‘I’m prepared to assist with anything,’ Fliss said, clearly smitten by these two good-looking medics.
‘That’s good,’ Ralph replied. ‘We need more of you women. The best job you can do for the men you transport is to try to stem the bleeding. We never have enough blood for transfusion and recovery is so much quicker if the men are strong enough to fight off the infection that can take their life quicker than the loss of a limb. Gangrene is our worst enemy. So, a thorough cleansingof the wound and a strong tourniquet are essential. It takes an ambulance about an hour to get to us from the front and time is critical. Female ambulance drivers are not permitted to retrieve casualties from the front line. The British army will not allow it, unlike the French. So, they have to be driven to a pick-up point where they are transferred to your ambulance. Once things really hot up, you will see plenty of spinal-cord injuries too. For those soldiers, the driver has the responsibility to deliver their patient with the minimum of jolting and jostling. So, your driving skills could mean the difference between a soldier being able to walk again or not.’
‘Not much responsibility, then,’ Tilly replied.
‘As we said,’ Jed replied, ‘thank God you’re here. Your skills could make all the difference to some poor Tommy. The injury the boys are most worried about are groin injuries. They could affect their wedding tackle. The men spend a good deal of time talking about the women they left behind. It would be easy for a woman to fall out of love with a man who can’t provide her with children. Sounds harsh, but it does happen. So, a deal of sensitivity is required with those poor sods.’
Jed had an inviting smile and his dark brown hair flopped seductively over one eye. Tilly felt attracted to him, and was tempted to reach out and tuck his hair to one side. Perhaps there would be an opportunity to socialise with the soldiers and medics at some point. She would like to know more about Jed. Martinez sounded Spanish or Mexican. He had wide, dark-brown eyes and tanned skin. Yes, a very attractive man. After having these thoughts, Tilly berated herself. She was not there to flirt with the medical staff and soldiers. She had a job to do and she wanted to get started on it.
Sister Parsons showed Tilly around the various tent constructions and where the medical supplies were stored. Sheexplained the shift system and the fact that it didn’t always work according to plan.
‘You might find yourself doing back-to-back shifts and sleeping in your ambulance,’ she said.
She introduced Tilly to the other drivers. ‘We work in teams of two, one driver and one nurse,’ she said, ‘so that the nurse can be treating the patient in transit. This is Margaret, Sylvia and Yvette. Ladies, this is our new driver, Tilly, and Fliss, a new nurse,’ Sister Parsons explained. ‘Now, let’s go outside, Tilly, and meet your trusty vehicle. Actually, not so trusty. This one is very temperamental.’
* * *
There was a shortage of beds in the tents. So, Tilly and Fliss spent the first night sleeping in the ambulance with Yvette. Before sunrise they were woken to use the latrines and washrooms, and get their breakfasts in the mess tent. Yvette then showed them how to check out the supplies to make sure the ambulance was well stocked. The first day started reasonably calmly and was spent learning the ropes, but the lull didn’t last long and they were soon flung headlong into it.
Tilly and Fliss were dragged out of their beds before dawn the following day. They were instructed to go, with the guidance of one of the interns, to a forested area some distance from the camp to rescue soldiers injured trying to defend the Maginot Line. The Maginot Line was an important position for the Royal Scots to hold and was the principle line of resistance on the Eastern Front. They were ordered to ‘fight to the last round and the last man’.
The intern was familiar with the route and had been called upon many times to carry out procedures on the spot that were beyond the capabilities of any nurse. Tilly and Fliss prepared themselves for the worst. Knowing that they were headedtowards the thick of it, the direct combat, was enough to make them nervous, but to drive with only the assistance of cat’s eyes was a tall order. Tilly was nervous about the whole thing but they were needed, alongside another ambulance crew, to rescue as many wounded as possible. The cat’s eyes gave off a very feeble glow, which made driving extremely difficult. They could not risk being seen by any enemy snipers, but that meant Tilly couldn’t see much either. She drove as fast as she could under the circumstances but with trepidation, for they had been informed that the track through the woods had been mined. Tilly had been told enough about damaged vehicles and torn bodies to know that hitting a mine was to be avoided at all costs.
When they arrived at their destination, Tilly could see that this was going to be a difficult mission. For there in front of them lay a soldier trapped by his ankle beneath the tracks of a Sherman tank.
‘What in God’s name happened here?’ Tilly asked.
‘Tank hit a mine and veered off into the ditch,’ one of the less injured soldiers explained.
If that was the damage a mine could do to a tank, then she didn’t fancy the chances of an ambulance surviving.
There was little Tilly and Fliss alone could do to help this man unless they could free his leg.
Wounded men everywhere were calling out for help and they were under mortar fire from the Germans. The stretcher-bearers were doing the best they could, but looked exhausted. Tilly could see the hopelessness of the situation, but the intern wasted no time in taking charge immediately. He admitted to being not the most experienced, but he was the only doctor who could be spared. He gave the soldier a shot of morphine, applied a tourniquet and prepared him for what must come next.
