The War Nurse

by Tracey Enerson Wood

  Being a gentleman, he slipped out of our little haystack and into his trousers without another touch or glance at me. “Your dress is still damp. I’ve got some trousers you can borrow in the meantime.”

  “No thanks. My dress will be fine.” I had worked myself into a sitting position and donned my blouse, which was neatly folded next to me. I peeled off my leggings, which had stuck to my now ulcered legs. No way did I want trousers touching them.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Fred stood above me, gawking at my exposed, gauze-wrapped shins.

  “That’s not a very professional reaction from a surgeon.” I tried to recover the hideous things with my blood-tainted leggings.

  “What the hell, Jules? Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “It’s a chronic condition I’ve had since childhood. I get flare-ups now and then.”

  “Let me take a look.” He removed the soiled-through roller bandage and examined my legs. “This is serious under these conditions. You need treatment, maybe even skin grafts.” He opened his first aid bag and took out antiseptic and rolls of gauze. “What caused it?”

  “No one has ever been able to figure that out, despite many hospitalizations.”

  “Well, what did your uncle Lewis say?”

  “He wasn’t consulted.” An old, bitter wound of a different sort was reawakened.

  Fred stopped rolling on the bandage. “How can that be? He was the top in his field of surgery, and weren’t you both in New York?”

  “It’s deep in the past, and I was but a child, so who knows? He was a very busy man, and it’s not like I didn’t receive care.”

  He finished bandaging my legs.

  “Thank you, Fred. And for saving me last night. You won’t tell anyone of this, I hope?”

  “Tell them about our night together or your legs?”

  I studied his face, trying to determine how he felt about the former. Was it, as he said, merely a clinical decision, like donating blood? But his face gave away nothing. If anything, it seemed he was slyly trying to determine how I felt about it as well.

  “Both, for sure.”

  “Your secrets are safe with me. As long as you promise you’ll let me know if your legs don’t heal.”

  “Then we have a deal. I guess it’s a heal deal.”

  “I’m holding you to it.” He slipped on his coat. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up for breakfast.” A streak of light entered when he opened the barn door. “Hey, I see a horse and buggy. I think Tony is back.”

  We finished dressing, made ourselves as presentable as we could, and headed over to the farmhouse. Tony had been busy, collecting firewood and other provisions from the surrounding vacated farms. He also brought back two tabby cats (alive) and two scrawny pheasants (not so alive).

  He emptied shotgun shells into a glass bowl. “Lucky shots. Two shells, two birds. Got seven shells left. And best of all, there’s a pig frozen solid down the road. If you help me get him into the truck, we eat like kings tonight.”

  “We’ll help, but I’m afraid we’ll need to head back to base after that,” Fred said.

  “Too bad. But we shall feast this morning, no? Julia, can you clean and dress the birds?” He pointed a knife at the limp pile of feathers, beaks, and claws.

  My eyes widened as I thought of how to gracefully decline the task. I hadn’t a clue what to do.

  Fred came to my rescue. “Ah, she’s a city girl, but I’ve got some knife skills.”

  The men had the birds cleaned and defeathered and into a baking pan in no time. I was relegated to chopping apples and root vegetables. Tony roasted it all in the wood-fired oven, creating a warmth and aroma in the kitchen that filled me with homesickness. One of the scrawny cats curled up in my lap, completing the picture of how things should be.

  When the birds were nearly done, Tony poured us all a glass of red wine, then tossed the rest of the bottle over the pan to deglaze it. My stomach rumbled, and I merely sipped at the wine, afraid of quickly getting tipsy on my empty stomach. Not to mention that wine with breakfast wasn’t my usual habit.

  This time, I ate as my appetite dictated. If either of the men noticed, they didn’t mention it; they just kept heaping more food onto my plate. With our bellies full and some spunk in our step, the three of us set out in the horse and buggy to dislodge the pig, then rescue the truck.

