The Comrades Three

O, don't deceive me,
O, never leave me,
How could you use
A poor maiden so?

Traditional

Alfie and I were woken by the sound of gunfire, booming like distant thunder and echoing from the mountains to the east. I got up and went to the attic window to look, but it was facing the wrong way and we could see nothing. The other girls stirred and muttered in their beds. It was still early; how early I couldn't tell without digging into my kitbag and finding my watch.

The sky was lightening slowly, but the darkness still persisted. It was going to be a long day, I guessed, and so I took Alfie back to bed and lay down. No doubt we would become tired of guns soon enough. I closed my eyes and let the dawn grow and flower in the streets and fields outside.

Madame Fluegel banged on the door, interrupting a strange dream in which I was dancing a vigorous pasadoble with Private John Fraser. He was looking very handsome in faultless evening dress and I was feeling awkward and frumpy in my maintenance overalls. We were just being cut in on by Captain Lowther - it was a ladies' excuse-me - when Sod-It shook my shoulder. 'Come on Sunny. Breakfast!'

I wondered if Kate had been to Frankland before. If she was expecting breakfast to consist of kaffee and cream, bacon, eggs, black pudding, fried bread and tomatoes she was in for quite a surprise.

I wasn't at all surprised when, on staggering downstairs to the kitchen, we found nothing more than a pot of acorn kaffee, a jug of milk and a round loaf of black bread standing on the table. 'Tuck in,' I said before the others could say anything and, 'Merci beaucoup,' to our hostess.

'Je vous en prie.' She smiled briefly and left us alone in the kitchen.

'I say. . .' said Kate.

'I mean. . .' said the other girl.

'Shut up,' I hissed.

'What?'

'Pardon?'

'Stop. Just think for a minute. How much food do you think she's got in her larder? Do you think she wanted us dumped on her? We're probably eating her rations for the whole day. Now smile, and thank her when you see her next.' Sod-It and the other girl looked down at the table.

Gosh, Sunny.

Yes, Alfie?

You surprise me sometimes. That's not like you at all, to consider the feelings of other people.

They don't call me the elusive Miss Moon for nothing. Now let me look after our physical needs, eh? I broke off a piece of bread and dunked it in my kaffee.

We paraded in the town square where we'd drawn up the ambulances the night before. I saw Nancy and Mabel, but they didn't see me; I made sure of that. I was so looking forward to surprising them. The tough woman NCO who'd sent us to our billets the previous night got us formed up into three ranks and standing at attention. Then she handed us over to a tall army lieutenant with a fine cougar-daemon by his side.

'At ease,' he said. We relaxed a little and linked our hands behind our backs.

'Welcome to the Front, ladies.' He gave us a sardonic smile. 'I'm Lieutenant Deveney and I'm the CO of this unit. It's my job to keep you hard at work and out of trouble. This,' he indicated the woman, 'is Sergeant Pearce. If you have any questions regarding our day-to-day operations you should, in the first instance, address them to her.

'Now then. All of you are in the Advance Brigade because you were put forward by the COs of your own units back in England. I'm going to suppose that this was because you are good drivers and mechanics, and not because they couldn't wait to get rid of you.' There was a nervous titter.

'You are all volunteers. This is important, because the work you are going to do will be dangerous. Very dangerous. You are aware that your vehicles are painted white with red crosses. This identifies you as mercy workers and, by the rules of war, immune from attack. This does not mean that you are safe. Far from it. The rules of war are only aspirational, ladies, and liable to be broken in the heat of battle. If you work on or near a battlefield you are quite likely to find yourselves under fire. Shells do not recognise the insignia of the Red Cross and they burst where they will.

'You have just spent your last night under a tiled roof. From now on you will be sleeping in your cabs or, if you are lucky, under canvas. We will move up nearer to the front line starting at oh-eleven hundred hours today. We will be based at a field hospital - there is no need to tell you where it is located. You will find out soon enough. From there you will run an ambulance service to and from the various Casualty Clearing Stations which are situated just behind the lines.

'You are here because you are the best. I know that and I hope you know it too. I am sure that you will acquit yourselves with honour, professionalism and pride. I am privileged to be your commanding officer. Thank you.'

