For King and Country (4 page)

‘What
is
a one-pip wonder?’ Sally interrupted.

‘Usually a public schoolboy on his first outing without his nanny, who stands idle while other men work and waits for the sergeant to tell him what orders to give,’ one of the older
men told her, echoing her brother Arthur’s words: ‘A lot of the officers are nothing but kids and the men have to play nursemaid to ’em, half the time.’

‘There were one-pippers, two-pippers, three-pippers too, just standing about with f—.’ another private piped up.

‘Nothing to do,’ a corporal cut in, with a glance towards Sally and a warning look at the private.

‘But what does it mean?’ Sally insisted.

‘A one-pip wonder is a second lieutenant,’ the corporal said, ‘the lowliest of the commissioned officers. Not a lot of use, most of’em. A good sergeant’s worth ten
of them in a scrap.’

‘And what good will any scrap do us?’ an older man wanted to know. ‘We’ve got two supposedly Christian nations slaughtering each other, and for what? Who gains anything
except war profiteers and politicians and kings and kaisers – people who start wars from their nice safe places in the rear and then wear themselves out going to shows and races, and visiting
hospitals, and pinning medals on people, and shoving other mothers’ sons to the Front to be slaughtered. And what’s the use of a medal anyway, when you’ve lost your life, or your
limbs? You can’t eat a bloody medal.’

‘It’ll never happen again in Russia,’ the lad with the shattered ankle gasped, through a bout of coughing. ‘They’ve had enough of serfdom there. They’ve swept
their tyrant away. Oh, yes!’

Oh, yes. The arguments were so familiar they made her smile. It all felt so comfortable, being with them. Apart from the overcrowding, and the smell of sepsis, sickness and carbolic, it was
almost like being at home.

‘You’re being transferred, Nurse. You take your day off tomorrow, and the day after you report to 7a.’

‘That’s the officers’ ward, isn’t it?’

Sister gave her a brief but friendly nod. ‘Yes. Don’t look so worried; you’re a good worker, and you’ll do all right. If we’d been keeping you, I’d have given
you a chance as dirty nurse on the dressing round next week.’

Praise indeed. Sally’s jaw dropped at it, but before she could close her mouth and collect herself enough to say thank you, Sister had already picked up the telephone, signalling her
dismissal.

Oh, dear. She’d far rather look after the tommies, if she had the choice. Oh, why did it have to be her? She’d only been on the ward a month, and she’d stayed on her other
wards for three, at least. And only half a day’s notice of her day off– no time to write and warn her mother. But she had no choice other than to do as she was told, and so she got the
train home and caught her mother distempering the kitchen ceiling in the failing light, with the whole house upside down and nothing in it that would make a decent meal.

S
ister Davies scowled and, raising her arm, pointed in the direction she intended Sally to go. ‘Get on that ward, Nurse. That’s where
the patients are. You’re no use to them dithering about in the kitchen.’

‘One of the patients asked me to fill his water jug, Sister,’ Sally protested.

‘Why, get a move on then; don’t take all day. I’ll have no slackers on my ward. I want everything done to time. You can go and start the round.’

‘Yes, Sister.’ The cutting tone deterred her from asking which round. She picked up the jug and left the refuge of the kitchen for the officers’ ward. It was a far cry from 7b
where, before she left, they had had fifty patients crammed like sardines into the same-sized space that in the officers’ ward was reckoned to be bursting at the seams with twenty. There was
an acre of space between the beds, and getting to the other end of the ward wasn’t like running an obstacle race; there were no beds down the middle here, and you could go the full length
without bumping into something. And also, she thought with regret, without some of the men calling jocular little compliments to you as you passed, teasing you and making you laugh. It looked as if
nursing the officers was going to be a more subdued business altogether.

She glanced back to see Sister Davies following, her flat feet splayed out so far they almost justified the probationers’ nickname for her – ‘Quarter-to-three-feet’.
Another old dragon, she well deserved the complaints and criticism about her that resounded round the four safe walls of the probationers’ sitting room.

‘What round comes next?’ Sally whispered, as she passed a kindly-looking ward maid.

‘The medicine round, I think, Nurse.’

The medicine round? Surely Sister couldn’t have meant a first year probationer to start that? Dreading having to ask again, Sally gave the patient his water jug and turned to approach
Sister, but she was busy with the patient in the top bed, and a couple of others were calling to Sally for things the men on 7b would have got for themselves, or for each other.

