In Falling Snow (39 page)

I soon returned to Villers to help Mrs. Berry. The guns seemed louder now although I put it down to having been back at Royaumont, farther from the front. At Villers, the big guns would pound all night, shaking the buildings so much that the tables in the theatre which held the instruments would hop about the floor. Sometimes I was sure we were going to be hit. Often now we had to operate in blackout mode, but the doctors never mentioned the bombs—I wondered if they even noticed. They just went on working by candlelight, their only concern the patient under their hands. I focused on keeping my own hands steady to hold the candle or assist. Poor Dr. Courthald administered her anaesthetic in the dark. I don't know how she did it. More than once, we even had to extinguish the single candle flame that guided the surgeon's hand and wait until the danger had passed.

Soon after I returned to Villers, Miss Ivens arrived with staff from Royaumont and told us we must expect a great rush of casualties. “I had a call from Dugald McTaggart,” she said. “I don't know why we weren't advised officially. We must be ready.” Within hours of her arrival, the wounded started to pour in. Miss Ivens remained with us and the extra pair of hands was much needed. That night, medical staff from an American hospital even closer to the front arrived on foot. They'd been evacuated, they said, and so they took up working with us too. Injured soldiers came on foot as well. We were frightfully busy all through that night—the receiving ward constantly full, the theatre never empty—and I was thankful we were so busy, for the sound of the shells and the shaking of the little wooden huts would otherwise have sent us mad, I was sure. Miss Ivens worked tirelessly. She was never afraid and perhaps because of that, we were all able to keep our fear in check.

The wounded continued streaming in through the next day and night. We each took an hour's break when we could. I don't think I slept. The commandant who'd helped us set up Villers arrived on the morning of the third day. “You must evacuate,” he told us. “We cannot guarantee your safety. The Germans have taken Soissons again.” After the commandant left, Miss Ivens gave the order to pack up. The commandant had said we were to wait for advice about evacuation of our patients but he returned later in the day to say there was nowhere to take the wounded yet. “All the other hospitals are closed or destroyed,” he said. “And the wounded are still coming. Can you stay until we have somewhere for them?”

“Of course we can,” Miss Ivens said, without hesitating. “After all, we're women. Iris, you must get in touch with Royaumont. Get them to send every spare car and ambulance. Tell the staff we must be ready to move at a moment's notice.” I watched her furrowed brow, her dark eyes looking up to the left in the way they did whenever she was planning, and I loved Miss Ivens with all my heart and soul.

I sent a messenger to Royaumont—the telephone had been cut the day before. I called as many staff together as were free and Miss Ivens explained the situation quickly. “We must stay here until they have somewhere to take our patients,” she said. “It is our duty.” Not one woman questioned that we would stay, despite knowing how close the Germans now were. We unpacked what we needed to keep working and set about the task at hand. The wounded continued to arrive all through the afternoon, on foot or stretcher, or in train or car. We were frantically busy, setting up a temporary theatre in one of the wards, using another to extend reception, operating into the night. We fed refugees and soldiers. Any patients who were able helped us with care.

Miss Ivens did nine thigh amputations in a row, wounds foul with gas. We had the lights out at least three times. The men were ragged, some screaming in pain, some dying just as they reached us, brought by comrades left with nothing but hope for a friend, only to have their hopes dashed. And all the while, bombs exploding with a flash in the night sky, the terrible noise of the big guns our constant companion. It was the worst night of my life.

At around 4 a.m., not having had more than an hour's break at a time in three days, I was sitting in the staff canteen. There was an eerie lull in the guns. Miss Ivens appeared out of the darkness. “Oh Iris, we've seen it all now, haven't we?”

“We certainly have, Miss Ivens,” I said. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

An hour later we received word that evacuations should start. Miss Ivens continued to operate until the last possible moment. And then we began to take the wounded to the trains, which would take them to Senlis. We ourselves were going to make for Crépy, twelve miles towards Royaumont. At about midday, the shells began again in earnest and now they were so close we heard them whistle overhead and knew we must get out quickly. We were each given a retreating ration of boiled eggs, an orange, and some cheese and bread. We packed what we could. I didn't have much, although some had to leave behind precious possessions.

At two o'clock that afternoon, Miss Ivens sent a group of sturdy walkers out on foot to meet the train to Senlis, including any patients who could walk. They joined the refugees of the towns that had already been taken. A constant stream of women and children, pushing their belongings on little carts before them, as well as soldiers, many of them wounded, came past the hospital all through the day. The town of Villers-Cotterêts was on fire, we learned, and people had to escape.

Late in the afternoon, as I went outside with Dr. Courthald to collect an empty stretcher, I saw a woman and two children walking towards the hospital. A bomb exploded right where they stood and I watched their bodies fly up into the air and land like nothing more than rag dolls. I went to run to them but Dr. Courthald stopped me. “They're dead, Iris,” she said. “We must do what we can for the living.” Fifteen minutes later a third child was brought over to us by two American soldiers—they said he'd been with his mother and two sisters who were killed—the family I'd seen. This child had run ahead, which had saved him. Miss Ivens operated to remove a large piece of shrapnel from his chest. His chances were good, she said, but what life now, without his mother and sisters? And God knew where his father was. Miss Ivens put the boy in one of the cars and told Marjorie Starr to take care of him. There were only four staff left now, Miss Ivens, Dr. Courthald, our X-ray technician Miss Stoney, and me, as well as the remaining wounded.

“Where are the blessed cars from Royaumont?” Miss Ivens said. Just then, we saw them coming along the road, trundling in with a confidence that made us take up a cheer. They'd been held up on the terrible roads. The cars could take the wounded back to Royaumont, making for Crépy in the first instance, leaving any that could be cared for at the hospital there. Miss Ivens and Dr. Courthald would accompany the worst cases. We loaded the patients and then rushed back to pick up our knapsacks. Just as we did, two American cars pulled up and told us the Germans were advancing much more quickly than had been anticipated. We heard the scream of shells overhead. I don't know why but I felt very calm.