Sergeant Pearce stepped forward. 'Brigade!' We snapped to attention. 'When I say "fall out" you will fall out and go directly to your assigned vehicles. I will call out your assignments now. You will not necessarily find yourself in the same vehicle or working with the same crew that you travelled in when you came here, so pay attention.' She began calling out names and vehicle registration numbers from her clipboard.

'Brigade! Brigade, fall out!'

The brigade fell out as it had been ordered, except for Alfie and me. The sergeant glared at us. 'Hey! You! Go to your vehicle! Move!'

I couldn't. I didn't know where to go. She strode up to me. 'What's the matter with you?'

'Please, Sergeant, I haven't been assigned to a vehicle.'

'What do you mean, you idiot girl, not assigned? What's your name?'

'Moon, Sergeant. Driver First Class.'

Sergeant Pearce checked her clipboard. 'There's no Driver Moon on my list. You've come to the wrong place.'

'Please, Sergeant. I've got my orders.' I held out my forged papers. 'I've come from number twelve depot, with Driver Patterson and Driver Vale.'

She looked closer at me. 'God help us! What've you done to your hair?'

'I cut it, Sergeant.'

'"I cut it, Sergeant!" Pah!' She looked away and her daemon followed her. 'Patterson!'

I could have sworn they heard her in Moskva. Mabel looked up from the opened bonnet of her vehicle. She started with surprise as she saw me for the first time since our goodbye at Agincourt Station.

'Yes, Sarge?'

'Do you know this individual?'

'That's. . . that's Driver Moon, Sarge.'

'Right. She's with you, then. Look after her. She's a bit touched, if you ask me.' Sergeant Pearce tapped her forehead with her index finger. 'Go on, Fuzzy.' She pushed me in Mabel's direction.

'Hi, gang,' I said as I reached Mabel's and Nancy's ambulance. 'Glad to see me?'

'Oh, good grief,' said Mabel, throwing down a spanner with a clang.

'What the hell are you doing here?' said Nancy.

'And I love you too,' I replied, somewhat nonplussed.

They made me sit in the back. Actually, first they made me load up the ambulance with fuel cans and dressings and tincture of iodine and poppy tablets and daemon-poultices and plaster-of-Paris and brandy. Then they made me get their kitbags. Then they let me get mine. Then they told me to sit in the back and keep my mouth shut. They hardly spoke to me otherwise.

What's going on? I asked Alfie as we pulled out of the town square. Why aren't Mabel and Nancy pleased to see me? We're the Three, aren't we? We stick together, don't we?

Alfie sounded genuinely puzzled. I don't know. I really, truly don't know.

We set out in convoy with a number of troop-carriers and crossed the river by means of a temporary pontoon bridge, lurching and swaying as we went. The road on the Swiss side had once been fine, level and smooth, but now it was pockmarked with shell-holes and craters. We had to leave the carriageway and drive on the pavement and verges to the side.

Not that that was necessarily an improvement. The towns we passed through had suffered badly from shot and shell and rubble lay everywhere. I climbed to the front of ambulance and sat next to Nancy so I could see out better. She moved aside with some reluctance.

I was staggered by what I saw. Yes, I'd seen bombing in London and I hadn't forgotten the horrible death of Jack and Minta, but this was different. . . It was as if a giant had trampled over the countryside and towns, crushing fields and forests under his iron-shod heels and swinging his bludgeon at houses, shops and factories. I used to do that with Gerry's bricks toy bricks when I was a baby. I loved stomping the buildings he made into wood and clay rubble. He'd pretended he didn't mind - at least, that's how I remember it. I wondered where the people whose homes and workplaces these ruins had once been were living now. Or were they still living? Could anybody have survived the kind of onslaught that had done such awful damage?

'They say these places have been lost to the Enemy and taken back again many times over,' Mabel said to Nancy.

'It wouldn't surprise me,' she replied.

'But we're winning, aren't we?' I asked. 'Aren't we?'

They fell silent, ignoring me. The road passed slowly under our wheels, crunching and rattling as we crawled along.

After three hours on the road and no more than four or five miles' progress we stopped by the side of a church. Its tower and spire were gone and the roof of the nave lay open to the sky, but it gave us a little shelter and cover. We had been issued with rations when we left Saint Claude but I'd had the impression that the amounts had been closely calculated and that my supplies had been taken from stocks that had been meant for others. I felt embarrassed by this - especially after what I'd said to Sod-It that morning - and so I sat a little apart from the others and munched my rye bread sandwiches in silence. Alfie was quiet too.

