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Authors: Kate Williams

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She wished that Johnson was beside her, solid and matter-offact, not like this man. His eyes were still closed. She could see blood running down his cheek. There was an X on his forehead marking that he had had his morphine shot. She couldn’t think of a thing to say. To him, she knew, her misery would be nothing. She was uninjured, driving an ambulance, could even go back to England if she couldn’t stand it. The guns boomed. She knew, rationally, that they were many miles away.
But they feel so near!

‘What did you say, miss?’

‘Nothing, nothing, sorry.’ She had mumbled it out, in spite of herself. Then she felt worse. Perhaps he was desperate to hear her say something.

‘My name is Witt,’ she said, full of feelings of treachery towards her father. ‘Celia Witt. I’m from London.’ She didn’t have to be Emmeline for him.

He did not reply. A man cried out from the back. ‘Mam!’ he wailed. ‘Mam!’

‘Shut that!’ shouted another.

Celia gathered her courage. ‘Where are you from?’ In front of her, the lights of the other ambulance looked like they were wavering in the darkness. That, she thought, must be terrible. What if the lights went when you were driving and you couldn’t see at all?

‘Birmingham.’

‘Oh.’ She had never been there. They were heading up the hill now, rumbling slowly. She turned the corner and the man in the back groaned. ‘Is it nice there?’ She was suddenly desperate for him to talk. She wanted him to tell her about Birmingham or his childhood or his sweetheart or anything. Anything so that she did not have to listen to the thrum of the engine, which couldn’t drown the coughing and the moans. ‘Mam! Mam!’ the man in the back was crying. ‘Make it stop!’

Celia kept on through the darkness, forcing herself to stay calm. As Johnson had explained, there were no signposts to the station or the hospitals. She could only go by landmarks. Hospital 5 was up a hilly road past four oak trees, number 6 after a double bend in the road. ‘Whatever you do, don’t miss the turning,’ said Johnson. ‘You can’t double back; you have to find a road to turn around in and then you run the risk of colliding with another ambulance. It’s easy to spot the turnings now, but not when it’s raining, you know?’

‘It’s terrible out there, miss,’ the sitter said, suddenly. ‘You can’t imagine.’ He leant his head on the window. He knocked against it as she changed gear, but he did not flinch.

‘Is it cold?’ she said. He did not answer. She glanced at him. His eyes were closed.
Oh God. Please let him not be dead. Let him just be sleeping.
Surely he was not dead, she told herself. Surely someone well enough to sit up front was not going to die just like that? She had never seen a dead body before. Should she pray for him?
Oh God,
she thought,
just keep going.

The man in the back was still coughing. It was getting worse now, as he whooped and hiccupped between coughs, gasping for breath. How long could he carry on like this? she wondered. Why had they not given him something to help?

The man who had been shouting for his mother was weeping now, huge, shuddering, pleading sobs. ‘Mam!’ he said.

‘Shut up, you blasted bloody fool. Shut it!’ That, she felt sure, was one of the sitters. There was a bump.
No!
she thought.
Has he
hit
him? Oh God
.

Another one cried out now. Then another.

‘You shut up too! Can’t you wait?’

Celia drove carefully around the corner. What if they began to fight?
Just keep going
, she repeated, but still. Those men on stretchers couldn’t defend themselves.

‘Mam! Mam!’

And then came the most terrible sound, an awful strangulated, breathless gobble. It sounded like fluid and a mouth full of foam. She knew immediately: it was the man with no legs. The orderly’s
voice resounded in her head.
It’s the ones that can’t shout that you need to pity.
She changed gear as they took the hill. Anger surged through her heart. ‘Why do they not give them something for the pain?’

The sitter did not reply. Perhaps he really was dead.
Keep going.

‘Shut up, you devil.’ There was another thump. And a scream.

She could feel a tear pricking at her eye.
No,
she told herself.
No!

