No Place for a Woman

by Val Wood

  ‘But what will you do? You haven’t had any medical training.’

  ‘I’ve had some,’ he admitted. ‘I did a quick course in first aid, but what I am able to do, Lucy, is use the X-ray machines. I’ve had extensive experience and these machines are invaluable for checking injuries. And I’ll be a stretcher bearer too if necessary!’

  Rose knocked and looked in through the open door. ‘We ought to be off, Lucy.’

  ‘Yes, of course. This is my cousin, Oswald Thornbury,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s come to tell me that we might meet in France.’

  ‘It’s a big country,’ Rose commented wryly as they shook hands. ‘We don’t know yet where in France we’ll be.’

  ‘Wherever there’s fighting there’ll be a CCS,’ Oswald said, looking at Lucy. ‘I’ll find you.’

  The journey to Boulogne was a rough one, with high seas that lashed over the deck. Lucy and Rose kept to their shared cabin, both aware not only of the danger of the heavy seas but also of the fact that beneath them there might be mines lying in wait.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to ask, but there has never been much time for conversation,’ Lucy said as they sat on their bunks. ‘What do you remember about my mother? What was she like? I don’t have a proper picture of her or my father in my head.’

  ‘No photographs?’

  ‘N-no, at least I don’t remember seeing any.’ Did she? A distant hazy memory came sidling back of someone packing boxes; were there photographs? ‘Mama was dark-haired like me, and Papa was too, so my uncle told me.’

  ‘You only need to look in the mirror to see your mother,’ Rose smiled. ‘You are the very image of her. She was much younger than you are now when she left the medical school. She was extremely clever, destined for great things if they hadn’t—’ She stopped and shrugged. ‘There’s no knowing what love can do,’ she said softly. ‘Or how it can change lives.’

  ‘No,’ Lucy murmured, lost in thoughts of her own.

  ‘Your cousin, Mr Thornbury,’ Rose said. ‘Which side of the family is he from? He’s not dark-haired like you.’

  ‘No, he isn’t. It’s rather complicated. My aunt had been married before, to Oswald’s father, and after his death she and my uncle met and married; a few years later Uncle William adopted Oswald and he became a Thornbury. So even though we were brought up together and have the same name, we’re not actually related.’

  ‘Ah,’ her companion murmured perceptively. ‘I see.’

  Lucy glanced at her. Should she read something into those few words, or was she only imagining that something more was implied?

  It was an early dawn, cold, wet and cloudy when the passengers disembarked and were rushed to horse-drawn wagons which took them along an unlit main road until they reached some railway sidings. There they showed their travel documents, and Lucy and Rose and several nurses and other personnel were hurried on to a railway train on a single track where the engine was already huffing out short bursts of steam. Once they were aboard the wheels started to turn and with a great gush of steam and smoke but with no whistles or shouts the train moved off.

  I hate trains when it’s dark, Lucy thought. I hate the sound of the wheels clattering as they turn on the track and the smell from the engine, and the smoke; they bring back such uneasy memories. She and Rose sat close together and turned their faces to each other; they didn’t speak, but Rose took Lucy’s hands and clasped them within hers, which was very comforting. This is it, Lucy thought. We’re on our way. There’s no turning back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘You all right, sergeant?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir. You?’

  Henry nodded. ‘Think so. You’ve got a few scratches. Better get them treated before it all kicks off again.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be all right, sir.’ Josh brushed a hand over his left eye and felt the stickiness of dirt and blood.

  ‘No, come on, down to the medic and that’s an order.’

  Reluctantly Josh followed the captain down the trench to the first-aid post where there was already a queue of men, some limping, some with blood streaming down their faces, others holding their arms as tenderly as if holding a baby. These were the lucky ones. Josh knew that they had lost a lot of men in the battle, but hadn’t yet dared to ask just how many.

  Henry was bypassing the queue and Josh followed him, but drew up short when the captain halted.

