Amy (25 page)

By May the Germans were only thirty-seven miles from Paris. Her father’s letters spoke of more air raids on England, and there were air raids on Paris. No one was safe now. Amy woke every day, wondering how long it would be before German planes attacked the camp. How could they escape it? There was the railway and the railway bridge, hundreds of men in training. It must be a prime target. So far they seemed to have been protected by the presence of the hospitals, but how long would that last? German planes frequently flew over, on reconnaissance, she supposed. Then there was an unsettling rumour that they had dropped a message, saying, ‘Move your hospitals or move your railway.’

‘They wouldn’t,’ Helen said. ‘Even they wouldn’t bomb hospitals.’

They were woken one morning by an enormous explosion.

‘My God!’ Helen jumped out of bed. ‘What’s that?’

They dressed hurriedly, knowing already what it was. They peered out of the door. Several German Taube aircraft were overhead. There was another explosion.

‘Oh God, Oh God,’ Helen stepped outside. ‘We’d better get to the hospital.’

They slipped between the buildings, hugging the walls. They could hear shouting from everywhere, and then a thin screaming from the shell-shock tent. One of the men, wild eyed, ran out across the camp towards the fields. Helen made to go after him but Amy stopped her. ‘They’re machine-gunning, Helen. Stay here.’

They reached the ward and stumbled inside. The staff were
standing
by the door, unable to do anything, just waiting until it was over.

‘They’re after the railway bridge,’ Dan said, ‘but their aim isn’t good. God knows what’s going on out there.’

The explosions stopped; the sound of the aircraft faded away. They went outside. One of the ward tents had collapsed, the men exposed to the open air, but apart from that the damage seemed to be confined to the railway area.

They struggled to get the men under cover. ‘Thank goodness there was so little damage,’ Amy said. ‘It could have been so much worse.’

Dan looked shocked. ‘We haven’t seen the last of them, Amy, I’m afraid. They’ll come back.’

They came back that night, and the next, and the next. In the wards and in their own huts they crouched in the dark, hoping and waiting until the attacks were over. During the day they continued, endlessly, in the theatres. One day several nurses and VADs straggled into the camp, with nothing but the clothes they stood up in. They had retreated, with the men, from Casualty Clearing Stations that were about to be overrun by the advancing Germans.

The bombs seemed to fall mainly on the town and on the railway. ‘They seem to be trying to avoid the hospitals,’ Dan said. ‘At least they are doing that.’

Amy found it very difficult even to remember the last raid, this time in the daytime. Somehow her brain and her memory shied away from it. Some part of her brain was protecting her from memories too
terrible
to bear.

The Taubes came over again, in the middle of the morning. As they left, one of them dropped its bomb on the camp. She remembered a nurse, running screaming from outside the mess hut, men running towards it, shouting, tearing at the wreckage with their bare hands. All she remembered after that was several bodies being carried out, and one of them was Helen.

She sat alone in their hut. Helen’s coat hung on the nail, her little possessions scattered about. Helen was gone, her cheerfulness and affection and sympathy were gone from a world that needed them so badly.

Dan broke the rules and sat with her often in the hut, just being there, or holding her while she cried. There was little that he could say. Peter, wild eyed and distraught, insisted on being transferred to a forward First Aid Post, as near to the fighting as he could get. Helen was gone.

Slowly, haltingly, the tide turned. American troops, fresh and eager, poured in. The Germans were driven back. They had played their last hand, and they had failed.

At long last Amy began to believe that the end might be near. ‘It’s over, surely,’ she said to Dan. ‘Why don’t they just stop? Why don’t they stop the killing?’

At last they knew that the end was coming. The armistice was signed on the morning of 11 November, and at eleven o’clock, the killing stopped. The war was over.

They stood outside among the men in fitful, drizzling rain. The minutes and the seconds ticked by. Then, on the moment of eleven o’clock, somewhere in the camp, a bugler played the slow, melancholy notes of the Last Post. The men listened in silence, their heads bowed, and then, when it was over, there were a few spasmodic cheers. It was as if no one could believe it, as if they thought it was some kind of evil German hoax. Then the normal sounds began again, the shouted orders, the rumbling of traffic on the road.

