A Rose for the Anzac Boys

by Jackie French

  She nodded numbly.

  He bent down conspiratorially. ‘How about I find you a cuppa char, miss? Sister won’t be this way for half an hour. I reckon a cuppa char would do you the world of good.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  She had accepted automatically, but the tea did make her feel better, the heat restoring her. He had even added precious rationed sugar and placed a biscuit on the saucer. She was just finishing it when Dougie’s eyes opened.

  For a moment he stared at her without recognition. And then he smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile. But for the first time Midge believed the VAD’s assertion that her brother would survive.

  ‘Midge, old girl. What are you doing here?’

  She could taste her tears as she tried to smile back. ‘Just seeing what you’ve done to yourself.’

  She reached for his hand. He squeezed hers, then pulled away. Shadows, she thought. She had seen them on the faces of so many men. Now Dougie wore them too.

  ‘They all died, you know, Midge.’

  For a moment she thought he was delirious, then she realised what he was saying. ‘The men you were with?’

  ‘Sometimes I think I should have died with them.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! None of them would thank you for that!’

  He shut his eyes. Not in weariness, she thought, but to shut her out. ‘You can’t understand.’

  Suddenly she was no longer the helpless little sister. The strength she’d learned in France flowed back to her.

  ‘I understand more than you think! I’m not your sheltered baby sister any more. I’ve been there, Dougie.’

  ‘Handing out tea and cakes.’

  ‘Cocoa and bully beef sandwiches actually. But it was more than that. I drove an ambulance. I spent months helping at a casualty station near the front line. I may not have gone up the line myself, but I’ve nursed men who have. I’ve heard their stories, changed their bedpans, helped gather up their arms and legs and hands, sat with them till they died.’

  She shut her mouth, suddenly aware that she had said too much. How could she have talked about lost limbs and dying to her brother lying legless in the bed?

  His eyes were open again. He looked at her curiously. ‘Well,’ he said. Impossible to know what he meant by it. His mouth twisted. ‘So you want a story, little sister? I’ll give you one.

  ‘We were in the trench. You know what a trench is like? It’s mud even in summer, but you don’t mind the mud. It’s rats as big as poodles, and hands and feet—the bits blown off your men, the bits the rats have chewed. It’s stepping on what you think is mud and suddenly it explodes in your face and you realise it was a man buried underneath and you’ve got his guts all over you. And all you can feel is relief it’s not a shell. You think: arms still present, body all right, legs both there.’

  She felt that she would faint. ‘Dougie, you don’t have to—’

  ‘I have to tell someone. If I don’t I’ll never get away from it.’

  She clenched her fists so hard they hurt. ‘Then talk,’ she said softly.

  ‘Four of us shared the room. Four officers, four beds. A room? Mud and broken timber, but at least we had beds. I was asleep when the order came to stand to. You don’t take your clothes off when you’re up the line. Not even your boots. I grabbed my gas mask and rifle. I staggered out. I was half asleep. And they were on us. Bullets going every which way and dirt flying and men screaming. It wasn’t quite dawn but there was enough light to see.

  ‘I yelled, “Stay together, boys.” And, God help me, they followed me. Followed me because I was an officer. I led them round the back of the dugout and up and over. My only thought was to get out, get out before they gassed us or we were buried.

  ‘It was impossible to see anything up there. Smoke and mud and it all looks the same anyway, the craters and the ruined trees. But they were watching me, following me, trusted me, God help them. So I called, “This way,” and we began to run.

  ‘There were ten of them maybe to start with. No time to count them. No time to think. One by one they died. The men carried the wounded while they could till they dropped as well. I hung one chap across my shoulders. That saved my life, I think. A shell hit us in the back, blew half his head away. But when I dropped him I saw the wound in front too. He’d been dead when I hauled him up.