  ‘Are you all right, private?’ He’d stopped by a soldier who was bent almost double and holding his stomach.

  ‘Don’t know, sir.’ The soldier’s words were practically inaudible and he tried to straighten up. He suddenly retched and clutched his abdomen again. When he looked up both Henry and Josh saw that his face was white as chalk. They each took an arm.

  ‘Make way!’ Henry called out and the other men moved to the side of the narrow trench as the captain and the sergeant manoeuvred the injured man forward.

  ‘Stretcher bearer!’ Josh called, but not so loudly that his voice could be heard over the top, though he reckoned that the enemy would be attending to their dead and injured too. This had been another bloody battle.

  Two stretcher bearers arrived and within a few minutes they had the soldier on the stretcher and were hurrying as fast as they could towards the first-aid post, where a medical officer took over. To call it a first-aid post was a play on words, Josh thought grimly, although the medics did a good job in dire conditions. The space was no more than a dugout, lined and topped with boards which wouldn’t withstand an artillery or grenade attack; but it was equipped with a makeshift planked table for the injured, and boxes of blankets, bandages, carbolic soap, antiseptic and anti-tetanus that the medics could use to make the men fit to be sent back to the trench or down to the next dressing station.

  Josh sat down on a folding stool to await his turn to be cleaned up, and the captain stood with his arms folded as he watched the injured man being attended to.

  ‘Have to send him down the line, sir,’ the medic told him. ‘He’s been hit by shrapnel by the look of it. He’ll need a surgeon to take it all out.’

  Henry nodded. It was as he expected. The soldier’s tunic was ripped and bloody, but with a bit of luck and medical expertise he’d recover and come back. Poor devil, he thought, but at least he was still alive and not lying in a bloody heap as so many of his other men were.

  He turned to his sergeant, who was sitting with his head held back whilst his face and eyes were washed with cold water and carbolic soap, dried, and anointed with an antiseptic cream. ‘It’s nowt,’ Josh said through gritted teeth.

  ‘You’re right, sarge,’ the medic said. ‘You’ll live to see another day, but as a precaution for now I’m going to put on an eye shield just to keep out any dust or dirt. You can take it off in the morning, unless of course you’re called elsewhere during the night.’ He turned to search in a medical box to find what he wanted.

  ‘Have you heard from your sister since she came over?’ Henry asked in a low voice.

  ‘Edie? Yeh, she was on her way to a hospital near to Calais. Wimereux I think it was. I’ve lost my bearings,’ Josh admitted with a laugh. ‘We’ve moved on such a lot.’

  ‘We have,’ Henry agreed. ‘I met her by chance on my last leave; she told me she was coming out.’

  ‘She’s a rare girl is our Edie,’ Josh said as he submitted to the indignity of an eye patch. He stood up. ‘Though there are many brave women coming over. Lucy Thornbury is one of them.’ He swapped places with the captain as Henry sat to have his bleeding hand washed and bandaged. ‘She’s a doctor now.’

  ‘Yes, Edie told me. I didn’t know she was coming over too.’ He grimaced as the antiseptic stung. ‘We should hope that we don’t meet up with them.’

  ‘Amen to that, sir,’ Josh said grimly.

  ‘Thanks for waiting,’ Henry said to the soldiers standing in line as they made their way back. ‘Take some rest when you’re done.’

  ‘Aye,’ Josh echoed. ‘Get some shut-eye while you
can, lads.’

  He followed the captain into the officers’ dugout. ‘Just wanted to ask how many men we’ve lost, sir?’

  ‘Quite a few,’ Henry said.

  ‘I know that already, sir,’ Josh said prosaically. ‘How many’s a few?’

  ‘A hundred at least,’ Henry admitted. ‘The Northern Division have lost more than we have. They were a lot closer than we were.’

  Josh nodded. ‘Did they use gas?’

  ‘No, not this time, thank God,’ Henry answered. ‘But it’s on the cards that they will. Make sure the men have their respirators on them at all times.’

