by Val Wood
The unit had already endured hours of artillery fire, yet in the latest communication Henry had been told this would be the final Allied offensive against the German stronghold of Passchendaele, the highest point of the Salient; the Canadians were in position and they were prepared to risk all to take it.
So this was it: now or never, do or die, the final assault. Each of them with his own thoughts, fears and palpitations, Captain Henry Warrington and Sergeant Joshua Morris simultaneously blew their whistles, and at the signal the combatants, no longer men and boys, charged, yelling, shouting and guns blazing, over the top.
Oswald and Corporal Morris joined the stretcher bearers and RAMC men to assist the injured and carry them to the first-aid post that was built within a trench; some of the men were past requiring any assistance, and those who were barely alive had to be left behind as orderlies, stretcher bearers and uninjured men moved across the stricken ground. Those with lesser injuries were prioritized. Others, with minor injuries, dragged themselves and their comrades to a safer place where they would wait for assistance.
Some of the men were screaming that they couldn’t see and that they were on fire and Oswald made them his priority. ‘Swill them down with water,’ he yelled to the orderlies in the first-aid post. ‘Wash their eyes and take off their jackets in case they’re contaminated. And wear your gloves; don’t touch them with your bare hands.’
He didn’t know what kind of poison gas had been used; chlorine laced with phosgene that attacked the lungs, or mustard gas that burned, or a combination of both, but whatever it was it could soak through garments and burn the skin beneath. It was worth the risk of catching a chill in the November air to avoid the blisters and pus that would come later if contaminated clothes were left on. If the respirators had worked the soldiers would avoid the agonizing effects of having their lungs stripped apart and their eyes blinded. The soldiers who were not injured ran towards them to help lead them towards the medics.
All the stretcher bearers ran with their masks firmly in place and their heads down to collect the injured; they were all at risk from the bouts of artillery and sniper fire that was still coming from the ridge. Oswald wondered if the German soldiers were as sick of the war as the Allies were and wanted to go home as badly. He guessed that they were, and did; and the dying would be leaving behind families and loved ones just as the Allies were.
By the afternoon the guns had stopped but for some occasional sporadic sniper fire; both sides of the conflict were collecting their dead and injured. It was starting to rain again, making bad conditions even worse.
An injured soldier with a head wound was being carried back for attention and called out to Oswald and Tommy, ‘There’s an officer over yonder trying to find his way,’ he shouted. ‘He’s not from my trench. I think he’s been blinded.’
Oswald looked towards where he was pointing. The stretcher bearers had been over that area and he thought they’d picked up everyone alive, but the soldier was right: a figure was staggering and struggling to right his mask and heading towards a deep shell hole full of water.
‘I reckon he’s been blinded,’ Corporal Morris said, starting to run. ‘He’s disorientated.’
They ran towards him. ‘Keep your gloves on,’ Oswald said again to Corporal Morris as they approached. ‘Hang on, soldier,’ he shouted. ‘We’re coming.’
The officer turned towards his voice. He was covered in mud from falling, his mask had slipped and his hands were shaking violently.
‘Captain,’ Oswald said, ‘let’s get you back to first aid.’ He fumbled to adjust the officer’s mask to protect his eyes and larynx though he feared some damage had already been done, then took hold of his elbow with his gloved hands. ‘Take off your coat, sir, and then we’ll get your injuries seen to.’
‘What! I can’t. I can’t see. It’s the gas!’
‘I know.’ Oswald carefully unbuttoned the officer’s greatcoat, helped him off with it and trailed it by his fingertips through the mud. ‘Have you any other injuries, sir? Can you walk?’
‘No. Yes. I can walk.’ He reached out for Oswald’s arm to guide him. ‘Help me to get back to my men. I’m Captain Warrington. I must see – find out – if they’re injured or killed. What hell is this? The shells. Have you seen my sergeant? Will you find him? Find my sergeant. The gas. I can’t see.’ His speech was jumbled and incoherent.
