The Storms of War (28 page)

Celia stood up, saluted and started towards the door. Then the commandant’s voice. ‘Miss Witt!’ She turned around. ‘I have an idea. I feel our best chance of success with you is if you go with girls you know from here. With some it is the opposite. I shall put in a request for you to be transferred with Shepherd if possible, even perhaps the others.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Rest assured, this is not favouritism, Witt. Far from it. Remember what I said. I am counting on you to do your job well.’

‘Yes, Commandant,’ said Celia, breathlessly, knowing it was wrong of her to feel so happy. She wanted to kiss the commandant on the cheek, hurried out of the room before the urge became too strong.

‘We’re together!’ she hissed to Shep that evening. ‘The commandant said we could go together! Mainly because I’m such a bad driver.’

Shep caught her hands and whirled her around the tiny space between the beds. ‘You
clever
thing, Witt. I knew that your hopeless gear changes would come in handy.’ They spun around again and then fell on to the bed, giggling. Someone from another bed told them to be quiet.

Shep lowered her voice. ‘We are friends for
ever
now that we are going to France together. Now I will tell you a secret, if you tell me one back.’ She hurtled on, putting her mouth close to Celia’s ear. ‘I won’t tell the other girls, but father is Jewish. I know, I don’t look it, do I? I put on a good show, eating the same as you lot. But I don’t always feel it as mother isn’t really Jewish. I could be Church of England, like you, just as easily. I’ll say the prayers – but
you
know. That’s the reason I am twenty-one and not married. The suitors don’t like it.’

Celia’s face was hot. Here was her chance to say
I am German, my father is incarcerated, I am not yet eighteen.

‘Go on. What’s your secret?’

‘I think I’m in love with a boy who … worked for our family. I thought we were just friends, that we’d be friends for ever. But now I think I would never want to be parted from him if we met again.’ And just as she said it, the words were true. That was it. She had read about love – they were always in love in Jane Austen – but she could not grasp what it meant. The emotion they felt in books, so pure and overwhelming, was something she could not feel, because nothing was ever a total feeling to her; there was always something else peering in at the sides. And she still did not exactly feel that. But she wanted to be always with Tom, even if they never went to Paris, and that was surely a type of love, a bit like Captain Wentworth always thinking of Anne.

‘So that’s why you’re not married. I knew there was something! Where’s he now? In France too?’

Celia nodded. Her mind was flurrying with strange ideas. Did she have to marry him? Have babies with him? None of that seemed so terrible as having to
tell
him. Would she have to do that? Surely so. He couldn’t be on the front line with all the other soldiers and not know. She wished she could sit down and turn herself into a list – what she felt, what she desired, written in a notebook with ruled lines. But instead she was a jumble of thoughts, scribbled all over the page. If she saw him, maybe they would become clear, she thought.

Shep laughed. ‘He’d be proud of you. You never know, we
might
see him out there. Better keep up with washing your hair just in case, Miss Witt.’

Celia nodded. Maybe, after the war was over, they wouldn’t come back. They would live together in Paris and be best friends and there wouldn’t be any babies because she would keep her gown on.

‘Will you two stop whispering?’ shouted the girl from the other side. ‘We have to be up early to leave in the morning. Or have you forgotten?’

They caught the train to Dover with English and Dartington, two stolid girls who had been always together in Aldershot. ‘The female Tweedledum and Tweedledee,’ Shep called them. None of them really felt like talking, so Shep took out her cards and taught them twenty-one, winning every time. ‘I should do this for money,’ she said. Celia sat there, still feeling dizzy with her thoughts from the night before. The splash of clarity, the spark of it all shocked her. She loved Tom. And if she loved him, if she felt that way about him, he must surely love her back.

At Dover, a girl called Warterton approached them in the queue. ‘I hear I’m in a group with you chaps,’ she said to Shep. ‘I got the info ahead of time. This is Genevieve Fitzhugh.’ She waved her hand at a tall girl with reddish hair and a very wide, pale face. Warterton was big too, but blonde and round-faced, the sort of person, Celia thought sinkingly, always chosen to be head girl. They all shook hands.

On the boat, Warterton alternated between talking, sleeping and eating. ‘Don’t you ever just sit and stare out of the window?’ Shep asked, exasperated.

‘Mother says people shouldn’t waste their time.’

They were treated to quite a lot of what Mother thought. As they learned, Father had worked for a mining company in Africa and Mother knew a lot about life in dirty climates. There were
lots
of fleas in Nigeria, so Warterton was ready for that. Mother was a great recruiter of men, and so the minute Warterton had turned of age, she had gone to the recruitment bureau. ‘Women must do their bit!’ she said to them.