I got up and walked around to the other side of the church to relieve myself. It did seem wrong somehow, doing it by the side of a holy building, but it had been quite a long time since we had set out that morning and I didn't want to be caught short later. I made sure I couldn't be seen and Alfie kept a look out for me.

Physical needs! Ha! said Alfie

You are my steadfastest friend. Now keep your eyes peeled.

Sarcasm doesn't suit you, my sweet. He was in a funny mood, I could tell.

When I returned everyone was gathered together and facing away from me. I wondered if I had missed a further briefing from the lieutenant or Sergeant Pearce so I pushed my way to the front of the group. But no, Lieutenant Deveney and his sergeant were standing by a gravestone on the far side of the burial ground talking quietly to each other. I say I pushed my way though the girls, but it would be more true to say they made way for me. Mabel was standing at the far side, next to Nancy. It looked as if I had interrupted something, because she gave me a quick glance as I approached and then turned away.

I felt terribly uncomfortable, as if I'd done something awful, like a faux pas, but without knowing what it was. You know, mentioning the name of a black-sheep uncle or somebody's ex-wife in the wrong company. Or belching in the Oratory. Of course you know when you've done that, don't you?

Nobody said a word. We stood awkwardly for a minute or two before Sergeant Pearce marched over and got us to tidy up our things and go back to the convoy.

We reached the field hospital at six o'clock. It was a collection of tents and wooden huts, linked by pathways made of wooden duck-boards. The place looked haphazard at first sight, but over the next day or two as I got to know the layout I realised that it was actually laid out in the most logical way possible, with separate areas for receiving wounded men and processing them through the operating theatre. That was the grand term for the biggest of the huts. Fixed to the roofs of the huts were white canvas sheets, painted with red crosses. Enemy gyropters sometimes flew low overhead, ignoring our ack-ack fire, but they didn't fire on us or drop bombs close to us.

The sound of artillery was much louder now and almost continuous. There were two batteries only a mile away from us on each side. I wondered how we would be able to sleep with all that racket going on.

There was no sleeping place for me, of course. It seemed that I was surplus to requirements. I stood hopefully next to Nancy and Mabel when the places were assigned but they didn't seem to want to speak up for me, or offer me a place in their tent. So then I went and found Sod-It and Georgie who had been given bunks to share with the nurses. But there was no room for me there either.

'It's awful when these cock-ups happen,' said Kate. 'Why not go and see that nice lieutenant? He might help.'

'Or the Sarge,' added Georgie, unrolling her sleeping bag and avoiding looking at me.

'Yes, that's a good idea. I'll do that,' I said, and left them to it. Perhaps I would, later.

There was nowhere else to go, so after supper, which was a dismal meal of chewy, fatty meat and soggy vegetables, Alfie and I sat at one end of the table, ignoring everyone and being ignored by them, except for the occasions when I could have sworn they pointed at me and exchanged knowing looks. I felt desperately homesick; not for Pangborne, nor for Highdean, but for Mornington, where everything had been all right and nobody had hated me. Afterwards, a group of them ganged up together and went out to an estaminet, where they planned to get famously drunk. Naturally they didn't ask me. I sat in the corner and smoked one solitary Woodbine after another. Nobody came over to talk to me. Eventually I gave up on that and returned to Nancy and Mabel's ambulance. I rolled out the stretcher-carrier, laid down on it and cried myself to sleep, all alone except for the sword close by my side.

The next day was no better. Everybody had decided to stop ignoring me, but instead they settled for being very polite and correct. Some of them spoke to me in the third person. 'If Driver Moon would be so kind as to pass me that carboy.' That kind of thing. And just as there had been nowhere for me to sleep, neither was there anything for me to do. There were twelve ambulances and twenty-four crew in the Advance Brigade, plus me. Clearly, until somebody was taken ill or injured I was, yet again, a spare part.

The sergeant saw me standing by myself as the ambulances drove off after First Parade. She took pity on me, or perhaps she wanted to keep me out of trouble. 'Nothing to do, Moon?' she said in a gruff voice.

