Mary Russell's War

by Laurie R. King

  This may or may not have to do with the article concerning a “young woman of independent means” from Bayswater who was charged with assaulting with her umbrella a Captain home on sick leave, saying that she had been insulted by men like this.

  In Paris, meanwhile, debate continues over the coming width of ladies’ skirts and the most flattering way to arrange one’s veil.

  16 March

  The juxtaposition of War with an attempt at maintaining the bastions of normal life is at times painful. For example, last Tuesday’s Times (which reached me late on Wednesday) contained the following:

  NEW PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN.

  That section of the field of labour hitherto regarded as the exclusive property of men is being rapidly invaded by women. These include: Medicine, railway clerical work, carriage cleaning, grocery, engineering, toy-making, architectural drawing, debt collecting, motor driving, banking, and accountancy.

  While nearby was printed excerpts of a diary from the Front:

  AT NIGHT.

  It was quiet when we were in the line. To the right there was the “devil driving in nails” with a machine-gun, and along the line the isolated reports of rifle fire—for firing at night keeps your own sentries awake and worries the enemy. The Germans are blazing away with pistol flare lights, the brilliant pallid flame of which hangs in the sky and then slowly nears the earth, throwing everything within its radius into sharp relief. Their searchlight flashes across every now and again, lighting up the low rain-laden clouds and playing like phenomenal summer lightning along our trench line. When we leave the trenches the night has grown black. We plod heavily up the communication trench, which seems to thirst after our boots, bending low so as to avoid the prying finger of the searchlight.

  Thomas—Lieutenant Saunders—is there in the midst of it, his letters giving a picture of truly appalling conditions: freezing mud, swarming lice, and, even in the cold, a pervasive miasma of unburied bodies. I encourage him to write me these distasteful details of life, since I am quite certain he cannot send them to his mother and I feel (Dr Ginsberg’s influence!) that it must only do a sufferer good to unload some small part of his burden onto a sympathetic friend. At the same time, I try not to read the lists from the Front, lest it remind me how many junior officers lose their lives in their first weeks of duty in the trenches. Thomas tells me that he has a sergeant of the classically grizzled type who has taken him under his gruff and no doubt malodorous wing, going so far as to deliver a slap to his head (assaulting an officer being a court martial charge) to knock it below the sandbags, lest the sniper’s crosshairs find a focus.

  Would that Lieutenant Thomas Saunders learns his lessons well, and keeps his head well down in the future.

  I have finally worn down the patience of the village doctor, who has come to accept my offer and agreed to teach me the basic skills of starter motor and gear lever. In fact, these lessons amounted to a demonstration of a) pushing the starter button, and b) a change of the gears, after which he got out of the motor and left me to explore the machine’s workings on my own while he (having been up for 36 hours attending first a difficult birth and then an emergency surgery) stumbled off to his bed.

  I will admit that I was a bit concerned with the effects of my initial trials on the workings of the motorcar, but it would appear that the machine is designed to permit much choking, grinding of gears, and bucking to a halt. By midday, I could drive to the outskirts of Eastbourne and back without killing the engine more than a handful of times.

  I then presented myself to the good doctor, and told him that I would be available at any time, day or night, and that he had only to telephone to my house or drive past and sound the horn. I assured him that it would be quite convenient for me to be given some hours of enforced reading in the car’s shelter while he attended to patients. I am not sure he was convinced (he did, to the contrary, look a bit stunned—perhaps he’d forgot about handing me his keys?) However, once I have taken up a position outside of his surgery for a few days, springing to his service whenever he makes in the direction of his motor, he will understand that Mary Russell is not to be put aside.

  The next thing will be to find someone to teach me the basic workings of the engine itself, since I imagine that the ability to render elementary repairs would be a necessity when driving ambulances on the Front.

  23 March

  This week has taught some interesting lessons, both in practical knowledge and—perhaps more valuable in the long run—in the subtle relationships between the sexes.

  Dr X and I (I decided I should probably not use his name, since my presence as his driver is probably against a string of regulations and I would not want the man struck off simply because he is too exhausted to argue with me) have forged a reasonable working relationship, in which he agrees to permit me to drive him about the countryside on his daily rounds, while I agree not to lay wait for him outside of his door at night. As a temporary solution, it is most workable, although eventually I shall have to take on the skills of night-time driving.

  One of our trips this past week took us to Seaford, where he anticipated a longer than usual visit. As I prepared to settle in with my Latin, I noticed just down the road a small garage, so I set aside the text and moved the motor over to the establishment’s forecourt.

  I have not reached the age of fifteen years without realising that few men take women seriously—particularly young women. There are two ways around this: One can force matters, asserting one’s needs and abilities until the man reluctantly (and resentfully) gives way, or one can manipulate him. The first way is easier on a woman’s self-respect, but I have to admit, the second seems both faster and more productive.

  In this case, my request—that the man in the greasy coveralls be hired to introduce me to the mysteries of the internal combustion engine—had the result I had anticipated: he laughed. Had his hands not been so filthy, I think he might have patted me on the head.

