Authors: Sue Reid
The German army seems unstoppable. In the last few days they’ve stormed through neutral Belgium and now their tanks are rolling across France. They entered France through the Ardennes, an area in eastern France. That was another big surprise. The Ardennes region is hilly and forested, and it was thought that their tanks wouldn’t be able to cross it. But apparently the Germans have got a new sort of tank, which seems able to cope with all sorts of obstacles – even forests and hills. The French armies are being pushed back under the German onslaught. The British Expeditionary Force is still standing its ground, but how much longer will it be able to do so?
Trying not to think what this means for us, but we’re all jolly frightened.
Holland has surrendered to the Germans. As soon as I came off duty, I wrote at once to Peter and Giles. I don’t know if my letter will ever reach Peter. I don’t know if I will ever see him again. I cannot bear it.
When I woke up this morning I thought for an instant that I could hear something – guns, or bombs – a sort of distant boom, boom – far away, across the sea. I told myself not to be so silly, we can’t possibly hear them here, and anyway, the Germans are still very far away, but I could feel my heart beat a lot faster.
I popped outside on my break. Shielding my eyes in the sun, I looked out to sea. You can’t walk on the beach now. It’s been mined and there’s barbed wire draped everywhere – even on the promenades we used to cycle down.
Mr Churchill says we’re in deep trouble. We’ve nothing to match the Jerry tanks. If the
Prime Minister
says that, then we are indeed in an awful fix.
Bit by bit, the British and French armies are being pushed back towards the sea. Nothing they do seems to be able to stop the German advance. I wish I could stop thinking about that. My brother’s out there in that hell.
Letter from Mother today. She writes that she’s made up her mind and joined ARP (Air Raid Precautions) – as an air-raid warden! She misses having us all to look after, she says, and she needs to feel she’s doing something useful. Now it seems she’s got a whole village on her hands!
She didn’t mention Peter, so I know that she must be very worried about him. I wish I could go and see her but a lot of new patients are expected here soon and more VADs are being drafted in to help. It would be wonderful if Anne was amongst them!
On the 20th the Germans captured the French towns of Amiens and Abbeville. Our armies are retreating. At the hospital we’re all holding our breath.
I’m trying not to think about the War. It is such a relief to be able to bury myself in work. But as soon as I go off duty, I start to worry again. I can see worry plain on everyone else’s faces, too. It’s all anyone can talk about – what’s going to happen now? Bunty’s going round with a face as white as a sheet. The strain we’re all under here is quite awful.
Half day off – I spent it in Surgical. It’s all hands to the deck now. All leave’s been cancelled. Sister and our MO were kept busy all morning, doing rounds and organizing patients’ discharges. For me it was back and forth to the store, returning hospital “blues” and bringing back the soldiers’ kits. As I ran back and forth, I saw men in khaki and women, white caps on their heads – doctors and nurses I’ve never seen before. I don’t know what they’re doing here.
All those patients well enough to travel are being evacuated to hospitals further inland to make room for the new arrivals. They’ll travel by ambulance train, escorted by a team of MOs and nurses. I still don’t know who the new patients are, or why so many are expected here. But something’s happened. Something big.
There are men lying on the floor, all along the corridor and in the ward, and on mattresses between the beds. Sweat pours off their faces, and they’re filthy. As I entered I saw a VAD on her knees, cutting off a man’s uniform. Her face was white and strained. It was Marjorie! I could see a dirty bandage swathed round the man’s leg and there was an identity tag round his neck. It was unreadable – stained with blood and dirt. One of the QAs took me over to another stretcher. Under the blanket the man was fully dressed. She asked me to wash his face. “Do it gently, Nurse,” she said. “And be quick about it. There are plenty more here that need washing.”
I knelt on the floor by the stretcher, a bowl of warm water to hand. Gently I lifted the soldier’s head, pillowing it on my arm, and began to wipe his face. His eyes were bloodshot and sweat was pouring off him.
“Wha. . . a. . . a. . . a. . .” he started to say. Oily stuff dribbled out of his mouth. I laid his head carefully back down on the stretcher. There was something staining my arm where his head had lain. I ran for help.
It was the last thing he said.
