Ardnish Was Home Read online

  The first port of call was Malta, where half the nurses disembarked. We spent the day there. What a place! Beautiful buildings along the port, where ships ranging from battleships to hospital ships were awaiting refuelling. This gave us our first real taste of what was to come. Prissie and I stood on the quayside as dozens of heavily bandaged men were bought on shore, many with crutches. Stretcher after stretcher went past. We stood in silence, in shock. The men caught our eye and stared blankly at us, their arms often dangling off the side of their stretchers. Many had blood still caked in their filthy hair. Even the nurses looked terrible – gaunt and exhausted – although at least they were going on shore for a few days to recover. As we turned towards each other we realised that we were both in tears. We leaned, sobbing, against a wall, trying to process the horror of what we had seen as it dawned on us that this was only the start. The reality of what our next few months were going to be like was now clear.

  Back on board, this time with the deck full to overflowing with ammunition, we headed off to Lemnos, a Greek island about six hours’ sailing from Gallipoli. There must have been a hundred boats of various sorts in the bay, where our Gallipoli HQ was located. Apparently, German warships had been sinking many of ours up the front, though, luckily, the hospital ships had been spared so far.

  We steamed into Suvla Bay on a hot summer’s evening. Many people were out on the deck straining to see what was going on. Prissie and I leaned against the railing and peered through a borrowed telescope.

  ‘Look, Prissie, you can see men moving across the hill over there!’ I pointed into the distance. We watched as matchstick men ran through the brush then lay down. Pops of gunfire could be heard crackling across the water. Then the men got up and ran back the way they had come. It didn’t seem real.

  There were rows of tents on the beach, and small lighters going back and forth with supplies. Horses were tethered in rows along the cliffs. We disembarked onto the hospital ship, the Gloucester Castle, which would be our workplace and home from now on. There were rumours that the Turks had overrun the British troops to the east and a full-scale retreat was on. One of the sailors said that he was glad we didn’t have to land as he feared the boat would be overrun.

  It didn’t look too bad from where we were, three hundred yards away. We could see dozens of men swimming naked. Beyond the sandy beach there were fields, and some white cottages in the hills. There was a bit of gunfire, but not too much.

  The nurses at Lemnos had told us we had just missed a period of carnage. There had been a series of big pushes forward in August and tens of thousands of our men had been killed or injured. The Gloucester had been back and forth twice to Malta since then, crammed full of injured soldiers.

  We were given a quick tour by Matron and put to work almost immediately. The procedure was that lighters would come alongside, and if we had capacity to take more injured we would. These brave men were manhandled up the side; usually with a bullet injury; some with severe dysentery. Apparently, there were medical stations on the beach, with many more injured than we had on the ship. The stretcher bearers could give an injection of morphine and wrap a field bandage on the wounds, but not much more. The casualty clearing stations treated men who could be returned to the front line, but operations for bullet or shrapnel wounds were usually treated on the ships. After an attack, there simply wasn’t room to handle the volume of men on the ships.

  During the month of September, we did a run back to Malta, delivering the injured to the hospitals and collecting supplies. We weren’t allowed to carry ammunition, being a hospital ship, but we could bring back food and desperately needed water which we transferred to the stores ship at Lemnos as we passed. With over 300 injured men on board, we worked every hour God gave us. Our only respite came when the ship had to be cleaned from top to bottom in Malta, and then we had three more days as the ship steamed back to Gallipoli.

  Dr Sheridan was on our ship, but with several doctors around we didn’t see too much of him. He knew to avoid Prissie and me. As we lay in our berths at night we talked about him. We wondered why the authorities hadn’t arrested him. Surely he must have been exposed as a fraudster by now?

  As we shared our room with another six nurses, soon everyone was in on our suspicion. One of the nurses was seeing one of the other doctors and even told him. Dr Sheridan must have known he was a hunted man by now, but there was nothing more we could do but wait for him to make a major slip-up and hope the other doctors could catch him out.

