A Bitter Truth (19 page)

“If you ask me,” he replied, echoing my own thoughts, “those are the real victims in this bloody war—begging your pardon, Sister. I sometimes wonder what’s ahead of them. And what sort of men and women they’ll grow up to become.”

“At least these have found shelter,” I said. “That counts for something.”

“Does it? My best friend’s mother came out from England when she was seven. Taken from a poor house where her own mother had just died and consigned to a convict ship filled with thieves and whores and the scum of the prisons. She was raped before she reached Australia, and then served as an indentured servant to a family who nearly worked her to death. My friend’s great-aunt took pity on her and rescued her. She turned out to be a fine woman. She never spoke of her trials. She said she had put them behind her. She was the bravest woman I ever knew.” There was pride mixed with an old anger in his voice.

“She must have been, to survive.”

“My friend was set on going to England after the war is finished and finding the men who put her on that ship. But of course they must all be dead now. What’s more, my friend is dead. Killed last week. So, with any luck, he’s caught up with them at last.”

He touched his hat to me and was gone. I stood there, looking after him. And then the nursing sisters were calling to me, asking my help with a delirious patient who had taken a turn for the worse. From what I saw of his leg, swollen around the ankle and purple with gangrene, I knew it would have to come off, and soon. He wouldn’t make it alive to England otherwise.

Half an hour later a surgeon’s assistant came for him.

I spent my few days of respite asking if anyone knew of other convents in the vicinity that had taken in orphan children, but no one seemed to be aware of any.

One doctor, his apron dark with other men’s blood, said, “Why do you want to know?”

“Curiosity,” I replied. “I treated those five children who were here on Tuesday.”

“Hmmmph,” he answered. “Thought you might be one of those wanting us to take on the care of the civilian population. Leave that to the French doctors. We’ve got enough on our hands as it is, trying to save the men who get this far.”

“What happened to the Corporal with the gangrenous foot?” I asked.

“Didn’t survive. Bled to death, in spite of all we could do. Just as well. When I got in there I could see it wasn’t just his foot we’d have to take, but the entire leg, if he was to have any chance at living. Too little too late.”

He nodded and walked away, leaving me standing there. I went back to my assigned quarters and bathed before lying down on my bed.

It was hopeless, trying to find that child. I couldn’t imagine that Roger Ellis would have had any better luck. Even though he had come back to France while he still had nearly ten days of leave. Had he looked then, or gone directly to his regiment? She was lost in a sea of humanity. Perhaps after the war—but that could be years away, in spite of what was being said about the Americans soon turning the tide. With their ships being destroyed by German torpedoes, how could they resupply themselves, or bring in fresh troops? It would, I thought wearily, be more likely that the Germans and their allies and the British and their allies would simply fight each other to a standstill, until there were no more men, no more shells, and no more bullets left on either side.

I fell asleep for a few hours, and then went back again to see if I could help. But there had been a lull in the long line of wounded being convoyed back to us, some of them on omnibuses painted khaki, and I finally had an evening to write letters home and indulge myself in a long, hot bath. If I could find someone to heat the water and haul it to my quarters.

I returned to the Front when my relief was up. On the third day, while bandaging the head of a young private who came from Sussex, I asked if he’d ever been to Ashdown Forest.

“No, Sister. I’d never left Eastbourne, until I joined the Army.”

“Do you by any chance know Captain Roger Ellis, of Vixen Hill, near Hartfield?”

His eyes brightened. “That I do. I served under him for a time. Took good care of us, he did. He said Sussex men must stand up for each other.”

It was a side of Roger I hadn’t seen before. “He’s liked by his men?”

“Trusted is the word. You always knew where you stood with him.”

Noting the past tense, I said, “Knew?”

He grinned. “Sorry. What was left of our company was sent along to another regiment to make up their numbers.”

“Then he’s still alive.”

