Four days after the battle had begun, Giles asked anyone who had time to listen, ‘Have you heard the news? Italy’s joined the war.’
Several pairs of eyes gaped at him and eyebrows rose.
‘On the side of the Germans, I suppose,’ Robert said.
‘No. Surprisingly, on our side.’
‘Really? Now that might give us a bit of a break if the enemy has to remove resources from here. Let’s hope so.’
But there was to be no respite as the German guns pounded the town of Ypres and beyond.
‘They’re shelling Poperinghe now.’ William was obliged to tell Brigitta what he’d heard. ‘They must have found out that the town is full of troops.’
Her eyes were fearful. He touched her hand. ‘We’ll try to visit your grandparents again as soon as we can.’
But the battle raged on and there was no time for anyone to take leave.
‘Nurse Maitland,’ Sister Leonore asked in her perfect English. When on duty she called Pips and the nurses by their formal names. Only in private did she use their Christian names. ‘You know a little French, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘There’s a poor boy at the far end of the tent dying. He’s holding on to wait for his mother, but I doubt she’ll get here. He’s in dreadful pain – I have nothing to give him to relieve it. We have to keep the morphine for operations.’
Pips nodded and pursed her lips. It was disgraceful, she thought, that they had so little to relieve the suffering of the terribly wounded. But there was nothing she could do about it. Daily, they requested more medicines but only the bare essentials ever reached them, despite Marigold Parrott’s best efforts.
‘Will you sit with him and hold his hand?’ Leonore said.
‘Pretend to be his mother, you mean?’
‘Not exactly, but I think holding a woman’s hand will bring him comfort.’
Pips sat by the casualty’s bedside and took his hand into hers. ‘My poor boy,’ she murmured in French. ‘Sleep now.’
The hand lying in hers relaxed and, for a while, the young soldier seemed to sleep. Then, after about an hour, he suddenly opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling and whispered, ‘Kiss me, Maman.’
Pips glanced behind her. There was no one coming into the tent who could be his mother arriving, so she leaned over him and gently kissed his forehead. ‘My brave boy.’
There was a small smile on his mouth as he sighed deeply and Pips knew he had gone. She rose and stood for a moment, looking down at him. He was so young, she thought, so achingly young. She had played out a lie, which was not in her nature, but if it had eased his passing – as she believed it had – then it had been the right thing to do. As she covered his face with a blanket and turned away to fetch someone to help her remove him from the tent, she realized that she did not even know his name.
‘Good heavens,’ Pips exclaimed as she drew up just behind the front line. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here again.’
Captain Allender smiled up at her, though the worry never left his eyes. ‘We keep getting posted to different areas but we always seem to end up back at Ypres, don’t we? Both of us.’
There was a pause as they stared at each other, then the captain seemed to shake himself mentally and said, ‘Anyway, to business. The shelling seems to have stopped for the moment. Can you come straight into the trench? I’ve a boy who’s seriously wounded, but I think if you can take him immediately, he might survive.’
‘Lead the way, captain. I’m right behind you.’
They hurried as fast as they could through the network of trenches until they found the young boy in a deep dugout in the reserve trench. Pips knelt beside him. He had a serious facial wound. His left jaw was smashed and his eye damaged. He was moaning softly, trying his hardest, Pips could tell, not to make a sound, but his pain must have been indescribable.
‘We’ll get you to the first-aid post as quickly as we can. Now, I’m going to put a clean dressing over your eye and bandage it.’
He made a noise that she had to take as agreement. When she had done all she could, two of his comrades carried him out of the dugout and through the trenches to her car.
‘I’ll take him straight away, captain, I won’t stay to pick up any others, but once I’ve handed him over, I’ll come straight back so, if you’d like to get a few more walking wounded rounded up, I’d be grateful.’
When she returned to the front line again, there were three casualties with minor wounds waiting for her.
‘There’s another still in the trenches, Nurse Maitland,’ Captain Allender greeted her. ‘But he won’t leave without his pal, who’s more seriously injured and needs an ambulance.’
