World War I

by Allan Burnett

  The young mother turned the coin over and over in her hand, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Milne.

  The women quickly gathered food for her. Clutching jugs of milk, a big bag of eggs and a loaf of bread, Milne returned to the camp.

  After breakfast, they convoy got going. The drivers gingerly nursed their vehicles over the ramshackle bridge, then attempted an ascent on the steep hill at the other side. They had to go at it with all the power and momentum they could muster, as the slope was caked in mud. Finally they made it to the top.

  During the journey that followed, Dr Inglis decided the group would make for a town called Harsova on the bank of the River Danube. From there, they would sail by barge to the safety of Galati.

  Harsova was a beautiful, ancient harbour town with a castle built during the Roman Empire and many other fine buildings. But it had been heavily bombed and virtually every structure was damaged in some way.

  ‘All of the windows are shattered,’ observed one of the women as they drove through the streets towards the port. The vehicles’ chuntering petrol engines echoed against bomb-blasted walls. Finally the road opened out onto the quayside.

  Some other members of the unit who had made their own way there from Medgidia were waiting by the water’s edge to make the final leg of the journey. The lorry and its seven passengers had already left on a barge that morning and was now on its way to the safety of Galati.

  Milne couldn’t wait to join them. It had been a long and exhausting few days. The General in charge of loading the barges explained that the town was being completely evacuated, so if they wanted a safe passage they had better leave that night.

  But Dr Inglis had other ideas. Instead of sailing to Galati right now, she told the General that she had decided to take a few staff with her in the hope of linking up again with the Serbian medical unit. ‘They will be in need of our help,’ she briskly told the exasperated General, refusing to heed his instructions for her to join the evacuation.

  Eventually he gave up. ‘Fine!’ he said angrily, throwing his hands in the air, and turned to an officer, ordering, ‘Fill the next barge with soldiers only!’

  Milne watched, dismayed, as Dr Inglis tried to make the necessary arrangements. It became clear there was no petrol to refuel the vehicles, nor any horses, and she was forced to abandon her plan. Dr Inglis was not used to being thwarted, but she cheered up when a Romanian doctor assured her that a dressing station was urgently required where they stood, on the quayside in Harsova. Wounded soldiers from the nearby battlefront would soon be pouring in, he said, and would need treatment for their injuries before being evacuated along the river.

  ‘We can’t all stay,’ Dr Inglis told her staff. ‘They can only accommodate two doctors and two nurses in case they need to get us to safety quickly.’

  ‘The rest of you must leave tonight by …’ She frowned at the barge as it was being loaded and paused, perhaps wishing she hadn’t rubbed the General up the wrong way. ‘By any means available,’ she finished.

  Milne was relieved that she hadn’t been chosen to be part of Dr Inglis’s small team. She could finally head for Galati and safety. But there was still a major – and bad-tempered – obstacle. Would the General allow them to travel on the next barge?

  They decided to send two of the prettiest girls in the group to try to charm him. The girls returned with news that he would do what he could. They had no choice but to wait patiently.

  Milne cursed the cold and hunger as she wandered up and down the quayside watching barges being loaded with equipment, vehicles, horses and soldiers. If only Dr Inglis wasn’t always so determined! The noise of cranes winching, heavy weights banging and thudding, and men shouting filled the air. Eventually the order came. The Scottish women would be permitted to board the next barge.

  But at the last minute there was yet another problem. There was not enough space on the barge for two of the hospital vehicles and the drivers refused to leave without them. Milne and the others didn’t want to leave their two friends behind. They had been through so much together.

  ‘Look,’ said an officer, ‘the rest of you had better go now while you have the chance. It will be much easier to get the two stragglers away later. If you insist on staying, there is a great risk we won’t have space left for any of you.’

  Milne reluctantly agreed and took charge of the main group as they boarded the barge. They stood on the deck and looked on as their two friends paced up and down in front of their cars on the quayside.

  Finally, at around two o’clock in the morning a new order was issued. The drivers and their vehicles were loaded after all.

  Although relieved, Milne could not yet relax. It would be a couple of days before they reached Galati and the dark, cramped barge contained new dangers. Some of the soldiers on board were behaving like a pack of animals, swarming around the car and constantly trying to get in. Terrified at what the soldiers might do to them, Milne and the others spent the night batting them away. But rowdy soldiers weren’t the only problem. Occasionally one of the horses, nervous and stressed, got loose and caused mayhem.

  Sleep was impossible. That night the barge hardly moved except to make way for other vessels to access the quayside. It was not until daybreak that they finally got going.

  The morning was bright and sunny as the women looked out from the deck. The ‘beautiful blue Danube’, as it was known from the famous waltz, was exactly that. The barge sailed past pretty thatched villages with white stone churches. Orchards and grassy slopes stretched away into the distance, grazed by hundreds of horses. The war seemed miles away.

  The soldiers calmed down a little. In the clear light of day the men seemed to accept that the medicine women in their midst had been through the wars too. They were just as shattered with nervous and physical exhaustion as the men, and deserving of some respect.

