The War Nurses Read online

  The War Nurses

  A gripping historical novel of love and sacrifice

  Lizzie Page

  Also by Lizzie Page

  The War Nurses

  Daughters of War

  Contents

  THE WAR NURSES

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Daughters of War

  Author’s Note

  What Happened Next…

  Lizzie’s Email Sign Up

  Also by Lizzie Page

  A Letter From Lizzie Page

  Acknowledgements

  To all the War Nurses, everywhere.

  Elsie Knocker – ‘Gypsy’, motorcyclist nurse, dare-devil mother – one of only two women on the Western Front and the best friend I ever had.

  THE WAR NURSES

  BASED ON A TRUE STORY

  Prologue

  It was a perfect racecourse. The ground was firm and the weather conditions were fine, at least they were to start with. I was towards the middle of the pack, enjoying myself, biding my time, until suddenly the heavens opened and everything was blown wide apart. I had guessed it might rain. My brother Uilleam said, ‘It will be a catastrophe if it does,’ but I love riding through a downpour. The earth churns beneath you as you fight just to stay upright. The bends become slippery and take your breath away. My more cautious rivals fell behind as I tore on.

  The rain wasn’t cold like it is in the Highlands, where I had gone to school. It felt good on my cheeks and trickling down my neck. I was on my Douglas motorbike, two years old and a beauty to behold, and he was puttering along beautifully. The gap between me and everyone else was growing.

  And then, I don’t know how it happened – maybe it was my goggles misting up like a January sky, maybe it was a message from God telling me to slow down – but somehow, I got lost. I had followed the signs fastidiously but what I didn’t realise was that the signs weren’t just for our race: that ‘2km’ carved into a tree-trunk could have meant to anywhere.

  So, I went one way, through brambles and rushes, low-hanging branches, and the pack went another. I was oblivious at first, enjoying the storm. It was only when I stopped completely, turned off the engine, looked around and could hear nothing except for the sound of one solitary bird chirruping that I realised: I had gone wrong.

  Retracing my tracks, I got back to the course as fast as I could. Naturally the others were a good way ahead now.

  I patted Douglas – we had lost a light in the undergrowth – and sped up. I thought of how Uilleam would laugh if I failed to finish, my father would be unsurprised and my mother would be pleased: ‘Maybe it’s best you stick to horses, Mairi?’ and it drove me forward.

  So I pressed on for I had nothing to lose. My thighs ached and the small of my back was pulsing but my reckless riding paid off… I found the pack again, beaten by the rain and moving at a sick snail’s pace. First they were twenty yards ahead, then ten, then five, but they were either too timid or too tightly bunched to make a break for it. No one was going to box me in. I swerved clean on the outside. I was alone again, tearing up the open road with Douglas roaring underneath me.

  Two more hairpin bends were accomplished, just the straight, smooth promise of the finishing line to go. I heard the crowd before I saw them. I thought I could make out Uilleam waving. He had assured me he would be at the end, with a slice of fruit cake.

  I was ecstatic, but just as I pulled forward for the last triumphant few yards, someone came out of nowhere, like a burst of unexpected sunshine, and shot past me. She went by at a most ridiculous odds-defying speed. She was creating merry hell. She was lucky she didn’t kill herself. I was left spluttering in the backdraught of black smoke.

  It was Gypsy.

  I knew Gypsy only by reputation back then: I had heard she was fast but not furious, a devil in a race. A hero on a bike. And off one.

  After I got to know her I realised that, if anything, her reputation didn’t do her justice: she was more magnificent, more extraordinary, more everything than anyone else. She would always be one step ahead of me.

  There are people you come across in life who you feel like you have known forever. You sense their fears; you can read their dreams. That’s how it eventually became with Gypsy and me. It felt like we were destined to be together. I used to think it was written in the stars that I would follow her to the ends of the earth.

  And that, I suppose, is what I did.

  For as long as I could.

  1

  Dr Munro came to my home in Chedington, Dorset, in the last week of August 1914.

  ‘Is this the house of Mairi Chisholm – and her parents? Good, I have something I would like to talk about with you all.’

  My mother rang the bell for tea, eyeing me uneasily. My father marched down from his study – he disliked an unexpected guest – but he shook hands with the stranger, greeting him warmly. This allowed my mother time to furiously mouth questions behind their rigid backs.

  ‘What trouble are you in now?’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘How long has this been going on for?’

  ‘Nothing’s been going on!’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

  It took me a good few moments before I realised that my mother thought the man had come to our house to propose to me!

  I cringed and shrugged at her, hoping my raised shoulders conveyed, Mother, I have never seen this man before in my life.

