Passions of War (11 page)

‘
Cochon! Bastard! Vous avez tuer mes camarades. Maintenant je vous etranglerai
.'

The words were followed by a muffled scream and Leo turned to see Franz grasping one of the nurses, a girl called Margaret, by the throat. She put down the bowl she was holding and ran across the ward, but before she reached him two male orderlies had leapt on him and wrestled him back on to his bed.

‘Why did he do that?' Margaret panted, clasping her throat. ‘I only wanted to feed him.'

‘It wasn't anything you did,' Leo consoled her. ‘He thought you were a German soldier.'

There was a rota for work on the night shift, and when her turn came Leo found it a relief. The pressure was less and she had time to chat to some of the men who were on the way to recovery. The ones who spoke French were glad to find someone who was able to converse easily in their language and she made efforts to learn a little Flemish, so she could communicate with the others. They told her about their families and many of them asked her to write letters home for them. They reminded her of the soldiers she had nursed at Adrianople. They expressed the same meek gratitude for everything she did for them and endured their suffering with the same mixture of stoicism and humour.

One night the relative peace of the night shift was shattered by a strange throbbing, buzzing sound. Leo turned to the orderly who was on duty with her but he indicated with a shrug that he had no more idea than she had what the noise might be. Leo glanced round the ward, saw that all the men were either asleep or at least resting quietly, and went out into the courtyard. The noise was coming from somewhere above her and for a moment she wondered if it was an aircraft, but very few planes flew at night. Then she saw a huge shape blotting out the stars.

‘It's a Zeppelin!' she gasped to the orderly, who had followed her out.

‘We should take cover,' he suggested, but Leo shook her head.

‘I want to see what it does. Why aren't our people firing at it?'

At that moment a searchlight beam sprang up, criss-crossing the sky until it fastened on the Zeppelin, so that it hung above them like a great silver fish. Others joined it and star shells began to burst around it, green and blue against the night sky. Then the guns opened up but the huge craft continued serenely on its way.

‘What is it doing?' Leo asked. The courtyard was crowded by now with staff from other wards but she got no reply except for heads shaken in puzzlement. Then she heard a whistling, rushing sound, followed by an explosion, and the ground beneath her feet shook.

‘Bombs! It's dropping bombs!' the cry went up, but no one headed for the cellars. The spectacle of the silver craft surrounded by the brilliance of the star shells, which outshone any fireworks display Leo had ever seen, was too fascinating to miss. The Zeppelin circled over them a while longer and dropped two more bombs, then the engine note changed and it throbbed away towards the German lines.

Soon after that incident Lilian Franklin – ‘Boss' to all the FANYs – called for volunteers to take a vehicle up to the front with comforts for the troops and possibly bring back casualties. There was no shortage of offers but Victoria was chosen to be the first, in view of her previous experience, and she naturally chose Leo to accompany her. Two other FANYs, Wilks and ‘Nicky' Nicholson came with them. The rear of one of the ambulances was stocked with woolly socks and mufflers, chocolate and cigarettes and medical supplies and they set off through the crowded streets in high spirits. They had grown accustomed to the reactions of the local people as they went to and from the hospital. They varied from stunned amazement through to a condescending amusement to scandalized disapproval. Their uniforms came in for a great deal of comment but the fact that they drove cars was the biggest talking point.

As luck would have it, just as they crossed the Place d'Armes, the main market square, there was a bang and a jolt and the ambulance swerved to the left.

‘Damn!' Victoria exclaimed. ‘What a spot to get a puncture!'

They all climbed out and very quickly a small crowd assembled round them.

‘Oh, how embarrassing,' Leo said. ‘How fast can we change a wheel?'

‘I like a challenge,' Victoria responded with a grin. ‘Let's show the Frogs that we don't just drive the cars.'

She set to work while Leo leaned on the bonnet and translated, deadpan, the comments of the onlookers.

‘
Zut, alors! Elle ouvre comme un homme!
' ‘My goodness, she works like a man!'

‘
Regarde ses bottes!
'
‘Look at her boots!'