I ran into the annexe and leaned over the sink, taking deep breaths. I felt awful – too upset even for tears. Desperately I tried to pull myself together
. I’ve got to cope – everyone else is. I must cope. I must.
“Nurse, I need your help,” I heard a voice say gently behind me. I dried my face quickly and turned round. The QA had a stack of hot-water bottles in her arms. “Heat these up for me, will you?” she asked.
“The men. . .” I faltered. “I’m supposed to wash them.”
“Never mind about that now. Nurse Mason’s doing it.”
Jean? I thought vaguely. She was working nights.
Was she still on duty?
As soon as the men are brought in, the QAs and MOs go from mattress to bed, from bed to mattress. They check the men’s breathing and pulse. Is that man still in shock? Can we risk removing his uniform? They call me over. “Nurse, I’d like you to wash this man, please.” I run over and cut off his uniform as I’ve been shown. “Be careful how you do it, Nurse. We must try to save all we can.” Gently I wash the gritty sand and dirt off him. Under an old bandage there’s a wound on his abdomen. Blood is seeping through the bandage. I need a fresh bandage – now! The haemorrhage is staunched, the new bandage wound tightly over the wound.
“His pulse is very weak, Sister.” I look up from my patient at Sister’s face. Sister’s sleeves are rolled up. She looks as if she’s been up all night.
An MO takes over and I’m sent to fill up hot-water bottles again. Soon, we’ve run out. “Nurse, look in the patients’ beds – over there, Nurse, over there!” Blankly, I pull out a hot-water bottle from next to a patient’s feet. The feet are very cold, I tell the Sister. He’s dead, she says briskly. No time for tears here. The body is rolled into a blanket and lifted off the bed. Automatically I wash down the mackintosh sheet, dry it, and then I rip open a package and pull out another blanket, which I lay on top of it. Next to me the stretcher bearers are waiting impatiently. As soon as I’ve finished, the bed is filled again.
Back and forth I go into the annexe, squeezing out the flannel, watching dirt and blood and sweat swirl away together down the sluice.
QAs run round the ward and the corridors, handing out injections of morphia as though they’re cups of tea. There are metal stands between the beds, bottles of blood swinging off them. Rubber tubes connect them to our patients.
A Sister asks me to sort through a pile of bloodstained clothing and get it ready to go off to the store. I’m glad to be able to keep my head down. Glad not to have to look for a time at those exhausted despairing faces, those blank eyes. But I can’t shut out the groans, the eternal tramp tramp tramp of the stretcher bearers, bringing more men into the ward, and taking others down to Theatre.
And still the ambulances come. The BEF is being evacuated from Dunkirk. When I first heard the news, I felt strangely relieved. Soon, I hoped, my brother would be home.
Not now.
Each time an ambulance arrives I wonder if he’ll be amongst its patients. Each time the doors swing open, I have to force myself not to look up. I’m terrified. I don’t want to see Peter here, but even worse is thinking of him left behind in France.
A cheerful, smiling nurse can do more to help her patients than a cross and weary one, I suddenly remember from my training. But I cannot laugh, I cannot smile. And oh, I am weary. And this – I feel horribly certain – is only the beginning.
Dragged myself up to bed at last at
three in the morning
– felt like curling up on the stairs – legs so wobbly and weak. Scribbling this in bed . . . too tired to think. . . That’s some little comfort, I suppose. I must write my diary because I promised Anne. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to
remember
what I’ve seen today. I want to
forget
. I daren’t let myself think – if I stop to think, I’ll never get through this.
We’ve had another blow. The Belgian army have surrendered to the Germans. It happened two days ago, I’m told. In the hospital the wards are overflowing. All our usual routine’s gone to the winds, though Sister tries her best to keep order.
Though I’m constantly exhausted, I often wake up when the ambulances drive up to the hospital. It’s hot and stuffy in our little room, too, which makes it hard to sleep, but we’re not supposed to open the blackout shutters. Tonight, though, I felt I just couldn’t breathe. I had to open the window. I crept quietly over to it and managed to prise it open. I gulped in the cool night air.
It was a clear night and I looked up at the stars. Those same stars shine over France, I found myself thinking, and then, without any warning, the tears came. I just stood there, trying not to sob, feeling the tears slide down my cheeks. Oh, please – don’t let him be killed. Please.