  But instead of bridling and manoeuvring him into a corner, I did the unnatural (to me) and unexpected: I went soft, blinking my eyes at him (and contriving to seem shorter than I was) while admitting that it was silly, I knew, but until I knew just a couple of things, like changing tyres and what to do if the starter wouldn’t catch, the aged grandmother I lived with far at the end of a country lane would be vulnerable and might even have to move into town…

  He relented, patently amused at the idea of a girl changing a tyre, much less cleaning the points of a carburettor, but since the forecourt was empty of other cars—and, perhaps more important, other men—he walked around to the bonnet and opened it to demonstrate the key architecture.

  Two hours later, having passed from amusement through bemusement to astonishment, he had taught me all the main parts of the motor and what to do in any event short of a broken axle.

  Dr X was most taken aback at my appearance, and my aunt filled with outrage, but I shall purchase my own set of coveralls and keep them in the motor, against my next exploration of the guts of the machine.

  30 March

  In the past week, the Times has continued to shrink in pages, and expand in its messages of desperation. Letters from the Front speak of A DOCTOR IN THE BATTLE LINE and his AMBULANCE WORK UNDER FIRE, from Neuve Chapelle:

  It has been quite impossible to write lately, as there has been a tremendous battle going on, the earlier part of which was a great success… Life has been absolute Hell; there is no other word for it…..Getting the wounded away was the worse. I had only four stretcher-bearers out of 16, and only two stretchers; and the shell fire was so great that it was impossible to carry them to the ambulance a mile and a half away.

  Boys at home are being encouraged to respond to the thrill of War, that they might be encouraged to volunteer for service in the Red Cross, to raise war funds, and to dig potatoes for desperate farmers. In the meantime, THE CALL TO WOMEN includes TO WORK IN ARMAMENT FACTORIES doing SHELL-MAKING, and to shore up the nation’s defences by FARM
ING.

  Under this relentless barrage of War news, the headline BRIDES DROWNED IN BATHS, concerning one George Smith of Shepherd’s Bush, accused of killing a series of three wives by drowning each of them in a bath, seems positively droll and homely by comparison. As does the description of NEW PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN that includes POSSIBILITIES OF MUSIC ENGRAVING and WOMEN TRAM CONDUCTORS.

  I do not know that music engraving fills a tremendous Wartime need, although I suppose even the boys on the Front would appreciate sheet music from time to time. Driving a tram would at least free a man to carry a gun—as my own driving frees the doctor to concentrate on his work, allowing him to doze the roads instead of hunching bleary-eyed over them. It may be a sign of his cumulative fatigue (the district’s other practitioners are all in France) but either my driving has improved, or he is too tired to object. The other night, the sound of a fence-post scraping against the side of the motor only caused his snores to briefly pause, and fortunately the post missed the head-lamp.

  I fear, however, that the good doctor will have to make use of another chauffeur before too long. I am determined to make a more active service to this, my mother’s homeland and the land of my birth: driving an ambulance at the Front. This decision has come, I realise now, from a methodical series of lessons, although I did not see the sequence until I looked back: Last December, I learned the skills of appearing older than my years. In January, I perfected the means of getting my way through calm and implacable will. In past weeks, I have learned to drive: day and night, sun and hard rain, on roads or over uneven ground. I can even perform simple motor repairs. My nerves are steady, my stamina vastly improved, and my wits sharp: England needs such as me. I know my vision of coming to the rescue of Thomas Saunders is but a figment of imagination, but surely any number of other young men could stand in his stead.

  I have heard of a local widow-woman who is not only well skilled behind a wheel, but whose sons are now out of her house, leaving her at loose ends for employment. To make matters even more interesting, the lady is of an age appropriate to my Doctor X, whose wife died four or five years ago. I have arranged the use of the motor this afternoon, while the Doctor holds surgery hours, to go and see if she might be willing to step into my place. If so, I shall forge identity papers and leave for the Front. If a schoolboy with ten shillings of choir money can work his way to France, I shall have no trouble at all slipping into a driver’s position amidst the chaos of a field hospital. By the time I am discovered, I will have made myself indispensible.

  6 April 1915

  A slight hitch in plans has occurred, with the discovery that identity papers are not readily forged by a person with naught but an amateur’s workshop. However, by asking around among the village troublemakers, I discovered a man in Eastbourne who can provide the necessary documents, and I have paid him the first instalment of the price. Unfortunately, it will take him some days to finish. My peripatetic reading on the Downs resumes.

  I admit to a brief reconsideration of plans following some Times articles this last week, which suggest that the government may be starting to take seriously the potential that lies in the female half of the nation. The government wishes to induce women to come to the aid of agriculturists by doing dairy work, milking, and other “light” employment. In the meantime, Patrick will be troubled in the coming year by the same article’s description of “the scarcity of farm labour and the requisitioning of hay by the War Office….” My two strong arms will be missed, when it comes to this year’s harvest. Or perhaps not—with any luck, the War will be over by then. In any event, Thursday’s news then trumpeted THE ARMY OF WOMEN with OVER 20,000 APPLICANTS FOR WAR WORK, so perhaps he and my aunt will manage without me.

