by Kate Hewitt
The first convoy of wounded soldiers had been a shock; Ellen didn’t think anything could have accustomed her to the sight of men with their heads half-open or their stomachs strewn out. Far too many of them came to Royaumont only to be comfortable while they died.
“It’s worse at the clearing stations on the Front,” Letitia told her grimly. “There are so many, and so few skilled medics and surgeons, not to mention morphine or proper equipment. They do what they can…” But it never seemed like enough.
By the end of February, the one hundred beds were filled with French soldiers, most of them privates or poilus, as they were known. Norah was an orderly while Ellen, thanks to her training back in Kingston, had been made an auxiliary nurse. She spent her days assisting Miss Ivens and the other surgeons in operations, changing bandages and bedpans when an orderly could not be found, and administering what medicines they had. She fell into bed each night exhausted and frozen to the bone, and woke with the grey light of dawn to drink a quick cup of coffee and hurry back to the wards. Sometimes she didn’t even sleep; the woman on duty would sound the porter’s horn if she sighted an ambulance, and everyone would tumble out of bed, hurrying into aprons and caps, to greet whatever horrors awaited them, and do their best to mend and heal.
Letters had, somewhat to her amazement, found her at Royaumont by early spring. She learned that both Jed and Lucas has joined Canada’s First Expeditionary Force ina few months before; Jed was a private and Lucas an officer, thanks to their differences in education, which seemed hard to Ellen, but she knew that’s simply how it was, and she suspected Lucas would feel worse about it than Jed.
She’d also heard from Aunt Rose, who had said that Peter was planning to enlist in the summer, and Caro was training to be a Canadian VAD nurse. She was hoping to go to a British military hospital on the Front, but Rose wrote that she thought it was more likely Caro would be assigned to a convalescent hospital in Kingston. Ellen knew Rose would be relieved by that; she did not want to send more than one of her children to the Front.
Now Ellen entered the theatre, steeling herself for the sight of a man with shrapnel littered through his intestines. Miss Ivens’ face was grimly focused above her surgical mask. Ellen’s job was to take the recovered pieces of bloody shrapnel and put them in a pan. Hardly glamorous work, and yet essential.
Her eyes felt gritty with fatigue, her body aching as she stood next to Miss Ivens. Every so often the room shuddered from the force of the shells exploding only a few miles away; the Front had been, as Miss Ivens had predicted, drawing ever closed, inch by bloody inch. Every so often the lights would blink or go out completely, and Miss Ivens would demand someone fetch an oil lamp, or even a candle. She’d performed more than one life-saving surgery practically squinting in the dark, but such were the times they lived in.
And yet, Ellen thought in her darker moments, it all felt so pointless. No matter how many soldiers they operated on, bound up, and sent on their way, yet more came. The stream of wounded felt never-ending; even if there was a brief lull in the fighting, when it started again, the soldiers came in a flood, each one seeming more broken and hopeless than the last.
In April, the Germans had begun to use the awful new chlorine gas against French and Algerian soldiers at Ypres, causing mass death by asphyxiation and sending the Allied forces into a shocked tailspin. The only saving grace, Norah told Ellen, was that the Germans had been so shocked by the success of the trial, they had failed to take full advantage and push forward. Despite the devastation, the Allies had kept most of their positions.
But now, in May, when the weather was warm and the air sweet with cherry blossom, the Germans had pushed forward again and the Allied forces had fallen back to Ypres.
It was early evening by the time they finished in theatre; Miss Ivens had removed all the shrapnel from the poor man, but his prognosis, as with many stomach wounds, was not good.
“If he lasts the night, he has a fighting chance,” she said grimly as she washed the blood from her hands. “More than some others, at any rate.”
As Ell left the theatre, the Nursing Sister, Helen Watts, told her to check the patients in the Ecosse Ward before going off duty. “The patient in Bed Five needs his dressing changed. Please see to that first.”