I heard the door open and a moment later I felt a hand touch my shoulder. Jean had come in.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. I couldn’t speak. “Is it Peter?” she whispered. I nodded and felt her arm go round my shoulder. “Has anything happened to him?” she asked carefully.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”
Jean stared out into the night. “My brother’s out there too,” she said.
“Oh, Jean,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” I put my arm round her shoulders and we stood there, the tears silently pouring down our cheeks.
As soon as I arrived on the ward this morning one of the QAs hurried up to me. She took me over to a bed surrounded by screens.
“I’d like you to keep an eye on this boy while I find an MO.” She lowered her voice. “He’s very sick.”
I looked at my charge. His eyes had opened ever so slightly when he heard our voices. Now he closed them again. I saw what an effort even this took. He looked awfully young – younger even than Peter. There was a blanket on the bed and though it was quite warm in the room, he was shivering. I took his hand in mine and rubbed his fingers gently, trying to warm them. They were very cold. I asked him his name, but it was clearly too difficult for him to speak. I talked gently to him. I don’t know what I said exactly but soon I forgot everything else – all the chaos and the noise on the other side of the screens. Occasionally I saw him move his lips slightly – they looked awfully dry, so I got up and dampened them with a moistened swab.
My patient’s lips were moving again and I leaned over the bed to listen. A smell – that awful stench of dried blood that I know so well now – rose up from the bed and it was all I could do not to retch. “Thank you,” I heard him murmur faintly. And then he said something else and I leaned closer to hear. “Billy.” His voice sounded as if it were coming from somewhere far away.
“Billy, I’m Kitty,” I whispered, close to his ear. I didn’t care that it was against the rules to tell him my name. It couldn’t matter now. I squeezed his fingers, very gently. Billy’s face was very pale and stained with perspiration, and I could see something damp begin to seep through the red army blanket. The wound had begun to bleed again. I stood up urgently. Where was the MO? I needed help – now. And then I heard a sigh and there was a sudden movement under the blanket – a sort of shudder that seemed to pass through Billy’s whole body. I was still holding his hand.
A screen was moved aside. The MO was standing there, the QA next to him. The MO leaned over the boy and took his stiffening wrist loosely in his hand. It’s too late for that, I thought. I was trying to choke back tears. Quietly I got to my feet and made myself walk across the ward to the annexe. I didn’t want anyone to see my tears.
The QA caught up with me a few minutes later. She asked me to wash the bedstead and change the sheets. I didn’t need to look back to know that the screens had gone and the body lifted off the bed. How could she ask this of me? I wondered dully. A boy had just died in that bed. Didn’t she care? “His name was Billy,” I wanted to tell her. I felt angry and upset. And then – fleetingly – I saw the sadness deep in the QA’s eyes, and the tiredness, and I felt ashamed.
I made up poor Billy’s bed. I don’t know how I did it, but I did.
Wounded soldiers are pouring in from the Front in France each day. Here, days and nights run into each other, but I’m thankful that I’m able to do something useful. New VADs arrived again today from outstations – sick bays, first-aid posts and other hospitals. I keep hoping to see Anne’s merry face amongst them, but I’ve heard nothing more about her hoped-for transfer.
Whenever I have time to grab a break, I go outside – stepping through corridors packed with wounded men, all of them waiting to be admitted. I take off my mask and breathe deeply – filling my lungs with fresh air, glad to get rid of the hospital smell. Today I sat down for a time on the warm grass, under the shade of a big sycamore tree. While I was sitting there, a squirrel bounded across the lawn in front of me. It stopped and looked at me and I looked back at it. Then it was off again, running up the tree. That squirrel doesn’t know we’re at war, I thought suddenly. Its life carries on as it always has. The thought comforted me a little. I looked out to sea again. There was a great ship bobbing up and down in the Channel, nose pointed to port. I wondered if it was a hospital ship, bringing more of the wounded home. It was like a signal to me. Tiredly I got to my feet and made my way back to the ward.
Only the very sickest are brought to coastal hospitals like ours. They’re a motley lot – they come from regiments stationed all over the country. Some of them had their wounds dressed in France or on board ship on the way home, but even so, infection can set in. There’s not much we can do if it really takes hold. I hate feeling so helpless.