In the Forest of Dean.

Her fear was breaking down to the girl she was, that Belgian girl; when she took that roundabout way to school to miss the torment of the Flemish neighbours. Cold behind her shoulder blades when she sensed being followed by an unseen. Resolution had deserted her, she was derived of guidance. There was a pull to seek out  Hienrich, which had nothing to do with her orders. Her weapon was lost, her cause in tatters and she felt her only support was the Red Cross.

The smell of birch wood smoke filled the valley and the rumble of rail wagons added to the workman`s calls as Anna wheeled towards the gate of the Works. She was challenged by the elderly soldier who fully accepted that she would like to meet the  nurse in charge of the first aid room. Soon they fell into deep conversation. Burns, splinters and smoke inhaled, were covered. Anna had enough sense left not to engage in her Front Line experience. They sat comfortably over a cup of tea, local affairs, gleaned by Anna`s numerous visits through the Forest, being the main topic.

Anna in the Forrest of Dean

Anna was told to wait for her medical talk by Dr Morris which was a requirement of the Medical Directorate. All school nurses were to have some knowledge of the major illnesses so that they could recognise the symptom’s when visiting schools. The major ones to be watched for where diphtheria, measles, mumps, and scarlet fever, all of which would be liable to spread far and wide. Each symptom was outlined. The minor ones,scabies,ringworm and lice where up to her to treat. They were already well-known to her. She nodded in agreement.

The hospital had received a note from the Queens Nurses in London advising against children being excluded from school to protect uninfected children on the grounds that their friends only waited outside the school gates to play with them.The advise was to ignore nits as these were only the empty egg shells of lice. With active lice the advice was,

“Comb when wet as the lice would be stationary. They would run away when raked in dry hair.”

She was issued with her own lice comb which she added to her small box of first aid. With the issue of a Rover cycle Anna was detailed to assist school nurses and midwives on pre and post natal visits when called for in the Forest on demand. The hardships of the war were evident even both outside the door and inside where the large ward was filled with four rows of beds, all close together beneath the Union Jack flags hanging from the beams.

Beyond the hospital the shops still had paper and colourful cloth banners rejoicing in the return of the Coleford Doctor`s son, albeit blinded, but with the V.C. One of the new Red Cross motorised ambulances was at the very door as Anna stepped out to her new assignment. Her first job was to understudy the midwife in the Milkwall area who she was to meet at the new village hall. She understood all this from the Sister who set her on the way, who gave her details as she popped Anna and her old cycle on the train. “As a treat, my dear, to save your legs”.

“That Mrs Mills has had many a jobs other than midwife: firstly a nurse at under the instructions of Dr Bangara, soon married she has a family, cleans the school,is a midwife, as I’ve said, and lays out the dead! beautifully, I might add.” She had to stop, even if only to take a breath.”You could not be in better hands!”

Anna was at a complete loss but she did realise that the Sister had sent her by train to ensure she arrived at the halt.

“Goodness sake,girl. Here is the address!”

Anna found the new hall easily enough and it was but a moment before a woman bustled in greeting her with a cry.

“Thank Goodness nurse, come and sit down and I will tell you of the situation. Things are getting tough around here. As with other places in Glos most of the men are gone, food is getting short and that`s not helping, the kids are under nourished and what babies we have are skinny little things. Get you out visiting them. By the way,” she went on, “Most of the villages around here have a refugee from Belgium. Some are taken in for free, others try to find work but most are pretty hopeless things! But it may feel you less homesick.”

Anna was soon to get to know the beauty of the Forest on the old push bike, up and down the hills, asking the way from friendly people, speaking with her pedantic English accent and smelling the forest air, which was such a relief from the stink of London

Reaching Lydney

 

She knew!  She knew!

Was it a swirl of coat tails, a half-remembered stance or just the tickle of a nerve? The man talking to the horse dealer at the Gloster cattle market had, surely, had been following since that day in Regents Park, way back in London.

Gathering herself she linked arms with a surprised girl, merry on cider, who was walking toward the station and hurried on, without looking back.