  I suppose it is understandable that Sunday’s celebration of the Easter holiday made for a wistful pursuit of normality, with a number of News pieces such as one about the EASTER HARE AND EASTER EGGS. (It asked: What is the connexion of the hare with eggs, and of both with Easter? In reply, the writer claimed that as a Christian symbol, the hare is as old as the catacombs, where it is the emblem of the repentant sinner. This seems a dubious bit of theology to me; I wonder what Mother would make of it?)

  Similarly, an earnest gentleman urged the use of HONEY FOR SOLDIERS, in a letter to the editor that began, “May I bring to notice the value of honey for our warriors? It is an especial nutrient for them when they have lost body heat on deck or in trench…”

  Lacking Easter eggs, or even pots of honey (which personally I’d have thought unsuitable as a gift for the Front, being both heavy and breakable) I shall divert myself with my former reading material, the Latin text of Virgil. The Georgics, by odd coincidence, contain a section on bees: “First, seek a settled home for your bees, where the winds […of War?] may find no access…”

  I write this in the still hours of the morning, sleep having been banished by a heavy heart. For yesterday, just before tea, Patrick came to the door with a look on his face such as I had never seen there before. I knew immediately what it meant, and yes: Second Lieutenant Thomas Saunders died of wounds, three days ago.

  It was a shock, and a huge sadness, yet I cannot say it was unexpected. I think I knew the moment Thomas planted his shy salute on my cheek that I would never see him again. Just as I know that this War will not be over until it has ripped the heart from every person on earth.

  My friend’s passing has firmed my own thoughts. The Meteorological Office predict rain tomorrow, making it a good day to spend in the stables with my thoughts and a review of this journal. When I started it thirty-six weeks ago, I was the daughter of two parents, the sister to a younger brother, resident in a country far from War. A child, with no more pressing concern than my right to visit a friend. So much change, such misery in the world.

  When I have finished meditating on the past months, I shall close this book my mother gave to me, and send it to a place where it shall be safe. Then I shall do my best to forget it.

  Thursday’s forecast is for fair skies. So on that day when the sun rises, before my aunt is astir (her unreasonable behaviour having reached absurd heights, most recently over the purchase of shoes!) I shall pocket the Georgics and a bread roll, to set out for a last day’s rambling. Only this time, instead of turning north to the forested Weald, I shall walk towards those distant guns and that ominous stretch of sea, that I might confront them face to face.

  I do not know when, if ever, I will read the final instalments of The Valley of Fear, a story that has taken up so much of my interest in recent months, a tale that—shallow as I feel to admit it—helped to pull me from the state I was in after the accident.

  Stories do not matter, not really. Like the hay harvest, this one may have to go on without me. I shall do what I can, and do it with all my strength, wanting only to feel that my parents, and my brother, would be proud of me.

  Mary Judith Russell

  Sussex, England

  **

  Thus ends Mary Russell’s War Journal. Her memoirs continue in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, which opens on that Thursday morning, 8 April 1915, with the words:

  I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defence I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year of 1915. In my seven weeks of peripatetic reading amongst the sheep (which tended to move out of my way) and the gorse bushes (to which I had painfully developed an instinctive awareness) I had never before stepped on a person.

  It was a cool, sunny day in early April, and the book was by Virgil. I had set out at dawn from the silent farmhouse, chosen a different direction from my usual—in this case southeasterly, towards the sea—and had spent the intervening hours wrestling with Latin verbs, climbing unconsciously over stone walls, and unthinkingly circling hedge rows, and would probably not have noticed the sea until I stepped off one of the c
halk cliffs into it.

  As it was, my first awareness that there was another soul in the universe was when a male throat cleared itself loudly not four feet from me. The Latin text flew into the air, followed closely by an Anglo-Saxon oath. Heart pounding, I hastily pulled together what dignity I could and glared down through my spectacles at this figure hunched up at my feet: a gaunt, greying man in his fifties wearing a cloth cap, ancient tweed greatcoat, and decent shoes, with a threadbare Army rucksack on the ground beside him. A tramp perhaps, who had left the rest of his possessions stashed beneath a bush. Or an Eccentric. Certainly no shepherd.

  He said nothing. Very sarcastically. I snatched up my book and brushed it off.

  “What on earth are you doing?” I demanded. “Lying in wait for someone?”

  He raised one eyebrow at that, smiled in a singularly condescending and irritating manner, and opened his mouth to speak in that precise drawl which is the trademark of the overly educated upper-class English gentleman. A high voice; a biting one: definitely an Eccentric….[6]

  Addendum I: The Story Continues

  A complete list of the Russell Memoirs can be found on the Laurie R. King web site, www.LaurieRKing.com. Of particular interest are:

  The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: when Mary Russell meets Sherlock Holmes, and becomes his apprentice.

  “Beekeeping for Beginners”: the early days of their relationship from Holmes’ point of view.

  “Mary’s Christmas”: a tale of Miss Russell’s youth.

  Locked Rooms: the complete story of the San Francisco events in Russell’s life.