Women and War

by Janet Tanner

  ‘Hold on. I’ll be right with you.’

  A slimly built body followed the legs. The girl was wearing the uniform of the Red Cross; she paused for a moment to pull her rucked up skirt down to her knees.

  ‘Damned skirts! You’d think they’d give us trousers! Right, I’ll give you a hand and we’ll get him in. Can you make it round to the back doors?’ she asked Tara’s charge, hauling his free arm up around her shoulders and releasing some of the weight from Tara. ‘You’ll have to sit up, I’m afraid – I’m full already. But I guess it’s better than walking.’

  As she spoke she was unlocking the rear doors of the ambulance. The stench of burned and blistered flesh wafted out and someone moaned. Half a dozen men sat or half lay on the stretcher beds and between them the two girls manoeuvred Tara’s charge into the only remaining space.

  ‘Right, fellas, we’re on our way,’ the Red Cross girl said cheerfully, and to Tara, ‘You’d better sit up in front with me – there’s no room here.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to come.’ But the girl was already on her way back to the driver’s cab and Tara followed not wanting to be left alone again.

  The girl had left the engine running; as Tara climbed in beside her she knocked it into gear and pulled away with a jolt.

  ‘Damn.’ She changed up. ‘You’d think they would make a vehicle like this to run smoothly, wouldn’t you? Instead of jolting the patients just when they don’t want to be jolted.’ Another swift change. Then she said conversationally, ‘ Well, that was a hell of a raid, wasn’t it?’

  Tara nodded. Her teeth were trying to chatter now from reaction and she knew if she spoke she would be unable to control them.

  ‘Where were you when it happened?’ the girl asked.

  Tara set her jaw. ‘On the wharf.’

  ‘Nasty! You are lucky to be alive. They got the Manunda, didn’t they?’

  Tara looked puzzled.

  ‘The hospital ship. You’d think they could have seen her red crosses – they’re big enough for heaven’s sake!’ She broke off to steer around a bomb crater. ‘The town’s a complete mess, you know. God knows how many people have been killed. The post office got a direct hit. No one there would have stood a chance.’

  ‘What about the Savalis’ rooming house – is that all right?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. I haven’t been out that way. Look out!’ She swerved to avoid a man wavering dangerously on a damaged bicycle and gave a small resigned shake of the head. ‘I suppose they’ll all start running now. Can’t say I blame them.’

  Tara stared in silent horror at the devastation all around – buildings reduced to piles of rubble, bits of curtain fluttering in the breeze, ruins smouldering. And everywhere the sense of barely controlled panic; panic growing with the sweltering heat of the sun as it climbed in the heavens.

  ‘This isn’t the way to the hospital is it?’ Tara asked presently.

  ‘We’re not going to the civilian hospital. That had a hit, I believe. I don’t know how bad it was – only that I’ve been told to take patients to the AGH – the military hospital.’

  They left the town behind, swinging out onto a road that ran across flat, blood-red earth where the vegetation was sparser and more twisted.

  ‘My name is Alys Peterson, by the way,’ the Red Cross girl said suddenly. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Tara Kelly.’

  ‘Sounds Irish! In fact you sound Irish.’

  ‘I am.’ Tara looked at her sharply. ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘My family are English. I have a British passport myself.’

  ‘I see.’ English, she was thinking. I must be in shock not to have noticed. And not only English but upper crust English. You are out of the top drawer, Miss Alys Peterson, whoever you are …

  ‘Hang on!’ Tara’s train of thought was interrupted as Alys stood on her brakes, almost catapulting Tara through the windscreen. ‘Looks as if somebody else needs our help.’

  The man at the roadside was partially doubled up, his face hidden; but Tara got the impression of crumpled flannels and a none-too-clean shirt and a wide brimmed hat pulled well down onto his head. Alys leaned out.

  ‘What’s wrong? Are you hurt?’

  ‘Naw, I … need a ride.’ His head was still bent so that his drawl was almost indistinguishable.

  ‘We’ve no room,’ Alys said. ‘Sorry.’

