Passions of War (22 page)

‘Yes. I came out to help nurse the wounded, but I got separated from the rest of the convoy. But listen! These people are starving. I mean, quite literally dying of hunger. Do you have food in those wagons?'

‘Yes, some. But we had no idea that there would be so many. It won't be enough to go round, but I will come back with more.'

She had been joined by Sasha and officers from the other units. The strongest men were called for and the wagons were rapidly unloaded and their contents, tins of bully beef and packets of hard biscuits, divided as equitably as possible. Leo watched Sasha going round his men, ensuring that the weakest were fed first. There were no arguments and she marvelled, not for the first time, at the uncomplaining endurance of these peasant soldiers. He insisted on giving her an equal ration but when he came back to her she saw that he had reserved only a small portion for himself.

‘Here, you eat this. I've finished,' she said, offering him the last biscuit with its smear of beef jelly.

He refused and they bickered for a few moments. Then he laughed and said, ‘I'd forgotten what an obstinate creature you can be. Here!' and he broke the biscuit in two and put half in his mouth.

When the British officer returned he came to find Leo.

‘Forgive me, I completely forgot my manners this morning. My name is Robert Johnson. I have a message for you. There is a Red Cross mission in town with a number of English and American nurses. I've made some enquiries and they would be very happy to accommodate you until arrangements can be made for you to return to England. I can take you there on my way back.'

For a moment Leo was taken by surprise. The idea that she might leave Sasha and his men had never crossed her mind. She shook her head. ‘That's very kind of you, but I have no plans to return to England at the moment.'

The officer looked nonplussed. ‘Well, at least let me take you to the mission until we are able to discover what has happened to your friends. I assume you will want to rejoin them?'

‘You should go, Leo,' Sasha said quietly.

She turned to him. ‘You want me to leave you?'

‘I'm trying to do what is best for you.'

‘The colonel is right,' the British captain said. ‘After all, this is really no place for a lady.'

Leo set her jaw. ‘Then perhaps I am no lady. I am staying here.'

The captain looked at Sasha. ‘Cannot you persuade her, sir?'

Sasha raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘I know that look. I might as well try to persuade the sun not to set.'

The captain frowned. ‘Very well. The offer is there, if you should change your mind.'

As he turned away, Sasha said, ‘What is going to happen to us? We can't sit here indefinitely.'

‘Ships have been chartered to take you off and transport you to Corfu. The first should arrive tomorrow, but it will be some time before we can accommodate so many of you. I'm afraid I must ask you to be patient.'

Leo had been thinking. Now she said quickly, ‘Captain, I'm sorry to have been so ungracious. I should like to accept your offer after all. But I should like to bring one of the men with me. He has a bullet in the shoulder and he needs a doctor urgently.' Then she added in Serbian to Sasha, ‘Stefan will be better off in the hospital but I shall come back, before dark. You won't go anywhere without me, will you?'

‘We shall be here,' he said. ‘But you should go home, you know.'

‘Oh, no,' she replied. ‘I'm coming to Corfu with you.'

‘Leo! Leo, it's you! Thank God! We thought you had been taken prisoner, or . . . well, we didn't know where you were. It's such a relief to see you!'

Stella Patterson caught her by the arms and hugged her as she entered the hallway of the building where the Red Cross mission was housed.

‘It's a blessed relief to see you, too,' Leo responded. ‘I was so afraid that you hadn't made it over the mountains. How did you manage?'

‘It was thanks to our wonderful drivers. When the road got too narrow for the wagons they cut them up and made two-wheeled hand carts and dragged the patients along in them. We lost two of them on the way, sadly, but three survived.'

‘Including Milan? Tell me Milan survived!'

‘Yes, he did and he's hobbling about on crutches. Come on in and see. The others are here, too. They will be so glad to see you.'

Stefan, the man who had been shot during the Albanian ambush, was taken up to one of the wards and minutes later Leo was reunited with the rest of her small team. They were all thin and tired but otherwise in good health. Having started out ahead of the main body of the army they had been able to buy supplies and had acquired three pack mules to carry them.

