Cousins at War (36 page)

When she joined her partner, Ellie said, ‘What a surprise! Olive’s my sister’s daughter and she used to be a real pain in the neck and so supercilious you would hardly credit
she could stick it out here. She’s changed, though.’

‘She doesna look happy,’ Isa observed, taking a glance at the girl, who was waiting for them to leave. ‘I suppose we could stop for a while, if you want to find out
what’s wrong wi’ her. Maybe ten minutes, would that do?’

Remembering how worried about her daughter Hetty had been the last time she saw her, Ellie was glad to have a chance to talk properly to Olive. Running back, she said, ‘Can we chat
somewhere for a few minutes?’

Obviously apprehensive now, Olive said, ‘My quarters,’ and led the way to a group of small tents behind the large one.

Brevity was essential, so Ellie was blunt. ‘I’m not trying to find out why you left home but if there’s anything you want to tell me . . .?’ She stopped as the girl shook
her head, then went on, ‘If you think your mother’s angry with you, I can tell you she’s not. She’s worried sick about you, and I think you should write to her.’

‘There’s nothing to write.’

‘Oh, come on, now. Just a little scribble to let her know you’re OK, that’s all it needs.’

‘I’d rather not.’

Ellie lost patience then. ‘Good God, Olive, you could be killed any time. Surely you want to patch things up with her before you die?’

The obstinacy fading from her face, Olive said, ‘I didn’t have a row with Mum, it was something I did . . . something that she wouldn’t have forgiven me for . . . I had to
leave.’

‘Look, Olive,’ Ellie said gently, ‘I don’t know what you did, and I don’t want to know, but you can’t punish your mum for something that was nothing to do
with her.’

The girl hung her head for a moment, then straightened up. ‘I’ll think about writing home.’

‘You just need to apologise for not writing sooner and it would put her mind at rest.’ Standing up, Ellie straightened her skirt. ‘I’ll have to go now, but I hope we run
into each other again some time.’

‘I hope we do. Thanks for not condemning me, Ellie, and . . . if you write to Gracie, please don’t say you saw me. I don’t want her telling Mum what I’m doing . . . not
until . . . yes, I’ll definitely write home, when I get a chance.’

‘You won’t regret it, Olive.’

‘Everything OK?’ Isa asked, when her partner returned.

‘I think so . . . now. She’d had a bit of trouble, but I think she’s seeing sense about it.’

Switching on the engine, Isa said, ‘Poor lassie.’

Ellie couldn’t help agreeing with this, even if Olive had brought her troubles on herself. Oh, damn! She should have told her about Neil’s wife; she wouldn’t know that Freda
had been killed in an accident.

Ellie’s thoughts were interrupted. ‘There’s some men up there,’ Isa told her. ‘Can you see, just through this next clump of trees?’

Over the next hour, the two Scotswomen were almost swamped by the avalanche of Seaforth Highlanders who surged towards them when they stopped the van. All the men were delighted to see them and
astonished that they’d had the temerity to venture so near the enemy lines.

One scrawny private even said, ‘Are youse no’ feared?’

‘No, are youse?’ Isa retorted, her eyes twinkling.

‘Naw!’ he grinned, ‘but we cannae move till we’re tell’t, an’ youse could easy be some place else. Naebody would ken.’

‘We’d ken.’ Her defiant stare dared him to argue.

‘See this twa?’ he demanded of the next soldier. ‘They’re the bloody bees’ knees, that’s whit they are. Right up to the front line, an’ them jist a
couple o’ auld weemen.’

‘No’ so much o’ the auld,’ Ellie smiled.

‘You’re aulder than my maw.’ The boy stretched up, pulled her head down and kissed her. ‘Ye’re the only weemen we’ve seen for months, an’ ye’re a
sicht for sair een.’

A great roar of laughter rose up, and Ellie felt her heart swell with the pride of lightening a few moments for these brave boys. When the orders came for the soldiers to move, one officer came
back to the van. ‘We will be putting up a fresh barrage shortly and Jerry’ll be retaliating, so you’d be safer to pull back, ladies. Thank you for coming, you’ve bucked us
all up.’ Saluting gravely, he left them.

