Tilly and Fliss had never experienced such a vicious bombardment. The noise was deafening and the ground shook with the impact of the bombs. The medical tents were under constant pressure to cope with the ever-increasing numbers of dead and injured. Everything the two nurses had witnessed so far in this war was nothing compared to the perpetual line of seriously injured overwhelming them now. The floor was constantly slippery with the flow of British blood. The air was full of the screams of men suffering from horrific injuries. The constant pleas for help echoed in Tilly’s and Fliss’s ears, and the numbers of stretchers blocking the alleyways between the beds seemed to be endless. Too many men were taken outside and added to the rows of dead that they were too late to save. Tilly thought that she would collapse under the strain of staying alert into the night. Fliss was called upon to assist in the operating theatre and came out of there, hours later, for some air. Tilly saw her head for the door of the tent only to be grabbed by the sister to apply pressure to a gushing wound while she tried to apply a tourniquet. Tilly glanced across at her friend and they exchanged looks of desperation. They were working flat out and yet the bodies kept coming.
The following day, after only a few hours’ sleep, they were back on duty. At a hurriedly eaten breakfast, they heard some infantrymen talking.
‘This just about takes the biscuit, doesn’t it?’ one soldier said. ‘Did you hear what they’ve got up their sleeve now? Operation Crusader, they’re calling it. It’s to be a surprise attack, but it sounds pretty risky to me.’
‘Doesn’t exactly fill a man with a great desire to step into it, but I guess we get no choice, chaps,’ added another soldier, with a grimace.
Tilly reported to the main serious-casualty ward that morning, while Fliss was tasked with assisting in the operating theatre again. Much to Tilly’s surprise, Fliss had taken on that most onerous and deeply upsetting of all the nursing duties with a stoic dedication that Tilly had thought her incapable of before the war. Somehow, Fliss had found a different side to herself that Tilly could only respect. They both had another long and extremely taxing day and collapsed onto their camp beds that evening with hardly the energy to undress. Tilly had almost fallen asleep when Fliss murmured, ‘You’ll never guess who I saw, carrying his kit bag across the camp, this evening.’
‘Who?’ Tilly asked.
‘Jed,’ Fliss replied.
Tilly sat bolt upright in bed. ‘You’re kidding,’ she said, suddenly awake and alert. ‘How is that possible?’
‘Well, he’s here. Sent out with Monty’s unit. Field Marshal Montgomery has now taken charge of this unit, apparently. Jed’s a top-notch surgeon. He was never going to be away from the action for long.’
‘But what’s the likelihood of him being sent here?’ Tilly asked.
‘Likely or not. Here he is. I don’t suppose it’s any slip of the tongue that he told me which part of the camp he was in, either,’ Fliss said. ‘Just two rows of tents away from ours.’
Tilly wasted no time in setting out to find him. She flung her coat over her shoulders and made her way immediately to thearea of the camp where Fliss said she could find him. She called his name outside two tents before she found the right one and stepped inside when his familiar voice told her to come in. When he saw her, his face lit up and she rushed towards him to be folded in his welcoming arms. The other doctor sharing his tent stood up and said, ‘Looks like I should leave.’
Jed insisted that he needn’t go, but it was quite obvious by the way they fell into each other’s arms that they needed to be alone.
‘I know when I’m surplus to requirements,’ the doctor said and left them together.
They wasted no time in falling upon each other and tore their clothes off then and there without any need for conversation. Their passion was spent far too soon and they lay curled together in one another’s arms, holding on to each other as if it was their last night together. They didn’t speak about the fact that that might well be the case. Jed’s tent companion came back in what seemed like the briefest of moments and Tilly made her way back through the encampment with Jed by her side. When they kissed goodnight, they vowed to find each other tomorrow evening in the canteen where they would drink to their own survival along with friends and family.
‘Perhaps we can get Captain Banks and Fliss to join us,’ Tilly said.
‘Captain Banks?’ Jed enquired.
‘Yes. I’m surprised it’s taken Fliss so long, to be honest. I thought she’d have worked her way through quite a few willing officers by now, but this Captain Banks is the first one. Perhaps this is the real thing,’ Tilly replied.
‘And what might that be?’ Jed grinned.
Tilly punched him on the arm and pulled a face at him, and they both laughed. A moment of pure joy, flying in the face of whatever new hell tomorrow might bring.
Chapter 32
May 1942
It was almost 11 p.m. on 4 May, Tilly was asleep in bed. The household had not long settled down for the night when a roaring sound shook the bedroom windows and the skies lit up, afire with a ghostly light. Tilly sat bolt upright in bed and struggled to understand what was going on. Was it a thunderstorm? No. It sounded more like a bombardment. Explosions and an intermittent hacking sound. But she was at home, not in France. She thought she was safe here.
She threw back the bedclothes and moved to the window. In the distance, she could see the sky was lit up with fire and silhouetted against a pale moon were the unmistakeable shapes of planes, two bombers and three accompanying fighter planes. An air raid! What was the target? The dockyards. She immediately thought of Ronnie. A good thing he wasn’t there. But that made no difference — nowhere was safe in a war.
Tilly stood at the window for a while, mesmerised by the light show in the night sky. She went onto the landing for a better view. Amelia was already there in her nightclothes.
‘It’s theBlyskawica,’ Amelia said. ‘Apparently she’s in dock for a refit. She’s firing back at the German bombers. Thank goodness we’re no closer.’
‘There will be casualties,’ Tilly said. ‘I’m getting dressed. They need all the help they can get.’
‘At this time of night?’ Amelia asked. ‘Surely there will be other medically qualified people on the scene. Anyway, it’s too dangerous and how will you get there? It will all be over by the time you cycle all that way.’
‘I’m an ambulance driver at the front, Amelia. Going to help the wounded this evening is no more dangerous, is it?’
Tilly got dressed, grabbed the first-aid kit from the cupboard in the bathroom and wheeled her bicycle out from the garden shed. The clouds cleared the moon, lighting her way, and she peddled as fast as she could in the direction of the shipyards. The sky was lit up from time to time when another wave of aircraft soared above her head and search lights peppered the sky. The stillness of the night was disrupted by the loud booms of the bombs and, where incendiaries missed their target of theBlyskawica, fires were blazing all around her as she cycled through the town.
