The Beauty and the Sorrow (62 page)

While the war on all the other fronts is characterised by increasing brutalisation, the warring whites in East Africa frequently behave in a notably chivalrous manner towards each other. This camaraderie is not just a remnant of the pre-war idea that the colonies should be excluded from any conflict, but is also an expression of the feeling that they—as a drop of white in that continent’s ocean of black—share a kind of collective colonial fate.
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On the whole, white prisoners are treated very well, sometimes being given better food than the soldiers. On one occasion
during this campaign a German doctor crosses the British lines and asks for the return of a bag of medical equipment which was left behind; he is given the bag and allowed to return to his own side. And when von Lettow-Vorbeck is awarded the Pour le Mérite during the fighting, the British general opposing him sends a courteous letter of congratulation.

At around eleven o’clock in the evening Buchanan and the rest of the battalion—those who are still on their feet—reach the camp at Ziwani. They are utterly exhausted, having been on the move or in battle for twenty-two hours.

In a week’s time they will attack the same ridge yet again.

That same day Harvey Cushing writes in his journal:

2:30 a.m. Pouring cats and dogs all day—also pouring cold and shivering wounded, covered with mud and blood. Some G.S.W.’s of the head,
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when the mud is scraped off, prove to be trifles—others of unsuspected gravity. The pre-operation room is still crowded—one can’t possibly keep up with them; and the unsystematic way things are run drives one frantic. The news, too, is very bad. The greatest battle in history is floundering up to its middle in a morass, and the guns have sunk even deeper than that.

WEDNESDAY
, 8
AUGUST
1917
Florence Farmborough crosses the border into Romania

They start their march at seven o’clock in the morning. It has been raining and the roads are muddy but she finds the open, hilly scenery attractive, with its colours and contours softened by the gentle morning light. They cross the Prut on a bridge that is being worked on by Austrian prisoners of war and she sees that their tents are soaked through after the rain. Some of the prisoners are just sitting motionless, waiting for the morning sun to rise high enough to dry their sodden clothes.

Once the wagons have clattered across the wooden roadway of the bridge and rolled down to the opposite bank they are in Romania. What is it that has raised their feelings of hope? Yesterday, when they were told that they would be going south into the neighbouring country, the staff of the hospital unit greeted the news with joy. Part of it is simply that they are getting away, not just from the advancing Germans but also from the scenes of collapse, demoralisation and retreat that have characterised the last week.

By this point the “freedom offensive,”
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the new government’s last effort to continue the war, has collapsed. Florence’s unit belongs to the Eighth Army, which initially seemed to be successfully breaking through the enemy lines south of the Dniester but which ground to a halt after advancing less than twenty miles. The reasons: a shortage of supplies and lack of enthusiasm on the part of the soldiers. The latter have been holding meetings, asking questions, discussing conditions, choosing committees and demanding the right to elect their own officers. The number of desertions has increased enormously and now occurs quite openly. Whole divisions have refused to attack the enemy. Florence has noticed, to her amazement and disquiet, that a large proportion of the soldiers really do not want to fight any longer. Their displeasure has also found a new target to set alongside their own officers—the female nurses. Is it because they are volunteers or because they are women, or both? Whatever it is, they now find themselves the victims of sneering, swearing and sexual innuendo: for the very first time Florence has felt afraid of their own side’s soldiers and has kept well away from them.

Over the frontier, with luck, they will be spared the sight of the continuing disintegration of the Russian army. And over the frontier Romanian and Russian units together have started their own little version of the freedom offensive and by all recent accounts they are having some success. So they greeted this march with joy, not because it was taking them away from the war but because it was taking them somewhere they could make a real contribution.

