anyone else.’

  ‘I’m going to have lots of babies,’ Helen said. ‘Lots and lots.’

  ‘Helen!’ Amy said. ‘You don’t mean….’

  Helen blushed again. ‘Oh no. I wouldn’t be here if I was pregnant. Peter wouldn’t let me stay. He’s not too keen now, but I said we got married to be together, didn’t we, so he’ll have to put up with me.’

  Amy laughed. ‘I think he can manage that.’

  In September the weather became fine and dry. ‘Perhaps we’ll get somewhere now,’ Dan said, ‘if the land dries out.’ But once again he spoke too soon. By October it was raining again, daily, incessant rain. In November, after sixteen weeks of fighting, the Canadians took Passchendaele Ridge. Then the British attacked at Cambrai, but the British tanks bogged down in the mud. After 40,000 casualties, they were back where they started.

  ‘Bad news,’ Dan said one morning. ‘The Russians are pulling out. The new government has obviously decided that they’ve had enough. Now the Huns can concentrate on us.’

  Amy stared at him. ‘Perhaps they’re the only ones with any sense,’ she said. ‘I wish we could all do the same.’

  ‘When will the Americans get here?’ Helen said plaintively. ‘I wish they would come.’

  The men who poured into the hospital from Cambrai were exhausted beyond belief.

  ‘They’re beginning to fantasize again,’ Helen said. ‘They’re talking about ghosts. One of them told me he saw his commanding officer helping the wounded off the battlefield, bullets flying all around, and when he got back he found out the officer had been dead for three days.’ The rumours flew around, of dead soldiers coming back to help the living. More angels of Mons.

  ‘They’ve had enough,’ Amy said. ‘They can’t accept reality any more.’

  Sometimes she almost believed them. She dreamt about Johnny almost every night. Then once, when she was walking at the edge of the camp, she thought she saw him walking towards her over the field, his fair hair shining. She had a crazed moment of unbelieving joy, she almost called out to him, almost climbed over the fence to run to him, and then in an instant he was gone. Slowly the acute and unbearable pain became a steady, nostalgic ache in her heart.

  After Cambrai the flow of wounded began to ease a little, but they were replaced by an endless flow of sick men, men with pneumonia, typhus, influenza, hepatitis. Often they had raging fevers that were never diagnosed. Helen was transferred to a medical ward. ‘There aren’t nearly enough nurses or VADs,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I’m the only person on the ward. I give bedpans out in my dreams.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Amy said to Dan. ‘Have you any news?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘It seems to have gone back to the same old beginning, sitting in trenches staring at each other and shooting anything that moves.’

  The winter came in and was bitter; deep, frozen cold and bitter w
inds. The water froze in the kettles and taps overnight. The nurses and VADs wore jerseys and sometimes overcoats on the wards. Keeping the men warm became a major battle.

  The year crept towards its end. Just before Christmas Amy and Helen walked into Étaples town to buy some sweets and biscuits for the men. Even these simple pleasures were becoming scarce. The town was busy, a steady trickle of refugees along the road in from the east. In the camp the men got up a Christmas concert. The medical and nursing staff crowded into the back of the tent, ready to leave if they were needed. There were the old, well-worn acts, music and songs and recitations – ‘The boy stood on the burning deck’ and ‘The Ancient Mariner.’ Then a young man came on to the makeshift stage, a young pilot from the RFC, his arm in a sling. He sang a song that he said was popular among the pilots. Amy listened with growing horror.

  Take the cylinder out of my kidneys

  The connecting rod out of my brain

  From the small of my back take the camshaft

  And assemble the engine again.

  She left the tent abruptly. Dan followed her out into the freezing night.

  ‘I’m sorry, Amy,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have had to listen to that.’ She was trying, unsuccessfully, to hold back the tears. ‘Amy,’ he said softly. He took her in his arms and held her close, stroking her hair, as you would comfort a child.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He let her go. ‘I wish I could take the pain away.’ She nodded, without looking at him, and without words, and made her way back to the hut.