  The pig had already been claimed, leaving a long crater in the road, so we moved on to the truck. We found it just as we had left it, in an icy ditch. It took some cracking of ice, backfilling with sand under the wheels, and a lot of pushing by the men while I steered, but we raised it out of the ditch. Lucky for me, I had watched the throttle and clutch routine on the way up, as prior to this trip, I had never driven. The Tin Lizzie alternately stalled and bucked like a bronco in my far from expert hands, but we got her back on the road.

  We were quiet on the way back to Rouen; the softly rolling hills covered in snow were a lulling comfort. We passed a few small towns. It was obvious which ones had been bombed, with buildings shattered and craters in the earth. There were fresh cemeteries everywhere. In some, there were boxes—I assumed caskets—piled several high. Perhaps the ground had become too frozen to bury the dead.

  “No poppies now,” I said. “Do you think they grow here too?”

  Of course, Fred knew to what I was referring. Everyone had read and probably memorized the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae. McCrae was a Canadian physician who wrote the poem after he lost a dear friend in the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium.

  Fred recited the first stanza, just above a whisper. “‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place; and in the sky, the larks, still bravely singing, fly, scarce heard amid the guns below.’” He looked at me and patted my hand. “I imagine they do grow here.”

  “And I imagine I will never see a poppy without thinking of this war. This terrible war. It’s a hopeless, awful waste of life.” I stared at the bleak landscape. We were passing what appeared to have once been a forest. But now, the trees were burned and broken, the ground littered with dead branches poking up from the snow.

  “It is terrible. But the poem is saying to carry on. To have the strength and the courage to carry on, no matter what, because some things are more important than an individual’s life.” He slowed the truck as we came upon another, half-loaded with sugar beets, which looked like giant dirty radishes, passing by on the narrow roadway.

  In some ways, the world still looked normal. Farmers tended their fields. Babies were born. Old people died.

  “I know. That’s why I volunteered to come here. But witnessing the inhumanity of it, seeing what humans are capable of doing to one another…”

  “The world will right itself. The evil nature of a few will eventually be overcome by the goodness of the many.” He squeezed my hand. Something had changed. Although this felt natural now, he hadn’t done it on the drive up or any other time that I remembered. “It is not like you to lose faith. What is it?”

  “Oh, I’ve always questioned God, my choices. I worry if I’ve brought sixty-four innocent women to hell on earth. I worry for my brother who followed me over here.”

  He pulled back his hand as he needed to pull back the throttle while he shifted to low gear. A gust of wind blew a smattering of snow against the windshield. “And now, you feel differently?”

  “Same worries, same hell. But now I have someone I feel I can talk with about these things. I have to always put on a brave front to the others.”

  “You can always be forthright with me.”

  I thought about what a tremendous gift that was. “As you can be with me.”

  As the engine tut-tutted down the road, snow swirling cloudlike around us, I felt relaxed and warm inside the truck. Fred’s steady hand was on the wheel, and his comforting words wer
e in my heart.

  * * *

  We arrived back at base camp not a moment too soon. Casualties from battles outside Cambrai were pouring in as the Germans made a desperate push to save their supply lines.

  As I did my rounds, Margaret rushed up to me. “Matron, can you please come see a patient? Dr. Valentine wants to amputate, but the poor fellow is refusing.”

  The patient was in bed, surrounded by Dr. Valentine and two orderlies holding a stretcher.

  “Do I have a say here?” The patient looked at me. “Nurse, help me!”

  Dr. Valentine sighed. “Of course you have a say. You can agree to lose part of your leg and live, or be buried right across the street.” He pointed his thumb behind him.

  The soldier spoke with a unique accent that sounded like a combination of German and French, which I had learned was Belgian. His right leg was bandaged from above his knee down to his foot. Fresh blood from his shin had soaked through, and I detected the ominous, putrid odor of gangrene. Margaret waved us back so she could change the dressing. As she cut the soiled one away, I could see the angry red, partially sutured wound running from just below his knee to his ankle.

  “We’ve done all we can, lad. Your wound is deep, nearly to the bone, and we need to amputate. I can save your knee, so we can get you set up with a good prosthesis. Right, Matron?”

