The Lost Soldier (21 page)

Years later, when going through her father’s papers, Sarah found both the letter from Molly and the later letter from Reverend Mother.

Molly had written simply to Sir George.

Dear Sir George

I am sorry I am not able to come home at present as I am needed here in the hospital. The wounded come all the time and we are hard pressed to keep up with them. I will write to my parents and I am sure they will understand.

Thank you for sending money for my fare. I have given that back to Miss Sarah.

Yours respectfully, Molly Day

Reverend Mother’s letter was equally simple though perhaps more straightforward.

Dear Sir George,

Thank you for your letter. I am afraid I am not in a position to send Molly Day home if she does not wish to go. I understand your concern for her, especially if her parents do not approve of her being here. However, she a great asset to our work here with the wounded, and if she wishes to remain, I am more than happy for her to do so.

I have instructed her to write to her parents explaining the situation, which she has promised to do, but more than that is not within my power. If I sent her away from here she still would not return home, but would move on to some other hospital where she is unknown and we should lose her in the confusion that is now France. I am sure you will agree it is better she remains here under our watchful eye.

Yours sincerely

Marie-Georges

Reverend Mother—Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy

Molly had stayed.

Sarah’s other letter had come from Freddie. She recognised his untidy writing, so like his father’s and she opened the letter eagerly as he had promised to come and visit her on his next local leave, and she was longing to know when this would be. On this matter, however, his letter was a disappointment. His plans had changed.

Dear Sarah, he wrote,

As you know, I had hoped to come and visit you in your convent, but instead of the three days leave I had expected, I have been given ten days, and best of all it is over Christmas and New Year. This gives me time to go home, so I will be off to London first and then down to see the governor. Any chance of you coming too so we could all spend Christmas together? I will be going with John Driver, a brother officer who I’ve mentioned before I am sure, to stay with his family in London for two days on each end of the leave. If you came too we could all go out on the town… we need to have a few days’ fun before we come back to this hell-hole. Write to me what you think, after all you are not a VAD or one of the official army nurses that have to apply for leave as we do. I am sure if you wanted to come you could.

If you can make it we could all cross together. Let me know.

Love from Freddie.

Sarah read and re-read the letter. Part of her wanted to go home and spend Christmas back in the manor at Charlton Ambrose; to spend the festive season as they always did, the house swathed in holly and ivy, a Christmas tree decked and shining in the entrance hall. She longed for the encompassing warmth from the huge log fire in the drawing room and the wonderful smells of baking and roasting that emanated from the big kitchen, but she knew that if she once went home she would not come back to France. She was certain her father would find some way of persuading her to stay in England, and she was equally certain that here at the convent was where she should be.

Sarah had slipped with ease into the life she lived, and though it was strenuous work in the wards and most nights she fell into bed asleep almost before she undressed, she never went up to the room she shared so amicably with Molly without spending half an hour in the quiet of the chapel. Gradually she had become convinced that this was where God wanted her to be, and she was afraid if she once went back home, the green shoots of this conviction, so new as they were, might not survive the cold blast of common sense to which her father would subject them. She did not reply to Freddie’s letter for several days as her decision wavered, swinging from determination to stay, to the possibility of going… it was just for Christmas after all, but at last she took the plunge and wrote saying that she could not be spared.

You know how bad the situation is here in France, she wrote, the dreadful state of the wounded when they reach us is indescribable. The sisters are more than overstretched and though most of my tasks are fairly menial, I know I am useful and if I left everyone here would have to work that little bit harder. We had a convoy in last night, and there was no room for half the men. We have cleared the refectory and some of the men were lying on the tables, but others were left on the floor. It took all night just to log who everyone was. That is usually my job, and at least that is something I can do, leaving the more experienced to do the nursing. You know the filth that comes with them from the trenches, the untreated wounds, and those which have had rough first aid at the casualty posts. You will understand why I cannot just come home for Christmas, and I hope you will be able to convince my father, as he certainly doesn’t believe me. Dearest Freddie, I am relying on you.

Come and see me on your next local leave.

With much love from your menial sister

Sarah

Wednesday 3rd November 1915

Today they brought in Harry, my cousin, Harry Cook. I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked up from helping Sister Eloise and recognised him waiting on a stretcher. It was Harry. He was plastered in so much mud and filth, that at first I wasn’t sure that it was really him. I haven’t seen him since well before the war began, but once I had stared through the dirt to his poor pale face, there was no mistaking him.

Sister Eloise ticked me off for not paying attention, but when I told her who it was she was kind.

I spoke to Harry, but he was beyond recognising me. Though I don’t think he was unconscious, his eyes were closed and he was unaware of his surroundings.

There was another man with him who said he was his friend. He was not so badly wounded as Harry, whose leg was shattered, surely beyond repair. The other man was wounded in the arm, and clearly in pain, but I don’t think he will lose it. He was more concerned about Harry than himself, so they must be very good friends, though we’ve all noticed how much these wounded Tommies look out for each other. Is there anything good coming from this dreadful war, I wonder? Maybe the unselfishness we see among the men who come here to us…

The days merged into each other. Gradually both girls were given a little more to do than simply scrubbing the wards clean, taking trolleys round and emptying bedpans. Sister Eloise had long since spotted Molly’s natural ability to nurse. An able and dedicated nurse herself, she recognised the same concern for her patients in Molly, the simple efficiency with which she treated them; the easy way she talked to the men and the response she drew from them. She was always calm in a crisis, and there were enough of those, both when more wounded arrived and in the routine caring. Though Molly had not even had the basic Red Cross training that Sarah had, she seemed instinctively to know what to do or say. Because Sister Eloise had very little English, when Sister Marie-Paul was not there she had to rely on Molly to talk to the English patients for her. Molly’s French had been non-existent, but she was picking up the words and phrases she needed with increasing rapidity, and though she could not hold a conversation in French, nor even follow one between the nuns, she could now make herself understood about matters in the ward.