  ‘We came to the barbed wire. You know what an entanglement is like? Only five of us now. We struggled through it. Barbs tearing at our uniforms, our skin. All the while the mud was still flying, the smoke was like a yellow fog. The sun was coming up now; I knew it would shine on our helmets. I hadn’t really felt terror till I saw the sun. And then I did see a helmet shine but it was one of them, a Hun. He was crawling through the wire towards us and then he saw us too. He aimed his rifle. It hit Reg Donaldson—’

  She didn’t mean to interrupt but the words came out. ‘Donaldson?’

  He nodded. ‘Donaldsons at home. Sam’s nephew. He’d been in my lot all along. He started to scream. Not words. Just screaming, screaming. The Hun was still tangled in the barbed wire. He knew he had no chance now. He yelled “Kamerad” and tried to put his hands up. I shot him in the face.

  ‘Reg was still screaming. Screaming and screaming. And all I could think of was how to shut him up so the Germans didn’t find us. We tried to pull him along but you can’t in the barbed wire. There was so much noise. I think he was dead when we left him. Oh God, Midge, I hope he was dead. I keep thinking over and over. Maybe he wasn’t dead at all. Maybe I’m just trying to change my memories. If I could ask the others…but I can’t.

  ‘Anyway. We got through.

  ‘The machine guns were sweeping the ground now. The rest of the Huns must have been close. They got me in the leg and I fell into a shell hole. That was what saved me, I think. I saw the others dive into another hole.

  ‘I looked down at my leg. The blood was pouring out so I tied my hanky to make a tourniquet. There was water in the bottom of the crater. I think I had some idea of hiding in it but it wasn’t deep enough so I began to dig. I piled mud over my body, over my face.

  ‘I heard one of my men yell out, “Captain, where are you?” But I didn’t answer.

  ‘And then the German voices, and then the screams.

  ‘And I just lay there. Lay there in the mud. The Huns went past and the bullets kept on flying and then…’ He stopped.

  ‘Yes,’ she said gently.

  ‘I don’t know. I woke up at the aid station. I’d lost consciousness, I think. Our blokes pushed the Huns back and retook that stupid, stupid piece of ground. But the others—they found their bodies. All dead in the shell hole. Bayoneted, every one. All dead because of me.’

  ‘Dougie, darling, you couldn’t have known.’

  ‘But it was my job to know! Don’t you see, you stupid girl? It was my job to lead them and I failed and so they died! And there is nothing—nothing—you can say that will change it or make it better. Nothing.’

  She sat silently, watching him pant with the exertion of it all. Some of the men down the ward were looking at them curiously. Others ignored them. They must have heard it before, she thought vaguely, remembering the screams from the wards she’d worked in. Just one more man remembering the agony.

  He grew calmer, and looked at her. ‘Sorry, old girl. For calling you stupid.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said gently. ‘And you’re right, Dougie. There is nothing that will make it better. But you are alive, and if the others could talk I know what they’d say.’

  ‘How can you know?’

  ‘Because a dying man told me.’ She shut her eyes, trying to remember. ‘He said, “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.”’

  He was silent. For a moment she thought he was angry. But then he said, ‘Don’t waste it? What do I do with my life now, Midge, eh?’
<
br />   She tried to give him one of her practised smiles. It wouldn’t come. Instead a real smile emerged. She took his hand again.

  ‘Now? We’re going home, Dougie. At last we’re going home.’

  * * *

  1‘Beware of the dog.’

  2Beef stew

  Chapter 17

  7 February 1918

  Dearest Anne,

  It was wonderful to see you down here at Roehampton last week. I can’t tell you how much your visit meant to me then, and when you come to see us at Dover. I know how hard it is for you in public, but just to be able to talk to someone—well, you know how it is.

  I can’t get over how depressed England is. It’s not just the hungry children waiting at the factory doors for scraps. Everyone seems grey. So many years of rationed food, I suppose, of reading newspaper lists, of hoping. I used to dream of sunlight on the hills at home. Now I find I’m just longing for the sunlight.

  I wish I could persuade you to come home with us, even for six months or so. I know it’s partly selfishness—I would so love to have you with me. And I know you are needed where you are. But oh, Anne, England is so cramped, so desperate, and the war is just too near. Sometimes I could hear the bombs when I walked along the cliffs back in Dover.