The train arrived at Lydney and Anna had no difficulty in finding the hospital. It was in the old Town Hall and the ticket collector`s direction was clear and direct. At the entrance she asked for the Matron, Mrs Bowles.

“Good gracious me, you mean the Commandant,” laughed the nurse. “Do not forget it! If you are to get anywhere!”

Indeed the Commandant was a figure to be respected. She approached in her uniform, standing tall but, without doubt, exhausted.

” So, what have we here?” She declared. “Belgian auxiliary in a very sorry state! Come with me, girl, and tell me your story!”

“Came from the Front with a hospital ship, nursed amongst the girls in the Post Office tents in Regents Park, followed the Belgian wounded to Gloucester. I got fed up with washing bandages, heard you were needing more nurses with Lydney`s hospital extra beds and hear I am!”

“Well, we can do with extra help, especially in the Forest, with so many  men away. The mothers are in need. Interested?”

Anna nodded.

“That`s good,”  replied the Commandant.

“Off with that dirty old uniform; you are in the Red Cross now.” She reached forward and without any further a-do, snatched Anna`s cloak off, bend down and emptied Anna`s old bag on the floor of her office. The heavy Luger pistol crashed down on the floorboards.

“You will not want that anymore.” She raised her toe and the Luger slid under her desk with the impact. Anna was speechless with shock! Her dispatcher gone! Holding down a bubble of panic which filled her mouth she was dumb!

The Commandant was quite unperturbed. ‘Did every nurse she interviewed, come armed with a long barrelled pistol?’ No. But tiredness overwhelmed her before she fully realised what had happened. War had brought constant surprises but this was a new one.

Anna gathered herself and spluttered  out a mixed story of needing a weapon in the Front Line and in the Recuss areas where she was nursing wounded German as well as British. But, no, she did not know how to use it. Just to show would be enough!

It all happened in a second! The Commandant had disarmed her in an instant. Now she had nothing but her hands! All her training went by the board. She was on her own.

 

Chapter thirty-seven ~ In the Forest of Dean

It was of no surprise to the Forest people when the clothing  arrived for the increasing number of girls working in the woodland in early 1917. Boots, khaki breeches, leggings and, surprisingly, white smocks. Wide-a-wake hats completed the ‘get-up’. The Measurers were issued with a green silk badge of a tree, the Fellers, crossed axes above a crosscut saw! to be worn on the shoulder. These were members of the new Women’s Forestry Services! Nicknamed “Lumber Jills” in America, it soon caught on in Dean!

The Measurers were the office types, the Sawyers the active ones, and how thankful the old  men were there for their help as the Army had taken almost all of the able bodied foresters. Squeals of delight could be heard as the girls broke the bales of khaki  breeches open, selected the one that they considered a fit, and with curtains drawn in the village hall, drew them on! Boots were a different matter. Their clumpy feeling was far from being ‘Girly’. The hats? To one side? Tilted back? Straight on? So it was to be a forester in the Forest. You wore a uniform just like the men.

Back when oak was king and ships were made of wood, and in high demand for the Royal Navy, the Forest of Dean had been almost stripped of timber. Wisely, thirty million acorns had been planted in the  1800s for oaks of the future. Iron and steel were the preference now, following the building of HMS Warrior, the first all metal RN battleship, in 1860. Trees of around a hundred years old, from those self-same acorns, were now in their prime.

The coal miners in South Wales had at last realised the desperate need for coal. They  had shelved their quarrels with Government and pit props were in high demand. The Free Miners  of the forest were never to be kept short! The high calorific value of the hard woods meant they were needed for charcoal. The resinous woods were used for props and Stockholm tar. The felling of timber, care and aftercare, was an ancient art in itself, and not knowledge to be found in books. It was this transference of expertise that had to be passed on to mere girls.  A challenge for desperate times.

Chapter thirty-six ~ At Gloster market

The sluice girl turned up. Anna had dreamt of her coming back to the fold. Her visualisation of a dumpy creature, generous arms encased in a tightly filled blouse and wild hair, fulfilled her dream. She was thankful for the expected release from the odious and unremitting task but that depended on some tact with the Supervisor!! Thankfully the one-sided  conversation was of thanks for all the help given in a  time of domestic crises. They chatted about her future.

