Liverpool Angels (30 page)

Eddie felt a lump come into his throat as the memory of the day he’d brought Jimmy into this hospital to her returned; the old terrors were closing in on him. ‘If . . . if I don’t come back, Alice, tell Mam . . . tell her . . . I’m sorry,’ he choked.

And then Lizzie was beside him, her hand firmly on his arm, her eyes full of love and a quiet determination. ‘You’ll come back, Eddie. I’m convinced this is third time lucky for you. Now, we’d better go before we’re all reported to Sister.’

Mae put her arms around Alice as they left. ‘I think Lizzie is right, Alice. He’ll come through it safely this time.’

‘I hope you’re both right, Mae, but at least he didn’t go with bad feelings still between us. I’ll write and tell Mam that.’

T
he bombardment had started on 18 March, the day after he’d rejoined the 18th Battalion, Eddie remembered now as he searched his pockets for a cigarette, but it was a battalion of strangers, all Liverpool men but none whose faces were remotely familiar. The lads he’d joined with, trained with and fought with were gone, just memories. He’d stoically endured the constant thundering of the guns and the explosions of bursting shells; even though the dugout was thirty feet deep the blasts had shaken the ground, cracked the wooden support posts and sent earth trickling down on their heads. And then after forty-eight hours, as suddenly as it had started, it had ceased and he’d felt the familiar twisting of his guts as he knew what they faced.

Dawn of the twenty-first had been chilly with a thick, swirling fog, a mixture of smoke, gas and low cloud, but none of them had been prepared for what had faced them: the sheer speed and ferocity of the German advance. By mid-morning the crack troops from the Russian front had smashed through the front lines. The men in those lines had died to buy time for those who followed them but still they’d been forced to retreat, and from then on the nightmare had begun in earnest. He’d estimated that the enemy was a bare half an hour behind them and those who hadn’t been wounded had had to run until they were gasping for breath and forced to slow their pace. Field dressing stations and casualty clearing stations had been overrun; most had managed to get their nurses away safely but doctors, orderlies and wounded alike had been taken prisoner. For fifteen chaotic and terrifying days it had been retreat, retreat, retreat, he thought bitterly, finding at last a butt end of a cigarette. The roads had been clogged with lines of with-drawing men and equipment, ambulances, refugees and reinforcements being rushed forward to try to stop the German advance. At times they’d been ordered to stop and fight but had suffered such heavy casualties that they’d inevitably had to fall back. Roiglise, Rouvrel, Roupy, Ham and now they were entrenched at Elverdinghe on the Ypres Salient.

He looked dully around at the group of lads he was with – those that were left, he thought bitterly. They were all filthy, exhausted, hungry and thirsty; nearly all had flesh wounds. He couldn’t remember when he’d eaten the last of his bread ration or taken a swig of water from his canteen, which he knew was now virtually empty, but what was far worse than any of these privations was the terrible sense of defeat and despair that enveloped everyone. All the ground gained in the past years of fighting, ground paid for dearly in blood and loss of life, was now in enemy hands. He was so tired and utterly demoralised that he no longer cared what happened to him; he couldn’t think straight and he didn’t even feel fear any more. His hands were shaking with fatigue as he attempted to strike the match.

‘’Ere, mate. I’ll do it. Yer shaking that much yer’ll set yerself alight.’ A match was struck and he drew deeply on the butt end. He nodded his thanks to the lad beside him, whose name, he thought, was Evans.

‘Eh, up! Here comes trouble,’ the lad muttered, digging Eddie in the ribs as Captain Pitman appeared. He at least wasn’t as filthy as the rest of them, Eddie thought vaguely, in fact he looked almost clean and tidy, but then he hadn’t been with them for very long.

‘At ease, men,’ the captain started and then cleared his throat. ‘We’ve been ordered to join the eighty-ninth brigade tomorrow. Regretfully, there are so few of us left from all the Pals Battalions that it’s the only sensible option. We’ll be moving into the front line between the towns of Hazebrouck and Bailleul. The enemy has commenced an offensive in the Lys Valley and another towards Ypres and we have to stop them.’ Again he cleared his throat. ‘And I have received an Order of the Day from General Headquarters, issued this morning by Field Marshal Haig to all military personnel.’

