Secrets of the Frontline Nurses

by Holly Green

  The boy looked uneasily at the fourth man. ‘What’s up with him? He doesn’t say much, does he?’

  ‘Old Slobodan? Take no notice of him. He’s had a bad time. When he got here he hardly knew his own name.’ Milan turned his head away and made a gesture of screwing his finger into his temple. ‘Shell-shock, if you ask me.’

  There was a brief silence, then the old man said, ‘You’ve only been in three months? Blimey, you didn’t last long, did you? Where did they get you?’

  ‘In the foothills of the Sar. I volunteered for forward reconnaissance. We walked straight into a Bulgarian patrol.’

  Milan leaned forward quickly. ‘The Sar? What in God’s name were you doing there?’

  ‘General Miscic’s orders. It’s the start of a new campaign.’

  ‘In the Sar mountains? Miscic must have gone mad! The Bulgars have held those peaks since they invaded. An assault from there would be suicide. There’s only one way to Skopje and then on to Belgrade and that’s along the Vardar valley.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘I heard the British and the Greeks were preparing to attack that way.’

  ‘That’s typical!’ The old man snarled. ‘We’ve been shafted again. The Brits and the Greeks are going to stroll up the Vardar and take all the glory while our men kill themselves trying to dislodge the Bulgars from Mount Veternik.’

  ‘Maybe it’s just a diversion,’ Milan said. ‘A ploy to get the Bulgars to move troops from the Vardar to the Sar.’

  ‘Let’s hope so!’ the old man said. ‘No one in his right mind could really expect to break through on that front.’

  ‘Unless …’ Slobodan’s word was hardly more than a murmur and the others took no notice.

  The old man smiled for the first time. ‘It’s true then! At last! There is a new campaign.’

  ‘Oh yes. And this time nothing is going to stop us. Men were saying we’d be back in Belgrade by Christmas.’

  ‘God! I’d like to be there to see that!’ Milan muttered. ‘There must be a way out of this place. Once our men are in Skopje we might be able to link up with them. What do you think, Jorge?’

  The old man shook his head. ‘I’ve survived this long. I want to see my home again. I’m not taking any risks at this stage.’

  They were silent for a time. At length the boy said, ‘What happened to her – the English lady?’

  Milan gave him a sardonic look. ‘You didn’t get the full story from your blabbermouthed friends then?’

  ‘No, I suppose not. Why? What happened?’

  Milan leaned closer. ‘OK. Now what you are about to hear is from the horse’s mouth, not just gossip.’ Cos I was there, see? I was in Lavci when it happened.’

  ‘When what happened?’

  ‘You’re right about the colonel getting a child on her. That night, the night he died, she came to Lavci. She was nursing in the hospital at Bitola and when she heard he’d been wounded she came straight there. Never mind it was winter, and the middle of a battle zone and she was pretty far gone with the child. She thought he needed her and she came. That’s the sort of woman she was.’ Course, she didn’t know it was no good, that he’d been left dead on the battlefield. When she heard, she went into labour with the shock of it.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘Well, what do you expect? No one in Bitola has been getting enough to eat, her included. What with that and the shock, she didn’t stand a chance, poor lady.’

  ‘So she died?’

  ‘And the child with her,’ Jorge said grimly. He crossed himself. ‘God rest her soul – and the kid’s, whatever it was.’

  Milan turned to him. ‘No! You’re wrong there, Jorge. You weren’t around at the end. You’d gone off to try and bring the colonel’s body back. The kid survived. I know, because the doc had us out scouring the village for a woman who’d recently had a child, to be a wet nurse for it.’

  ‘Did they find anyone?’

  ‘Yes. I saw her being taken into the house where the colonel had set up his HQ. I asked one of the locals who she was. What was the name now?’ He wrinkled his brow. ‘Pop-something. Popovic, that’s it.’

  He stopped speaking abruptly, at a sudden movement from Slobodan. For a moment it looked as if he might launch himself at one of them again, then he sank back and resumed his former position. But his eyes were no longer vacant.

  ‘I wonder where the kid is now,’ the boy mused.

