World War I Read online

  When Milne went to pass the information on to Dr Inglis she could tell from her boss’s expression that turning back was not an option. ‘We need to set up a dressing station for wounded soldiers,’ said the doctor firmly, ‘and we can’t just abandon the girls in the lorry. They’ve probably already reached Karamurat.’

  Milne climbed back into the car, and the two vehicles continued, edging their way through the oncoming refugees.

  The town of Karamurat was dark and appeared almost empty when they arrived. The only signs of life were soldiers sitting miserably in groups trying to keep warm around campfires. There was no sign of the lorry or the other hospital staff anywhere. They drove around for a while before they noticed a faint light coming from one of the houses.

  ‘Mary, you are our good German speaker,’ said Dr Inglis, turning to Milne. ‘I need you to start knocking on doors to find out what has happened to our missing girls.’

  ‘Yes, Dr Inglis,’ replied Milne, and she hurriedly pushed open the car door. She was the youngest member of the group and glad of an opportunity to impress Dr Inglis.

  But the first thing Milne did was slip in the mud and fall on her face. Her limbs were so cold and stiff after hours of bone-shaking driving in the car’s wet and windy cabin that she was barely able to stand. Slowly she got to her knees and then her feet, shaking and rubbing herself vigorously to loosen the mud and warm her muscles. She glanced back at the car.

  Dr Inglis made a shooing motion with her hand. ‘Go on, girl, go on,’ she said.

  Milne walked slowly up to the house until she stood in front of the door. Nervously, she raised her hand and was just about to knock when the door opened.

  A few minutes later she was back at the car window.

  ‘Look who I’ve found,’ she said, smiling brightly in the darkness. ‘His name is Viktor.’

  Viktor was a Serbian soldier. He spoke German and had agreed to try to help find the missing girls.

  ‘He says he can take us to the Red Cross Station, which is quite near,’ said Milne. ‘They’ll know where our nurses are.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Dr Inglis. ‘We will wait for you here.’

  When Milne and Viktor arrived at the Red Cross Station, they were met by a very unfriendly matron who gruffly told them she knew nothing. ‘You should try looking for your friends at the Serbian headquarters,’ she told them, as she showed them out.

  ‘I know a shortcut,’ said Viktor. ‘It’s not far.’

  Soon the two of them were sneaking through gardens full of sleeping soldiers, sprinting across courtyards full of horses, and crawling through fences in which they had to tear holes to get to the other side.

  ‘This is some shortcut,’ muttered Milne, as she tried to keep up with Viktor.

  Eventually they came to a sheer wall. Milne glared at Viktor, who admitted he must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. The only way to get back on track was to climb the wall, he assured her. Grunting with exertion, Viktor lifted Milne as high as he could and finally she managed to hook her fingers over the top of the wall and pull herself up.

  When the pair were both perched atop the wall, the young soldier jumped into the darkness on the other side and landed with a splash.

  Bracing herself, Milne lowered herself as far as she could and then let go. She too landed with a splash. But it was the smell that appalled her. ‘It must be an open sewer,’ she thought to herself, wondering what she must look and smell like now.

  But Viktor was undaunted. ‘Come on!’ He grabbed her by the arm and they set off once more.

  Eventually they reached a dark courtyard with a door. Viktor slipped inside and disappeared. Milne stood alone, waiting for his return. She was intensely hungry, cold and miserable. Her body stank. She wanted to run away, but where could she go? She had no idea how to get back to the car. If Viktor didn’t come back, she had no idea what she would do.

  Finally he reappeared. ‘This way!’ He beckoned her inside.

  Milne was taken swiftly down a passageway and pushed through a doorway into a dimly lit room. The door closed behind her. In front of her were three older men, one half dressed and the other two lying in bed. A feeling of dread tugged at her stomach. Was this a trap?

  The half-dressed man spoke to her in German. ‘Please excuse us,’ he said. Something about his tone of voice reassured Milne. He smiled wearily. ‘We weren’t expecting a visitor and had already retired for the night. We are all leaving Karamurat at four in the morning.’

