Rosie arrived at the hospital an hour early. It had its own railway station, and so her trunk had been sent in advance, containing all fifty-one items stipulated, which included even a lantern, galoshes and a collapsible rubber basin. Everything had been assembled at some trouble and expense, and she felt with all these articles she could probably survive for months. Slipped into pairs of stockings and wrapped up carefully inside her apron (white), her apron (coloured), her wool dress and dust skirt, was her plaster statuette of the madonna and child, and her mending bag contained the battered New Testament and Psalms with which she had once been sent off to school.
As she was too young for Foreign Service, she had been posted, just as she had hoped, to Netley. She had arrived courtesy of a first-class travel warrant, and had read the regulations over and over on the train. She was entitled to seven days’ leave in the first six months, and was to be paid twenty pounds for her first year’s service, which was just two pounds more than Millicent earned at home as a housemaid, and she would receive two pounds and ten shillings in uniform allowance, which she had already spent during a rather sober spree on the ground floor of Selfridge’s, now entirely given over to nursing supplies.
Although much bolstered by the happy thought that, almost identically equipped, Ottilie was at the same moment making her way to Brighton Pavilion, Rosie was confounded by the vast size of Netley. She stood by the sentry box before its grand facade thinking that it must be several times larger than Buckingham Palace. Built by command of an empress, the place was on such a scale that it could have belonged only to the greatest empire on earth. It had been constructed to echo the style of Osborne House, just across Southampton Water, whence the late Queen had frequently ventured forth to visit her wounded troops, of whom she kept photographs, and for whom she had knitted shawls which became so highly prized that no one dared or wanted to use them.
At its centre was a copper dome, green with verdigris, and to either side stretched wings of granite, brick and Portland stone, set up in the classical style, with Italianate turrets and spires. Hundreds of windows were set into walls that were 440 yards long. On the greensward of the grounds hobbled or sat the wounded in their blue uniforms, and all seemed peaceful and orderly. Here and there a VAD with the red cross on her breast supported an elbow or strode forth on a mission.
She plucked up her courage and entered the building through the vast double door. She found herself confronted by the stupendous skeleton of an elephant, whose bleached bones had been set up in the lobby. There were alligators and crocodiles mounted on the walls, row upon row of snakes preserved in formaldehyde, and fish were set into the plaster of the walls in imitation of a shoal. Vast sets of horns and antlers were set up by the hundred, as if this were not a hospital but the country house of an implacably bloodthirsty aristocrat.
Rosie was just emerging from the museum, and wondering where to report, when mayhem suddenly broke loose. There was a great commotion as people began to pour out of the building – doctors, nurses, VADs, FANYs, stretcher-bearers. As if drawn irresistibly by their collective purpose she followed them, still carrying her valise, only to realise that a hospital train had come in.
Nothing could have prepared her for this, although she would soon become familiar with it. As the wreckage was unloaded onto the platform, the doctors scurried from one man to another, injecting morphine into those who would certainly die and so require no other attention.
She stood, fixated by horror. There was a stink of excrement and putrefaction that grew steadily worse as the bodies were laid out on the platform. She saw heads bound up with filthy bandages, white faces with black gaping mouths and wild eyes, black and green rotting stumps bound with improvised tourniquets, flesh bubbling up with blisters that gave off poison gas. She saw wounds patched with field dressings that had not been changed for days, and great pools of dried black blood across chests and stomachs. She saw faces without jaws, and skulls cracked like eggs. She saw bellies bound up with bandages that she somehow knew were retaining bowels, scooped up and thrust back into their cavities. There was a low moaning like that of cattle being driven from one field to another, interspersed with sharp shrieks, whimpering and keening. She heard prayers, appeals to mothers and sisters, the curt orders of doctors as they detailed the nurses and the stretcher-bearers. Some stalwart souls, eyes bulging with pain, made no sound at all.
Astounded by this horrible tumult, and sickened by the pall of smoke and wet sooty steam, it was a few moments before she realised that an officer was standing next to her, his arm in a bloody sling, one of the luckier ones. ‘You should see the ones who didn’t get this far,’ he said, in a strangely deadened voice. ‘I saw a man with his head compressed into his chest by a shell. The crown of his head was just poking out at the top.’ He paused, said, ‘Major Frederick Arbuthnot, Irish Guards,’ and fell silent, leaving Rosie wondering whether that had been the name of the casualty, or whether he had been introducing himself. ‘Better get to the sawbones,’ said the officer, and he set off on foot towards the hospital.
Rosie knew that she had to do something. She knelt by a doctor who was checking a soldier for signs of life, and said, ‘What can I do?’
‘VAD?’ asked the doctor without looking up at her.
‘Yes.’
‘Trained or untrained?’
‘Untrained. Just arrived.’
‘Well, the first thing you do is ask “shrapnel or bullet”. Treatment depends entirely upon which one it is. Now just find someone who’s dying and hold his hand. Say prayers. Say what you like. Just don’t get in the way.’
Rosie knelt by a skinny runt of a boy from the East End. He was breathing stertorously, and no one was tending to him. She took his hand, which was cold, clammy and limp. At first she could not see what was wrong. As she looked at his face, overwhelmed by pity, the tears began to roll in huge drops down her cheeks. Suddenly he turned his head and looked at her, holding her gaze. ‘Don’t cry for me, miss,’ he said. He began to convulse and shudder, then closed his eyes.