Flora's War (18 page)

In early August, Lady Bellamy sent a note asking Gwen and me to see her at the rest and recreation centre as soon as possible.

‘What’ve we done?’ asked Gwen.

‘Even worse, what haven’t we done?’ I answered.

We hadn’t been to the centre much lately, but surely Lady Bellamy realised we were busy as drivers? She couldn’t expect us to do
more
, could she?

Lady Bellamy chose a quiet moment to take us aside. ‘I know you have important driving duties,’ she said. ‘Sadly, the need for drivers will continue. Even more so, in the near future.’

Hmm. So Lady Bellamy knew something.

‘I have been asked if I have any more ladies able to assist the nurses on the wards,’ said Lady Bellamy. Apparently she could expect more from us. ‘It is expected the hospitals will become even more challenged quite soon.’ She paused for a moment. ‘As unmarried girls I have endeavoured to keep you away from the wards,’ she went on. ‘But needs must.’

Gwen and I both stared. What did she think we’d see on the wards, for heaven’s sake? Boys in their pyjamas? Boys
not
in their pyjamas, perhaps? We’d observed worse as the trains were unloaded.

‘What sort of work, Lady Bellamy?’ asked Gwen. ‘Will we be using our first aid training?’

I hoped not. The training we’d had would be completely inadequate for the wounds we’d seen.

‘There will be no nursing, as such,’ said Lady Bellamy. Gwen and I heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Your tasks will consist of preparation, tidying up, some cleaning. There will be plenty to do, I’m certain. And girls?’ She looked at Gwen in particular.

‘Yes?’

‘Wear sensible clothing, plain skirts and blouses, hair tied back. You will be there to
work
.’

‘Really!’ said Gwen, as we left. ‘Surely we could have figured that out ourselves.’

I looked at Gwen. For a day of driving boys between hospitals, she had chosen a rose pink skirt, a paler pink blouse covered in frills and a distractingly pretty pink hat, which tied under her chin to keep it from blowing off. Gwen caught my look, and we both laughed.

‘A girl has to give the boys something to look at,’ she protested.

‘And indeed you do,’ I said. ‘What do you think about this work? If we’re not doing first aid?’

‘I’m awfully afraid I think the worst,’ said Gwen. ‘I’m afraid it might mean –’

‘Bed pans,’ I finished for her.

…

While we waited for the call to work in the hospital, we kept on with our driving. A train arrived one day and we reported as usual. This one was no different from the others: the same appalling smells, the infected wounds, the oozing, maggoty dressings. I watched the stretcher cases being unloaded, waiting to drive the more lightly wounded to the hospital. If a stretcher case had to wait to be loaded into an ambulance, I moved from my motorcar to shield the soldier from the sun with my shadow and said a few reassuring words.

An anxious boy had seized my hand and I was talking to him, telling him he’d be helped soon, when I heard my name.

‘Flora! It’s you, isn’t it? Flora!’

The voice came from the nearest stretcher case. I didn’t recognise the face. It was dirty, with a stubbled chin. The man had a loose bandage around his head.

I patted the shoulder of the boy I’d been talking to, gently released his grip on my hand and moved closer. Now I could see it was Lydia’s fiancée, Matthew Grier.

‘Matthew! What’s happened to you?’ I glanced at the red tag pinned to his jacket. Red tag. That wasn’t good.

‘Not much,’ said Matthew. He tried to smile. ‘I’ll be fine.’

I doubted that. ‘Of course you will!’ I said.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Driving. Taking men to the hospital.’ Such a stupid conversation. It sounded as if we’d met in the street, and I’d told him I was on my way to Groppi’s.

Stretcher bearers were ready for Matthew and I had to step back. ‘I’ll come and see you!’ I called after him. ‘I’ve heard from Lydia. She’s on Lemnos!’ He waved a hand in acknowledgment, as he was loaded into the ambulance.

‘Where are you taking him?’ I asked an orderly.

‘Nile Palace.’ I’d expected so, the Nile Palace was a hospital for serious cases.

I went there that very afternoon, as soon as the train was empty of wounded.

‘He’s being operated on,’ I was told. ‘You can’t see him now. Come back in two days.’

‘Two days? It’s really serious then?’ I asked. ‘What’s being done?’

‘I really couldn’t say,’ said the nurse. I didn’t know her, she wasn’t going to tell me anything.

Two days later I returned, and found to my relief that Jean had been transferred to Matthew’s ward.

