Snowflakes in the Wind

by Rita Bradshaw

  He watched the little figure as she bustled out of the room, shutting the door behind her, and not for the first time wondered how he would have coped over the last twelve months without her devotion and support. He had never really been mothered before and he found he liked it, he liked it very much indeed. And then, as invariably happened if he reflected on how fortunate his present circumstances were, the thought came that Abigail was probably enduring hell on earth while he took it easy as a country doctor. The gnawing ache in his heart that accompanied thoughts of her made him inwardly groan, and he was glad when the first patient knocked on his door, even if it was old Mr Davidson expecting him to lance the boil on his ancient sagging bottom . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Abby and Delia sat either side of the bed of one of their fellow nurses who had succumbed to a bad attack of diarrhoea a few days before. Anyone who became sick in the camp had to trust to luck to get them better, and Hilda was no exception. She had reminded Abby of Kitty when she had first met her, having the same plump, heavy build and bright red hair, but now, after two years in the camp on Hong Kong island on starvation rations, Hilda was nothing but skin and bone like the rest of them. None of the women in the camp saw evidence of their monthly cycle any more – malnutrition had long since stopped them menstruating – and they all looked like walking scarecrows. Abby had just given Hilda a drink the women made from pine needles they collected and made into an infusion. It contained vitamin C which was missing from their diet of tiny amounts of boiled rice and a watery vegetable stew. Occasionally they were given a few cubes of meat or fish, but the daily ration of food to internees was kept deliberately low, causing starvation and encouraging the spread of tropical diseases.

  The matron at the camp, a formidable career army nurse, had had battles with the Japanese over the prisoners’ health from the first day. Their captors callously allowed large numbers of internees to sicken and die, even though their own medical personnel had huge quantities of the very drugs the prisoners needed. Apart from a small supply of Javgel septicide powder and a topical antiseptic, the nurses at the camp had nothing to work with, which was terribly frustrating.

  The camp was a mixed-nationality one for both men and women, along with a number of children, and the sexes were allowed to mix freely. It comprised the whole of the peninsula and added up to several acres. Abby and Delia and the rest of the women from the hospital in the hotel on the mainland had been taken there after they had been working at the hospital for nearly eight months. It had been a blisteringly hot day in August and the Japanese had made them stand for hours in the compound when they had first arrived, counting them over and over again and coming up with a different number every time. It had been a relief for everyone concerned when at last the numbers tallied. As Delia had whispered to Abby, it was clear counting wasn’t one of the guards’ attributes.

  This August was equally hot, and now Abby leaned forward and guided the cup holding cooled boiled water and the infusion of pine needles to Hilda’s cracked lips as she said, ‘Come on, finish it all. You’ve got dehydrated and you know you need to keep your fluids up.’

  That said, it was becoming increasingly hard to swallow enough liquid in the last months as food rations had been cut still further and water had become more scarce. Prisoners made a little water go a long way when it came to washing and so on. There was no soap, but the male POWs made a substance called lye from wood ash and used it to wash their clothes with some success. They often distributed it to the women in exchange for them mending their shirts and trousers which were becoming increasingly ragged and thin. The seamstresses among the female POWs made threads for sewing by drawing them out of bed sheets.

  Delia had struck up a romantic friendship with a Norwegian POW after she had nursed him back to health. Hans had nearly died from beriberi and had been at death’s door for days, and was convinced it was only Delia’s devotion that had saved him. He had made both women a pair of wooden clogs after their shoes wore out, the tarmac in the compound where the Japanese insisted on holding their relentless and unending roll calls being too hot to endure in the summer for bare feet.

  Abby was glad Delia had found Hans. The love the two shared and which had come about gradually in the last months had healed something in her friend. Delia had told Hans about what had happened to her when the Japanese had invaded, and she said he had held her close while she had cried for a long, long time. Delia had been more at peace with herself since, and had regained some of her old bounce and optimism.