‘And the best news is,' Stella said, ‘Stobart and the rest have reached Scutari, north of here and are heading for Medua. We've all been promised a ship to take us to Brindisi and from there it will be easy to get the train to Rome and then back to London. Have you realized what the date is?'

Leo shook her head. ‘I've no idea.'

‘It's the twenty-third of December! Two days to Christmas. Of course, it isn't Christmas by the calendar they use here, but that's not the point. Just think! We shan't make it home for Christmas, but we might get there for New Year.'

For a moment Leo's imagination conjured a vivid image of the drawing room at Sussex Gardens; a blazing fire in the grate and Beavis bringing in tea with toasted crumpets. She dismissed it and smiled at the others.

‘I hope you do. You've all done a marvellous job out here.'

‘What do you mean?' Stella asked. ‘Surely you are coming with us.'

Leo shook her head. ‘I'm going back to be with . . . with the people who brought me over the mountains. They're old friends and I want to stay with them.'

She resisted all their attempts to persuade her to change her mind, but accepted the offer of a hot bath and a meal. The Red Cross nurses gave her a set of clean underwear but she declined the offer of a linen uniform dress and insisted instead on sponging the worst of the dirt off her breeches and tunic. She did, however, agree to exchange her smelly sheepskin coat for a thick woollen cloak with a hood. Lunch was the inevitable bully beef hash but it was followed by bread with real butter and apricot jam and coffee sweetened with condensed milk. The sudden rush of sweetness made her feel almost light-headed.

When they had eaten she thanked the nursing sister in charge, a cheerfully efficient American, and added: ‘I wonder if I could ask you a really big favour. The men I came over the mountains with are almost starving. They are getting food now, though not really enough, but what they miss most is sugar for their coffee. It seems as though they can face almost anything as long as they get their hot, sweet coffee in the morning. Is there any chance you could let me have some sugar to take back to them? I probably owe them my life and I should like to repay them in some small way.'

As a result, she set off back to the camp in a donkey cart carrying the equivalent of a year's ration of sugar for one nurse and several tins of jam. Her leave-taking was a tearful affair, and her companions still begged her to change her mind and go home with them, but she never wavered. The comforts of home were a distant illusion, compared with the real prospect of returning to Sasha and his men.

Back at the camp conditions had improved. There were still not enough tents, but rough shelters had been constructed with sheets of tarpaulin and the men had scoured the countryside for wood, so that each company now had its vital campfire. Hay had even been procured for the horses and Leo found Sasha at the horse lines, stroking Cloud's emaciated flanks as the horse champed at the fodder. He greeted her with a frown.

‘What are you doing back here?'

She felt as if he had struck her. ‘I told you I was coming back.'

‘You should have stayed in the town. As the English captain said, this is no place for a woman.'

Leo swallowed. ‘Perhaps not. But it's where I want to be. You sent me away once before. This time I won't go.'

He turned to look at her and clasped both hands to his head in a gesture of self-mocking despair. ‘Dear God! What have I done to be punished with this insubordinate female?'

In the space of a breath they were in each other's arms, not kissing but clinging together like the survivors of a shipwreck. She felt her tears soaking into the shoulder of his cloak. Voices nearby made them draw apart at length and as they looked at each other she saw that there were tears on his cheeks as well.

He ran the back of his hand across his eyes and then over her cheek. ‘You smell good. What is it?'

‘Soap and water,' she answered. ‘Come and see what I have brought back with me.'

When she showed him the jam he called his men together and she went along the line giving each one a spoonful, which they received with almost religious solemnity, as if it had been the Holy Sacrament. After that, they had beef stew fiery with paprika and finished with mugs of thick, dark sweet coffee. The sugar raised their spirits to such an extent that one man produced a gusla and began to play and sing and two others even attempted the kolo; but they were quickly exhausted and sank down again on to the ground.

