Chapter One Hundred And Twenty Eight
A Friend In Need
As the bout of heavy gunfire continued, despite his injuries, Tom's first thought was, as always, for his wife and child.
"Tom, darling, oh Tom!"
"Jaysus! My arm! Feckin hell!" screamed Tom, tears of pain welling in his eyes, his fingers slippery with blood and fiercely hugging Sybil and Danny to him with his remaining good arm. "Sybil, love! Are you and Danny all right?"
"We're here, both of us. Oh, my darling!" cried Sybil her voice breaking with emotion, while by way of confirmation of his presence and well-being, Danny wailed his own protest.
"Oh Sweet Mother of Christ!" Heedless of either his own injuries or his own safety, Tom pulled himself over on top of Sybil on the narrow space of floor between the two sets of facing seats and the lifeless body of the young man. It was as well that he did so, for at that precise moment the windows of their compartment shattered, showering them all with shards and splinters of glass. Meanwhile, at the head of the train, the British soldiers in the open wagon marshalled in front of the locomotive, along with those now crouching on the footplate of the engine, and in compartments at the front and middle of the train returned sustained gunfire at their largely invisible assailants. In response to this, a volley of rifle shots raked the train from the front window of a farmhouse close to the railway line.
Several of those civilians and soldiers who, like the young man, had been unlucky enough to begin getting off the train as it drew to a stop at the station, among them the oafish sergeant who had so savagely assaulted the young porter on the platform at Kinsale Junction now lay dead, dying, or wounded on the blood soaked gravel surface of the platform. All the casualties, military and civilian alike, had dropped where they had been hit, the latter including a young fair-haired boy no more than six years old. A lucky few had managed to take refuge behind and beneath the carriages of the train from where the soldiers among them attempted to return fire at their attackers. However, had it not been for the sudden arrival on the scene of two Rolls Royce armoured cars, it is doubtful if any of the soldiers would ever have survived.
As it was, the swift arrival of the armoured cars along the lane which led down towards the distant sea and thence to Skerries House, followed in their wake by a lorry containing British reinforcements, tipped the balance in favour of those soldiers still sheltering on or under the waiting train. The two armoured cars lurched into the station forecourt, their machine guns erupting into life, spraying the station building and the surrounding area with a lethal staccato shower of bullets. The firing from the vicinity of the station died away in an instant as the assailants, probably numbering no more than a dozen or so, quickly scattered and singly, in twos and threes began a hurried and disorderly retreat from behind their hastily improvised barricades and up across the hillside which looked down on the station. Whether the comparatively few Volunteers who had mounted the attack had realised that more soldiers had boarded the train at Kinsale Junction was unclear; it seemed unlikely.
As the surviving attackers attempted to make good their escape, a ragged cheer erupted from the train. Those soldiers who had also survived clambered down out of, from behind, or from beneath the shattered carriages, and ran across the platform to take aim at the fleeing Volunteers, bringing down several of them in the process. Save for an isolated shot or two, the sound of gunfire rapidly died away. Cries and screams from those still on the train took its place. The few passengers who were uninjured, among them Sybil and Danny, she with Tom's right arm flung about her hunched shoulders ostensibly for her protection but in fact rather more for support, clambered none too steadily out of their wrecked carriage, to stand and to gaze vacantly about them at a scene of utter carnage.
"Sweet blood of Christ", mouthed Tom, utterly appalled by what they had both just been through and what they now saw before them. Already a British Medical Officer and two orderlies were moving slowly and methodically amongst the soldiers lying on the platform. However, they were not the only casualties. Also lying dead on the platform in pools of congealed and rapidly thickening blood, apart from the young boy, were several other civilians who, when the shooting began had tried to take shelter in the station building. Among these was another child, a little girl not much older than the young boy.
A series of individual, sporadic shots rang out from within the station building causing everyone still alive and uninjured on platform to instantly scatter and dive for cover as best they could; notwithstanding his injuries, Tom and Sybil doing likewise. The shooting died away in an instant. A moment or two later the door leading onto the platform was wrenched open from within and several soldiers came out from the station building announcing loudly that they had cleared it of the last of the fucking bloody Shiners.
Unsteadily, Tom and Sybil now staggered to their feet, their clothes flecked with specks of glass and dirt. Heavily encumbered with both Tom and Danny, Sybil sought desperately for somewhere close by where she could begin to tend to Tom's injuries. Then, when she was at her lowest ebb, help came to her and from the most unexpected of quarters.
"C... can I help you, m... miss?"
After all the unpleasantness at the railway station down on Albert Quay, the helpful, solicitous tone of an unmistakable English voice at her side came as a distinct shock to Sybil. She was even more surprised when she turned her head to see beside her a fresh-faced, freckled, dark-haired young private in the khaki uniform of the South Staffordshire Regiment.
