SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE, NOVEMBER 1917
Three men stared at her as she stood upright. This dug-out was the largest she’d seen: benches against each of the earth-and-wood walls, a table down the middle with army biscuit tins as well as toolboxes under it, cables running up the walls and through the planking roof.
She smiled at Alan Galbraith, not trying to hide her delight. He was alive! Had he heard that she was alive too, and had asked for her, someone who could transmit and receive with all speed and urgency possible? But no, he’d just sworn because he’d been sent a woman signaller . . .
Alan Galbraith stared at her grimly. ‘It’s Major Galbraith now, actually. It’s Miss . . . Miss McLain, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir. Reporting for duty, sir.’
She waited for him to announce that they now had the fastest Morse code sender and receiver on the whole Western Front.
‘This is impossible,’ Major Galbraith said curtly. ‘You’re dismissed, Sergeant,’ he added to Sergeant Lawson. ‘Get yourself some food but don’t go far. Miss McLain will be returning. This is no place for a woman.’
Or a man, dog, or anything but a rat or maggot, Jean thought, but didn’t say.
The sergeant saluted wearily. ‘Yessir.’ He hesitated. ‘She kept up today, Sir. I’ve known men to not cope as well.’ He left the room.
Jean carefully removed her instinctive smile at finding Alan Galbraith alive, and here, replacing it with polite and dutiful blankness. ‘I know what the conditions are like, sir. I was warned, and I’ve seen them today.’
‘No, you have not!’ Major Galbraith glanced at the men on either side of him.
‘Miss McLain, what I am about to tell you is top secret,’ said Lieutenant, no, Major Galbraith. ‘As soon as we get the signal we are moving out of here.’ He gestured to a heavy black wooden box on one of the benches, its side open to show the transmitter and headphones inside. ‘You know what that is?’
‘A mobile Morse code machine, sir, to send and receive messages when it’s hooked up to the cable.’
‘Have you ever carried one?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, our telegraph operator is going to have to lug that from trench to trench or over no-man’s-land, mile after mile, ducking and weaving while the enemy fires at him. Can you do that?’
This was no time for pride. Jean quickly evaluated the box, its probable weight, and her own strength and stamina. ‘No, sir.’
‘Then you are of no use to me whatsoever.’
Jean nodded at the coding machine. ‘Why isn’t anyone receiving now, sir?’ They might not have messages that needed to be sent, but surely they should be listening for orders or information that might come in.
‘Our operator was killed three weeks ago. We’ve been waiting for his replacement. In the meantime, we’ve been getting our communications through by messenger, but that won’t work while we’re on the move.’ Major Galbraith shrugged. ‘I suppose you’ll do till we get moving. Can you use one of these things?’
‘Yes, sir. I can send and transmit at the same time, too, if necessary.’ She’d had to when her partner back in Rouen took an emergency latrine break, and once for a whole shift when they were short-handed.
‘Can you now? You can transmit your first message to headquarters then: Send us a suitable telegraph operator, at the double.’ Major Galbraith turned to the man next to him, a young man who surely couldn’t be twenty-one. ‘Lieutenant Seabrook, prepare the code, please.’
The young man saluted. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Major Galbraith, please . . .’ Jean tried to find the words. ‘I don’t think they have any suitable men to send, or they wouldn’t have sent me. I’m fast and reliable — faster and more reliable probably than any other operator you’ll get. You’ve seen me obey orders and not panic back on that ship. I can do this job, and do it well.’
‘But you can’t carry a coding machine.’
‘No, I can’t. But no one can send or receive messages until the machine is hooked up to the cable. Surely no one can carry it and drag miles of cable with it?’
‘The cable has to be laid first, and then the machine attached to it, of course,’ said Major Galbraith.
‘Then why does it have to be the operator who carries the machine? Plenty of your men are strong, but none of them have my skills, sir. I can run. Could someone else carry the machine when we move?’
‘Certainly, but that is not the way we do things in the army.’
‘Then it’s about time you worked out how to use what you’ve got. And you’ve got me. I’m the fastest they’d ever seen at Rouen, sir,’ she said impatiently. This was no time for modesty. ‘Look, I can even attach the cable to the portable machine. Give me a knife, pliers and some cable.’
