No Man's Land (14 page)

Cough, cough, little fair-haired boy. Perhaps somewhere your mother is thinking of you… boasting of the life she has so nobly given… the life you thought was your own, but which is hers to squander as she thinks fit. ‘My boy is not a slacker, thank God.' Cough away, little boy, cough away. What does it matter, providing your mother doesn't have to face the shame of her son's cowardice?

These are sitters. The man they are hoisting up beside me, and the two who sit in the ambulance. Blighty cases… broken arms and trench feet… mere trifles. The smell? Disgusting, isn't it? Sweaty socks and feet swollen to twice their size… purple, blue, red… big black blisters filled with yellow matter. Quite a colour-scheme, isn't it? Have I made you vomit? I must again ask pardon. My conversation is daily growing less refined. Spew and vomit and sweat… I had forgotten these words are not used in the best drawing-rooms on Wimbledon Common.

But I am wasting time. I must go in a minute. I am nearly loaded. The stretcher they are putting on one side? Oh, a most ordinary exhibit,… the groaning man to whom the smallest jolt is red hell… a mere bellyful of shrapnel. They are holding him over till the next journey. He is not as urgent as the helpless thing there, that trunk without arms and legs, the remnants of a human being, incapable even of pleading to be put out of his misery because his jaw has been half shot away… No, don't meet his eyes, they are too alive. Something of their malevolence might remain with you all the rest of your days,… those sock-filled, committee-crowded days of yours.

Gaze on the heroes who have so nobly upheld your traditions, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington. Take a good look at them… The heroes you will sentimentalise over until peace is declared, and allow to starve for ever and ever, amen, afterwards. Don't go. Spare a glance for my last stretcher,… that gibbering, unbelievable, unbandaged thing, a wagging lump of raw flesh on a neck, that was a face a short time ago, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington. Now it might be anything… a lump of liver, raw bleeding liver, that's what it resembles more than anything else, doesn't it? We can't tell its age, but the whimpering moan sounds young, somehow. Like the fretful whimpers of a sick little child… a tortured little child… puzzled whimpers. Who is he? For all you know, Mrs. Evans-Mawnington, he is your Roy. He might be anyone at all, so why not your Roy? One shapeless lump of raw liver is like another shapeless lump of raw liver. What do you say? Why don't they cover him up with bandages? How the hell do I know? I have often wondered myself,… but they don't. Why do you turn away? That's only liquid fire. You've heard of liquid fire? Oh, yes. I remember your letter… ‘
I hear we've started to use liquid fire
,
too. That will teach those Germans
.
I hope we use lots and lots of it
.'Yes, you wrote that. You were glad some new fiendish torture had been invented by the chemists who are running this war. You were delighted to think some German mother's son was going to have the skin stripped from his poor face by liquid fire… Just as some equally patriotic German mother rejoiced when she first heard the sons of Englishwomen were to be burnt and tortured by the very newest war gadget out of the laboratory.

Don't go, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington,… don't go. I am loaded, but there are over thirty ambulances not filled up. Walk down the line. Don't go, unless you want me to excuse you while you retch your insides out as I so often do. There are stretchers and stretchers you haven't seen yet… Men with hopeless dying eyes who don't want to die… men with hopeless living eyes who don't want to live. Wait, wait, I have so much, so much to show you before you return to your committees and your recruiting meetings, before you add to your bag of recruits… those young recruits you enroll so proudly with your patriotic speeches, your red, white and blue rosettes, your white feathers, your insults, your lies… any bloody lie to secure a fresh victim.

What? You cannot stick it any longer? You are going? I didn't think you'd stay. But I've got to stay, haven't I?… I've got to stay. You've got me out here, and you'll keep me out here. You've got me haloed. I am one of the Splendid Young Women who are winning the War…

‘Loaded. Six stretchers and three sitters!'

I am away. I slow up at the station gate. The sergeant is waiting with his pencil and list. I repeat, ‘Six stretchers and three sitters.'

‘Number Eight.'

He ticks off my ambulance. I pass out of the yard.

Number Eight. A lucky number! A long way out, but a good level road, comparatively few pot-holes and stone heaps.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

Along we creep at a snail's pace… a huge dark crawling blot on the dead-white road.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

The sitter leans back motionless. Exhausted, or asleep, after the long journey. His arm is in splints, his head bandaged, and his left foot swaddled in a clumsy trench slipper. He leans back in the darkness, his face as invisible as though a brick wall were separating us. The wind cuts like a knife. He must be numbed through, for he has no overcoat and his sleeve is ripped up. He has draped the Army blanket cloak-wise over his shoulders, leaving his legs to the mercy of the freezing night. It is snowing again. Big snowflakes that hiss as they catch the radiator. I tell the sitter he will find a cigarette and matches in the pocket of my coat nearest him. I have placed them there purposely… my bait to make him talk. I want him to talk. He does not reply. I want him to talk. If I can get a sitter to talk it helps to drown the cries from inside. I discovered that some time ago. I repeat my offer, a trifle louder this time. But he makes no reply. He is done. Too done to smoke even. No luck for me to-night.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

How smoothly she runs, this great lumbering blot. How slowly. To look at her you'd never think it possible to run an ambulance of this size so slowly…

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

Did I hear a scream from inside?
I must fix my mind on something… What? I know – my coming-out dance. My first grown-up dance frock, a shining frock of sequins and white georgette, high-waisted down to my toes…
Did I hear a scream?…
Made over a petticoat…
don't let them start screaming…
a petticoat of satin. Satin slippers to match, not tiny – my feet were always largish; so were my hands…
Was that a scream from inside?
… Such a trouble Mother had getting white gloves my size to go above the elbow…
Was it a scream?…
My hair up for the first time…
oh, God, a scream this time
… my hair up in little rolls at the back…
another scream
–
the madman has started, the madman has started. I was afraid of him. He'll start them all screaming
…Thirty-one little rolls like fat little sausages. A professional hairdresser came in and did them – took nearly two hours to do them while Trix and Mother watched, and Sarah came in to peep.
Don't let him start the others; don't let him start the others…
Thirty-one little sausages of hair, piled one on top of the other, and all the hair my own too, copied from a picture post card of Phyllis Dare or Lily Elsie. Now, which one was it?…
The shell-shocked man has joined in. The madman has set the shell-shocked man howling like a mad dog…
Lily Elsie, I think it was…
What are they doing to one another in there?