  What hapened next took them both by surprise. With lightning speed the man yanked open the ambulance door and grabbed the wheel from Alys.

  ‘Out – both of you!’ His voice was dangerous. ‘That side – move!’

  Tara was about to obey but Alys’ squeal of fury stopped her.

  ‘How dare you! This is an ambulance!’

  ‘Get out I say! I’m warning you …’ The sun glinted on steel. Oh my God, he’s got a knife! Tara thought and in the same instant: But she won’t give up her ambulance. Not if he kills her she won’t.

  Wildly her eyes skittered around the cab and fell on the small fire extinguisher in its holder. All her backstreet instincts of self preservation asserted themselves and without stopping to think she grabbed it, pointed it and aimed. The foam caught the man full in his unshaven face and he staggered back, the knife falling harmlessly from his hands as he clawed at his eyes. Without waiting to close the door Alys drove her foot down onto the accelerator pedal and the ambulance shot forward while the extinguisher still pumped foam across her lap and out of the open door.

  ‘That’s one patient someone else will have to take care of.’

  Tara laughed shakily. ‘ Heaven only knows the damage I could have done!’

  ‘He asked for it. Looters, cowards, they all crawl out from under their stones when this sort of thing happens,’ Alys said. She slammed the ambulance door. ‘No more stops for anything until we reach the hospital. Right?’

  ‘Right!’ Tara agreed with feeling.

  ‘Here we are then – thank God!’

  Alys Peterson swung the ambulance around a lush green island and pulled hard left into a track, worn hard and wide by the passage of numerous wheels. Surprised, Tara watched the trees thin into a man-made clearing and the track broaden into a sweeping drive edged by coconut palms and new young saplings. Five concrete and corrugated blocks had been built end-on to the drive on the right, their clean washed appearance witness to their newness, and two large square buildings faced them from the opposite side. A flag pole centred the drive: Alys missed it by inches, swinging a wide arc to the second of the five blocks.

  ‘Casualty Department, known here as Inspections and Admissions,’ she explained. ‘ Not bad as military hospitals go, is it?’

  ‘It looks brand new,’ Tara said.

  ‘It is, almost. 138 Australian General Hospital are a lucky crew.’ She leaned heavily on the horn again and two orderlies appeared, making their way amongst the stream of casualties who were going in and out.

  Inside the hospital looked exactly what it was – a battle clearing station. In the clinging heat that had descended when the power for the ceiling fans had been lost men sat or slumped, holding pads to cut faces and nursing wounds of every conceivable kind. The more serious cases were taken directly to treatment rooms where a team of doctors and nurses worked constantly, cleaning, stitching, repairing and arranging for those in need of surgery to be whisked over to the block that housed the operating theatre.

  A slightly built girl in the uniform of a sister of the Australian Army Nursing Service was in charge of admissions. Her face was pale and she wore no make-up, light brown hair straggled untidily from a few hastily applied pins. She looked, Tara thought, as if she had just got out of bed. Then, as she caught sight of her own reflection, she could not help smiling – at least the nurse was clean!

  The patients were brought in and Tara’s charge was whisked away to a treatment cubicle. It was a relief to see him go, to feel the burden of caring for him lifted from her shoulders, but Tara felt lost suddenly. She had wanted to get away but no
w that she was free to do so there was nowhere to go. Alys had disappeared – Tara had last seen her talking to one of the medical staff – and as Tara stood aimless and alone the admissions sister came bustling over to her.

  ‘I’m Sister Kate Harris – and you’ll be the new Voluntary Aid. Glad you’re here! Could you begin by cleaning some wounds? You’ll find everything you need …’ she broke off, a slight frown creasing her forehead. ‘You are the new VA, aren’t you?’

  Tara shook her head.

  ‘But she’s going to lend a hand anyway,’ Alys said from behind her. ‘Look, Tara, I’ve just been asked to go up to the RAAF aerodrome for some supplies they’re desperately in need of here. You could come with me if you like, but to be honest I should think you’d be more use here.’ She smiled at Kate. ‘She’s a dab hand with a fire extinguisher!’ she added.