“Write! Write a postcard to Miss Bowles, at Lydney VA Hospital. They have just taken over the Craft School and thus added to the 150 beds they have at  the Town Hall! I am sure they need extra nursing. Stay here until you hear from her!” The Super’ could not have been more helpful.

Anna took herself to town. It was market day. She followed the  crowd, most alighting from Stroud and Stonehouse at the station to down by the River Severn. She chatted to some girls of her own age to find out that cheeses were main purchase that they sought, followed by, maybe, a glass of cider!

The market was noted for the sale of barren cows but there was plenty to look at of a more domestic nature. There was much support for the war effort, Recruitment, parcels for the Front, Knitting groups sat around tables knitting comforters, socks and gloves on needles, ‘made from bone in Stroud…’  she was told with great pride. An old man sat on a wagon painted with a farm address in Dymock.

“Are you from the Forest?” She asked?

“No,” he laughed. ” I would be stoned if I went there with this wagon. Are you interest in the Dean? Go and speak to the horse people”. He pointed the way.

Anna knew about the importance of horses to all armies, especially the Second German Army that followed the British retreat from Mons covering 200 miles in quick advance into France. Horses, eighty thousand of them, just for this one movement. She remembered thirty-six horses had been needed to pull each of the huge Howitzers that pulverised the Belgian fortresses, and her pulse beat. The horseman, gaiter’d and breeched, sat on a bale of straw, ready enough to speak to the nurse in the wornout cloak. He told he came from Coleford, luckily the first lot of requisioned horses were to be over 15 hands while the Forest folk preferred the smaller animals for timber hauling and pulling coal wagons and trolleys, sometime down the larger mines.

“Time would tell,” he went on. “There were only a few Clydesdale heavies around and the Army wanted these above all. Have to import them. Mules and all from foreign parts”. He tickled Anna with straw! ” Why the interest” ?

Anna took a totally unacceptable risk.

Chapter thirty-four ~ At the Gloster Union

The Cheltenham was to leave at quarter past ten and was already heaving with anxious passengers. Porters with trolleys loaded high with luggage, the smallest item at the top, fought to secure a seat…and a good tip… from the owners of their parcels.

The train left on time, several snorts of steam from the locomotive. Unknown to Anna, the Star engine had been renamed “The Knights of Liege” in recognition of the neutral Belgians. This could be seen on the curved nameplate above the wheels. Filled to the clerestories of the coaches, five people in Third class crushed into a seat for four. People stood smoking, much to the annoyance of some, after all there was a special section for this activity!

Slowly the train pulled out of Paddington, past the vegetable fields Heathrow, tended by bent figures in this surprisingly empty country. It trundled on to Reading and beyond with only a  few shepherds huts on the high Berkshire downs. Swindon was busy with the engineering sheds, stubby tanker engines shunting wagons loaded with military equipment, gangers with their long poles, engaging the heavy links and disengaging, as waggons were relined…

The train entered the first tunnel of the journey at Kemble, smoke deflecting into the occasional open window only to be repeated at entering the long Sapperton tunnel. This time the leather straps were rapidly pulled down to close the windows. They entered the Golden Valley, running down the steep gradient to the busy town beyond, mill chimneys, rack upon rack of khaki cloth spread out on the northern hills, the glint of water to the south and on to Gloster.

While many passengers were to wait for the Monmouth & Cardiff train, others went about their business in the City. Anna was one of those seeking direction. As she turned toward the booking office she saw a fellow passenger in a black felt hat and had a vision of the face of Elspeth Schragmuller, Grand  Patronne, staring at her with her ‘tiger eyes’. Flooding into Anna’s mind was the story of the ‘sacrifice’, the old technique of ridding the spy network of those considered disloyal… and thus supporting the genuine professional. She felt faint and took refuge on a bench, drawing her heavy bag, with all her possessions, and the Luger, to her feet.

