Maudie escorted Flora to the makeshift maternity hostel in the little town of Brouilla where a young Swiss nurse was organising patients into the crowded rooms.
‘This is Miss Elisabeth Eidenbenz who is in charge, with Karl Ketterer.’
A pretty young woman hardly looking out of school with her coronet of plaited hair and her smile that beamed a welcome. ‘We are understaffed and overcrowded. Wallace tells me you were a nurse in la guerre. There will be plenty to do here. You have had injections?’
Flora nodded, glad that Rose had insisted she was inoculated before she left. She glanced over to the beds where sad-eyed Spanish women were holding newborns and eyeing her with interest.
‘We have midwives, a local doctor, but we need a driver to collect women in need of confinement. You drive?’
Flora smiled. ‘I once drove from Scotland to here,’ she said in her best French, hoping to impress, and a little awestruck by the young woman’s dignity and confidence.
‘Why did you return here?’
‘Because in Scotland there are many women raising funds for the Spanish refugees. I wanted to do more than shake a tin on a street corner.’
‘You know the battle for the Ebro is lost, and the war is almost over, but punishments are harsh. We expect many more women such as these. You have seen the conditions on the beach.’
‘Yes, there are hundreds there, sleeping in trenches in the sand. Why are there no proper camps?’
‘Sadly, the French were not prepared. You can see how full we are. The worst cases go to hospitals in Perpignan, but we do what we can with the aid we are given. I’m afraid it will seem menial work.’
Maudie butted in. ‘Flora is no shirker. She worked on the ambulance trains up and down France. She once cleaned a warehouse on her hands and knees, to make a sterile ward…’
Flora blushed. ‘Not just me, of course, but VADs had to make the best of things.’
‘Excellent,’ Elisabeth said. ‘Welcome aboard our crowded ship.’
Over the days that followed, Flora sensed Elisabeth was a powerhouse of calm efficiency, sending out search parties for desperate women and children, giving expectant mothers a chance to give birth safely, in clean conditions, away from the stench and filth of the coastal camps.
Flora drove volunteers and nurses to check those near their time, distributing tins of clean water, dried milk powder and fresh bread. She had never seen such desperation. It was a living hell on earth. There were families using the sea water to relieve themselves, to wash, and some elderly, devoid of hope, just lay ignored, dying on the sand. The soldiers roughly dragged the bodies out of sight, without bothering about decent burial rites.
It wasn’t long before Flora itched with lice. Her skirt was stained with dirt and she begged for slacks and a long-sleeved shirt to protect herself from biting insects. This was exhausting work and she felt every one of her years. In every letter home, she pleaded with Pa and Vera to do their utmost to send aid down to the coast.
How could she describe the chaos? There were many aid workers from all nations: American Quakers, Swiss and British individuals like herself. Coordination between charities was often fragmented. Christmas and New Year passed, with a few ceremonies and little extra rations to lighten the darkness and ease the cold of winter shelters. It was Dante’s Inferno without the heat. Her only relief was in knowing Maudie was not far away and if she took a bus or train into Perpignan, she could collapse for a night in a clean hotel.
By February of 1939 the floodgates opened as expected and thousands upon thousands of refugees surged across the border into France. Every available beach was choked with newcomers, corralled behind barbed wire. Children were shipped out across Europe, separated from desperate families who only wanted their young ones to be fed, sheltered and safe. It was a time of tears and sorrowful partings.
The incessant search for pregnant women went on. They escorted them to the bathhouse, boiled up the clothes that would stand washing and hung them out to dry in the weak sunshine, where the wailing of hungry babies filled the air. Mothers took turns to help where they could, in the kitchen and wash house.
So strict was their regime of cleanliness and effective midwifery that there were few deaths among mothers, but some babies were too premature or weak to survive.
The nurseries were full of laundry baskets used as cribs. Once rested, the women worked in the garden, digging or planting vegetables, and fathers came to help with repairs and carpentry, building fences and freshening up paint.
Each family was registered and places were found for the lucky ones to work or be shipped far away from the beaches. Flora had never worked so hard, her joints ached at the end of every shift, but it was satisfying work and there was no time to be homesick, or plan her return to Scotland. Here she was determined to stay.