  He explained that they were Serbian officers and that they knew nothing of the whereabouts of the seven Scottish women. ‘Perhaps you should try the Russian headquarters.’

  Milne thanked the men and wished them well. She and Viktor set off for the Russian HQ. But nobody there had any news of the missing girls.

  ‘We are leaving here – and so should you,’ said a tired-looking General. He was surrounded by men bent over desks, writing reports, tracing troop movements on maps and answering telephones that rang constantly. ‘The enemy will be here in the morning and this is no place for women,’ he continued. ‘But go to the Romanian headquarters if you have not been there already. They might know something about your friends.’

  There was no luck at the Romanian HQ. No courtesy either. Well-dressed young officers mocked the bedraggled and strange-smelling foreign woman in their midst, with her crumpled tartan tie and grey shirt, muddy waterproof coat and boots, her tangled wet hair plastered to her scalp.

  Milne fumed but tried to hide her anger. Eventually, an older officer who had been studying a map on a wall pushed Milne’s tormentors away and repeated what the Russian General had told her. ‘We are leaving and so should you. This is no place for a woman!’

  Exhausted and demoralised, Milne asked Viktor to lead her back to the car. This time he took no wrong turns.

  ‘My dear girl, we thought we had lost you too,’ cried Dr Inglis, when they returned. ‘Where have you been?’

  Milne explained what had happened. ‘Nobody has seen anything. I don’t think the lorry can ever have arrived in Karamurat,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Inglis.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Dr Inglis. ‘You have done well. We now know for certain they are not here yet, so we shall just have to wait for them to arrive. We need a roof over our heads.’

  Viktor led them all to the Serbian HQ, where he arranged accommodation for them while they waited for their missing companions. Milne thanked him for his help and off he went into the night. Meanwhile, they were told to wait while an officer arranged a room for them to sleep in overnight, but he insisted that there was no food available.

  ‘Officer, we have eaten nothing since this morning and it is now near midnight,’ said Dr Inglis in her commanding Edinburgh accent. She glared at the man. ‘There must be some food here.’

  The officer shook his head and went away grumbling.

  Finally, the women were led along corridors lined with sleeping soldiers to a room with straw bedding and green blankets. Basins of water, towels and soap were brought in. Milne washed, relieved to get rid of the stench from the sewer, then lay down in the straw and slept.

  After an hour they were woken by a knock at the door. In came soldiers carrying plates of food – Russian soup, roast turkey, bread and tea.

  Astonished, the women sat up and tucked into their feast while a satisfied Dr Inglis announced, ‘There, isn’t this much better?’ Milne smiled to herself as she chewed. If Dr Inglis wanted something for her people, she got it.

  At dawn, the Serbian officer who had provided the meal came to say farewell. ‘We have to go, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘If the enemy catches us, we won’t be taken prisoner, we’ll be shot. They are very near. You too should …’

  ‘Yes, yes, officer – we shall be going as soon as possible,’ interrupted Dr Inglis. ‘This is no place for a woman, and so on.’ She winked at Milne. ‘We thank you for your help, and rest assured,’ Dr Inglis continued, ‘since there is no work for us to do here we will
not be delayed for a second longer than is necessary. I wish you and your men good luck.’

  With that, the officer left. Dr Inglis then turned to the others and said, ‘As soon as our missing girls turn up, we’ll get out of here. I cannot consider leaving without them.’

  Soon afterwards, at around 6am, a courier on a motorcycle arrived bearing good news. The seven missing staff were safe and well, but had been delayed. They were awaiting new orders from Dr Inglis.

  The news cheered and relieved them all, and Dr Inglis immediately reorganised the group for the onward journey. They had to act quickly. The guns of the enemy were booming louder.

  Luckily, the Serbian army had not yet completed their withdrawal so a lift on some horse-drawn army carts was arranged for Milne and a few others. They were instructed to make their way to a place called Gradina. Meanwhile Dr Inglis and the rest of the group would take the motor vehicles and drive along a different road in order to link up with the seven missing girls, and then rejoin Milne and the others as soon as possible.

