The Mersey Angels

by Sheila Riley

  ‘Do not raise that anchor just yet!’ Ruby called in most unladylike tones to the sailor checking the ropes on the quay, whilst May did her best to keep up.

  ‘Can you believe this?’ Anna, Ellie and the rest of the travellers ogled the spectacle. ‘Surely they’re not coming too?’ Anna could not imagine Aunt Ruby slumming it with a hundred other nurses. Ruby got seasick just watching the boats on the lake.

  ‘There you are, my good man,’ Ruby told the captain, ‘permission to come aboard, I won’t be a tick!’ Then, panting as she boarded the ship and handed Anna the umbrella, ‘You forgot this.’ Patting the arm of a well-mannered sailor, who moved over allowing her to squeeze in, she said: ‘If it hadn’t been for Archie bringing me in the motorcar, I’m sure I would have missed you.’

  Anna and Ellie both knew this was her way of waving them off, knowing Ruby did not like goodbyes any more than Ned had all those months ago.

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ Anna said, ‘but I’m so glad you did. It gives us a chance to say goodbye properly.’ She wasn’t sure if Ruby had overslept or if it was an attempt to avoid the inevitable goodbye. ‘The ship will be sailing soon but thank you so much for bringing the umbrella.’ She tried to keep a sudden feeling of guilt from her voice. And was saved the emotional send-off that would surely come, when a cheeky Tar said in a jaunty voice:

  ‘Why don’t you come along with us, Ma?’

  ‘Ma?’ Ruby’s eyebrows shot to her hairline. ‘Who are you calling, Ma?’ Ruby looked round and saw Ellie who was hooting with laughter. ‘Just because there is a war on, it does not mean you may be impudent, young man,’ Ruby admonished, ‘and I forbid you to take advantage of two perfectly innocent young nurses.’

  ‘Don’t be such a spoilsport, Aunt Ruby,’ Ellie rolled her eyes and Ruby raised her hands in mock despair before hugging them both.

  ‘I’m sure these two can take care of each other,’ May said, squeezing them tight before she and Ruby meandered off the ship, waving as they went, not looking back.

  ‘Right, off you go,’ Ruby called from the quay, waving energetically, as if giving permission for the ship to leave.

  ‘She told me she did a stint in the Crimean War, did you know?’ Ellie said, settling down for the journey.

  ‘Would that be on the day the Emporium was closed?’ Anna asked with a wry smile, not believing a word. Ruby was a lot of things, she thought and most of them were admirable, but a nurse in the field was certainly not one of them. But she doubted Ellie was paying attention, she was too busy listening to a couple of inebriated sailors who were singing some very salty sea shanties.

  ‘We’ve been on leave in Liverpool,’ the matelots informed them, ‘although we cannot say which hostelries we visited. That is top secret.’ They tapped the side of their noses with their forefingers while Anna nodded, wondering if Ned ever caroused the drinking establishments of foreign lands, and also if Sam felt this excited when he went off into the great blue yonder.

  Ned. What did he feel when he took his first journey away from home? They shared an all-consuming passion she only dared think of fleetingly. She worried about him, like thousands of other girls, and even though they wrote to each other, it was not enough. The letters were patchy and infrequent at best, which was not surprising given the Atlantic U-boat campaign back in February, when Germany announced its U-boats would resume unrestricted submarine warfare, rescinding the ‘Sussex Pledge’.

  ‘I’ve got a girl in every port.’ She heard the sailor chatting to Ellie say and realised that, in a destructive climate, a lot of men married within weeks of meeting a girl, solely because he thought he was never coming back. She had also seen men, like Ned, who wanted to wait until the war was all over. Ned told her it was not fair to tie her down if he should come home maimed and knowing Anna would feel obliged to nurse him for the rest of their days, he told her in his letters that she was free to do as she saw fit if this should happen. He was not going to hold her to the promise she made to marry him the last time he was home. Anna had replied, telling him she would be honoured to nurse him as his wife and would always be here waiting for him.

  ‘You are under no obligations, while we are not yet married,’ Ned had told her. His comment, although meant kindly, hurt her more than she could say. Even if, God forbid, Ned was wounded she could never bear the thought of another woman looking after him and it didn’t go unnoticed that only last week, German warships attacked British naval patrols off the Goodwin Sands, sinking HMS Paragon, Ned’s last ship before he had been transferred. The war was coming closer to home by the day.

