Frontline Nurses Read online

  ‘They are not at Chataldzha then?’ Leo asked.

  ‘No, as I told you. Foreign non-combatants are not permitted so near the front line. But the casualties from Chataldzha are being taken to Lozengrad. I am told that your friends have set up a hospital there.’

  ‘Then we must go and join them,’ Victoria said. ‘Only sixty kilometres. We can be there in an hour in the car.’

  The general shook his head reprovingly. ‘My dear lady, I could not possibly allow you to set off alone. The countryside between here and Lozengrad has been devastated by the war and there are desperate people out there. Who knows what might happen to two unprotected women? You must allow me to send an escort with you. They will not have cars, but you will find that it is impossible to travel fast over these roads.’

  They both realised that it would be foolish to argue, so an hour later they set off in a cavalcade with Georgi Radic and two troopers riding ahead and two more soldiers standing on the running boards of the car. The general had insisted on providing them with a tent, which was strapped on top of the trunk carrying their possessions, and food supplies for two days.

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ Victoria muttered as they packed. ‘Anybody would think we were going six hundred kilometres, not sixty. Doesn’t he have any idea how fast a car can travel?’

  They soon had their answer. The roads, if they could be called that, had been churned to liquid mud by the bullock wagons that were the main form of transport for the army. They had not covered more than two miles before the car stuck fast and they were glad of the power of the two burly soldiers to push them out. Another mile further on they stuck again and this time the two mounted troopers had to get off their horses and help. By the time the short winter daylight was fading they had covered less than half the distance and Georgi called a halt by a small copse of trees, whose upper branches had been ripped away by gunfire. The fallen timber was built up into a campfire, the tent was erected and a cooking pot was soon simmering for the inevitable soup. Conversation was difficult, since only Georgi spoke anything other than Serbian, but before long one of the men produced a gusla and this time Leo took comfort in the monotonous drone, which seemed to make the darkness beyond the fire less threatening. When the song finished they said their goodnights and crawled into their sleeping bags in the tent, snuggling together for warmth and comfort, while the men, except for one to keep watch, wrapped themselves in their blankets and lay down around the fire.

  ‘I say,’ Leo murmured, on the verge of sleep, ‘we wanted an adventure. Well, we’ve certainly found one.’

  Victoria chuckled softly. ‘I don’t know about you, Malham Brown! Here we are, miles from anywhere, half frozen, with nothing but the hard ground to lie on, and I do believe you’re enjoying yourself!’

  ‘Do you know,’ Leo responded, ‘I believe I am.’

  Chapter 8

  The two days after his arrest passed for Tom with frustrating slowness. He was half afraid to leave the hotel and when he did venture out the febrile wartime atmosphere of the city unnerved him, as it had not done before. He spent most of the time in his room, working up some of the sketches he had made from the train, being careful not to include anything that might conceivably be seen as useful to an enemy. He also tried to produce a reasonable likeness of Leonora, reckoning that it could be useful in his search, but as always he found it impossible to catch that indefinable essence that would make the picture come to life.

  On their last evening in the hotel he knocked on Max’s door to see if he was ready to go down to dinner and was alarmed to find him cleaning and loading a revolver.

  ‘I didn’t know you carried a gun!’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No! No, it would be illegal in England.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I forgot your people’s funny attitude to self-protection. Believe me, I wouldn’t be without this baby.’

  ‘Have you ever used it?’

  ‘Never needed to. But there’s always a first time.’