This news was received in silence. You could see and feel their lack of interest, he thought, their hopelessness and despair, and although it unsettled him he could understand in part how they felt; however, it was up to him to rally them, for the situation was now desperate. He had no intention of reading it all, it definitely wouldn’t raise morale for them to know that over 150,000 men had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner in the past three weeks or that all the reserves had been exhausted and the German line now stretched beyond Bapaume and Albert in the south and Armentières here in the north, putting the Channel ports in imminent danger.

‘I will now read the concluding paragraph of that order. “There is no other cause open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind alike depend on the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.” Signed, Field Marshal Haig. That’s it, lads. No more retreating. We stand and fight to the last man.’

No one broke the silence but you could feel the change in the atmosphere, he thought with some relief as he turned away. He’d leave them to digest Haig’s orders, just as he’d taken the time to contemplate their dire meaning.

Eddie felt his mood shift; it was as if everything had suddenly become crystal clear to him. They were fighting not for some vague concept loosely defined by the words ‘King and Country’. He realised now that what that really meant, and had in fact always meant, was they were fighting for their homes and their freedom. He was fighting now for Lizzie and their life together, their children as yet unborn and future generations. For Alice and Jimmy, Mae and Pip Middlehurst, Mam and even his father: the man who had walked out on them, but in the end hadn’t he fought for them all at Jutland? Eddie’s opinion of him was gradually changing: yes, he was fighting for Billy too. He was fighting for Harry and Tommy Mitford and all the other lads who had made the ultimate sacrifice. As Haig had said, their backs were to the wall, there was no other option open to them if they were to save their homes and families. If they were to stop the Channel ports from being overrun, leaving only that narrow stretch of water as the last bastion between oppression and freedom, they would fight to the last. He felt the weariness and the hopelessness of defeat fall away. Tomorrow he knew he would experience again the gut-twisting fear before the battle, but he also knew it wouldn’t overwhelm him or stop him. This time it would be different because now he knew what he was really fighting for.

The first indication the girls had had that the offensive was under way was the steady stream of ambulances moving slowly down the road towards the hospital. Rumours had surged through the hospital all morning, terrible tales of the German advances, of medical staff and wounded being taken prisoner, but it appeared that no one actually knew
what
was happening or exactly
where
the enemy were.

There had then been no time to dwell on the situation as the wounded and dying were brought in.

They should all have been stretcher cases, Alice heard Sister Harper declare bitterly as she helped a man from the first ambulance who was using his rifle as a crutch for a mangled foot. They were all ragged and filthy, some with wounds that had not even been dressed, their faces grey and haggard with fatigue, eyes dull and glassy from lack of sleep, shock and despair. They hobbled on feet swollen and black from advanced trench foot, some crying openly and pitifully from the pain of gaping wounds and shattered bones.

‘There are five hundred in this convoy and more on the way, God help us all!’ Sister Harper informed them as she quickly and curtly issued orders. ‘Nurses Strickland, McEvoy and Lawson to the dressing lines. Platt, Livesey and Stanford to the surgical assessment. The rest of you stay here to help these men.’

Alice, Mae and Lizzie ran across to the tent where tables stood piled with bandages, swabs, splints, sponges, boric ointment, gentian violet and two basins full of Dakin’s solution for wet dressings. A medical officer followed them and took up his position at a small table, orderlies with stretchers awaiting his instructions.

‘Nurse, let them in half a dozen at a time, please. Do whatever you can with their wounds, those you deem more serious pass on to me.’

Grabbing a pair of scissors each, Lizzie, Mae and Alice went to help the first of the walking casualties. Within minutes they were overwhelmed, surrounded by men and boys with bloody bandages that had dried and were stuck to their wounds.

‘There’s no easy way to do this, I’m really very sorry,’ Lizzie apologised to a ragged corporal as she cut away his tunic to reveal a deep jagged shoulder wound covered with a filthy lint pad. He screamed in agony as she quickly ripped off the pad and then directed him on to the medical officer.