'I'll do anything, Ma'am,' I replied, still muzzy with sleep.

'Don't call me "Ma'am". I'm an NCO, not an officer.'

'Sorry, Sarge, I knew that. Silly mistake.'

'What are we to do with you, eh, Fuzzy?' The sergeant stood with both hands on her hips. 'Can you lift and carry?'

'Yes, Sarge.'

'The get yourself over there and report to the admissions ward sister. She'll find you something to do.' Sergeant Pearce pointed to one of the larger huts. I walked over there and found stout, capable Sister Moulson standing by a press and sorting linen. She was very happy to hand the job over to me.

I stayed with Sister Moulson for the rest of that day. It was a relief - such a relief - to escape from the hostile atmosphere of the Advance Brigade. I still had no idea why they had taken against me so. Nobody had ever done anything like that to me before, not even when I first went to Highdean and had to get on with lots of new girls in a strange new place. It'd been hard, and I'd shed a few tears those first few days, but it hadn't been nasty. This was.

I was carrying the sword with me once more.

That night I joined the Advance Brigade in its makeshift mess for dinner. I tried - oh, I tried - to make friends with them, but even the girls I thought I was all right with didn't seem to want to know me. Kate, Georgie, Nancy. None of them. Especially not Mabel. So afterwards I sat outside and smoked and thought. Alfie kept six feet away from me and complained about the smell.

I realise I've said nothing about that first day in the field hospital. I didn't fold sheets and dressings all day, that's for sure. About ten o'clock the first ambulances returned from the CCSs with their precious cargo of wounded men. From then on it was absolute hell.

I'd seen injured men before, of course, but that had been when I was in London. Those men had already been patched up by the doctors in Frankland and their wounds treated and cleaned. These men were different. Their wounds were fresh, the blood still red on their torn uniforms. There were only temporary field dressings covering the places where their limbs had been torn off, or their skulls shattered by flying shrapnel. They had not yet been given clean water to drink, or poppy to take away their pain and give their tormented throats a rest from screaming. They had not been taken away to die.

There were worse sights to be seen, I am sure, in trenches where mortar shells had fallen, or in land-mined dugouts, or at the crossroads they called Jekyll Park Corner. Worse too, at the Casualty Clearing Stations. But it was my first day, and... it was as if I had learned nothing from my experiences in Mornington and Camperdown. They counted for nothing, they were a walk in the woods compared with this.

I did my best. What more could I do? Sister Moulson growled and complained when I was clumsy, or didn't know where the stores were kept. She swore like an infantryman. But when the flood tide of maimed humanity receded a little she found the time to encourage me a little.

'It's tough, your first day.' She put her hands on my shoulders. 'Why did you cut your hair so short?'

Everybody asked me that. 'To keep it out of the way, Sister.'

'You didn't need to do that. How old are you, anyway?'

'Nineteen, Sister.'

She looked into my eyes. Her snipe-daemon stared at Alfie, who was tucked safely into the breast pocket of my tunic.

'Maybe you are.' Sister Moulson shook her head. 'Maybe you're not. What was his name?'

She had taken me by surprise. 'G-Gerry.'

'Gerry. I see.'

'No, Sister, you don't. He was my brother, not my sweetheart.'

She looked even closer at me. I felt all of ten years old. 'Just as you say, you poor, lovely little thing. Come on. Back to work. Fetch that skip over, would you?'

Later on, when I was on the Calais train and had some free time, I managed to write something about my time with Sister Moulson, short though it was. I'm jumping ahead a bit but I'll put it down here, because this is where I think it belongs. When I began it I thought I was going to write something very angry, something very vivid and harsh that would make anybody who read it feel sick with rage at the waste of it all, but it didn't come out that way. I don't think that anybody who has actually been in a war writes that kind of stuff - all blood and fire and glory - only those armchair warriors who used to make Daddy so cross. I think I understand now why he never talked very much about the sea-battles he had been in. It went too deep for boasting about or turning into a great big adventure. You couldn't explain how it had been to someone who hadn't lived through it himself. Anyway, here it is. I wrote it while I was sitting by the side of one of the vehicles after supper. Its wheels were covered with sticky mud - mud that was tinged with a shade of red that I had come to know all too well:

In The Field Hospital

Blood is our stock in trade,
The matron says,
And broken limbs,
Our exchange currency.