‘Well, we are! You’re preaching to the wrong lot,’ said Shep.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee both whispered, one after the other, that they had brothers in France and wanted to help. Warterton said she had delayed her coming-out year so long, and now she was hoping that by coming here she had avoided it altogether. ‘I look like a great dancing umbrella in those gowns,’ she said. ‘Much better in uniform.’

Fitzhugh spent most of the time asleep. ‘She’s the daughter of an earl,’ hissed Warterton. ‘She’s Genevieve,
Lady
Fitzhugh. Says she would much prefer to be here doing something useful than on the debutante circuit.’

‘But this
is
a debutante circuit,’ said Shep.

Warterton shook her head. ‘Nonsense. Oh look,’ she said as the train rattled along. ‘Chinamen.’ Celia opened her eyes and saw groups of Chinese labourers building huts, three men in khaki overseeing them. She had only ever seen a Chinaman in London; three of them, near a shop in Oxford Street when she had been with Emmeline. These ones were dressed in shirts and trousers, thin shoes, piling up stacks of wood. ‘We should be nearly there, then.’

Celia pressed her face close to the window, watching the men.

Celia drove to the station feeling as if the guns were firing inside her head, sharp stabs over and over.
Don’t let me down
, the commandant had said. She could feel the ground shaking under the wheels of her cab. How could the men stand it? She forced the ambulance into gear and manoeuvred it around the corner. She felt a surge of nausea, even though – or perhaps because – she had not eaten anything other than a few bits of chocolate for two days. She was terrified of arriving and collecting her men. She pulled the vehicle into gear and cursed herself. What had she been
thinking,
signing up to do this?

‘This way! Come along.’ A few hours earlier, the commandant of Station 3, Division 4, Étaples, had opened the door of a large wooden building. ‘Look smart. This is where you will sleep, eat, live, spend the few spare minutes when you are not with your ambulances. Your beds will be allocated to you and you can lay out your belongings.’ Commandant Robinson must have been about forty-five or so. She looked jolly, Celia thought, like a butcher’s wife – round red face, large chest, short legs. But she did not smile, and her voice carried around the room.

Celia and the five other women staggered into the room, exhausted after two long days of travel. A dirty, crowded boat to Boulogne, then twenty miles in the back of an ambulance to Étaples. ‘Now you know how it feels for the men you’ll be carrying,’ said the driver when they complained about being bounced about.

Celia stared at the bare room, six canvas pallets on the floor. She cast a look at Shep, grateful that they were together at least.

‘You girls are lucky,’ declared Commandant Robinson. ‘The other stations send the drivers out the minute they arrive. Fortunately
for you, today has been quiet for us and all the mortuary runs have been completed. You will have two hours’ break here. At eight p.m. sharp, you will report for duty, wearing your uniform, hands washed. You will be taken out by one of our existing drivers to see the layout of the hospitals. Then at midnight you will go out on your own.’

‘On our own?’ Warterton spoke first. ‘We had thought we would be on probation for a month, learning the ropes.’

The commandant shrugged. ‘Those were the good old days. No time for that now. Straight out at midnight.’

‘But we have never driven in the dark before!’

‘Well, no time like the present. You girls have it easy. At least it’s not winter.’

‘But what will we eat?’ asked Shep.

Commandant Robinson snorted. ‘More fool you, Miss Shepherd, for not bringing food with you. You have missed lunch and dinner. Breakfast is tomorrow at eight. If you are delayed while out on patrol and arrive back too late, you’ll have to find something else. Most of our girls eat when they can. You would be well advised to ask your families to send food from home. Biscuits.’

Celia was doubtful about Emmeline’s ability to send biscuits. And if she did, who would she write as? From one Emmeline to another?

‘Your duties have been made clear to you, but I shall reiterate them. You will drive from eight p.m. onwards, bringing injured men back from the front. At six a.m., you have roll call. At eight a.m. breakfast. Then you must ensure that your ambulance is clean and the mechanics and tyres are in perfect order. I shall make an inspection at eleven. You are free for the rest of the day, but you are at our disposal if doctors or sisters require driving, or for funeral duty, and there is also housework to be done. Each time you come in you will write your name on a pencil board, and when the names preceding yours have been crossed out, it is your turn to work. You are responsible for the cleanliness of the canteen and the mess room. I will distribute those tasks. You will be allowed an afternoon off weekly.’

Celia saw Warterton and Shepherd gazing hopelessly at her, their mouths working, unable to say a thing.

