Ardnish Was Home Episode 31

Mr Skinner gives us a map which he had with him. It turns out to be crucial. At the time, we hadn’t even considered retreating overland, but this map gives us another alternative if our troops have indeed been evacuated.

As part of his officers’ course at Mons, Skinner was taught about escape and evasion. He tells us that the choice is whether to look like locals and act normally, which carries the risk of being shot as spies, or to stay in uniform, move at night and be soldiers attempting to get back home, in which case we would be taken as prisoners of war.

We know that, with two women, there is a chance we can pass as locals, so that is the option we have chosen.

Mr Skinner traces a finger over the map, showing the nurses a route. “You need to head north for a week of walking to the neck of the Gallipoli peninsula, then another couple of days towards the town of Kesan. Turn west towards Ipsala and the border for about a week and after you cross the river Evros you’re in Bulgaria. Another few days’ walking to Alexandroupolis, and you should be able to get a boat to safety – Greece, maybe.”

My heart sinks. They all know that even half an hour’s walking is difficult enough for me. “A month of walking through rough country?” Louise says. “How will you manage, DP?”

“Well, it’ll be a challenge,” I reply, “but we have no choice.”

We know that the river forming the boundary between Turkey and Bulgaria will be difficult to cross. But Skinner says that there are people in that part of Turkey and Bulgaria who are of Greek origin and Christian; we might find someone who would help us get a boat across.

And so we have the beginnings of a plan. Louise and Prissie spend many hours with Skinner discussing alternative routes. I sleep a lot, but I overhear Skinner explaining how we must avoid roads yet always read the road signs, and how local women will be much more amenable to help than men.

Despite this advice, avoiding people at all costs seems to be the message.

Today, we hear distant shelling. The wind is coming from the south, so clearly the engagement is still on. I think about those at the front. They’ll be curled up in trenches scraped out of hard ground, the scream of shells headed in their direction above them, followed by the thud as they hit the ground.

The shell either has your name on it, or it hasn’t. And they would be cold. While it is much warmer and the snow is nearly gone, the men would be soaked through and freezing, especially at night. It is strange to feel so fortunate.

We need a horse and cart, if possible. With the sapper dead and Mr Skinner heading off shortly, only the priest and myself remain among the patients.

The following day, Mr Skinner announces that he’ll be leaving tomorrow, first thing. He’s going to head along the bottom of the cliff face and hope that no one will see him. He does one great favour before he leaves.

Taking the pistol, he goes out and shoots a goat. He skins and guts it, before chopping it into manageable pieces. I stand beside him as he does it and tell him where to cut. I’ve done it often enough with hinds and sheep alongside my father, though I am in no fit state to be of any use to Skinner at the moment.

We have a word before he goes.

Head off

“I’m leaving you some money and I’ll send someone back to get you,” he says. “I promise. But if they don’t come within three days you’ll need to head off yourselves. Every day you’re here is a worry.

“We aren’t that far from the front line. If neither the main party, Dr Sheridan nor I have sent a rescue party it will be because we’ve been captured – or something.”

Prissie accompanies him for the first mile and climbs up the hill to see the fleet. On her return, she rushes into the house, crying: “I’ve seen a donkey! We must go and get it. We can move DP around on it.”

Louise finds some rope and between us we make a basic halter. I know how to make one, of course, but my arm and eyesight are still next to useless and explaining it isn’t easy. They don’t have much call for halters in the Welsh Valleys or Liverpool. The women go out to look for the animal, but despite searching for hours they can’t find it.

I have a good conversation with Father

Joseph. He can talk only very tell he is in real pain.

Brought up in Liverpool, he had converted to Catholicism a few years ago and went to work in Ireland, teaching for a religious order. He became a priest only recently. He didn’t know of my brother, though they must have been about the same age.

We have a good rapport, given the circumstances. Father Joseph was assigned to join the Royal Green Jackets, a regiment largely made up of soldiers of Irish descent. But not long after getting off the ship, he was hit by shrapnel and paralysed.

He is acutely aware of the problem. Prissie, Louise and I are able to walk; he is not. There is a reasonable chance of our reaching safety, with only the nurses and myself moving at night, but although he is a small man, we can’t carry him.

If we leave him here he won’t be capable of looking after himself and, being a Christian priest, he is not likely to be treated well by the Muslim Turks, who after all, are fighting a religious war. It is an agonising dilemma for us all.

There have been terrible stories circulating about the Turks massacring three quarters of a million Armenians: men, women and children. The Armenians are Christian and moved down from Russia over the centuries and settled here.

Whenever someone said that the Turks played a clean war by not shooting at our stretcher bearers or hospital ships, Colonel Willie would say: “Remember the Armenians.”

“I’ll bet this house was owned by Armenians,” I say. “That would explain why the cupboards have food in them, and their clothes are still here.”

“You have to leave me here,” insists Father Joseph. “I’ll be fine. The Lord is at my side.” If he hadn’t been a priest we would have left him the pistol to shoot himself with if he’d had to. little. I can

They all know that even half an hour’s walking is difficult enough for me. Louise says: “How will you manage, DP?”