The Furies (16 page)

Elspeth and the others carried on walking and arrived in the centre of town, where they saw that some of the shops – even some of the restaurants – contained casualties. Walking inside the nearest building, a butcher's shop, they found eight Serbian wounded lying on the sawdust floor, their wounds covered with dirty field dressings. The rancid smell of decay was in the air, and Elspeth watched as Dr Curcin knelt to speak to one of the soldiers. After a few words the soldier removed his jacket and shirt, and Elspeth was shocked to see sores on his buttocks and shoulder blades, a result of lying too long on the hard floor. Another soldier had a gangrenous foot. Elspeth felt torn: her instinct was to stay and help the poor men. Dr Soltau, however, insisted that their first priority was to find a building they could use as a hospital. So it was with great difficulty that Elspeth finally left the building and followed the others away.

Ten minutes later they arrived at some wrought-iron gates, behind which Elspeth saw a two-storey brick building, fronted by a square concrete courtyard. Anitch told them that this was the town's high school, but as most families had fled Kragujevac it was no longer in use. Dr Soltau pushed the gate open and Elspeth followed her into the yard. The school appeared to have been abandoned in a hurry, as the main entrance door, approached by a short flight of stone steps, was unlocked. Inside the building on the ground floor they found a number of empty classrooms, but also a canteen, a good-sized kitchen, proper toilets and running water. More classrooms, a library and offices for teachers were on the first floor.

‘Aye, we can clear the classrooms of desks and they can be converted into ward bays and an operating suite,' said Dr Chesney.

A smile appeared on Dr Soltau's face. ‘Yes. I think this will do very nicely as our hospital,' she announced.

‘Excellent,' Dr Curcin said with a beaming smile. ‘I will go and arrange for a detail of Austrian prisoners to come here and clear the classrooms. They can also bring over your medical equipment and help erect the beds.' He paused. ‘There are a number of well-trained nursing orderlies amongst the Austrians. If you wish, you may keep a few in the hospital to assist with the heavier manual work.'

‘That would be a great help,' Dr Soltau replied.

‘I will also organise a permanent detachment of Serbian guards to watch over them.'

Dr Soltau nodded her agreement and then turned to Dr Chesney. ‘Lillian, can you go back with Dr Curcin, and fetch our nurses and VADs? We should make an immediate start on disinfecting the floors and walls of the school buildings.'

Dr Chesney agreed and followed Dr Curcin out of the building.

Dr Soltau turned towards Dr Anitch. ‘Would it be possible for Dr Stewart and I to be shown around your hospital?'

He looked embarrassed. ‘The conditions in my hospital are very poor. We are badly overcrowded and the wards are dirty as the cleaners have fled from fear of infection—.

‘We understand the situation is challenging,' Dr Soltau interrupted. ‘But seeing your difficulties will help us understand how we might defeat them.'

Reluctantly Anitch agreed, and after another walk through streets sprinkled with more broken paving and fallen roof tiles, Elspeth and Dr Soltau finally arrived at a large red-bricked building: the First Reserve Military Hospital.

There had clearly been heavy fighting in this area, and the exterior walls of the hospital were heavily pockmarked with bullet holes; many of the windows were patched with boards and pieces of packing case. But the conditions inside the building were far worse: Anitch told them that although the hospital had been built to accommodate two hundred patients, there were now four hundred men packed within its walls. As she walked onto the surgical ward, Elspeth was shocked to see the crammed rows of patients lying on straw mattresses, the lucky ones on top of the mattresses, the unlucky ones on the floor between or even underneath the beds. She could see only one, exhausted-looking orderly, dressed in a dirty white gown, carrying a chamber pot and ignoring the pleas of men as he walked by them. Elspeth felt queasy at the sight, but turning towards Dr Soltau, she was impressed to see that the chief medical officer's face was impassive.

‘I see your difficulties,' Dr Soltau said in a calm voice. ‘Can we see the fever ward please?'

In the next ward they encountered the same overcrowding of beds; the smell of the place was dreadful, a mousy, musty, feculent odour.

‘And your laundry?' Dr Soltau asked, holding a handkerchief to her nose.

