Poppy (13 page)

‘Yes . . .’ said Poppy doubtfully.

‘And sometime during the evening you could mention that his mother doesn’t seem too happy about you seeing each other. I bet he’ll say that it’s none of her rotten business and that’ll be the end of it. Being forbidden to see you will only make him keener.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘I really do,’ Matthews assured her.

Chapter Twelve

The following morning, Sister Malcolm arrived at the hostel at first light with a wad of paperwork under her arm, ready to tell the new VADs which hospital they’d be assigned to. They had all gained their certificates in first aid and home nursing, so knew how to pack and bandage wounds (at least, simulated ones), to bed-bath a patient as modestly as possible, to sterilise bandages, apply poultices, take temperatures and to be discreet in the giving out and collection of bed pans. Which of these duties they would be permitted to do, however, would be entirely down to the ward sister they would be working under.

There were just ten of them now. Two of their number, having come from homes where a multitude of servants had seen to their every need, had found the long hours and sometimes tedious tasks too much for them. Poppy, by contrast, hadn’t found the hours as long or the tasks as tiring as when she was working for the de Veres. Experience in service, she thought, was an ideal starting point for a girl who wanted to be a VAD.

The girls gathered in the YWCA common room, all nervous but rather excited at the thought of getting their hands on real patients.

‘There are scores of hospitals within the Southampton area,’ Sister Malcolm began, ‘but the Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley is, without doubt, the largest of these, and its capacity has recently been vastly increased by the addition of a hut hospital in the surrounding grounds. Each of these huts contains at least two fully trained nurses, but they also rely very much on Red Cross VADs to carry out the day-to-day work. As the war continues and the number of injured men increases, they will be in need of more of you. You will therefore
all
be going to Netley.’

Poppy and Matthews exchanged glances. They’d both been hoping that they would be taken on by a small hospital, thinking it would be easier to get to know the patients that way and to gain a position of responsibility. A very large establishment was not what they’d wanted.

‘How big is it, Sister?’ someone asked.

‘Nearly two hundred new huts have been built,’ Sister Malcolm replied.

‘But . . .
huts
,’ said Jameson in a rather disparaging tone.

Sister Malcolm looked at her. ‘Did you think you’d be working in the Ritz Hotel, Jameson?’

‘Well, no, but –’

‘The huts are
wards
. They are bang up to date, they have their own kitchens, bathrooms and nursing stations and all the equipment you’d expect to find in a brand new hospital.’

Jameson nodded, contrite, but Sister hadn’t finished with her.

‘I’m sorry we can’t put you in a brick-built place, Jameson, but there hasn’t been time to construct one – not when more and more men with the most dreadful injuries are coming in every day. Every single day!’

Jameson looked uncomfortable. ‘No. I see that. Sorry, Sister,’ she murmured.

‘Excuse me, Sister,’ Poppy asked, trying to help out Jameson. ‘How many beds are there in the hospital altogether?’

Sister Malcolm consulted her paperwork. ‘Before the new wards were built, Netley could hold a thousand men. Now it can house nearly two and a half thousand. They deal with surgical cases, medical cases, men with dysentery, TB and nerve trouble. In fact, they take on every type of war-related illness and surgery.’

Poppy gasped. There had been perhaps three or four hundred soldiers on the train going to Manchester, and it had been shocking to see so many and with such crit­ical injuries. But to realise that there was a hospital in this local area with a total of two and a half thousand beds just for war injuries! It was a figure almost beyond her imagination.

‘Are you shocked by that number of casualties?’ Sister Malcolm asked quietly.

Poppy nodded, as did some of the others.

‘I’m afraid every encounter, every battle, now produces hundreds, sometimes thousands, of casualties.’

The girls were silent, trying to take in the magnitude of what faced them.

Sister Malcolm shook her head slowly. ‘It’s enough to break one’s heart. Many of the young lads whom Kitchener recruited at the start of the war didn’t survive their first battle. We’re losing a whole generation of young men.’

‘But the Germans are losing young men, too, aren’t they?’ said one of the girls.

Sister Malcolm looked at her. ‘Do you think that makes it any better? Any fairer?’ she asked, and the girl reddened. ‘A whole generation wiped out in Germany, in France, Belgium and England. Where’s the sense in that?’ Finishing the sentence with a catch in her voice, Sister Malcolm then stared out of the window for a full two minutes. When she turned back to the girls, she said, ‘I realise I have a rather unorthodox view of war, one that the majors and generals might not agree with. I’m just relieved not to be a man, for then I’d be forced to fight and I don’t know if I could.’ She hesitated, as if she was trying to keep her feelings under control, then added, ‘I just want to emphasise that at Netley you will have an enormous number of young men to care for, all of them grievously wounded.’

Poppy closed her eyes for a moment and visualised a long, long line of hospital beds, each bearing an injured soldier, stretching off into the hazy distance.

‘Once you begin nursing there must be no slacking, no laziness, no grumbling about following orders,’ said Sister Malcolm. ‘The men who are dependent on us have all suffered on our behalf. We mustn’t let them down.’

After some more details about afternoons off and annual leave, the girls put on their outer coats and walked down to the station in crocodile formation, two by two.

‘Like good little girls on a school trip,’ Poppy said to Matthews.

‘But we’re not. We’re real VADs!’ said Matthews.

On their way to the station they drew many looks and some applause. Holding their heads high, swishing their skirts, they tried not to look too pleased about it.

Jameson, who was walking directly behind them, said in a loud whisper, ‘Do you know what the Tommies call us VADs?’

‘No. Do tell!’ said Poppy.

‘Very Adorable Darlings,’ Jameson whispered.

Poppy and Matthews laughed.