  Lost in a world of her own, Anna gazed out over the rail. A thousand and one goodbyes had already been said in homes across the country, she thought, looking out to a muted grey sky that joined the far horizon, her hometown no longer visible as she eyed the white horses topping the swell of the sea, caused by the ship’s forward sail. And she suddenly wondered if Ned would be willing to care for her if anything should happen to her in Flanders. Her heart said yes, but her head wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Well,’ said Ellie interrupting Anna’s thoughts, ‘we’ve packed our stays and are about to enjoy untold escapades in the service of our country.’

  Despite the official resistance towards Doctor Bea and the rest of the female medical staff who had been ordered to go home and sit still, Doctor Bea decided she knew better.

  ‘We will show them,’ she had told Ellie and Anna resolutely, as detailed discussions of various adventures went back and forth around them and even though they faced danger and suffering they also looked forward to a huge adventure.

  There were scores of intrepid nurses heading across the Channel, not only to Belgium and France, but also to Serbia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia to nurse injured men who were fighting their cause. Anna could understand perfectly why these women felt a burning need to go to do their bit. She had even heard of women who galloped to the rescue on horseback, scooping up wounded soldiers and proving themselves indispensable in the field.

  ‘Did Florence Nightingale think only of her own comfort when she nursed men in the Crimean war?’ Doctor Bea had asked. ‘No she did not.’

  ‘Right, ladies,’ the leader of the little band of nurses, shouted in a voice, so strident it roused a sleeping sailor from his slumber. ‘I have checked the itinerary, we disembark at Le Havre, so, make sure you have all your belongings.’

  ‘All she is short of,’ declared an auxiliary nurse in petulant tones, ‘is telling us to move in single file in complete silence She’s got a voice worse than my father and he was a Sergeant-Major.’

  Anna smiled, looking forward to her first voyage on a ship.

  Thankfully, the U-boats had stayed home today, and as they headed towards France, the sun obliged by coming from behind the clouds and chased them away so they could enjoy sunshine on deck and the two girls looked forward to the new adventure with renewed optimism.

  The ship was crowded with military men, some of whom had already been to France and once injured were now well. Some seemed a bit reluctant to go back for more and both nurses could understand why. Although others laughingly said they really missed the place.

  When Anna and Ellie disembarked from the ship at Le Havre, they were greeted by the sight of a working dockyard filled with uniforms of every country, horses, wagons and ambulances waiting to dispatch men to Red Cross hospital ships, Anna could not see what there was to miss.

  ‘Cheeky bugger,’ a voice said as the ambulance door catapulted violently into a tree, encouraging a flurry of leaves to flutter onto the ground. Anna and Ellie had stayed in a little château near the dockside for the past two days in readiness for their orders. Now they were sitting on their suitcases watching the continual ebb and flow of khaki-clad men and women. Soldiers, Sailors, Airman, Nurses, Ambulances. The jetty was a moving unit. Never still.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Anna said, looking round, surely this khaki-clad woman was not talking to them?

  ‘You must be
Annie and Ella,’ the ambulance driver called from the open window near the driver’s seat when she heard the English accent and saw their uniforms. Her impatient grimace spread busy freckles as she looked up from the sheet of paper and met Anna’s gaze.

  ‘It is Anna and Ellie,’ Anna said as Ellie picked up the suitcase upon which she had been sitting.

  ‘I’m always getting bloody names wrong,’

  ‘Excuse me, young lady?’ said a passing officer of the King’s Regiment, just off the ship and not yet accustomed to ripe language from a female, especially one so dainty in stature amid a fizz of military motors, Red Cross ambulances and speeding cars careering through the streets.

  ‘Not you, Mister!’ The girl had an accent Anna recognised immediately. It carried the inflection of her youth in Queen Street. ‘That idiot of a sergeant major stepped right in front of me ambolance, and nearly got himself killed.’ Nodding to a pale-faced officer now sitting in the middle of the road, the girl continued determinedly, ‘He must think he can fight my Bessie,’ she tutted loudly for all to hear, ‘I ask you!’

