The War Nurses Read online

  I hadn’t anticipated the sheer number of people going the other way. It was only three weeks since the war had started; how could this many people be on the move? There were motorcars and wagons, there were carthorses and yappy dogs, bicycles and tricycles, massive trunks like treasure chests, old men with medals on their blazers, pregnant women and babies in wobbly prams, all waiting to be loaded onto boats. I even saw what I fancied to be a rare Henderson Four motorcycle. Uilleam would be annoyed to have missed that!

  ‘They want to get to England,’ Lady D said knowledgeably.

  ‘They’re Belgian?’

  ‘Yes.’ She paused. ‘I hope they receive a good welcome.’

  The waiting children ran back and forth on the sand in wooden clogs, enjoying the sprays of salty water. The adults looked at them without smiling or even talking, although sometimes they called a child back, admonishing them, perhaps, for going too far. It was strange to think that we were going to wherever it was that they were running from.

  ‘War is terrible,’ said Lady D.

  Perhaps, I thought, crunching another mint and thinking of the Henderson Four, though if it’s like this, it won’t be too bad.

  It transpired we didn’t have enough petrol for the ambulances, which I found disturbing: I had thought we were better prepared than that. At the port, Dr Munro and Arthur ran around looking for someone who could help. Dr Munro’s French was excellent, Arthur’s not so much. I had only learned French at school, but I was hopeful that I would be able to make myself understood – rather more than Arthur – le pauvre!

  Eventually, Elsie grew fed up with her task of ‘guarding the vehicles’ and left to approach a corpulent Belgian colonel. I’m not sure what happened, but he agreed to give us enough fuel, he estimated, to get our vehicles clear to Ghent. From there, we would be on our own.

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked as Elsie walked victoriously over with a can in each hand.

  ‘He said, “Oh, if only I wasn’t a married man!”’ She was still laughing as she filled up the tanks. Dr Munro and Arthur didn’t say anything.

  Dr Munro took the Daimler, Lady D took her turn at the wheel of the Fiat, but Arthur looked longingly at Douglas and asked for a go. I didn’t like to refuse. I was realising that all the vehicles were now regarded as communal, and what had been a glorious present to myself in July had now been subsumed into the war effort. Helen went with Lady D. I could have gone with Dr Munro, of course, but Elsie proposed I go in her sidecar, which was a relief. Dr Munro was a master of many things but he was a stranger to small talk.

  ‘Do you think we’ll be able to cope once we get there?’ I asked Elsie as we pulled on helmets and goggles.

  ‘We’ll do fine,’ answered Elsie airily. She looked down at me. ‘Blasted lock doesn’t work.’

  I resolved to fix it for her as soon as I had the chance. I would always leap at any opportunity to do something for her.

  ‘I just wish we had some training before we left, don’t you?’

  Elsie looked surprised. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘We don’t know the first thing about nursing!’ I gave a hollow laugh.

  Elsie paused. ‘I don’t know the first thing about war nursing, no,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, ‘but I trained at the children’s hospital in Sevenoaks and served as a midwife at Queen Charlotte’s.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, tugging at the door handle. ‘I may know a way to fix this lock.’

  So it was just me.

  * * *

  We drove away in our queer convoy. I kept an eye on Arthur but I needn’t have worried. He was a proficient rider. Belgium was an incredibly flat country, with tidy fields and tree-lined roads. I felt increasingly excited now I was here, not only on foreign soil but also travelling towards a war zone!

  At first there was little evidence that the Germans had invaded the country – indeed, had managed to occupy most of it. However, after we had been on the move for about an hour, we spied a huge crater by the side of the road. We pulled over to examine it. It was about three metres wide and two metres deep.

  Dr Munro shook his head sadly. ‘The shell that did this must have been very large. Imagine if you were nearby, how the ground must have shaken beneath your feet!’

  I was not upset to see it. Until now our existence as the flying ambulance corps had felt like a fairy story. The mass exodus at the port may have been an over-reaction – perhaps everyone was just making a to-do about nothing.

  This shell hole revealed they were not.

