In Falling Snow

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  “Of course we can,” Miss Ivens said, without hesitating. “After all, we’re women. Iris, you must get in touch with Royaumont. Get them to send every spare car and ambulance. Tell the staff we must be ready to move at a moment’s notice.” I watched her furrowed brow, her dark eyes looking up to the left in the way they did whenever she was planning, and I loved Miss Ivens with all my heart and soul.

  I sent a messenger to Royaumont—the telephone had been cut the day before. I called as many staff together as were free and Miss Ivens explained the situation quickly. “We must stay here until they have somewhere to take our patients,” she said. “It is our duty.” Not one woman questioned that we would stay, despite knowing how close the Germans now were. We unpacked what we needed to keep working and set about the task at hand. The wounded continued to arrive all through the afternoon, on foot or stretcher, or in train or car. We were frantically busy, setting up a temporary theatre in one of the wards, using another to extend reception, operating into the night. We fed refugees and soldiers. Any patients who were able helped us with care.

  Miss Ivens did nine thigh amputations in a row, wounds foul with gas. We had the lights out at least three times. The men were ragged, some screaming in pain, some dying just as they reached us, brought by comrades left with nothing but hope for a friend, only to have their hopes dashed. And all the while, bombs exploding with a flash in the night sky, the terrible noise of the big guns our constant companion. It was the worst night of my life.

  At around 4 a.m., not having had more than an hour’s break at a time in three days, I was sitting in the staff canteen. There was an eerie lull in the guns. Miss Ivens appeared out of the darkness. “Oh Iris, we’ve seen it all now, haven’t we?”

  “We certainly have, Miss Ivens,” I said. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  An hour later we received word that evacuations should start. Miss Ivens continued to operate until the last possible moment. And then we began to take the wounded to the trains, which would take them to Senlis. We ourselves were going to make for Crépy, twelve miles towards Royaumont. At about midday, the shells began again in earnest and now they were so close we heard them whistle overhead and knew we must get out quickly. We were each given a retreating ration of boiled eggs, an orange, and some cheese and bread. We packed what we could. I didn’t have much, although some had to leave behind precious possessions.

  At two o’clock that afternoon, Miss Ivens sent a group of sturdy walkers out on foot to meet the train to Senlis, including any patients who could walk. They joined the refugees of the towns that had already been taken. A constant stream of women and children, pushing their belongings on little carts before them, as well as soldiers, many of them wounded, came past the hospital all through the day. The town of Villers-Cotterêts was on fire, we learned, and people had to escape.

  Late in the afternoon, as I went outside with Dr. Courthald to collect an empty stretcher, I saw a woman and two children walking towards the hospital. A bomb exploded right where they stood and I watched their bodies fly up into the air and land like nothing more than rag dolls. I went to run to them but Dr. Courthald stopped me. “They’re dead, Iris,” she said. “We must do what we can for the living.” Fifteen minutes later a third child was brought over to us by two American soldiers—they said he’d been with his mother and two sisters who were killed—the family I’d seen. This child had run ahead, which had saved him. Miss Ivens operated to remove a large piece of shrapnel from his chest. His chances were good, she said, but what life now, without his mother and sisters? And God knew where his father was. Miss Ivens put the boy in one of the cars and told Marjorie Starr to take care of him. There were only four staff left now, Miss Ivens, Dr. Courthald, our X-ray technician Miss Stoney, and me, as well as the remaining wounded.

  “Where are the blessed cars from Royaumont?” Miss Ivens said. Just then, we saw them coming along the road, trundling in with a confidence that made us take up a cheer. They’d been held up on the terrible roads. The cars could take the wounded back to Royaumont, making for Crépy in the first instance, leaving any that could be cared for at the hospital there. Miss Ivens and Dr. Courthald would accompany the worst cases. We loaded the patients and then rushed back to pick up our knapsacks. Just as we did, two American cars pulled up and told us the Germans were advancing much more quickly than had been anticipated. We heard the scream of shells overhead. I don’t know why but I felt very calm.