  Abby gently took the cup from Hilda who had drifted off to sleep, and she and Delia crept out of the tiny room the three of them slept in, shutting the door behind them. Hilda was past the worst, thank goodness, but in the tropics a patient could go downhill rapidly just when it appeared they were making progress.

  It had been stifling inside, but as the two women stepped out into the blazing sun it was beyond hot. Abby was always amazed at the fierceness of the heat. It was like stepping into an oven. In pre-war days, when the Europeans on the island had lived in light airy houses with fans and wide verandahs and umpteen servants to attend to their needs, the heat had probably been nothing more than a minor inconvenience most of the time. Now it was quite literally a killer.

  Hans had been waiting outside for Delia and he smiled at the two women. Tall at six foot three inches, he weighed less than nine stone, but it was the same for them all. No one in the camp had an ounce of fat on them except for the Japanese.

  As Hans and Delia wandered off hand in hand, walking with the slow steps of the malnourished, Abby made her way to the shade of a rubber tree and sat down on the sparse grass beneath it. The rainy season which began in May through to late July had finished a little while ago and the heat and humidity were unbearable. On top of this, the lack of food meant she was constantly tired, the ulcers in her mouth and the dry cracking skin all over her body meant infection was a worry, and her eyes were sore most of the time. She leaned back against the trunk of the tree and closed them against the fierce white light.

  Out in the world beyond the camp, Nicholas was alive and breathing, she thought dreamily. The thrill of finding out he’d made it to England hadn’t left her since the day she had got his letter. She’d been sobbing and incoherent as she’d read it, and everyone had gathered round her thinking she’d had bad news. She had been nearly as euphoric when she had read her grandfather’s letter and known everything was all right between them all.

  Since that time, her priority had been to keep as fit and well as she could. No easy task. A few of the POWs had Chinese friends or relatives still at liberty in Hong Kong, and they received a food parcel now and again. They were the lucky ones. In the last two years, the Japanese had allowed only a couple of Red Cross parcels into the camp, making a song and dance about their benevolence in the process. The parcels had contained tinned food, which was welcome, and sanitary towels which, due to the effects of malnutrition, were not needed.

  Abby and other POWs grew their own crops in little plots in a corner of the camp using urine as a fertilizer. These included a form of runner bean, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, but the harvest was always tiny and never enough.

  Abby opened her eyes and looked up into the blue sky. Nicholas might be looking up into an English sky right at this moment; she couldn’t remember if it would be night or day in England but that didn’t matter. A blue summer sky or a night one filled with stars, it was all the same. She just had to survive until the war was over and one day it had to end. If she could keep from getting sick, she would make it. She willed it every day.

  Unlike some of the POW camps, the fact that this one was mixed had proved a blessing, because the men did more than their fair share of the heavy work like cutting the grass to create fuel so they could cook the rice they lived on. There had been no rapes or molestation of women within the camp either; the horrific massacres, torture and murders that had occurred when the Japanese had invaded the island were in
the past. As long as the POWs paid due respect to the guards, bowing to them and obeying orders without question, they were left pretty much alone.

  None the less, Abby reflected, for every prisoner at the camp the anguish of not knowing when – or if – they would be set free was the same. The memory of those terrible first days was at the back of everyone’s minds, and who knew what the Japanese might do to them if the Allies won the war? Their captors were quite capable of slaughtering them all in an orgy of retribution for the Japanese people having lost ‘face’, before then committing suicide themselves – an ‘honourable’ death, in their opinion. Some of the guards took great delight in taunting them that the war would last at least another ten years. If it did, it was unlikely there would be any POWs left to either slaughter or set free if the rate at which men and women died here was anything to go by. The young VAD and her mother who had been working at Abby’s hospital when the Japanese had invaded the island had both come to a sad end. After the mother had died a long and agonizing death due to a wound on one of her legs becoming gangrenous, her daughter had lost her mind. She had screamed and cried incessantly for weeks, and although Abby and the others had tried to hide her condition from the guards, it was inevitable they would eventually cotton on. When the disturbances became continuous they had taken her away to somewhere on the mainland, or so they said. Some of the POWs were doubtful if she ever left the island and instead was buried in an unmarked grave outside the camp.

