The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  Miranda looked a little embarrassed. ‘They’ve both got desk jobs in London. How I don’t know, probably dear Mama pulling strings.’

  Belle couldn’t help but smirk. Mrs Forbes-Alton was a piece of work, hounding other men into joining up while her own sons remained safe. She wondered how the woman could hold her head up.

  It was late at night when the girls finally arrived at Camiers, the base depot of the British army. Belle knew it was just north of Etaples where Jimmy did his training and close to the sea, but she hadn’t expected such a vast place. There were row after row of what looked like big tin sheds on both sides of the road, with just a dim light above each door, and behind them they could glimpse rows of large bell tents.

  Ten nursing VADs were in the back of the truck with her and Miranda, plus a couple of older women who were with the Red Cross but were evasive about their role. It had been a very cold and bumpy ride from Calais as the lorry had canvas sides which billowed in the wind, and the road appeared to be full of pot holes.

  ‘I hope we aren’t expected to sleep in a tent,’ remarked one of the nursing VADs in a very plummy voice.

  Belle looked anxiously at Miranda. She didn’t relish the thought of that either.

  ‘Those buildings which resemble sheds are mainly wards,’ one of the older women volunteered. ‘They are a lot better inside than you’d imagine from this view. They have a long skylight on the top so they are quite bright, especially on a sunny day. Between them are theatres, kitchens and suchlike. I’m quite sure you will all be housed in a hut; the tents are mainly occupied by men working here, and used as extra wards when there is a large influx of wounded. Last year during the battle of the Somme every one of them had to be pressed into service.’

  The nursing VADs were shown into one hut, much smaller than the ones they’d been told were wards. Belle and Miranda were shown to a different one close to where rows of ambulances were lined up.

  ‘One of the women in there will explain everything to you,’ the lorry driver said. ‘Good luck, you’ll need it, this place can be hell on earth.’

  A big woman of about thirty with very short hair and wearing blue flannel pyjamas got up from her bed as the girls walked into the small hut. ‘You must be Reilly and Forbes,’ she said, holding out her hand to shake. ‘Sally Parsons. I stayed up to welcome you; the others wanted to but sleep overcame them.’

  ‘That was kind of you,’ Miranda said. ‘But don’t let us stop you going to bed. We’re sorry we’re so late.’

  As Miranda spoke for them, Belle was looking around. There were six beds, three of which were occupied, and Sally’s was clearly the one with a small light by it. There were no comforts. It was just a shed, with a bare wooden floor, a couple of windows on either side and a stove in the middle with a table at the far end with two benches to sit on. Beside each bed was a small locker.

  ‘The lavatory is through that door.’ Sally pointed to a door at the far end of the hut. ‘There’s a couple of washbasins too, but only cold water I’m afraid. And we hang up our overalls and leave our boots out there as well. I’ll show you where to go for a bath tomorrow. Now, if you don’t mind I’ll lock the door and get my head down.’

  As soon as Miranda switched on the light between her and Belle’s beds, Sally turned hers off and got into bed. The two friends looked at each other, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. They hadn’t expected luxury, but this was very Spartan, and cold too.

  Miranda prodded her bed and winced. ‘Like a concrete slab,’ she whispered.

  ‘At least we’ve got one another,’ Belle whispered back.

  They were in their beds within ten minutes and though Belle had laughed when Mog packed a wool comforter she’d knitted, now as she cuddled it around her she was very grateful, as the sheets on the bed were rough and cold, and the blankets smelled strange.

  There was a little light coming through the small windows, and she could hear men talking in low voices close by. Every now and then someone walked along the pathway they’d driven in on, and there would be the occasional bang of a door.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ she whispered to Miranda. ‘It will all look better in the morning.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  They woke to a grey, damp morning and Sally introduced them to the other three girls, Maud Smith, Honor Wilkins and Vera Reid. ‘Maud and I went to school together in Cheltenham,’ she said. ‘Honor is from Sussex, Vera from New Zealand. We’re the only female drivers here, and we get teased by the men, but we stick together and rise above it.’