“I am  not a spy. I am an Eliminator,” she thought to dismiss her fears. It did not help.

Anna collected herself,  decided that a cup of tea would be a good fortifier before approaching the Union and meeting a new situation. Now she felt she was on her own without the support of circumstances that had buoyed her up, seemingly for ever! She clutched the cup, sipping the brown fluid slowly to make it last until the moment to stir seized her.

The reception she received at the long red brick building surprised her for its ferocity. She was given a totally unwelcome greeting from the  Supervisor. “You are late! How dare you after all the arrangements I made! You’re late!”

Of course it was a mistake of identification but it did not make it any easier for Anna to explain that she was only following Belgian advice in calling.

“Belgians!” exploded the fraught Supervisor. ” If only they spoke clear English! I was expecting a girl for night-shift in the sluice. If she does not turn up, you will do!”  She waved her arms as an invitation for Anna to enter the Union.

“We are not a hospital but as well we might be with all our wounded Belgians, men and women everywhere in recuperation, getting better or just dying on us! Let me show the sluices!”

Anna was swept up and off, without being able to say a word, into the stinking sluice rooms. Bedpans, urine bottles, nappies and bins of discarded dressings lined up alongside the glazed sluices, taps running and in one sink, overflowing.

“Nothing like the night-shift which starts soon, ” she was smartly told. “Here is your room, supper at 6.30 and clean up this lot before the evening rush”. The order was delivered in a swirl of an arm and the Supervisor was off. It was, at the very least, a bed; the morrow could wait.  A hectic night of unexpected foulness followed that she had not experienced since those days, long ago it seemed, on The Front.

Anna woke up to a fear that she might meet someone from her village with all the memories of the gossip of that small commune. She drew her nurses cap low down on her forehead and prayed. God did not enter her world often, but He did that morning. The place was filled with displaced Belgians, shovelled in just before the demand on hospitals for British soldiers hit the sky. Many were wounded following the early assault on the small country by the Germans. It was a rampageous advance, untidy and often cruel. Unnecessary for a civilised people bent on a different target -France – but people got in their way. The residents of Gloster Union were only to happy to voice their anger to a new pair of  ears.

The plumbing was not up to the strain and the sluice took the burden. Anna vowed she would leave as soon as she found the location of the distillation plant, not that she could enquire about the whereabouts of a factory linked with the war effort. Her briefing was of the sketchiest nature and reflected on the lack of intelligence she had been given. In a way it was reflected in the Fatherland’s distrust in Hiendricht and the reason for her ‘endred.

Chapter thirty-three ~ St Dunstan’s

With such a number of girls working in one place, rumours abounded at the Post Office sorting office in Regent’s Park. Some were nice, some really horrid. Anna’s meagre knowledge of English made Cockney accents, the London dialect, almost impossible to decipher, but she came to realise, nay feel, that some chatter was about herself. A group would gather, then quietly part as her eye caught a gossip’s glance. She knew that some concerns where due to her total lack of nursing natural to a normal girl. Her own experience hardly helped on such matters, mostly bodily fluid problems and affairs of the heart.

As the lions roared just before their morning feed, Anna hoped they would not escape from the Zoo. Would the girls gang upon her and feed her to their carnivores? Anna’s senses told her they might. Looking back on her past, she decided to use a weekend off to call upon her blind patients. Just to speak Flemish would be a relief from the endless girlish giggles.

It was doubtful if Anna would be recognised at St Dunstan’s Lodge, after all nearly all were blind.  It was the staff who were glad to see her. She asked if it were possible to sleep in the Lodge. They explained that night nursing required Flemish speakers, as on many occasion a patient woke up either racked by nightmares or pain, and no one could understand to quell his fears. This was the nursing that she knew.

The matron at St Dunstan’s was more than willing to approach the Post Office surgery and ask for a transfer. Not surprisingly they agreed, adding that Anna could be more trouble than she was worth. There was a problem in that her Aliens Identification Card that, as yet, not arrived, but they said they would happily forward it.

