The Promise (22 page)

‘I’ve been hit, Bin,’ he yelled. ‘Go on, hold your nerve and join the others.’

Bin turned his head, hesitating for just a second, but then, signalling with his hand, went on. Jimmy took a few more steps, then, seeing a shell hole, dropped into it.

He must have passed out. When he came to, there were two other men from his regiment in there as well, both groaning with pain. Jimmy still had his pack on his back, and wincing from the pain in his arm, he gingerly took it off. It was very hot, though still early in the morning. He knew by the men rushing past above him, all intent on reaching the German lines, that he could expect no rescue until sunset. He looked up at the sides of the hole and realized he wouldn’t be able to climb out of it unaided.

Loss of blood was making him feel light-headed. Or maybe that was just the rum he’d had such a short while ago.

‘How bad are you two hurt?’ he asked the other men. ‘Can I do anything to help?’

It was the longest, most painful and worst day of his life, and since joining the army he’d had plenty of bad ones. He took off his tunic and put a dressing over his wound in an attempt to keep infection out, and did what he could for the other two men, but they both had serious chest wounds and passed out by eleven in the morning. He tried to eke out the water he was carrying, but it was so hot his thirst got the better of him.

All he could see from the hole was the blue, cloudless sky above him, and a never-ending stream of soldiers rushing by. Machine-gun fire rattled out just as endlessly and remorselessly, and above it he heard screams and the moaning of men dying just a few yards from his hole. By the time the sun was directly overhead burning down on him, he had no water left and the pain in his arm made him want to scream too.

He tried to think of Belle, and imagine the coolness of the kitchen back home. But although he could hold those images for a second or two, the noise and carnage all around him soon brought him back to reality.

A rat appeared, running over one of the unconscious men, and Jimmy shuddered and threw a stone at it to chase it away. The rat disappeared, but it was obvious that it and others would soon be back, attracted by the smell of blood. He tried to stand up then, with the intention of trying to get out and get back to the line. But whether it was the vast number of bodies he could see all around his shell hole, his wound or just the heat, his legs gave way under him and he had no choice but to slump back down. He checked on both the other men and found they were dead.

It was anger he felt then. How could the generals send so many men to certain death? If what he’d seen from his hole was happening all along the length of the line, then surely half the British army must be wiped out.

Dusk was falling when they finally got him out. He must have been unconscious for most of the afternoon. As they held a water bottle to his lips he could barely swallow as his tongue and the whole of his face was swollen.

Belle got a note from Jimmy telling her he had been wounded a week after it had happened.

‘I got shot in the upper arm, but don’t worry, it isn’t a really bad wound. They’ve patched me up and they’ll be sending me home on leave soon. I’m one of the lucky ones, my pal Donkey bought it, and so many more men I liked. But I expect you’ve heard how many casualties there were on 1 July.’

Belle did know. The first of them began trickling into the Herbert by 4 July and by the next day it was a flood of wounded. An officer on Miranda’s ward had said he thought there were over 18,000 killed and 30,000 wounded just on the first day of the battle of the Somme. Belle didn’t know then that Jimmy was in the battle, but she was afraid he might be as he’d written a while ago to say he was on a march to a new place. So each day until she got his letter she had been bracing herself for the dreaded telegram.

She was joyful he was only wounded, but at the same time she was afraid. Many of the wounded men she saw were withdrawn and had terrible nightmares. From things they said, often just in passing, she knew that they’d seen hell that day in France.

Jimmy returned home the last week in July. His arm was in a sling and the skin on his face was peeling, but his smile was as bright as ever.

‘Don’t fuss,’ he said when she rushed around trying to make him comfortable, offering to cut up his food and undress him. ‘I’m fine. Never been so pleased to see you and home. But I’m fit to fight another day.’

He had been lucky, compared with so many men at the Herbert. The wound had remained clean and it was healing well. He pointed out that the sling was only to prevent him straining his wound; all his fingers worked, which he demonstrated by playing a little tune on the piano in the bar. ‘I think I’ll keep the sling on for other people though,’ he said with a smirk. ‘I quite like being treated as a hero.’

