by L E Pembroke
*
I arrive on the outskirts of a large town fearful that the authorities I plan to approach will consider me a mad man. I am exhausted, unshaven and barely able to breathe normally because of suppressed excitement. The stark contrast, between the silent primitive life I led in Belgium and this bustling garrison town almost overwhelms me. A party of khaki-clad soldiers marches towards me. I approach them and grab at the arm of the subaltern – the one star on the man’s epaulettes reveal his officer status to me, another memory breakthrough. In my eagerness to be claimed by someone I ignore it. I try to draw myself up and with my left arm propping up my still partially paralysed right arm, I attempt some semblance of a salute.
The fellow laughs good-humouredly. ‘What’s the matter, old chap?’ His sergeant, in a gruff voice (is that a Yorkshire accent?) bawls, ‘Look, boys, the gentleman wants to say thank ‘ee.’ They grin, then continue without giving me a backward glance.
I am mortified and utterly dejected that my own countrymen have dismissed me so heedlessly. I decide on a new approach. I must report to a regimental medical officer at a unit headquarters. The thought process, using military terminology, occurs naturally, but in my state of near exhaustion and disappointment I fail to realise at the time that another part of my memory has clicked in.
I read the sign ‘Calais’. The word means nothing to me, but I recognise a garrison town when I see one. It takes an hour of searching before I come across the type of building I seek – a British military hospital. I pass through the foyer and limp down a passage with offices on either side. My eyes light on the door sign, ‘Superintendent’, and I push the door open. In front of me stands an immaculately dressed officer wearing on his collar the gorget patches of the Medical Corps. I recognise them. The man looks stunned at the vision I present. I will my arm to rise in salute, but the physical and emotional effort is too great. I feel myself falling to the floor.
*
So now I am a patient in this hospital. At one of the many examinations that followed, a doctor says to me, ‘I wonder how many others are out there, how many lost souls who will never find their way back home?’
And I wonder, every hour of every day, whether I will ever find my way back to perhaps a wife, back to my family. Is it my destiny to return to my country but never to my home?
CHAPTER 19
In France they taught me well how to communicate by signing. Thank God for sign language; to be able to communicate my thoughts and fears gives meaning to my life. I never stop asking questions through signing. I find out about the World War. I learn about battles in which I might have served. My frustration deepens. What about my personal life, my name, my former life, my family? Nothing but a void; I am still a lost soul. Single, married or engaged; officer, NCO or Other Rank – I have no idea. They tell me millions are dead; no chance of discovering who I am through War Office records.
After several weeks, they send me back to England. They tell me this hospital is in London. It is ‘the Royal’ in Chelsea; it overlooks the river. I begin a regimen of exercise, massage and lessons in the mechanics of speech, and I continue to perfect my skills at signing. They explain that I am suffering with aphasia: inability to put into words, or even write the words, I understand so well. They believe the cause is the shrapnel that is lodged in the left side of my brain. They don’t fancy trying to remove it.
‘All we can do is hope. We don’t know much about the brain; sometimes it heals itself completely,’ doctors say. ‘Be positive. It’s happened before.’
Again and again they try using names to stimulate my memory. ‘Peter, Harold, Jack, Ernest, James, Henry. William.’ I don’t react to any of them. So they end up calling me ‘John Smith’. It is the same with place names; I have no memory of Salisbury, Hereford, Essex, Hampshire and so on and so on.
Day after day they interview me – physicians, surgeons, psychologists. They ask questions, personal questions as well as medical questions. They muse. ‘So many killed in Flanders or presumed killed; unbelievable that such a disaster has happened.’
They look for clues, but the one or two glimpses that penetrated my consciousness during my time in Belgium are of little use. I am grateful for their patience, although I am becoming depressed. I lose my former exultation and optimism.