  Anna noticed the armband on the driver’s sleeve clearly showed this girl was part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and judging by her rapid pace, she was in no mood for pleasantries with sergeant majors.

  ‘Matron in charge asked for a couple of nurses to go to Number 33 Military Hospital at Le Treport,’ said the ambulance driver to Anna and Ellie who had been volunteered while the other nurses went elsewhere by bus.

  ‘Where are we going now?’ Ellie asked. ‘And who’s Bessie?’

  ‘First to Boulogne; it’s under British occupation,’ the girl said in answer to Ellie’s question as she climbed out of the vehicle. ‘And Bessie’s me ambulance.’ She nodded to the military first aid vehicle with an expression that seemed to suggest Ellie had gone quite mad, for not knowing.

  ‘Righto,’ Anna said, eager to be on the move and find out all about France.

  ‘I’m Daisy, by the way.’ She was dressed in an ankle-length uniform skirt, three-quarter jacket nipped in at the waist and was wearing a khaki-coloured hat resembling a soft-topped muffin. Her bright blonde hair was tucked severely under it, but it was her eyes that Anna noticed most of all, not the colour but the lofty, uncompromising expression. It was obvious that this young woman was nobody’s fool.

  ‘Can you smell that heavenly lavender?’ Ellie inhaled leisurely, while Anna grabbed their belongings and threw them into the back of the motor vehicle.

  ‘All I can smell is diesel and horse shit,’ said Daisy. ‘Lavender seems to have evaded me.’ The ambulance driver shrugged, not quite knowing what to make of these two clueless arrivals. ‘Come on now.’

  ‘I don’t take kindly to being rushed,’ Ellie said, feeling tetchy, ‘not after waiting nearly two days for your arrival.’

  ‘Do you not?’ Daisy answered wryly. ‘That’s a shame because you are going to be rushed off your bloody feet soon enough.’ After Ellie and Anna settled themselves for a sedate journey through the French countryside, they watched the ambulance driver force the contrary gears with a gawky start, and manoeuvre the juddering vehicle, ‘I’m sure they fill this thing with bloody kangaroo juice.’

  ‘Is there any need for such language?’ Ellie asked, but the driver ignored her, saying instead,

  ‘Bessie takes a minute to warm up; she’ll soon get going again.’

  Then, Anna and Ellie were hanging on for dear life, as the revving ambulance catapulted into action, flinging them from one side of their seat to the other. Fortunately, it seemed most foot soldiers were well aware of the dangers of mad ambulance drivers and kept out of this one’s way.

  ‘You’ll soon get used to that,’ said the diminutive driver, ‘there’s no time to stand on ceremony out here.’

  ‘So, have you been here long?’ Anna was sure that she was on their side, no matter what her initial temperament dictated.

  ‘Too bloody long,’ she said. Her left hand was on the steering wheel while the right scratched her head for all it was worth, ‘Looks like one of the patients shared more than was good for them.’

  ‘In what way?’ Ellie asked while sliding right to the other side of the ambulance seat as the ambulance turned a corner.

  ‘Lice,’ Daisy said matter-of-factly, ‘they bring the little buggers in from the trenches.’

  Ellie shuddered and Anna stifled a laugh; lice were an everyday occurrence in Queen Street. ‘Ned brought some back with him on his last leave,’ Anna said, ‘it had been years since I last saw headlice.’

  ‘Oh, they’re much bigger than headlice,’ Daisy informed them, ‘and they don’t just wander through your head either.’

  ‘Where else can they wander?’ Ellie’s innocent eyes widened; most of the soldiers had been cleaned up somewhat by the time they got to Ashland Hall. Then, for the first time, Anna heard Daisy let out a laugh that was more common along Liverpool’s dock road.

  ‘You’ll soon see…’ Daisy howled with laughter. ‘Welcome to the Front.’

  Ellie was more than a little put out, at Daisy’s lack of reverence for her lofty station, but it did not take long to discover that Daisy had little respect for anybody, especially authority, when she gave a passing general a one-fingered salute when he was slow to get out of her way and almost crashed into the front of her ambulance.

  ‘Do you have to drive so fast?’ Ellie did not like being thrown about and found it difficult to speak over the noise of the engine. ‘I really do think you enjoy driving like a madwoman.’ She held on to her headdress and promptly slid to the floor. ‘We would like to be in one piece when we get to the hospital, you know.’