  A Russian driver brought Milne and the others some vodka. Later, while they put in to a harbour where the barge was unloaded and reloaded, the captain brought them some bread, sugar and boiling water to which they added some cocoa that miraculously they still had with them. Gradually the women were able to relax.

  The good weather didn’t last long. It started to rain and the docks stank. During the night, off went much of the cargo and the horde of soldiers. In the morning, on came a host of sick and wounded. The women got to work as best they could.

  ‘Mary, can you finish dressing this man’s wound for me?’ said one of the nurses, handing Milne the end of a bandage.

  The soldier was sitting on the deck, bloody and battered, propped up against a pile of equipment and the backs of the other wounded men next to him. He seemed amused at Milne’s dishevelled uniform as she nursed him. When she was finished, he grunted his thanks.

  At last, on 26 October, they arrived in the safe haven of Galati, where they were welcomed by the British Red Cross and re-united with their colleagues. Eventually Dr Inglis too reached Galati and – with characteristic determination – immediately began to set up a Scottish Women’s Hospital Unit there.

  Sitting at the edge of the beautiful blue Danube and reflecting on their adventure, Milne wrote in her diary: ‘We have only been in Romania for a short while, but between 22 and 26 October 1916 we seem to have lived a lifetime.’

  WAR REPORT

  Personnel: Mary Lee Milne played an active and varied part in the First World War. She worked as a cook, translator, messenger and junior group leader with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service, an organisation founded by Dr Elsie Inglis. She was highly regarded by Dr Inglis, who raised her to the rank of officer, and she recorded her experiences of working for Dr Inglis in her journal.

  Dr Inglis, who lived most of her life in Edinburgh, was one of the first generation of female doctors in Britain. She was also a campaigner for women to have the same rights as men by voting in elections and having a career.

  The First World War gave Dr Inglis the chance t
o combine her medical and political passions. She persuaded the Scottish Women’s Suffrage Society to support the creation of a new organisation – a group of medical units to treat soldiers on the war’s front lines, staffed and run entirely by women.

  The government’s War Office, which was run by men, rejected the idea. But through private donations and fundraising, Inglis’s plan came to fruition – and the result was the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.

  The organisation’s headquarters was in Edinburgh, with branches in Glasgow and London. Units were sent out to locations on the western and eastern fronts of the war – such as France, Serbia and Russia. The Scottish staff was joined by women from many countries, England in particular.

  Dr Inglis led her organisation from the front, which is why she was running the unit in Romania in which Milne served. Dr Inglis died of cancer in 1917 at the age of just 53 and was buried in Edinburgh, but the work of the hospitals she created continued until the end of the war.

  Event Log: The events in this story take place in 1916 in Romania, a country in Eastern Europe next to the Black Sea. This area formed part of the Eastern Front of the First World War.

  In August that year, Romania entered the war on the side of Russia and the Allies. As a result Romania was attacked by the enemy side, known as the Central Powers, which included armies from Germany and Bulgaria – Romania’s southern next-door neighbour.

  The Scottish Women’s Hospitals unit went to Romania to help the Allies. Specifically, they went to give medical assistance to a division of volunteer soldiers from Serbia who were fighting alongside the Russians and Romanians against the Germans and Bulgarians in Romania’s south-eastern corner.

  In late October 1916, the German and Bulgarian armies advanced from the south and forced the Allies north to the delta of the River Danube. The Scottish Women’s Hospitals unit was compelled to join the chaotic Allied retreat alongside hundreds of thousands of refugees.

  During the year that followed, Russia pulled out of the war and Romania was surrounded and crushed for a time by the Central Powers. However, in 1918 the Central Powers were defeated by the Allies and Romania finally emerged victorious.

  Inventory: Before the First World War, sick and injured people were transported by horse and cart. That changed in September 1914, when the British Red Cross introduced the first-ever motorised ambulance.

  The Scottish Women’s Hospitals followed suit. Their vehicles were donated by their supporters and were essentially the same as those used by the Red Cross – except that they had the Scottish Women’s Hospitals livery painted on them.

  Scottish Women’s Hospitals ambulances included space for several stretcher cases, and some had springs upon which the stretchers were hung to minimise pain and discomfort for patients travelling on bumpy roads.

  Several different makes of motor car and lorry were used by medical units on the front lines. The popular American Model-T Ford car was often converted for use as an ambulance.

  Flight of the Black Cat

  Captain Ian Henderson leaned over the side of his open-topped cockpit and craned his neck, scanning the sky above and below him. The wind blasted his cheeks, the noise of the engine and propeller roared in his ears.

  Far beneath the wings of his single-seat biplane, through gaps in the ragged, dense blankets of grey cloud, he could see the bomb-blasted fields and shattered buildings of farming villages. Above, cold and mysterious, were the infinite Heavens.

  ‘Where are you hiding, Bosche?’ Henderson said to himself, cursing his German foe as he sat back down in the relatively quiet cocoon of his cockpit.

  He pulled off his leather-bound goggles for a moment. His eyes smarted in the rushing air as he wiped the sweat and engine oil from his brow. He checked the ammunition in his well-worn machine guns and scanned his instruments.

