The Other Anzacs (29 page)
Pearl Corkhill understood the poignancy of the moment, and the deep impact that the events at Gallipoli a year earlier had had on the psyche of Australians and New Zealanders. A tradition had begun.
Major Gordon Carter marked 11 June 1916 in his diary with two crosses. Still in Cairo awaiting transfer to France, he clearly thought it an auspicious day. Over the past month he had resumed his courtship of Kath King now that she and her sister Wynne were back in Cairo. On her arrival, he picked her up in a taxi and they drove to Shepheard’s, where they had a ‘glorious’ dinner. They drank champagne and later went out for a little ‘sphinxing’. These were heady days, and over the next few weeks their romance flourished. By early June they were inseparable, strolling among the flame-coloured poinciana trees at the zoo, or dining at Shepheard’s and taking moonlight drives to the Pyramids. Gordon was building up to a proposal of marriage. But before he could make it, there was a problem—his teeth were giving him trouble. How could he propose with a toothache?
His teeth fixed, a relieved Gordon ‘called for Sister King and took her to lunch at Shepheard’s’.
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In the previous fifteen months they had shared the Gallipoli experience. It had been harrowing for both, but it had become part of the bond between them. ‘And then he proposed to me, ’ an excited Kath wrote in her diary. ‘Accepted.’ As if to reassure herself that it was true, she added: ‘Became engaged to Gordon.’
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They filled in ‘a very nice afternoon’ collecting photos before returning to Shepheard’s for afternoon tea. Later, Gordon caught the train back to camp at Ismailia and reflected on the day in his own diary. ‘Became engaged to Sister King during the afternoon but can’t say that I felt myself any violently different person as a result (such as one might expect). Things seemed to go on quite normally. I don’t think either Kathleen or myself quite realise what we are in for but we decided to leave things in abeyance ’till European affairs got more settled. Then we would think of ours.’
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Gordon was ever the realist. He was also proper; only now did he begin referring to Kath by her Christian name.
Eight days later, Gordon left Alexandria for France and the Western Front, no doubt hoping that ‘European affairs’ would be settled quickly so he and Kath could get on with their lives. Shortly after, Kath and Wynne were among fifty reserve sisters who set sail for England to work at the 2000-bed Netley military hospital in Hampshire. Not until October would Gordon, on leave from France, be able to present Kath with a ‘bonzer engagement ring’.
Alice Ross King, too, had her fiancé on her mind. Because of the secrecy surrounding troop movements she had not seen Harry Moffitt since 14 February. Now she was one of seventy Australian nurses in Rouen, and the workload should have given her little time to think of anything else. But she did, alternating between yearning for Harry and worrying about him. She waited anxiously for his letters, not even knowing whether he was still in Egypt. Harry’s May 3 birthday came and went. Still no news.
As the large convoys of wounded rolled in and the days became busier in the tents and Nissen huts that covered the Rouen racecourse, there were touches of humanity that uplifted her heart. ‘A wonderful packet of old linen from Penzance Red Cross. Beautiful fine linen sheets cut to large handkerchief size. Scented with lavender. Such a boon! Poor old gas gangrene patients can have their sweating faces wiped.’
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This was the smallest mercy for men with flesh-rotting infections for which there was no effective antiserum until 1918. Gas gangrene bloated the tissues around a wound with gas and, if the limb was not amputated, led to shock, kidney failure and death. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died of gas gangrene during the war.
One day the British Director-General of Medical Services arrived for a ward inspection. Alice’s tents were the first on his itinerary. She was disgruntled: the officer ‘tried to give me the “glad eye” . . . So marked was it that even the [officer commanding] and the patients spoke of it afterwards.’
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She found English doctors, matrons and nurses difficult. ‘I hate the English. Loathe them. They are treating our men disgustingly.’
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Shortly afterwards, the epileptic Princess Victoria visited. The staff made no special preparations but learned later that they had been expected to do so. ‘The princess gave out penny boxes of cigarettes, the English boys were very disgusted but the Australians were only disappointed because she did not take a fit.’
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Black humour and irreverence had not deserted them.
Alice decided to give her patients a treat, taking four of them by taxi for a picnic in the forest, eight kilometres from the hospital. It was the first time they had been out for two months. She bought a strawberry tart, cakes and ox tongue, as well as two bottles of light wine. When she got back there was a letter from Harry. She could hardly contain her excitement and relief. ‘Such joy. Only two weeks old it is. He is adjutant of the 53rd Battalion and will shortly be over in France. My love for him is enormous.’
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But letters from Harry were rare; Alice feared they often went astray. As May ended, she noted in her diary, ‘No letters. It’s very few I’ve had from Harry although I know that he has often written. How I love that boy!’
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The plight of the wounded, and their struggle to survive, touched Alice. A Tommy was admitted with a fractured spine, the bullet still embedded. He was only twenty-five and had married two days before returning from England on his last leave. He was now a paraplegic. Among the many letters she was writing to families, Alice wrote to his wife to give her the news. Then there was the seventeen-year-old who had been wounded in seven places.
‘The little Irish boy with his leg off is a fowl plucker in private life and is delighted that his foot is gone because now he won’t have to return to the trenches and he may not be inconvenienced in his work by a missing limb.’
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A soldier with gas gangrene had to be operated on immediately. ‘His leg is in a fearful mess, he is also shot through the lung and in the head . . . I’m afraid he is dying.’