‘Let me out. Let me out.'

The madman is calling that
. Lily Elsie, I think it was. Lily Elsie…

‘Stop screaming. You're not the only one going through bloody hell.'

A different voice that one. That must be one of the sitters…
Satin slippers with buckles on the toes – little pearl buckles shaped like a crescent. Aunt Helen or Trix gave me those.

‘Shut up screaming, or I'll knock hell out of you with my crutch, you bastard. Shut up screaming.'

What was that crash? They're fighting inside. They're fighting inside… Scream, scream, scream…

‘I'm dying. Oh, Jesus, he's murdered me. I'm dying.'

What are they doing? Are they murdering one another in there? I ought to stop the ambulance; I ought to get out and see. I ought to stop them… I ought. A driver the other night stopped her ambulance, and a man had gone mad and was beating a helpless stretcher case about the head. But she overpowered him and strapped him down again. Tosh, that was. But Tosh is brave. I couldn't do it. I must go on…

They are all screaming now. Moaning and shrieking and howling like wild animals… All alone with an ambulance of raving men miles from anywhere in the pitch blackness,… raving madmen yelling and screaming. I shall go mad myself…

Go and see… go and see… go and see.

I will not. I cannot… my heart is pounding like a sledge-hammer. My feet and hands are frozen, but the sweat is pouring down my back in rivulets. I have looked before, and I dare not look again. What good can I do? The man who spewed blood will be lying there dead,… his glassy eyes fixed on the door of the ambulance, staring accusingly at me as I peep in,… cold dead eyes, blaming me when I am not to blame… The madman will curse me, scream vile curses at me, scream and try to tear himself from the straps that hold him down,… if he has not torn himself away already. He will try to tear himself from his straps to choke the life from me. The shell-shocked man will yammer and twitch and jerk and mouth. The man with the face like raw liver will moan… I will not go and see. I will not go and see.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

Number Eight, where are you? Have I missed you in the monotony of this snow-covered road. I have been travelling for hours. Am I travelling too slowly? Am I being over-careful? Could I accelerate ever so slightly… cover the distance more quickly? I will do it. A fresh scream from someone as I jolt over a stone… I've hurt someone. I slow down again.

Scream, scream, scream. Three different sets of screams now – the shriek of the madman, the senseless, wolfish, monotonous howl of the shell-shock case, and now a shrill sharp yell like a bright pointed knife blade being jabbed into my brain. One, two, three, four,… staccato yells. Which one is that? Not the little fair-haired boy. He is too busy choking to death to shriek. Another one has joined in… inferno. They are striking one another again… hell let loose. Go and see, go and see…

I will not go and see. I will not go and see.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

The sitter sleeps through it all. A pool of snow has fallen in his lap. We have missed Number Eight. I must have missed the turning in the snow. The black tree-stump on the left that leads to Number Eight… snow-obscured. I must have missed the turning in the snow.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

The screams have died down, but a dreadful moaning takes their place. Oo-oo-oh… oo-oo-oh… dirge-like, regular, it rises above the sound of the engine and floats out into the night. Oo-oo-oh… oo-oooh… it is heart-breaking in its despair. I have heard a man moan like that before. The last moans of a man who will soon cease moaning for ever. Oo-oo-oh… the hopelessness, the loneliness. Tears tear at my heart… awful tears that rack me, but must not rise to my eyes, for they will freeze on my cheeks and stick my eyelids together until I cannot see to drive. Even the solace of pitying tears is denied me.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

I have given up all hope of reaching Number Eight by now. I will go on until there is a place to turn.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

The moans have ceased. I strain my ears. The madman is shouting again,… a hoarse vituperative monologue. I cannot catch his words. I do not want to catch his words. But I strain to catch them just the same. He will start the others again…

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

If only I could find a place to turn. The road seems to grow narrower. How many journeys shall I make to-night? Was it a big convoy? I didn't notice at the station,… I always forget to notice. Perhaps I shall have shrapnels next time… shrapnels, too exhausted from loss of blood to scream. A sitter who will talk and smoke.

…The madman is screaming again… he will start the others.

Crawl, crawl, crawl.

Is that a light? No… yes! Number Eight! The big canvas marquee gleaming dully in the darkness… the front entrance flaps already parted… white-capped nurses waiting in the doorway. They can see my lights. The orderlies are standing by… Number Eight… Number Eight… I am there at last. The tears are rolling down my cheeks… let them. Let the tears freeze my eyelids together now… let them freeze my eyelids… It doesn't matter now… nothing matters now…

HELEN ZENNA SMITH

THE BEAUTY OF MEN WHO ARE WHOLE

from
Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War

I
AM AFRAID OF GOING MAD…
of being discovered one morning among the boulders at the foot of a rocky hillside as was The Bug the day following on the air-raid that smashed the station and the convoy train to matchwood… a night of smashings, though none so cruelly smashed as The Bug. She had lost her way and missed her footing in the darkness, said the powers-that-be. This on the brightest night in a season of moonlit nights.