Oswald led him back towards the first aid post whilst the corporal ran towards another injured soldier. How could they help them all? There were men crying out for assistance whilst crawling across rubble and out of potholes towards their dead comrades and how, in all things miraculous, he pondered, did he chance upon Henry Warrington when there had been hundreds of men swarming out of the trenches to fight for their lives? He looked back towards the ridge that had been fought for and it was all but flattened. There was no church spire either. But there was a British flag fluttering there. Passchendaele had been captured; but at what cost.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Lucy glanced down at her bloody gloves. Another life saved, another limb for the limb basket. The fiery incinerator outside the CCS was constantly working overtime. She was following Rose’s organized method of using two operating tables in the theatre, only now she was the surgeon with an assistant doctor; Sister Edie Morris and Staff Nurse Milly Thomas worked on the other table, stitching a patient’s wounds or treating stumps of arms and legs; in an anteroom a senior nurse dealt with serious cuts and head injuries. The three of them, she, Edie and Milly, worked as a team, and when their duty rota expired others took their place.
Only occasionally did male doctors, young and opinionated, and older ones set in their bigoted and prejudiced ways say she shouldn’t be here, but no one said she was too young. Sometimes at the end of the day she felt as if she were a hundred years old. They all did, doctors, nurses, orderlies, administrators alike. They were all exhausted, but none more so than the injured men who were brought in.
There was a constant turnover of doctors and nurses when those on the point of collapse were replaced by others who had been away for a well-earned rest, and this station would be Lucy’s last before returning to a base hospital.
A medical orderly came to help lift her patient on to the other table. His left arm had been amputated to just above the elbow. Edie was waiting to stitch the wound in her neat hand and bandage it whilst the soldier was still unconscious. He would be put to bed on the ward and if he was well enough would be transferred in two days’ time to a base hospital for a further check-up before being sent back to England for final treatment and a discharge.
Before his operation Lucy had asked him what had been his occupation before the war.
‘I was a carpenter,’ he said, his eyes creased with pain.
‘You’ll still have one hand,’ she said softly. ‘Will you be able to manage?’
‘What’s the alternative, doctor?’ he’d asked.
When she said there wasn’t one, he simply answered, ‘So be it.’
How brave they were, these men, she’d thought as she held his good hand and waited for the anaesthetic to take effect. So stoic and fearless. Nothing, she thought, could be any worse than what they had already been through.
She’d removed her bloody apron and was scrubbing her hands when a nurse put her head round the door. ‘Dr Thornbury. There’s someone asking for you. He says it’s urgent.’
They’re all urgent, Lucy sighed, every one of them, but before she could answer the nurse added, ‘He says his name is Dr Thornbury.’
‘Oh!’ Then it must be urgent. Oswald never gave his professional designation if he could help it; he used to joke that people expected to see him with a stethoscope round his neck if he did. ‘My cousin,’ she said. ‘I’ll be out in a moment.’
‘Oswald!’ He was sitting outside the theatre with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. When he looked up she could tell that he was troubled. ‘What is it? Are you all right?’
She pushed him back on to the chair. ‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Why – Josh, didn’t I say? Henry’s all right, well, he’s not, but he’s not going to die or at least not immediately as long as his lungs aren’t affected, but Josh—’ His words rushed out spontaneously, incomplete and confused. ‘I couldn’t stop the bleeding and neither could the medics; there’s a doctor with him now, but he needs immediate surgery—’
‘Take me to him; where is he?’ She took his arm and they followed the nurse, who had waited while they talked.
There was a long line of beds where the most urgent cases had been taken and two doctors and several nursing sisters were already in attendance. Oswald led her to where Dr Rutherford was examining a patient. He looked up at Lucy and then at Oswald.
‘This soldier is a friend, I gather? He’s in a bad way. We can try surgery, but he’s lost a lot of blood.’
Lucy bent over Josh. He was conscious, but only just. His right leg was a mangled mass of flesh, blood and splintered bone.
‘We can amputate above the knee, can’t we?’
‘Yes, but it must be immediately. Aren’t you going off duty?’