  We continued with our journey, although we did not swap drivers as I had hoped. I carried on, remarking excitedly about the sounds and sights – ‘Wasn’t the landscape rather like England?’ – until Elsie turned to me, shouting over the engine:

  ‘You know I can’t hear a word you are saying!’

  * * *

  An hour later, I was keen for a wash and regretting having lunched so early. Dr Munro had mentioned the possibility of a meat stew for supper and I was hoping it would be that. With potatoes, cabbage and cauliflower, please. Back home, my mother would be tucking into venison, pork or chicken in a rich gravy. She would be picking at the vegetables. (Mother had an aversion to food that wasn’t meat or pudding.) Father might be brandishing his fork, ranting about politics or praising Lord Kitchener. I wondered if Mother and Father would be speaking to each other now. Mother had sent Father to Coventry for less than this in the past. Or Uilleam might be up in his room, looking at his reflection in the mirror – I always teased my brother that nothing fascinated him so much as his own handsome face. I supposed he would be preparing for his own imminent voyage – across the Atlantic Ocean in an even bigger ship than the Clementine – although, knowing my brother, he would be leaving his preparations to someone else!

  I thought we would settle directly into quarters in Ghent, but as we travelled down another pretty road with evenly pruned hedges, I suddenly noticed that it was unusually quiet. There were hardly any carriages, there were hardly any cars, there were hardly any people, and I wondered if we had taken a wrong turn. The last sign I had seen read ‘Nazareth’ and it had given me pleasure to see a biblically named town in Belgium. A reminder that God was with us. Just as I was going to shout this to Elsie, a woman ran out into the road in front of us. She may have heard our noisy convoy coming past, or maybe it was coincidence. She was wearing nurse’s overalls. She stood dead in the exact path of the Daimler, the same way I have seen panicked foxes with piercing yellow eyes do at sunrise.

  Dr Munro had the presence of mind both to forcefully brake and to swing the car away from this sudden obstruction. Elsie swerved similarly with the Chater-Lea and I felt myself lift up into the air before the sidecar bumped smack, back into the ground.

  ‘Heavens!’ she cried. ‘Are you all right, Mairi?’

  I said I was super. It was quite a thrill. Elsie jumped off her bike. I was still fiddling with the stubborn lock of the sidecar when Elsie reached the woman, then ran past her towards a small low-roofed building. I decided to leave the lock and, proud of my ingenuity, hopped over the top of the sidecar instead.

  As I drew closer, I saw that the woman’s nursing uniform was covered in so much blood it looked like a butcher’s apron.

  * * *

  Everyone was already in the hall. I was the last in. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  We were in a makeshift hospital, if you could call it that. All around were rows of men laid out on the floor. Some dead, some dying, men with their jaws blown off, arms and legs mutilated. Some were in uniform, most were not. Some hadn’t only been shot at, but stripped or stabbed too.

  Everyone else set to doing something. Arthur and Helen must have slipped back out to the cars, because they reappeared loaded up with our first-aid boxes. Dr Munro was kneeling by someone’s side unravelling bandages. Lady D was down on the floor tending to a blasted eye. Elsie was covering another wounded soldier with one of our towels. Everyone was doing something, except me. I just f
roze. I didn’t know what to do, and even if I had, I didn’t know what to do it with.

  ‘What’s Mairi doing?’ someone – Arthur? – asked and I heard Elsie, ‘She’ll buck up soon.’ I wanted to say something, but I had lost the ability to speak. Strange thoughts swirled in my head. My father talking about the line of poplar trees by the Modder River. How the men had failed to spy the Boers and had to lie prone on the veld – if they moved they would be fired upon.

  ‘What did you do, Father?’

  ‘I smoked my pipe.’

  I saw a tin bucket, grabbed it and ran out the back door. I vomited copiously, the second time in two days. My breakfast, the sandwiches, the mints, everything.

  How did I think I could do this? I, who had only practised slings at school on Katherine McDonald (and only got a B+ at that)?

  I retched and retched again, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. Pouring my guts out.

  My father: ‘What would you have done at Belmont, Uilleam?’

  ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘I fixed my bayonets, and just saw their heels…’

  I suddenly saw long, shiny boots in the mud. Elsie was standing over me. I breathed in and out, steadying myself. I didn’t want to make myself look even more of a fool than I already had.

  ‘They’ve been massacred,’ I said and puked again.

  Why didn’t my father warn me that there were such things as a face without a nose? How could that be?

  ‘I want to go home…’ I continued. Tears filled my eyes, my throat. I sounded like the feeble child I had so desperately been trying not to be, but I didn’t care. I had never felt so powerless. They had chosen the wrong person for the job.

  ‘There’s not a safe passage out any more, Mairi.’

  ‘But it’s… hopeless.’

  Spots of blood were on the ground. I eyed the splattered trail to a chestnut horse that stared steadily ahead. Clipped to it was a wooden carriage. There were still two men in the carriage, leaning together, heads close. Did anyone know about them?

  ‘Just do your best.’

  I don’t have a best. I don’t even have a worst.

  ‘I’ve never done anything like this before.’

  ‘Munro wouldn’t have selected you if he didn’t think you would be up to the task.’

  I lifted my head up from the bucket, averting my eyes from the staring horse.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He said: “Despite her youth and quiet manner Mairi is as cool as a cucumber”.’

  ‘Dr Munro said that?’

  ‘He said you’ve always been a trooper. And a damn loyal friend.’

  The horse swished its tail. Flies, I thought. Black hungry flies. The men in the carriage hadn’t moved a jot. Men alive a few hours ago, worrying about their dinner, their uniforms, their girlfriends… and now they weren’t.

  ‘But I don’t know Dr Munro! I only met him the one time when he asked me to join. How would he possibly know this about me?’

  I had caught her out. Elsie squatted next to me. She didn’t recoil from the smell in the pail, which I continued to grip on to for dear life.

  ‘You ride, don’t you?’ she said. ‘They say you are fearless.’

  ‘That’s different,’ I whimpered.

  ‘You were educated in the Highlands?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You’ll be stronger than most and with a darn sight more common sense.’

  I didn’t know about that. I only knew that whatever I had just said, I couldn’t go back home now. Not like the broken boy on the ship – I couldn’t face my parents, their battles over me. I coughed. Of course, I was going to have to go back into that terrible place. I was going to do the right thing. Put others first. And I would find the strength. From the place that always gave me strength. How had I forgotten that?

  Elsie stood up. She looked composed: No doubt the sort of woman a Belgian colonel would be delighted to fornicate with, I thought wildly. I dared take one hand from the bucket to grab her slender wrist.

  ‘Would you pray with me, Elsie?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  I thought in that polite thank you, there was still hope, so I pushed on. ‘Let’s ask God to keep us safe…’

  When people didn’t believe, it worried me. God might not deign to perform goodness if only a few people had faith in him. I suppose it was silly insecurity, but I doubted Lady D and I would be enough to keep God interested by ourselves. We needed Elsie.

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll keep us safe, Mairi.’

  ‘I am going to pray now.’

  This is not just any town, this is Nazareth, I thought. I should have remembered.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death; I will fear no evil: for thou art with me…’

  Elsie didn’t move away, so maybe she wanted me to pray for her even if she wouldn’t pray herself.

  ‘Gypsy, I mean Elsie?’

  She stroked my hair. ‘I’m sorry Mairi, but we need that bucket.’

  4

  After the resident nurses declared the situation under control, we continued on to the military hospital in Ghent. It was a beautiful old building with large, rectangular windows and everything was industrious and orderly. It was an enormous relief to arrive there after the horrendous experience at Nazareth.

  Our team were ready to roll up our sleeves and jump in, but now we faced a new obstacle. We were not authorised to get involved with anything. We could spread disease. And there were plenty of Belgian doctors and nurses here anyway. There were plenty of injured soldiers too, but they were comfortably housed in the efficiently run wards. Everything ran like clockwork. It looked like Belgium did not require a flying ambulance corps from Britain after all.