‘May I have a bedpan, Nurse?’

They evidently got bedpans whenever they asked here, not like downstairs where they usually had to wait for the bedpan round, Sally thought. She sped to the top of the ward for the screens, then
into the sluice for the bedpan.

‘Nurse! Nurse! Over here! No, take that to the patient, and then go and wash your hands.’ Staff Nurse Dunkley’s voice was sharp and peremptory.

Sally jumped to obey, and then presented herself to Dunkley, who indicated the bandages obscuring the patient’s face. ‘Take them off. I’ve just admitted him. He’s got
shrapnel wounds to his face and left arm. His notes say they’re dirty wounds, and he hasn’t spoken a word since they brought him off the battlefield; probably shell shock.’

Sally nodded. She’d seen plenty of nerve-shattered men on 7b. After they arrived most of them seemed completely dazed and lay in bed hardly moving for the first week or two. The ones whose
wounds had healed were as jumpy as cats, waiting to be sent back to France. She’d seen one or two of them physically sick at the thought of it, but the doctors saw very little of that, that
shock to the men’s nerves. They came and looked at them for about five minutes, decided what needed to be done about their wounds, and were gone.

‘Christopher Maxfield’s his name. He’s a second lieutenant with an Australian regiment,’ Dunkley continued, ‘and that’s about all we know about him. He looks
done for, anyway. I hope somebody in France has informed his family, because we can get nothing out of him.’

Carefully unwinding the bandage, Sally said: ‘Why, he’s a long way from home, then.’

Staff Nurse’s blue eyes appraised her. ‘The house surgeon’s coming up to see him, and he’ll want these dressings off. Do exactly as you’re told, and see if you can
learn anything.’

As she gradually uncovered a hollow-cheeked, grey face adorned with the stubble of a few unshaven days and a thick, untidy moustache, Sally felt a fluttering in her stomach. She’d never
been so near to a wound almost fresh from the battlefield before, but she managed to keep calm.

The bandage was off. Stained with blood and discharge, the dressing pad obscured the whole of the left side of the patient’s face. He tensed, and the bloodshot hollow eye that looked into
Sally’s eyes was full of terror.

‘Get the dressing off, Nurse.’

Sally gingerly took hold of one corner of the pus-contaminated pad and tried to lift one corner, to loosen it. The patient gasped, and reached up to grasp her wrist and stop her pulling.

‘Come on, now, take a few deep breaths. Relax, and it won’t be so bad,’ said Dunkley. ‘It’s got to come off. Both dressings have got to come off before the doctor
gets here. He’ll want to have a good look so he can decide what needs to be done.’

Can’t we soak it with something and wait a bit, until it’ll come away easier and not hurt him so much, thought Sally, but a doctor couldn’t be kept waiting, and a lowly
probationer just coming to the end of her first year couldn’t very well breach hospital etiquette so far as to question a staff nurse’s judgement.

She steeled herself to the task, and the quick, darting eye that kept glancing into hers reminded her of a wild animal at bay. The patient released his grasp on her and held tight to the side of
the bed. His breathing became faster and faster still as bit by bit she eased the dressing from his flesh, and then his panting became a moan and, sick to her stomach, she stopped pulling.

‘Ready, Nurse Dunkley?’

The voice was soft, and Staff Nurse turned to flash a welcoming smile at the house surgeon who appeared at her side. ‘In a tick, Dr Campbell.’

‘Hello, Lieutenant, let’s see what the damage is,’ the doctor said, extending a hand to shake the patient’s uninjured right one, ‘and what we can do to mend
matters. You realize we’re dealing with a hero, nurses? Lieutenant Maxfield’s got the Distinguished Conduct Medal
and
Bar which tells you he’s won the award twice!
Perhaps you’ll tell us how you came by it when you’re feeling a bit better.’

The patient shook his head slightly and groaned. He’d looked feverish at the start, and was sweating now. The dressing was still stuck, and Sally could no more have tugged at it again than
shoot him. No matter, Staff Nurse Dunkley ripped the last of it off with the forceps, and the Lieutenant let out a sound that cut Sally like a knife.

‘There, now,’ Dunkley said, quite unperturbed.

What a sight! The eye was gashed out and blackening blood congealed in the broken crater, with fresh blood oozing from points around the margin where the dressing had been torn off – and
such a stench from it, of blood and putrefaction.