  Sally, Maud and Honor were three of a kind, probably around thirty, plain, buxom and with plummy voices. They put Belle in mind of schoolmistresses, sensible and good-hearted but almost certainly dull company.

  Vera on the other hand looked like fun. She was younger, and had a freckled, open face, duck-egg blue eyes and a wide, warm smile. ‘My only excuse for being here is that I’m mad,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s how it seems most days.’

  Belle had never met anyone from New Zealand before and Vera’s accent sounded very odd to her.

  There was no time for further conversation. Sally handed Belle and Miranda a khaki overall each to put over their clothes and suggested they shortened their skirts a few inches or they’d be trailing them through mud. Then, with their hair tied firmly back under a peaked khaki cap, they left for a breakfast in the canteen of slices of bread with a couple of rashers of fatty bacon, and a mug of tea, then went to meet Captain Taylor of the RAMC who was in charge of the ambulance drivers.

  ‘We wait in there.’ Sally indicated a further hut in which through the open door they could see about thirty men sitting around. ‘They ring a bell when a train of wounded is coming in, then we dash down to the station. Everyone tries to get up front, as they unload the sitting patients first.’

  Captain Taylor was elderly and looked the girls up and down with the kind of bemused expression that said he was not convinced any woman was strong enough to handle stretchers. He said very little, just that he expected them to keep themselves and their ambulance clean, and that they must obey the rules posted up on the wall in the ambulance drivers’ hut. He then paired both of them with a stretcher bearer who would ride in the ambulance with them.

  Miranda got Alf, who was around fifty and very short, with notably bandy legs but massive shoulders.

  ‘I won’t be dreaming of him tonight,’ she whispered to Belle behind her hand.

  Belle got David Parks, from Sheffield. He was only about twenty-five, fresh-faced, fair-haired and with sticking-out ears. He told Belle he’d been invalided out of the army because of a leg wound he received at Ypres back in 1915, but he’d asked to stay on here to help with the wounded. As he walked away to speak to someone she saw he limped badly, and she wondered whether he was really up to carrying heavy loads.

  Within the hour Belle was very glad she’d got David. He not only knew exactly where to go and what to do when they got to the station, but also understood the ambulance’s little foibles and didn’t appear horrified to be paired with a female driver. He had a very thick Northern accent, but a gentle, rather shy manner which she liked. He said he couldn’t drive an ambulance himself because his injury wouldn’t let him put enough pressure on the clutch.

  ‘Why didn’t you just go home after you were wounded?’ she asked him as they drove out in a convoy of ambulances making the first trip of the day to the station. She was struggling with the gears and the heavy steering, but David guided her through it and gave her confidence. ‘Surely you’d had enough of war after being wounded?’

  ‘What’s at home for a cripple like me?’ He shrugged. ‘No one’s gunner give me a job, me mam don’t want another mouth to feed, not with the house full up with little ’uns, and me mates are all out here.’

  His words echoed ones she’d heard before from other soldiers at the Herbert. Many of them had come from poor families in cities like Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham. They had joined up to escape poverty an
d grim surroundings and lack of opportunities. Sadly a large proportion of the wounded would return home embittered, to an even worse life than before.

  Yet Belle had also talked to men who felt the army had improved their lot in life. Regular meals and muscle-building exercise during their training had turned them from scrawny lads into men. The close friendships they’d made with men from different backgrounds and the guidance from their officers had often opened their minds and given them new skills. She was certain David fell into this camp.

  ‘Maybe you can get a job in a hospital when the war is over,’ she suggested.

  He smiled shyly. ‘I’ve been reading up on physiotherapy. I’d like to do that. I reckon it’s one field where they wouldn’t turn you down because you was lame.’