  October arrived, bringing with it a definite feeling that winter was coming. There were frosts at night, and the men were relieved that there were fewer flies around.

  I loved my job; we nurses really felt we were making a difference. Until just recently all the medical staff had been male, and the doctors said that we seemed to add that extra touch that made the soldiers feel cared for. Whatever it was, we were told there was a much happier atmosphere on the ship these days. We had no time off and were always exhausted, but I was learning new things every day. I had little time to think of the soldier I had met on the train, but occasionally a Highland voice or the sound of skirling pipes being carried over the water from the shore brought him to the forefront of my mind.

  There was talk among the senior officers that Earl Kitchener was thinking of a withdrawal from the entire Gallipoli campaign, though our General, Sir Ian Hamilton, wouldn’t consider the idea, I was told. He seemed blind to the unfolding disaster and even wandered around telling everyone how well things were going.

  It was late October when we first started getting men in with jaundice. They had yellow eyes, and pale skin, with high temperatures. While not huge numbers, it was one more ailment we could have done without. One of the doctors estimated that about half the soldiers were not really fit to fight now.

  When they came on board, assuming we weren’t having a rush on, the men would get a bath and be put into pyjamas. Their clothes would be sent off to be cleaned and they would be fed much better than they had been in the trenches. Plus, they would have a comfortable bed. You would think the men would be keen to stay, but on the whole they yearned to get back to their battalions. There was one young officer who was with us three times in as many months: once with a shrapnel wound in the back, and twice with dysentery. After the first injury, without telling anyone, he just climbed out of his bed and climbed into a lighter that was dropping men off. And there was us planning to send him to Lemnos to convalesce!

  We’d had a few Lovat Scouts on the ship so far, and no doubt we would have more, as they had only arrived at the end of September. We heard of the considerable success the Scouts had been having over the last few weeks; they had been picking off the enemy officers, resulting in disciplinary problems among the Turks, and there seemed to be a swing of the pendulum in favour of our troops at Suvla.

  However, Brigadier General Lord Lovat had himself been stricken down with dysentery and been evacuated to Malta, which was a real blow as people said he was very popular among the men. The other Generals didn’t have the oomph that Lovat had. They dithered about an attack while the Turks rushed in reinforcements, meaning we couldn’t seize the hilltops. He didn’t come on our ship, which was a shame. I would have liked to have met him.

  Then we heard that General Hamilton had been sacked by Kitchener. The other officers seemed pleased. He didn’t reconnoitre the ground; rather he tried to assess his strategy from maps and from his HQ aboard ship. Perhaps if he had seen the problems the men faced, he would have had different tactics. The word on the officers’ wards was of nothing else.

  I felt sure we could do more. I spent hours talking to the other nurses and finally came up with a plan. Nervously, I went to speak to the matron about it.

  Matron Davy was very professional and looked after us well. She and I got on just fine. She listened as I explained my ideas. Perhaps some of the nurses could go onshore and join the medics who were really struggling to cope at the Casualty Clearing Station on the
beach? The need was so desperate, surely we could do more good there?

  But she wouldn’t hear of it. She said we would be in danger and there wouldn’t be accommodation for us. She told me to leave it at that, but said we would talk about it again in a few days. I was determined now, however, and as my Mam would tell you, when I want to do something I usually end up doing it.

  Anyway, the nurse who had the doctor friend told him what I’d requested and he in turn told the Brigadier doctor who commanded the ship’s hospital. As a result, Matron and I were marched in to see the Brigadier.

  ‘Well, Staff Nurse Jones, I gather you have a plan. Would you like to tell me about it?’ he said, not unkindly.

  ‘Well, sir,’ I stuttered, ‘the problem seems to me that the Casualty Clearing Stations are not set up to deliver the medical service they could. And if soldiers were treated better and quicker there, we would have a far higher survival rate, and the backlog of men waiting to get to the hospital ships would be a lot less.’

