A Rose for the Anzac Boys

by Jackie French

  As you will see from the address on this letter I am lending a hand for a few months at the casualty clearing station where my Aunt Lallie is stationed. It is a nightmare of a place and this war is a nightmare too. We lost over 100,000 men in the last ‘push’ they say, and gained perhaps a mile of ground. From the cuttings you have sent me I do not think anyone at home can realise just how bad things are here. Our men keep going with such courage despite orders from England that even to me seem such stupidity.

  There is no more news of Tim yet, I’m afraid. We have kept hoping that we might get a letter either from him or the Red Cross to say that he is a prisoner. But there has been no word. Mail takes such a long time to get through from the prison camps though, and so many letters get lost when ships are sunk or trains bombed. I’m sure that is why we haven’t heard from him. Dougie continues well. He is stationed far from where I am, though, in Belgium. I would love to see him, but none of our boys have had more than a couple of days’ leave since they have been stationed there.

  I hope you are well. I am well too, apart from a little trouble with my hands. But all of us have that over here—our hands are constantly damp and we always have to battle infection. But it is nothing serious.

  Your affectionate pupil,

  Midge Macpherson

  ‘Sister!’

  Midge put down the letter she was writing and looked up. It was the boy from Harry’s ward—Nipper, that was his name.

  ‘What are you doing out here? And you shouldn’t call me Sister. I’m not a nurse, remember?’

  The boy shook his head, too sunk in misery to understand her words. ‘We’re going back tonight,’ he whispered.

  Midge said nothing. What could you say?

  ‘I…I don’t want to go.’

  Suddenly he was crying. He looked even younger, his eyes red, wiping his nose on his sleeve. How could they ever have thought this boy was twenty back in Australia, thought Midge.

  But of course they hadn’t. They hadn’t cared.

  ‘I thought it was so grand, lying about my age. I thought…Miss, I can’t go back! Can’t you say I’m too sick to go? Please, miss, I’ll do anything.’

  ‘Nipper, I’m sorry. They wouldn’t listen to me. I can try with my aunt if you like.’

  But she knew it was no use. How many pleas like this had her aunt already heard? There was no choice, for her or Lallie or this boy. You fought with the others. If you ran, they shot you—not the enemy, but your own side. And if you screamed in terror, or shook hands with the enemy as you gathered in your dead, they wrote ‘lack of moral fibre’—LMF—in blood upon your forehead.

  ‘No. Don’t say nothing to Sister. Please.’ The boy wiped his sleeve across his eyes one more time. ‘I know what she’d say. I’m sorry, miss. I really am. Miss, will you write to me? Same as Harry?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll write.’

  ‘And, miss, when we march out tonight, will you wave to me at the gate? Please? It won’t be so bad if there’s someone to say goodbye.’

  Midge felt her own tears prickle her lashes. ‘I’ll be there.’

  The men marched out at dusk. Grey uniforms in grey light. Grey faces too. These weren’t men eager to face the enemy, full of the romance of the battle. These were men who had been there and knew what they would face, who had lost faith in most of the men who ordered them.

  But still they sang. It was ‘A Long Way to Tipperary’ tonight, and if you shut your eyes and listened only to the voices and the beat of marching boots, you might almost think that they were happy.

  Nipper was halfway down the line. She waved and smiled, the practised smile you gave to men when your heart felt it would rip in two.

  She caught Harry’s eye and waved to him as well. She tried to make her smile genuine; something real to give him, not the practised cheer. She touched the pocket of her apron where she kept the photo, and saw his glance of understanding.

  ‘Wish me a Blighty One next time!’

  Who called that? What was his name? There were so many. Bluey, that was it. She smiled. She smiled and waved and smiled…

  ‘You don’t get used to it.’ She hadn’t noticed Aunt Lallie come up beside her. ‘We patch them up and then we send them off to die. They know it and we know it.’

  She touched Midge’s arm lightly. ‘Come on, my dear. There’s time for a cup of tea before the rounds.’

  Midge tried to put her smile in place again. ‘Does tea help?’