It was twenty months since he’d enlisted, and he made love to Belle that first night home as if he thought he’d never have the chance again. ‘This was worth getting wounded for,’ he said at one point. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else while I was in hospital; the nurses kept asking me what I was smiling about.’

He admitted a day or two later that he was so relieved they’d given him a Blighty ticket. He hadn’t expected to get one; wounds like his were usually patched up over there, and then it was back to the front. He said he thought his CO had intervened on his behalf.

Yet however lovely it was to have him home, knowing he’d got to go back to the front frightened Belle. She couldn’t take the view that he did, that this wound was his lot and he’d be safe from now on. Each time she bathed and dressed his arm wound she couldn’t help but think what it must be like for wives who got a telegram to say their husband was dead.

Even in the sweetness of their lovemaking, her mind flitted between dreading his leaving again and guilt that she’d managed so well without him all this time.

Mog boasting to Jimmy how they valued Belle at the hospital, and Garth saying how much he and Mog depended on her, made her sound like a paragon of virtue. It was difficult to believe Mog had once been so against both the work and Miranda, and changed her tune about both, even encouraging Belle to spend her off-duty days with her friend. Just a few weeks earlier they had ridden their bicycles out into the countryside beyond Eltham, and on many evenings they went to concerts and the theatre together.

Now Jimmy had come home after such a close shave, Belle felt torn between being the perfect stay-at-home wife and pursuing her own dream. She still really wanted to go to France with Miranda. They had applied to drive ambulances twice, and been turned down. Miranda was sure it was only because they weren’t considered experienced enough yet, and insisted they had to try again.

The weather was good, and Belle managed to get a couple of days off so that she and Jimmy could spend some time together. They took a picnic to Greenwich Park and sat under a tree and talked. Jimmy told her about his army friends, about the conditions he’d fought under, and groused about the generals, who he felt were mainly stupid and ill-equipped to lead men. ‘That five-day bombardment at the Somme was a waste of time and effort,’ he said with some anger. ‘Half the shells were duds as it turned out, and those that weren’t didn’t smash the barbed wire at all, or send the Boche running back to their second lot of trenches. One man I saw in hospital was stuck on the wire for hours; he was shot in four different places during the day and torn to pieces, and he was one of hundreds. Our men found out afterwards that the Boche had really dug themselves in there too. They had safe concrete shelters and far better and bigger guns than us. We didn’t stand a chance.’

As the days passed Belle realized Jimmy was a little ashamed that he’d gone into the shell hole and stayed there all day. He had no reason to feel that way; she could see by the wound that he could never have fired his gun, and would probably have passed out through loss of blood anyway, which meant he might have been hit again, fatally. She told him this, then drew him away from the subject by describing the many strikes around the country, the rising cost of living and the shortages of food.

She was a little ashamed of herself too for not telling him she still wanted to go to France, and that Miranda was giving her driving lessons whenever she could borrow her uncle’s car. But Belle reasoned with herself that they might never get accepted anyway. Besides, the war might be over soon, even though Jimmy thought not. She was relieved he had not been badly hurt and she wanted him to go back to France remembering the park in summer, their lovemaking, good meals and laughter. Not a wife who always seemed to have something else up her sleeve.

Chapter Thirteen

1917

Belle reached the bicycle shed and before pulling the cycle out, she hitched up the skirt of her uniform dress a couple of inches and tightened her belt to secure it.

It was a mild April evening, and after a long day in a stuffy, somewhat gloomy ward it was good to be out in the fresh air. The ride home over the heath always invigorated her and she was looking forward to it.

But as she pulled her bicycle out, she saw that yet again both tyres were flat. There was no point in trying to pump them up; like all the other times this had happened, she knew it had been done intentionally. As she spun the wheels round, sure enough, there was a flat-headed tack in both of them.

Belle was adept now at mending punctures, in fact since learning to ride she had become expert at all kinds of repairs. But not here – she would have to walk home with the bicycle and fix it there.

