War Girls

by Adele Geras

  But – but! If I am to work in the ambulances I shall have to put up with such stuff. There can be no judgement in the medical services, no putting one before the other. All are sick – the brave, the cowardly, the enemy even. So I held his hand and listened while he excused himself. I swore I understood, and that he would get better like any other soldier and soon be back in the thick of it, earning medals for his country and his family.

  I tried to tell him my own plans – how I was going to make it to the Front to nurse the men and drive an ambulance. Of course, he did everything he could to dissuade me. The Front was no place for a girl, he said – for him of all people to make that claim! – and it was full of bad language – which made me laugh as well, for he had brought that very language into our sitting room! – and he was fearful I would be dishonoured. ‘The girls who go out there often sink very low,’ he said. ‘It is odd how morals tend to fall away when there is so much death and destruction about.’

  I put my chin up and told him there was no fear of that, not while I was alive, unless my honour was taken against my will – and that is a risk every woman must take if she is to fare bravely in this world. He tried to make me promise not to go, but my mind was made up more firmly than ever. There was no getting away from it – Robbie had let us down. It was up to me to make up for his failings.

  I had a plan afoot. I had read in the papers about Mrs Huntley, the suffragette, who had put aside her militancy for the War effort and was taking a band of like-minded women over to the Front to nurse the wounded right on the edges of the battlefields. That was the stuff for me! It was all to be done unofficially, of course, because the authorities were all frowning away desperately on women at the Front, especially suffragettes. But as Mrs Huntley said in the newspapers, if you left it up to the men, they would let the world fall to bits rather than allow a woman to help them. So women were making their own way – taking their own provisions and using their own money – even though the generals and politicians and clergy shrieked hysterically at them to stop.

  Mrs Huntley was leaving from Dover on the Thursday evening. That gave me a few days at home to practise my nursing skills on poor Robbie and say goodbye to my family – in my own way, of course; they would only know what I had been doing after I had gone. If they had even the slightest inkling of my plans, they would certainly have locked me in a tower like Rapunzel!

  Of course, Mrs Everington was around the very next day after Robbie had disgraced himself, full of understanding. She had an article with her about shell shock, and how even the bravest and most willing soldiers can fall foul to it.

  ‘It is one of the sufferings of modern warfare, like a wound, if not quite so noble,’ she explained. It could happen to anyone and she only thanked God that her son Howard hadn’t suffered in the same way. She put it down to her grandfather having been such a notable soldier.

  Then we all had to listen to her for half an hour, lecturing us in great detail about how aristocratic blood, like her grandfather’s for example, had been bred for centuries to cope with the shocks of warfare but that other blood lines couldn’t be expected to cope so well. Which inspired me to point out that half the country must have aristocratic blood in their veins, too, because it was well known that aristocrats – like her grandfather, for example – did tend to stray from the marital fold somewhat, didn’t they?

  My mother sent me out rather hurriedly on an errand, but not before giving me one of her most arch looks and a little nod of approval. Normally, marital relations are something we never discuss in this house – but when it comes to taking Mrs Everington down a peg or two, exceptions can be made.

  When I came back in they were discussing a new military weapon: liquid fire, a kind of blazing fluid that burns the enemy to ashes on the spot. It sounded just the thing! The three of us raised our teacups and prayed to God that we might get lots and lots of it, to send those German soldiers back down to where they came from, and where the Devil himself no doubt keeps a good supply of it to keep them entertained for the next few thousand years.

  On the day, I was up at dawn. I’d told Mother and Father I was off to visit my cousin Lizzie. They’d given me money for my fare, which made me feel bad, but it was the only way. I only hope they’ll understand once they have time to think about it. Every nurse and, especially, every female driver who gets to the Front releases a man to fight. One of our brave Englishmen are worth five Bosch, I heard Father say the other day, so by doing this I am adding five soldiers on our side. Unless of course those soldiers are like poor Robbie, whose nerves are so shot, I wonder if he will ever recover. Every night, I hear him raving in his sleep. It makes me wonder how brave I will be, with the same blood flowing in my veins. But even as a child I was more daring and bold than Robbie. Whenever I have doubts I tell myself to keep faith – in my country, in my family, in myself, and in womankind. I shall prevail!