‘
Et son chapeau! Quel chic!'
‘And her hat. What style!'

‘
Crois-tu qu'elle peut nous entendre?
' ‘
Non, non. Les anglais ne parle que sa propre langue.
' ‘Do you think she can understand us?' ‘Oh, no, the English only speak their own language.'

The comments continued in this vein until Victoria completed the wheel change and they both climbed back into the cab. As they prepared to drive off Leo leaned out of the window and called sweetly, ‘
Mesdames et messieurs, le spectacle est terminé!
'

Victoria doubled up over the steering wheel. ‘Their faces! How priceless!' And they drove on, laughing.

Once they were out of the city they found themselves on a long, straight road, dwindling into infinity through a flat, featureless landscape punctuated by small clusters of houses and the occasional church steeple. It was bordered on each side by deep ditches, full of mud at this time of year.

‘I loathe these cobbled surfaces,' Victoria complained. ‘They shake you till your teeth rattle.'

‘The
pavé
, you mean,' Leo said. ‘Well, it's not comfortable but at least it isn't full of potholes like so many English roads.'

‘I blame the railways for that,' Victoria said. ‘Now everyone goes everywhere by train no one bothers to keep the roads in good condition. We're all right on the cobbles but I dread to think what will happen if we end up in the ditch.'

She had good reason to worry. The roads were thronged with traffic. Columns of soldiers marched towards the front while refugees streamed away from it. There were farm carts pulled by oxen, guns on horse-drawn limbers, detachments of French cavalry resplendent in cuirasses and plumes and occasionally a staff car full of bemedalled officers. Overtaking, or passing another vehicle, was fraught with difficulty. At one point they found themselves behind an old shepherd, calmly driving his flock along the road.

Victoria, at the end of her patience, leaned out of the cab. ‘
Ecoutez! Allez
off the bloody
pavé, tout suite.
'

Leo chortled. ‘Vita, your French is improving!'

At intervals they were stopped by sentries manning barriers constructed at angles across the road. They had been given a
laissez-passer
by the Belgian military command, and also told the password for the day, so these obstacles presented no more than an irritating interruption to an already tedious journey. They passed through Dunkirk and then Furnes, where they saw several buildings that had been damaged by shells and it was there that Leo heard again the sound she had heard for the first time when their ship docked in Salonika; a sound which had been the daily accompaniment to life at Chataldzha. She looked at Victoria and they nodded in mutual comprehension. From behind them a nervous voice asked, ‘What's that noise? Is it gunfire?'

Leo turned round. ‘I'm afraid it is, yes. But it's quite a long way off.'

Shortly after that they passed the first dead horse, its belly bloated, four legs sticking straight up in the air.

‘What do you think? Killed by a shell or dropped dead from exhaustion?' Victoria asked.

Leo, thinking of Amber, had to swallow hard before replying. ‘Who knows? I'm certainly not getting down to check.'

After that they saw more horses and the landscape became pitted with shell-holes. A column of walking wounded passed them, many of them limping, heads or arms swathed in bandages. The sound of the gunfire grew louder and then they all heard the whistle of a shell and an explosion somewhere just ahead. At that point the road made one of its infrequent bends, to by-pass a large farmhouse, and when they rounded it they saw a smoking crater almost in the centre of the road. Victoria stood on the brakes and Wilks and Nicky crowded forward to look over her shoulders. For a moment nobody spoke.

Then Victoria said, ‘Oh well, there but for the grace of God . . .' and put the engine into gear.

Wilks said in a small voice, ‘You don't think perhaps we should turn back?'

Leo was about to speak but Nicky's robust rejoinder cut her off. ‘Good heavens, no! That's what we're here for, isn't it?'

There was just enough of the
pavé
left for the ambulance to edge past but it took all Victoria's skill and Leo found herself staring down into what looked like a bottomless pit of mud and praying that the wheels would not slip over the edge.