  Matron Davy responded with all the objections she had put to me two days before, though not so forcibly with the Brigadier. The one point he seemed unable to respond to was who could authorise the Queen Alexandra nurses to do a shore-based job, with the danger of coming under fire. Yet there was no doubt that he was persuaded, and I was told to go and continue with my duties while he and Matron spoke. Later in the day I saw the matron and asked her how things had turned out.

  ‘If there is any decision, you will hear about it in due course, Staff Nurse Jones,’ she said stiffly, and walked on. We all respected Matron – she worked tirelessly and was very good at her job – however, she didn’t mix well with us new nurses and definitely saw us as lower-class.

  There was talk of nothing else among the nurses. On balance, they were keen to go and help on shore, wondering whether perhaps a rota could be set up, such as two days on shore and then two days on the ship, for a trial period. Communication between the Queen Alexandra nurses’ HQ on Malta and the front line always took a while.

  A whole week passed, during which we heard nothing. But things finally came to a head when the ambulance boats reported that many of the medics at the Casualty Clearing Station had come down with dysentery, and there were not enough people to manage.

  I spoke to Prissie, and together we decided to corner the Brigadier. We waited outside the officers’ mess until eventually he beckoned us into his office.

  ‘How about we just climb into the lighters now, sir? No one would stop us. The men at casualty will be in a terrible way. They need us.’

  He paused, then smiled and nodded. ‘We never had this conversation.’

  With our hearts beating fit to burst, we rushed back to our berths. At dawn, we agreed, we would get the first boat going ashore. We asked Mary and Lorraine to join us; they had been keen when we had originally floated the idea.

  Thus it was that at five in the morning, we four were in our tidy scarlet uniforms, with a box of medical equipment, stepping confidently onto the lighter.

  ‘Doing a task for the Brigadier doctor,’ I said primly, as we sat down.

  The sergeant just nodded.

  Fifteen minutes later, we parted the curtain of the largest tent and were confronted by the sight of dozens of men lying on camp beds and the ground. There was a look of surprise from everyone, and then a cheer went up so loud that others came to see what was going on.

  Our faces were pink with embarrassment, but our chests swelled with pride at the welcome. A doctor came across to us, and we explained that we were there to help.

  ‘By God, we need it,’ he said. ‘I’ve had no sleep for two nights, and we’re down to three of us, with two hundred injured and more coming in all the time.’

  There were twenty canvas bell tents, a kitchen and store tent, and a marquee to treat the newly arrived. Within minutes, we had arranged big vats of boiling water and were unwrapping bandages, putting on antiseptic creams, using scalpels to cut off bits of gangrene and generally doing all the work and more that we had been doing on the Gloucester. After two months, we could do most of the practical work that the doctors did, anyway. Yet, although we never would have expected it, I think that just our being there and caring for the men was the most important part of it all.

  Sometimes, the sea was too rough for the small boats, and the lighters would be nowhere to be seen. Occasionally, they came back with the injured men when the hospital ships were full and they were turned away. We felt like crying with frustration when we knew they could have saved a man on the Gloucester, but here we were only three hundred yards away, unable to get him onboard and watching him die.

  What would normally have been the job of the ship’s surgeon became ours as we held the fort. Digging a bullet out of a man’s leg when he had been injured for three days with his leg swollen to twice its normal size brought forth tears of gratitude. He held my hand and whispered his thanks, even though our work doubled the pain he was in already.

  We did days of this, non-stop. The patients were from Norfolk, Ireland. There were Gurkhas, Aussies – all cheerful and grateful. Our uniforms were soaked in blood and covered in dirt, and we were exhausted but we felt elated, too.

  During a lull, us four nurses sat outside a tent in the weak autumn sun with a cigarette and a cup of tea and talked.