  Miss Ivens went in the last car with Violet. I gave my seat to a wounded boy and said I would make for the train on my own, following the walkers who’d gone earlier. Violet hugged me as she left. We hadn’t seen as much of each other since I’d been at Villers. Our friendship had changed since Miss Ivens had spoken to me about studying medicine. I felt I had a guilty secret. I didn’t think Violet knew and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. For her part, she was distant with me too. I didn’t know why but assumed perhaps she knew something about the scholarship.

  “Do you remember when we spent the night near Baillon, frightened the Germans were coming?” she said now. I nodded. Of course I did. “This is for you, darling.” She put something small in my hand and closed it into a fist. I opened my hand and saw it was the knife she’d had that night in Baillon. “Take care, Iris. We’ll see you when we see you. I love you.”

  “Go, Violet, and stay safe.” I gripped the knife in my hand. “I love you too,” I said to the back of the car receding into the distance.

  I could smell smoke in the air and hear not just the thunder of big guns but the rat-a-tatting of smaller fire that couldn’t be far away. I went to the railhead expecting I could help with wounded en route to Senlis, but they’d all gone. It was chaos now, soldiers who’d become separated from their units—American, French, Canadian—mingled among fleeing French civilians, no one knowing quite what to do. And now, an American soldier told me, a munitions train had blown up at Soissons so the trains had been stopped. “The Germans have taken the town. They march like the living dead,” he said. The Germans were five kilometres away, the soldier told me.

  They were burning everything behind them, desperate now to establish supremacy. I held Violet’s knife in my fist, a talisman. No one even noticed me, a young nurse on her own in all this mess of people and vehicles. I’d never felt so alone in my life.

  I started on the road I knew led to Royaumont but soon saw the folly of this course. The shells were finding their mark less than a mile from me. I wished I’d gone in the car with the others. At every step, fear threatened to overtake me but I knew I must remain calm. I would have screamed if I wasn’t so crazed with fatigue. There was nothing to do but go on.

  I saw French soldiers on the road, grim-faced, resolute, as if they’d already gone to their deaths and were nothing but spirits. The Americans and Canadians were there too, but even they were without hope now. As the sun was setting, I came to a field I knew—we’d walked there earlier in the summer when the flowers first bloomed—and now it was covered in daffodils and cornflowers lit up by the last of the day’s light. Suddenly, I remembered the forest road Violet and I had taken four years before when we’d been afraid for our lives. It might serve me now, I thought. It might truly save my life. On top of a rise, I looked back along the main road and saw, to my horror, the German soldiers marching towards their victory.

  I veered off across the field and headed west and south towards the forest road. The sun had set now and I was glad to see a clear night would follow that dreadful day, with a full and peaceable moon already risen to light my way. I soon found the road and walked through the night, stopping briefly every hour or so to rest, climbing down into the forest and sitting or lying down where I stopped. I slept in these breaks—I can’t say how long—and saw no other travellers, as if all had fled before me.

  As the sky began to grow less dark and I knew a day was coming—whatever it might bring—I felt a kind of joy. I w
as hungry—my rations had run out—and I was tired, but nothing would stop the morning now and the morning brought ever hope.

  Just then my reverie was interrupted when I heard a motor. I scrambled down into the forest and crouched among the leaves. Before long I saw them—well, heard them first. They were singing “It’s a Long Way” and I knew. It was Violet and Miss Ivens and the crew coming back to Royaumont.

  Violet saw me first. “It’s Iris!” she screamed. She pulled up the car, at first forgetting to apply the brake so it rolled back as she was getting out but she jumped back in and stopped it. “It is you! Oh, my dear. We’d heard the trains were out. We thought . . . We didn’t know what had happened. We’ve been searching the road for you. I told them. I told them I knew you’d take this road. And you did.” We were hugging tightly.

  “Violet,” I said. I could have collapsed into her arms if she didn’t feel so frail herself. Miss Ivens was emerging from the car now and Dr. Courthald. I burst into tears. “Oh my friends. How wonderful to see you all safe.”

