Ardnish Was Home Episode 20

LOUISE The first port of call was Malta, where half the nurses disembarked. We spent the day there. What a place! Beautiful buildings along the port, where ships ranging from battleships to hospital ships were awaiting refuelling. This gave us our first real taste of what was to come.

Prissie and I stood on the quayside as dozens of heavily bandaged men were bought on shore, many with crutches. Stretcher after stretcher went past. We stood in silence, in shock.

The men caught our eye and stared blankly at us, their arms often dangling off the side of their stretchers. Many had blood still caked in their filthy hair.

Even the nurses looked terrible – gaunt and exhausted – although at least they were going on shore for a few days to recover. As we turned towards each other we realised that we were both in tears.

We leaned, sobbing, against a wall, trying to process the horror of what we had seen as it dawned on us that this was only the start. The reality of what our next few months were going to be like was now clear.

Ammunition

Back on board, this time with the deck full to overflowing with ammunition, we headed off to Lemnos, a Greek island about six hours’ sailing from Gallipoli.

There must have been a hundred boats of various sorts in the bay, where our Gallipoli HQ was located.

Apparently, German warships had been sinking many of ours up the front, though, luckily, the hospital ships had been spared so far.

We steamed into Suvla Bay on a hot summer’s evening. Many people were out on the deck straining to see what was going on. Prissie and I leaned against the railing and peered through a borrowed telescope.

“Look, Prissie, you can see men moving across the hill over there!” I pointed into the distance. We watched as matchstick men ran through the brush then lay down. Pops of gunfire could be heard crackling across the water. Then the men got up and ran back the way they had come. It didn’t seem real.

There were rows of tents on the beach, and small lighters going back and forth with supplies. Horses were tethered in rows along the cliffs. We disembarked onto the hospital ship, the Gloucester Castle, which would be our workplace and home from now on.

There were rumours that the Turks had overrun the British troops to the east and a full-scale retreat was on. One of the sailors said that he was glad we didn’t have to land as he feared the boat would be overrun.

It didn’t look too bad from where we were, 300 yards away. We could see dozens of men swimming naked. Beyond the sandy beach there were fields, and some white cottages in the hills. There was a bit of gunfire, but not too much.

The nurses at Lemnos had told us we had just missed a period of carnage. There had been a series of big pushes forward in August and tens of thousands of our men had been killed or injured.

The Gloucester had been back and forth twice to Malta since then, crammed full of injured soldiers.

Procedure

We were given a quick tour by Matron and put to work almost immediately. The procedure was that lighters would come alongside, and if we had capacity to take more injured we would.

These brave men were manhandled up the side; usually with a bullet injury; some with severe dysentery.

Apparently, there were medical stations on the beach, with many more injured than we had on the ship. The stretcher bearers could give an injection of morphine and wrap a field bandage on the wounds, but not much more.

The casualty clearing stations treated men who could be returned to the front line, but operations for bullet or shrapnel wounds were usually treated on the ships. After an attack, there simply wasn’t room to handle the volume of men on the ships.

During the month of September, we did a run back to Malta, delivering the injured to the hospitals and collecting supplies.

We weren’t allowed to carry ammunition, being a hospital ship, but we could bring back food and desperately needed water which we transferred to the stores ship at Lemnos as we passed.

With over 300 injured men on board, we worked every hour God gave us. Our only respite came when the ship had to be cleaned from top to bottom in Malta, and then we had three more days as the ship steamed back to Gallipoli.

Dr Sheridan was on our ship, but with several doctors around we didn’t see too much of him. He knew to avoid Prissie and me. As we lay in our berths at night we talked about him.

We wondered why the authorities hadn’t arrested him. Surely he must have been exposed as a fraudster by now?

As we shared our room with another six nurses, soon everyone was in on our suspicion. One of the nurses was seeing one of the other doctors and even told him.

Hunted man

Dr Sheridan must have known he was a hunted man by now, but there was nothing more we could do but wait for him to make a major slip-up and hope the other doctors could catch him out.

October arrived, bringing with it a definite feeling that winter was coming. There were frosts at night, and the men were relieved that there were fewer flies around.

I loved my job; we nurses really felt we were making a difference. Until just recently all the medical staff had been male, and the doctors said that we seemed to add that extra touch that made the soldiers feel cared for.

Whatever it was, we were told there was a much happier atmosphere on the ship these days. We had no time off and were always exhausted, but I was learning new things every day.

I had little time to think of the soldier I had met on the train, but occasionally a Highland voice or the sound of skirling pipes being carried over the water from the shore brought him to the forefront of my mind.

We leaned, sobbing, against a wall, trying to process the horror of what we had seen. It dawned on us that this was only the start

Ardnish Was Home is published by Birlinn. The third novel in the series, Ardnish, was published in 2020. www. birlinn.co.uk