I communicate by signing, and every day I look forward to my lessons. I am less pleased with my lessons in the mechanics of speech. They teach me to recognise vibrations in my throat, to shape my mouth a certain way, to position my tongue so that my sounds can be recognised. But my sounds remain ugly, my voice lacks modulation. There are no vocal clues to my former social class. I would rather not be heard; I am embarrassed by the sounds I make. Why can’t I just sign for the remainder of my life?
They ask me for details of my brief glimpses into my past, and they wonder what triggered them.
‘Smells,’ I sign. ‘The stench in the barn adjacent to the house that housed the cow, ox and goat was familiar to me; that noxious, faecal animal smell that I became aware of as soon as she opened the door each morning. I had smelt something similar as a child.’
Telling the circumstances of that brief and transient memory triggers a scene that I describe to them. ‘Animal carcasses covered with flies hanging in front of small hessian-walled dens or dark holes in a wall. There is a small boy, grasped firmly by the hand; he turns his head away from the stinking butchered meat and buries his nose into the body of a lady who wears bright cloth wrapped around her. He savours her fragrance.’
Every word I sign and every hesitation they record. ‘This case history is vital,’ they say. ‘Even the most insignificant-seeming fragment, when put together with memories you might have in the future, may reveal all that has been lost. And, if the brain heals itself – and we have known it to happen – it is also possible, even likely, that you will forget your experience in Belgium. When a new door opens, the other door may close.’
At the time when I discuss the vision of the putrefying meat there is a second doctor sitting in the room. He hasn’t had a lot to say until, in a quiet and considered way, he speculates. ‘Sounds to me as if you lived out East as a child. My family lived in India, and I can still see and smell the stink of the bazaar.’
‘India!’ I look up, awakened for a second. ‘Subahdar Chitkara – he wears a turban.’
‘Well done, old man. Now we’re getting somewhere, and it sounds as if your father served in India.’
There are very few days, in terms of memory, with positive results; although I mention to my interlocutors a feeling of perturbation that I have suffered with since coming to the Royal. ‘I am disturbed by the volunteer nurses,’ I sign one day.
‘Most of us are disturbed by the volunteer nurses,’ the doctor responds. ‘Jolly attractive bunch.’
‘No, no, that’s not what I mean. There’s something about their appearance that strikes a chord.’
‘They’re FANYs. They served throughout the war; you must have bumped into countless FANYs.’
‘Yes, I imagine so, but why do they make me agitated?’
After several months they send me to a hospital in Edinburgh – a convalescent hospital that specialises in neurological disorders.
*
I stretched. I opened my eyes and looked at the ornate plaster ceiling. I didn’t know where I was. I sat up in bed, tried to fling the bedclothes off my body. My right arm didn’t work – why? I slid out of bed, stumbled across the room to the bay window. Something wrong with my leg, not walking properly. I gazed out at a totally unfamiliar landscape. Orderly, park-like gardens, an abundance of trees, beech, birch, elms and a stand of oak. Healthy trees, not leafless trunks blackened by explosives. Where was I? I had no idea. What had happened? I went back to bed, closed my eyes and tried to remember.
I left the battalion on a motorbike at about 1000 hours – had to attend an Orders Group. Soon after that I was going on leave, and within weeks Madeleine and I would be married. So what was this
place, and how did I get here? Why couldn’t I remember? Again, I got out of bed. I limped across the room, opened the door and found myself in a long, wide corridor. A nursing sister briskly approached me. ‘Can I help you, John?’
John – she’s mistaken. My name is Charles, Charles Phillips. I opened my mouth to explain that she’d made an error, but the sounds I emitted startled me. I could feel myself slip into a state of panic. I grabbed her arm and held on like a small child alone lost in a totally strange world.
She took a firm hold of me and led me back to the bedroom. Calmly she said, ‘Wait there, John, I’ll call the doctor.’
She pushed me into the easy chair by the window. I looked out again at the gardens. The leaves of dozens of trees had almost completed their colour change – ruby red, scarlet, orange and brown. They dangled from limbs and covered the lush grass.