  Dr Munro was a tall, no-nonsense fella with a thick ginger moustache and a narrow build. Despite his height, he didn’t take up much room. You wouldn’t notice him in a crowd, so maybe I had seen him before and missed him? Perhaps he had seen me walking to the post office or maybe he had observed me in church. I often fancied I made a pretty picture, on my knees at the altar. And maybe without my having the faintest inkling, he had fallen in love with me? He might have knocked on doors around the village – it wouldn’t be difficult to find my name and address, how many pious young redheads were living in Chedington? – then decided to make his approach.

  That would require some nerve, a quality I did generally admire, but even so, it seemed… impulsive. Foolhardy even.

  The idea of a secret admirer was unexpected, yet flattering. I had not experienced a lot of male interest, truth be told, although I had not been seeking it either. My brother Uilleam’s friends had, on occasion, set my heart a-flutter but more because they were different to what I was used to, rather than because they had any particular appeal.

  However, if I wanted an engagement – which I was not sure I did – then I would have preferred the gentleman to be at least thirty years younger than Dr Munro appeared. And perhaps someone who trimmed their facial hair more than occasionally. Would it be wrong to ask for broader shoulders too?

  I knew that one of my mother’s darkest fea
rs was that I was ‘unmarriageable’. In spite of my feelings, or rather lack of feelings, towards this doctor, it occurred to me how pleasant it would be to prove her wrong for once (not that she would admit it).

  Yet Dr Munro seemed in no hurry to get to the question of why he was here. We drank tea in the drawing room and talked of the weather. Which was, as my mother was fond of saying, unusually kind for this time of year.

  Inevitably, our conversation turned to the recent outbreak of war. Although I tried to keep up with the news on the wireless, most of what I knew about it came from my father, who was fervently in favour of military solutions to just about anything. I had never heard my father’s opinions on the Belgians in particular before, but now he agreed with Dr Munro that they were a plucky people who must not be crushed. As for the Germans, I had in the past heard my father admire their manufacturing, but now they were ‘methodical’ and ‘desperate’. Dr Munro disagreed here, saying it was ‘six of one and half a dozen of the other’, and my father, who instinctively knew when he had an audience, reined himself back. Now the Germans were not so much ‘methodical’ and ‘desperate’, but ‘efficient’ and ‘dutiful’. Dr Munro added that he had spent many happy summers in Berlin, a centre of intellectual thinking and technological advance. Surprisingly, Father agreed. A shame to make enemies of such people.

  Dr Munro thought, optimistically, that the war would be over by Christmas. My father, determined to out-do him even in positive thinking, said he would lay good money that it would be done and dusted before October’s end.

  As their conversation turned to Lord Kitchener – ‘a superb commander’ according to Dr Munro, ‘The Kaiser underestimates him,’ opined my father – I tried to imagine the wedding. I had always thought I’d marry in the Highlands – and since it appeared that Dr Munro may have some Scottish in him, there was no need to rethink the location. Certainly, my father would be wearing his military kilt and he would insist we listen to the meow of bagpipes. He might even have a go at playing himself. There would be a rare blue sky and sunshine. Rice would be thrown and nestle in my veil, Mother might cry into Father’s handkerchiefs and Uilleam would tease us.

  I liked the way Dr Munro talked. Perhaps not quite enough to marry the man and to listen to him talk all day long, but he had a compassionate and intelligent way about him. Shooting him sideways glances, I imagined our wedding night. Me in a new nightdress with more – no, fewer – ribbons than usual, he in his… bedtime finery? Surely, he wouldn’t want to do it at his age.

  I was tempted by the vanilla macaroons, but I did not want to be proposed to with crumbs in my mouth, so I held off. However, I could have had ten vanilla macaroons by the time things came to a head. Father and Dr Munro discussed Russia – my father: ‘The average Russian wants war no more than the average lamb wants to be slaughtered’, Dr Munro: ‘The average Russian has no more say in what he wants than the average lamb’; the French – my father: ‘self-interested, self-serving’, Dr Munro: ‘It can appear that way’; even the Japs – my father: ‘The Orientals are untrustworthy’, Dr Munro: ‘The Orientals are an unknown quantity’. We circled and circled the most important question, as though too timid to get into a cold bath, until finally, Dr Munro announced that he may as well get to the crux of it: he had something of sensitivity to ask of me and indeed of my parents.

  Everything seemed to slow down. My father put his cup and saucer on the table with a loud clunk. I watched the rise and fall of my mother’s chest and the flush on her throat, which crept up to her cheeks. I had no idea what to say. Perhaps I would ask if he would be opposed to a long engagement – wouldn’t it be sensible to get to know each other properly? I couldn’t imagine how my mother would respond to that. Nor him, in fact – he was old enough already. Might he not die if he had to wait very long?