The garden at St Dunstan’s was very large with access to part of the lake. This was ringed with a few benches that Anna led some of the soldiers to so they could take the sun and talk. Most had been gassed by chlorine and had burnt eyes. Their only defence on the front had been to hold a cloth soaked in urine to their faces. Curiously, such is chemistry, the reaction did help.

There was sometimes much to talk about, other-times not a word. But holding a hand helped. Anna’s thoughts during these silent moments turned to Elspeth Schragmuller, the Fraulein Docktor who had set her on this course with all its odd routes. Holding the fingers of a wounded Belgian soldier? Unlikely but true!

Sacrifice was the Docktor’s doctrine, destroy one to draw attention away from the expertise of another. She was a superlative spy master but did she understand the loneliness of the assassin who, under no circumstances was to communicate, whatever the temptation? All assassins knew that another of his like, or hers, would follow.

Anna pondered. It was War, she thought. We are all disposable.

Chapter thirty-two ~ Regents Park

Most of the coal on the dockside in Newport was from The Black Vein Steam Coal Co, held in eight ton loads in wagons of the Gloucester Wagon Co. Each would have to be searched by hand.  The 6710 loco was called upon to haul wreckage apart and she puffed and shunted along the rails hauling away with ropes and chain. The dock rigged up a belt system to move the coal after inspection.

Room 40 was fully aware of a successful bomber of shipping was in Britain. He specialised in planting explosives in the hulls of ships in dock and on slipways. It was considered that he paid large sums of money to dockhands to place the innocuous parcels aboard rather than placing it himself.

*******

Anna realised that she was not a nurse!

Yes, she could cleanse a severe wound of mud, fragments of bone, congealing blood and other debris. She could stem an artery, apply a tourniquet, set a minor fracture and apply morphia, calm a patient and go some way to alleviate pain to those who were gassed. But, she had never explored the trauma of birth, hysteria and the common ailments of a mass of females and was at a loss how to explain it to the staff in the post office surgery. There was no choice but to persevere. Her Alien card had yet to arrive and Anna was acutely aware she would not get to Gloucester without its protection. At least she was nimble, a quick learner and looked the part. She would muddle through. Surprisingly the first casualty she was confronted with was a sharp cut on a girl’s hand. A paper cut! Anna could not believe it when told that a sheet of paper had caused the injury. Whatever next!

The days passed. Anna found her place in the hierarchy of an almost totally feminine  world. Over 16,000 sacks of mail were sorted and handled each day. The Army Postal Service was a major factor in the war effort. It offered morale support to those who read the letters and, of course, those who wrote the missives. The Front was only eighty miles away but eighty miles of little news. Newspapers were expensive and dated. There was no better way than to write, whether it was about love, a favourite dog, the farm, Grandad, or the passing of the next door neighbour; whatever. It was a tactile way, so easy, with the best post the world had.

The heavy bags of parcels and letters could lead to severe muscle strain, hernias and even miscarriage.  Fatigue and fainting struck time and again. Laughter and song helped the day along but with long dresses and fancy, encumbering sleeves getting in the way, it was hard to work quickly. Uncomfortable shoes and the uneven floors of a temporary building did not make life easier for the girls coping with repetitive work. Now and again bullying led to a fight, which led to crowd participation. This called for one or two of the men to mix in and part the rowdies. Anna patched up the bites and the nail scratches…and combed matted hair.

A Post Office job was a career for life in 1913. One of the largest organisations in the world the Royal Mail gave a security to those who were lucky enough to work for it. This was blown apart when the war came. 17,000 staff joined up immediately and many were not to return. So when it came to a grumble in the sorting shed canteen, “the best for the boys” was the answer!

Wonderfully, the nature and responsibility of the work shone through and the letters always got despatched. Air raid warnings, signalled by bugle, gave the girls a shiver of fear. It was impossible to shelter the crowd. They were instructed to get under the benches, should they hear a bomb drop, in case there was a second or a third from which to take cover!