  Aunt Lallie looked at her strangely. ‘You know, my dear, I think it does. Especially if you drink it with friends.’

  Another week. The guns drew even closer. She’d have to leave, she knew, when the casualty station moved to safer territory in two days’ time.

  She kept the drawing of the roses in her bag, wrapped in her spare petticoats, the photo in her apron; looked at them both before she went to sleep and when she woke. Harry was right. They were a reminder that somewhere there was another life: beauty, growing things, lambs being born and flowers to fill vases. Pikelets with butter and jam on the verandah, looking down towards the river…

  ‘Miss Macpherson!’

  ‘Yes, Sister?’

  It was Aunt Lallie’s friend, Sister Atkins.

  ‘Miss Macpherson, would you do Sergeant Ross’s dressing this evening, please? Nurse Rowan will show you how.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  Midge frowned. She had never been allowed to do dressings before. And Sergeant Ross was one of the bad cases, too bad even to ship out to one of the hospitals.

  She found Nurse Rowan already at the sergeant’s bedside, the tray of dressings beside her. The sergeant lay on his stomach, but he turned his head on the pillow as she arrived.

  ‘Ah, so ye’re the treat Sister promised me!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  The man laughed. It was a faint sound, more like a dog panting, but it was still a laugh. ‘A lass from home.’

  ‘Scotland?’

  ‘I am not! It was my father who was from Scotland. I’m a Kiwi, like yerself.’

  ‘I see.’

  It began to make sense now. The comfort of a voice from home. And then Nurse Rowan moved and the reason became even clearer. This man was dying.

  His buttocks had been shot away. But where there should have been red flesh was pus—yellow pus, green pus edged with black, already seeping into the new dressings. A tube ran down from his side, but instead of the usual clear fluid it ran green and brown. A perforated bowel.

  Nurse Rowan gave her practised smile. ‘Just keep changing the dressings when they become sodden,’ she said. ‘Hypochlorous acid quarter of a per cent solution.’ She took the man’s big hand in hers. It was a large hand and looked like it should be brown. But it was now pale and the fingertips were blue. ‘You behave yourself for Miss Macpherson.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  There was a chair by the bed. Midge glanced at him. He must know what that meant—only the most serious cases had a chair. She sat and lifted off the already sodden dressings. The man’s eyes closed briefly, but he made no sound. She dipped the new dressings in the solution and laid them on.

  ‘Where are ye from?’ His voice was deep, but faint.

  ‘The South Island. Glen Donal. It’s a sheep property, up in the high country of Canterbury.’

  ‘Ye’ve never seen the North Island then? The Bay of Islands?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Oh my, Sister, ye have to see the Bay of Islands. The most beautiful place on all the earth. Those islands…’ He shook his head slightly, apparently without either the words or strength to describe it.

  Once again she pulled off the pus-soaked dressings, laid on new ones. He was quiet. She wondered if he was asleep or unconscious. The last, she hoped. It was so much easier when they felt no pain or fear. But his eyes were still shut when he added, ‘There’s a song that tells it all. Wasn’t supposed to be about New Zealand, but it is. It’s a Scots song. My mum sings it but I never
caught all the words.’

  ‘How does it go?’

  He hummed a moment. It could have been the drone of an aircraft for all the tune it carried.

  She shook her head. ‘Can you remember any of the words at all?’

  ‘“Islands of rain and sun.” That’s what I remember.’

  ‘I do know it!’ Joy rushed through her at having something to give him. ‘It’s “The Skye Boat Song”…No, it’s the other one, “Sing me a song of a lad that is gone” it begins. But it’s the same tune.’

  ‘That’s it. Can ye sing it, Sister?’

  ‘I can.’

  His breathing seemed to grow quieter. ‘I’d like it fine if ye could sing it.’

  She tried to keep her voice as soft as possible:

  ‘Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,

  Say, could that lad be I?

  Merry of soul he sailed on a day

  Over the sea to Skye.