Amy watched the ambulances coming in. It seemed an
extraordinary
thought that these would be the last of the wounded, that slowly the numbers would diminish, and then stop. All the men would be going home. Now the ambulances were also bringing in more and more men who were sick with influenza, the dreadful strain of the disease that was beginning to kill people all over Europe, and even, she had heard, in America. She felt a dreadful sense of inevitability, as if death would not give up, as if it would not be satisfied with mere human folly, but would want to display its own overwhelming power, devouring more and more.

‘It’s over, Amy,’ Dan said softly. ‘We can go home.’

It will never be over, she thought. Johnny and Helen and all the dead men will never come back. It will never be over.

She turned to him and forced a smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Home.’

‘We still have work to do,’ he said. ‘I expect we will have for some time.’ They began to walk back to the theatre.

‘What now, I wonder?’ Dan said.

‘At least it will stop,’ Amy said, ‘the carnage. We should get all the remaining wounded in the next few weeks.’

‘This influenza worries me.’ Dan looked sombre. ‘It’s killing people just as effectively as the war and it’s just as relentless, just as mindless.’

‘What’s happened to us, Dan?’ The war’s end hadn’t brought what Amy had hoped – a true feeling of evil conquered, a new beginning. She had an unaccountable feeling of dread, as if something dark had merely been covered over, not rooted out for ever. She sighed. Perhaps these thoughts were just the result of years of a horror that could never have been predicted or imagined.

‘I think the world has fallen into a kind of pit,’ he said. ‘We’ll just
have to pull ourselves out of it.’

‘How?’

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘by leading good lives.’ He paused. ‘That sounds really pompous, doesn’t it, but I don’t mean it that way.’ He frowned, searching for words. ‘I don’t mean simply not doing
deliberate
harm. I mean looking after other people; our countrymen for a start. Some of these boys got better food, even in the trenches, than they did at home.’

‘I think you are absolutely right,’ she said. His words gave her a kind of warmth, a sense of purpose for the future.

The wounded still came. The fighting had apparently gone on until the very last moment. One of the officers told her that the Germans had continued to fire on them till the very end – a German officer had seen to that. Then at eleven o’clock he had stood up, taken off his helmet, bowed, and led his men away. His own men had been
reluctant
, fearing that it was some kind of trick. Then, slowly, they began to stand up in the trenches, amazed that they could do so without getting shot.

Slowly, the stream of wounded slowed to a trickle. They were replaced by men sick with the influenza, and slowly they were
repatriated
home. The camp began to disband, the Americans and Canadians and Anzacs and all the other Empire troops going home.

Dan was sent back to England, to work in one of the military
hospitals
in London. They said goodbye in the lane at the edge of the camp.

‘Let me know as soon as you are back home,’ he said. ‘I’ll come to see you. I’ll write to you till then.’

She nodded, her eyes filling. He took her hands and then bent his head and kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘I won’t say goodbye. Just
au revoir
.’

She found herself in a personal no-man’s land. Officially she wasn’t there at all, except perhaps as a VAD. Very soon she would have to go home and face the future. She wondered if Major Barnes would remember his promise, if Sir Henry could ever do anything, if her work at the camp would stand her in good stead, or if it would count against her.

She plucked up her courage and went to see Major Barnes. ‘Of course I remember, Miss Osborne,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps I should call you Dr Richmond now. I shall approach the General Medical Council
as soon as I can.’

That, at least, was comforting. Her work at the camp was finishing. Perhaps her whole career was finishing. She would just have to wait.

Eventually, together with most of the other female staff, she was sent home. She took the train and the boat, and then the train again. Once more they were packed with soldiers going home, this time for good. She had expected that the men would be different, laughing, joking, larking about. To her surprise they were not. They were as quiet and subdued as the last time she had travelled, smoking incessantly, eyes hooded, withdrawn. She saw the same in London, men standing on the streets alone or in small groups, smoking, looking into the distance with empty eyes.