“Oh, yes. There’s a rumor that he got to Paris one day. Bluffed his way onto a convoy. Went to see the dancing girls, someone said. Perhaps he did. Perhaps not. But he came back from Paris with a bottle of champagne. It was the most expensive he’d ever paid for, he said, and gave each of his men a taste.”

A very different Roger Ellis from the man I’d encountered in Ashdown Forest. I wondered if Lydia had seen this side of him before the war. If so, I could understand why she had found the man who came home on compassionate leave almost a stranger.

I moved on to the next patient, and then it was another day, and the fighting was fierce in one sector. We began seeing the casualties around noon. It was in a brief lull that I was reminded of what the young private had said. That Roger Ellis had gone to Paris to see the dancing girls.

It occurred to me that it was a story certain to please his men. And that wherever he went, it was to find a small child who had reminded a dead man of Juliana.

Chapter Eleven

O
ne morning we were brought a dozen Australian wounded, men there was no room for in the crowded forward aid station but who were not severe enough cases to be sent back for major surgery. They were, for the most part, shrapnel victims where bursting shells tore through flesh and bone and sinew.

We had been warned to prepare for them, and the first inkling we had that they were arriving was an assortment of whistles and jeers and general catcalls, from the English Tommies lying on stretchers or sitting on whatever they could find. It was all good-natured, a rivalry of long standing. And then I heard the most maniacal laughter, so wild and crazed that I went to see what was wrong, expecting some sort of head wound. A burst of laughter followed the sound, and at that moment a tall Aussie Sergeant was limping toward me.

He greeted me just as I recognized him as the soldier I’d asked for chocolate when the nuns had brought in the five wounded children a few weeks earlier.

“Still searching for that little girl?” he asked, one hand gripping his other arm at the shoulder. I could see beneath the hasty field dressings that it was lacerated, deep wounds still bleeding.

There was no time to answer—the other sisters were there, and we got the Australian soldiers inside and began evaluating their wounds.

The Sergeant insisted that we look at his men before he would allow us to touch him, and as I worked on a leg wound, cleaning it and removing bits of shell, he sauntered over, clapped the young private on the back, and said, “Good lad.”

The boy—for he hardly seemed more than that—grinned weakly. He was pale, his teeth clenched against the pain, but his Sergeant’s praise saw him through his ordeal.

The Sergeant then turned to me. “Ever find that lass you were looking for?” he asked again.

I was surprised he’d remembered our conversation.

“No luck so far.”

“You’re not going about it the right way,” he told me. “Put the word out, let others be on the lookout for her.”

I hesitated, for I realized that word could easily get back to Roger Ellis that an English nursing sister was searching for a fair-haired orphan. But even if it did, there wasn’t much he could do about it, was there?

“I’d like to find her,” I said over my shoulder as I bandaged another soldier’s back. “Someone I knew was set on finding her and bringing her back to England. He wasn’t the father, but he knew the father didn’t care enough to rescue her. Only he was killed before he could return to France.”

“Killed?” the Sergeant asked, frowning. “In England, you mean?”

“He was murdered,” I admitted. “It’s a long story, but never mind. I just want to find her, and then perhaps her family can be persuaded to bring her home. She’ll have a better life than she could have here in this war-torn country.”

“I’ll put the word out,” he told me. “Describe her again.”

I did. “It must seem quite fantastical, but she ought to be just that pretty.”

“If you’ve never set eyes on the lass, how do you know so clearly what she looks like?”

A perceptive question. I smiled.

“There’s a portrait of another child—a—a relative of this one. I was told she bears a strong family resemblance to Juliana. That’s how I know what to look for.”

“A needle in a haystack,” he said cheerfully, “but we’ll do what we can.”

One of his men began to scream as Sister Bedford probed for an elusive bit of shrapnel.

The Sergeant was there, saying, “Buck up, my lad, you don’t want those Tommies out there laughing up their sleeves at us.”

The soldier grinned sheepishly. “No, Sergeant. But it damned well
hurts
.”