Major Galbraith stared at her. Finally he said, ‘Seabrook, find Miss McLain a knife, pliers and some cable.’
They waited in silence for a few moments. Seabrook returned and handed Jean a pocketknife, crusted with what she hoped was mud and not dried blood, a pair of pliers, and cable, shattered at both ends.
Jean took them. It had been years since she’d done this, helping her brothers with their crystal radio sets and other home-made gadgets, but her fingers, used to knitting and embroidery, had been more nimble than theirs.
She took out her hanky — any speck of dirt on the wires inside the cable wrapping might interrupt transmission — spat on it, and cleaned the knife and cable. She quickly peeled back the covering from one end of the cable, exposing the black and red wires, peeled back their covers too, then touched the black end to the knob for the black wire, and the red wire to the other knob.
She looked back to find Major Galbraith’s expression hard to read. Lieutenant Seabrook though was visibly amazed and admiring. ‘That took her less than two minutes, sir.’
‘I presume you don’t want me to disconnect the present cable and attach this temporarily,’ said Jean. She added, ‘Sir.’
‘No,’ said Major Galbraith. To Jean’s surprise he looked almost despairing. ‘Can you do that under fire? Hiding in a shell hole with men dying around you? Because that’s what you’ll be facing.’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Jean honestly. ‘I won’t know till it happens. But I know how to focus under pressure, and not be distracted. I’ve worked eighteen-hour shifts doing both sending and transmitting, and never made a mistake.’
She hesitated, unwilling to shock him by saying things no nice young girl would say, but she had no other way to convince him. ‘I’ve helped a midwife deliver a baby that was stuck.’ That had been when Mrs Robinson collapsed at the post office.
‘The midwife had to use a knife. I helped when she stitched the mother up again. The baby died. I didn’t scream or have hysterics then. I just did my best. Women face pain and death too, sir. You have to know that most of the ambulance drivers out there are women volunteers, and you know what they face, rescuing men under fire night after night. Don’t ever think I can’t do something because I’m female. No one can offer better communications to support your unit than I can.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re just a girl!’
‘I’m twenty-one, am I not?’ She looked at him, daring him to say the army had lied to get her there. And he had not thought she was a kid on the deck of that troopship, though she’d been wrapped in a blanket and life jacket then, in the darkness, so he probably hadn’t realised just how young she was when he’d begun to flirt with her.
‘I have been working at headquarters for months, sir. They know I’m good and can work under pressure. They think I can do the job, too.’ She met his eyes defiantly, aware that she had not quite told the truth. If there had been any man at all to send, even if he had only half her skill, they would have sent him instead.
He glared at her, his jaw set, then slumped. ‘Corporal Geoghegan?’
‘Sir!’
‘Fetch Miss McLain a pair of overalls.’
‘Yes, sir!’
Major Galbraith turned back to Jean. ‘You may be able to run, but not fast enough in skirts.’
‘I don’t have any trousers to wear under them, sir. This is my official uniform. But I can run faster than you may think, and probably as fast as a man carrying a heavy box.’
‘You will wear overalls, not a skirt, and I’ll have two men assigned to you to take turns carrying the machine. You understand you will sleep here, with the machine? There’s no one to relieve you. You have to be ready to send or receive at all times.’
She could doze in between messages. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘It seems we need to make the best of this, as there’s no alternative. Lieutenant Seabrook or Lieutenant McEwain will prepare the messages for you, and decode any you receive.’ Major Galbraith hesitated. ‘I carry a copy of the code at all times, if it is necessary for you to have access to it.’
He meant he could decode the messages if the lieutenants were killed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Seabrook, prepare a message to say she has arrived. No, better make that the package sent from Rouen has arrived. Then show Miss McLain Alistair’s dug-out. You can change into the overalls there,’ he added to Jean. ‘Use the sandbag as a latrine. It’s the only privacy we can give you, but don’t spend too long away from the headphones. Your duty is to be ready to send or receive at all times.’
‘I don’t want to take someone’s dug-out, sir.’
‘You’re not. He’s dead.’
He left them.