They halt out in an open field to eat an army concoction in which “fish and meat had been lumped together into thick
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soup, and
there were strange greenish leaves which had certainly not been reared on a cabbage-plot.” The sun is high in a blue sky and it is hot. Florence hears people arguing—politics, of course. She picks up some of the details: Kerensky will undoubtedly dismiss Brusilov—their hero—as being the man responsible for the failure of the offensive. Other angry voices join in and even Florence is upset. But she does not let herself get dragged into the discussion and goes off with her friends to cool down with a bathe in the river. Unfortunately they cannot find anywhere private enough—there are soldiers everywhere—so they return to the column up in the field and crawl into the shade under one of the big wagons. She manages to write some letters before the order is given to move on. By then it is about four o’clock in the afternoon.

Later on they come to a long, steep hill and have to wait their turn since the horses need help to haul the heavily laden wagons up it. She writes in her journal:

A bevy of stalwart young soldiers assisted each horse and cart to reach the summit, and there was much shouting and unnecessary whipping of horses. They, poor frightened creatures, knew what was expected of them and did their best; but their deep, spasmodic breathing and foam-streaked, perspiring bodies told of the strenuous exertion which every movement demanded of them.

They carry on along poor roads, up and down through the hilly terrain, through villages with neat little wooden houses, their windows covered with curtains, past women and children in exotic, beautifully embroidered clothes. She hears an old woman let out a yell of terror at the sight of all these uniformed men and Florence thinks that the words remind her of Italian. So this is Romania. They stop in a small town and buy apples from the Jewish merchants—for roubles. There are no eggs to be had since the soldiers have already bought them. The summer heat is made more bearable when they enter a beautiful, shady pine wood.

As evening approaches they make camp on a hillside close to a village. The heat is such that they disdain their tents and set up camp beds in the open air. Their leader has managed to get hold of a newspaper only three days old and he reads it aloud to them by the campfire. Much of it is about the usual political chaos in the Russian capital and Florence
is only mildly interested. There is, however, one story that grips her and some of the other nurses: it is the news that, because of the critical situation, infantry battalions consisting solely of women are being formed.

She already knows that woman soldiers exist in the Russian army and has actually met some of them among the wounded. She remembers one in particular, a twenty-year-old woman she nursed in Galicia who had a nasty wound on one temple where a bullet had grazed her. The woman wanted to get straight back into battle. The new all-woman battalions have been formed on the initiative of “Yasha Bachkarova,”
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a Siberian woman from a simple background who initially fought alongside her husband and then stayed in the army after he was killed. She has been wounded and decorated several times and has been promoted to the rank of sergeant. The newspaper quotes her: “If the men refuse to fight for their country we will show them what the women can do.” A battalion composed entirely of women has already seen action during the “freedom offensive,” when they were sent in to hold a trench abandoned by deserters. Florence and the other nurses think this is fantastic news.

It is a warm evening and a big, shining moon is hanging in the starry sky.

SATURDAY
, 18
AUGUST
1917
Olive King sees Salonica burn

By this afternoon it is clear that a major conflagration is raging in the city and Olive is keen to see it at closer quarters. So when there is a call for cars to help rescue the supplies at the Serbian Quartermaster General’s depot she is obviously quick to grab the opportunity. It is not until she drives past Venizelos Street that she realises how serious the situation is. What started as an ordinary enough fire has now accelerated into something on an enormous scale. The whole of the Turkish quarter seems to be in flames:

It’s impossible to describe the scenes of pandemonium in the streets, the jammed mass of panic-stricken people getting their goods away in bullock carts, on their own backs, in little open fiacres, or in those long narrow falling-to-pieces little Greek carts that make driving here so difficult. There was a continuous roar of the flames, every moment came a great crash & millions of sparks as some buildings, [
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] a Vardar hot-wind gale was blowing & showers of sparks & burning fragments poured over us all the time. It was not yet dark, but everything was lit by the weird golden glow, like a wonderfully brilliant sunset.