“You can scream at the Hun when we get back to our lines.”

That brought a shout of laughter from the others.

While I appreciated the Sergeant’s willingness to help—I was grateful, in fact—I rather thought he was enjoying flirting with me, and as soon as he and his company were back in the line, my orphan child would be forgotten.

The Sergeant himself took the painful digging in his shoulder stoically, tight lipped and teeth clenched. I could see the muscle in his jaw clearly.

When we’d finished, he ordered his men to follow him, and “stop cluttering up the sisters’ ward.”

I said, “Wait, where is the man with the head wound?”

He looked at me, then scanned his company. “The only one with the head wound didn’t make it, Sister,” he said, frowning. “Unless you’re counting Teddy, there, of course.”

He gestured to the private who had had bits of shrapnel in his scalp.

“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking that the man must have died outside the station. I added, “But I daresay your man Teddy will survive.”

“You’d better believe he will,” the Sergeant said, grinning. “I promised his mother special.”

And they were gone.

One of the sisters working on a stretcher case watched them walk away. “I do like tall men,” she commented. “And that one in particular.”

My next encounter with the Australian Sergeant was nearly a fortnight later, in the form of a message brought to me by a Scottish Corporal who had met him on a muddy road outside Ypres. The Corporal’s arm was in a makeshift sling, and I could tell before I had cut away his sleeve that it was badly broken. He said, his face pale with pain, “Is there a Sister here called Crawford?”

“I’m Sister Crawford,” I said as I finished with the scissors and laid bare the broken limb.

“I’m to gie ye this, then,” he answered, and with his good hand, he fished a slip of dirty paper from his blouse. “There’s a Sergeant Larimore fra’ Australia who’s been sending messages back by any wounded laddie he meets.”

“Ah, the Australian,” I said, smiling, taking the sheet and opening it. I found it was a list of orphanages that he’d somehow come up with by questioning everyone in sight, or so it appeared. I could never have collected such a list on my own, not without weeks of intense searching.

“Bless him,” I said, after scanning it.

The Corporal replied, “If it’s only a list that will make ye smile, I’ll draw up one masel’.”

Shaking my head, I said, “It’s not any list. I’m searching for a convent that used to be in a house on the road south of Ypres. They took in a number of orphans, but with the fighting had to move south to Calais. After that I’ve lost touch with them. There’s a child in that group of orphans that I’m trying to find, for a—a friend.”

“Ye’ll niver find one child in the hotch potch of religious houses,” he said earnestly. “Ye ken, there’s likely one on ivery corner.”

Spoken like a true Scots Covenanter,
I thought,
scandalized by Catholic France.

The doctor had come to have a look at his arm, and I prepared to move away.

“Is it important, Sister?” the Corporal asked. “Yon list.”

“Very.”

“Aye, well, I’ll pass the word back,” he told me, and I thanked him.

It was another week before I could take the few days coming to me and find a lift to Calais. An officer, a Major Fielding, was carrying dispatches to be sent on to London, something to do with ordnance, and as I got down near the harbor, he said, “Do you drive, Sister Crawford?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Then keep the motorcar, will you? I’ll be back from London in three days and I’d like to find it here whole, not commandeered or stripped of parts badly needed elsewhere. It’s my own motorcar, you see.”

“Thank you, sir! I’ll take good care of it.”

“See that you do. And meet me here on the dot of noon in three days’ time.”

I saw him off and gratefully turned the motorcar to go in search of the house where the nuns had taken shelter after leaving their convent on the road to Ypres.

Easier said than done. When I stopped a French priest and asked him where to look, he shrugged in that Gallic expression of ignorance.

“What can I say, Sister. There are so many houses dispossessed by this war. But if you go to the church two streets over, the one whose tower is visible from here, they may be able to help you.”

And so I found myself in the office of the monsignor of St. Catherine’s Church.

He was a thin man, prematurely aged by war and responsibility, but he took time to listen to me.