  Max reported that it was impossible to get tickets to travel by train as the whole rail network had been taken over by the military; so in the morning he and Tom loaded their belongings into the car and set off by road. It became clear very quickly that progress was going to be slow. The roads were clogged with troops moving towards the front, on foot and on horseback, and wounded being returned in slow-moving wagons drawn by oxen. By the end of the first day they had reached Nis, the second largest city in Serbia, and were lucky to find a small, bug-ridden room in an inn, where they had to share a straw-stuffed mattress on a rickety bed. The next day they headed south towards Kumanovo. As they drew nearer they encountered sights that turned Tom’s stomach. They passed through village after village that had been reduced to smouldering ruins and among the blackened buildings he caught glimpses of ragged, half-burned bundles that he tried not to recognise as human bodies. The fields on either side of the road had been churned to liquid mud and half submerged in the morass were the corpses of hundreds of men and horses. Upflung arms were stretched in pointless appeal towards the heavens and blackened skulls grinned up at them from the verges. As darkness fell, the sky was reddened by the flames of further conflagrations. That night, they reached Skopje and found a scene of total devastation. All the undamaged buildings had been commandeered by the military and they were forced to spend the night in the car, parked close to the river Vardar, which ran through the centre of the city.

  Tom woke, chilled and cramped, as an unwilling winter dawn broke over the town. He had suspected for the last day or two that he was coming down with a cold and now he was sure of it. His nose was streaming and his throat felt as if it had been rubbed raw with sandpaper. He crawled out of the car to stretch his legs and wandered onto the bridge that crossed the river. He looked down and immediately doubled up in a fit of convulsive vomiting. The waters of the river were choked, as if by debris brought down by flood waters and caught up against the bridge, with the headless bodies of men.

  Tom’s stomach was empty and he could only bring up acid bile. When the nausea eased enough to allow him to stand he staggered back to the car and woke Max.

  ‘Go and look,’ he gasped in answer to Max’s sleep-fuddled queries. ‘Look in the river.’

  Max came back to the car after a few minutes, grey-faced but calm. ‘Tom, you should draw this. The world should know what is being done here. I can write it up, but only a picture will make people see the true horror.’

  ‘I can’t!’ Tom whispered.

  ‘Yes, you can,’ Max said. ‘You need to do this.’

  Tom dragged himself back to the bridge and forced himself to look properly at the pitiful sight below. He got out his pad and began to draw and as he did so he understood the force of what Max had said. In confronting the horror and reducing it to planes and shadows on the paper it became no less real but somehow comprehensible. As he finished a few local men appeared from the shells of their houses and came to stand by the bridge. It was evident from their behaviour that this was not the first time they had seen the slaughter below them. Max questioned them in German and translated for Tom.

  ‘They say it happens every night. Some think it is local men, killed by the četniks for resisting, others that the bodies have been carried down from higher up the river. No one knows for sure who is responsible.’

  ‘Who are the četniks?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Serbian irregulars in the pay of the Black Hand. Most of the local population are Albanian and the Serbs and the Albanians have always been at daggers drawn.’

  ‘The what? It sounds like something out of a penny dreadful.’

  Max gave a mirthless grunt of laughter. ‘See what you mean, but they’re serious enough. The proper name for the organisation is Unification or Death but they are always referred to as the Black Hand. They are ultra-nationalists and their objective, as I understand it, is to create a Greater Serbia. It seems from these guys I’ve just been talking to that they pretty much run things arou
nd here at the moment.’ He looked down at Tom’s picture. ‘That has to be sent to the London Times, and I need to get the story out to my paper. People have to know what’s going on here. Let’s go find a post office or somewhere with a telephone, so I can file my copy.’

  ‘Maybe I can send a telegram to London in case Leonora has arrived home,’ Tom said. The prospect of an affirmative answer, which would allow him to return to civilization, dangled before him like a mirage in the desert.

  Enquiries in the stricken town produced the information that all communications were under the control of the Black Hand, who had set up headquarters in one of the few intact buildings, which people were already calling the Black House. There they were received courteously by a Major Tankovic but told that the telephone lines between Skopje and Belgrade were down, as were those between the town and Salonika to the south. Normal postal services had ceased to operate and all messages had to be conveyed by courier and were confined to military bulletins. With little hope of success, Tom asked his usual question regarding the possible whereabouts of Leonora and Victoria and was met, as usual, with blank incomprehension. Defeated, they returned to the car and breakfasted on the last of the provisions they had brought with them from Belgrade.