Anna soon noticed a new spirit amongst the girls. With many of the postal men away women were taking their place in the world. Drivers, packers, even censors of letters seeking the leak of confidential matters, women filled the vacancies. A Women’s Auxiliary Police Service had been set up and was proving most reliable.

Curious things happened. The fat  girl, working on section 10, slipped into the surgery, to tell the amazed nurses who happened to be on duty,

“There’s a babby in the lavvy!”

“Sorry?” Anna felt her lack of English exposed.

“Just been to the lavatory and there’s a babby there.”

It was a surprise birth!

One girl collapsed. on being carried into the surgery to be laid on the inspection couch, she was found to be a young man! posing as a girl to avoid going to France! He almost lost what manhood he had in the outrage.

The food was at least regular. Anna often wondered what was inside, as she handled a squidgy parcel being sent to the Front. Who were giving their especial treats to some soldier sleeping in a rat run trench not so very far away? On her few hours off Anna wandered around the once beautiful gardens and stared at the magnificent houses. The one with the large conservatory was, she learnt, a hospital for the blind – Belgian blind soldiers. They were there! with bandages around their heads, hands pawing, groping and sticks a-tapping! With a gasp she realised that her friends the German Army had inflicted this to these young men, her age!  It had somehow seemed acceptable behind the trenches but here, amongst the elegant houses and the stately layout of the park, it laid seeds of doubt in her mind. She dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. Resolve! Resolve! Her duty, Duty.

Once it was reported that two more spies had been shot in the old rifle range at the Tower of London a wave of “spy hunt” swept the country.  Anna kept her head down.

Chapter Thirty-one ~ Anna in London

“He drowned with the others!” She said twisting her mouth in sympathy, flapping her hands.

“We’ll have to photograph you,” he said.

Anna visibly paled! It was against all rules drummed into her!

“It’s not all that painful,” the old policeman grunted. “Wanted for your Alien’s Registration Card.”

She nodded dumbly.

“Your pal, the Guard on the Ambulance train, he told us to look out for you! ‘Washed out little thing,’ He told us. ‘Wouldn’t hurt a fly’.”

The camera’s  light, a frightening flash of magnesium powder, brought instant memories of the shelling Anna had experienced.  She shivered and cowered, her hands flying up to cover her face.

“Sorry  about that!” muttered the photographer, emerging from beneath black drapes. “It  upsets the kids too!”

“Now! What we have to do is to find you a job. The Post Office Train people say that they are desperately short of nursing help at the sorting office at Regents Park in London. You’d best be there so we know where to find you to send on your Card when the photograph is ready! We’ll put you on the next PO train and they will look after you.”

Anna was sat down, with yet another cup of tea, in  the railway police office, to await the special train  expected to return from its long haul from Plymouth. There was not a lot she could do other than accept the situation  She felt lost and disorientated, a huge contrast to being on demand by the likes of a nursing Sister or an overworked Doctor.

The Star 4-6-0 locomotive at last pulled into Basingstoke. Steam and smoke, it was a massive presence pulling the wagons loaded with full sacks of mail, and the empties, a everlasting rotation of letters carrying every emotion capable of being put to paper. There was a  carriage laid out with a long table, and pigeon holes to receive letters, as a sorting office for those with high priority. Anna was bundled in to sit on an occasional seat under the watchful eye of the Supervisor. She waited with high degree, she had to admit to herself, for her first visit to London.

The route via Reading took short of two hours to draw into the gloom of Paddington’s great glass station, having been diverted by the threat of a Zeppelin attack to the south of London. The mail bags were quickly unloaded onto trolleys, with the priority consignment taken to a waiting horse drawn covered wagon.  Much to Anna’s surprise  it was driven by a young woman who indicated her to take a seat alongside, requiring Anna to climb up high to a tiny perch, thankfully with a guard rail on the outside, almost to the level of the canvas roof. How the girl took the reins with such confidence! She wheeled the horse around to trot up the ramp out of the station and, with whip raised, drew into the constant flow of carriage, cars and huge lorries. It was a show of true horsemanship …and courage. Perhaps the bright post office red helped give her some priority?

