Passions of War by Hilary Green Page A

belongs to,’ Victoria mused. ‘If we could rent it we could live there.’
    â€˜We can’t sleep in a shop window!’ Leo protested.
    â€˜I’d rather do that than move every three days,’ Victoria retorted.
    Enquiries produced the answer that the tenants had fled the town and the owner was only too glad to rent the place to someone else. Sheets of brown paper were pasted over the windows and spare beds were carried down from the hospital, though there were so few of them that the night nurses simply fell into those vacated by the day shift. ‘Just like good old Lozengrad,’ Victoria commented.
    The wounded arrived every night by the trainload and at dawn each day the FANY ambulance, which had now been joined by an assortment of other vehicles, including Sparky, set off in convoy for the station. Lamarck was not the only hospital, and the casualties had to be distributed amongst the others before Leo and her colleagues could begin their work on the wards. Periodically news arrived that a hospital ship was in the port and then all those able to be moved had to be loaded into the ambulances and driven to the docks, to make room for new admissions.
    It was not long before the first typhus patients were joined by others, and Leo volunteered to nurse them, reckoning that her experience at Adrianople would be useful. Their care needed more labour than the other casualties. They had to be regularly sponged with cold water to reduce the fever and as there was no running water in the building it all had to be drawn from a well in the courtyard and carried up several flights of stairs. And since there were no chairs or tables the basins had to be placed on the floor, making the actual sponging a back-breaking occupation. Then they had to be fed with great care, sip by slow sip. They were often raving with delirium and could sometimes be quite violent. It was dispiriting work, since despite her best care roughly a third of the men died and it was not unusual to come to work in the morning and discover that the bed occupied yesterday by someone she had bathed and fed and comforted now held a new occupant.
    One of the typhoid patients was called Franz. He had been a gunner and had served at the siege of Antwerp. In his delirium he believed he was still there and constantly counted his ammunition and shouted to his imaginary comrades. Occasionally he gave vent to a loud ‘Boom!’ which made everyone jump. One day Leo was feeding another patient when she heard him shouting.
    â€˜ Cochon! Bastard! Vous avez tuer mes camarades. Maintenant je vous etranglerai .’
    The words were followed by a muffled scream and Leo turned to see Franz grasping one of the nurses, a girl called Margaret, by the throat. She put down the bowl she was holding and ran across the ward, but before she reached him two male orderlies had leapt on him and wrestled him back on to his bed.
    â€˜Why did he do that?’ Margaret panted, clasping her throat. ‘I only wanted to feed him.’
    â€˜It wasn’t anything you did,’ Leo consoled her. ‘He thought you were a German soldier.’
    There was a rota for work on the night shift, and when her turn came Leo found it a relief. The pressure was less and she had time to chat to some of the men who were on the way to recovery. The ones who spoke French were glad to find someone who was able to converse easily in their language and she made efforts to learn a little Flemish, so she could communicate with the others. They told her about their families and many of them asked her to write letters home for them. They reminded her of the soldiers she had nursed at Adrianople. They expressed the same meek gratitude for everything she did for them and endured their suffering with the same mixture of stoicism and humour.
    One night the relative peace of the night shift was shattered by a strange throbbing, buzzing sound. Leo turned to the orderly who was on duty