  Mull was astern, Rum on the port,

  Eigg on the starboard bow;

  Glory of youth glowed in his soul:

  Where is that glory now?’

  Her hands changed the dressings as she sang on. He was smiling. Despite the pain his hands were relaxed on the white sheet.

  ‘Give me again all that was there,

  Give me the sun that shone!

  Give me the eyes, give me the soul,

  Give me the lad that’s gone!

  Billow and breeze, islands and seas,

  Mountains of rain and sun.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he breathed. ‘They’re there waiting for me, aren’t they? The islands of rain and sun?’

  Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sing that bit again.’

  ‘Billow and breeze, islands and seas,

  Mountains of rain and sun,

  All that was good, all that was fair,

  All that was me is gone.’

  She was silent. The ward was quiet too. Had they all been listening, she wondered. Finally he said softly, ‘Sister, am I dying?’

  ‘I’m not a nurse. But I think so.’

  ‘I think ye’re right.’ He was quiet for a while and then he said, ‘Can ye do something for me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell the others not to blame themselves. Tell them they did their best. Tell them to live their lives. That’s what’s important. If only one of us makes it out of this, tell him not to waste it.’

  ‘I’ll tell them.’

  He hadn’t said who the others were. But it didn’t matter, she thought. She would tell them all, every boy she could.

  ‘Will ye sing again?’

  The voice was even fainter now. His eyes closed. He wasn’t asleep. The breathing was too shallow. Nor was he dead, for the blood and pus still flowed. So she sat there, changing the dressings, knowing it was futile. She sang until he died.

  Two more days to go, she thought, as she went to get a VAD to help her lay the body out for burial. Two more days till I am away from here.

  She shouldn’t be glad to go. She should want to stay, to help. And if the choice had been hers she would have.

  But every fibre of her being longed for sunlight on the mountains, and a breeze that didn’t smell of rotting flesh, of blood and death.

  Chapter 15

  Casualty Station 15

  France

  1 July 1917

  Dear Harry,

  I wish we could have had another chance to talk, to tell you how my very best wishes go with you and hopes for your safety. I didn’t even really get a chance to thank you properly for the roses. They are so beautiful. I will write to Davo too, to thank him again. I do hope they can help him in England. My aunt said that there is a good chance of saving the sight in one eye at least, and maybe even both of them.

  You are right, you know. I keep looking at the photo and your roses too, and no matter what happens here it doesn’t seem to hurt so much. I think of you too, and your kindness, and that helps as well.

  Things are much the same here. You should have heard the cheering though, when we heard that the first American troops had landed. Oh, and I have to tell you the remark of one young Tommy here, when he heard about the splendid progress of General Allenby and the Australians in the Holy Land.‘Well, all I can say is them shepherds won’t half have to watch their flocks by night with them Aussies about!’

  Tomorrow I will head back—I was going to say ‘home’ but of course home is far away. Back to the canteen and Madame and the hotel. I am so looking forward to seeing Ethel again. I wish Anne could be there too. I think she is one of the closest friends I have ever had. When this is over it is going to be so hard talking to the other girls I knew at school, or friends at home. It’s as though Anne and Ethel and I—and you, of course—are part of a world the people at home can never share or understand.

  It is so good to be able to write to you, you know. Dougie doesn’t really like me being here, and my aunt and uncle would worry if I told them what it is really like. I always feel better after I have written to you. I hope you don’t mind my scribblings! You can always use my letters to line your boots if they are too long!

  I met a couple of Australians who had been at Gallipoli a few days ago, but none of them could remember Tim. It’s really the New Zealanders I need to ask, but most are stationed too far from here. But if you meet any and are able to ask I would be so grateful. Somehow I am so sure that he is all right. Did I tell you we are twins? I can just imagine his grin if he knew how much I was worrying. ‘Silly old chook,’ he’d say. ‘You should know I always land on my feet.’

  I will write again when I get back to the canteen.

  Your affectionate friend,

  Midge Macpherson

  P.S. It’s grand that the season has been so good back in Australia. Please give your parents my best wishes when you write next.