  ‘God alone knows,’ Milan said. ‘We had to pull out of Lavci the next day and the Bulgars moved back in. Last I saw the place was being shelled to blazes. The family may have survived, but the chances are pretty slim.’

  ‘Pity, that,’ Jorge said. ‘Sad to think the colonel left no one to carry on his name.’

  ‘Come to think of it, it’s not just a name, is it?’ Milan’s tone was suddenly more animated. ‘He was an aristocrat – Count Alexander Malkovic. There must be an estate as well as a title. And that kid is the only heir.’

  ‘Not a legitimate heir,’ the boy objected. ‘I mean, when all’s said and done, he and this English lady weren’t married, were they?’

  ‘No, they weren’t,’ Jorge agreed. ‘The colonel had a wife, a Serbian lady, but I don’t think there were any children. I seem to remember hearing that he sent her off to Athens for safety when the war started and he wouldn’t have had a chance to see her since. But I can’t believe she’d be prepared to recognise his bastard as a legitimate heir.’

  ‘Why not?’ Milan pursued. ‘If they want to keep the estate in the family, this kid is their only chance. I reckon there are probably men out searching for him – or her – right now.’

  ‘Well, I don’t give much for their chances of finding him,’ Jorge said with a shrug.

  ‘Maybe not,’ his friend agreed. ‘They wouldn’t know where to start. How many people were around when it happened? Only the men of our company, and the locals of course, and most of them are probably dead. But for someone who knew who to look for …’

  Jorge gave a brief laugh. ‘Milan, you’re a dreamer! You’re a POW, remember? And even if you weren’t …’

  ‘Just imagine, though,’ Milan said. ‘I reckon anyone who could find that kid and hand it over to the colonel’s family would be made for life. It’s got to be worth a nice little pension, maybe a bit of land on the estate, or a job with the family … And if the war is nearly over, we won’t be POWs for much longer.’

  A bugle sounded on the far side of the camp. Jorge hauled himself to his feet. ‘Come on, that’s dinner. Let’s get to the cookhouse while there’s still something left to eat.’

  The others rose and followed him, the man they called Slobodan a short distance behind. None of them looked back to see that the eyes that peered out from the tangle of hair now glittered with purpose.

  ‘Mon dieu! It’s not possible!’ Pierre Leseaux craned his neck to gaze up at the towering rampart of mountains that stretched north and south in front of him. Precipitous slopes gave way to sheer cliffs and above all floated the snowy peaks, some of them 8,000 feet above sea level.

  Standing beside him, Leo shivered involuntarily, although where they were in the foothills the September sun was still warm. The thought of anyone attempting to scale those crags, even unopposed, made her stomach churn.

  ‘And the Bulgars are entrenched up there?’ she asked.

  The young lieutenant acting as their guide nodded soberly. ‘Their front line runs along the crest. The spotter planes have brought back photographs of the blockhouses they’ve built. We are relying on our artillery to smash them before we advance.’

  ‘Pouffe!’ Lesseaux gave vent to a French expression of disbelief. ‘You will never get artillery up there.’

  The lieutenant grinned for the first time. ‘You think not? Already we have 155mm and 105mm guns halfway up. When we get them to the top they will dominate the Bulgarian positions.’

  ‘Halfway up?’ Leseaux scanned the mountainside. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Exact
ly! Nor can the enemy planes, we hope. The guns are moved at night and every day they are camouflaged. When they finally open up it will take the Bulgars completely by surprise.’

  ‘At night!’ Leo said. ‘But how?’

  ‘They are hauled up by tractors and cranes.’

  Lesseaux shook his head. ‘I would never have believed it possible.’

  ‘No,’ the young man agreed soberly. ‘Nor would I. But General Miscic saw that it could be done and he convinced General d’Espery – and the miracle is happening. But it is the men who are making it happen. They are working like slaves and nothing is allowed to stand in their way.’ He smiled. ‘We are going home, you see.’

  ‘But surely,’ Leseaux said, ‘this is just a diversionary attack. The real advance will be along the Vardar valley.’