It was the Somme all over again, Alice thought, but she thanked God that she had not seen Eddie amongst the wounded – yet. They worked on all through the day, the evening and into the early hours of the morning, until they were on the point of dropping from exhaustion. During the late afternoon they’d been joined by staff nurses and sisters, equally as exhausted as themselves, who’d escaped from the clearing stations – now behind enemy lines – and whose experiences had at first sent shivers of terror running through them until tiredness had overcome the fear.

It was almost dawn before the hospital was declared totally unable to take any further casualties and the Chief Medical Officer sent orders that subsequent convoys were to be shipped straight across the Channel.

‘I can hardly put one foot in front of the other I’m so tired,’ Mae sighed as they finally made their way to their billet.

‘I feel awful. I’m filthy, I’m sure I’ve picked up some greybacks and my head is throbbing,’ Alice said, pulling her grubby short veil off in a weary gesture of exasperation.

‘We’ll have to share our billet and beds too. Those poor nurses who escaped have nowhere to go, they had to leave everything behind,’ Mae reminded her.

‘It must have been terrifying. I do feel so sorry for them but all I want to do is sleep,’ Lizzie yawned.

‘Look, it’s dawn!’ Mae exclaimed and they stopped and stood gazing at the sky, which was gradually lightening from the east. Slowly the first fingers of light crept over the horizon and spread in ribbons of gold across the pale misty-blue and pink-tinged sky, giving promise of a beautiful spring morning after a night filled with darkness, pain and death.

Lizzie watched the dawn with mixed emotions. Thankfulness that the long, exhausting and traumatic night was over. Relief that although for days to come they would have to work long hours, there would be no more convoys of wounded brought to the hospital. The gnawing fear and anxiety for Eddie’s safety and the knowledge that in the east where the sun was now rising was the battle line. Suddenly she shivered; it wasn’t all that far away, she realised, and no one knew if that line could be held.

Exhausted though she was, Mae could still marvel at the sunrise. ‘It’s beautiful and it makes you feel that somewhere there’s peace, that somewhere the dawn is breaking on a place where there’s no suffering and death. Let’s hope it’s an omen – a good omen,’ she said quietly.

‘And judging by what we’ve seen and heard we desperately need a good omen and some good luck,’ Alice added as they resumed picking their way carefully between the stretchers laid in rows across the compound, which was now bathed in glorious sunlight.

That sunlight fell on Pip, warming the back of his neck as he lay at the top of a small hill overlooking the village of Cantigny on the German front line, the field telephone on the ground beside him. Below him to the south of the village he could see the American front line and he smiled grimly. His countrymen were about to go into action for the first time as a wholly American unit. They were full of enthusiasm, eager at last to have a pop at the Hun, despite the fact that their old Springfield rifles and Hotchkiss machine guns had been virtually worn out in training. He’d been both astounded and somewhat appalled when he’d learned that the United States Army was short of weapons, for they hadn’t been engaged in conflict since the Spanish-American War twenty years ago and before that the Civil War over fifty years ago – and what weapons they did have were old-fashioned compared to those of the French, British and Germans. It hadn’t even been considered worthwhile to ship the four hundred or so field guns across the Atlantic, they were so antiquated, and until new artillery pieces and munitions could be manufactured in America their weaponry had to be supplied by the British and the French. But none of that mattered to them today, he thought. They had a saying: ‘Heaven, Hell or Hoboken by Christmas’. He wondered how many of them would still believe that by the end of today.

As he scanned the lines of eager but restless troops through his binoculars, he reflected that his job on this occasion was important for he had been ordered to observe the assault and to report the troop movements to the French gun batteries supporting the American infantry who were to attack and hold the village, an objective which required artillery support. For once he wouldn’t be in the thick of it, he thought thankfully. So far he’d been lucky; he’d come through with only cuts and bruises, although at Passchendaele a machine-gun bullet, mercifully deflected by his helmet, had grazed his forehead and he’d suffered a mild concussion.