  It was true that Josh had lost his bearings, having been moved from one ridge to the next and then alongside the Ypres canal to where they were now dug in somewhere near the village of Hollebeke in Flanders. Beyond this the German front line awaited them, unless they were moved again. Everywhere looked the same, he thought, it didn’t matter where they were; what would once have been a green and pleasant landscape was now a sea of mud.

  A hundred men, he mused. One hundred letters to be written home to say that someone’s husband, father, son, would not be coming home to a joyful reunion. And what of the enemy? The same would apply; some mother or wife would be waiting. How did they get their news delivered? Did they watch out for the post as all the Allied families did?

  He never swore, he’d never been allowed to. There were always strict rules at home when he was a lad and any indiscretions the boys committed were at the risk of having to scrub their tongues with soap. But his mother wasn’t listening now and he swore beneath his breath. What a gory blood-spattered awful war this was.

  I can’t believe I’m still alive. Stanley began a letter to Joshua. It was months since they had met and that was by chance as they were being transferred from one area to another. They had both been marching their men, following a line of wagons, water carts, forage carts filled with medical supplies, cooks’ wagons and wagons with stores. They were to be given a three-day respite in the same village, which contained nothing but half a dozen empty cottages; these might serve the officers as places to write letters or communicate with others further down the line or be given orders.

  The infantry section to which he and Josh belonged would make camp in the least muddy field that they could find. He’d been wondering, as they’d marched, about battles that had been fought in earlier centuries and how communication would be managed, musing that it would have been by a mounted soldier bearing a letter and not by field telephone as it was now, although the messages were often garbled and incomprehensible. Then he’d spotted his brother.

  When they were lads they had often laid their arms across each other’s shoulders as they walked, but were never outwardly affectionate. It wasn’t a lad thing to do; though it was different with their brothers. Bob being the eldest and Charlie being the baby, a show of affection with them was allowed, like giving your mam a kiss goodnight. But he and Josh did everything together; everything that Stanley did Josh had to do too, just to show that he could.

  When they had issued orders to their men they went in search of one another, and first they saluted and then spontaneously put out their arms to embrace.

  It was a good three days, Stanley pondered now. They’d had a chance to catch up on letters home and discuss the family, but never the fighting and only rarely the men they had lost, and then only when they had both known the person they were speaking of.

  But he sighed now; he didn’t really want to write of the terrible battle they had had earlier that day, and to no avail: they hadn’t gained an inch of ground. Half his unit was decimated, including some of the officers, and there had been many soldiers with serious injuries; they’d been carried across the battlefield to the medics and if they’d survived that journey would now be on their way by wagon to the nearest CCS, which was why he couldn’t believe that he was still in one piece, apart from a small segment of shrapnel that was lodged in the fleshy part of his arm. Not worth bothering about, he’d decided; it’ll work its way out and if it doesn’t I’ll get it seen to tomorrow.

  Dusk was falling as he made his way down the trench to speak to the men. It was well built as trenches went, with sandbags lining some of the walls where they overlooked the enemy line and partially laid with wooden footboards, but the weather hadn’t helped that morning; where there were no footboards the rain had increased the depth of mud that sucked on his already wet and claggy boots. His feet itched. He stretched his toes inside his wet socks and determined to change them as soon as he’d spoken to the men.

  ‘Try to get some sleep, lads,’ he repeated as he passed them. ‘We’re almost there, we’re making good headway,’ which was a downright lie. ‘Don’t forget to say your prayers now,’ and some of the young lads, eighteen or nineteen years old, obediently put their hands together and muttered, ‘Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name …’ Some went on to ask for blessings on those at home, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and every other relation they could think of.

  The older men, those in their late twenties and early thirties, were writing in notebooks or on scraps of paper, perhaps to their wives, mothers or children. They looked up as he passed them and he nodded, not wanting to disturb them in their thinking. They have old eyes, Stanley noticed, just like mine. I feel as if I have seen the whole of my life pass by and that I’m an old man, older than my father or even the grandfather that I can barely remember.