  Dr. Valentine passed the last of the convincing on to me. But I was not convinced myself. The soldier clearly did not want the amputation.

  “Can we try a few more days to save his leg?” I said.

  Dr. Valentine whirled to face me; this was clearly not the support he was expecting. But the anger in his face faded, and he gave a little nod. “Why no, we can’t. Gangrene has already set in, and as you can see, we haven’t quite controlled the bleeding. This is no light decision.”

  The patient looked from me to Dr. Valentine, weighing the matter. I knew I should say something in support of the doctor, but I just couldn’t. It seemed to me that the gangrene wasn’t that far along, and the bleeding indicated there was still good blood flow near the injury. I’d seen patients with worse wounds wait for days before they amputated and a few others who, given more time and a lot of care, were able to heal.

  “If I may offer a compromise? Can we delay the surgery by a few days, watching him closely, of course?” I asked.

  “Not my preferred thing to do. He’ll only get worse, and right now, the operating theater is open. Who knows what could happen in a few days’ time?” Dr. Valentine was getting louder and more insistent. “We could have trainloads of patients arrive, needing immediate surgery. He could be waiting in line until it’s too late.”

  “We can irrigate with Dakin’s around the clock. Take him outside and expose the leg to fresh air.”

  Dr. Valentine turned to the patient. “It’s freezing out there. Is that what you want?”

  “Yes, yes! I’ll do anything. Please give my leg a chance!”

  “Thank you, Miss Stimson.” The daggers in his eyes didn’t match Dr. Valentine’s stiff but polite dismissal of me.

  The other thing that happened while I was away was that a number of our own staff had taken ill. Two of my nurses had been sent to the Sick Sisters Hospital in Étaples with pneumonia, and my dear Ned, now a sergeant, had also come down with the lung infection.

  As if my nurses hadn’t already sacrificed enough, and were already in physical and emotional danger—now they must also face exposure to a mysterious illness. Stealthy and invisible, it could wipe out my staff in weeks if we weren’t careful.

  Pneumonia had become such a problem that I had campaigned to have one tent dedicated to patients and staff who suffered from it. Dr. Valentine had begrudgingly agreed to it, after I made it sound like his idea, of course.

  * * *

  The following day, I was heading to the new tent for the infectious respiratory patients when I saw Dr. Valentine wheeling a cart of supplies.

  “So we meet again. I think you’re sweet on me, Miss Stimson.”

  His cheerful demeanor surprised me, so I didn’t want to bring up our last encounter. I did manage a small chuckle, then turned to the chalkboard with the list of patients in the tent.

  “Looking for Ned? He’s confined to barracks.” He pointed to his cart. “We’ve got to do a better job with isolation. I don’t want to save a man’s leg just to have him die of pneumonia.”

  Although pleased with his turnabout to my position, I wasn’t about to show it. “Yes, I’d like to check on Ned. We go back to St. Louis days.”

  “Me too. A fine young lad.”

  The cart was laden with face masks, an oxygen tank, and folded cloth dividers we sometimes hung between cots for a modicum of privacy and germ containment.

  “Can I help you with that?”

  “No, I’m just setting them here for now. This whole tent will become a separate ward.”

  I waited, expecting some kind of barb aimed my way. But there was none, which only made me suspicious.

  * * *

  I went to the enlisted barracks where Ned had been sent to rest. His dark blond hair was a frightful mess, and his crooked teeth only added to a comical look. My big sister instinct kicked in, and I had to restrain myself from fixing him up. He seemed chipper enough in between bouts of coughing, joking with me about his buddy Benjamin. He told me how his friend sometimes wandered over to the wrong side of the road while driving.

  “Benjamin says that Napoleon got it wrong, and it’s France that drives on the wrong side. You hold your sword in your right hand, so it’s better to be on the left side of the road to protect yourself. And you get on a horse on the left side. Who wants to mount a horse in the middle of the road?” Ned laughed. “Swords and horses. You got to love those crazy Brits.”