  Helen came back later. ‘1918 in a week,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to celebrate New Year. How could anyone? I’m just going to spend the evening with Peter if I can, though I don’t suppose we’ll manage to be alone.’

  A strange marriage, Amy thought, but at least they’re together. Most people were not.

  January was bitter. The wounded still came in steady but manageable numbers, and the sick flowed in.

  In February there was news that delighted the female staff. ‘It’s happened, Amy.’ Helen was dancing about the hut. ‘Votes for women! Our great and wonderful government’ – she made a face – ‘has at last decided that women can vote. We are no longer classed with criminals and lunatics.’ She pulled another face. ‘You’ve got to be thirty, though.’

  ‘About time too. And I don’t understand why they’ve made it only over thirty.’ Amy thought of all the women here and at home, the nurses and VADs and the WAACs and WRENS and the Land Army and the ambulance drivers – most of them under thirty. ‘I suppose it’s a start.’

  Helen pinned her suffragist badge to her apron. ‘They can’t stop me wearing this today.’ She smiled broadly. ‘We can be Members of Parliament too.’

  Amy laughed. ‘I can certainly think of someone who might do that.’

  Helen was serious. ‘I’ll have to wait for a few years, but I shall certainly keep it in mind.’

  ‘What are you all so happy about?’ one of the patients asked, a grizzled sergeant, wounded in the leg.

  ‘We’ve got the vote,’ Amy said. ‘Women have got the vote. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘You can’t do worse than the lot we’ve got now. Maybe you can stop this bleeding war.’

  In March the weather eased a little, icy days and nights changing to cold, cold rain. Amy was in a strange, restless mood. She took to wandering about the edge of the camp in her time off, or occasionally walked into Étaples, looking at the shops, watching the steady trickle of refugees from the east, away from the enemy lines. Do they know something we don’t, she thought? Or are they just getting as far away as they can? She felt as if this were the lull before a storm. Everywhere there was a dreadful sense of weariness, of want and despair. The only laughter came from the children, playing with their meagre toys in the streets.

  She saw Dan almost daily. ‘I’m stifled, Dan,’ she said. ‘I just have this awful feeling, and it’s not only me. The men are restless and the shell-shock cases are worse. It’s as if there’s a black cloud hanging over us.’

  ‘You’re tired, Amy,’ he said. ‘We’re all tired to death.’

  ‘I just feel as if there’s something coming,’ she said.

  Dan smiled wearily. ‘There’s always something coming.’

  On 21 March, they knew what it was. The camp was struck with unbelieving shock. The Germans had launched a massive offensive, pouring shells and explosives and phosgene and mustard gas into the British lines. By nightfall they had broken through and the British were falling back.

  Amy and Dan were in the surgical ward when the news came through. Dan visibly paled before her eyes.

  ‘It’ll take nearly two days before the wounded get here,’ he said. ‘God knows what it will be like. We must be prepared. Get what sleep you can, Amy.’ He turned to Sister. ‘Stock up the theatres and the wards, Sister. As many dressings and bandages as you can get. I’ll try to get more blood. We must transfer more of the nurses and VADs to the surgical wards.’

  Amy lay in bed at night, waiting. She felt as she had when she first qualified, afraid of what might be coming in, hoping that she would be able to cope.

  They heard the rumbling of the ambulances and lorries on the road half an hour before they arrived. They waited in the theatres and wards, silent, apprehensive.

  The ambulances began to unload. Amy was dazed by the scenes before her. There were hundreds of men, their wounds covered in filthy, stinking bandages and sodden dressings, shattered limbs bound to splints with filthy rags, spilling intestines under dirty wet towels; the gassed men coughing up their lives, their eyes swollen and purulent. The men were crying, dismayed. ‘There’s thousands of them,’ one of the young soldiers sobbed. ‘There’s ten of them for every one of us.’