Sally suddenly felt light-headed. Her mouth filled with water and she swallowed frantically, but it was no use. She was going to be sick.

‘Quick, Nurse! Over there, into the sluice!’ Staff Nurse Dunkley rasped. Sally clamped a hand over her mouth and bolted.

She reached the sluice just in time. Ugh, how foul it was, that taste of vomit. Safe from the sight of staff and patients, she retched until she could retch no more, then thought of that wound,
and retched again. The image of the sluice receded and she held onto the sink as her knees buckled under her and the world went black.

She found herself lying on the cool sluice floor and after a minute or two raised a hand to her face. Her skin felt cold and clammy and her throat felt burned with the acid from her stomach.

‘Ugh.’ With hazy, disjointed thoughts of the wrong she would get if Staff Nurse came in and caught her, she dragged herself to her feet and turned on the tap to run cold, clean water
into her cupped hands to swill her mouth, and rinse her clammy face.

Oh, God. What on earth had possessed her to come here? She’d no more idea of nursing than the man in the moon. Kath’s dad was right. It was worse than any housemaid’s job. She
found a clean huckaback towel and dried herself, then pulled her apron straight and went back to face them all: the staff nurse with her faint smile of contempt, the doctor whose handsome young
face held nothing but amusement at a little probationer’s weakness, and the patient, whose mutilated face would have made her sick again had that been possible, and whose eye, filled with
anguish, stared straight into hers.

Down in the probationers’ dining room, Sally sank into a chair beside Curran, an Irish girl who’d started at about the same time, glad to take the weight off her
feet. Conversation stopped until the waitress had served them supper.

‘I’m starving,’ said Sally. ‘I was sick this morning, and I didn’t get enough to eat at dinner time to make up for it.’

‘Oh, morning sickness!’ One of a family of fourteen, Mary Curran gave her a knowing look. ‘We all know what that means.’

‘Don’t be daft. I saw the most horrible wound I’ve ever laid eyes on, that’s all. It made me heave.’

‘Aren’t you the lucky one? Sure, an’ all I’ve seen is bedpans and buckets of soapy water, and all I’ve done is bedpan rounds and cleaning and tidying, and the same
slaving I’ve done since I started. The nearest I’ve got to the patients is rubbing their backsides with methylated spirits on the back round. That sister’s got a hatred for the
Irish, so she has.’

Armstrong, who was sitting at an adjacent table, put down her fork. ‘How many of your set will stick it until you qualify, I wonder? Beale and Batty have gone already.’

‘Well, you know what Matron says,’ said Sally.

‘Nurses must be subjected to discipline and severe training if they are to develop character and competence,’ Curran groaned.

Armstrong shrugged and picked up her fork. ‘Some people just don’t want to be disciplined, I suppose.’

‘At least Beale and Batty went of their own accord,’ Sally said. ‘Poor Keeble got thrown out.’

‘Poor nothing. It might be the luckiest thing that ever happens to her in her life,’ said Curran. ‘I’m sick of being disciplined and kept out of all the interesting jobs,
so I am.’

Armstrong snorted. ‘It’s good for you. You’ll end up with a much higher character than the rest of us.’

Curran gave her a look, and detecting a trace of hostility, Sally hastened to smooth it away.

‘Why, man, if you’d had to watch that dressing you wouldn’t have called me lucky. When you realize men are doing things like that to each other, you know the devil’s out
of his chains all right. But Staff Nurse Dunkley didn’t turn a hair. She cleaned it up and then put a dressing on. The night nurse’ll have to change it every four hours. What with
everything else there is to do, she’ll probably be half dead before she gets off duty tomorrow morning.’

‘She’ll have to do it, though. Until they get him to theatre, it’s the only way to stop it going septic, or gangrenous,’ said Armstrong. ‘If he gets that,
he’s had it.’

‘He’s already got it, if the smell’s anything to go by,’ Sally said, then stopped talking and ate ravenously, reflecting on the dispassionate way Staff Nurse had done
that dressing, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to clean congealed blood and discharge from around a man’s eye pit and pack the holes in his face with gauze wrung out in
antiseptic solution. That was what was needed to stop fatal sepsis in its tracks, what it was to be a trained nurse, and how much more use she was to the patients than someone who had to dash to
the sluice to be sick.