‘William’s just behind me. He can take him and a few more besides.’
As they walked into the trenches once more, George explained, ‘The soldiers I’m talking about are both with one of these pals’ battalions that have been set up at home. I don’t agree with them myself.’
‘What are they?’
‘It’s where men from the same village, town, workplace – even places of education like schools and colleges – have formed battalions in the hope of serving together. And many of them do, but the problem, that no one yet seems to have realized back home, is that if there are heavy casualties, they’re going to be from the same place. Think of the devastation that causes to a community.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ she began, and then stopped suddenly, looking up at the edge of the trench above her. ‘Oh my!’ Just above their heads, on the parapet of the trench and a little way down the side, grew a profusion of poppies. She touched the delicate red petals. ‘How can they grow in such an awful place?’
They moved on to where the two soldiers were, one sitting with his arm in a rough sling, the other lying on the ground.
‘I aren’t going without my mate, nurse, so don’t ask me to.’
‘We can take you together, though you will have to travel separately, but I promise we will keep you together as far as our first-aid post. After that, soldier, I can’t promise anything. Your friend looks as if he needs more care than you do. Now, you wouldn’t want to stop him getting that, would you?’
‘’Course not, but—’
‘Ah, here’s William with the stretcher.’
As carefully as they could in the confines of the narrow trench, they lifted the semi-conscious man onto the stretcher and William and another soldier carried him out to the ambulance.
‘Now, you lean on me, soldier, and we’ll follow them.’
‘I’m a big fella, nurse, I didn’t oughta . . .’
‘Here, let me.’ George moved forward and put his arm round the man’s waist. ‘Put your arm along my shoulder, Thompson.’
‘By heck, I nivver thought I’d have an officer helping me. You’re a good ’un, Captain Allender, that you are.’
As they drove back to the first-aid post, George beside her, Pips said, ‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, Captain Allender, I wouldn’t have believed it.’
He smiled. ‘What? Me helping an injured man?’
Pips laughed aloud. ‘Heavens, no! I meant the poppies growing on the tops of the trench parapets.’
‘Poppy seeds can lie dormant for years and then bloom when the earth is disturbed. Have you seen them in the war cemeteries that are springing up everywhere?’
Pips shook her head.
‘Then I’ll take you. I need to visit the grave of a pal of mine who was killed last week. I wasn’t able to attend his burial, so I want to go and pay my respects. I had thought to go on my own, but now I find that I’d appreciate the company of just one person. You. Would – would you do that for me? Would you come with me?’
Coming from the straight-backed, strict and rather staid dedicated soldier, the tentative request was a surprise. She’d seen his concern for the welfare of the men in his charge – knew that he put that above even his own safety – but she’d not seen his sensitive side before; a man who was mourning the death of his friend and who could not face visiting the freshly dug grave alone.
Her voice was husky as she said, ‘I’d be honoured.’
‘Where are you going?’ Giles demanded very early the next morning when he saw Pips walking away from the tents towards the edge of the field. ‘To the front?’
‘No, I promised to go with Captain Allender to visit the grave of one of his friends and he said he’d pick me up early this morning.’
‘Why d’you need to go with him?’
‘I think he wants some company, and also, he’s going to show me the poppies growing amongst the graves.’
Giles frowned. ‘I don’t think you should go.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because I don’t want you to.’
Pips stared at him for a moment and then she laughed. ‘I think my reputation will be quite safe. We’re hardly following the conventions of a society drawing room out here, are we, Giles?’
Pips turned and marched away.
‘Pips, I . . .’ he called after her, but she did not look back.
Before the fighting was likely to start, Captain Allender drove the vehicle himself and took her to a cemetery very close to where the corps had their tents.
‘Of course, at the moment there are only rough crosses to mark their graves,’ he explained as he helped her from the car. ‘But I’m sure, after the war, proper headstones will be erected.’
As they walked to the area now set aside as a burial ground, Pips asked, ‘Was your friend one of our patients?’
George shook his head. ‘No, he was killed outright as he stood beside me. It was a shock and I am left feeling so dreadful that he should have been killed and I escaped unharmed.’