  Dougie’s last operation seems to have done the trick. I don’t know why I should find the idea of trimming bone so disturbing now—maybe it makes a difference when you know and love the person it’s happening to. But the stump is finally healing, and he should have his first fitting for his new leg in about a fortnight. They have even measured his foot to make sure the boot on the new one matches!

  It would be easier if Dougie would talk about what’s happening to him. But he won’t—or at least not to me. And he’s made it very clear he doesn’t want his sister nursing him either.

  Many of the VADs at Queen Mary’s Hospital are men—there is so much lifting and carrying with the amputation cases. They even carry the men off to football matches at the weekend! But I met Dimpy Morell in the wards yesterday—do you remember her? She was a year ahead of us at school. She’s been a VAD for the past two years. I met Sister Atkins here too, Aunt Lallie’s friend. She says that now the Americans are taking over so many of the nursing jobs Aunt Lallie should be transferred to England soon as well. I do hope so—it would be so good to see her again before we go home.

  I told Sister Atkins I was going bonkers trying to fuss over Dougie and not being allowed to, and she has put me to work with the neurasthenia cases in the convalescent home. The men call it ‘shell shock’, but the army doesn’t like the term. If a man has shell shock he can get an army pension as it is classed as a war wound, but if he has neurasthenia then he just gets discharged with no help at all, or even sent back to the front.

  I met a few neurasthenia patients while driving the ambulance. We had to be careful with them because they could go into these fits and we had to make sure they didn’t fall off the stretchers or go banging themselves about. One of them went berserk with a knife, but that was in Mollie Heenan’s ambulance, and she had a male orderly and he was able to get the knife away.

  The men here aren’t violent. All the violent cases are sent to the asylum, poor things. Mostly the men here just tremble and they often stammer so badly it is hard to understand what they are saying. They wet the bed too, and are so embarrassed about it, and some of them have hallucinations and see the most shocking things.

  My job is supposed to be to collect the breakfast trays and take the morning milk around. But Sister Atkins says what the men really need is just someone to speak normally to them and reassure them that there really is a world beyond the war. One poor chap was screaming the other day that he could hear the bombs. He was screaming and screaming and wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t see Sister Atkins anywhere. But Mrs Andrews (she’s a VAD here and a real old dear) told him to sit down and drink his milk like a good boy, and all of a sudden he did. Then she explained about how the bombs and noise make you deaf and the deafness makes a ringing in your ears and that was what he was hearing, not bombs at all. She promised he wouldn’t have to go back—that is what they are all terrified of—and he calmed right down. I hope it’s true—that he won’t have to go back, I mean.

  I spend each morning with them now, which leaves me the afternoons to take Dougie out in his wheelchair or to pick up things he needs. He is still so fussy about his pyjamas, I just can’t tell you. He says to say ‘Hello’ to you, by the way, and to thank you for the grapes.

  Sister Atkins says that all going well it should take Dougie about six weeks to get used to his new leg. It all sounds incredibly fast but that is what is expected nowadays. So I have put us on the list for a passage home. I would like to wait to see Aunt Lallie, but it is so difficult to get a berth these days, and we must take what we can get, especially as Dougie is wild to get back. If we get a passage soon we will go directly to the ship, but if Dougie is discharged before then we will go to Aunt Harriet’s. I don’t want to be a burden on her though, especially now so soon after Michael’s death. And no, darling, this isn’t a hint for you to ask your mother to put us up. I know she would, but it is just too far for Dougie on the train.

  It must be strange in France now, so many Americans are there. Ethel says she has almost got used to the accents. I keep waiting for her to elope with a nice sergeant-major—it would take a sergeant-major to cope with Ethel these days—but she says she’d rather have a motorbike than a husband. I think she is serious! Has she told you that she has started yet another canteen? That makes the fourth. She sounds rushed off her feet but very happy. At least someone is happy in this wretched war.

  Take care, my dear, dear friend. Please, please do come out to us, at least to visit, when all of this is over. I miss you and Ethel more than I can say.