  By the time they had moved up in the line of ambulances close enough to see the station platform, the sitting patients had already been driven off to the hospital, and there were only lying patients left. Although the station was crowded with nurses, men on stretchers and other army personnel, Belle was surprised by the organization and the calm. At each carriage door an army nurse in a crisp white apron and cap stood with the notes of the men under her care and directed the stretcher bearers in which order they were to be taken. Each patient had his Dorothy bag of personal possessions tucked in beside him, but few were wearing the hospital blues Belle was used to seeing at the Herbert. Most were in undershirts, some torn and bloody. She saw bandaged stumps of arms, heads swathed in dressings, raw, burnt faces and in some cases no legs were visible beneath the covering blanket. She could hear groaning and the occasional shriek of pain, but in the main the wounded were quiet, some so still they appeared lifeless.

  ‘Move on forward, it’s our turn now,’ David said as the ambulance in front of them pulled away after being loaded with six stretcher cases in the racks made for that purpose. ‘When we start the loading, try not to let the men see you haven’t done it before or show horror at their injuries.’

  Belle might have thought she was used to seeing appalling injuries, and to helping to lift patients into bed, but she had never lifted a stretcher before; the orderlies at the Herbert had always done that. As she and David picked up the first stretcher, carrying a man with abdominal wounds, she staggered momentarily as it was so heavy, and his pain-filled eyes pleaded with her not to hurt him further. ‘It will all be better soon,’ she said soothingly. ‘You won’t be moved again once we get you to the hospital.’

  As they lifted and slid him into the ambulance her arms felt as though they were being pulled from their sockets, but she reassured the wounded man again and wiped his brow with a damp cloth.

  ‘You’re doing all right,’ David said in a low voice as they fetched the second man. ‘You’re made for this – a smile and a comforting word do almost as much as the morphine.’

  Once they were fully loaded, notes attached to each stretcher, Belle drove away, trying to avoid the jarring pot holes in the road. She was damp with sweat, her arms felt as if they’d been stretched on a medieval rack, and she knew the same procedure would be repeated in reverse at the hospital. It was just after nine in the morning, and she’d be doing this again and again until six. She wondered if it would be possible to complete the day.

  If it hadn’t been for David, she thought she might have thrown in the towel by midday. But he said the first day was always the worst and urged her not to give up. ‘I know it seems impossible to lift another one,’ he said as he gave her a mug of tea to wash down a couple of aspirin. ‘But muscles soon get stronger, and you don’t want to give Captain Taylor the pleasure of seeing a girl not up to the job.’

  At six in the evening when Miranda and Belle returned to their hut, they both sank on to their beds with a groan. They had been back and forth to the station so many times they had lost count. Every muscle in their bodies had been strained to the limit; the terrible sights, evil smells and cries of pain which assaulted their senses over and over again had taken them to the edge of endurance.

  ‘I didn’t expect it to be like this,’ Miranda said, her voice weak with exhaustion.

  ‘Nor me,’ Belle agreed. ‘I doubt I can even lift my arms to undress and brush my hair.’

  ‘Enough of your moaning,’ Vera piped up from across the room. She had stripped off to a lace-trimmed petticoat, rushed off to wash and was now putting on a blue dress as if she was off to a party. ‘Go and have a hot bath, that will revive you.’

  Belle managed to sit up. ‘Was today especially busy?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘It’s about average for when the fighting is going on,’ Vera said. ‘It was fairly quiet until Easter, but then the fighting in Arras began and we got some two thousand casualties in soon after, British, French, Australian and Canadian. They say it’s going to get even worse soon.’

  ‘I don’t think I can face another day like today,’ Miranda admitted, voicing what Belle had been thinking.

  ‘You can,’ Vera said firmly. ‘I thought the same on my first day, but you do get used to it. Go and have a bath, get some food and then go to bed. You’ll sleep like babies and when you wake up tomorrow it won’t seem as bad. Give me your skirts and I’ll take up the hems for you tonight.’

  ‘You’d do that for us?’ Belle asked. Her long skirt had hindered her all day but she hadn’t the strength to shorten it herself tonight.

  ‘Of course, we’re all in this together,’ Vera said. ‘Helping each other is how we get by.’

  ‘But aren’t you going out somewhere?’ Miranda asked. Vera had taken the pins out of her hair and was brushing it vigorously.

