Yes.
And that was why you were provided with this makeshift wardrobe?
She explained that they had started off with a French navy shirt and blanket.
And those rough dresses, he declared, look like they’ve been bought secondhand from the Greeks. That aside, there have been complaints about orderlies and their treatment of nurses. What has your experience been?
We are not treated politely, said Sally. She felt a rush of released fury.
He told her please to be more precise.
And so she devoted herself to their history. The orderlies began by treating the nurses as full-time drudges and skivvies. They were commanded by orderlies to clean excrement and carry waste buckets and bedpans. To lug buckets of tissue and used dressings and amputated limbs to the furnace. None of this they were unwilling to do. But it was all they were asked to do, and they were abused by orderlies for how it was done. They were not admitted to the operating theatres except to scrub them. And sometimes called by names not normally applied to nurses. They are not all bad—the men. But the good ones seemed silenced.
By their fellow orderlies?
Sally decided to risk her entire opinion.
I see it as permitted by the colonel, she said.
He didn’t seem appalled. His head was down and he wrote with his neat fountain pen in an even, infallible hand. His bowed scalp was covered with bristly tan hair. Then he looked up.
Were any of you touched violently or improperly?
Not me. Nurse Freud… you must know about her.
Leatherhead leaned forward at this—like a man about to be engaged in gossip.
Did you know, however, that the young man who attacked her is dead?
I’d not heard that.
It is important for you women to know that there was a price exacted. A double price in his case. He was carrying a wounded major on his shoulders to a field ambulance when he was shot dead. His captain recommended him for the Military Medal. But obviously it could not be granted in such a case.
Even then Sally wondered how it was that the dry, non-disclosing Leatherhead had let this story out. To some it would seem gossip. But to the nurses it served as a vindication. She would conclude that he had done it so that they would somehow see the issue as settled. She did wonder if clever Leatherhead had merely fabricated the tale—his inventive way to put the matter to rest. But that would have been a touch of a storyteller rather than of a dry functionary.
He suddenly brought the interview to an end. He thanked her. She rose and was leaving. But he stood up as if impelled by etiquette and intercepted her before she reached the door.
So you did not think Staff Nurse Nettice unstable in her mind?
I think her mind is fixed on the Archimedes. The way the minds of some of the men are fixed at the moment they were wounded. But she is as sane as anyone else.
His dismissal of her came through turning his back and returning to his notes. His manners, his moves, his questions, his measured gossip were all so jerky and unnatural. Yet it had been a genuine cure to be questioned by him in every particular of the tribulation she shared with the others.
When she came off duty that evening she was astonished by the apparition of Nettice sitting on her own cot. Nettice looked up with her traditional frown fully in place. She said flatly, So you see, I am out.
Sally rushed over to envelop her. But Nettice showed no appetite for celebratory hugs at all.
Lieutenant Byers will be so relieved to see you. And happy as well.
Nettice said, He won’t quite be able to see me, will he?
Sally grew suddenly furious at Nettice’s sophistry. For God’s sake, Nettice.
All right then, said Nettice. I can imagine the poor boy will feel some solace now I’m back.
You sound almost as if you’re unhappy to get out of that place.
On balance I’m very happy.
You take it very easy. But did you know Naomi has been suspended for visiting you?
Nettice pondered this. I knew it was a risky business, she conceded. You will have to understand, though, that I’m not lacking in gratitude. I am just too stunned yet to fall on my knees in appreciation.
Yes, said Sally. Forgive me.
For she understood that state of soul precisely. Nettice made a better effort at sharing the enthusiasm of the others when Carradine came in. Naomi returned from one of her shopping expeditions, and the sight of her broke down Nettice’s reserve and sent her into a strange mixture of tears and hacking laughter. Would you believe it? she asked. I’m out!
Naomi said in wonder, This is the work of Colonel Leatherhead.
Carradine had a smart idea. I’ll go and fetch Lieutenant Byers and bring him for a constitutional. And you can see him by the mess tent here.
Nettice was now all at once anxious for that meeting to happen, and it was organized. She waited in the wind with Sally and Naomi on either side of her and saw Lieutenant Byers come walking forth on Carradine’s arm in his hospital pyjamas and with an army jacket over his shoulders since the evenings were turning so cold. Even with Carradine to guide him, he tested for obstructions and swept the gravel in front of him with a white stick.
Sam, called Nettice in a thin voice.
Rosie? he said with his head cocked. Darned sorry to get you into trouble.
There is no more trouble now.
He shook his head. For there was the untellable trouble of his blindness. But then he inhaled a deep breath and managed a wide, generous smile.
A triumph for justice, he said. Not a common thing in armies.
The women chose to find this heartily amusing and gave themselves up to more laughter than was perhaps justified.
Uniforms arrived from the depot ship to relieve them from the harsh oddments of coarse cloth. There was a rumor sweeping the stationary hospital that Colonel Spanner had left that morning on a ship for Alexandria. The arrival of a new chief medical officer, a Scots surgeon from Adelaide—a former civilian used to treating other civilians with at least some civility—occurred with equal suddenness. The Australian matron broke the news to them—as if they might be aggrieved at it—that they were required to wear the capes ordained by their military authorities. The near-forgotten and halfway elegant gray overcoats with boomerang-shaped “Australia” on their shoulders were also provided, and a neat array of shoes almost too refined for the mud and gravel of Turks Head.
Sheep from Salonika had been landed. On some nights fresh mutton replaced the bully beef on their tin plates.
Orderlies—former tyrants amongst them—now carried out waste buckets and limbs and bloodied bandages to their points of disposal. No “Bloody dumb cows!” anymore. This was the wonder the Leatherhead visitation had produced. He had switched the poles of the earth—or at least of that planet named Mudros. Because of her experience with Captain Fellowes aboard the Archimedes, Sally was asked to administer anesthesia in some shrapnel cases amongst the newly arrived from Gallipoli. She observed the vital signs as metal was removed from wounds or as limbs were taken off by amputation saws and wrapped in linen and carried out to join the heap of arms and legs awaiting prompt incineration. Honora worked as theatre nurse. Leo worked as a scout, preparing and presenting the appropriate packs of instruments and the swabs, keeping count of them, and even supervising sterilization carried out by orderlies.
The matron-in-chief who had been Colonel Spanner’s chatelaine survived for ten days before her temporary assignment to their stationary hospital similarly ended and she was sent elsewhere. Everyone felt that the hospital had been renewed.