  I caught up with Mrs Huntley at the docks, ready to depart. She was a little doubtful at first, because of my age – even though I’d added a year to make the magic eighteen. But her doubts melted away when I showed her the letter from my mother, blessing me and my enterprise, praising my abilities as a driver, a nurse and a hard worker with a stout heart – and hoping that Mrs Huntley would take me on board!

  ‘And if the boys can fight at eighteen, why cannot I nurse them, Mrs Huntley?’ I demanded.

  I knew that appealing to her suffragette instincts would pave my way. She held out her hand. ‘Welcome aboard, my dear – we have need of more like you,’ she said. I jumped up the gangplank and that was it. I was part of the team.

  Many months later I told her how I’d forged that letter from my mother, and she forgave me at once. By then, I’d already made myself indispensable.

  It took us a little over two months to set up our base, in the face of much lip-curling from both French and English generals, who clearly thought us weak and silly women, unable to cope with the stress of the Front.

  ‘Go home, my dear, and sit still. We’ll have no women at the Front,’ one said to Mrs Huntley.

  She looked him in the eye and hit straight back. ‘You will have heard of childbirth before now,’ she replied. ‘But of course having a life burst out from inside of oneself is something a man would suffer gladly every day if it stopped him having any kind of serious competition from women. Your poor manhood would wither at the very thought.’

  How I adore her! They just stood there like idiots and gaped at her. So we got little help but managed anyway, as women will.

  The plan was to set up a Forward Dressing Station, where the wounded would be brought straight from off the battlefield to be tended before being sent on to hospitals further away. We found a little house, literally yards away from the trenches. It had no roof, no windows – the shells had long ago seen to all that. Even the walls were full of cracks. It had been looted bare, but it was enough for us. We set up tarps to keep wind out and the rain off, and cleaned everything to within an inch of its life. We begged, borrowed, bought and stole mattresses, sheets, blankets, bandages – and set about our work.

  I look back now and wonder that this was just six months ago – six months! What a child I was! Sometimes I wonder if I’m even human any more. I can’t dismiss my enthusiasm and desire to help, but how I wish I had been born at a time when such things might have been of use, and not in an age when every human virtue is being blown to pieces on the battlefield.

  I’ve learned a great many things on the Front. How not to faint at the sight of blood. How not to retch at the stink of a man’s insides. How to smile and look hopeful when a boy no older than I am asks me if he’s going to be all right, when there are already flies crawling on his liver.

  Oh, yes – and I have learned not to cry. Not a single tear has fled my eye since the first week, when I truly believed I would drown in them. I realised that if I started again, I would never stop. It worries Mrs Huntley though. She is desperate for me to shed a tear. I told her about Rob
bie and how I was resolved not to cry, because tears were for babies. She scolded me and said that the tears of the brave were worth more than diamonds. I didn’t believe it at the time. I do now.

  How I will be able to face Robbie when I see him again? The way I spoke to him – the thoughts I had! How could I? I know better now, but no amount of knowing better will ever erase the memory of how I was unable to meet his eye. I thought bravery consisted of knowing no fear, but I understand now that it is not fear but utter terror that is the lot of every soldier, and that enough shelling will turn any man into a jelly.

  And Mother! And Father! And Mrs Everington! What on earth will I say to them when I go home, if I survive? No one can ever understand who has not been here. I would like to curse them to their faces for sending their sons away to Hell, but no one will ever hold them to account, because they know no better, and the words do not exist that can describe this place. Only the knowledge that I was as bad as them will stop me spitting in their faces.