They followed him out – Elspeth was relieved to be away from the fetid stench – and along a corridor to another large room. Four large iron steamer units were on one side of the room. A large pile of dirty uniforms lay on the floor on the other. The air was hot and steamy and carried the smell of washing and soap. A Serbian soldier sat on a chair in the far corner of the room with a rifle across his lap, watching three Austrian prisoners load the dirty clothes into the steamers. They were using two long pieces of wood like chopsticks to lift and carry the uniforms, but, seeing Dr Anitch, they stopped their work to bow their heads to him. He waved at them to continue, and after smiling and bowing their heads to Elspeth and Dr Soltau, the men returned to their task.

‘The Austrian prisoners are happy to work here,' Dr Anitch said, ‘even if it is a dirty and dangerous business. They tell me it is better here than the prison camps.'

Good Lord, Elspeth thought. What must the prison camps be like if they would rather be here than there?

‘Come and see this,' he said and led them towards a pile of dirty clothes. ‘But don't get too close.'

Elspeth bent forward and squinted at the rags on the floor, and then focussed on the sleeve of an Austrian officer's jacket. ‘Oh my goodness,' she said, seeing the tiny dark bodies of lice outlined against the pale blue of the uniform. Beside her Dr Soltau jerked back with surprise.

‘They're active now because they don't like being separated from the warmth of the body,' he said. ‘It is a plague of lice. Every soldier – Serbian or Austrian – has them.'

‘Can't you just burn the uniforms?' Elspeth asked.

‘No. This is all they have to wear. There is no spare clothing.'

‘I think we've seen enough, Dr Anitch,' Soltau said. ‘We must get back. The quicker we convert the school to a hospital, the quicker we can help you.'

‘Your arrival in Kragujevac is a blessing,' he replied. ‘You can see how badly you are needed.'

***

‘Are you sure about this?' Elspeth asked Sylvia as the two women walked towards the triage room.

‘Yes, absolutely certain,' Sylvia replied. ‘I'm going to help Dr Wakefield run the new typhus hospital.'

Six weeks had elapsed since the women had arrived in Kragujevac. Six long, challenging weeks, during which Elspeth had worked harder than ever before, helping the other women to turn the school into a fully functioning surgical hospital, and operating on the large number of Austrian and Serbian wounded that had lain for so long without proper medical help. Dr Soltau had originally brought beds and medicines to equip a one-hundred-bed hospital, but there were so many casualties that she eventually found space in the school's ten classrooms for one hundred and seventy patients. The work was arduous, and seeing so many young men permanently disabled by the misfortunes of war was heart-breaking. But eventually the backlog of surgery was almost done.

And then typhus had struck.

Dr Soltau had always emphasised that her major concern was to protect the women from infection. Everyone in direct contact with patients had been given typhus uniforms, consisting of long white high-collared calico gowns, which were to be tucked into their boots and rubber gloves. For those women attending patients with proven fever, hair was compulsorily cropped to one inch and fully enclosed in a white cap. And for every arriving casualty a strict admission policy was enforced: the patient was placed on a rubber sheet and stripped of all clothes – which were sent for steam disinfection – the head and body were shaved, and finally the patient was rubbed from head to foot with paraffin.

However, in spite of this, the number of cases of typhus rose.

Dr Soltau responded by opening a fever ward in the hospital, but as the number of cases climber even higher, she decided to establish a separate typhus hospital in a disused tobacco warehouse on the outskirts of town. Dr Wakefield was to be the only doctor working in this hospital, and she would be accompanied by eight of the VADs and five trained nurses. And to Elspeth's surprise, Sylvia – who had so far only ever worked on surgical wards – had volunteered to be one of the two sisters working there.

‘What patients with typhus need most is good nursing care,' Sylvia said. ‘The backlog of surgical cases is mostly finished here, so I'll be more useful organising nursing care in the new hospital.'

‘You do realise you'll have to chop off most of your lovely hair, don't you?' said Elspeth.

‘I'd been thinking it needed a bit of a cut anyway,' Sylvia replied, picking at her blonde fringe. ‘In any case, it'll grow back quickly once all this is over.'

‘Who else volunteered to go with you?'

‘Louisa Jordan will be the other senior nurse.'

‘And Vera?'