The man did not stop screaming. Then another joined in. And another. Three different types of noise: long, awful wails, a sharp, repeated scream, a low growl. The sitter was shouting at them, but they would not stop.
Stay on the road,
she told herself. But what could they do? Could they break out, come and attack her? It was impossible to square this vanload of men with those she had seen at Waterloo station, smart in their uniforms, singing and waving, shouting jauntily at passing women:
We’ll be back soon, girls! Don’t forget us!
These men in the back were another breed altogether, like animals.
And one had no legs, gobbled rather than screamed.
She cursed herself for her naivety. She had thought that men being taken to hospital would be grateful, quiet. She thought of her own teddies’ hospital, set up in her bedroom, silent bears waiting appreciatively for her ministrations.
Not this,
she thought.
Not this.
They screamed and screamed and all she wanted to do was join in. There was another thump. ‘Shut it, you bastards!’

Celia looked ahead and realised that the girl in front must have turned off, for her lights were no longer there. Without her, she could hardly make out the road. She did not think she could see any of the landmarks that Johnson had pointed out. How was she supposed to see a tree in this?
Oh God.
Johnson had told her to make sure she didn’t miss the turning. But what if she had done an even worse thing? What if she was completely lost? These roads could be going anywhere. Her heart was banging, her face on fire.
I can’t bear it!

There was another scream, and the sitter swore again. He sounded as if he was punching the wall.

It struck her that a hearty type of girl like Warterton might
have turned back and shouted something half jokey like ‘Now stop that, boys! What’s a girl to do in all this din?’ The commandant would have threatened them with goodness knows what. Even Shepherd would probably have piped up with something. And then they would have heard her pretty voice and stopped, probably asked her to say something else, just for the sake of hearing a girl speak. So why couldn’t Celia? Because whenever she opened her mouth, she wanted to cry for help.

She tried to speak, but the only thing she could say was ‘ “Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour/Draws on apace; four happy days bring in …” ’

She paused. The men were still groaning.
Come on,
she told herself.
Keep going.
Surely she hadn’t missed the oak trees; how could she? She must have missed them. She recognised nothing on this road. The legless man gobbled. She wanted to drop her head and cry. Instead, she would continue and find a place to turn round. Why was there no other ambulance?

‘Go on, love,’ came a voice she didn’t recognise. ‘Keep going with the story.’

‘ “Do you amend it then. It lies in you. Why should Titania cross her Oberon?” ’

The men must be able to sense the fear in her voice, because they were moaning more loudly. She eased off the accelerator, peering out. The ambulance tipped over a stone, and she heard the pneumonia man groan. Still no response from the man next to her. She crept forward on the dark road, feeling herself in the greatest pit of despair she had ever experienced. Surely every minute counted for these poor men, and she was hopelessly lost in the middle of France. Johnson had given her excellent instructions and she had failed to carry out even the simplest. How she detested herself!

There was another groan from the back. ‘Tell us the story, gal,’ called the man who had spoken before. ‘Just tell us.’

‘ “Out of this wood do not desire to go. Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.” ’

And then – she turned a corner and almost slammed on the
brakes in shock. The four oak trees. There they were, ahead of her. This was surely the turning Johnson had told her about. Her heart leapt. ‘ “Away with us to Athens; three and three. We’ll hold a feast in great solemnity!” ’

She swung the ambulance up the drive. The men in the back groaned at the speed but she hardly heard. ‘We are nearly there!’ she called out gaily. She could see the hospital ahead of her. The flaps of the canvas marquee were open, and nurses – oh God, nurses – were standing waiting for her.
Hi!
she wanted to shout.
Hi there!

She brought the ambulance to a stop. Behind her the men were crying, great lolloping sobs. ‘Mother!’ called out a different voice. Celia heard the doors being opened and the voices of the orderlies taking out the stretchers.

An orderly opened the passenger door and leant in to help the man next to her. ‘I think he’s dead,’ she said.

‘Feels warm enough to me.’ He fingered the man’s neck. ‘No, beating away. Must have just dropped off.’