  Oh, Mother and Mrs Everington – how shameless you would think me now! Did you know that I can clean up a man from head to foot without so much as blushing? Imagine what a hussy I’ve become. And the language! The words Robbie used in the sitting room that day seem so mild now. I’m only astonished that he managed to contain himself so well.

  I wish I could show you around, Mother and Mrs Everington, to see our work here, tending these young men torn to pieces mentally and physically while the old men at home go to work to earn the money to keep them here, and the woman knit or learn to drive in order that one more boy can be freed up to have his insides blown out of him. You see that chap over there, gasping and coughing, Mother and Mrs Everington? What a mess he makes – scarcely the kind of thing we’d want in the drawing room, I think. Don’t worry – we’ll keep him here until he stops, so you won’t have to see it. There he goes again. You’d think he might put a hand to his mouth, if he had any manners at all. And look at the nasty mess he spits out – green and pink. Disgusting. Have you ever seen the like? What on earth can it be, do you suppose? Some new type of cough breeding here in the trenches, do you suppose?

  It’s his lungs, Mother. Gas does that – it melts the lungs and while the remaining part of them produces mucus, the rest gets coughed up with the sputum, one piece after another; green and pink. Of course, the Germans get gassed too – marvellous isn’t it, ladies, that we are doing such dreadful things to another mother’s son in the name of our country? Does it make you proud, Mother? How about you, Mrs Everington? How you must have wept when you heard that your poor Howard had died. Gas, was it? You’re not sure? Don’t worry – you won’t be told. It’s a question of morale, you see. The boys at the Front won’t want you to be worrying about them – it might slow down the production of scarves, mightn’t it? And that would never, ever do!

  Oh, and look at this boy who has come in! He has no face, Mother. How could he have been so careless as to lose it, I wonder. Oh, yes, of course – liquid fire, that’s what did it. What a shame – the Germans have it as well. See that featureless stump wagging to and fro on his neck, wondering why he can’t see or hear or talk. What is it the Bard says? ‘Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste.’ ‘Sans life’ very soon too. And I think he will be glad of it. I wonder if I should help him on his way? Oh, yes, I’ve done that, too. There are times when even the most urgent of God’s commandments melt before the cruelty of man, and we have to learn a new moral code especially for this place.

  I am not sure if the boy is English, French or German. His uniform has been burned off him. Odd how they all look the same when their uniforms and faces are burned away. Either way, we shall treat him just the same. Do you want to know why, Mother? Mrs Everington? It’s because I no longer particularly care who wins this bloody war. I no longer care, because whoever is proclaimed the victor, I am sure of only one thing – we will all have lost.

  There was the most fearful battle nearby yesterday. I was one of the first to get out there – I usually am, because I’m the best driver we have. We found the wounded in a turnip field and gathered them up, like turnips themselves, I thought. We sent ambulance after ambulance back, all four of them, loaded to the gills, and then back again, all four. And again. It was right at the end that I found the boy, hidden quietly behind a heap of earth. He’d heard us but kept quiet, scared of what we might do to him. German, you see. Scared as a mouse of what we might do to him – as if it hadn’t been done already!

  The ambulances were all away so I sat and waited with him for them to come back. I gave him some water and we talked a very little in my poor German and his only slightly better English. But we made sense. Can you imagine – he’d joined up early too, poor boy. It seems the Germans are infected by the same disease we are.

  We smoked a cigarette and talked about our countries, and we agreed that it was still possible to love one’s country without agreeing with it in any shape or form and whilst sincerely despising the donkeys who rule it.

  He was quiet for a bit and I started to think about what was waiting for me when I got back to the station. I think that was my mistake. Anyway, this boy, this German, he started to cry. It was the most horrible noise, a dreadful, high-pitched whining. It really got on my nerves for some reason – God knows why, it isn’t as though I hadn’t heard men weeping and screaming in pain before.

  ‘Now, come on, that won’t do,’ I told him – which was unfair of me, because how could he help it? I tried to comfort him, but nothing seemed to help. He just lay there, staring off, making this terrible noise.

