Part 20 (1/2)

Altogether it was a most entertaining afternoon, and when we came out in the dark and rain the eldest again slipped off to get a taxi, dodging cabs and horses with the dexterity of an acrobat.

Christmas came round, and there was tremendous compet.i.tion between the different wards, which vied with each other over the most original decorations.

At midday I was asked into the W.A.A.C.'s ward, where we had roast beef and plum pudding. The two women doctors who ran the hospital visited every ward and drank a toast after lunch. I don't know what they toasted in the men's wards, but in the W.A.A.C.'s it was roughly, ”To the women of England, and the W.A.A.C.s who would win the war, etc.” It seemed too bad to leave out the men who were in the trenches, so I drank one privately to them on my own.

As I sat in my little ward that night I thought of the happy times we had had last Christmas in the convoy, only a short year before.

CHAPTER XVIII

ROEHAMPTON: ”BOB” THE GREY, AND THE ARMISTICE

After Christmas it was thought I was well enough to be fitted with an artificial limb, and in due course I applied to the limbless hospital at Roehampton. The reply came back in a few days.

”DEAR SIR, (I groaned),

”You must apply to so-and-so and we will then be able to give you a bed in a fortnight's time, etc.

_Signed_: ”SISTER D.”

My heart sank. I was up against the old question again, and in desperation I wrote back:

”DEAR MADAM,

”My trouble is that I am a girl, etc.”

and poured forth all my woes on the subject. Sister D., who proved to be an absolute topper, was considerably amused and wrote back most sympathetically. She promised to do all she could for me and told the surgeon the whole story, and it was arranged for him to see me and advise what type of leg I had better wear and then decide where I was to be put up later. He was most kind, but I returned from the interview considerably depressed for, before I could wear an artificial leg, another operation had to be performed. It took place at the military hospital in January and I felt I should have to hurry in order to be ”doing everything as usual” by the time the year was up, as Captain C.

had promised.

For some reason, when I came round I found myself in the big W.A.A.C.s'

ward, and never returned to my little room again. I did not mind the change so much except for the noise and the way the whole room vibrated whenever anyone walked or ran past my bed. They nearly always did the latter, for they were none of them very ill. The building was an old workhouse which had been condemned just before the war, and the floor bent and shook at the least step. I found this particularly trying as the incision a good six inches long had been made just behind my knee, and naturally, as it rested on a pillow, I felt each vibration.

The sheets were hard to the touch and grey in colour even when clean, and the rows of scarlet blankets were peculiarly blinding. I realised the meaning of the saying: ”A red rag to a bull,” and had every sympathy with the animal! (It was so humorous to look at things from a patient's point of view.) It had always been our ambition at Lamarck to have red top blankets on every bed in our wards. ”They make the place look so bright and cheerful!” I daresay these details would have pa.s.sed unnoticed in the ordinary way, but I had already had eight months of hospitals, during which time I had hardly ever been out of pain, and all I craved was quiet and rest. Some of the women doctors were terribly sarcastic.

We were awakened at 5 a.m. as per hospital routine (how often I had been loth to waken the patients at Lamarck), and most of the W.A.A.C.s got up and dressed, the ones who were not well enough remaining in bed. At six o'clock we had breakfast, and one of them pushed a trolly containing slices of bread and mugs of tea from bed to bed. It rattled like a pantechnicon and shook the whole place, and I hated it out of all proportion. The ward was swept as soon as breakfast was over. How I dreaded that performance! I lay clenching the sides of the bed in expectation; for as surely as fate the sweeping W.A.A.C. caught her brush firmly in one of the legs. ”Sorry, miss, did it ketch you?” she would exclaim, ”there, I done it agin; drat this broom!”

There were two other patients in the room who relished the quiet in the afternoons when most of the W.A.A.C.s went out on pa.s.s. One of them was a sister from the hospital, and the other a girl suffering from cancer, both curtained off in distant corners. ”Now for a sleep, sister,” I would call, as the last one departed, but as often as not just as we were dropping off a voice would rouse us, saying: ”Good afternoon, I've just come in to play the piano to you for a little,” and without waiting for a reply a cheerful lady would sit down forthwith and bang away virtuously for an hour!

We had had a good many air raids before Christmas and I hoped Fritz would reserve his efforts in that direction till I could go about on crutches again. No such luck, however, for at 10 o'clock one night the warnings rang out. I trusted, as I had had my operations so recently, I should be allowed to remain; but some shrapnel had pierced the roof of the ward in a former raid and everyone had to be taken down w.i.l.l.y-nilly.

I hid under the sheets, making myself as flat as possible in the hopes of escaping. I was discovered of course and lifted into a wheel chair and taken down in the lift to the Padre's room, where all the W.A.A.C.s were already a.s.sembled. Our guns were blazing away quite heartily, the ”London front” having recently been strengthened. Just as I got down, the back wheel of my chair collapsed, which was cheering!

We sat there for some time listening to the din. Everyone was feeling distinctly peevish, and not a few slightly ”breezy,” as it was quite a bad raid. I wondered what could be done to liven up the proceedings, and presently espied a pile of hymn-books which I solemnly handed out, choosing ”Onward Christian Soldiers” as the liveliest selection! I could not help wondering what the distant F.A.N.Y.s would have thought of the effort. In the middle of ”Greenland's spicy mountains,” one W.A.A.C.

varied the proceedings by throwing a fit, and later on another fainted; beyond that nothing of any moment happened till the firing, punctuated by the dropping bombs, became so loud that every other sound was drowned. Some of the W.A.A.C.s were convinced we were all ”for it” and would be burnt to death, but I a.s.sured them as my chair had broken, and I had no crutches even if I could use them, I should be burnt to a cinder long before any of them! This seemed to comfort them to a certain extent. I could tell by the sound of the bombs as they exploded that the Gothas could not be far away; and then, suddenly, we heard the engines quite plainly, and there was a terrific rus.h.i.+ng sound I knew only too well. The crash came, but, though the walls rocked and the windows rattled in their sockets, they did not fall.

Above the din we heard a woman's piercing scream, ”Oh G.o.d, I'm burning!”

as she ran down the street. Simultaneously the reflection of a red glare played on the walls opposite. All was confusion outside, and the sound of rus.h.i.+ng feet pierced by screams from injured women and children filled the air. It was terrible to sit there powerless, unable to do anything to help. The hospital had just been missed by a miracle, but some printing offices next door were in flames, and underneath was a large concrete dug-out holding roughly 150 people. What the total casualties were I never heard. Luckily a ward had just been evacuated that evening and the wounded and dying were brought in immediately. It was horrible to see little children, torn and maimed, being carried past our door into the ward. The hum of the Gotha's engines could still be heard quite distinctly.

Sparks flew past the windows, but thanks to the firemen who were on the spot almost immediately, the fire was got under and did not spread to the hospital.

It was a terrible night! How I longed to be able to give the Huns a taste of their own medicine!

The ”All clear” was not sounded till 3 a.m. Many of the injured died before morning, after all that was humanly possible had been done for them. I heard some days later that a discharged soldier, who had been in the dug-out when the bomb fell, was nearly drowned by the floods of water from the hoses, and was subsequently brought round by artificial respiration. He was heard to exclaim: ”Humph, first they wounds me aht in France, then they tries to drown me in a bloomin' air raid!”