  ‘That is what the Bulgars will expect,’ the lieutenant agreed. ‘We are going to show them different.’

  The Serbs, with their French allies, had moved forward from Bitola over the summer and Pierre Leseaux and his field hospital had followed. Leo had taken up her old duties as a nurse, but it was understood between them that at every new village or farm she would be free to pursue her quest for information. She had knocked on doors and stopped women in the street or old men working in the fields with the same questions. ‘Have any refugees passed through here?’ ‘Do you know anyone called Popovic?’ It was not an uncommon name and more than once she had arrived at a cottage with her heart beating fast and her stomach quivering with anticipation, only to be met with blank incomprehension. Every time she saw a woman with a little girl of the right age she had to quell the impulse to rush up to her and demand to know if the child was her own or was left with her by a stranger.

  As the army moved west towards the mountains she became increasingly frustrated. She had begged to be allowed to rejoin Leseaux because he understood her situation and had proved a good friend, but now she began to think that she should instead have applied to the British Red Cross who were with the British contingent in the Vardar area. If the Popovic family had survived and fled north it was almost certain that they would have taken that route. The likelihood of finding them here in these inhospitable mountains was remote in the extreme. However, loyalty to Leseaux and her colleagues prevented her from leaving and she could only hope that when the breakthrough finally came, if it ever did, she would be able to follow in the wake of the victorious forces.

  The field hospital had been set up in a collection of tents in a steep sided valley. As yet, they had few casualties to deal with, but many of the beds were already occupied. There were still cases of malaria but the main enemy now was the Spanish flu, which had infected their ranks just as it had swept across most of Europe. It was the very disease that had killed Tom and nursing the victims was a constant reminder to Leo of her loss.

  One evening she persuaded the lieutenant to take her to see the guns being moved up the mountainside. They rode up to the head of the valley and then followed a rough track that zig-zagged higher and higher up the slopes of the mountain.

  ‘This was just a goat track a couple of months ago,’ her guide told her. ‘Now you see what has been achieved.’

  Trees had been felled to widen the path and their trunks used to bridge streams and gullies. The surface of the ground was already worn into deep ruts by the passing of heavy vehicles and they overtook a steady stream of mules and men of foot, carrying supplies and equipment. As they climbed further Leo became aware of the sound of engines and shouted orders and a low, rhythmic murmur that resolved itself as they got closer into the sound of men’s voices united in effort. At length, the track opened out onto a narrow plateau at the foot of a sheer cliff and to a scene that reminded Leo of a canvas by Breugel. In the light of naphtha flares, teams of men hauled on ropes that disappeared into the darkness of the night sky. Craning her neck, she could just make out the shapes of huge timber derricks perched on the edge of the cliff and halfway up a field gun swayed and jerked as the men hauled. At the foot of the cliff, two more guns waited to be lifted in their turn.

  Leo turned to her companion. ‘It’s incredible! But is that the top? Where do they go from there?’

  ‘It’s very far from the top,’ he said. ‘Beyond the plateau up there there is another track which has been blasted into the side of the mountain. The guns are hauled up by tractors and there are several more places where they have to be lifted like this. But the work is nearly finished. These are the last few guns. In a day or two we shall be ready to launch the attack.’

  He was correct in his estimate, but when the last gun was in place, days passed while the whole army waited tensely for the order.

  ‘What are the generals waiting for?’ was the question on everyone’s lips but no one knew the answer. Somewhere, higher up the chain of command that stretched back to Paris, there was hesitation or uncertainty. Then, on September 14th, Leo was woken by the roar of gunfire, which echoed and ricocheted around the mountains. All day the barrage continued, deafening in its intensity. Unit after unit of infantry marched out of camp, heading up the narrow valleys towards the crest of the ridge they called Dobro Polje and Leo and her colleagues prepared for the inevitable casualties. At nightfall the guns fell silent but before dawn they heard new sounds from above. This time it was the crackle of small arms fire. Wounded began to trickle back, but not in the numbers they had anticipated, and they told of a steady advance against less determined opposition than expected. Then, in the afternoon, a messenger arrived in the camp to announce triumphantly that the Serbs had taken Mount Veternik. By nightfall, Mount Sokol had also been conquered. The Serbian and French forces now dominated the Bulgarian front line.