Johnson had told her not to leave her cab: ‘The faster you can turn around, the quicker you’ll have your next load of men. Anyway, you don’t want to see.’ But she couldn’t help it. She hopped down and watched the orderly taking out the stretchers. The man with no legs had been taken off first and the sitters had gone, so there was only the one still coughing and two men waiting quietly. They were surely the same ones who had been screaming, but now they were silent, only flinching when they were touched. Neither was much older than her, she thought.

One looked up at her. ‘You were the girl reciting?’ he said. She nodded. ‘That was nice.’

‘You’ve delivered us a good lot of chaps, driver,’ said a nurse. ‘Should keep us busy.’ Her wide white hat flapped in the dark.

‘They are quieter for you than they were for me.’

‘I should think so. You should tell them to stop if they call out.’

‘Will they live?’

‘We do our best, driver. Like you.’

‘And then they go back home?’

‘Home? No. Not if they can still walk. Back out again.’

Celia looked at her, hopelessly. ‘But they can’t. How can they? How can any of them be fit for duty?’

‘A lot of them want to go back. Careful there.’ An orderly was pulling out the coughing soldier. His uniform was covered with yellowy-green stuff.

‘He has pneumonia?’

The nurse tossed her head. ‘He should be so lucky. Gas. Shrivels the lungs.’ The man screamed out. ‘Come along, soldier, none of that. We’ll soon get you comfortable.’ She turned and spoke over her shoulder. ‘Go on, driver, off you trot.’

Celia stared into the back of her ambulance. Even in the dark, she could see that it was spattered in blood and grime; whatever the soldier had been coughing up; gobbets of flesh, too, probably from the man without legs. The stench of blood and urine was overpowering.

‘Who cleans this up?’ she asked a passing orderly.

‘Why you, miss. As far as I know. Mind you, I don’t think you do it until you have finished all your convoys.’

Celia gazed at the filth. She could not quite say what had shocked her more – that she had to clean it, or that she would have to fill it with men again when it was still covered in blood. The commandant had said they would have to clean the ambulances. But Celia had thought it would be polishing the outside – not this.

‘Driver!’ It was the nurse she had spoken to before. ‘Don’t dawdle! Off you go.’

Celia climbed into the cab and turned the ambulance around. On the way there, struggling with her load, she had imagined how joyously she would drive back, speeding along the roads, zipping down the hills. But although she drove quickly, there was no happiness in her heart. In an hour or so she would be back on the same road, her vehicle filled with screaming, terrified lumps of human flesh.

‘I cannot do it,’ she said to Shepherd, who was standing by her ambulance at the railway. ‘I can’t do it. Really.’

Shepherd turned to her, eyes ablaze. ‘I don’t think I can do it either. But you have to! You have to.’

Tears were running down Celia’s face. ‘I thought the one next to me was dead. The man in the back had no legs. I can’t!’

Another girl looked across. ‘Stop it!’ hissed Shepherd. ‘You’ll have the commandant over. Just stop it!’ But Celia couldn’t. The tears were pouring down her face and her mouth was making sounds she didn’t recognise. The coughing, the gas, the screams, the man with no legs.
I see these things with parted eye, When everything seems double. Help me!
She felt a crash that knocked her off balance and fell to the damp earth. Shepherd was beside her. ‘I am sorry, Witt,’ she said. ‘I really am. But you can’t cry like that. You have to go on.’ She held Celia tight and Celia wept on to her shirt. ‘Come on, girl,’ she said, rocking her. ‘We are the lucky ones. We get to stay alive.’

TWENTY-THREE

‘Come on, Witt, stop daydreaming!’ Shepherd slopped water at the back of her legs as she walked past. ‘Commandant will shoot you if she finds you idling.’ She broke into an exaggerated accent, imitating Commandant Robinson. ‘If you find you don’t have enough to do, Witt, then you can clean out my ambulance as well, thank you very much. Witty! Are you listening to me?’ A sponge landed on Celia’s head. ‘Get cleaning!’