‘We’ve done no’ bad for one day,’ Isa said, as they packed up. ‘I think we’d better get back to base.’

‘I’ll drive this time.’ Ellie sat behind the wheel, hoping that they would be out of range before the shooting started. To save time, she went out on the road as soon as she
saw an opening, and sped back the way they had come. They were well past the area of the Medical Station before they heard the gunfire but by then they were safely out of harm’s way. As Isa
had said, they had ‘done no’ bad’ for that day – in more ways than one – and Ellie considered that they deserved all the rest they could get.

Olive returned to her quarters pensively, wondering now if she should have confessed everything to Ellie; it might have eased her burden of guilt. Her aunt would never have
guessed who had been the father of the child whose existence she had terminated so barbarically, but her mother would have made the connection with Neil straight away. It was better that no one
should know of the hour she had spent in the shabby tenement flat with the woman who poked inside her with a spoon-shaped instrument and then told her it might take some time for the abortion to
work; of the night Polly had sat with her waiting until it did; of the gnawing emptiness she had felt when the thick clots of blood started to come away. It had all been so shaming, so sordid, that
she would never feel clean again.

Polly had let her stay on in her room until she recovered sufficiently to go to Glasgow, where she’d lived in a girls’ hostel until she came into the Medical Corps. Not having
qualified as a doctor, she was accepted as a nurse, and had gone to the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot for the months until her detachment was sent to France, just after D Day. They had
been meant to set up a medical field station at Caen, but the Germans had still been holding the town and they’d had to work alongside some Queen Alexandra nurses near St Lo until they were
allowed to go forward themselves.

After days of working round the clock, Olive recalled, of patching up men who would then be sent back down the line to a less transitory, better equipped hospital, she hardly knew whether or not
she was still on her feet. When she had done all she could for one casualty, another was waiting for attention – it never seemed to end. She had been a nurse for over a year now, but she
would never become inured to the terrible injuries she saw. Even yet, she felt sick at seeing a severed limb, a gaping wound, a shattered or burned face, but she carried on taking and transfusing
blood, suturing, clamping, acting as doctor or surgeon if the need arose, her movements automatic. The silent suffering of her patients tugged at her heartstrings, compelling her to treat them to
the best of her ability, and they responded by placing their trust in her. When, in spite of all she did, one of them died, she felt a bitter disgust at herself and wondered if there had been
something else she could have done for him.

Olive’s mind came back to what had happened a short time before. She had just left the bedside of a young soldier who had succumbed to his wounds when her aunt turned up, and she had not
been feeling like talking. Having been on duty for thirteen hours, she had felt nauseous when the boy died, and had clung on to the end of his bed. Tina, another nurse, had looked at her in some
alarm. ‘Are you OK? You look ghastly.’

‘I feel a bit squeamish, that’s all.’

‘Take a break for a couple of hours. We’ll manage here.’

‘I think I will. I’m no use like this.’

Olive’s legs were trembling, her head was pounding, but a few minutes in the fresh air did stave off the sickness, and she had been on her way to her quarters when the canteen van drew up.
She must have looked really awful, so it was little wonder that Ellie had wanted to talk to her. She would take her aunt’s advice and write to her mother, but only to say that she was alive
and well, nothing else. It was impossible for her to go home again . . . ever.

The company of Royal Scots Fusiliers to which Neil and Alf were attached had been so reduced in numbers that it was disbanded and the men transferred to other units who had no
need of the REME, so the two friends had been separated at last. Alf was sent to the Argylls, while Neil had to go to the Highland Light Infantry. They had been so long together that Neil felt as
if part of him was missing, but it was a case of every man for himself against the last desperate struggles of an enemy who refused to recognise the writing on the wall. He no longer had any wish
to die – realising, after the terrible things he had witnessed, that his wife’s death, and his child’s, had to be accepted. So many people had lost loved ones, he wasn’t the
only one and he could do nothing to bring them back.

He determined now to survive the war, to go back home and pick up his life from where he had first left Aberdeen. He would never forget Freda but the agony was lessening, the heartache would
ease and would gradually become just a deep sadness. So he assured himself, but it was sometimes hard to believe.