  Milne squeezed herself and her haversack of belongings in among the straw on the back of one of the carts. She waved goodbye to Dr Inglis and the others as the grey cart-horse clip-clopped down the street.

  Craning her neck as she tried to get comfortable, Milne saw they were approaching a building that towered over the others. On its flat roof was a lot of activity. A huge group of soldiers were looking intently into the distance, pointing and arguing.

  Suddenly there was panic. A roar went up as the soldiers ran off the roof and down the stone steps that clung to the outside wall of the building. Onto the street they fled, past the carts carrying Milne and her companions. Though it wasn’t a language she knew, it was not hard to get the jist of their cries.

  ‘The Bulgars! The Bulgars!’ screamed a wild-eyed young soldier as he pelted down the road, clutching his rifle. He was just one of scores of men shouting.

  All of a sudden there was a huge explosion. An enemy shell landed nearby and set a building on fire. Then another shell struck, followed by another. Soon the whole place was under heavy bombardment and house after house caught fire, creating a raging inferno.

  Children and their parents streamed out of doorways and alleys where they had been hiding and ran down the middle of the street. The retreating soldiers charged ruthlessly among them, knocking down youngsters and the elderly in their eagerness to escape.

  Milne watched in horror as a cavalryman on a charging horse got tangled up in a dangling telegraph wire. The wire pulled tightly against his torso and he was flung to the ground with an agonised scream.

  Other terror-stricken soldiers, desperate to avoid being trapped in the town, clawed at the sides of Milne’s cart. One of them tried to haul himself aboard, but she tore at his fingers and beat him off. The horses simply could not carry any greater burden with such a long and uncertain road ahead.

  Another shell landed with a whoosh and a BLAAAST! sending debris flying. A new fire began raging.

  ‘Get us out of here, for God’s sake!’ shouted one of the nurses.

  The lead driver cracked his whip and snarled at the horses, who began galloping through the crowd. With a teeth-chattering shake and rattle they flew down the road.

  CRASH! A wheel hit a pothole. THUNK! Another slammed into a rock, bouncing the cart high and almost rolling it over. The women clung onto each other and prayed.

  Out beyond the boundary of the town they charged, alongside the fleeing mass of people. They crossed railway bridges and rivers, galloped over moors and fields, climbed steep hills and passed through clusters of houses where the only living souls were stray dogs and abandoned farmyard animals.

  Some of the sights Milne saw horrified her – yet she couldn’t help but look. An ox, too weak to drag a cart out of a muddy field, was being whipped relentlessly while the owner’s wife and children huddled, crying in the back. Eventually the crazed man grabbed a sword from a passing soldier and slashed his poor beast with the blade.

  Elsewhere an officer threw a woman and child off the back of their cart so he could have it for himself. Milne was relieved to hear later that the pair had been picked up by others and carried to safety.

  The stream of refugees thinned as the women’s carts got ahead of the crowds. Eventually they made their way through a narrow pass and down into the valley beyond. There lay their destination – the village of Gradina.

  The women were invited to camp with a Serbian military medical unit that had left Karamurat earlier. The exhausted horses were unharnessed, fed and watered. The women washed as best they could. They were offered a meal by some Serbian army officers. Milne wolfed down the tasty hot soup, roast lamb and cabbage.

  They had only a brief rest before a motorcyclist arrived with a stark message from Dr Inglis. They were to leave Gradina at once and should prepare to travel all night. By now the weather had closed in, and they set off into the cold and dark. Milne cursed her rain-soaked coat.

  After making a number of wrong turns they found themselves travelling alongside the Serbian medical unit, which had also retreated from Gradina. The booming guns of the enemy – still advancing – made it easy to see why.

  Exhausted, but unable to sleep, Milne was sitting hugging her freezing knees when she heard a shout coming along the line of a hundred or so carts.

  ‘Halt! Motor cars behind us!’