They trotted down Marylebone Road at a sharp pace. The driver indicated Madam Tussaud’s famous ‘Chamber of Horrors’ show on the left hand side. They entered Regents Park by Clarence Gate and were stopped by a khaki clad guard with a rifle slung from his shoulder. He waved them on with a grin. Not far from the Outer Circle they drove to unload alongside the wooden shedding that seemed to stretch endlessly across the park. They were expected. Helping hands quickly unloaded the full sacks marked with a red stencilled P onto wheeled trolleys and saw them rapidly disappear just as an obvious Senior  stepped over to greet Anna.

“I know who you are,” she growled. “Welcome to our small home! Two thousand five hundred girls, all sorting millions, maybe billions, of letters for the BEF! We have our fallouts, our hysterics,  our wornouts, our lovesmitten, all sorts! We need a nurse or two!”

The noise! The smell! The apparent chaos, the piles of sacks, full and empty, even  some, she was told, in a pile to be sent back to the prisons for restitching. Anna was shown to her Casualty room. She had  a base, a roof over her head and, supposedly, food!

Chapter Thirty ~ Anna and the Railway

Anna tried the door into the staff carriage to find it open. Luckily it was empty. She slipped in with the intention of a thorough wash and clean up. First, she hung her cloak on a dressmaker’s dolly and gave it good brush. Salt still hung in the heavy cloth. Afterwards, she washed her hair and had a good scrub. She ate some of the soft white bread, which seemed on offer, longing for a taste of black rye that was more to her taste. The heavy train, clicking at every joint in the rail, set up a pattern of noise that rang in her head as they passed through the beautiful, empty country. Was this a country at war? It was only passing wagons holding artillery pieces, their snouts pointing to heaven and longer wagons with horses, noses to tail, nose to tail, that convinced her that this was the enemy. At one point they drew into a siding to allow a fast troop train to rush by on a single line stretch where the ‘up’ track was being repaired. The gangers lifted their shovels and picks in salute to the Red Cross as they continued on their way. At last they drew into the southern branch line at Basingstoke, where ambulances waited to take the wounded to West Ham House and Danes Hill.

The guard moved her to the downside where there was no platform. As he handed her down the side of the van Anna slipped and fell. Her canvas bag dropped six feet to the granite chips ballasting the rail. She cursed in a string of Flemish, to the amazement of the railwayman, who found it difficult to realise that the world spoke in a different language to English. He gathered her up and told her to board the next train travelling west, indicating the way with a wave of his arm. It was a long wait and when it did arrive it was a goods train, each wagon guarded by a soldier armed with a rifle. Not her train she decided, slumping down onto a platform bench. The station stank of steam, oil, people and dust, old dust. Her cape collected all this a she huddled on the hard slats, trying to fall asleep as the station slowed down its ceaseless wartime activity.

The Great Central policeman’s hand fell on her shoulder. Dazed, Anna muttered,

“Goedenavond.”

The policeman gently responded by telling her that sleeping on the station platform was not allowed. Perhaps she should move to the Ladies’ Waiting room. Still full of sleep, she mumbled,

“Ik beginrijp net neit.”

`Got a right one here,` he thought and went to the office to gather a female assistant, if there was one at this time of night!

There was nobody. With the help of an elderly porter he walked the nurse to the empty room. The smell of urine pervaded and he wondered, eyeing the dirt, how it could possibly be called a Ladies’ Room. Anna stretched out on the thinly upholstered bench and settled down for the night.

This was not interrogation as she knew it! No bright lights, no intensity as she had been taught, just a comfortable elderly man with stripes on his arm kindly asking where she had come from and had she identification papers? Anna bent down to her canvas bag. No, it had not been searched, everything in its place and the papers, original service papers stretching back to a training in nursing since her teenage years, all taken from a girl that she had never known and, hopefully, was still alive.

Anna was quite prepared to answer questions arising from the now rather mouldy,  certainly creased sheets and was surprised to be asked,

“How did you get on the manifest of the Warilda?”

She puzzled over the word, then guessing, said that she had been delegated to care for a stretcher case.