  Miss Ivens had taken her patients safely to Crépy and had since picked up more wounded to bring back to Royaumont. They were as glad to see me as I was to see them—they’d heard about the railway line and were planning to send a car for me but they’d come the forest road “just in case.” They’d had a wild night, narrowly dodging shells on the road. Dr. Courthald said they’d had a few sharp minutes. “I really didn’t think we would get through unscathed.” She was very unhappy we’d left so much behind. But she’d picked the last of the radishes from the vegetable patch—to stop the Germans getting them—and so we munched on those. We piled back into the car, Dr. Courthald forced to sit on my lap but we weren’t about to leave anyone behind. None of the patients was seriously wounded and soon we were back home. We arrived at Royaumont at dawn, just as the sun was striking the abbey walls.

  Royaumont remained untouched, although a shell had burst in the back fields leaving a huge hole not a hundred yards from the abbey. The staff and patients had spent the night in the cellars, fearing the worst. They were relieved to hear the cars returning staff to Royaumont.

  Miss Ivens and I went straight from Royaumont to Senlis, only stopping for a quick wash and coffee and bread. The German advance had been halted and Senlis had been held. We met at the new hastily established Command HQ with the new Allied Health Service authorities, where it was decided Royaumont would replace Villers-Cotterêts and cover the entire zone, collecting wounded now from Senlis as Creil was too vulnerable to continue. Royaumont would be the largest hospital in the region, providing up to six hundred beds. We were all so exhausted I didn’t know how we were going to manage it.

  Two days after we closed Villers, everyone was safely back at Royaumont. We’d left equipment and supplies behind, much to the consternation of those in Edinburgh, although the X-ray machines and films were saved thanks to Miss Stoney, who risked her life to go back the day after we evacuated and retrieve them. We didn’t lose one patient in the evacuation and Royaumont was full again. The town of Villers-Cotterêts was completely destroyed, Miss Stoney told me, but the hospital, on the outskirts of the town, remained eerily untouched by the German advance.

  We found out that we were the only hospital that had continued operating in the region—Royaumont was too far from the field to take the wounded—and Miss Ivens said we’d saved lives that surely would have been lost without us. Marjorie Starr was among those who had evacuated to Chantilly. She’d seen Tom, she said, and he was quite safe. The child Marjorie had taken with her turned out to have an aunt in Chantilly and they managed to see him united with family. “Poor little tyke was so brave,” Marjorie said. “If we’d not found his people, I’d have taken him in myself.”

  “Thank goodness he has someone, Marjorie,” I said. “Imagine having no family anywhere.”

  I left Marjorie in the kitchen and went to the office to find Miss Ivens. When I got there, the telephone was ringing. Quoyle answered it. “Iris, it’s for you,” she said. “A Captain Driscoll.”

  My heart was banging in my chest when I picked up the receiver.

  “Miss Crane, I’m sorry to be calling you like this.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing, nothing like that. Of course that’s what you’d think. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said my name. Young Crane is fine. But I wanted to let you know that I’ve been transferred to Le Havre to coordinate postal operations there. Lieutenant Michaels has taken over the postal service and I thought you should know. I understand your brother is still keen to transfer to signals. One of the other boys, Hugh Passmore, has already moved out into an infantry division. Michaels didn’t stop him. I’m not sure that he’ll stop Crane either. I wanted to let you know.”

  I hung up the telephone just as Miss Ivens walked in. “What is it, dear? You’ve a terrible pallor.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, “and I’m sorry to ask, but can I take the afternoon? I need to go and see my brother.”

  “Of course, Iris. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, I’m sure it is. I just need to talk with him.”

  None of the cars was available to take me so I had to walk to Chantilly. The fields were in full bloom now as if no one had told the flowers about the days that had just passed.

  The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want Tom to fight and at all costs I must convince him not to pursue that course.

  When I arrived at the mail centre, I had to wait for Tom. The new officer in charge, Lieutenant Michaels, had sent him out with a message. “He’s a fast runner, your brother,” Michaels said. He was not much older than me, with a narrow beaky face, eyes too close together. It made him look nervous. “Make a very good messenger, and he’s keen, wants to join the signallers.”