‘Yes, of course you can see him,’ she said. ‘But Flora, you should know. He’s lost his left leg below the knee.’

‘His leg!’ Matthew was a career soldier. He’d been going to spend his life in the army. He wouldn’t be, now. ‘Does he know?’

‘Yes,’ Jean said. ‘He’s taken it fairly well, considering. But it shouldn’t have happened! If it’d been seen to sooner …’

‘It was infected?’ I asked.

Jean nodded. Her eyes flashed. ‘Appalling conditions! Such a waste!’ She broke off as another nurse passed by. ‘There’s no use carrying on about it. Come on in, he’ll be pleased to see you.’

As an officer, Matthew was in a smaller ward on an upper floor. It had once been a bedroom, but now it held six folding metal-framed beds. I noticed that having a chair placed at the end of them had extended some of the beds.

‘That’s for the six-foot Queenslanders,’ Jean grinned. ‘You breed them big up there.’

Matthew had been washed and shaved and looked considerably better. A cradle held the sheet up over the bottom end of the bed.

‘Flora!’ His face broke into a huge smile. ‘Do you know, when I saw you at the train, I thought I was dreaming. Is visiting old crocks in hospital included in your driver’s duties?’

I put down the magazines and chocolates I was carrying. ‘All part of the service,’ I said. ‘How are you feeling?’

Matthew shrugged. ‘All right, considering. You know about this?’ He nodded at the place where his leg used to be.

I bit my lip. ‘Yes. I’m so sorry.’

‘It could be worse. I could be dead. Enough about me. Do I remember you saying you’d heard from Lydia?’

‘Yes. Over two weeks ago. Just a postcard saying she’d arrived on Lemnos and it wasn’t quite what she’d expected, and she’d write properly soon. I haven’t heard anything since.’

‘How’s that delightful Gwen?’

‘Oh, charming every soldier she drives,’ I said. ‘Just as usual.’ We laughed and I told him about the soldiers I’d heard from that he knew. There was a brief silence.

‘Matthew,’ I said carefully, ‘have you seen anything of Jay – Jim Hunter?’

Matthew’s face changed. His eyes slid to the window and he gazed out. ‘Jim? Oh yes. We’ve run into each other a couple of times.’

‘What did you – what did you think? Is he all right?’

‘You’ve been writing to him?’

I nodded. As far as I knew Matthew didn’t know Jay had asked me to become engaged, and I wanted to keep it that way.

‘Well, he’s still in Gallipoli. At least he was, when I was taken out. Why do you ask if he’s all right?’

‘His letters changed so much. It seemed as if things were getting too much for him. It worries me.’

‘Things are getting too much for everyone,’ said Matthew. ‘It affects some fellows more than others.’ He looked at me sharply. ‘Fond of him, are you? If it’s not a delicate question, is there something between you?’

I could feel a flush rising up my neck to my face. Matthew watched its progress with interest.

‘Mmm. You don’t need to answer that,’ he said. ‘Look, some fellows are operating on the edge. Sometimes, it’s letters from home that are keeping them balanced. If you want my advice, Flora, you keep on writing.’

That wasn’t at all what I’d wanted to hear. It was putting a responsibility on me that I didn’t want.

‘I’ll keep on writing,’ I said.

Chapter 15

Then, suddenly, the trains began arriving in greater numbers. Train after train.

‘There was a big battle,’ an orderly on one of the trains told me. ‘A place the Turks call Kanli Sirt, Bloody Ridge. Our boys are calling it Lone Pine. There are more wounded coming, lots more.’

This, I gathered, was the something Lady Bellamy had known about. Cairo was again bursting with wounded. More and more beds were squeezed into the existing hospitals and the army searched for more places to establish hospitals. And we worked.

Now, when we’d cleared the train, Gwen, Frank and I didn’t go home. We parked our cars by the hospital and put in time on the wards.

As Gwen and I had feared, our work involved bedpans. And a lot more. We weren’t trained nurses and we couldn’t take on nursing duties, but we could boil up instruments, roll bandages, wash and clean, and make tea. And deal with a lot of bedpans.

‘I can’t believe how many they get through,’ Gwen groaned. ‘Are they doing it on purpose, do you think?’

‘Oh, probably,’ I agreed. ‘Especially the ones with dysentery. You’d think they could wait or go to the lavatory, wouldn’t you?’

We looked at each other and laughed hysterically. Laughing was good – we needed to laugh about it.