  Anna had tears of laughter running down her cheeks and tried many times to help Ellie up, but to no avail.

  ‘Maybe she’s safer on the floor,’ Daisy called, she doubted she was going to see eye to eye with Ellie. She had the measure of her all right. ‘Oh, by the way, now you come to mention it, we’re not going to a hospital.’

  ‘Not going to a hospital?’ Anna and Ellie chorused.

  ‘We should be so lucky as to have a real hospital anywhere near here.’

  ‘You’re worrying me now, Daisy.’

  Quietly, watching the countryside zip past, they travelled through the French landscape en route to Belgium at breakneck speed and sometime later Daisy told them, ‘We have to pick up soldiers from a field hospital in Boulogne.’

  ‘Is that not a real hospital?’ Anna asked, feeling confused as they rounded another corner. ‘There’s no sign of war here.’ They jolted and bumped along a stony excuse for a road. She and Ellie exchanged a quizzical look. It was certainly quiet as they travelled to their destination.

  ‘You’ll see when we get there,’ Daisy said mysteriously as the sky darkened, low with the promise of rain to come and the angry rumble of thunder. ‘Here she blows,’ Daisy muttered as a jagged fork of lightning lit up the leaden sky, which then split and let loose rods of torrential rain. The long journey seemed endless. Would they ever see terra-firmer again? Anna wondered.

  Daisy called over her shoulder: ‘You’ll soon get used to this,’ before coming to a screeching, sliding halt near a skeletal tree bearing a white flag with a red cross. This was where they were going?

  Anna had not known what to expect, but certainly not this.

  Daisy jumped out of the ambulance and beckoned for her and Ellie to follow.

  ‘We’ll get soaked,’ Ellie cried, but Anna was already halfway out of the vehicle and the rain on her face was a welcome respite. Shown to a tent, they picked up two wounded soldiers.

  ‘Sometimes we pick them up from the side of the road.’ Daisy informed them, ‘poor buggers left lying there, what thanks is that, hey?’ Anna gave an incredulous look to her companions and Daisy nodded in confirmation, ‘Come on, we’ll get these two back to the C.C.S. and then I’ll show you to your billet.’

  ‘C.C.S? Billet?’ Ellie asked.

  Anna had heard the soldiers back at Ashlan
d Hall talking like this so she knew all about casualty clearing stations and that a billet was the place where they would get their head down and sleep.

  ‘But don’t expect Buckin’ham Palace,’ Daisy said pointedly to Ellie, ‘because you won’t get it out here.’

  Stiff uniforms rustled round her, as nurses went efficiently about their business. A medic, wheeling an empty bath chair, stepped back to minimise his chance of permanent injury when Daisy, with green eyes blazing, swung into the yard of a shabby-looking hotel now used as a clearing station and proceeded to drag Anna’s heavy suitcase from the ambulance and across the newly scrubbed floor, cursing all the way.

  ‘Well,’ exclaimed the medic drily, ‘have you ever heard the likes?’

  On hearing the commotion, a serving hatch in the wall opened.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked a stern-looking nurse in a white apron emblazoned with a huge red cross, her hair covered in the same wimple-styled headdress as Ellie and Anna. She leant forward and looked disapprovingly at the baggage. ‘I would advise you to try and carry that thing,’ she said, glaring at it. ‘Sister will not be best pleased if you mark her clean floor.’ She sniffed and looked directly at Daisy, ‘This is not the kind of establishment that encourages riffraff to drag their belongings in off the street.’

  ‘Really?’ Daisy’s deadpan expression made Anna quietly giggle, but not within sight of the nurse. They were not stupid. Daisy smiled to Anna and Ellie. ‘You’ll get used to Sister Blake; her bark is far worse than her bite. Hello, everybody, this is Anna and Ellie,’ Daisy told the rest of the new nurses gathered in the foyer when Sister went about her business. ‘They have come to help us,’ Daisy laughed, ‘in the mistaken belief they will single-handedly win this war, and send all the good boys home to their mothers…’

  ‘We all thought that at one time, didn’t we, nurses,’ a Canadian nurse declared to nobody in particular.

  Sister returned, clapped her hands for silence and took in a long, pained stream of disinfected air.