  ‘I guess the only thing we can do is press on southwards,’ Max said. ‘If we can get through to Salonika we should be able to contact London and the USA, and maybe pick up some news of your lady friend.’

  Tom rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the stubble that reminded him he had not washed or shaved for two days. He longed with all his heart to get away from these killing fields but unless he went on with Max the only alternative was to try to make his own way back to Belgrade. From Salonika, he told himself, he should be able to get a boat, which would take him to Italy or France – and surely, if there was no news of Leo there, he would be justified in calling off the search.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on our way.’

  ‘There’s just one problem,’ Max said. ‘It seems there is still fighting around the town of Bitola, which is on our route. We’ll have to hope that we can get around it somehow.’

  As they drove south the country grew wilder and more mountainous. There was snow on the higher slopes and the road followed river valleys full of the sound of rushing water. Everywhere, there was evidence of the fighting and from several miles outside Bitola they could hear the boom of artillery and the sky ahead was lit up by flashes.

  ‘This is crazy,’ Tom said. ‘We can’t drive through that.’

  ‘I know,’ Max responded. ‘I’m planning on finding the battlefield HQ, which must be well back from the firing line. They may be able to tell us a way round. If not, we’ll have to sit it out until the fighting is over. Seems like the Serbs are making pretty short work of the Turkish forces, so it shouldn’t be too long.’

  They had gone just over another mile when, on the outskirts of a small village, they were waved to a standstill by a group of raggedly dressed men carrying rifles. A bearded man jerked open the driver’s door and said something in what Tom presumed was Serbian. Max replied in German but the man shook his head angrily and gestured them out of the car. Max produced his press card and waved it under his nose, but he brushed it aside and repeated the gesture. When neither Tom nor Max moved, he shouted a command to the rest of his band and they found themselves at the centre of a ring of rifles.

  ‘Better do as the man says,’ Max muttered, and climbed out. ‘Maybe there is someone in charge who speaks German.’

  Tom got out and as he did so the bearded man climbed into the driving seat and revved the engine.

  ‘Hey, now, whoa!’ Max yelled, jumping in front of the vehicle, but the man just laughed and drove at him, forcing him to leap aside. In numb horror, Tom watched as the car disappeared up the village street.

  ‘You can’t do that!’ Max yelled. ‘That’s theft! What are we supposed to do? Walk to Salonika? At least let us have our bags …’

  The remaining men grinned and gestured with their guns towards the road that led through the village.

  ‘Maybe they want us to follow him,’ Tom suggested, with faint hope.

  ‘Guess there’s nothing else we can do,’ Max agreed.

  They trudged down the village street, followed by the men, but there was no sign of the car. Tom guessed it had been hidden in one of the dilapidated barns attached to the houses. It was only a small place and they quickly reached the far end of the street, from where the road stretched ahead of them towards the sound of the guns.

  Max turned towards the gang. ‘Look here, fellers, we have to be somewhere. It’s important. I’ll pay for the car. Look, see?’ He produced his wallet and waved it at them. One of them snatched it and riffled through the notes, chuckling. Then he pocketed the money, threw the empty wallet back to Max and waved his rifle towards the open road. Tom saw Max’s hand go to the pocket where he carried his revolver. He grabbed his arm.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Max! Do you want to get us both shot?’

  The man who had taken the money advanced and pushed the muzzle of his rifle into Max’s stomach. Tom tugged at his arm.

  ‘It’s no use, Max. Look at them. They won’t think twice about shooting us. We don’t have a choice. Just walk away.’

  Slowly they turned and began to trudge down the road. Tom’s spine crept as if slimy creatures were running up and down it and he expected at any moment to feel a bullet strike him in the back but he plodded on, pulling Max with him, and when he eventually dared to look behind him the road was empty.