  Shutting her eyes again, Abby forced her mind away from thoughts of poor Constance and her mother. It was something she had learned to do in the last years; focus her mind on the positive and physical survival and feed her spirit with thoughts of Nicholas and life on the farm and England’s green and pleasant land. It didn’t always work, but this was encouraged wholeheartedly by the matron who often gave the nurses in the camp pep talks, pointing out it was noticeable that when POWs became ill, it was those who believed they would get better who were more likely to recover. And in spite of their constant exhaustion and wasted bodies, Abby and Delia and many others found that keeping busy helped. Apart from growing crops in their little plots, the POWs put lectures and concerts and plays on to entertain each other. Those with a gift for storytelling had evenings when they spoke for two hours or more. The fact that the camp had been a boys’ school before the war had meant certain things could be utilized by the POWs, and the piano in the hall was in excellent working order. They had a professional pianist among the POWs and he had organized musical soirées to rival any in high society. Even some of the guards had been known to form part of the audience.

  Because of the tropical heat and humidity, it had been found that any exertion in the day soon took its toll on bodies ill from recurrent malaria, fatigue and other problems. Entertainments were therefore put on at night, but then the mosquitoes and other insects were out in number. Diphtheria and tuberculosis were feared everywhere, but nowhere more than in the tropics where the diseases progressed with lightning rapidity. Heat and humidity acted as incubators for disease and infection, and although Abby and the other nurses were forever encouraging the POWs to stay as active and bright as they could, they also warned them that sufficient rest and hydration were essential. The first was easier to come by than the second, Abby thought now, licking her dry lips and thinking longingly of what it would be like to swallow icy cold water again. Any water they had was always tepid. So many things she had taken for granted before the war . . .

  Abby stretched her aching legs, hoping the vicious muscle cramps that were a part of daily life due to the lack of salt in their meagre diet wouldn’t make themselves known. Sometimes they were so severe she would be writhing in agony for long painful minutes, and cramp was a regular cause of fainting among the POWs when the pain became too much for their feeble bodies.

  The next moment she was aware of someone sitting down beside her and opened her eyes to see one of Hans’s pals, a young, good-looking Norwegian man who had made it plain in the early days of their meeting that he would like their relationship to go further than friendship. When she had explained she was married and more than that, very much in love with her husband, he had accepted the rebuff good-naturedly and settled for friendship after all. Bright blue eyes smiled at her from a face that was still handsome in spite of its skeletal thinness.

  Abby smiled back. There was something very endearing about Kurt, not least his determined optimism that the Allies would soon win the war, their captors would set them free unharmed and they’d all be home within a month or two. The fact that he had been saying the same thing for the whole time Abby had known him in no way detracted from the lift in her spirit she always felt when she was in his company.

  ‘Heard the latest?’ Kurt raked back his thick mop of blond hair as he spoke. ‘US bombers have reached the Japanese mainland. Peter told me.’ Peter was a British journalist who had married a Chinese woman and had been living in Hong Kong when it was invaded. He could speak fluent Japanese as well as a number of other languages, and was one of the fortunate POWs who had close Chinese friends still at liberty on the island who provided him with regular food parcels and Japanese newspapers. ‘Won’t be long before it’s all over now, you’ll see.’

  Ignoring what he’d said, Abby looked more closely at her friend. His voice was hoarse and he appeared unwell to her trained eye. ‘What’s the matter? You’re feeling ill, aren’t you, I can tell.’

  ‘I’m going down with a cold, that’s all, funny throat and bad head. Did you hear what I said, Abby? About the bombers? We’re taking the fight to them now for the first time and you can bet the swines won’t like that. And the Germans are being driven out of Normandy at last. The tide is turning and fast.’

  ‘When did you first start to feel off colour?’

  ‘Abby, stop being a nurse for two minutes and listen to what I’m saying.’