  Even so, according to Dr Munro, the situation could rapidly change and we must stay prepared, ready to spring into action at any given moment. So, the day after we arrived, he went to deal with tiresome bureaucratic formalities while we were put to work in the hospital kitchens or fields. After a few days of peeling and scrubbing great sacks of potatoes and turnips, I felt bored with life. I couldn’t get the mud out from under my fingernails. Uilleam thought it was hilarious. He wrote ‘If that is all war entails then I might change my mind about the Bahamas.’ It wasn’t funny though. If I had wanted to get this familiar with turnips, I thought resentfully, I could have just helped in the kitchen at home.

  On the fourth day I asked Dr Munro if, please, I could get some hands-on medical experience and he agreed. From then on, if a new load of patients were brought in and if the Belgian nurses were particularly busy, I was invited to the wards to help with the less serious cases.

  ‘At last, patients not potatoes!’ I said to Lady D, who always could be relied on to smile at a silly observation.

  Dr Munro showed me how to open iodine phials and how to change dressings. We had to keep scrupulously clean. He showed me how to apply sticking tape to pads, sighing unpatriotically as he did so, ‘Our tape isn’t half as good as the Germans’.’ He explained how to make tourniquets and ligatures. ‘Our enemy is blood loss,’ he said. ‘Keep that in mind at all times.’

  ‘I will!’ I agreed eagerly.

  ‘Modern weapons are going to cause more damage than we anticipated,’ he added, but though I nodded sincerely, I didn’t understand what he meant. I hadn’t anticipated much.

  But there were so many medical staff in Ghent that, mostly, all our corps had to do was keep the patients company and make sure they were warm, comfortable and had plenty to drink. That was another thing: Lady D had brought boxes of Bovril from England. The Belgians didn’t know it at first. And then, once they tasted it, they didn’t like it much!

  I happily mispronounced the Belgian men’s names and listened to tales of their families and their pets. I was relieved my French was not too wanting. I told the soldiers whether ‘il pleut or ‘il y a soleil’, and asked them if they felt ‘froid’ or ‘
chaud’.

  In return, they taught me swear words, in both French and Flemish, and all the body parts – and I mean all, even the ones I expressly asked them not to!

  At first, I thought the soldiers must feel robbed: only a few days in and already demobbed, what bad luck! But the men didn’t seem aggrieved. I imagine most were only grateful to be alive.

  On those special days, when I could practise on, or wash or shave the patients, play cards, spoon-feed them, it gave me a great sense of purpose, but with all the turnips that needed peeling it didn’t happen often enough.

  * * *

  In the evenings, we sat in our small, shared kitchen. Arthur was usually engrossed in the New York Times, Helen would be staring into space and scribbling, while Lady D might chat about the women’s movement and discuss her leaflets. ‘I’ll make a suffragette out of you yet,’ she said.

  ‘You already have!’ I admitted. My father always complained that I was easily swayed. It was probably true, but that didn’t mean the things I was swayed towards were wrong.

  Tonight, Lady D was sewing. A pair of Dr Munro’s trousers had already split around his privates and Lady D was determined to make them ‘shell-proof’. I switched between reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and studying the Bible. I was particularly interested in any references to Nazareth – I found a section where Jesus studies at the temple in Jerusalem without his parents knowing and then returns home to Nazareth, and another where Jesus goes to the synagogue in Nazareth and is rejected. I tried to work out what it meant.

  I couldn’t write about what had happened in Nazareth to Uilleam or Mother. I didn’t want to worry them and they would have worried. We had been plunged like a vegetable – like a turnip! – into boiling water and pulled out just as quickly. It was disorientating. I tried to talk about it with the others but they weren’t particularily forthcoming.

  ‘It’s done now, young Mairi,’ Arthur said to me, and Helen nodded. Elsie said little beyond murmuring ‘terrible, terrible’. Dr Munro didn’t say much either. Everyone seemed to have put it to the back of their minds. Perhaps it was best I put it there too? I suppose I was also invested in not remembering because I felt so ashamed of my poor show. Oh, I did ‘get stuck in’ eventually, but I had done the worst possible thing: I had frozen. I had surprised myself, and not in a pleasant way. Determined never to repeat that experience, I decided that if ever there was something even slightly risky then I would raise my hand the highest for it.