“Yes, Sister.” Ellen hurried back to the ward; the poilu in Bed Five blinked up at her as she approached.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” Ellen said with a smile, and checked the bandages on his arm where he’d been hit by some flying shrapnel. The bandages were soaked with blood and the sutures, she saw, had come undone.
She shook her head at him, for she knew he had probably fussed with the bandages, as many of these poor men did. They were sad cases, and not just because of their injuries. When the first poilus had arrived back in February, Ellen had been appalled by their state. Their officers, some of whom also came to Royaumont, had little use for them away from the battlefield. Letitia, who was one of the few women at Royaumont who spoke fluent French, had overheard an officer say in disdain, “At the Front the soldier may be a hero; in the rear he is merely tiresome.”
Another officer whose men were being treated in a separate ward had not even inquired about their health, but had merely complained about his own lack of hot food and fresh water.
“You must leave the bandages alone,” Ellen now told the poilu, and he smiled at her blankly. “Ne touchez pas!” she said severely and he grinned and nodded.
Despite their rough looks and ways, the poilus loved the abbey, which they called The Palace for both its comforts and the kindness of its staff. One poilu had called the nursing staff ‘the happiness of Royaumont.’
Smiling, Ellen patted the soldier on his good arm and moved to the next bed. By the time night had settled like a soft, dark blanket over the abbey, Ellen had checked all the soldiers in the ward, settled the restless ones, and administered what medicines she could.
She was just going off duty when she heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside, and she peered out of one of the abbey’s ancient, arched windows to see several drivers hurrying to the row of trucks that served as makeshift ambulances, and then the sounds of cranks turning and engines sputtering to life in the still, spring air.
She turned to Edith, the nurse who had come to take over her shift. “The wounded are arriving at Creil again?”
Edith nodded. “We just received word. The hospital will be full again. So much for sleep,” she said, her lips twisting ruefully, and Ellen nodded in sympathy.
Life at Royaumont was conducted in frenzied, staggered bursts; they might have days or even weeks of peace, when the fighting had stopped and the operating theatre remained thankfully empty. In those times Royaumont could be a jolly place; once two orderlies had dressed up in the French horizon bleu uniform and pretended to be patients, much to the delight of the soldiers who called them ‘the naughty Misses’. There might be card games and singing, and jokes and laughter and celebrations, but when the porter’s horn sounded, any merriment was forgotten and the staff might be working for days at a stretch with little or no sleep.
Ellen had got used to the stop and start pace, and it had forced her, along with everyone else, to find their happiness and pleasure while they could, in the simple things—a cup of tea, a game of cards, the roses that still bloomed in the garden, tightly furled pink buds, nearly ready to unleash their heady scent.
“I have enough time for a cup of tea, then,” Ellen said with a smile. Creil was thirteen kilometres away, and although they moved fast, it would take some time for the drivers to get the wounded on board.
The monks’ refectory where the staff ate their meals felt like a welcoming haven after the intensity and pervasive despair of the operating theatre, and a big brown pot of tea was always at the ready for whoever could sit for a moment and have a cup.
As Ellen entered the room, she saw Norah sitting at one end of the long table, her chin in her hand, her expression as weary as Ellen suspecte
d hers was.
“Hello, Norah.” She poured herself a cup and sat opposite her old friend and colleague. Now that Norah was an orderly and Ellen a nurse, their positions were essentially reversed. It had been strange at first to see Norah, so elegant and sophisticated, emptying bed pans and sweeping floors, given the lowliest of chores because of her lack of medical training. Norah, to her credit, had not complained; Ellen thought it took a special sort of courage to admit your own failings, and accept your limitations.
“It’s quiet now,” she said as she sipped her tea. “But I just heard the drivers starting up the ambulances. We have an hour, perhaps.”
“And I can still hear the guns,” Norah replied. They had been booming ceaselessly for nearly a month, as the second battle of Ypres raged on, nearly two hundred kilometers away. “It never seems to stop.”
“How are you holding up?” Ellen asked gently. Norah’s face looked particularly careworn tonight, in the dancing shadows of the oil lamp.