  Tara opened her mouth to plead with Alys to take her with her to the aerodrome. Anything – anything rather than stay here with all these wounded men, being expected to dress messy wounds and dispense cheerfulness and courage. But Alys was already on her way.

  The AANS sister smiled; Tara recognized the sympathy in that look and inwardly squirmed.

  ‘Well, if you haven’t any nursing experience you can still be useful to us,’ she suggested. ‘ The electricity has been off since the raid. But if you think you can get the old fashioned primus stove to work, you can make us all a nice cup of tea!’

  She was in the pokey kitchen struggling with the primus when she heard the aeroplanes returning.

  She froze, listening almost in disbelief to the thunder of engines as it grew louder, vibrating in the air and shaking every stone and sheet of corrugated iron in the hastily built hospital. Every moment she expected to hear the whine of falling bombs and the crash of exploding earth and masonry, but the thunder reached a crescendo as the planes passed overhead then began to die away and the dreaded thuds when they came were muted by distance.

  Tara dumped the matches and ran out of the kitchen. The admissions hall was in chaos. Those who could walk milled around the entrance pushing and shouldering one another in an effort to get out, while two frightened looking nurses were trying to rig up a makeshift shelter of mattresses around some of the more seriously wounded. The atmosphere of barely controlled panic was contagious and Tara twisted this way and that looking for a path of escape. It had been bad enough on the wharf with bombs falling all around; somehow here, hemmed in by four walls and a mass of people who smelled of blood and fear, and with the memory of the last raid still agonizingly fresh to all her senses, it was much, much worse.

  ‘Hold it everyone, please!’

  The voice was loud enough to make itself heard; authoritative enough to command attention. The hubbub faded and died and every eye turned towards the speaker – a tall white-coated figure who had emerged from one of the treatment cubicles.

  ‘That’s better.’ He raised a hand and ran his fingers through thick fair hair which had receded slightly at the temples. ‘ We are not being attacked. They have headed up towards the aerodrome. There’s no need for panic.’

  ‘Who says?’ someone called jeeringly.

  ‘Panic gets us nowhere. I suggest those who are fit enough to walk make their way to the slit trenches in an orderly fashion. You’ll find them to the rear of the hospital – behind the nurses’ quarters. The rest of you take what cover you can in case of attack. And medical staff – let’s get on with the job, shall we? We may have another influx of casualties when this raid is over.’

  He turned away, going back into the treatment cubicle, and for a moment there was complete silence before people began talking once more. But amazingly his words seemed to have had the desired effect, the panic had become an uneasy calm, an orderly queue filed out through the door and those unable to move lay with resignation rather than terror in their eyes as they listened to the distant sounds of the attack. Tara, feeling slightly ashamed of herself, returned to the kitchen. She could, she supposed, join the queue and file out to the trenches. But what was the point? A bomb could fall on a trench just as well as a hospital.

  I believe if I had been meant to die I would have caught it on the wharf, Tara thought. And only pausing to cross herself and whisper one hurried Hail Mary she filled the kettle and jammed it onto the spluttering primus.

  In years to come Tara was never able to able to recall the details of that second raid. Time became meaningless and each facet blended into one tumbled whole – a bad dream from which she was unable to waken – so that it seemed she stood outside of herself watching a stranger inhabiting her body. This other Tara made tea and took it round, guiding the cup to parched and trembling lips, supporting it for those whose hands were too badly burned to hold it for themselves. That task completed – and it seemed to take forever – she was pressed into service as an auxiliary in the treatment rooms – holding dressings in place, snipping the sodden and scorched rags that were all that remained of clothing from tortured bodies, easing men into clean hospital pyjamas and trying not to wince when they winced or cry at their protesting screams. The faces of the other players in the drama were indistinguishable too, those of the nursing staff pale and anxious blobs above grey cesarine uniform dresses and white medical coats; while those of the patients were sweating, dirt-streaked reflections of agony.