  I laughed with him, then shared my ditch driving escapade. “I’m just happy to keep all four wheels on the road, so either side will do.” I stayed only a short time, and as he had no requests, I hurried back to the wards.

  * * *

  Very early the next morning, there was a quiet rap on the door to my private rooms. Thinking it was one of my nurses with something unusual to report at change of shift, I opened the door while trying to pin on my new slouchy and uncooperative cap. But it wasn’t a nurse. It was Dr. Valentine, looking especially disheveled.

  “Dr. Valentine! You look like you haven’t had a wink of sleep. Come in.”

  He stayed in the doorway, still dark at this early hour. “Bad news, I’m afraid.”

  My mind went immediately to Phil. I hadn’t taken the time to see him since I returned from the CCS. “Is my brother all right?”

  “Your brother? I…no…he’s fine.” Dr. Valentine shook his head. “It’s Ned.”

  I waved him into my sitting room, and he plopped down into a chair. He covered his face with his hands.

  “Ned? He seemed fine last night. What’s happened?”

  When he removed his hands, I could see his face was raw with despair. “My fault probably. I just didn’t see it. Or hear it, more likely. How could a young buck like that have lungs fill up so fast?” He looked up at me, still standing with my nurse cap in my hand. “I’m sorry, Miss Stimson. We’ve lost him.”

  Grief and fury rose in me, but seeing his absolute devastation, I spoke in an even, measured tone. “When? And why didn’t someone come get me?”

  “It all happened very quickly in the middle of the night. Your night shift leader—Nora, I think—hauled me out of bed. But it was too late.” He rubbed his fist into his other hand. “Even so, I don’t think there was anything we could have done. I suspect it’s a beast we haven’t seen before, an influenza. Unpredictable and sometimes deadly, even for the most strapping of young men.”

  I was torn between consoling him and screaming into the watery, pitiful light of an early winter dawn. Now we had a new battle
to fight. “Influenza? I thought he had regular pneumonia.”

  “That’s what I suspect. There’ve been reports of a new influenza. Seems like a bad cold, then develops rapidly, especially in young adults. It’s the only thing I can think of that would take a healthy young man so quickly.” Gone was the insufferable, bombastic surgeon. He looked at me with true sorrow in his eyes. “We thought we’d let you have another couple of hours of peaceful sleep. But I wanted to tell you myself.”

  “Oh, our sweet Ned.” I set aside my nurse’s cap and sat down. I was angry, but no longer at the doctor. He vexed me, for sure, but maybe that just made me try harder.

  He took a folded piece of paper out of the chest pocket of his white coat. “I was going to report your insubordination to the medical committee.” He tore the paper and tossed the shreds, then tapped his fingers on the table in between us. It seemed the closest he could come to a hug, which I suspect we both badly needed.

  * * *

  This was the first loss of one of our own. Not only Dr. Valentine and I but the rest of the staff took it very hard. An elaborate funeral was planned at the nearby cemetery and memorial chapel. The nurses, all fifty who could get away, put on their dark-blue dress uniforms, and the rest of the staff who were able wore their finest as well. It was just under a mile from our hospital to the cemetery, and it was lined nearly the whole way with mourners. They had hired a French hearse, and it was covered with wreathes of pine and laurel.

  The cemetery was an expansion of one that had served the community for hundreds of years. There were large stone monuments, mostly laid horizontally and darkened by the ages, and elaborate walk-in crypts for the wealthier families. There were rows and rows of new marble gravestones for the fallen from many countries. They were mostly British, but I spied a few Australians, New Zealanders, and even Africans. As Ned was the first American, he was laid to rest in a newly prepared area. It was disconcerting, to say the least, to see all the empty space they had set aside for future casualties.

  A number of local French villagers came by to witness the ceremony. As there were burials nearly every day when it was warm enough from all fourteen hospitals in the area, I wondered if the villagers came every day. But from my experience, those burials were quick and efficient, with few mourners present, if any.