“I’m all right.” Norah hesitated, her gaze focused on her cup of tea. “I heard word today that my cousin fell at Ypres. Three weeks ago now, right at the beginning. All this time, I didn’t know.”
“Oh, Norah, I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head, the movement quick, as if denying the truth of her loss. “He was only eighteen, poor lad. Eighteen! His whole life ahead of him, and now we’ll never known what he might have achieved or dreamed.”
Ellen just shook her head, knowing no words were adequate. Grief was all too common these days, but it still hurt. It always did. And she feared for those she loved—Peter, of course, and Lucas and Jed. Would she feel it if they’d died? How long would it take before she found out if they were wounded?
“Sometimes I feel as if we are losing two or three boys instead of just one,” Norah said slowly. “Because we’re losing the potential of him. These young boys… I saw a poilu who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, although he would have denied it. He died from that wretched chlorine gas, and who knows what he might have done? He could have been a doctor or an artist, an architect or a lawyer, or even just a simple farmer. But he’ll never know, and neither shall we. A whole generation is losing its potential, Ellen, and I shudder to think of what will happen after this bloody war, and what it will mean for us.”
Ellen could not imagine the war ending. She’d been at Royaumont only for six months, but it felt like a lifetime, and there was no end in sight. No end at all.
“They say there have been over fifty thousand deaths of British soldiers in the last month,” Norah continued. “And thirty-five thousand French. Six thousand Canadian.”
“Six thousand?” Ellen could not keep a tremor from her voice. There were only thirty thousand in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, in which Jed and Lucas, and soon Peter, all served.
“Yes.” Norah’s voice softened. “Have you had any news from home?”
“Not recently.” Her last letter from Aunt Rose had been three weeks ago, right at the start of the latest push. How long would it take Rose to find out, and then to write to her?
She’d written to Lucas herself, back in February, but she had no idea if he’d received her letter; getting mail to soldier was a dicey business. In any case, he hadn’t written back.
Now, as her tea grew cold, Ellen mouthed a soundless prayer for the safety of both Jed and Lucas, and all the island boys who had crossed the Atlantic to give the Germans what-for.
After finishing her tea, Ellen hurried upstairs to her sleeping quarters, a draughty room on the top floor of the abbey that she shared with three other nurses. Her bed was nothing more than a straw mattress on the floor, her chest of drawer a few wooden crates, and her dressing table an old door propped on top of some blocks. Still, the view was unparalleled, with the meadows, now filled with wildflowers, glinting under the moonlight.
Ellen didn’t bother changing out of her uniform as she lay on her mattress and tried to catch a few minutes’ rest before the ambulances came back with the wounded.
She managed to doze for an hour before she was wakened by Rosemary, another nurse, and she hurried to tidy herself and slip her nurse’s veil back on.
“It’s bad,” Rosemary said, her face pinched and gray.
Ellen stilled for a moment, glancing at the other woman. “It’s always bad.”
“Yes, but…” Rosemary shook her head, swallowing hard. “How can men do such things to one another?”
Tense with awful anticipation, Ellen hurried downstairs. The wounded were coming through the front doors of the abbey, which had been flung open to the night. Those who could walk did, some staggering, and others were carried in on stretchers, heads and bodies swathed in bloody bandages, many of them moaning piteously.
For a second Ellen simply stood there, watching this flood of wounded humanity, and thinking how it never ceased. Tomorrow or the next day there would be yet more coming. The war, it seemed, would continue until there were no men left to fight.
“Nurse Copley!” Sister Watts’ sharp voice startled Ellen from her melancholy thoughts and quickly she hurried forward.
“Yes, Sister,” she called, and she placed a hand on a soldier’s elbow to help him into the ward. Perhaps the fighting would cease one day, but for now it continued, and there was work to be done, and men to be tended to and hopefully healed.