  Only the doctor who had appealed for calm stood out from the rest and Tara found herself drawn to him as to a lifeline. Holding a dressing to one vicious wound while he stitched another she watched him, watched his quick clever fingers moving deftly over the ruptured skin and taking a kind of comfort in their success. Long, strong fingers that did not shake despite the droning of the aeroplanes overhead; fingers that reminded her a little of Chips Magee, the most talented pianist she had ever known. But with the fingers the resemblance ended. Chips had been a small man, with shoulders hunched from too many hours of stooping over the keys and legs bandied by poor nutrition when he was an infant. This doctor was tall and straight, six feet of well proportioned muscle and sinew, and beneath that slightly receding hairline his face was strong boned yet handsome, with a fine nose and long jaw, forehead high and angular, lips narrow but well defined. And his eyes … He glanced up to ask for an instrument and Tara found herself looking directly into them – blue eyes, as blue as her own, fringed by lashes thick as a girl’s.

  As she looked at him Tara felt a falling away in her stomach, a sudden strange lurch which took her totally by surprise.

  Crazy, crazy! she thought. You stand here with a raid going on, doing horrible things you never thought you could do, and look at a man’s eyes and hands! You, of all people! But crazy or not it somehow seemed the only reality in a world turned inside out.

  Captain Allingham was his name – she heard someone call him that and slotted it into her mind alongside the other realities, something good, something solid to hold on to, like the image of those strong deft fingers and the blue, blue eyes.

  Eventually, the planes went away, droning back across the coastline and leaving a new trail of devastation in their wake, but the stream of casualties continued. Tara, who had slept little the previous night and been up since the crack of dawn, began to feel weary, but it did not occur to her now to ask if she might go. She worked like an automaton helping one patient after another, seeing them come and go, not knowing where they went or even if they existed outside the confines of the treatment cubicle.

  Towards the middle of the afternoon a nursing sister poked an anxious face into the treatment cubicle.

  ‘Captain Allingham, I’m sorry to interrupt but there’s an emergency just come in – I think she ought to be seen immediately.’

  The doctor straightened his tall frame.

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve just finished with this patient. Have the emergency brought in here, Sister.’

  Two orderlies wheeled a stretcher into the cubicle. Tara’s first impression was of blood, more blood than she had ever seen in her life. Then she raised
her eyes to the face, ashen white beneath blood-caked hair, and caught her breath as she recognized it.

  ‘Alys Peterson!’ Sister Kate Harris said, her voice mirroring Tara’s shock. ‘She was asked to go up to the RAAF aerodrome for supplies, wasn’t she? She must have got caught in the raid.’

  Mentally Tara crossed herself. Holy Mary, she looked more than half dead already … Slyly she edged away so as to be able to watch what Captain Allingham and Sister Harris were doing without being too closely involved. They seemed to have forgotten she was there and she was glad. For a few minutes they worked quietly, speaking to one another in tones too low for Tara to catch what they were saying, then she heard Sister Harris say, ‘She’s lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘And she’ll lose more unless we operate immediately.’ Richard Allingham looked up and Tara thought that the strain was beginning to show in his eyes. ‘Is the theatre free?’

  ‘I believe so. Major Parks has been operating but I think the most pressing emergencies have been dealt with.’ Kate Harris’ voice was quiet and calm, no longer betraying any of the emotion Tara felt sure she must be experiencing. ‘Thank God we are equipped to carry on without power! It’s one of the blessings of a purpose-built hospital.’

  She placed a clean blanket over the unconscious girl then exclaimed softly, ‘ Hey, wait a minute – what’s this? She’s wearing a medical information bracelet!’

  Tara leaned over to get a better look and saw the heavy silver chain around Alys Peterson’s wrist. She had noticed it in the ambulance, she remembered, and assumed it to be an identity bracelet. Now Kate Harris lifted the inert hand to look at the lettering on the bracelet and groaned.

  ‘This is a blood group alert bracelet. She’s AB rhesus neg!’

  Captain Allingham, who had been washing his hands at the sink, turned sharply and swore. ‘That is a complication we could do without! I’ll bet we haven’t any AB rhesus negative here.’