Sasha's face was still gaunt with anxiety. ‘Some of them are so weak,' he confided. ‘I thought if I could get them this far all would be well, but now I am afraid that we shall lose more unless they get better care soon.'

It was not long before the men moved back into their improvised shelters and began to roll themselves in their blankets and settle down to sleep. Leo looked at Sasha. On the mountains it had been a matter of survival to snuggle together, but now that excuse had vanished. She longed to feel his arms round her but he led her to a small space at the back of the tent, where a groundsheet had been suspended across the corner.

‘It's not very comfortable, I'm afraid, but it will give you a bit of privacy.' He touched her cheek and turned away to stretch out near his men.

She understood that he was concerned for her honour but as she settled down, covering herself with her newly acquired cloak, she could not help feeling abandoned.

All next day they waited for news of the ships that would take them to Corfu, but there was no sign of them. Around noon two Austrian Taube biplanes came over and dropped bombs on the harbour. None fell on the camp but the sight increased the sense of despair that had settled over the refugees. However, as the sun was setting, Captain Johnson returned to tell them that ships were expected the next day. They must make their way to the harbour at dawn, to be ready to embark.

In the morning, as they prepared to leave after a hastily brewed cup of coffee, Leo looked for Sasha and could not see him. She found him down by the horse lines, standing by Cloud with his revolver in his hand.

‘What are you doing?' she exclaimed, aghast.

He looked round at her, his eyes sunk so deep into their sockets that the flesh around them appeared bruised. ‘We can't take horses on the ship. I won't leave him here to be worked to death by some peasant.'

‘You can't!' she whispered. ‘Sasha, you can't!'

‘What else am I to do? Stay here with him?'

He turned away and held his hand to the horse's muzzle and Leo saw Cloud's tongue flick over his palm and guessed that he had kept his share of the sugar ration as a last treat for him. Then he put his arm round the animal's neck and whispered in his ear, and pressed the revolver against his head. Leo heard the report and saw the horse's legs buckle beneath him. Sasha put a second bullet into his head to make sure and turned away.

‘Are the men ready?'

‘Yes, they are waiting for you.'

‘Let's go, then.'

When they reached the harbour it was empty of ships, though the quayside was already crowded with men. The hours passed and they waited without food or shelter from the biting cold. Around midday a cheer went up and two Italian ferries steamed into sight. They were too large to moor up to the quayside, so small boats put off to carry the troops out to them. They had just taken on their first load when the Taubes came over again. There was nowhere to shelter, so all they could do was huddle together on the quay and watch as the bombs dropped. Most of them fell harmlessly into the water, but one hit one of the ferries amidships. Within minutes she split in two and sank. The men in the small boats had to climb back on to the quay, while the boats went to rescue the survivors who were thrashing about in the harbour.

Eventually some of the waiting troops were loaded on to the second ship but it was clear that there would not be room for all of them. As the evening darkened Leo looked at Sasha.

‘Should we head back to the camp, do you think?'

‘What would be the point? The men still waiting there will have eaten all the rations. We can starve here as easily as anywhere else.'

She had never seen him so dispirited and it hurt like a stab to the heart. But as she struggled to think of words to cheer him another cry went up and they saw a rusty freighter steaming into the harbour. By midnight they were all aboard and the ship, so low in the water that Leo feared the slightest swell might swamp her, set sail for Corfu.

Fifteen

‘Ladies, I have some really excellent news!'

Victoria put down her cup of cocoa and looked at Lilian Franklin with interest. It was not like Boss to get excited. Around her in the fuggy common room at the top of Lamarck the other FANYs stopped chatting and turned to their leader in anticipation.

‘I don't have to remind you that our original intention was to provide an ambulance service for our own troops. It is not from choice that we have spent the last fifteen months caring for the Belgian and French wounded, although I know how much our efforts have been appreciated. Now, at last, it seems the powers-that-be have relented and we are to be allowed to do what we set out to do.'