Until today Salonica was a confusing, picturesque and, in parts, very beautiful city with the unmistakable stamp of centuries of Ottoman government. There were minarets, a strong city wall and an excellent bazaar. Anyone walking round the labyrinth of narrow streets and medieval lanes would feel quite convinced that he or she was, in a purely geographical sense, in Europe but would simultaneously recognise immediately that the place felt, smelled and sounded like the Orient. And, in fact, until less than five years ago the city was under Ottoman rule. Far from detracting from the place, its oriental character was an important part of its attraction, and the years of Western occupation with its accompanying flood of troops from virtually all corners of the world has served only to reinforce the glaring contrasts and the cosmopolitan spirit of the city. Here mosques, Byzantine cathedrals and Greek Orthodox basilicas stand shoulder to shoulder with trams and cinemas, variety theatres and bars, expensive shops, fine restaurants and first-class hotels. For some people, however, Salonica is not just a polyglot conglomerate (King and many of her friends speak a unique pidgin, in which the basis is English but with a significant admixture of French and Serbian) but much more a Babel of sin.

Well, if that really is its true character, the time for punishment seems to have arrived. The strong wind causes the fire to spread with unexpected speed.

King makes several trips into the growing sea of fire, rescuing necessities or people’s private possessions. Whenever she stops she has to run round the outside of the little Ford ambulance putting out the sparks that are falling on it. And as she drives she has to sound her horn almost
continuously to force a way through the dense crowds of people, some of them hysterical and panic-stricken, others so distressed that they have become virtually apathetic. She notices that the two most common things people salvage from their homes are large mirrors and bronze bedsteads. When the flames eventually reach the harbour and the sea she realises that a wall of fire three miles long is now separating her from the garage. She still drives on and, when she runs out of petrol, she continues on foot in order to find more fuel.

Military discipline largely breaks down in this flame-flickered confusion. As usual, chivalry and heroism are mixed with selfishness and cowardice. There is a wave of looting. A number of large casks of wine burst in the heat and their contents pour out across the street “like blood.” Both soldiers and civilians hurl themselves to the ground and drink the sludge. The next time King passes the spot it stinks of wine and she sees blind-drunk, vomit-covered people lying all over the place. A stockpile of shells ignites with an enormous explosion. Sporadic gunfire can be heard.

When the sun rises after a long night the sky is so full of smoke that it never becomes properly light. King drives down to the harbour. The electric cables for the trams have partially melted and are hanging down across the street so she has to zig-zag between them. She sees soldiers and civilians raking through the smoking ruins in search of loot.

Olive King has been behind the wheel for over twenty hours. When she returns to her room, exhausted and hungry and in need of some sleep, she finds a homeless woman and nine children in the hall. Almost half the city has been burnt down and
80,000
people have lost their homes. It will take the best part of two weeks to put the fire out and the city will remain a sooty ruin for the rest of the war. The Salonica that existed before the fire will never be rebuilt.

SUNDAY
, 26
AUGUST
1917
Harvey Cushing finally sees a three-dimensional map

The front is quiet but everyone knows the lull is only temporary. Most of the morning is spent changing the wounded men’s bandages. Cushing
thinks that many of those he operated on earlier seem to be recovering—or perhaps it is just that he is in a better frame of mind after managing to get two nights’ sleep in succession.

There are no American units to speak of involved in the fighting yet so Cushing and his hospital unit have been moved north to the Flanders front. Another British offensive, the biggest of them all, has been going on there since the end of July. It already has a name: the Battle of Passchendaele, or the Third Battle of Ypres.

Four major attacks have been launched so far. It has rained almost the whole time and the battlefield has been churned into a sea of mud. Up to now the successes have been as small as the losses have been great, but it is difficult to know much about what is happening and few people have an overview since censorship is strict and the official communiqués uninformative. Cushing, however, has made some fairly accurate guesses about the course of the fighting from his observations of the stream of ragged, bleeding men being brought in by a seemingly endless convoy of mud-spattered ambulances. How many men have been wounded? Is their morale holding up? How long has it taken them to reach the bandaging station? Most of the wounded are so caked in mud that it takes an unusually long time to remove their clothes, clean away the dirt and find their wounds. Those who have already been given a tetanus injection have a “T” written on their foreheads with an indelible pencil. There is a steadily expanding cemetery next to the hospital, the graves being dug by Chinese labourers in blue tunics.