  Your loving pal,

  Midge

  Roselands

  Christchurch

  New Zealand

  20 February 1918

  My dear Margery,

  I do hope you are well, and that dear Dougie is still progressing steadily. Oh dear, I do not know if I should tell you this—I sent the poor boy a pair of socks I had knitted, just before his accident, as well as a fruit cake, you remember my mother’s recipe that we made up every Christmas? Then when I heard from you I felt terrible that I had sent him such a tactless present, all unknowing. But you know what that sweet boy did? He wrote back to thank me, to say the socks would last twice as long now!

  Those Christmases seem so long ago already. Dancing Roger de Coverley up and down the shearing shed, and you and Tim and Dougie tobogganing down the grassy hills on tin trays and trying to avoid the tussocks. Oh, I must tell you too—before I left Glen Donal I wrapped all your dear mother’s Christmas tree ornaments in tissue paper. You will find them on the top shelf of the linen cupboard. But of course, I will be seeing you both soon, I hope, now you have booked your passage home. Do remember—a saltine cracker or some plain dry toast in case of mal de mer, and strong sweet tea.

  Do give my very dearest love to Dougie, and to yourself I remain,

  Your loving governess,

  Amelia Davies

  P.S. The enclosed sugar pigs are from little Diana, the youngest of my pupils now. I am afraid they may be sadly squashed by the time they reach you, but she says they are for you and Dougie, with her love. I wrapped them in silver paper, so if the sugar dissolves I hope it will not stain the mail.

  The docks smelled of coal smoke, an echo of the stink of shellfire so vivid that for a moment Midge shivered and felt the hair stand up on her neck. The seagulls screamed above them.

  She turned to help Dougie out of the taxi, then hesitated. Dougie hated to be touched these days. He had abandoned his wheelchair and swung his new leg between his crutches. He managed on land well enough, but on a swaying ship…

  But Angus was already there, an arm out for Dougie to lean on, as the taxi’s horse stood patiently, dreaming of oats maybe and the warmth o
f his stable. Somehow Dougie could accept help from Angus, when his sister’s assistance just annoyed him. Perhaps, she thought, it was because Angus had been a soldier too. He’d been a batman till he’d had a touch of gas, and worked as a hospital orderly in London till his coughing grew too bad in the peasouper fogs. He could help Dougie bathe and dress, the intimacies he didn’t want a sister near. Maybe, thought Midge, as she watched Angus trying to suppress a cough, it was easier to accept help from someone who had been damaged too.

  The Lady Lyndon was small, with only twenty passenger cabins. They’d had to wait to get berths—most ships now were used as troop carriers, not for passengers. Somewhere down in the hold there would be cargo destined for New Zealand; and on the trip back the ship would bring meat, canned or frozen, and the precious wool for uniforms.

  She should be interested in whose wool and at what prices. But her mind seemed to have narrowed. All she could think of was home and Dougie and how to get him there.

  At other times she wondered if her heart would snap as soon as the ship sailed, the threads that linked her to Tim breaking as the distance between them grew, abandoning him to the war; abandoning Ethel, Harry, Anne…

  She couldn’t think of them. She wouldn’t. That was the good thing about duty. Duty narrowed down your world. Her duty now was Dougie.

  Her stateroom was small, in first class but right next to the door into second. Second class had fewer stairs and would be easier for Dougie. There were no flowers waiting for her. Staterooms used to be filled with flowers before a voyage. But not these days. Nor was there a hamper of fruit or chocolates, or even a parcel of books. No one these days had time for anything but necessities. But at least she had the room to herself.

  Her bag had already been delivered, with its label Wanted On Voyage. The stewardess must have unpacked the contents too. She wondered if the woman had been shocked by the bag’s poor contents. She had grown out of the dresses she’d worn in her school days, and the clothes she’d worn in France were shabby now, with stains that brought back scenes she wanted to forget. Aunt Harriet’s dressmaker had made her two new day dresses, and had taken in one of Aunt’s old evening dresses to wear at the ship’s dinners. They were enough.