I showed him my list, courtesy of the Australian Sergeant, and he scanned it quickly.

“You permit?” he asked, pen poised over the sheet of paper. When I nodded, he began to make notes. “This house had only six elderly nuns,” he said, “And this one is now in Rouen, but I don’t know if they have orphans in their care. Their duty before the war was to the sick, much like yourself, and in particular, the care of the elderly and aged, many of whom have nowhere else to go. This next house is also in Rouen, and it may be the one you seek. But I make no promises. This and this and this house are now scattered.” He shrugged again. “Alas, I have no way of knowing where the rest may be. We are endeavoring to keep up with the displacement of religious houses, but there are so many, and I am one man.”

As I thanked him for his assistance, he asked, “What is your business with this child you seek?”

“I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “But it’s a charge I was given, to find her and make certain that she is safe.”

“Is the child’s mother French?”

“I was told that she was. Which is why the child is in an orphanage. The father, we believe he is an English officer, didn’t know that the mother of the child died, and by the time he discovered that, she was already in this orphanage or another like it.”

“And why is he not seeking this child himself?”

“I have reason to believe that he is. But France is wide, and one child is hard to find.”

“And you do not know how this child is called?”

“If I did,” I said, “it would make my task easier. But I do know what she looks like, and if I see her, it’s possible that I will recognize her.”

He considered me for a moment. “There was someone here also searching for a small child. I was not in Calais, you understand, and my housekeeper told this Englishman, an officer, that we could not help him. She was suspicious, you see. She did not think he was”—he looked for the right word—“ ‘
so frantic as a father should be, if his child was missing.
’ ”

“Does she remember when this Englishman came—and what he looked like?”

“It was three weeks ago. I know, because I was in Lille at the time.”

Then it wasn’t George Hughes, trying to discover where the nuns at the convent on the Ypres road had gone. It had to be Roger Ellis.

. . .
so frantic as a father should be, if his child was missing.

“Why then was he searching for the little girl?” I asked, curious.

“I have no idea.” He smiled. “She is afraid, Madame Buvet, that he would take the child to England and rear her as a heretic.”

“Is that so terrible, if she is loved and given a proper home?”

“In the mind of my housekeeper, better an orphan than a heretic.”

“But you have helped me.”

“You are a nursing sister. I believe that you are concerned for the welfare of this little girl.”

“And if the English officer comes again?”

“I shall judge him for myself. And then I shall decide what is best to do.”

I thanked him again, and went out to the motorcar. Three private soldiers from a Yorkshire regiment had lifted the bonnet, and when I appeared, they quickly lowered it again. “Sister,” they said, almost in unison, coming smartly to attention. “May we turn the crank for you?” one of them asked.

I could see then why Major Fielding had feared for the safety of his transport. I was pleased to find that the motor did turn over and nothing appeared to be missing as I drove on.

It was not far to Rouen, as a French crow might fly. But given the heavy traffic of military vehicles and the condition of the roads, I didn’t arrive in the city until well after midnight. For a mercy the town was quiet. The Base Hospital in the old race course was brightly lit, but the motor ambulance convoys, lorries, and omnibuses bringing in the wounded were thin on the ground with the lull in the fighting. Even the trains that brought in many of the wounded were idle. The raw recruits had already marched up from the River Seine and found their billets for the night. No one had the energy to fill the bistros and the corner wine shops at this hour.

This English Base Hospital for the wounded was manned by American doctors and nurses, filling in the decimated ranks of English medical men. Indeed, the shortage had become acute. I’d sent patients to them from the advanced dressing stations and knew that they did good work. But I never quite understood why the permanent buildings at the course had been turned into offices and the wounded were housed in tents.

Ever mindful of the fact that I must return to meet Major Fielding in one more day’s time, I knocked at the door of a house on Rue des Champignons that an elderly gendarme had directed me to in the maze of half-timbered housing in an older quarter near the river.