The doctor arrived. He must have raced up the stairs. Not fit, that chap, puffing like a man who has just completed a mile race. He pulled up a chair adjacent to me. ‘Sister is getting someone to have a conversation with you. Meanwhile, are you able to remember who you are?’
I tried again. I opened my mouth to say the words that were tumbling around in my brain desperately trying to get out. I was horrified by the nasality of my tone and the thick, unnatural and ugly sound I was emitting. I stopped trying, nodded my head in reply to his question and waited on tenterhooks for the arrival of the chap with whom, it seems, I had been having my signing conversations.
He came bursting into the room a few moments later. ‘What do you remember? he asked.
I signed. ‘Everything. I took the motor bike to attend an Orders Group in Ypres. Seventeenth April, 1917, only two days before my posting back home (getting married in May). A shell burst. I remember being propelled by its force; I thought I’d bought it. Now, I see from the landscape it must be late autumn, and I realise I must have been wounded and shipped home.’ I focused my attention on the doctor again and signed. ‘Where am I, Colonel? And what’s been happening during these last six months? Is my fiancée about? Poor Madeleine, having to postpone the wedding.’
‘What’s your name and regiment, son?’
I turned back to my interpreter. ‘Phillips, sir, Captain Charles Phillips, 1st Royal Surreys.’ I signed.
‘Excellent.’ Then the doctor went on to drop his bombshell. ‘Yes, Charles, it is late autumn, and you have been very sick but not in the way you probably think. You sustained, among other things, serious head injuries. You lost your memory, old man. You lost your memory three and a half years ago. But now we know who you are, you will soon be able to pick up the threads and get on with your life.’
Part 5
Returning Home, 1919–21
CHAPTER 20
ALISTAIR
There are times when we need to be alone, and for me, the moment I left the English shore was one of them. The ship pulled away from its berth, the watery blue sky began to darken and wind ruffled the sea’s surface. I leant on the ship’s rail – hardly anyone about – and looked back on the land in which I had supposed I would live out my days with Eleanor.
It was almost three years to the day since her death. I knew it was time to look forward, create a new life and make decisions about my future. But first a final farewell. Very few people emerge from a war unscathed, and despite the fact that my war had been comparatively soft, I had been bruised by the experience of Gallipoli and, of course, the untimely death of my wife.
I caught sight of a figure just a few yards from me, a nursing sister, also leaning on the railings taking a final look at Southampton and the British Isles as we steamed passed the Needles. A confirmatory glance in her direction – it was Genevieve. We had seen quite a bit of one another following her return from France. Our friendship had helped me through my difficult time, and I think I had helped her through hers. But I didn’t want her to intrude at this moment of valediction. I turned slightly in the other direction to better vivify the few short moments of my marriage.
When I was done, I turned back to greet my friend. She had gone. I should have known; Genevieve would sense my need for privacy.
Back to the present, I became distinctly and unpleasantly aware of the ship’s motion. I am not a good sailor. The vessel had begun rolling and pitching in the howling wind. With some urgency, I dashed across the deck. I had a pressing need to reach the nearest bathroom.
Three days later, I left my cabin just as our ship turned east into the benign Mediterranean Sea. Along with so many other chaps, I’d been wallowing in my bunk, eating nothing and feeling like death.
‘Take a banana, sir. Very good for settling the stomach,’ my steward said. I was unable to comply and, after those miserable few days, at least had the satisfaction of looking in the mirror and realising that I looked far trimmer than I had done for years.
With dozens of other fellows who had been confined to their cabins, I climbed the steps to the deck below the bridge. We were like noisy cicadas emerging from the black depths for our climactic moments in radiant sun. It promised to be a perfect day; the early morning sun, white and shimmering, had risen to a point just above the line of horizon. The sea was placid; its inky colour fast diminishing into patches of deep and sapphire blue. I leant on the deck rail and saw the stark and forbidding outline of Gibraltar receding, the wake of our vessel a white trail of froth. The air was still, yet bracing.
