Читать книгу The Stolen Years - Fiona Hood-Stewart - Страница 15

Etaples, France, 1918

The German offensive had intensified to such a degree during the past weeks that they could not help wondering how much longer the Allied forces would resist the massive drive from the east. Although no one ever expressed their doubts out loud, each day new villages and towns fell and more and more casualties poured in.

In one of the rare moments of quiet Flora was able to grab between shifts, she wrote to Angus, shipped home three months earlier.

It never stops. Day and night the wounded are pouring in and there is barely room to house them. The floors are covered with stretchers and they are treated there, for the beds are full. The operating theaters never stop and they arrive in everything from ambulances to cattle trucks. Bapaume, Beaumont Hamel and Péronne have all fallen and they are saying that the Germans are already in the suburbs of Amiens. Now there is very little left between us and the front lines…Angus dear, if I should not return…remember him for me, won’t you? I promise that if that should be the case, both he and I will be watching over you…

But the frantic activity, dealing with destroyed limbs, removing the stench-filled basins of bloodied gauze and cotton, and treating wounds, allowed her no time to think of Gavin as she prepared surgical instruments and rolled bandages in the hectic dispensary. Not even Arras or the battles of 1917 could compare to the current threat, as the enemy inched toward them, a relentless monster avidly seeking its prey.

Letters were few and far between, and one morning, when she was handed an envelope addressed to her in Angus’s neat hand, all she could do was stuff it into her pocket while she rushed through the chaotic ward to aid an agonizing patient whose blood had congealed, gluing his torn limbs to the hard canvas of the stretcher. She tried to remove it as gently as possible but finally had to cut the canvas away. The soldier’s cry of pain resounded against the ceaseless clatter of trucks, ambulances, ammunition wagons and trains filled with reinforcements, making their way to the front.

When she’d cleared the ward as best she could, she told the other nurse that she was taking quarter of an hour off before the next convoy arrived. Going to the kitchen, she grabbed a cup of strong tea and sat down, exhausted, at the makeshift table, between a harried doctor and the weary chaplain, to read her letter. Taking a sip, she skimmed the lines. All at once, her eyes filled with horror-stricken tears and her hands trembled.

“Are you all right?” the chaplain asked solicitously, laying a hand on her sleeve. “Can I help you, my dear?”

Flora put down the letter and wiped her eyes. “My Uncle Hamish died of a sudden heart attack. He was like a father to me,” she whispered.

“I’m so sorry,” he replied quietly, pressing her hand. “You look exhausted. Perhaps you should try and rest.”

“What? With this mess going on around us?” She glanced bitterly toward the corridor, where another trail of stretchers shuffled by, drenched in blood. The men didn’t even see the front-line stations anymore, but were brought straight here from the shell-blown trenches.

“Still,” the chaplain insisted, “I think you should take a break. If I remember rightly, you lost your fiancé as well.”

She nodded wearily. It all seemed unreal. Gavin gone, abandoned forever in the trenches. Uncle Hamish, dead of shock and unhappiness. Was there nothing this endless war would leave intact?

Taking the kind chaplain’s advice, she wandered aimlessly outside, seeking some solace in the fresh air, a contrast to the acrid stench of the ward. She walked over to a clump of trees and sat down, watching a lumbering horse-pulled cart bringing more injured soldiers.

She turned away, heart overflowing with sadness for Gavin and Uncle Hamish, for Angus and Tante Constance, for the life that had been theirs and that would be no more. Perhaps Angus was right after all. Perhaps the only way to survive was by creating an invincible barrier, pieced together out of painful but loving memories against which, united, they could build a future.

She gazed across the fields, her mind far away. If the war ever ended, she would go home and marry Angus. At least helping him through the ordeal of assuming a role designed for his brother, for which he had neither the nature nor the inclination, would give her life a purpose. She watched as the sun set behind the dark clouds, an ominous stretch of orange-streaked lead that seemed to foreshadow dark weeks ahead where, for the first time, the unmentioned possibility of defeat lurked.

Several days later, as she was sluicing the bedpans, Flora heard two V.A.D.s, Ana and Heather, calling her excitedly.

“Flora, come and see. They’re finally here.”

“Who?” she asked curiously, washing her chilblained hands.

“The Americans. They’re here. Come and see them,” Ana urged, and Flora followed her hastily to watch the long lines of tall, well-built, clean-cut young men marching swiftly along the road. It made her realize how tired and disheveled they must seem, after almost four long years without respite. But the sight infused her with both hope and excitement, tempered by sorrow. Gavin and the others had marched off the same way, full of strength and will…She wondered sadly how many of these young men would return, and how it must feel to come so far and fight for what must seem so alien to them. She commented on this to Ana.

“Just be happy they’re here,” Ana replied with the first grin Flora had seen in many months. “Now we stand a real chance of clobbering those bastards once and for all.”

Flora smiled and watched the First United States Army march into Etaples, filled with deep respect and gratitude toward these dignified, purposeful young men willing to endanger their lives in the name of justice, a sentiment that she was determined to remember always.

As she made her way back to the ward, she sent up an inner prayer of thanks for the hope these soldiers brought with them.