‘Not now I’m not,’ she said, letting out a gasp of breath that she’d been holding since seeing Josh.
George Rutherford looked seriously at her. ‘Sure you want to do this?’ he asked. ‘If he’s a friend?’
‘I do,’ she answered. ‘Will you help me?’ When he nodded, she said, ‘Let’s get on now, but will you make sure that Sister Morris doesn’t hear of this? He’s her brother. She can come in later.’
Edie and Milly were coming off duty, and after transferring the patient they had been attending Edie came looking for Lucy and found her as she was about to enter theatre.
‘Did I hear that Oswald was here?’ she asked. ‘Is he staying?’
‘Erm, he didn’t say, but I expect he will until tomorrow.’
‘Maybe I’ll go and find him,’ Edie said eagerly. ‘Are you coming?’ She frowned, ‘I thought you were off duty now.’
Lucy swallowed. ‘I’m helping Dr Rutherford with an urgent case that can’t wait.’
‘Oh, well in that case—’ She too turned to return to the theatre.
‘No, no, it’s all right; you get off to bed,’ Lucy said quickly, but apparently she insisted too vehemently, for Edie immediately eyed her suspiciously.
‘What kind of injury?’
When Lucy stuttered over the details of amputation, Edie said, tight-lipped, ‘Who is it? Is it one of our lads? Stanley? Or Josh?’ When Lucy reluctantly admitted that it was Josh, Edie said, ‘I have to be there, Lucy. I have to help him.’
‘No.’ Lucy spoke firmly. An orderly was trundling a patient’s trolley towards them. ‘I promise that you can come in once we’ve prepared him for surgery, Edie, but you’re not being there during it, so don’t argue. You can ask Milly to be there. She doesn’t know Josh. Go and fetch her now.’
Lucy had never seen her strong and resilient friend, who had stayed fast at her side as they’d fought for so many soldiers’ lives, fill up with tears and show such emotion, and she knew that she was doing the right thing. It would be hard enough for her, and she was pleased that George Rutherford was going to be there too. A few years older than her, and an excellent surgeon, he was always grateful that Dr Mason had given him his rightful place as a senior doctor rather than an underling to Dr Staples, who, so they had heard, had gone back to England.
When Josh was ready for surgery, Lucy asked Milly to bring Edie in for a few minutes only so that she might speak to her brother. She’d calmed herself and stood steadily beside his bed. He was almost unconscious, for he’d been given morphine, but she touched his cheek with her scrubbed hand and whispered, ‘Now then, our Josh. What’s all this about? You’ve been fighting again, haven’t you?’
His lips worked and she leaned to hear. ‘S-sorry, Mam,’ he faltered. ‘Won’t do it – again.’
Her lips trembled as she realized that he thought she was his mother, and she kissed his forehead and turned away. She nodded at Lucy and Dr Rutherford, acknowledging that they had been right to insist that she shouldn’t be there, and left the theatre, going to join Oswald whom she had found in the canteen fast asleep with his head on a table.
He was sitting now with a cup of coffee in front of him and he stood up as she came to join him and asked if he could get her anything. She said not.
‘I’ve been to see Josh,’ she said.
‘Ah, you were allowed in after all?’
‘For a moment only. Lucy was right; she put on her doctor’s hat and said no.’
‘If you don’t intend going to bed,’ he said, ‘and I can’t imagine that you will until you know how Josh is—’
‘I won’t,’ she interrupted. ‘I’ll stay up all night if necessary, but I wanted to ask you. How did you find him in that massacre out there, one soldier amongst thousands?’
‘Sheer luck,’ he said. ‘We’d picked up so many, including Henry Warrington, who has been gassed—’
‘Henry! Henry Warrington? He’s here?’
‘Yes, yes.’ He waved vaguely over his shoulder. ‘We brought him in with Josh and a couple of others in the lorry. We couldn’t get many in because of the machine taking up so much room; I’m leaving it here now and then going back first thing in the morning.’
‘But,’ she interrupted again, ‘how did you find Josh?’