Genevieve was on deck, having just come off night duty. She looked hale and hearty. ‘I don’t suffer with sea-sickness,’ she said, I thought rather smugly. ‘How are you feeling, Alistair? I have to say you’re looking rather trim.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I retorted. ‘Last meal I had was in a pub in Southampton.’
She then told me that the sick bay was full and suggested that I get on with breakfast because she thought I’d be doing a cholecystectomy before the morning was out. No rest for the wicked. I said I’d see her in the bar at 1800 hours.
The thing I admired most about Genevieve was the way she had picked herself up after the trauma of being attacked in France. And not only that; she had also revealed to me that there was a man, an Australian soldier in whom she’d been greatly interested, although she didn’t know him very well. Sadly, he was killed soon after their last meeting during the latter part of 1917.
Despite her loss, she soon became pragmatic as I, and hundreds of thousands of others, had learnt to be – life must go on. However, she looked rueful when I asked if she planned to return to the hospital. She said that she’d made no plans and didn’t want to think about the future just yet.
I also was in a quandary about my future. No immediate problem, mind you, but a general surgeon can’t expect to go on forever. One has to be at the peak of fitness to undertake long and difficult surgery. I was close to fifty years, having a spot of bother with my eyes and finding some difficulty standing for hours in theatres maintaining the intense concentration necessary. Nevertheless, I also wasn’t going to spoil my voyage home by worrying about the future. This long journey by sea was the perfect opportunity to put aside our problems and enjoy a few weeks in a world divorced from reality.
There were about four hundred officers and men on our ship and about a dozen sisters and nurses who, like the doctors, were on duty throughout. On the whole, the work wasn’t too bad – mostly bronchial problems caused by gas and the usual run of minor illnesses.
We had plenty of time for relaxation, and an army travelling home from a war knows how to relax. Gala dinners, gambling nights – vingt-et-un, which nearly everyone learnt in France, superseded two-up as favourite with the troops. Concerts were popular. I never ceased to be amazed at the enthusiasm and merriment on board our ship as soldiers, who less than a year before had endured some of the fiercest battles of the war during the final German spring offensive, were now devoting their skills and imagination to entertaining their mates.
I imagine the nurses on board were having a convivial time. None were unattrac
tive, and most were younger than thirty. I noticed many an eye being cast their way.
Genevieve and I enjoyed a very satisfactory relationship during most of the journey. We always sought one another’s company when off duty. For hours, we sat in companionable silence stretched out side by side on deck lounges and reading our books. There was mutual excitement when we cleaned up on the roulette wheel and giggling over a particularly apt impersonation of a senior officer during some of our frequent concerts.
I learnt a lot about Genevieve as we walked around the deck on those balmy evenings as the ship passed out of the Mediterranean, slid through the Suez Canal and glided into the Red Sea. By the time we were edging towards the Indian Ocean I found myself becoming increasingly attracted to her.
Previously, in many ways, Genevieve reminded me of my sister Clementine. Poor dead Clemmie was – in my youth – my closest friend. Our family lived in the country; both Clemmie and I went to the city to school, but when we came home on holidays we were inseparable mates. Then Clemmie died after falling off a horse – probably one of the reasons I later studied medicine.
During the years 1917–19 when I went out with Genevieve I treated her in the way I would have treated my sister. Still recovering from the loss of my wife, it was comforting to have a close female friend to whom I could confide some of my anguish. And I believe it was a comfort to Genevieve during that time soon after she’d been attacked and when she first heard of the death of the man she thought she might have loved.
The trouble is that relationships are never static. Aware of my growing ardour, I was also fairly certain that Genevieve had never thought of me as a lover or future partner. We laughed together constantly. We revealed our secret thoughts to one another. I knew of her relationship with her mother and her devotion to her father, and she told me of the affair that had ended with her miscarriage in 1915. Yet I could tell that not in her wildest dreams did she entertain the thought of loving me sexually. With a difference of more than twenty years in our ages she may have thought such a relationship would seem incestuous – if she ever thought on the subject at all.