  Amy and Helen looked at each other, horrified. Where had all these German soldiers come from? For the very first time it occurred to Amy that the Allies might lose the war. The thought was devastating, paralysing. Was it possible? All this, and then to lose? Was German cavalry going to ride down Whitehall?

  The men came on, in trucks, farm carts, anything they could get. One of the officers was near to tears. ‘It’s chaos,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost dozens of the men; they’re scattered everywhere.’

  ‘Miss Osborne,’ Sister whispered, ‘they’ve shelled Paris! They’ve got guns that can shell from seventy-five miles away.’

  One morning Amy and Helen were walking to the hospital when a column of soldiers marched down the road nearby. ‘Who on earth are they?’ Helen said. They were so tall, so upright, and seemed so cheerful. Helen clutched Amy’s arm. ‘Amy! It’s the Americans!’ Amy watched them go by, impressed by their height and strength. What a contrast, she thought, to our own men, beaten down by years of war, and beaten down by neglect and want before that. There were so many things that needed changing at home, after the war.

  By May the Germans were only thirty-seven miles from Paris. Her father’s letters spoke of more air raids on England, and there were air raids on Paris. No one was safe now. Amy woke every day, wondering how long it would be before German planes attacked the camp. How could they escape it? There was the railway and the railway bridge, hundreds of men in training. It must be a prime target. So far they seemed to have been protected by the presence of the hospitals, but how long would that last? German planes frequently flew over, on reconnaissance, she supposed. Then there was an unsettling rumour that they had dropped a message, saying, ‘Move your hospitals or move your railway.’

  ‘They wouldn’t,’ Helen said. ‘Even they wouldn’t bomb hospitals.’

  They were woken one morning by an enormous explosion.

  ‘My God!’ Helen jumped out of bed. ‘What’s that?’

  They dressed hurriedly, knowing already what it was. They peered out of the door. Several German Taube aircraft were overhead. There was another explosion.

  ‘Oh God, Oh God,’ Helen stepped
outside. ‘We’d better get to the hospital.’

  They slipped between the buildings, hugging the walls. They could hear shouting from everywhere, and then a thin screaming from the shell-shock tent. One of the men, wild eyed, ran out across the camp towards the fields. Helen made to go after him but Amy stopped her. ‘They’re machine-gunning, Helen. Stay here.’

  They reached the ward and stumbled inside. The staff were standing by the door, unable to do anything, just waiting until it was over.

  ‘They’re after the railway bridge,’ Dan said, ‘but their aim isn’t good. God knows what’s going on out there.’

  The explosions stopped; the sound of the aircraft faded away. They went outside. One of the ward tents had collapsed, the men exposed to the open air, but apart from that the damage seemed to be confined to the railway area.

  They struggled to get the men under cover. ‘Thank goodness there was so little damage,’ Amy said. ‘It could have been so much worse.’

  Dan looked shocked. ‘We haven’t seen the last of them, Amy, I’m afraid. They’ll come back.’

  They came back that night, and the next, and the next. In the wards and in their own huts they crouched in the dark, hoping and waiting until the attacks were over. During the day they continued, endlessly, in the theatres. One day several nurses and VADs straggled into the camp, with nothing but the clothes they stood up in. They had retreated, with the men, from Casualty Clearing Stations that were about to be overrun by the advancing Germans.

  The bombs seemed to fall mainly on the town and on the railway. ‘They seem to be trying to avoid the hospitals,’ Dan said. ‘At least they are doing that.’

  Amy found it very difficult even to remember the last raid, this time in the daytime. Somehow her brain and her memory shied away from it. Some part of her brain was protecting her from memories too terrible to bear.

  The Taubes came over again, in the middle of the morning. As they left, one of them dropped its bomb on the camp. She remembered a nurse, running screaming from outside the mess hut, men running towards it, shouting, tearing at the wreckage with their bare hands. All she remembered after that was several bodies being carried out, and one of them was Helen.