At their mess table the women bolted down sugar-laced tea and ate bread which they doused in Queensland treacle as if to reembrace their dear, safe, sleeping home continent. Major Bright came in after beating on the door and told them with a mannish innocence and irrelevance—almost touching—that he had recommended them all for Military Medals. Those who stayed in their wards or had worked at the fire or had mercifully dealt with others or had placed tables or basins over men to make them feel safer or had put others on the floor and beneath their beds—even as orderlies yelled at them to get into the trenches. But, he said—as if it were a great concern arising from that mad night—it was a military lottery that would define who got the decorations.
They listened because he was such a good man. But military ambition burned very low in the women. It was amusing to Honora that the man she had carried from the chest ward was not after all a German but an English captain—and not only an Englishman but a German-speaking, renowned novelist named Alexander Southwell, the nephew of one Lord Finisterre who had been formerly a British cabinet minister. It was idly assumed that if there were medals they would go Honora’s way. But the chief remark her act attracted was wonder at how a woman of five foot six inches had—in the fury of the moment—carried a six-foot man, limp and awaiting chest surgery, from his ward to the trench.
It was an issue which did not delay Honora in the least as she went back to duty immediately after breakfast. She was all business. The mere sentiment of compassion had left her. She pursued it all in a fierce, mechanical way. There was something to do with Dankworth mixed up in it.
Let her go, Matron Bolger said. I’ll fetch her back for a rest in an hour or so.
Sally went back to her ward too but returned to the mess for a cup of tea before collapsing. Most of her gas cases had been moved to evacuation ambulances. Now it was up to the base hospitals to soothe and save them. Rest lay ahead since nothing could happen until the surgical theatres were resupplied. Honora returned with Matron Bolger—you could hear their chat before they reached the tent.
Karla Freud also arrived. She had been helping in the evacuation ward that morning—attending to men as they were loaded on rear-bound ambulances. Entering the tent now, she saw Honora and Sally and a few others—Leo too—and stood contemplating them. Honora was writing something on the card table—they all feared it was to that bureau and that the blasts of the night had unsettled her again.
Look, you’ve probably heard of my surgeon, Karla Freud stated. Boyton. He’s an American from the British Medical Corps transferred here. Well, you can stop speculating. It’s all true. I’m letting you know in case anything happens. Both of us might have been incinerated together last night, and weren’t. That means there are two reasons why my friends from Lemnos can stop thinking, “Poor old Karla.”
Then she sat down. Sally did not know whether she was supposed to congratulate her or be silent. Are we all suddenly mad? she wondered.
That’s good news for us too, said Leo—exactly the right answer. I hope you have a happy life.
All right then, said Freud. Thank you.
And so? asked Leo. A few more details, please.
His mother’s English, father’s American, his practice is in Chicago. He’s not Jewish and that means lamentations will be uttered in Melbourne. But in Chicago I won’t hear them. Only thing…
She winked here.
It’s the end of my dreams of the stage. Women are fools. We can’t help offering ourselves up. Living sacrifices. That’s us.
She turned to Honora, who was back-on at a side table writing her fluent letter.
Honora, she called in a frank but soft voice. Honora, dearie! Listen to me. He’s dead, that kind picnicker from Lemnos. He’s dead. He doesn’t deserve to be, but he is. There aren’t any more theories you can make up. No more letters, for God’s sake.
Honora ceased writing but sat rigid and without turning. Freud moved to her and put her hands on those stiffened, raised shoulders. But a particular sound—of air being shredded—arose again. The Klaxon began to wail. The planes had returned and could be heard, low and fast. Sally stiffened to withstand the first jolt of a dropped bomb. The women rushed outside—they could not help themselves. When the reverberating explosion came—though it must have been a kilometer along the road—it threatened to loosen Sally’s bladder. An orderly sergeant came yelling, Dugouts, ladies. Not wards! Split trench and dugouts!
But Sally ran to the resuscitation ward to see how many of last night’s cases were too damaged to be moved. There was nothing to be done for these men, but she wanted to know the numbers. Two pale-faced staff nurses were there, looking startled but steadfast. They had been tending perhaps four cases of whom any informed assessor would say at least three would die. The way the girls stood—so professionally, with their hands half folded in front of them—reminded Sally of Karla Freud’s phrase. “Living sacrifices.”
Yet she too was willing to lose herself.
At her suggestion the three of them did the basin trick—the near-comic business of covering the patients’ faces. It was ridiculous, an exercise in flimsiness and capable of adding to damage. It would be laughed at later. But it seemed a serious duty now. Anything more—to move them beneath their beds—would certainly finish them. For these were men too far gone to survive the journey to the remaining operating theatre, let alone the anesthesia once there. But the idea they would die without nurses present was abhorrent. Meanwhile the Archies provided the continuous rhythm like minor instruments, the screaming descent of those explosive cylinders adding in the symphonic climaxes.
Sally uselessly took a hand of one of the patients—gently, as if feeling for a pulse. As she stood she saw Major Bright in the doorway. Will you, for God’s sake— he yelled. But an explosion along the road made him repeat it. Will you, for God’s sake, go to the dugout? Sister Durance, set an example, for God’s sake!
Her two young women stared at him without comprehension.
It is General Birdwood’s order, he roared. She waved the two girls to follow him. She wanted urgently to urinate and feared that if a bomb came near she might be concussed into this indignity.
Bright ran at their side, shepherding them to a slit trench, helping them jump down and leading them along the trench to a dugout—a covered structure Sally had never entered before, a dark pit thickly roofed with timber and loads of sandbags. As she went in, Bright held her elbow. His face was red. You have years of training and I have years more. How dare you risk all that!
There were a number of nurses inside sitting on benches. Honora was one of them. There was Freud, who had so recently tried to cure Honora of her delusions. And Matron Bolger.
Honora cried, Matron, this is an absolute bulldust order. The men hate us going.
These are today’s men, the matron told her. Who will nurse tomorrow’s men if you get blown to shreds?
Honora looked sullen. The matron took out a book from her pocket. She patted it with her hand and yelled against the continuous but blessedly distant explosions of bombs. If you do not come here when the Klaxon goes, she told them, it is very likely they will move us out of the casualty clearing stations. The general says he will not have us in danger and will move us if we expose ourselves to the Taubes. You understand?
She waved the book in her hand. For now, she announced, I want you to pay your mess bills. Don’t tell me you don’t have money on you.