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He had a photograph of his wife and ‘wee baby girl’. Alice was struck by his sweet eyes. He died that night. And then there was Harry. She couldn’t get him out of her mind. Alice hoped he was on his way to France. Her love for him helped her cope with the enormity of the suffering and death around her. He represented hope.
The pace of events was quickening. On 7 June she heard that the Allies’ war supremo, Lord Kitchener, had drowned two days earlier when the HMS
Hampshire
was torpedoed. No one wanted to believe it, so overwhelming was the news. A rumour began the same day that the Germans had broken through the line at Ypres, 200 kilometres to the north. Alice was unsure. ‘Certainly the guns were much nearer and clearer last night. But they may be our own guns.’ Nonetheless, orders were given to evacuate patients as fast as possible. ‘How terrible it all is. I comforted myself tonight by developing some prints of Harry. How I long to know that he is safe.’
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Two days later she heard that Harry’s brigade was in England. ‘My heart is very sorrowful when I think of him.’ The Germans, she noted, had apparently had some successes at Ypres. She wrote to Harry that night, only to hear the next day that his brigade was not in England after all.
Another case touched her. A seventeen-year-old American had run away to join up in England and was now badly wounded. The pain was worsened by his circumstances.
His father and mother divorced. He said they would not miss him. A kitten from the Q store wandered into the ward. He asked if he could have it. I let him have it on his bed. He has lost both feet and one leg has gas gangrene. I don’t think he will recover. I asked him if he liked cats and he said, ‘YES! They used to call me “Tom” when I was little because I always brought home stray cats.’
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Her ‘little American boy’ died four nights later.
Alice heard that Harry had been in France for two weeks. Then a cable came saying that he was still in Egypt, at Ismailia. It read simply, ‘53rd Battn. Greatest love.’ Her relief was palpable. ‘How different I am tonight. My heart is overflowing with joy and love. This man has all my inmost soul. Thank God for his great goodness to me. Harry is just all I admire in a man. I adore all his shortcomings.’
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But deep down something still troubled her. Perhaps it was an unconscious self-protective instinct reminding her that in war nothing was certain, and that love alone might not be enough. ‘I wonder if I shall have him with me. I don’t know if I want to marry him—but there is no doubt about my love.’
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The cable kept her feeling warm for another day, and she kept it close by all the time. Despite her hesitations about marriage, she was increasingly certain she wanted to be with Harry. But that didn’t stop her from looking at others. A certain captain came to say goodbye and waxed sentimental. ‘I like him, but my good old times are past. Bother Harry! ’Tis strange how one changes. All men have to stand beside my beloved and they are not worth talking to then.’
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The sisters and their patients could hear the guns in the distance every night now. As the injured continued to arrive by convoy, and friends were farewelled to the front line, it was announced that the hospital would expand to 2000 beds. A new sitting-room tent was opened, complete with furniture hand made out of boxes and other odds and ends. The nurses went to some trouble to give their utilitarian living quarters a touch of home. ‘The girls all brought home plants in full bloom and so we startled the community by suddenly having a beautiful garden blooming where only grass was to be seen the day before, ’ Alice wrote proudly.
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They tried to live as normally as circumstances would allow by picnicking at Forêt Etienne, a beautiful old orchard filled with wild foxgloves. Incongruously, as they drank tea and ate tarts, the cavalry drilled among the trees.
Towards the end of June, a letter from Harry arrived. It was nearly four weeks old, and full of reaffirmation of their relationship. Alice was overjoyed. ‘It is full of love and I’m so happy.’
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As June ended, a wire came saying he was coming through Rouen with the 5th Division. Harry’s 53rd Battalion had left Alexandria on the same day as Gordon Carter, who some weeks earlier had transferred from the 53rd to the 5th Pioneer Battalion. Harry had finally arrived in Marseilles from Alexandria on 28 June. Alice was elated. ‘He is coming through and I want to see him, ’ she wrote excitedly.
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They had not seen each other since that day in Cairo, all those months ago, when they had sat on the piazza at Shepheard’s Hotel and Harry had promised to buy her an apricot dress. She rang her friend Major John Prior, who did all in his power to find out when the train was due.
On 1 July Alice went to the railway station and stood there for hours, waiting. Just a glimpse was all she asked for. But there was no sign of Harry. ‘All the afternoon I spent on the railway station hoping against hope that I might see Harry come through. But no luck. Major Prior and Capt. Ford were with me and were most good to me.’
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The disappointment was dreadful, and the strain was beginning to tell. Alice confessed that she was feeling ‘fearfully tired out’.
On that day the war took a turn for the worse, for it was the start of the Allied offensive against the Germans aimed at destroying Germany’s manpower reserves, and diverting German forces from Verdun. The Battle of the Somme took place in a landscape of rolling downs, woods and meadows, among peaceful streams, canals and picturesque villages. These days, the country is again a picture of bucolic charm, with little trace of the bloodbath that the Somme offensive became when men laden with more than twenty-five kilograms of equipment went ‘over the top’ of the trenches. One Australian nurse working for the British Red Cross in a casualty clearing station was later moved to describe the sounds from the Somme this way: ‘We could see the Somme River—or, rather, one little bit of it. I was greeted by the sound of the guns—one continuous rumbling, like Coogee, Manly, and all the surfs in a heavy storm rolled into one.’
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On the first day of the Somme alone, the British Army suffered 57, 470 casualties, including 19, 240 killed, representing Britain’s worst-ever twenty-four hours in battle. Over the next four months, the armies of Britain and its dominions would suffer some 420, 000 casualties, including 131, 000 dead.