Miss Ivens went in the last car with Violet. I gave my seat to a wounded boy and said I would make for the train on my own, following the walkers who'd gone earlier. Violet hugged me as she left. We hadn't seen as much of each other since I'd been at Villers. Our friendship had changed since Miss Ivens had spoken to me about studying medicine. I felt I had a guilty secret. I didn't think Violet knew and I couldn't bring myself to tell her. For her part, she was distant with me too. I didn't know why but assumed perhaps she knew something about the scholarship.

“Do you remember when we spent the night near Baillon, frightened the Germans were coming?” she said now. I nodded. Of course I did. “This is for you, darling.” She put something small in my hand and closed it into a fist. I opened my hand and saw it was the knife she'd had that night in Baillon. “Take care, Iris. We'll see you when we see you. I love you.”

“Go, Violet, and stay safe.” I gripped the knife in my hand. “I love you too,” I said to the back of the car receding into the distance.

I could smell smoke in the air and hear not just the thunder of big guns but the rat-a-tatting of smaller fire that couldn't be far away. I went to the railhead expecting I could help with wounded en route to Senlis, but they'd all gone. It was chaos now, soldiers who'd become separated from their units—American, French, Canadian—mingled among fleeing French civilians, no one knowing quite what to do. And now, an American soldier told me, a munitions train had blown up at Soissons so the trains had been stopped. “The Germans have taken the town. They march like the living dead,” he said. The Germans were five kilometres away, the soldier told me.

They were burning everything behind them, desperate now to establish supremacy. I held Violet's knife in my fist, a talisman. No one even noticed me, a young nurse on her own in all this mess of people and vehicles. I'd never felt so alone in my life.

I started on the road I knew led to Royaumont but soon saw the folly of this course. The shells were finding their mark less than a mile from me. I wished I'd gone in the car with the others. At every step, fear threatened to overtake me but I knew I must remain calm. I would have screamed if I wasn't so crazed with fatigue. There was nothing to do but go on.

I saw French soldiers on the road, grim-faced, resolute, as if they'd already gone to their deaths and were nothing but spirits. The Americans and Canadians were there too, but even they were without hope now. As the sun was setting, I came to a field I knew—we'd walked there earlier in the summer when the flowers first bloomed—and now it was covered in daffodils and cornflowers lit up by the last of the day's light. Suddenly, I remembered the forest road Violet and I had taken four years before when we'd been afraid for our lives. It might serve me now, I thought. It might truly save my life. On top of a rise, I looked back along the main road and saw, to my horror, the German soldiers marching towards their victory.

I veered off across the field and headed west and south towards the forest road. The sun had set now and I was glad to see a clear night would follow that dreadful day, with a full and peaceable moon already risen to light my way. I soon found the road and walked through the night, stopping briefly every hour or so to rest, climbing down into the forest and sitting or lying down where I stopped. I slept in these breaks—I can't say how long—and saw no other travellers, as if all had fled before me.

As the sky began to grow less dark and I knew a day was coming—whatever it might bring—I felt a kind of joy. I was hungry—my rations had run out—and I was tired, but nothing would stop the morning now and the morning brought ever hope.

Just then my reverie was interrupted when I heard a motor. I scrambled down into the forest and crouched among the leaves. Before long I saw them—well, heard them first. They were singing “It's a Long Way” and I knew. It was Violet and Miss Ivens and the crew coming back to Royaumont.

Violet saw me first. “It's Iris!” she screamed. She pulled up the car, at first forgetting to apply the brake so it rolled back as she was getting out but she jumped back in and stopped it. “It is you! Oh, my dear. We'd heard the trains were out. We thought . . . We didn't know what had happened. We've been searching the road for you. I told them. I told them I knew you'd take this road. And you did.” We were hugging tightly.

“Violet,” I said. I could have collapsed into her arms if she didn't feel so frail herself. Miss Ivens was emerging from the car now and Dr. Courthald. I burst into tears. “Oh my friends. How wonderful to see you all safe.”

Miss Ivens had taken her patients safely to Crépy and had since picked up more wounded to bring back to Royaumont. They were as glad to see me as I was to see them—they'd heard about the railway line and were planning to send a car for me but they'd come the forest road “just in case.” They'd had a wild night, narrowly dodging shells on the road. Dr. Courthald said they'd had a few sharp minutes. “I really didn't think we would get through unscathed.” She was very unhappy we'd left so much behind. But she'd picked the last of the radishes from the vegetable patch—to stop the Germans getting them—and so we munched on those. We piled back into the car, Dr. Courthald forced to sit on my lap but we weren't about to leave anyone behind. None of the patients was seriously wounded and soon we were back home. We arrived at Royaumont at dawn, just as the sun was striking the abbey walls.

Royaumont remained untouched, although a shell had burst in the back fields leaving a huge hole not a hundred yards from the abbey. The staff and patients had spent the night in the cellars, fearing the worst. They were relieved to hear the cars returning staff to Royaumont.

Miss Ivens and I went straight from Royaumont to Senlis, only stopping for a quick wash and coffee and bread. The German advance had been halted and Senlis had been held. We met at the new hastily established Command HQ with the new Allied Health Service authorities, where it was decided Royaumont would replace Villers-Cotterêts and cover the entire zone, collecting wounded now from Senlis as Creil was too vulnerable to continue. Royaumont would be the largest hospital in the region, providing up to six hundred beds. We were all so exhausted I didn't know how we were going to manage it.