  Then the shells started up again, sweeping across our turnip field, bombing the dead, blowing up the living – who knows why they do it? Just to terrorise each other, I suppose. Down they came, all around us, like some kind of devilish rain. It hurts your nerves, it really does. You can’t hear a thing and you never know if one is going to land right by you, you see.

  Anyway, the noise of the shells was really getting to this lad, because he screamed louder than ever. It was quite unbearable. I thought, Well I can’t just sit here waiting while the poor beggar goes mad, can I? There’s only one thing to do. I have to get out of it.

  After a lot of huffing and puffing I managed to heave him over my shoulders – he wasn’t so big fortunately – and off we went, staggering over the turnip field with the shells going off all around us. I know it sounds crazy, but I thought, Well, if one of them’s got my number on, it’s going to get me anyway. I didn’t see the point of sitting waiting for it. It can bloody well come and find me, I thought!

  I staggered along God knows how far before it did – finally. I don’t know how far away it landed, but there was a noise like all hell blowing up. It blew both of us up in the air and we came down in a great storm of mud and clay. A great clod of it landed on my face and half stunned me, but other than that, I seemed to be all right.

  ‘Well, if that’s all that being hit with a shell does, I don’t mind it so much,’ I said to myself. I just lay there for a while. I thought the German boy must have died, but then, God help me, he started up again, that dreadful noise worse than ever. You never heard anything like it, I couldn’t bear to listen to it. I couldn’t work out where he was at first, until I realised it was coming from beneath me. I’d come down right on top of him.

  The shelling had stopped by this time, but nothing I could say or do made any difference, he just kept on and on and on until I wanted to just bloody strangle him. I dug him out of the earth – it was a real effort, he was no help at all – and set off again over the turnip field with the screaming boy on my back.

  I hadn’t gone far when I heard a shout. It was Gillian and Sylvia come back from the station with the ambulance at last. ‘You took your time,’ I said.

  They put me on a stretcher, carted me off to the ambulance and shoved me in. Off we went, with Sylvia sitting next to me, stroking my hair. It annoyed me, to be honest, because all this time the German lad was still making that God-awful noise, and all
she could do was sit next to me, when I was pretty well all right except for a swollen face, which, believe me, is nothing.

  ‘Can’t you give him something for the pain, Sylve?’ I asked her. ‘That noise is driving me mad. I’ve been listening to it for hours now.’

  ‘What noise? Who?’ she asked.

  ‘That poor boy, can’t you hear him? He must be in the most terrible pain to be making a noise like that.’

  ‘That boy you were with, Effie?’ she said. ‘That boy was dead. He’d been dead for a couple of days by the look of him. He isn’t even in the ambulance with us.’

  Well, that was ridiculous. I could hear him as clear as a bell.

  ‘Sylve, what’s wrong with you? Can’t you hear it, that ruddy awful noise he’s making?’ I asked her.

  She gave me a funny look and said, ‘Effie, that’s you, darling. That’s you crying.’

  ‘It can’t be me!’ I said, but she insisted it was.

  Of course I refused to believe it. We argued about it all the way back to the station where they fetched Mrs Huntley to see if she could convince me. She came at once and gave me a sad old smile. ‘Here they are, here they are, your precious tears at last,’ she said, wiping my face.

  I knew then that it was true.

  She gave me a hug and told me that no girl had given as much as I had, and that she was sorry she’d waited so long, but now I was going home for a while. Then she tucked me up in bed and went to make arrangements for me to leave the next day.

  Sky Dancer

  by Berlie Doherty

  Sky Dancer

  ‘Are you going to sing with us, Kate?’

  The small group of amateur performers was rehearsing a Christmas concert for their family and friends. Fred had organised it. He was a law student, but really he wanted to be a dancer. He could dance so his feet sounded like the pattering of rain, and then the beating of drums, and then the roll of thunder; and suddenly he would stop, poised like a bird in mid-flight, and sing without a hint of breathlessness.