‘Right, ladies, settle down. Eight p.m., remember. Your beds are thus.’ She pointed. ‘Warterton, Fitzhugh, English, Dartington, Shepherd and then Witt.’ Celia had the bed at the end of the room, which she supposed was a blessing – two walls for herself, even if she was near the door. The commandant gestured towards a pile of sleeping bags and blankets. ‘Take your bedding from there.’

Celia waited in line to make up her bed, and then sat down on it. Shepherd looked as if she was about to cry.

‘Psst, Witty,’ she said. ‘Over here.’ Celia crept over to her bed. ‘I’ve got some chocolate I kept from my last package.’ Shep’s mother had sent regular parcels to Aldershot, with perfumed rose petals, cakes from the cook, and chocolate. ‘Don’t let the other girls see.’ She delved into her bag and picked out a dusty-looking bar, cradled it in her hand.

‘Thanks, Shep.’ Celia seized a piece and gobbled it down. She wasn’t normally a great chocolate eater, found it too sweet, but right now she would have eaten anything. She regretted not buying bread from the Frenchwomen who had held it up to them at the windows of the train. ‘So we go out driving straight away?’

‘Why of course! We are ready, aren’t we?’

‘You
are. Don’t you remember? I can’t drive!’

‘Maggie said the food was filthy,’ shouted Warterton across the room. Maggie was a school friend of hers who had come out to do the job in January but had been sent home with pneumonia. ‘What would they think at home if they could see us now? Covered in mud and no dinner.’

‘Do stop talking, old thing,’ called Fitzhugh. ‘You heard what she said: we need to be up for driving in a few hours.’

Now, heading along the dark road, Celia longed to be back in Aldershot. How could she have thought she was ready? In half an hour or so, she would be carrying dying men. For the last few hours, she had been travelling up and down the routes with
a long-term girl, Johnson. She was a friendly sort, short-haired and cheerful, but Celia could hardly bear to ask her anything. She felt that the minute she asked a question, hundreds would come tumbling out and Johnson would not be able to cope with all her desperate pleading. She didn’t really want to know about spanners and signs and how not to bump the men too much. What she really wanted to say was
I am afraid. Help me. I made a mistake in coming here.
She knew it was cowardice, but she could not help it. The guns banged in her head, again and again.

As she drove, she tried to recite Johnson’s instructions in her mind. She was already exhausted, desperate for sleep, but she would be on duty until at least four or so. Why was it so
dark
? She knew, they’d said enough times in training, that there would be no headlights, only oil sidelights (and not even those if there was a raid on), but she hadn’t grasped how black it would be without them.

She changed gear and almost hit the back of the ambulance in front of her.
Oh God.
Johnson had said that the key was to keep moving. ‘No point being distracted by the chaps’ screams. Just get them to the doctors, fast as you can, and try not to bump them. Things can fall out.’

‘What do you mean, things?’

‘Well, you know, when they haven’t got any skin, they can lose bits of what is underneath.’

Celia felt sick. She had envisaged broken legs, concussion, cuts, black eyes. ‘It’s not what people at home think of as injured,’ said Johnson, as if reading her mind. ‘With a black eye, they’ll keep them back to fight. No, these are burns where all their skin is off, wounds where there is only a flap of skin and their hand holding in their guts.’

‘That’s not possible.’

‘It’s nothing compared to the gas. But don’t worry,’ the other girl continued. ‘You’ll soon get used to it. And remember, they are much better off with you in here than hanging about at the station.’

Celia finally summoned up the courage to ask what she wanted
to, what she had wanted to ask as soon as she signed up. ‘Do you know the names of the men?’

‘What, the men in your ambulance? Of course not. Why would you?’

‘My brother and friend are in France. I could be driving them and not know it.’

‘I wouldn’t say so. Out of all the hundreds of thousands of men in France, that would be a coincidence too far, if you ask me. Now look sharp here. At the bottom of this hill, there is a really bad bend. We call it Knife Hill. One girl came off here in the winter and had to go back home for it. Bad for her, terrible for all the chaps who went over with her.’

‘That’s awful.’ Celia thought dizzily of pictures of spanners and driving around the track in Aldershot. She had imagined herself going more or less in straight lines on neat French roads.

‘Now watch carefully. Keep going down the hill at this kind of speed. As you approach the bend, drop down into first and go as slowly as you can. Don’t start going slowly too early, ‘cos then you might stall and the effort you need to start you up again might well send you off too fast. Got it?

Celia nodded. ‘Thank you.’ She tried to focus on the practical instructions, not the terrible imaginings in her head of the girl trying to pull it back, then the whole thing overturning as men with no skin screamed.