  It was hard to leave Aunt Lallie. Life seemed fragile now; bright meetings that the war could so quickly burn away. Aunt Lallie seemed so small standing in the makeshift courtyard, even in her sister’s cap and cape. She lifted a hand in farewell. Midge waved back, leaning forwards to reach the truck’s window, then sat back in the tiny space behind the front seats.

  ‘Capable woman, your aunt.’

  The woman’s voice was American, the vowels longer and more melodic than Midge was used to. The Model-T Ford truck belonged to the American Fund for French Wounded, but the driver and her companion wore no uniform, not even the sensible grey serge skirt and coat that so many of the female volunteers adopted. Instead the driver’s white shirt was topped with a tie and what looked suspiciously like an embroidered smoking jacket. To Midge’s shock, what had looked like a skirt now appeared to be a form of loose pantaloons that hung skirt-like when the wearer stood, but separated into trousers as soon as her feet touched the pedals. Midge had seen women in trousers before—a bicyclist had passed the school wearing bloomers and of course there was Slogger and the men’s trousers she wore. But she had never seen women in trousers made especially for them.

  ‘A fine lady,’ agreed the driver’s companion. In a world of uniforms and serge and aprons, her dress had the ruffles of a debutante, with the big frilly sleeves that had been fashionable before the war. She shoved her hand between the front seats and held it out to Midge in the back. ‘I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. My [She pronounced it ‘mah’] name is Cecilia Harrington. Of the Charleston Harringtons. And this is my dear friend Eliza Dintwhistle, the artist. I believe you may have heard of her?’

  ‘Ah, no, I’m sorry,’ said Midge. ‘I don’t know much about art.’ She shook Cecilia’s hand gingerly. It still seemed odd to shake another woman’s hand. ‘I’m Midge,’ she added. ‘Midge Macpherson. Well, it’s Margery really but most people call me Midge.’

  ‘Midge! Why, that’s so cute! Eliza, don’t you think that’s cute?’

  Eliza looked up as the gears clashed under her hand. ‘Cute as a button,’ she agreed.<
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  ‘Your aunt told me you and your friends run a canteen, Miz Macpherson,’ Cecilia went on. ‘Why, I do think that is fine. And what were you doin’ before the war?’

  ‘I was at school in England,’ said Midge, embarrassed.

  ‘Well, of course you were. Sometimes my mouth just runs away with me before I think. Cissie, I say to myself, you just think now before you go rabbiting on, hear? Isn’t that right, Eliza, darling?’

  Eliza grinned. ‘You said it, sweetheart.’

  ‘Eliza and I have this dinkiest li’l flat in Paris. You should have seen Paris before the war, Miz Macpherson. So many artists and writers that you couldn’t move sometimes without trippin’ over one. Eliza, darling, look out for that man an’ his pig—there, you’ve frightened the poor beast. I despair sometimes, I really do, Miz Macpherson. Eliza just has no sense of the road at all.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ The truck’s gears clashed again. ‘Don’t you worry, Miss Macpherson, you’re safe as houses.’

  ‘Safe up here maybe, darlin’, but how about those poor sufferin’ creatures on the road? Miz Macpherson, don’t say you’re not terrified, absolutely terrified, by this mad creature’s drivin’?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Just insane,’ said Cecilia, patting her friend’s arm. ‘Why, I remember back in Paris, we were on our way to a luncheon with the Baroness Peirlot—do you know her, Miz Macpherson? Such a charmin’ lady. She paints too, you know, these just perfect watercolours. And what should Eliza do but…’

  Midge settled back against the wooden panels of the truck. It was going to be a long journey.

  They stopped for lunch at a small hotel.

  Cecilia beamed as she studied the menu. ‘Isn’t this the duckiest li’l hotel?’

  Midge gazed around at the small stuffy room. The wallpaper was of faded roses, the tablecloths were mended at the corners, but there were bright poppies in the tiny vases on each table. Even better, there was no smell of damp cabbage and old socks, which had been the companion to all their meals at the casualty station.