  ‘Well, now what?’ Tom asked.

  Max was muttering to himself. ‘Sons of bitches! My car and my money. And all our gear. Fuck it! They’ve even got my sodding typewriter!’

  For the first time it struck Tom that he had nothing but the clothes he stood up in and the satchel in which he carried his drawing materials, which was hanging from his shoulder. He felt in his pocket and was relieved to find his wallet and his passport. He looked at Max and saw that the confident swagger had disappeared, leaving him grey faced and wild eyed.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Max demanded, echoing Tom’s question.

  ‘Keep walking, I suppose. Eventually we must reach the rear echelons of the army. Then we can ask for help.’

  They trudged on. It had been raining intermittently all day but now the rain seemed to have become one more hostile force in an inimical world. Icy cold, it slanted into their faces and soaked their clothes. Tom, not sure what to expect when they left Belgrade, had dressed as he would have done for a day’s shooting on the moors. He was glad of his good boots but had neglected to put on gaiters and he could feel the mud and water from the roadway soaking into his trouser legs, while the rain dripped off the back of his deerstalker and ran down inside his collar. Before long, the moisture had even penetrated the cape of his tweed Inverness coat and he could feel his shirt chill and damp against his skin. His nose had dried up but now his sinuses were clogged with catarrh, and his throat was so painful he could hardly bear to swallow. Every time he took a breath there was a sharp pain in his chest. But at least he was used to long tramps in the rain, which Max obviously was not.

  ‘I’m a city guy,’ he protested. ‘I’ve never walked more than a couple of blocks in my life. These boots are killing me.’

  ‘Stop!’ Tom said abruptly. ‘Listen.’

  ‘Listen to what?’

  ‘There it is again. Hear it?’

  Faintly, through the relentless hiss of the rain, came a sound that sent a chill of horror through Tom’s already icy body. A high, thin wailing, so shrill and attenuated that it was almost beyond the range of his ears, but insistent and unceasing.

  ‘It’s the wind,’ Max said.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Tom replied, turning his head this way and that. ‘It’s coming from over there, behind that wall.’

  He crossed to a broken stone wall at the side of the road and looked over, then turned away and flung his hand over his
eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ Max demanded.

  ‘Look!’ was all Tom could say. He forced himself to lower his hand. Lying on the ground just beyond the wall was a girl, hardly more than a child, legs splayed obscenely apart, her body ripped from crotch to navel. All round her the sodden ground was stained dark with her blood and yet, incredibly, she still lived and uttered that terrible, unworldly cry.

  Tom climbed over the wall and knelt beside her. Behind him he could hear Max repeating over and over again, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’ He found the child’s hand and gripped it and the wailing stopped, although her eyes remained closed.

  ‘What do we do? What do we do?’ Max demanded.

  ‘What can we do?’ Tom said. ‘God knows where the nearest hospital is, and she would be dead before we got her there.’ He was remembering a day when he was about twelve years old. His father had taken him out shooting and they had come across a young fox, which had somehow escaped from the hounds, its belly ripped open and its intestines dragging. Tom had knelt by it, weeping, and his father had handed him his shotgun and said brusquely, ‘Put the poor creature out of its misery.’

  Tom reached behind him with his free hand. ‘Give me your revolver.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Give me your gun.’

  He did not look round, but felt the butt of the revolver placed in his hand. His eyes were blinded by tears but he found the child’s temple and put the muzzle against it. ‘Don’t be afraid, little one,’ he whispered in English. ‘Your suffering will be over in a moment.’

  He pulled the trigger and felt the small body convulse once and lie still. Words came unbidden to his lips. ‘Dear God, gentle Jesus, who wipes away all tears from our eyes, take her and be merciful to her.’

  He got to his feet and looked round. Max was vomiting against the wall a few feet away. Tom waited until the paroxysm had passed and then said, ‘We can’t leave her like this, but we’ve nothing to dig a grave with. Help me.’