‘I do hope some good-looking chap falls madly in love with me,’ Matthews said. ‘A captain, ideally.’

The military hospital at Netley was Britain’s principal reception hospital for the huge numbers of war casualties arriving from France, and a branch of the railway had been constructed to convey troops directly from ship to hospital. This way, the injured men only had to limp, stagger or be stretchered a few final feet from the train into bed.

Netley was an attractive building but far too large to be practical, consisting of 138 wards and stretching a full quarter-mile. VADs running errands for ward sisters found themselves covering miles over a day. The girls, used to the small cottage hospitals, were amazed to see it.

‘Look at the size of it! We’ll get in there and never find our way out again,’ Poppy said as they approached the mighty building.

‘We’ll have to tie the end of a piece of string to the door handle and unroll it as we go,’ Matthews replied.

‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea – people could trip up,’ Jameson said seriously, and Poppy and Matthews stifled giggles.

When the girls were allocated their wards, Poppy found that she was to be working under a fully qualified nurse, Sister Kay, in Hut 59, a surgical ward mostly holding ordinary servicemen who had lost one or more of their limbs as well as having supplementary injuries. Matthews was based on a convalescent ward, and Jameson, who spoke German, was told she would be looking after German prisoners of war who needed hospital treatment. She was rather indignant at this, for, as she complained to Sister Malcolm, she’d volunteered specifically to nurse British officers.

‘Perhaps you have,’ Sister said, ‘but if your brother was badly injured and taken prisoner by the German army, wouldn’t you like to know that he was being tended by someone who spoke his language?’

The new VADs were taken on a tour of the main hospital building so they could start to learn where the various kitchens, operating theatres, storerooms, linen rooms, training areas and chapels were located.

Afterwards, Poppy made her way to Hut 59, which was a sturdy wooden hut in a huge open field containing over two hundred similar huts.

She hung up her coat and hat in the annexe, feeling scared of what might be expected of her. It fell as if she was about to act in a starring role at the theatre, but hadn’t yet learned her lines.

She edged into the ward and stared about her. This was
her
ward, she thought, and these were the boys
she
was going to look after. It was a long room with a row of beds running down each side of it, each with a dark wool blanket tucked in tightly, a blue counterpane with its top folded down and a linen sheet as white and crisp as an envelope over that. Most of the beds had occupants; a few were empty. Right down the middle of the room was a long dining table bearing pots of ferns, and this was flanked by dining chairs. Pinned all over the walls were maps, framed photographs of the King and Queen, cartoons, sheet music and some articles cut out of newspapers.
Let them have it!
Poppy read.
Not long now, boys!
and
The little women at home!

She stood unseen for a moment, feeling shy and awkward, then went towards the sister in charge, who was sitting at a desk at the top of the ward.

Sister Kay was middle-aged, gaunt, with long grey hair which was braided around her head in an old-fashioned style. She also, to Poppy’s eyes, looked stern and rather terrifying.

‘Sister Kay?’

The sister sighed. ‘I suppose you must be the new VAD.’

Poppy nodded. ‘Poppy Pearson.’

‘I can only hope that you turn out to be more capable than the last one.’

Poppy didn’t answer this, having no knowledge of who this might have been.

Sister Kay looked Poppy up and down carefully, checked that her skirts didn’t show a glimpse of ankle and that the Red Cross band was on the proper arm, then introduced her to Nurse Gallagher, an attractive and experienced nurse in her thirties, who, it turned out, had been working at Netley since before the war. Also on Ward 59 for part of the time was Smithers, a male orderly who was there to do the heavy lifting and carry out some of the men’s more intimate tasks, and another VAD who, happily, turned out to be Moffat, whose bath water had been stolen by Jameson. Poppy, who’d come to like Moffat, was immensely reassured to see her there.

‘Be prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked before,’ Moffat said by way of greeting. ‘But also be prepared to love every minute of it.’

‘I’m not scared of hard work – just of doing something daft.’

‘Well, let’s get you going,’ Moffat said. She looked at her watch. ‘You’ve missed the morning dressings round, but you’re just in time for the dinner trays.’

Poppy looked at her blankly.

‘Every mealtime – breakfast, dinner and tea – you have to take round the trays laid ready for the boys’ meals,’ she said. She nodded towards the door. ‘Come with me and I’ll show you.’

Poppy obediently followed her from the hut into a small kitchen in the annexe. It was lined with shelves and contained a sink and gas ring as well as a few basic items of kitchen equipment, a pile of tin trays, plates, cutlery and condiments.

‘There are fort
y-
odd trays to lay up, each with knife, fork and spoon, salt and pepper pots,’ said Moffat. ‘You give each man a tray first – he’ll tell you if he’s eating in bed, or at the table – then wait for the soup to arrive. You ladle out eight bowlfuls at a time, put them on the trolley and bring them round. And no larger portions for the ones you like the look of. No favouritism!’

Poppy, rather startled at this, said, ‘Favouritism? I’ve hardly even
seen
any men yet!’

‘Ah, they’re a lovely bunch,’ Moffat said. ‘Sweet as sweet can be! They’re regular Tommies either waiting for surgery or getting over it. They’ve had a hard time and are just pleased to be back home tucked up in bed.’

Poppy smiled in sympathy at this.

‘Oh, they’ll lead you a dance sometimes and you
will
have your favourites, but don’t let Sister Kay find out or she’ll run you out of here quicker than a rat along a drainpipe. That’s what happened to our last VAD.’

‘She got run out?’

Moffat nodded. ‘She was a flirty little thing, but the boys liked her well enough and she liked them. A little too much, judging by what went on in the linen cupboard.’

‘Goodness,’ said Poppy, and would have liked to have heard more, but Moffat had gone back to the ward.