  It wasn’t as if they spent the whole of their soldiering stretch in the trenches; it just seemed like it, and it couldn’t be right, he pondered, that men had to spend any time at all dug into a hole in the ground like the rats who shared the space with them.

  He reached the dugout where his commander was sifting through a pile of paperwork. Draped round his neck was the Geo phone or listening device that was used to detect any enemy tunnellers beneath them; above his head was a hanging lantern and his whistle on a length of string, and the gas bell to warn of impending gas clouds; on the small wooden table a heap of dog tags belonging to only some of the casualties. ‘How many men down, sir?’

  The captain pushed his cap back and wearily rubbed his forehead. Stanley reckoned that he was a year or two younger than him, a regular soldier just as he was, not a recent enlister.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ he said bitterly. ‘Too many to count. I feel sick to my stomach when I think of the number I have to report in the morning. I just can’t face it tonight.’

  ‘Get some shut-eye then, sir,’ Stanley said. ‘It’ll keep till ’morning.’

  ‘Are you on guard duty?’

  ‘Aye, I am. I’ll not sleep anyway. I’m past sleeping. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.’

  ‘No, me neither,’ the captain admitted.

  Stanley went back to his post and felt in his sack for clean dry socks and a towel, then leaned on the trench wall to take off his wet footgear. He dried his toes though the towel was soggy, powdered them and put on the dry socks, and finally folded up some sheets of thin lavatory paper and put them inside his boots to soak up the damp before putting them on again.

  He stretched and shrugged his shoulders to ease the stiffness and looked about him. The younger lads were curled up sleeping like babes in their func holes; of the others, some were sitting with their eyes closed, others were still writing. There was, he thought, a kind of calm. He patted his waist and chest to check that his field dressing packs were in place; these had saved the lives of many a soldier hit by a bullet or shrapnel and he was eternally grateful that there was a plentiful supply of them, made in Hull by the T. J. Smith and Nephew company.

  He climbed the short ladder up to a ledge a few feet below the top of the sandbagged wall with his box periscope in his hand and his rifle strapped over his shoulder.

  The periscope was wrapped in shredded muddy sacking that wouldn’t be noticed from the other side and he slowly and carefully placed it on a flattened shelf that had been scooped out for the purpose between
the sandbags, so that it protruded a mere few inches above the top. Then he positioned his rifle on the sniper ledge and made himself comfortable, half lying on the ledge so that he could look through the bottom of the periscope.

  The sun was almost down, dropping below the horizon leaving streaks of gold and purple in the sky, a backdrop to a clump of stunted blackened trees that had almost escaped the shelling and a building with its roof blown off that hadn’t. The land was empty, although only a few hours ago it had been littered with hundreds of bodies, both British and German. There had been a mutual truce whilst both sides gathered up their injured and the almost living, brought back to die with their own countrymen. Both sides were counting their losses.

  Stanley closed his eyes for a second, seeing it all again as if it were imprinted in his brain, and felt … stoical. What would be would be. He had no influence on what the morning would bring, whether he would live to see yet another brutal day, or die. He was a soldier sent to war, to fight; that was what regular soldiers did. It was the young men, boys merely, singing and swaggering in ill-assorted caps and clothing, full of bravado as they joined the line of volunteers, that he was sorry for. He, as a recruiting sergeant in his smart uniform, had painted a picture of the honour and glory they could achieve and had instead given them a bloody battle with no victors. Guilt, he thought. It’s written all over me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The train stopped several times to allow passengers to get on or off and finally it was time for Lucy and Rose to get off too. It was still raining and very cold, and Lucy was glad that she’d packed warm scarves and stockings. Over her plain buttoned jacket and skirt she wore a woollen cloak, and she had a fur hat on her head.

  An official called out their names and asked them to follow him and led them towards an army truck and helped them aboard to sit next to the army driver. ‘Good luck, ladies,’ he said, before dashing away again.