Gradually, and under careful supervision at first, Sister Eloise taught her to change some of the dressings on the minor wounds, letting her gain experience in how it should be done, the careful cleansing and packing of wounds, the neat, firm bandaging afterwards. Molly was quick to learn and deft in her movements, and all the time she was able to keep up a cheerful flow of chatter with her patient, trying to keep his attention off the painful task she was performing. This was something that the other nursing sisters, most of them French, were not able to do with the English patients, and Molly worked more and more with them, leaving the few French wounded who arrived to their compatriots.

It was while helping with a new influx of men that Molly saw Harry. At first she thought she must be seeing things. She was helping Sister Eloise, who was swathed as always in a huge white apron over her habit, clean the wound of a man newly arrived from the front. Molly was holding the bowl of warm water, when her eyes slipped down to a new stretcher case that lay just inside the door of the ward. On it, lying motionless, she saw her cousin, Harry Cook, from Charlton Ambrose. She stared down at him, peering in the gloom of the late afternoon to be sure that it was indeed Harry who lay there, his familiar face gaunt under several days’ growth of beard overlaid with dust and dirt. Sister Eloise had to call her attention sharply back to the job in hand as the bowl she held began to tip.

“I’m sorry, Sister,” Molly stammered in her halting French, “but this man is—” she hesitated not knowing the word for cousin and finished, “—from my home.”

Sister Eloise understood enough of her fractured French and said, nodding at the patient whom they had been washing, “We have nearly finished with this man. Ask Pierre to lift your friend on to the table, next.”

Their patient, now cleaner than he had been for weeks, was moved gently by Pierre, the ward orderly, to an empty bed. Pierre then knelt by the unmoving figure on the stretcher and lifted him up on to the table where each man was cleaned up as far as possible before he was put to bed to await the doctor. Another man, also still dressed in dirty service tunic with the sleeve cut away and with a grubby bandage around his arm that had been sitting on the floor by the door, got to his feet at once.

“That’s my mate, Harry,” he said. “Harry Cook. He got it in the leg, and now it’s going rotten.” His own face was grey with pain or exhaustion, his eyes red-rimmed hollows above his gaunt cheeks. He half put out a hand as if to help Pierre, but dropped it again as the big orderly swung Harry easily up on to the table.

“What is he saying?” asked Sister Eloise.

“He says it is his friend,
son ami,
” replied Molly. She turned to the second man. “Don’t worry,” she told him gently. “Harry is in good hands now. The doctor will be in here in a minute, and before that we’ll do all we can to make him comfortable.” She smiled at him and added “What about you? Is your arm bad?”

The soldier shook his head wearily, “No, I’ll live. Harry’s the one who needs you now. I’ll just wait here.” He slumped down on the floor again, and Molly saw him close his eyes as he leaned back against the wall, instantly asleep.

Harry Cook was in a bad way. Whatever had hit him in the leg had ripped away much of the thigh muscle and smashed the bone to splinters. As they removed the remains of his trousers and makeshift bandage some overworked doctor had put on it at a casualty clearing station, a sickening stench of rotting flesh exploded among them, make both Molly and Pierre take an involuntary step backwards. Sister Eloise seemed not to notice the rank smell, but continued slowly and steadily cutting away the dirty clothing until the man’s shattered body lay exposed for them to wash and warm and put into bed to await the doctor.

One look at the leg had told Sister Eloise that it must come off, and immediately, if there were to be any chance of Harry Cook surviving. She looked sharply at Molly to see how she was coping with tending a man she actually knew, but after the one moment of involuntary recoil, Molly had straightened her shoulders and was standing ready with another bowl of hot water and dry warm towels. With an approving look, Sister Eloise gave Harry a shot of morphine and set to work to do what she could for this latest piece of flotsam from the front.

As they worked, washing away the grime and the mud, Molly looked down at Harry’s exposed body and the thought flew through her mind that the last time she had seen Harry Cook naked was when they were both about six years old and they had played in the river at home. She had had a beating from her mother, not for getting her clothes wet, but for taking them off to play in the water as naked as the village boys.

How long ago that was, she thought now, and how far away.

When Dr Gergaud appeared, Sister Eloise directed him to Harry Cook first, explaining the wound, now marginally cleaner and covered with a light sheet. Sister Eloise had seen no point in putting the poor man through the agony of re-bandaging a leg that must be removed within the hour.

“The poor man will have enough to go through if he survives,” she murmured to Molly. Gently she took Molly’s hand. “Your friend is very bad,” she said. “They will operate, but it may be too late. There is gangrene.”

Molly nodded, understanding what she was being told as she recognised the words “bad”, “operate” and “gangrene”.

Dr Gergaud had Harry taken to the operating theatre in the main convent building, and having watched him carried out of the ward on a stretcher, Molly forced her attention back to the other men who needed it. Harry’s friend was still slumped against the wall. As he was asleep, they had dealt with the others first. Now, at last it was his turn, and Molly shook him gently awake. At her touch he was immediately alert, looking round him to remember where he was.

“It’s your turn now,” Molly said, and held out her hand to help him to his feet. He ignored it, however, and pulled himself up alone. Understanding his need for independence, she lowered her hand and turned her head to look down the ward, so that she shouldn’t see him struggle, until he was standing beside her.

“What’s your name?” Molly asked, smiling as she faced him again.

“Tom Carter,” he replied. “Where’s Harry? Is he all right?”

“He’s in the operating theatre,” answered Molly. “I’m afraid they have to take off his leg. They have no choice if he’s to survive, you know.”