‘Dr Soltau wants all patients with typhus to be taken up to the new hospital. So Vera will drive them there.' Dr Curcin had managed to find the women an old Serbian army ambulance, and Vera was to drive it when required.

‘Well I'm staying here,' Elspeth said. ‘There's still a steady stream of surgical work coming in from the surrounding towns and villages.' She paused for a moment. ‘You will be careful, Sylvie, won't you? Those calico gowns are not fail-safe.'

‘Don't worry, Ellie – I do know what I'm doing…'

She stopped talking as they arrived at the triage room, a small space that had originally been the school caretaker's storage cupboard, but had been converted into an area to assess and disinfect all potential admissions to the hospital. Two injured soldiers – one Serbian in grey uniform, one Austrian in pale blue – lay on rubber sheets on the floor. Standing above them were two of the Austrian prison orderlies, holding heavy scissors and shaving equipment, waiting for instructions.

‘Gut mornink, Dr Stewart, Sister Calthorpe,' the prison orderlies chimed, almost in unison. Dr Soltau had selected six Austrian prisoners to help with the heavier work in the hospital, and the men were pathetically grateful to have been chosen, bowing their heads and smiling deferentially every time Elspeth walked past. They had happily complied with having their heads and bodies shaved to the skin and then disinfected with paraffin. Once sanitised and re-dressed in their steam-sterilised uniforms, the Austrians had helped to clear the classrooms; had washed the floors and walls, and moved the beds into the designated ward areas. They were now responsible for shaving and disinfecting all new admissions to the hospital.

Elspeth acknowledged their greeting with a brief nod of her head and watched the two orderlies remove the bandages from the soldiers lying on the floor. Then, with Sylvia by her side, she looked down at the exposed wounds.

The Serbian soldier had a relatively simple bullet wound to the calf; that could wait until tomorrow, Elspeth thought. But the Austrian soldier, a grizzled-looking veteran with a badly smallpox-scarred face and a bushy moustache, looked very unwell. Elspeth did a quick inspection and saw a neat bullet hole with surrounding bruising and reddened skin over the right kidney area. The soldier managed to raise a smile at her through his tobacco-stained teeth. ‘I have blood in my urine,' he said to her in heavily accented English.

‘You speak English?' Elspeth asked.

He nodded. ‘
Ja
. A little. I am a trained orderly.'

‘You worked in a field hospital?'

‘
Ja
. With the Austrian
5th Army medical column.'

‘Then you know that blood in the urine—'

‘
Ja, ja
,' He nodded his head. ‘I know – is very bad sign. The bullet is in my kidney.'

‘Yes, you need surgery. Have you eaten today?'

‘Not for several days.'

‘Good. We'll operate right away.'

‘My surgeons would say there is no point. A kidney shot is usually a fatal wound.'

Elspeth smiled at the calm acceptance of his fate. ‘We'll see about that. What's your name?'

‘Sergeant Huber.'

‘Well, have faith, Sergeant Huber.' She looked across at Sylvia and nodded.

Sylvia turned to the two orderlies. ‘Shave and disinfect him please, and then take him straight up to theatre.'

***

It was a dismal wintery Sunday afternoon in late February.

The funeral of one of their own.

Elspeth fought to hold back her tears as she watched a young altar-boy carrying an iconic gold orthodox cross, followed by a Serbian priest dressed in funereal robes, leading the procession of Scottish women, Austrian prison orderlies, and Serbian soldiers out of the school and towards a nearby church. Immediately behind the priest came the coffin, carried by four of the prison orderlies, the slim pine box swaying as the pallbearers found their feet on the uneven ground. Behind Elspeth, at the rear of the column, a small band of musicians played a mournful death march, the slow thump of a drum and the sombre notes of a tuba emphasising the sadness of the occasion. The music was so melancholy that Elspeth struggled to keep her composure as she looked up at the coffin and tried to comprehend that a dear friend and talented ward sister was lying inside it: cold, lifeless, killed by the typhus. She could hardly believe that this vibrant young woman was no longer alive.

Standing beside her, Vera sniffed loudly, and Elspeth turned and saw her watery, red-rimmed eyes; she realised that almost everyone in the procession – including the Austrians – was weeping, or trying to blink back tears at this first loss of life amongst the Scottish women.