Lady Bellamy had issued orders that unmarried girls must be given suitable tasks. Presumably, ones where we wouldn’t see anything we weren’t supposed to. If she’d been hoping to shield us from the sight of boys without their trousers, she succeeded to a certain degree. But we saw much worse.

We couldn’t avoid seeing the terrible wounds the boys had suffered. For boys who’d been shot in the chest, their gaping wounds meant every breath was a struggle.

‘Waiting to die,’ said Jean flatly, of those with spinal fractures. ‘They’re just waiting to die.’

Many of the boys developed bedsores from lying in bed for weeks, sometimes months. Some sores were as big as dinner plates. Often they became infected and had to be dressed, and the procedure was so painful that anaesthetic was administered before the fresh dressings were applied.

One boy caused a panic in the ward every afternoon by haemorrhaging every day around three or four o’clock. ‘The blood vessel can’t be tied off successfully,’ Jean said. ‘It’s in an awkward spot.’

One day, when I came into the ward, he wasn’t there. There was someone else in the bed. I glanced a question at Jean. She shook her head.

For cases of cholera and typhoid, no one went to the wards except the staff appointed to them. They wore overalls and boots and their rubber masks had a thick, antiseptic-soaked pad inserted into them.

And all of this was exacerbated by temperatures of well over one hundred degrees every day, and the hot, sand-laden winds, and the swarms of flies that couldn’t be defeated by mosquito netting or gauze covers on food.

But if it was hard on volunteers, it was harder on the nurses. ‘I started at seven yesterday morning,’ a theatre nurse, Mary, told me wearily one afternoon. ‘I didn’t stop till two in the morning. I assisted at ten amputations,’ she said. ‘Just one after another after another. Whenever I tried to sleep I just heard that saw; the sound of the saw, going on and on.’

One long, hot day, I walked into the ward to deliver a supply of freshly rolled bandages to a nurse called Edith. As I walked towards her I saw her straighten up from the bed of a boy whose wound she was about to dress. She stopped, stood still, and put a trembling hand to her forehead. She went absolutely grey in the face and swayed on her feet. ‘Here, she’s not well!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘Catch her!’

I dropped the bandages (with the unworthy thought that there was an hour’s work wasted) and caught her arms. An orderly came to help me as Edith’s knees sagged and she leaned heavily on us. Another orderly arrived and Edith was hurried out of the ward. I didn’t see her again.

‘What happened to Edith?’ I asked Florence a few days later. ‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s had a complete nervous breakdown,’ said Florence. ‘She’s gone to a nurses’ rest home to recover.’ I got the impression that Florence didn’t have much sympathy for Edith. She hadn’t been able to handle her duties. The nurses hadn’t a lot of respect for those who couldn’t cope. I wondered, nervously, how long
I’d
be able to take it.

Late one afternoon, the hospital was in turmoil. Gwen, Frank and I had been working unloading a train all day. We were dirty and tired and thirsty – but we were needed. Frank was sent in one direction, Gwen and I in another.

‘You’re wanted up on the third floor,’ an orderly told us.

We’d never been sent up to the third floor. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. I had a vague notion the third floor contained the wards for dangerously ill patients.

The orderly had clearly had a long day too. He looked at his list. ‘That’s where it says help’s needed,’ he said.

We walked up the long flights of stairs. ‘We’ve been sent to help,’ I told the nurse who opened the door. There actually was a door, I noticed. On most of the other wards the doors had been removed to save space.

‘Volunteers? You’ve been sent to help here?’ she said. She seemed surprised.

‘That’s right.’ We often had to explain to the nurses just what we were capable of doing. ‘We can roll bandages, sterilise instruments, make tea, clean …’

‘… do bedpans,’ said Gwen with a resigned sigh.

‘Well.’ The nurse seemed undecided. ‘You could do teas. It’s time they all had a cup.’

Tea was easy, a pleasure. It was better than bedpans, every time.

‘There’s the kitchen,’ the nurse said.

We made tea, poured it into mugs and placed them on trays with milk and sugar.

We entered the ward. And stopped. This was like no ward we’d been on before. Many of the men didn’t seem wounded at all. They had no bandages, no evidence of missing limbs. One boy, lying quietly in a corner bed, did appear to be injured; he had a bandage on his head. Some patients were sitting on their beds or on chairs, staring blank-faced at nothing. One man was curled into a ball on his bed, shaking, the whole bed vibrating under him. Two men were sitting together, talking and talking. But they weren’t talking to each other, it wasn’t a conversation. They were just talking, on and on.