  The young pilot was something of a rising star in the Royal Flying Corps, notching up a series of successes against the fighter aircraft of the German Luftstreitkräfte. Now it was time to add to that total. He knew the enemy was out there somewhere, so he throttled up the 200-horsepower engine and got ready for action.

  It was then that his propeller came off.

  At first, just for a moment, it was as though nothing had happened. But the tell-tale change in the tone of the engine made Henderson realise he was in serious trouble. He could also sense it through the controls.

  Suddenly he felt his stomach lurch, as the plane began to drop through the air. He gripped the controls tighter and tried to level off, but the aircraft was already nosing into a dive.

  The dials on the dashboard span and jerked. The altimeter revealed that he would hit the ground very hard, very soon, unless he could find a way to regain control.

  The plane rattled and shook as the descent began taking its toll. Henderson knew of pilots who had met their doom when the stress of a steep dive caused their wings to come off. Having no propeller was deadly enough without that added challenge. He used all his strength to pull, push and lever the controls, desperately trying to find a friendly current of air to ride on.

  Still the aircraft kept plunging.

  Buildings and hedgerows became sharper and more detailed as the ground loomed closer. Somehow, he just managed to lift the aircraft’s nose to make the descent less steep. The plane leapt from side to side as he wrestled with the controls for the rudder and the wing-mounted ailerons, trying to steer to an open patch where he might be able to set down without slamming into a wall or a ditch.

  By now he was level with the tops of the trees. In just a few seconds he would strike the ground. His pulse throbbed in his chest and temples. He had to force himself to remain calm, not to allow his tense muscles and sweaty fingers to yank too hard on the controls.

  Sensing he was only inches away from the soil, Henderson closed his eyes.

  THUD! CRASH! BATTER!

  The plane smashed into the ground, wrecking the undercarriage and damaging the propeller-less nose and its huge, square radiator. The fuselage skidded along the ground and the wings shook violently.

  Eventually the aircraft jerked to a halt and the engine spluttered, then died. Smoke and steam poured from the wreckage.

  A few moments passed. There was no sign of life.

  Then a leather-gloved hand emerged and gripped the lip of the cockpit. There was a groan.

  Henderson checked his legs and arms, wiggled his fingers and toes. ‘Still in one piece,’ he reassured himself and leaned his head back, his smile a crescent of ivory white against his smoke-blackened face.

  He coughed and came to his senses. There was no time to relax. He had to get out in case the fuel tank caught fire.

  Gripping the fuselage he began to haul himself up, then paused for a moment. He grabbed his map and tucked it under his arm, then reached out to an object tied to the dashboard – the toy black cat his sister Angela had given him.

  ‘How many more lives does this leave us with, then?’ said Henderson to his mascot as he pulled it free, then climbed out of the wreck and staggered away.

  Soon he was back among his friends in the squadron, rested and recovered, with another exciting tale to tell – and ready to fly and fight another day. Yet, returning to earth with a bump was a reminder of how far Henderson had come since the war began. In many ways it was amazing that he had survived this long.

  Henderson’s wartime adventure had begun quietly and unpromisingly with a miserably cold, long winter in the army reserves, far from the high life of the Royal Flying Corps.

  He was given a job guarding the army’s big weapons arsenal at Woolwich in London. His accommodation was a stuffy little hole where he and the other men lived on a diet of tinned beef.

  Henderson, who had been trained as an officer, was in charge of the sentries who patrolled the premises, and he had to check regularly that they were guarding the place properly. It wasn’t a job he enjoyed.

  One night, while out checking on the men, Henderson and his orderly were caught in a
storm. They were walking along a river-bank and a gust of wind sent the orderly reeling, blowing him into the water. Instinctively, Henderson jumped in and managed to drag the man out.

  The storm had pulled down trees and it started to snow. Exhausted and frozen, the pair became disoriented and ended up stumbling through a ditch full of dirty water. As they returned to base they were almost shot by one of their own men. It was very late and they were soaked to the skin.

  To make matters worse, the stove had gone out in Henderson’s room and the window above his bed had blown open – his mattress was sodden.

  So when Henderson was finally sent across the English Channel to fight on the front line, it was a relief at first to leave behind such miserable conditions. But he quickly realised there were certain advantages to being on the home front – like not being shot to pieces.

  By the late spring of 1915, he was right in the thick of the action with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The Germans were trying to take the Belgian town of Ypres and the Argylls, together with other British regiments, were trying to stop them.

  To get to Ypres, Henderson and his company marched along roads jammed with military and civilian traffic. There were horse-drawn artillery carriages, wounded troops, ambulance wagons, transport wagons, motor cars of all shapes and sizes, dispatch riders on motorcycles, riders on horseback, people on pedal bicycles ringing their bells furiously, and a constant chatter of French and English.

  As they got nearer the front line the chaos and signs of battle intensified. They had to walk across open fields strewn with the dead bodies of men and horses. When they finally arrived, they found the city of Ypres in ruins.

  Henderson was posted to a front-line trench near the ruined city. The network of trenches went on for miles and miles, and his was just one tiny part of it. The Germans were dug in nearby on the other side of a small hill and Henderson rarely saw them. But their shells continually blasted and pounded the Argylls, and the number of dead and wounded began to mount.