CHAPTER FOUR
June 1915
As summer blossomed around the abbey, the staff and soldiers of Royaumont experienced a brief respite as there was a lull in the fighting. The aftermath of the battle at Ypres had been both bloody and deadly, and far too many men had died in their wards and theatres.
Now, however, with the roses in bloom and the sun shining high above, the only men left at Royaumont were the ones who had survived and were now convalescing. Although most of the patients were French, some others were British, Canadian, and some from the French Colonies in Africa. One of the Scottish orderlies had been shocked, having never seen a black man before several privates in the Algerian division came to the abbey.
Ellen had asked one of the Canadian soldiers if he knew of Jed or Lucas Lyman, but the man had shaken his head sorrowfully. Ellen longed for news; she still hadn’t heard from anyone on the island, and although she’d written him again, there had been nothing from Lucas.
Still, it was hard to keep oneself in a constant state of anxiety, and Ellen did her best to be cheerful, for the patients’ sake. She was continually amazed and humbled at the forbearance the patients showed again and again, and how they were able to laugh and joke in even the most tragic of circumstances; she would never forget the tight-lipped, uncomplaining faces of the soldiers with mangled limbs who had to be adjusted on the hard metal table for an X-ray, or the one-armed poilus playing draughts, or the soldiers blinded by the dreadful gas who painted watercolors of the wildflowers from memory.
Their fortitude was a lesson she took to heart, considering the tragedies in her own life, and she had vowed that whatever happened after the war, she would face it with the courage and cheer that the poilus had shown her so many times.
One afternoon in mid-June, Ellen came into the ward to find an Algerian soldier protesting at the top of his lungs and Letitia standing at the foot of the bed, her hands planted on her hips as she looked at him in exasperation.
“Monsieur, s’il vous plait,” she said for what Ellen suspected was not the first time. She continued in French that Ellen could only just understand, “I must see to your wound’s dressings. If you will only permit me…”
The man held the bed sheets to his chest, his face red with both fury and humiliation. “Non, mademoiselle,” he returned. “Non, non, non!”
Ellen suppressed a laugh at the absurdity of the interaction; a few of the patients in nearby beds, those who were well enough to sit up, were watching the scene enfold as if it were a great drama on the London stage for them to enjoy.
Ellen touched Letitia’s arm. “What is the matter here?” sh
e asked quietly. “Can I help?”
“Only if you can hold this man down long enough so I can check his dressings,” Letitia answered shortly. “He is being ridiculous.”
“Where is his injury?”
Letitia’s face, already flushed nearly as red as her patient’s, turned a shade rosier. “On his buttocks. He was hit with flying shrapnel. I sewed him up myself a week ago while he was unconscious, but he is now insisting that he cannot show himself to a woman, and—oh!” She shook her head impatiently. “He is at a hospital with all women staff. There is no one else, as you very well know.”
“Does he know that?” Ellen asked.
“I have explained it to him several times.” She tried again. “Monsieur, s’il vous plait—“
The man shrank back against his pillow, wincing as his wound pressed against the mattress. “Non!”
“Oh dear,” Ellen murmured. She was trying not to smile, but there was something ludicrous about the situation, and as they all learned, you had to find your humour where you could. “Are you sure they need to checked right at this moment?”
“It has been a week,” Letitia huffed. “And it is clearly the wound is paining him. If they’re not checked, he could develop an infection in the blood which may very well prove to be fatal.”
“That is indeed no laughing matter,” Ellen continued soberly. “I’m sorry, Letitia.” She touched her friend’s arm lightly. “How can I help?”
“You cannot, unless you can turn me into a man,” Letitia retorted in exasperation. She turned to the patient, who looked as obdurate as ever. “You will reopen your wound!” she warned the man, shaking a fist. “And then what? You shall die of sepsis, sir, if you are not careful!”
“Perhaps I can help, mademoiselle?” A man appeared in the doorway of the ward, speaking in English. He was a patient, but well enough to walk, and clearly an officer, judging by the dressing gown and slippers he wore. The poilus had nothing but the tattered uniforms they came in.