Pain is our meat and drink;
And when we sleep,
The light still falls,
Behind our eyes.

Death is our daily task;
The living men,
Are bathed in mud,
The winding sheets betray.

I spent a total of three days in that field hospital, less than three miles from the western ramparts of Geneva. All that time the trains were bringing more and more men up to the Front for the major effort that was, we were assured, going to sweep the Foe away and make the Holy City safe for generations to come. If I hadn't been working in the hospital I don't know what I would have done. Perhaps I'd have joined one of the columns of marching men and looked for death and glory in the shadow of the Great Dome of Geneva, fighting the Pagan Horde, as we called them. Perhaps I'd have joined up with the KSLI and found that nice Private Fraser and given myself to him, so that neither of us would have died unfulfilled.

But I bumped into Mabel outside the latrines and she gave me such a look that I couldn't stand it any longer. I followed her back to her tent, raised the flap and sat myself down in the entrance. She was in there with Nancy, getting ready to go to sleep. 'Right,' I said. 'I'm not leaving until you tell me what the hell is going on.'

'Going on?'

'You know what I mean. Don't come over all innocent with me. Look; I thought we were a team. Us. The Comrades Three. "Three For One, Three For All". So why are you treating me like dirt? And what have you been telling the others? Why do they all hate me so?'

Nancy sat up. 'Go away, Sunny,' she said. 'Go away now. We don't want to hurt you.'

'You don't want to hurt me? What do you think you've been doing these past three days? Buttering me up?'

'Calm down,' said Mabel.

'Calm down! Why should I calm down? I thought you were my friends. Now you're being horrible to me and I don't know why!' I was nearly shouting in my frustration.

'You tell her,' said Nancy, lying down again. 'I'm whacked.'

'Well?'

'Sunny,' Mabel started hesitantly, 'You're not supposed to be here. You know that, don't you?'

'Yes. So what? I am here.'

'How did you get here?'

'The same way you did. Train, ship, ambulance. I did my fair share of the driving. Don't you worry about that.'

'If you say so.' Mabel's face was drawn with fatigue.

'So what's the problem?'

'You lied, Sunny. You lied to get here, didn't you? Your papers are forged, aren't they?'

'What if they are?'

'You're alway lying, do you know that? You pretended to be Lady Gresham. You said you could drive but you couldn't. You send fake letters to people. You've been saying you're a Driver, First Class, when you're not. You get lying documentation made up so you can follow us here.'

'Y-yes, but... I do my bit. I-' I was interrupted by a series of loud thumps from the gun emplacement to the north.

Nancy spoke. 'We can't trust you. Don't you know there's a war on? How can you work next to someone you can't trust? It's life and death now.'

'Captain Lowther knew all this. That's why she wanted to keep you in Mornington,' Mabel added.

I was totally confused now. 'But why didn't you say anything before?'

'It didn't matter before,' said Nancy. 'Now it does.'

'And you can't trust me?'

'No.' I could feel the tears starting in the corners of my eyes.

'You told all the other girls that? Is that what you were telling them at the church?'

There was a deafening crash from nearby. The Enemy was responding to our artillery barrage.

'They asked us about you.' They blabbed? They blabbed about me? How dare they!

'Traitors! You bloody traitors!' I drew the sword from my belt. 'I ought to...'

No! said Alfie.

Alfie...

'You! You!' I pointed the sword at Mabel. She flinched. 'You told them, didn't you? You told them about Alfie!'

'No!

'Yes you did! You told them what a freak I am. You wanted to make them hate me! You told them he was an-'

Sunny! Shush! Shut up! Alfie's voice was low and urgent.

'What?' said Nancy.

'No. No,' said Mabel. 'I would never do anything like that.'

'I don't believe you.' I lifted the sword.

'No really. Ask her.' Mabel looked frightened, as well she might. Her daemon Hal covered his eyes with his wings.

'Why should I believe her? You're both in it together!'

Alfie: She's telling the truth.

Really?

Really.