  ‘Kurt, answer me. When did you begin to feel ill?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure but don’t worry about it, it’ll pass.’ He coughed, and then wiped his nose with a piece of rag from his pocket. ‘It’s just a cold.’

  ‘Yes, you said.’ She reached out and felt his forehead; he was burning up. ‘Can you swallow OK?’

  ‘I’ve told you, my throat’s sore.’

  ‘So that’s a no.’

  She put her hands either side of his neck and he grinned at her. ‘Hey, not out here in the open. If you want to get cosy we can go back to my place for a glass of champagne.’

  This was no joking matter; his lymph nodes were enlarged and if she wasn’t mistaken he was already beginning to show signs of a swollen neck due to diphtheria. Of course it could be an upper-respiratory infection but somehow she thought not. She had always trusted her sixth sense where patients were concerned, and now she said, ‘Kurt, you’re sick, really sick. We need to get you over to the hospital.’

  ‘For a cold? Come on, Abby, I’ll be a laughing stock.’

  ‘It’s not a cold. At the very least it’s a severe respiratory infection but I’m not going to argue with you. You are coming with me now.’

  She stood up, holding out her hand, and after a moment he took it, letting her pull him up. He swayed slightly, muttering, ‘Damn heat,’ but she was very much afraid it wasn’t the heat or humidity causing him to feel weak.

  He wouldn’t let her assist him as they walked to the camp hospital but by the time she had him inside his breathing was laboured. She wasn’t due to start her shift for a couple of hours, but she went straight to the matron and told her of her fears, requesting that Kurt be put in the nearest thing to isolation they could manage with their limited space and resources. Matron Fraser didn’t waste time asking questions but with Abby on her heels went to inspect the patient herself. After a thorough examination, Kurt was whipped into a side room that had been harbouring a patient dying of kidney failure who was unceremoniously moved onto the main ward.

  ‘You are right, Nurse.’ The matron took a deep breath.
A diphtheria epidemic in prison-camp conditions, with no drugs to treat it and only the most primitive disinfecting facilities, could be a major catastrophe. In the past, she had seen doctors perform tracheotomies more than once, but that had been in the sterile confines of a theatre and under anaesthetic. Even then it was a risky procedure, but if diphtheria hit with a vengeance it was certain a number of patients would suffocate to death if a passage wasn’t opened into their windpipe, and that was besides heart and kidney damage leading to death if the toxin was absorbed into the bloodstream. ‘We need to make masks for ourselves whilst dealing with this patient. See to it, would you? I’m going to see Major Fushida to ask him to release the antitoxin we need. I know the Japanese have a plentiful supply of it locked away for their use.’

  The matron wasn’t away long and she merely shook her head at Abby as she walked back into the ward.

  In an effort to stop the disease sweeping through their numbers, the matron asked the rest of the members of Kurt’s hut, along with anyone he had been in close contact with, to come into the hospital whereupon they were put in a separate section from the other patients. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best they could do.

  By the next day, Kurt was gasping for each breath as the thick grey coating from dead tissue caused by the toxin that is produced by the bacteria built up over the nasal tissues, tonsils, voice box and throat.

  The matron went to see Major Fushida once more, asking that a doctor be brought in from the officers’ camp and, again, that the antitoxin be released. The doctor was brought to the camp two days later by which time Kurt was beyond his help. The request for the antitoxin was refused.

  Abby had insisted on sitting with Kurt in his last hours. She talked to him of his home in Norway that he had told her so much about in the past, of the clean pure air, the mountains, the deep valleys and the sparkling fjords that worked their way between high cliffs and were as blue and clear as the sky above. She spoke of the sister he adored and his three young nephews, reminding him of the funny things they had said and done. She held his hand tight as he fought for breath, feeling her heart break at his frantic eyes and contorted face that was black with the effort of getting air past the mass of tissue constricting his throat. And in her mind she cursed the war, Hitler, the Japanese and men’s quest for power.