‘It happens all the time, George,’ she said softly. ‘We get so many casualties racked with guilt that they have survived and their pals have not. I patched up a soldier last week who was absolutely distraught because he’d been fighting alongside his younger brother, shoulder to shoulder, he said. And then the brother was shot before they even reached the wire. He wasn’t concerned about his own injury. All he kept saying was, “I promised our mam I’d take care of him. She’ll never forgive me.” So, you see, you mustn’t feel that way. There’s nothing you could have done to save your friend. And there’s nothing you can do to save the countless thousands who are going to die before this is all over.’
‘When will it be over, Pips?’
‘I don’t know. I wish I did. But there’s one thing I do know, George.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That however long it takes, however many lives it costs, we will win in the end.’
‘I wish I had your faith,’ he murmured.
‘It’s the courage of our soldiers that makes me so sure. They never complain, they’re not bitter and they try – as much as they can through their pain – to remain cheerful. Sometimes a man’s face is grey with agony, but through it all he will crack a joke or try to comfort a younger man beside him. Their stoicism is incredible. But we’ve nursed a few German prisoners – you know we have . . .’ For a moment, she paused until George prompted, ‘And?’
‘Some of them have not got the certainty of victory that our lads have. Oh, they do their duty and they’re just as courageous, but they have an air of pessimism about them – at least the ones I’ve met have – that our boys do not.’
George was thoughtful as they walked on in silence. As they neared the cemetery, Pips stopped and gasped in surprise at the scene before her.
‘Oh George! I never thought to see such a beautiful sight, not amongst the horror we witness every day. The trenches were a surprise, but this . . .’
Amongst the grave markers, a sea of bright red poppies bloomed, their delicate heads fluttering in the breeze.
‘It’s strangely peaceful just now, isn’t it?’ There was no sound of shelling or gunfire. ‘I’m glad that Arnold is here.’
Pips stood amongst the markers and read some of the handwritten names. On a few there was just the word ‘unknown’.
‘How sad,’ she murmured, ‘that we don’t even know who they were. I suppose we’ll never know now, will we?’
George Allender shook his head. ‘No, there was no identification on the bodies when they were found. We sometimes know what regiment or battalion they’re from. That’s all.’
They paused at several of the graves before George held out his hand and said, ‘This way.’ Without thinking, she took his hand and stepped over the rough ground, scattered with wild poppies, until they came to a particular grave where the soldier’s name was given in full.
‘This is my friend,’ he said quietly.
They stood together looking down at the crude cross surrounded by the delicate blood-red flowers.
‘Somehow it seems fitting that it should be poppies, don’t you think?’ he murmured. ‘Or am I being over-sentimental?’
‘Not at all. How could you be? These fine young men have given their lives in the cause of freedom. And, sadly, there will be a great many more lives lost before the end.’
They stood for several moments in silence before George said, ‘Pips, will you promise me something?’
‘Of course.’
‘If I’m killed, and you can arrange it, will you see that I am buried here?’
A lump came to her throat at the thought, but she said huskily, ‘Of course I will.’
They stood a few moments longer and then George took her arm and led her away.
‘Thank you,’ was all he said, but she didn’t know whether his gratitude was for her company at his friend’s grave or for the promise she had just made him.
As they walked back towards the car, Pips noticed small clumps of poppies growing here and there.
‘Do you think it would matter if I picked a few? They’re not near the graves now. I didn’t want to take them from there.’
‘They won’t live for long, though.’
‘They’d brighten the tents we jokingly refer to as “wards”, even if only for a day or two.’ She pinned one to her white apron just above her left breast.
George gazed at her and said solemnly, ‘I’m sure you’re right. Come, we should be getting back.’
She could not fail to hear the reluctance in his tone.
As they neared the car, a lark began to sing somewhere high above their heads.
Pips stood very still. ‘Oh, listen.’
‘Yes, we hear them often, even when there is shelling going on. They’re brave little birds.’
‘How lovely, though, that there’s one singing here.’