  ‘Only to get some supper, but we always change when we get back. As Sally would say, “Us gals must keep up appearances.” ’

  Belle was to discover in the days that followed that Vera’s philosophy about helping one another was what made the job easier, and it created camaraderie. It didn’t take that much extra effort to help another driver load their ambulance, and it was invariably reciprocated, especially when a patient was particularly heavy. It had rained almost constantly since they got here, and one day Miranda’s ambulance got stuck in mud. Men came running to help immediately, bringing sacks to put under the wheels. Another day David stumbled with a stretcher, and suddenly there was a helping hand to steady him.

  In periods when there were few trains, she and Miranda got to know the other drivers and stretcher bearers. They were from all walks of life. A few were like David, invalided out of the army but wanting to stay on to help others. Some had been turned down by the army because of a minor health problem. But still more had come for similar reasons to her and Miranda, to do their bit or wanting a change from what they did at home. Whatever their backgrounds, they all mucked in, there was a great deal of laughter and leg-pulling, and even though the work was extremely hard, she and Miranda felt liberated by being accepted in a predominantly male world.

  One of the older drivers, whom they had both considered to be totally prejudiced against women ambulance drivers, roared with laughter one day on overhearing her and Miranda impersonating two nursing sisters who were real battleaxes. A day later when the fan belt broke on Belle’s ambulance, he came to her rescue and showed her how to put a new one on. He said as she thanked him that it was nothing, that she and Miranda were rays of sunshine and he was glad they’d joined the team. Belle was elated to have his approval, and in that moment she felt that however hard the work was, or how primitive the living conditions, they had made the right decision in signing up to come here.

  Even Captain Taylor nodded approval at them from time to time. David said he’d overheard him telling another RAMC officer that ‘Those two new girls are made of the right stuff.’

  It kept on raining remorselessly. By the end of each day they were often soaked through and chilled to the bone. The hut looked more like a laundry room at night, with clothes hung up to dry and soggy boots stuffed with newspaper all around the stove. Yet despite this, Belle seemed to have more energy than sh
e’d ever had at home. Instead of going back to the hut straight after supper to play cards or read and write letters, she liked to go into the wards for an hour or so and check on the progress of the men she’d brought in.

  She often offered a little help to the nurses, writing letters for men who couldn’t hold a pen, reading to someone who was blinded, or just feeding those who couldn’t manage it themselves. Miranda teased her about it; she said she saw enough gore during the day without looking for more.

  Because Belle was kept so busy, her letters to Jimmy were now often as brief as his to her. She tried to write to Mog and Garth every week too, but it proved difficult to respond to Mog’s gossip about people in the village, the shortages of food, and who had been at the weekly sewing circle meeting. It all seemed so trivial in the face of what she saw here daily.

  She understood now why Jimmy had always said so little about his day-to-day life. There was the censor looking over his shoulder of course, but it was more likely he felt that what he saw daily could not be understood by people who hadn’t experienced it. She felt the same: she couldn’t explain the black humour they all used as a way of dealing with the horror they saw, or why she had become so attached to everyone she worked with. She knew now that a soldier’s life wasn’t anything like the way the newspapers at home portrayed it.

  Until she got here, Belle had imagined Jimmy cowering in a trench being fired on constantly. Now, thanks to David who had been at the front, she knew that soldiers only spent four days at a time in the front line before being sent back behind the lines.

  Jimmy had gone back to the front after his wound healed, but to a different regiment, and up until his last letter they were still in reserve. Yet David had told her that even if he was in the front line that didn’t mean he was in constant danger of being shot. Apparently the men endured long periods of utter boredom, when all they did was keep watch for enemy activity. Furthermore, some places on the line saw very little action; David said there was often a ‘live and let live’ attitude on both sides. Of course, even in these quiet spots, men could get killed by a sniper or a thrown grenade, and the real danger periods came when the generals ordered an assault, or when the men were sent out into No Man’s Land on patrols to see what the enemy were doing.