I put the sword down. 'All right. So you've been telling everyone in the Advance Brigade that I'm a lying cow who can't be trusted. It doesn't mean I can't help, does it? Why do you think I came here? I could have stayed safe at home. I could have gone back to school. But I didn't. I followed you because... because I wanted to do something important. And because I wanted to be with you. And now it's all turned out wrong...' My tears were running down my cheeks. 'Won't you let me stay? Please?'

Nancy looked at Mabel. The flash of a prematurely exploding shell far overhead lit our faces in red and green flares and shadows.

'I'm sorry, Sunny. It's out of our hands now. Go back to the ambulance. We all need to sleep, somehow.'

I left, wondering what Nancy had meant by "out of our hands".

Sleep was slow to come that night. It wasn't just the incessant roar of the guns and rocket launchers. Nor was it the images that kept appearing in front of my tight-closed eyes; of surgeons shaking their heads over blood-drenched operating tables, of broken-eyed men lying on stretchers and litters outside the ward doors, of Sister Moulson's grief-shattered face. No, it was me - or rather my friends and me. How could I have been so stupid? I'd thought we were all on the same side. I'd thought that we were equals; Mabel, Nancy and me. I'd thought we were comrades. But we weren't. They were grown-up women and I was a silly little lying... whatever. I felt ashamed of myself, and them.

The following morning, as I was on the way to the latrines to wash, Sergeant Pearce stopped me. 'Moon. Defaulters. Lieutenant's office. Now.'

Lieutenant Deveney's "office" was a plank of wood standing on two ammunition boxes outside his tent. He looked up as I approached and saluted him. 'Right, Moon.' I stood at attention, Sergeant Pearce by my side. 'I have received a communication from Captain Lowther.' He held up a pink anbarogram form. 'She was your commanding officer, was she not? In London?'

'Yes, Sir.'

'May I see your papers?' I reached into my tunic and handed them over. I thought I knew what was coming.

Lieutenant Deveney flicked through them, holding them up to the morning light. 'I see. These are forged papers, are they not?' He regarded me with eyes that were steel-grey and very direct. His cougar-daemon stood completely still by his side.

'Yes, Sir.'

'To utter forged military documents is a court-martial offence, carrying a maximum penalty of death by firing-squad. You do know that you are under martial law, don't you?

'Yes, Sir.' I had signed the Articles Of War in Mornington.

'Cases of this kind usually involve deserters. They forge orders sending them back home. You are clearly not a deserter. Why did you have these papers made?'

'I wanted to stay with my comrades, Sir.'

'How old are you, Driver Moon?'

'Nine... Sixteen and three-quarters, Sir.'

'Too young to serve. As I thought.' The lieutenant put his hands on the table top. A horrible churning weight landed in my stomach. Everything had gone horribly, totally, disastrously wrong. What was going to happen now?

'Moon. The Forces of the Crown were not established for your personal gratification. Nor was the Ambulance Brigade. They have serious work to do. Your role is not here. You should be at home in England; at school, for God's sake. Or, if you must, helping on the Home Front. In her 'gram Captain Lowther tells me that you are a useful member of her team. She asks me to return you to her and she requests that I treat you leniently. In the light of your assertion that your motives in coming here were honourable, I am inclined to accede to her request.'

'Thank you, Sir.'

'Do not thank me. Sergeant Pearce?'

'Sir?'

'Take Driver Moon out to the marshalling yard and administer one hour of Field Punishment Number Three. Then put her on the next returning convoy. I do not wish to see her or hear of her again.'

'Yes, Sir.' She led me away.

I'm not going to say anything about my punishment. It was humiliating and uncomfortable, but it did me no lasting harm. That afternoon I was put on a returning supplies wagon heading west. I was equipped with my kitbag - with the sword stowed safely away inside it - a food parcel and a set of wholly legitimate travel warrants and orders authorising my return to London. I didn't see Mabel or Nancy again, and they had the decency to keep away from the yard during my ordeal.

They told him, didn't they? Mabel and Nancy told Lieutenant Deveney about us.

Or more likely they sent a 'gram to Mornington.

Sergeant Pearce helped me into the back of the wagon. 'Go on, Fuzzy,' she said. 'We can't spare anyone to keep an eye on you. We'll just have to trust you to follow your orders. Can you do that? Just this once?' She winked at me.

'Yes, Sarge. I'll go home now,' I said.

And I really, honestly, truly meant it.