  ‘My lord, if my George could see me now,’ Lorraine exclaimed. ‘Filthy hair, mud and blood everywhere, broken nails – he’d go back to his old girlfriend in a jiffy!’

  We all laughed. We all looked the same.

  One morning, the Brigadier doctor appeared suddenly beside me. ‘Jolly well done, Nurse Jones. I gather you are the heroine of Suvla – we should call you Florence Nightingale. I have another half a dozen nurses on the next boat, so you and your girls can go back to the ship and find your beds. We haven’t heard from the Queen Alexandra HQ in Malta yet, as it happens, but you can assume that you have done the right thing. The men are all the better for it.’

  Later that morning, the four of us stepped back onto the Gloucester Castle and were met by many nurses and doctors all keen to shake our hands. Even Matron Davy looked us in the eye and congratulated us.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ she said and smiled. ‘It made a huge difference to the men on the beach, and we are proud of you.’

  Overjoyed, we ate a huge meal, had a thorough scrub and went to our cabin to sleep for twelve solid hours.

  Chapter 5

  WAR

  Louise is off duty now. It is night, and with dawn not far off, the place is quiet apart from some murmuring in the tent next door. I dangle my hand in the sand below the camp bed and wave at the flies buzzing around my head. It is cold. But at least I have blankets; the men in the trenches will be freezing.

  I have been avoiding the issue, not confronting what happened to me. I have always tended to look for good things and avoid unpleasant ones, so my mind wanders to Ardnish or Louise. I blank out my pain. All of the other men in here were either shot or hit by shrapnel from the shelling. In the other tents there are men who have dysentery.

  I find it painful to think about Sandy. After my family, he had always been my closest friend, and of course what happened to him took place at the same time as I was injured.

  Sandy was a gangly fellow, always smiling, with a friendly word for everyone. That’s not to say he didn’t have a temper. It’s just that it was slow to come, and when it did, you were as well to keep your head down, for as quickly as it appeared it was away again, and he had forgotten all about it. He had black hair and a very fair complexion, which took a lot of punishment from the Mediterranean sun. He didn’t talk much and was far more thoughtful than me, though when he did speak he was worth listening to. We were very close. It was the fishing that was his true passion. He would sit with his rod for hours waiting for a bite, whereas I was always itching to be at something else. We were as different as chalk and cheese: he excelled at school while I was always in trouble; he would help with the chor
es while I was up to mischief – allegedly. He was as good as a brother to me and much closer than Father Angus, who was just that wee bit older.

  Orders were given from above that there was to be a big push. We were issued with extra ammunition and told to be on standby for a 6 a.m. assault. As we understood it, in normal battles there would be some massive shelling on the enemy position, a cavalry charge would go through, and then us infantry. But this time there would just be us.

  We stood in our trenches as the sun broke through. Officers dashed back and forth with orders, as sergeants handed out ammunition and barked at youngsters to do their laces up and cheer up.

  My stomach was churning with fear. ‘God smile upon us, look after us,’ I prayed. ‘Please may the Generals know what they are commanding us to do.’

  We were given the order to fix bayonets. I pumped up my bagpipes, and then, on the command ‘Charge!’, I launched into the tune ‘Highland Laddie’ and stepped onto the parapet.

  The men charged out of our trenches, the Turkish machine guns opened fire and then, horribly quickly, at least half of our men were slaughtered. Not one of us even made it to the barbed wire in front of their trenches. It was the most dreadful episode. After only a matter of minutes, Captain Mackenzie shouted, ‘Retreat, retreat!’

  There is nothing that can prepare anyone for this: the futility and senseless murder of men yet to experience the best days of their lives. Did the officers giving the orders truly have any idea what they were doing? Did they not know the Turks had machine guns facing down the hill at us, that we had barbed wire we had to clamber through? In the army, we are trained to believe that ‘they’ – meaning the officers – know best, that they have a plan and that we are a key component part of that plan.