As she began walking, pushing her bicycle, several nurses, other volunteers and orderlies on their way home or just arriving for the night shift waved or said goodnight. She had become quite well known at the Herbert and had made many friends. She was going to miss them when she left for France with Miranda in two weeks’ time.

This business with the flat tyres was one thing she wasn’t going to miss though. Everyone else thought it was a stupid and random practical joke. But Belle wasn’t so sure about that; it felt as if she was being maliciously singled out.

There was no regularity to it. Sometimes it would be once in a fortnight, then nothing for weeks, and once there was a gap of three months, long enough for her to think whoever was doing it had grown tired of it.

But the culprit always came back. She had tried leaving her bicycle somewhere else, risking a telling off for doing so, but it still happened. Sister Adams had suggested it was done out of jealousy, because she was pretty and popular with staff and patients alike. Everyone agreed it must be someone who worked at the hospital.

The last year had been exacting for everyone in England. At the start of the war there was excitement and patriotic fervour to carry people along. But when it didn’t end as quickly as everyone had believed it would, and the casualty lists grew ever longer, along with the terror induced by air raids, and shortages of food, weariness and doubt had set in.

The war had brought some changes that Belle welcomed. Young women had gained more freedom, taking on jobs which just five years earlier would have been unthinkable for a woman. There were female bus conductresses and taxi drivers, postwomen, and women working in munitions factories and farming. Chaperones had become a thing of the past; as with so many young men off in France they were deemed unnecessary.

Yet Belle often smiled at angry letters written to the newspapers by staid matrons about the breaking down of morality. They claimed that young women were behaving recklessly, going out dancing, walking out after dark with men in uniform and drinking in public houses. All this was true, and Belle thought it was totally understandable that the young should seize the moment when they believed that death could strike at any time.

The last year had been good for her, though, apart from missing and worrying about Jimmy. The melancholy which followed the loss of her baby had gone, leaving just sadness which she knew she must live with. She had her close friendship with Miranda, and Mog and Garth not only accepted her work at the hospital now but were proud of her. Sometimes Mog said she hoped when the war was over that Belle would go back to millinery, but agreed that she had been right to volunteer at the hospital.

It was very hard work, with no let-up from the moment she got to the ward in the morning until she left at six. There was a constant stream of wounded every day, though never again as many as there had been after the battle of the Somme last July.

In the last year Belle had seen injuries so appalling that she could not believe the human body could withstand so much – loss of sight, arms and legs blown off, hideous burns and abdominal wounds. She hated the facial and head wounds most. People treated men on crutches or in a wheelchair as heroes, heaping admiration and respect on them. But those who were terribly disfigured found people averted their eyes from them, and even some of their own families found it difficult to deal with.

It was the colossal numbers of casualties in 1916 which had finally made it possible for Miranda and Belle to be accepted as ambulance drivers. The hellish battles at Verdun had resulted in 87,000 French casualties, and the battle of the Somme, which continued until November, chalked up over 400,000 among the Allies, finally changing the outlook of the Red Cross. On top of this many American ambulance drivers had left to join the army, as at long last America had agreed to come in on the Allies’ side. With German submarines attacking shipping mercilessly from February and just recently the battle in Arras commencing, creating even higher casualties, the authorities were glad of any help they could get.

Both girls had glowing references from ward sisters and Matron, plus they could drive. But Belle thought what had really tipped the balance in their favour was that they both spoke a little French, and kept coming back to apply, showing determination.

Matron, who rarely praised even highly experienced nurses, let alone lowly volunteers, had surprised Belle. ‘I thought at first that you were a foolish, giddy young woman,’ she said, fixing her sharp eyes that missed nothing on Belle. ‘But you have proved yourself to be reliable, conscientious and steady. Had you not been married, I would have asked you to train as a nurse. I don’t wish to lose your help here, but I know that the quicker wounded men can be got from the dressing stations to hospitals, the more likely they are to survive. I shall be stating to the Red Cross that I believe you have the necessary resourcefulness and pluck, and that you have had enough experience here to be suitable for the task.’