  Milne turned and peered into the darkness. It was the car and ambulance carrying Dr Inglis and her group. Soon the grunting vehicles with their glowing headlamps came alongside, and the cart-travelling nurses were reacquainted with the more modern form of transport. As Milne gratefully took a slug of brandy from the ambulance driver she was relieved to be told that the seven staff in the lorry had been met and sent on to safety further north.

  Eventually they came to a river where the bridge was in a very poor state. Pedestrians and horses could only just pass over the rickety structure. The exhausted drivers of Dr Inglis’s convoy were adamant that it was not safe to try to cross it with the car and ambulance in the dark.

  Dr Inglis assessed the situation for a moment, then nodded. ‘We shall camp here by the roadside until morning.’

  The Serbs who were retreating alongside them thought that camping by the river in the open, in late October, with the enemy advancing, was madness. They begged Dr Inglis to reconsider, but her mind was made up. One of them offered to stay, but the rest of the Serbians reluctantly continued across the bridge and left the Scottish women to it.

  Milne set to work, prepared a fire and then cooked a meal for them all. After they had eaten they lay down, wrapped in their blankets, and chatted.

  They were interrupted now and then by passing groups of soldiers and refugees, who would simply stand and stare, then wander off. At one point, some women came and asked for food, and the nurses gave them what leftovers they had.

  Although it was good to be together again, there was no possibility of relaxing completely. They were all too aware that the enemy was hard at work some miles distant, fringing the skyline with fire and filling the night air with the faint CRUMP! CRUMP! noise of their guns. But they ignored it as best they could. The heat of the crackling campfire soon made them drowsy and eventually their chattering voices fell silent and they slept.

  When Milne opened her eyes, she checked her watch in the early morning light. It was five o’clock. ‘Time to find breakfast!’ she announced to her yawning colleagues. She tossed a fresh branch on the smouldering fire and hung up a pitcher of water to boil. Then off she went, wondering what she might find.

  Passing through a beautiful forest of ferns and yellowing trees, she came upon a thatch-roofed village. The broad road had houses on either side, but the whole place seemed absolutely deserted. She entered the first farmyard she came to.

  A large, muscular black dog with a white chest darted towards her, snarling. It was flanked by two more, growling and howling. The dogs barked at the tops of their lungs, two circling her, one
springing up and down, all with saliva dripping off their bared teeth. Milne stood there unable to move.

  Just then a door opened at the far side of the courtyard. A woman’s face slowly peered round it. The dogs’ aggression lessened slightly. Milne took a deep breath and marched straight up to the door.

  The woman retreated but did not quite shut the door. Milne could not speak Romanian, so she tried a bit of French. There was no response, so instead she tried German.

  ‘Are you a German?’ came the reply from behind the door. The dogs continued crowding Milne’s heels.

  ‘No,’ Milne replied. ‘We are fleeing from the Germans and the Bulgarians. We are the Scottish Women’s Hospital from Great Britain. I just want to buy some eggs, if you have any.’

  There was whispering behind the door and then slowly it was opened. A large group of women streamed out into the courtyard. The dogs melted away. One of the women explained that they were in hiding because some ‘friendly’ retreating soldiers had raided the village.

  ‘There is not a man left in the village apart from three very old ones,’ she said.

  ‘The soldiers came and looted everything in sight,’ said another. ‘Our horses, oxen and cows.’

  ‘One of them came to me and stuck his bayonet in my ribs, demanding bread,’ said a third woman.

  In the distance they could hear the boom of the guns. ‘The enemy is coming,’ said the first woman, pointing. ‘We cannot get away. Without horses and carts we could walk, but our children can’t.’

  Milne felt utterly dejected. She had arrived in the village with a spring in her step, but now she was crushed, knowing there was nothing she could do for these poor women.

  ‘Please, Miss, do you have a charm for my child?’ A young woman cradling a baby at her breast looked at Milne with a mixture of fear and hope.

  Milne took out a threepenny piece which she had carried with her ever since she was a little girl. ‘Here, take this,’ she said to the young mother. ‘Do you see the head of Queen Victoria on one side? That side must be worn facing outwards.’