Her father greeted her with his arms open wide. He looks older, she thought, much more than four years older.

‘Here I am, Father,’ she said. ‘Home again, safe and sound.’

He led her into the sitting-room, weeping. ‘Thank God,’ he said, his voice breaking. They sat together beside the fire, the unaccustomed warmth glowing on her face. ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Amy,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine what you have been through. I only thank God that you are home.’

She found that it wasn’t possible to talk to her father about the war. She could see his concern, his eagerness to help her put it behind her, but no words would come. There were no words to describe the wounds, the filth, the horror and the pain, the danger and the death. She knew that he was waiting for her to tell him, but she could not. No matter how often she tried, the words would not come. She thought of the soldiers on the train, their eyes far away. She recognized their new battle.

She felt totally lost, confused and empty. She woke in the night, every night, disturbed and startled by the unnatural quiet, and found it hard to go to sleep again. She woke every morning, facing another day with nothing to do, nothing to distract her from her memories.

She wrote to Dan to tell him that she was home and a few days later he came to the house. She was so glad to see him that she almost cried, clutching his hands. She introduced him to her father and then took him out to walk, to be alone with him.

‘You’re still in uniform,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I should be demobbed soon.’

‘What will you do then?’

‘I’ve been offered a job at St Bartholomew’s – on the surgical staff.’ He said it almost apologetically.

‘How wonderful,’ she said. ‘I’m so happy for you Dan.’

‘What are you doing, Amy?’

‘Waiting,’ she said. ‘Just waiting.’

‘I’ve been to the GMC,’ he said.

‘Oh Dan!’

‘And they told me unofficially that they’d heard from Major Barnes. They also told me that they’d had a letter from Sir Henry Maddox.’

She looked away for a moment, a lump in her throat.

He took her hand. ‘Do you think you might ever get over it, Amy? I don’t mean forget him, I know you can never do that.’ He paused. ‘I don’t really know what I mean. Am I being insensitive?’

She looked up at him. His face was filled with caring and concern.

‘He’s dead, Dan, and Helen’s dead. I’ll never forget them but I’ve accepted it now. I’ve had to. I can’t look around me without seeing what has happened here. God knows, I’m not the only one.’ She squeezed his hand gently. ‘It’s so good to see you, Dan. I don’t have to say anything to you or explain anything. You know.’

‘I know,’ he said. He walked home with her. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

Two weeks later a letter arrived, inviting her to call at the GMC offices in London.

‘I’m frightened, Father,’ she said.

‘Do you want me to come with you, Amy?’

She shook her head. ‘No, dear.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘If I’m going to have a nervous breakdown I’ll be better alone.’

She was shown into a small office and shortly afterwards one man came in, the one she remembered, the only man on the committee who’d shown her some sympathy.

He smiled at her. ‘Sit down, Dr Richmond.’ He sat down beside her, not behind a desk, this time, she noted.

He looked, she thought, slightly embarrassed. ‘We have had several letters,’ he said, ‘on your behalf, concerning your fitness to practise.’ She waited. ‘We have also received a letter from Sir Henry Maddox, a character reference it would be hard to ignore.’ She waited again, her heart thumping. ‘There is something more,’ he said. He looked even more embarrassed. ‘We have had another – shall we say – complaint,
from the theatre sister at the hospital where you used to work.’ She stared at him, puzzled. ‘I will merely say,’ he went on, ‘that William Bulford has taken early retirement.’ He coloured. ‘I am sure you will understand me.’

She could not stop a look of disgust. ‘I do.’

‘Therefore,’ he said, ‘the General Medical Council have withdrawn unreservedly their decision of four years ago and your name has been restored to the Medical Register without any mark against you.’ He smiled. ‘I am sure that your surgical experience in France has far exceeded anything that you could have gained here at home, and will stand you and your patients in very good stead.’

He stood up and held out his hand and she shook it until he laughed and stopped her. ‘Goodbye, Dr Richmond. You will be getting a letter of confirmation very shortly.’

She left the office on air. She travelled home and flew into the house, calling for her father. He ran out of the sitting-room, his face strained with worry.