  “He is fast,” I said. “Comes from running away from me all his life, but he’s very young.”

  I’d decided not to talk with Lieutenant Michaels about Tom until I’d had a chance to see Tom himself, but Michaels raised it. He got up to walk out with me and I saw he favoured his left leg. He noticed me watching. “Shrapnel,” he said. “Shredded the knee. Now I’m stuck here.” I went to open the door for him but he opened it and stood back and all but pushed me through.

  “Crane’s been here the longest of any of the men,” he said. “He ought to be more involved.”

  “Lieutenant Michaels, please understand, Tom isn’t even nineteen,” I replied, as calmly as I could. “He was only fifteen when he came here. He wasn’t old enough to decide to fight and I have been thankful that Captain Driscoll has understood that a boy shouldn’t be making a man’s decision.”

  “Driscoll’s not in charge anymore.”

  “I just meant—” I began, but Michaels spoke over me.

  “Crane’s old enough to make his own decisions.” Just then Tom walked in. “Ah, the man himself. Your sister’s giving me a roasting, Crane.”

  “Iris, I wasn’t expecting you,” Tom said. He looked as he had when as a child he’d done something he knew he shouldn’t have done. But he wasn’t a child. He was a grown man now and I realised suddenly I couldn’t make him do anything.

  We took our leave from Lieutenant Michaels and went over to the canteen. I told Tom what Michaels had said, that Tom should be more involved. “He’s just talking, Iris. Don’t pay him any mind.”

  “So you’re not trying to move.”

  “Of course not. I’m happy here.”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  “About what?”

  “What did Michaels mean? He said you wanted to join the signallers.”

  “He didn’t mean anything, Iris. And even if he did, mind your own bloody business for a change. I’m not a baby anymore.” He’d raised his voice and looked around to be sure no one was listening. “I’m a man.”

  I was angry suddenly. “No, you listen to
me. I’ve told our father that you are in a safe job, despite the war, that you’re making an important contribution without risking your life. He was ready to come over and get both of us. You were a child when we came here and you are still not of age. If you want, I can go and see more senior officers and tell them your true age.”

  Tom burst out laughing. “Is that the best you can do, Iris? You think they care? There’s more of us enlisted who are underaged than over. I’m an old timer. There’s a kid at the front who’s fourteen. His sister doesn’t tell him to come home for supper. Just leave me alone.” He got up and walked out the door without looking back.

  I wasn’t myself in the week that followed. I worried about Tom, what I’d do if he persisted with this plan of his. And I was still tired to my bones. We all were. Miss Ivens had things on her mind too and they were of the kind that made her angry and short with all of us. We’d had a complaint from an orderly who’d returned to England after being let go by Miss Ivens and now Miss Ivens was livid.

  Orderly Johnston had come to us only three months before. From what I could gather, she had trouble adapting to life at Royaumont. She claimed the conditions were appalling, cited an example of an Arab patient who’d relieved himself on the floor. An orderly was made to clean it up—quite usual when the patients had an accident—but Johnston was incensed. Anyone who has lived in the East knows well that it is not fitting for a white woman to wait on natives. She also said the staff accommodations were filthy and flea-ridden—we did suffer terribly with fleas, which came in on the soldiers’ uniforms—and that there were unsatisfactory bathing arrangements. This too was a fair point. Most of us got by with a wash every second day and a bath when we went to Paris. As for the accommodations, we shared rooms sometimes with two or three others, and during the very busy periods we even shared beds, one resting while the other worked. Violet and I had done this from time to time and while it was nice to have my own bed—Violet never, ever made the bed—it wasn’t really much of a hardship as we were rarely off at the same time. Truly Johnston’s complaint was a tempest in a teacup, but it came at a bad time and Miss Ivens had always had a weakness when it came to criticism. She said she would go back to Edinburgh and speak with the committee about the complaint. I told her I thought that unnecessary. “I just think she’s not worth it,” I said.