Celia threw the sponge back. ‘Not with this grimy thing!’ After that first night, when Shep had held her close then forced her to collect more men and set off again to the hospital, she had felt almost bound to her for ever. Sometimes she wondered if she was being faithless to Tom with Shep. She tried to imagine the three of them in Paris together, all reading books. Surely Tom wouldn’t mind.

Ten o’clock every morning was ambulance cleaning. Polishing the outside, cleaning the engine was the easy part. A bit of oil was nothing to the awful blood and vomit of human misery.

She opened the back doors of her ambulance and wanted to retch. Last night she had carried cases of gangrene, and the smell was shocking, as if it had got much worse overnight. Overwhelmed with misery, she set off for her bucket of water. All over France, women like her were scrubbing, she reminded herself. One VAD whom she’d met at Hospital 7 on her third night had declared Celia lucky to be helping with the patients. ‘Usually all I do is wash dishes,’ she said. ‘I never knew there were so many dishes in the world.’

Celia scrubbed at the bloody lumps and washed out the horrible foam. Another boy with gas. This one she was sure was no longer alive when she handed him over. She should feel lucky, she
reminded herself. She slopped out the interior with disinfectant and then another bucket of water. The soiled water dripped on to the ground. She felt ill again at the sight of it.

It was her second month with the ambulances, and already Celia felt as if she was running through a routine. After that first, dreadful night, she had grown used to the work, quicker than she could ever have imagined. She had become accustomed to feeling wearied beyond measure, never undressing for bed because she had to be ready to leap out of her sleeping bag at any moment, almost falling asleep with exhaustion beside the ambulance, waiting for the next load of men. Johnson had adopted her as a sort of pet, would wave across to her when she saw her, crying ‘Keep it up, Witty!’

She had come to recognise the stretcher-bearers and a few of the nurses at the hospitals. Driving through the night was still hateful, the men often terrifying, but there was nothing to beat the feeling of relief when she reached the hospital and saw the nurses and orderlies waiting there for her load. She found other sources of joy too: a sitter who was eager to talk about growing up on a farm in Wales (Shepherd had given her a few cigarettes to pass out), a man in the back who shouted ‘Thank you, miss! God bless you, miss!’ as she navigated a pothole. Another man shouting as he got in: ‘Thank our stars we have a girl driver, chaps. They’re always more gentle on the bumps.’ To her shame, the sense of horror she had felt on the first night was fading as she grew used to seeing injured men. She often had to remind herself what a healthy soldier might look like.

She had even come to find a pleasure in driving itself – it was so pleasingly predictable. She knew she would never be a good driver like Shep, who sped ahead of her on the roads, weaving in and out, dodging potholes. But she was passable, as good as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and that was enough. ‘You are turning into a reasonably competent driver, Witt,’ said the commandant in her second week, while she was inspecting her cleaning. ‘I had my doubts about you. But I get good reports from the hospitals. They
say the men rather take to you.’ She patted the bonnet. ‘Yes. Quite a good little driver.’

I won’t!
Celia cried to herself.
I won’t be a good little driver! Not surrounded by all this blood and misery.
Yet she found herself becoming one, chatting with the soldiers. And she began to feel proud of herself for doing such work, and thought that even Verena would think so too – though she would never tell her mother about the cleaning, scrubbing lumps of flesh from the floor, picking up teeth and what were surely bits of bone. Celia smiled sometimes to think of how her fellow drivers were exactly those Verena had wished her to be friends with, wealthy, influential London girls – and Fitzhugh the daughter of an earl! Verena had thought she would meet this type of girl by curtseying to the Queen, then going to balls, not wading about in rubber boots, knee deep in filth, slopping out an ambulance full of grime.

And Tom, surely Tom would be proud of her, she thought, cherish and admire her for what she had done, say,
Well, I never thought you could do that!
She imagined him watching her work.
Look at me now,
she would say.

