A Rose for the Anzac Boys by Jackie French Read Free Book Online Page B

for something, anything, to drink. Please, she prayed silently. Help us, please.
    ‘ Cacao, mon brave ?’
    It was a stranger’s voice. Midge looked up. All along the platform, she saw young women in grey skirts with handkerchiefs about their heads, old women in black lace, girls with aprons over neat print dresses. The village women had come to help. Now at least it was possible to also give drinks to everyone.
    A hospital train arrived, steaming and snorting as it stopped. Orderlies climbed out—all men, this time, andin uniform—lifted stretchers from the platform and carried them one by one on board. Inside the train Midge could see nurses, their veils a brilliant white even through the window glass. But as soon as one stretcher was taken from the platform, another took its place.
    Midge glanced out into the courtyard again. It was still crowded with stretchers, the road still lined with vehicles waiting to unload. There were no more motor ambulances. Now the wounded came in farm trucks, delivery trucks, carts that a year ago had carried cows or sheep and still smelled of hay or manure. Others came in private cars with leather seats and empty silver vases for the nosegays there was no time to pick, the men stretched out on the back seat or propped awkwardly with linen pillows.
    Midge returned to her task. ‘ Pardon, monsieur ? Cocoa?’
    Mopping blood from a soldier’s face so it didn’t drip into the cocoa. Replacing a bandage pad that had slipped off a wound. More trucks, more cars, and then the ambulances again, returning from hell, carrying a second load.
    ‘ Pardon, monsieur ? Cocoa?’
    The shadows grew shorter, then long. Dusk thickened the air as the first of the walking wounded limped down the cobbled street and lay panting against the walls of the station master’s office or stretched out on any patch of platform or in the station courtyard.
    The station master lit the gaslights. They hissed above sounds of pain.
    ‘ Pardon, monsieur ? Cocoa?’
    And still the wounded came staggering along the village street, on foot now as well as in the carts, an endless procession, desperate to reach the station and a hospital train, a doctor’s hands. One man helped another; two carried a comrade between them; men with bandaged eyes pushed bath chairs, their passengers giving them directions.
    Villagers rushed into the street to lend a shoulder; some brought wheelbarrows to help those who collapsed along the road. School children lugged buckets of water, while women held cups to the dry cracked lips of bleeding men who rested on steps or leaned against walls on their way to the station.
    The gaslights flared on the platform, turning the pale faces yellow. Here and there buckets of smouldering coke provided a little heat, and a thin transparent smoke that choked you if you went too close.
    Cocoa and more cocoa. Loaf after loaf to be sliced. And still the ambulances came and left. And the wounded staggered in.
    Dimly Midge was aware of Slogger and Boadicea coming back a third time; unloading more stretchers. Slogger swayed up to grab more cocoa, Dolores at her heels. Even the big dog seemed weary now.
    ‘Smile,’ Slogger whispered, her eyes red with tiredness.
    ‘What?’ Midge stared at her, not understanding.
    ‘It’s all we can do for the poor chaps sometimes—smile at them. Comfort them. Give them a pennyworth of hope. And if they’re dying…well, let their last thought be of home, of comfort.’
    How could you smile in this, thought Midge desperately. But Slogger was right. They had so little to give. She forced her lips to move, her face to relax from grimness to what she hoped was comfort.
    ‘ Pardon, monsieur ? Cocoa?’ Smile. Lift and fill and smile…
    More powdered milk to be mixed. More bread to slice. Midge stared at the loaf in front of her. How many hours had she been working? The knife seemed to blur back and forth whether her hands moved or not. She blinked hard, but the world still