‘Right!’ said Johnson, patting her hand. ‘You know where you are going. You seem pretty ready to get on with it. Good luck, old thing. It’s only a five-mile drive. Not even to Kings Cross from Earls Court, and much less traffic. And remember, if you cry, you can’t see the road, so don’t.’

After their drive, Johnson had guided her in to park straight at the station and hopped out to her own ambulance. Celia kept the engine going and set off after her towards the railway.

By the train, Celia pulled open the back cloth doors, feeling afraid. There must be thirty or so ambulances lined up, waiting. Four hundred or so men waiting inside the carriages to be piled in, one by one. She glanced at Warterton, who was beside her,
but she was looking straight ahead. A few ambulances along was Shepherd, holding tight to the front of her vehicle. The train slid in and the bearers began clambering on, collecting stretchers or escorting men by their arms. ‘Gunshot, right knee!’ ‘Head wound!’ ‘Shrapnel, left eye!’ The orderlies read out the soldiers’ tags. There were bangs and bumps, shouted directions from the MOs – and the most terrible cries, more like animals than men. Celia got back into the ambulance and reversed closer to the train. She looked at the gearstick and the pedals.
Please,
she prayed
, please let me not stall on the way out. At least that!

There was an awful scream. ‘Damn and blast you all to hell! Let me die!’

‘Now come on, son, we’ll soon have you well again. In you go.’

She felt a bump that meant a stretcher-bearer was loading men on to her ambulance. There was a cry and a ‘Careful!’ Another bump, and the sound of sliding as they pushed in more stretchers. ‘Here you go!’ Footsteps, which must mean a walking man was being handed aboard. He moaned out a sound that was almost worse than the scream, it was so hopeless. She forced herself not to turn around and try to look through the blinds. The back was all covered off, Johnson had told her, to make sure the men couldn’t distract her. Celia supposed that some of them would be shocked that they were being driven by girls who looked younger than them. She kept her eyes forward, praying that the ambulance would do as she asked it, that she’d find the hospital in the darkness, somehow. There were more bumps. The man who wanted to die was groaning now, the same sound over and over. The back doors were closed and she put her hands on the wheel. ‘Blast you! Blast you!’ screamed the man. Another was coughing, horrible retching sounds. Pneumonia, she supposed.

She felt a jolt as the doors were opened again and another stretcher was pushed on, but then withdrawn. ‘It’s all right, mate,’ the bearer was saying. ‘You can hang on a moment. We’ll wait till the next ambulance.’

‘Please!’ called the man. ‘Please!’

Celia lifted the canvas curtain despite herself and glanced
behind her. A man on a stretcher, his uniform torn, was being shifted to the side. Instead, she realised, they were bringing over a man from another ambulance. He was screaming. She looked, even though she knew she should not. His shirt just covered the top of a mass of bloody bandages. He had no legs.
Oh God. God help me.
There was a bang as he was lifted in, and a dreadful shriek.

Do the praying when you get back.
Johnson’s voice in her head.
Out in the field, you don’t have time.

There was a knock on the side door. She opened it to a bearer standing with a tall soldier, his eyes closed. His head was bandaged and his right arm was bound up as well, his sleeve torn. He had no coat. An awful smell of rotting filled the cab. ‘Here is your front sitter, driver. In the back, you have five stretchers and three sitters.’ He pushed the man into the front seat. ‘You new, driver?’

She nodded; no need, she supposed, to ask how he’d guessed. The man in the back moaned again and the other was coughing still.

‘Give him a cigarette to get him chatting. Take your mind off things.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Oh well. See if you can get him talking. Good for you, ain’t it?’ He gave the man a nudge. ‘Don’t take it too hard, love. At least they can shout. It’s the ones that can’t that you need to pity.’

He slammed the door – and she was on her own. She waited for the girls either side of her to drive off before she carefully turned the ambulance to go out of the gate. ‘How many?’ said the sergeant holding a board.

‘Five stretchers, three sitters. No, four sitters.’

‘You sure, driver?’

‘Certain.’ The smell of rotting was getting worse, she thought. What was wrong with the poor man?

‘Hospital Five. Off you go.’

He stepped back and she drove forward into the night. There was a bump as she reached the road, and she heard a moan from the back of the ambulance.
Help me!
she wanted to cry. She dropped her speed, and the dim lights of the ambulance ahead
moved away. She leant forward and tried to make out the road in the dark. Without a windscreen (taken out in case of bombs), the whole place loomed up in front of her, the monstrous shapes of trees, the blur of hills. A freezing draught was flapping through the thin canvas roof over the cab.