It was late afternoon when they finally drew up at a dilapidated building which was serving as a
poste de secours
, where the officer in charge was delighted to receive the medical supplies they had brought with them. The gunfire had stopped and he informed them that they could stretch their legs without fear as the bombardment had finished for the afternoon.

‘How can you be so sure?' Leo asked.

‘Because it happens like this every day,' he answered. ‘The Boche have a schedule and they keep to it like clockwork.'

Leo looked across the darkening landscape. The banks of the Yser had been breached and the land around flooded to slow down the German advance and the light of the setting sun was reflected off the water, giving the whole scene an air of unreality.

‘I don't understand,' Nicky said. ‘I thought we were close to the front but I can't see any sign of either army.'

‘That's because they are all dug in, in trenches,' Leo explained. ‘Can you see those dark lines? They are full of men, but if they were to show themselves they would risk being blown to bits.'

They were told that they could not go up to the trenches until after dark so they sat drinking
marc
with the officer and his men until nightfall. Then they were instructed to follow one of them to a point beyond the village where a doctor would meet them. After that, they must walk in single file with at least twenty feet between them and be prepared to drop flat if the Germans sent up a star shell. They set off, each carrying a bundle containing woollen socks and mufflers, donated by knitters back in England, as well as a supply of bandages and other medical items. Along the way they passed silent lines of troops, heading for the trenches or going in the opposite direction. It was pitch dark by now and they were not allowed to show a light and Leo felt that she had trudged for miles, just keeping the shadowy figure of the doctor in sight. At last they came to the first trench and scrambled down a slippery plank into it. At once Leo's nose was assailed by a familiar stench of foetid water and human excrement and for a second she was back in the Turkish trenches with Sasha. She pushed the memory to the back of her mind and concentrated. Behind her, she could hear Wilks trying not to retch.

The first task was to assist the doctor with a number of wounded men. Then they set off along the trench to distribute the ‘comforts'. It seemed to Leo that she had stumbled along for hours, up to the ankles in mud, ducking down every few yards to crawl through the entrance to a dugout where the inhabitants crouched like troglodytes around hissing paraffin lamps. Their gratitude for the gifts was touching. The socks were particularly welcomed and, feeling her own frozen feet, Leo could understand why.

When all the goods had been distributed they made their way back to the entrance, where two wounded men were waiting on stretchers.

‘This is going to be tricky,' Victoria muttered. ‘How are we going to get them up that slippery plank without tipping them off?'

‘Tricky is an understatement,' Leo agreed. ‘But it has got to be managed somehow.'

Somehow, between the four of them, they manhandled the stretchers out of the trench and set off, with aching arms, for the village. Halfway there a star shell exploded overhead, flooding the area with light, and they had to dump their burdens and lie flat until it died out. By the time they reached the
poste de secours
they were all ready to weep with exhaustion. One of the wounded men reached up and caught Leo's hand.

‘
Merci! Merci, madame!
'

Leo stooped over the stretcher and managed a smile. ‘
De rien, mon brave
.'

Once they were safely back in the ambulance and on their way Leo voiced a thought that had been at the back of her mind since they left the trenches.

‘Vita, do you think Tom and Ralph are living in the same conditions as those men?'

Victoria gave a small snort. ‘Well, wherever they are, I imagine your brother's boots are not as shiny as they used to be.'

Leo looked at her. ‘That's a bit hard-hearted.'

Victoria negotiated a pothole in silence. Then she said, ‘Sorry. I suppose it was a bit uncalled for. But you must admit Ralph did need taking down a peg or two.'

Leo thought back to the scene at Adrianople, when he had discovered her in her male disguise. Than she remembered what Tom had told her about their exploits in Sarajevo. ‘He can be a pompous ass at times,' she conceded, ‘but he's very brave, you know. He'll be doing his bit with the best of them.'

The conversation lapsed, largely because Leo had to fight to stay awake. She tried to keep talking, because she was afraid that Victoria might drop off and drive them into the ditch, but she kept forgetting what she was trying to say. In the end, it was only the frequent need to whisper the password for the day to the sentries along the way that kept her from falling into a deep sleep.