  From that moment on, the Serbian advance was unstoppable. All night they pushed forward, the Bulgarian defence crumbling before them. By the following day they had taken the Kozyak Ridge, six miles further north. Here they encountered more determined resistance from a German battalion, which had been rushed forward to bolster the Bulgarian lines, but nothing was going to stand in the way of the Serbian troops now.

  For three days they advanced without pausing to rest or eat, carrying nothing with them except ammunition. The Bulgarians, starved of supplies and demoralised by rumours of riots and dissension at home, took to their heels. On the September 21st, British spotter planes reported seeing the mountain defile west of Robrovo jammed with retreating Bulgarians. By September 26th the road to Skopje was wide open, though the town itself remained in enemy hands, and beyond that lay the main route to Belgrade.

  Pierre Leseaux’s field hospital followed the advancing troops. In Tetovo, where they took over the local hospital, Leo resumed her perpetual search. She began at the town hall where, at first, she was met with the usual blank faces and shaken heads. In the chaos of war floods of displaced people had swept back and forth around the country and local officials had long ago given up any attempt to keep records. Eventually, however, the mayor reluctantly admitted that a camp had been set up for refugees a mile or two outside the town. Leo rode out immediately but with little hope that her enquiries would bear fruit. When she reached the place, she almost found herself hoping that the Popvices had not come here. It was a bleak cluster of makeshift hovels, constructed out of tree branches and roughly thatched with bracken. There had been rain recently, and the paths between them had been churned into mud and there was, as far as Leo could see, no attempt at proper sanitation.

  She tethered her horse and began her eternal repetition of the same questions. Most of the occupants of the camp were women, many with young children. The only men were those who were too old for military service. Sometimes she was greeted with sympathetic interest, more often with suspicion, occasionally with a silent shrug and averted faces. Then a woman crouching over a small fire said, ‘Popovic? A family with a baby girl? There was a woman I met a while back when I went down to the stream to fetch water. She had a little mite with her. I remember because the child had red hair – well, not red exactly.
More the colour of yours. I think she said her name was Popovic.’

  ‘Where?’ Leo gasped the word. ‘Do you know where I can find them?

  ‘I’m not sure. Not just round here, anyway. I know most of the people in this part of the camp. I suppose she must have come from over the other side somewhere. But it was sometime ago. A month, maybe. They may have moved on by now.’

  Breathlessly Leo thanked her and stumbled away through the mud towards the far side of the camp. But here she met with no greater success than before. No one seemed to remember a family with a red-haired child, or if they did, they thought it better to pretend ignorance. Then a young woman sitting in front of a tepee of branches suckling a baby called her over.

  ‘You’re looking for the Popovic family?’

  ‘Yes! Do you know them?’

  ‘They were living there,’ she indicated the collapsed remains of a hut. ‘But they moved on some time ago – must be a month or more.’

  ‘Do you know where they went?’

  ‘The father had a cousin in Skopje, I think. They were trying to get there.’

  ‘In Skopje?’ Leo struggled to order her thoughts. At last, in this most unexpected place, she had found a definite lead. But if the Popvices were in Skopje, how could she hope to trace them, in a city that size? At least it was confirmation that they had survived until a month ago, and that her daughter was still alive – if indeed this child was her daughter. ‘And they had a little girl with them – a child with hair the same colour as mine?’

  The woman regarded her curiously. ‘Yes, now you come to mention it. Why are you looking for them?’

  Leo squatted on the ground beside her, suddenly overcome. ‘If it is the family I am looking for, then the child is mine. She was given to them to care for because I was too ill to look after her myself, and I’ve been searching for her ever since.’

  The tears which she had been suppressing for many long days filled her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks and the other woman reached out and laid a hand on her arm. ‘These are terrible times. We all know what it is like to lose a child. My eldest son was killed when a shell hit our home. And now this little one is sick and I do not know what to do for him.’