She tried to stop herself from wondering constantly where he and Michael were. She wrote them both a letter every night in her head, telling Michael what she was doing, listing the places she drove and the food she ate. To Tom she told her feelings: how each morning she was torn between pride in herself and hatred at being part of this great, awful thing. She described how the dorm room was freezing even in May and there was never enough food, how English – Tweedledee – was the most popular girl in the station because her mother sent her huge parcels of chocolate and she would go around offering her great brown package, a little like the lucky dip at the party. She told him how she dreaded the smell of the men, how she could never get her ambulance as clean as Shep’s, however much she polished. She described cranking the engine, a job she liked, how she did it for the other girls when the Commandant wasn’t looking. She told him everything – except for how much she was thinking about him, how when she was
driving her empty ambulance to the station, she shouted out his name, so that only the trees could hear.

She had written twice to Tom care of his mother, although she didn’t expect her to send the envelopes on. She had sent six letters, one a week, to Michael and received two replies – short, a lot about mud. She’d had one from Emmeline, with a drawing of herself sitting on the Bloomsbury sofa done by Mr Janus. She had to admit she found it touching, in spite of herself.

Miss Webb had written three long letters about how dull nursing was and how she envied Celia in France, and Celia had sent back platitudes because she could not bear to write the truth. Nothing from Verena, though one letter from Jennie (
not much news from here, miss, house a bit draughty but we can’t stop up every gap
), and no word about Rudolf. Still, out of all the girls, only Warterton had a steady stream of letters, two a week from her mother, her sisters and her brothers, every one finished with a flourish and
Rule Britannia.
Shep thought her own mother was probably too busy writing to her brothers; Fitz said her family (she never said Papa or Mama, Celia noted) wouldn’t want to know about war things.

Shep was keeping a little diary – to look back on when she was a student, she said. Celia tried to do the same but found it pained her, for it only made her go into her own thoughts: how Verena was alone, Tom and Michael somewhere she did not know, and she hadn’t heard from Arthur for ages.
Some writer you are,
she said to herself, promising that she would do it after the war. Then, she thought, she would be jolly, laughing off the bad food and the rain, not tired and nervous, brought low by always feeling wet and chilly, sick of the dirt and the suffering of the men. Brave, not weak and easily cowed as she often felt now.
I have such fun with the other girls
, she told Tom in her head.
We are pleased to do our bit. The more we do, the quicker the war will end.
She said the same to the other drivers, to the commandant if she asked. And yet, you might also say (Mr Sparks, for example, might say) that she was just taking men to be patched up and sent out again, probably to be killed, and how was that really bringing Rudolf back?

*

Celia looked up and caught Shepherd’s eye. ‘No slacking,’ she mouthed.

In their spare time, the two of them tried to talk about books. Shep loved history – particularly the Wars of the Roses – and Celia chastised herself for not listening more carefully to Mr Janus talk about Edward IV. And Shep told jokes; even after nearly three months, she still thought of new ones. ‘Stop it, Shepherd,’ groaned Fitzhugh as they were all about to sleep and Shep’s slight voice came from the dark: ‘What did the tiger say to the lion?’

But then, Celia thought, how could she really say she was friends with Shep? She had not told her the truth, pretending she was twenty-one, the third child of four, that her father was English. Shep had told her everything, while Celia was nothing but a fraud.

Celia walked to the front of the ambulance to start the engine, before checking the tyres and then beginning the tedious job of polishing the exterior so that it was perfect for eleven a.m. On the stroke of the hour, she stood in front of her vehicle and looked smartly ahead as the commandant crawled into the back of Warterton’s ambulance to begin her inspection. Celia estimated that she would get around to her in about half an hour. She had a stock of images of Tom for just these moments, conjured up to stop herself thinking about bombs and guns: playing cards in the trenches, running races and eating Christmas dinner (she’d read the cooks brought in special beef for the day). This time she pictured him playing cards. ‘King of clubs,’ he said, putting it down. ‘I win.’

Celia smiled at the commandant as she arrived, followed her around the ambulance.