On 1 May, the 15th Scottish Division were given orders to clear the Sachsenwald the next day. This was a large area of forest north-east of Hamburg, and three brigades spent all that day taking
up positions for the drive, which began at eight the following morning. The HLI were on the left and had an early, sharp fight with marine cadets from the flak school at Hamburg but managed to
overcome them and pressed on. At the end of the day, when they came out of the forest, they met fierce resistance before they reached Neu Bornsen which was their final objective. Neil Ferris,
however, never got as far as that.

For the last lap of their advance, unhindered by the enemy who were now in retreat, the men boarded an open truck which had caught up with them, jumping into the rear part of the vehicle with
cries of joy. Even standing, packed as tightly as sardines in a tin, was preferable to foot-slogging along the rough road. Neil found himself in the middle of the mass of bodies but what did that
matter? The truck had gone only a few hundred yards when they heard the whine of the shell and were flung off their feet when the driver put his foot hard down on the brake. Scrambling over each
other in panic, they vaulted over the backboard to run for cover but Neil, being underneath, was last to get off and fell as he hit the ground. He didn’t have time to roll away as the truck
was hit and the diesel tank exploded.

The Argylls, with Alf Melville amongst them, had been to the south, advancing along the main Geessthacht–Bergedorf road, with Bornsen as their objective. They, too, met
some marine cadets with 20mm flak guns, and had difficulty fighting on the almost sheer, thickly wooded hill above the road. Alf was one of the minor casualties, wounded in the right leg but waving
away any of the overworked medical team who came near him.

Just before noon, there came a long-awaited, and extremely welcome, change in the situation. First only a few, then an absolute sea of white flags appeared and a steady stream of men in hodden
grey uniforms came out with their hands raised high in the air. Very soon, the news had spread that Hitler was dead. The Wermacht had nothing left to fight for.

Ever since her unexpected meeting with Ellie, Olive had done a great deal of thinking. She had written to her mother and told her everything, and just setting it down on paper
had helped a bit, but she hadn’t had the courage to send it. She had started again, just saying that she was in the Medical Corps and that she was very well, but not giving any address or
indication of where she was. She had also said she was sorry for leaving the way she had but that she hadn’t been able to face any explanations. She had still been left with the guilt that
burned her up even after being on duty for sometimes more than eighteen hours at a stretch but, thankfully, the pressures now were not so great.

From the Mehr area, her unit had moved forward gradually, setting up Casualty Clearing Stations in convents or schools – or tents, if nothing else was available. With the help of some
Queen Alexandra nurses, they did their best for all the wounded, enemies as well as allies, until the patients could be sent to the Field Hospitals down the line. Olive treated the Germans exactly
as she did the others and most of them were grateful, except one young boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. The surgeons had worked on him for hours to remove all the shell splinters
in his chest before he was brought to her, and she had been bent over him to make sure that he continued to breathe after regaining consciousness. For a second, a flicker of fear had crossed his
face, then a hint of a smile when he saw that she was a nurse . . . until he spotted her khaki trousers, then he spat on her. She would never forget the hatred in his eyes but she had wiped her
cheek and smiled. He was still a child, after all, and had probably been fed lies about British brutality.

Her unit had been between Frankfurt and the Kiel Canal when hostilities ceased and she had spent most of her last leave by the canal, swimming and sunbathing. There had been so many British and
American men and women that it had been a real holiday, peaceful and fun-filled, but the break was over all too soon. She was then sent back to just outside Hamburg and it was rumoured that they
might be moved shortly with the wounded to hospitals in England. They would be taken to Bremerhaven or Hamburg, likely, then on by boat.

Fastening her belt as she walked, Olive went back on duty, her feet taking her directly to the bedside of a sapper from Southend who had been shot in the spine and was paralysed from the waist
down. Ron White’s was a case that interested her. At times, his disability did not seem to bother him then, with no warning, he would rant and scream at anyone who ventured near him. There
was no pattern to it and with her psychiatric training, she was itching to find a reason for his erratic behaviour.