  Dr Munro did not get down on one knee, but he did walk the long expanse of the room to take the vacant leather armchair to my right.

  ‘Mairi,’ he said and I nodded resolutely. I had a feeling this was a once in a lifetime event for me and I was determined to treat the moment with respect. I might let down my poor suitor, yes, but I would let him down gently. Dr Munro was clearly a good man. The last thing I would want to do was humiliate him.

  ‘Would you do us the honour of joining our war effort?’

  It turned out that Dr Munro did indeed want my hand, but not in marriage. He had heard of my riding ability. The hairpin bends I negotiated so well. The competitions I won.

  My courage.

  This was what had piqued his interest.

  I let out a breath. I didn’t know if I was happy or sad. Happy, I thought. Disappointed, a little. Curious, a lot.

  Dr Munro explained that he was setting up a ‘Flying Ambulance Corps’ to travel to Belgium and join the war effort over there.

  ‘Flying?’ I spluttered, still trying to catch up with the change in proposal.

  ‘Well, not exactly flying.’ He gave me a toothy smile. ‘By that we mean… very fast motorised vehicles.’

  ‘We had horse-drawn wagons in my day,’ my father said nostalgically.

  ‘Very good they were too,’ agreed Dr Munro. ‘But this is the future.’

  Dr Munro made the undertaking sound relatively simple: retrieve soldiers in difficulty. Maybe give a hand on the ground.

  ‘But I’m not a nurse,’ I told him.

  ‘You’ll soon learn. It’s only dressing wounds, that kind of thing. Most treatment will take place at the hospital.’

  I explained that I had just started volunteering in London for the Women’s Emergency Corps and I wasn’t exactly available for… I didn’t know what to call it. I decided on ‘a trip’.

  ‘Have you seen much action there?’

  ‘In the city? Not yet, but—’

  ‘Your driving – your bravery – is what we are looking for, Mairi.’

  ‘Her brother Uilleam taught her to ride,’ my mother said abruptly, as though aggrieved on behalf of her neglected son. ‘He’s very talented too—’

  But Dr Munro interrupted with a list of my motorcycling achievements as though she hadn’t spoken at all. ‘First at Chichester, first in Bournemouth. And second at the Dorset… I heard it was an utter mudbath—’

  ‘I may well have come first,’ I said stubbornly, ‘but for the signs.’

  He smiled. My father smiled. My mother did not. She had never held with my riding motorbikes, and it was only after many hysterical threats (her) and desperate promises (me) that I had been allowed to join a club and to race at all.

  ‘Would you like to go out to Flanders, Mairi? To do your bit?’

  I imagined rescuing soldiers from the methodical and desperate but also intellectual and technologically advanced Germans. I imagined the gratitude on plucky Belgian faces. Dressing the occasional wound, driving up and down rough terrain – were there any hills in the lowlands? – Uilleam gruffly explaining to his friends, ‘My sister is as tough as any fella.’

  This was a far superior picture of the future than the one of me with rice in my veil and Dr Munro in his best pyjamas.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Everyone looked at me.

  I didn’t have to think. ‘I’d love to,’ I said.

  ‘Impossible,’ my mother said that evening. ‘You are too young.’ She would have much preferred a proposal even if I had turned it down. At least then there would have been a clean vote of confidence in my eligibility.

  ‘I won’t stop you travelling,’ she said, ‘but if you must have excitement, what is wrong with the Caribbean?’ I knew she wanted me to go out to the Chisholm family plantation to watch over Uilleam, who would be heading there to manage it soon. Uillleam had been delaying his departure for years, but the outbreak of war had given him a much-needed shove. My mother pretended that she wanted me to go because it would be an interesting experience for me, and not because Uilleam couldn’t be trusted not to burn the place down or get in a fight with the natives.

&nbs
p; ‘The heat doesn’t agree with me. Think of my freckles!’ It was true, I was a proper Scottish-looking girl, with a mongrel cross of gold-and-red hair and white skin that demanded shade. I once overheard my mother tell her friend that my looks were an ‘acquired taste’.

  But my father, a Scottish-looking man if ever there were one, became my strange ally in this. For once, he took the position that if going to Flanders was what I wanted, then that was what I must do. As soon as he said this, my resolve hardened. I could feel the new sensation of his approval raining down on me. My mother was not going to get in its way.

  * * *

  We ate a light supper, the three of us still at odds. Uilleam was out with his local friends who I was not allowed to meet nor to mention. It was still warm and summery, but the sun was low in the sky and you knew autumn was snapping at its heels.

  My father talked about opportunities to serve, dedication, a call to duty, a responsibility. He was only sixteen when he first went to fight in South Africa so I suppose, for him, at eighteen I was positively ancient.

  As he was warming to his theme, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that my mother did not like him much.