‘Not bad, Witt,’ said Robinson, brushing off her hands. ‘Those tyres will need pumping up soon, and you can douse out the back with disinfectant again. Tomorrow it will need to be perfect, otherwise I will have to impose a punishment.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Instead of turning away, she remained. ‘Witt. I am wondering. Your full name is de Witt, I believe?’

Celia felt a thudding panic across her chest. ‘Yes, Commandant.’

‘A German name?’

‘Yes, Commandant, though of Dutch origin. But my mother is English.’
Oh God.

The other girls were staring over now. Warterton was the most obviously curious, smiling at Celia and trying to catch her eye.

‘Can you speak German, Witt?’

‘I learnt at school,’ Celia lied. She thought of her aunt Lotte teaching her the words at her kitchen table in the Black Forest. Heinrich asking her endless questions about her family and the servants in German. Hilde and Johann running around the fields, dipping their hands in the river for fish. Johann. She thought of him then and her heart was struck hard. Seventeen, now, too young to go to war. Unless he had done as Tom and Michael had and run away anyway.

‘Indeed. And what sort of standard would you say you were?’

Celia could not answer. If she were to say
Good,
then she would lose everything. This was surely a trap. She stared at the commandant. Robinson looked around at the other girls and took Celia to one side.

‘Let me be plain with you, Witt. We are looking for a girl with a reasonable standard of German. We have a German man brought to us in error through a mix-up at the clearing station. We need to ask him questions. Do you think you are up to it?’

Celia could have hugged her in relief. ‘Yes, of course, Commandant.’

‘Good. I will meet you by your ambulance today at two and you will drive us over.’

Celia returned to her vehicle and gripped the bonnet. As the commandant walked away, she stopped and turned. ‘And Witt? Don’t mention it to anyone, if you please. You can tell them you are driving me to a meeting at Hospital One.’

*

‘If only Mother knew!’ said Shepherd crossly, spooning up her stew in the canteen. ‘Sometimes, when I am driving along in the middle of the night with a cart full of bloody, swearing men, I think: did you imagine it was like this, Mother? And did you have any idea we’d have to clean up blood? Or sit in cabs polluted with measles? Our brave girls indeed!’ The canteen was at its fullest. Shep had to shout to get her voice heard above the others.

‘My mother is probably leading a recruitment drive in Surrey right now,’ said Warterton. ‘Fitz’s too. You’re lucky, Witt, that yours is a stay-at-home type.’ Celia had told them that Verena liked to knit, was not much interested in the war. Warterton’s mother sounded rather terrifying, she thought. She imagined a rather larger version of Warterton holding huge meetings in halls in Cheam, calling out for young people to do their bit.

‘Yes, Ma talks a lot about “my girl out in France”,’ Shep sighed.

‘I imagine they eat buns at the recruitment meetings. Not this morass,’ said Fitzhugh, gesturing at the stew. It was always a competition to see if you could find any meat under the blobs of vegetable and gristle.

‘We’re lucky, don’t you know,’ said Shepherd. ‘Babb tells me that the girls at Station Two have a real beast of a commandant who makes them clean the lavatories and do all kinds of punishment duties. He says we should count our blessings that we have the Frenchwomen in to do the lav work.’ Shep was a favourite with the orderlies like Babb. They loved to make her hang back and chat at the station at the end of her shift.

‘I am not cleaning that lavatory!’ said Warterton. ‘It gets into a real state sometimes.’ There was only one between forty or so.

‘You’d have to if you were in Station Two.’

‘How do they ever get time to sleep?’ It was hard enough as it was, what with driving all night, ambulance cleaning, and then being on call all morning for ferrying doctors and nurses between hospitals, mortuary runs with miserable, bloated men, their cause of death written on tags, taking coffins to funerals and general errands. And if you were out at mealtimes, tough luck: the cook served when she pleased.

‘Got one!’ Shepherd held aloft a blob of meat. ‘No, Warts, it’s mine. Well, I don’t suppose they do. Babb says that if we get offered a spell in Station Two, we shouldn’t take it. Said a girl from here was sent off there for a few weeks, never came back.’

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