‘It was Henry who alerted us. He said he couldn’t find his sergeant and then when I’d taken him for treatment at the ADS the penny dropped that he meant Josh, so I went back to look for him.’ Oswald ran his hands over his face. ‘I thought he was dead,’ he muttered, ‘and I didn’t know it was him, not at first. My driver, Corporal Morris – he’s a relative of yours, seemingly – had gone off with the stretcher to help another first-aider. It was mayhem, Edie, total mayhem, but anyway, I went back to where we’d found Captain Warrington and found some more men who I assume were from his trench. They were Hull Pals, at any rate, and none of them looking good, but alive. I whistled for some assistance and a couple of stretcher bearers came running and took them.’
His account was jumbled and out of sequence and he couldn’t recall in what order anything had taken place, but he ploughed on.
‘I could hear someone. I’ve got good hearing,’ he mumbled. ‘Making up for my poor eyesight. And it was such a low cry, like a cat or some other injured animal, and when I went to look where it was coming from, I found him. I didn’t know it was Josh,’ he repeated, ‘not at first, but I saw that he was breathing so I carried him back.’
Edie looked up to see a soldier coming towards them. ‘Looking for you, sir,’ Corporal Morris said. ‘Captain Warrington is asking for you.’
‘Hello, Tommy,’ Edie said. ‘Remember me?’
Tommy Morris shook his head. ‘Don’t think so, Sister. Have we met?’
Then he looked again and put his head on one side. ‘Though you do look familiar – you’re not – by heavens, it’s Edie Morris. Well, by all that’s wonderful. Fancy seeing you here.’
She stood up and they hugged. ‘Thank you for bringing Josh in,’ she said, and took her handkerchief from her pocket to blow her nose.
‘Not me,’ he disclosed. ‘It was ’mad boffin here,’ and Oswald muttered something about no respect. ‘It was him who brought him in on his back, as we’d run out of stretchers. Me and another first-aider took his legs, what’s left of ’em,’ he blundered on, not realizing that Edie didn’t yet know how serious Josh’s injuries were, ‘and got him to ADS. They tried to stop ’bleeding, but—’
‘That’s enough, corpora
l.’ Oswald stood up. ‘Would you like to come over and see Captain Warrington, Edie? With luck he’ll probably be transferred tomorrow.’
‘Yes, I would,’ she said, more worried now than ever over Josh, but realizing that seeing Henry might take her mind away from it.
Henry was in a tented ward with other gas victims. He’d sustained some injuries to his hands but nothing that required any more than cleansing, antiseptic cream and bandaging, but his eyes were covered in a bandage strip and he lay on his bed silent and comatose.
‘Captain Warrington,’ Oswald said, ‘I’ve brought someone to see you; an old friend from our childhood.’ He patted Edie on the shoulder before moving off to his waiting position by the theatre door.
‘There’s no one here that I know from my childhood, only my sergeant,’ Henry said to his retreating back. ‘I need to get back to my men,’ he said croakily. ‘They’ll need their orders.’
Edie patted his arm. ‘You know me, captain,’ she said softly, ‘although you were a lieutenant last time we met. Edie Morris, Josh’s sister. We have a mutual friend in Dr Lucy Thornbury.’
‘Edie.’ He reached for her with his bandaged hand. ‘Oh, I don’t want you to see me like this.’ He turned his head away.
‘I’ve seen worse, captain,’ she said bluntly. ‘Much worse. You haven’t had your face blown apart like some.’
‘I know. I know,’ he said brokenly. ‘But what am I going to do without my sight? I’m finished in the army.’
‘You and many others,’ she said. ‘Including Josh.’
‘Oswald found him,’ he said. ‘He went back into all that mire and found him. He would have died if he hadn’t, might still,’ he muttered. ‘I heard him arguing with someone that he must get him straight to surgery or he might not make it. That’s why he insisted on bringing him back here himself— Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Edie. Josh is your brother, isn’t he? I’m confused. I’ve lost so many of my men.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said soothingly, knowing that he was suffering from the shock waves of what had happened. ‘He’s being cared for now; they’re doing what they can.’