Tilly recalled Jed’s words about amputations. She was about to witness her first. It was extremely difficult for the intern toreach the trapped soldier. He had to reach forwards, lying on his stomach, hanging almost upside down. The whole procedure took about twenty minutes and while his foot was being amputated, the soldier was giving directions about the retrieval of the tank to his crew. Tilly was glad when it was over and they could load him, with five others with the most serious injuries, into their ambulance. The floor was red with soldiers’ blood. Fliss, who had naively volunteered to assist in operations, looked decidedly green.
Somehow, they managed to get the injured into the ambulance and drive back before the bombardment started. The intern was very quiet on the return journey. Tilly could see that he was quite shaken by the whole experience. The soldier with the amputated foot had been so preoccupied with giving orders to his crew that, when they arrived back at the post, he didn’t realise he was minus one foot.
‘I hope I did a good job,’ the intern said to Tilly. ‘It’s really quite difficult to do your first amputation hanging upside down.’
Tilly reassured him that he’d done an excellent job.The thing about war is that you have to expect the unexpected, thought Tilly.You never know what the next day will bring.
* * *
As the weeks moved on, Tilly was often called upon to help civilians suffering injuries, as well as soldiers from both the Allies and the German sides. One evening, she went with Fliss to collect wounded from a bridge that had been blown up. A local farmer had been ferrying soldiers across the river all day and had been badly injured by a hand grenade, which a German soldier had thrown into his boat. It was a long journey to the field hospital and they decided to get him to the convent, which served as a local hospital. By the time they got there, he wasbleeding to death. When they arrived, no one could be found until a nun came towards them holding a candle.
‘The electricity was cut in the fighting,’ the nun said. ‘So, we have no lights and no lift. I’m afraid the operating theatre is on the third floor. Can you carry the stretcher all that way?’
Tilly and Fliss struggled up the staircase and along dark corridors looking for a surgeon until they found a room where four doctors were dining by candlelight. They left their meal and their wine, and went immediately to the operating theatre. Tilly was congratulating herself on a job well done, when the nun cutting the farmer’s bandages and his clothes announced that it was too late — the farmer had died on their way up the stairs. It was the first time that Tilly had actually witnessed someone dying on her watch, despite best efforts to save them. There was nothing more she could do for him and it was at that moment she realised that so many civilians were caught up in the futility of war. This realisation brought her one step further to understanding the events that took place on her next mission. The pent-up anger of the French people towards the enemy sometimes found a way to be satisfied.
Tilly hadn’t realised that part of their job would be assisting German soldiers but she accepted that their job was to sustain human life, even that of the enemy’s. She and Fliss were picking up some French soldiers one day and took in two injured German POWs with them. On the way back to the field hospital, the ambulance started coughing and spluttering. Tilly suggested they pull into the farm they were passing, so that she could investigate the problem. When they entered the farmyard, they were greeted by a large woman with a severe look upon her face. Tilly explained with the aid of gestures and minimal French that she needed to repair the ambulance. While Tilly was under the bonnet and Fliss was attending one French soldier in the back of the ambulance, one of the German soldiers indicated that hewanted to get out for a smoke. The farmer’s wife approached the French soldier with a cup of water and handed it to him. She asked to look at the French soldier’s gun. Tilly thought this strange, but the soldier handed it over. The woman glared at the German with a cold blackness in her eyes and Tilly wondered exactly what her intentions were. Tilly watched, open-mouthed, as the woman raised the gun and shot the German, her expressionless face hardened to the task. She said nothing, but returned the revolver to the soldier and went back into the house, closing the door. The French soldier told her later that the Germans had dragged her son out of the house a few days earlier and shot him in front of her. An eye for an eye and a son for a son.
The cold-blooded killing was difficult for Tilly to witness and yet she understood what had made the woman do it. She and Fliss drove back in stunned silence. That evening Tilly wanted to erase the sight of the shooting from her mind and, once they were back in camp, she sought out the refuge of some company and several glasses of wine. Fliss declined to join her, saying she badly needed to wash the day’s events away in the shower. Tilly joined a group of nurses and doctors in the mess tent, who seemed to be all letting off steam. Among them were the two surgeons, Jed and Ralph. She bought herself a drink and joined them.
She spent the evening hearing all about Pennsylvania, where Jed came from. Tilly had this fixed image of America as a place where everyone owned a fast car and led a Hollywood lifestyle. She had seen photographs of the Grand Canyon and the west, of the beaches in California and the Rocky Mountains, but she knew little of the rest of the country.
She heard all about Jed’s family, who worked in the iron and steel works and managed to find out that he had no girlfriend that he had left at home. She found that difficult to believe.Perhaps he didn’t want to confess it in order to make his chances with the nurses and female ambulance drivers better. She told him about her birth village of Micklewell and her upbringing on the Isle of Wight. They both marvelled about how they had ended up here, in this place. Two people who’d started life on different continents, thrown together because of the actions of one dictator with a desire to build an empire for himself and fulfil his vision of a pure Aryan race.