"M...miss?" he persisted. "H...here let m...me help". So saying, he moved swiftly to position himself in between Tom and Sybil. Then, without further ado, taking Tom's good arm from around Sybil's shoulders he placed it instead about his own. Uncomprehending what was happening and that it was for the best, Tom moaned a muffled protest.
"Thank you" said Sybil and then seeing a bench by the side wall of the station she motioned the private towards it.
"H...here miss?"
"Yes that's fine".
Gingerly the young soldier lowered Tom onto the bench. Tom groaned and cried out in pain. "Shall I t...take the n...nipper, m...miss?" Sybil eyed the private cautiously. "It's all right m...miss, d...despite what you h...hear t...tell, w...we don't all eat Irish b...babies for breakfast!"
"Then, thank you". Sybil handed a wide-eyed Danny in his blood flecked shawl into the arms of the young soldier. The private registered the bloodstains with immediate and genuine concern.
"You're s...sure he's not b...been…"
"Yes, he's fine. The blood is my husband's".
"I'm s...sorry. I didn't m...mean to…"
"It's all right…"
"You're E...English, m...miss, aren't y...you?"
"Yes, from Yorkshire"."
"Then how… I mean…" The young soldier blushed, lapsed uncomfortably into silence.
"What you mean is how do I come to be over here?"
The private flushed to the very roots of his hair.
"M...miss, I d...didn't m...mean to…"
"That's quite all right. I married an Irishman. They're not all savages you know, living in squalor, in one-roomed tenements, plotting the downfall of the British Empire!" said Sybil, choosing to echo almost exactly Tom's very words spoken to her after they had first arrived in Dublin from England, a lifetime ago or so it now seemed. Her response, in the light of the remark about not eating Irish babies, elicited the ghost of a smile from the soldier. Danny began to wail, but only for an instant, as, cradling him in his arms, the young man rocked Danny to and fro and shushed him gently into silence.
"How did you know what…"
"… to do? I've younger brothers and sisters at home, miss; on our farm, near Lichfield, back in England. So I've had plenty of experience helping with babies!" explained the private and now without any trace whatsoever of a stammer.
Embarrassed by his frank admission, the soldier now blushed making him look even more youthful. Sybil smiled, awarded him marks for his honesty. With his dark hair and the way it fell forward over his forehead, then the mention he had made of his family's farm, but for the fact of his accent and that he was a couple of years older, he could have been Tom's own nephew Ruari, Ciaran's eldest boy standing there before her; Ruari, who she had taught to dance out in his father's barn and who had a very soft spot both for his Uncle Tom and his Aunt Sybil.
While the young soldier held and ministered to Danny, murmuring words of reassurance and comfort, carefully and with infinite care, Sybil slowly helped Tom out of his jacket and waistcoat, unable to suppress a horrified gasp on seeing the blood-stained shirt, concerned for what might lie beneath. Swiftly she unbuttoned the shirt and eased it slowly off him. Normally, Sybil would have been the first to admit that stripping Tom of his clothes was a pleasurable task, usually the precursor to other more enjoyable activities, but not this time. With Tom now divested of his bloodied shirt Sybil choked back a sob on seeing for the first time the mass of congealed blood covering his upper left arm. Then she hit an unforeseen snag.
"Here, miss. This might help". So saying, the private delved into one of the pockets of his tunic and then handed her a penknife.
"Thank you!"
"By the way, what's your name?"
"Atkins, miss".
"Just Atkins?" Sybil smiled.
"William. But my friends do call me Will". Shyly, the young man ducked his head.
Sybil smiled, thought fleetingly of another William, who had died of blast injuries he sustained in saving Matthew during the war.
"Well then, Will, I'm Sybil" she said promptly in answer to his unspoken question.
With Will's penknife, Sybil now deftly slit the bottom of Tom's blood-soaked vest, and tore it open. Moments later, with Tom now stripped to the waist, careful not to disturb the mass of congealed blood around his wounds, telling him to keep his arm raised, with practised hands Sybil proceeded to turn the clean part of the vest into wadding to staunch the flow of blood from his arm. Fortunately, this had now slowed to little more than a trickle. While undoubtedly a bloody mess, thankfully, both wounds seemed remarkably clean and neither was life-threatening: that to his shoulder having but winged him and the other bullet which had struck him in the arm had exited without hitting either artery or bone.
It was then, just as she was about to apply the improvised dressings, that she saw the sphagnum moss. From her medical training in York, Sybil was well aware of the widespread use of the moss as an absorbent dressing for wounds and for surgical swabs. In the absence of anything else being available, at least until a doctor could be found to treat Tom, it would have to do. Kneeling down by the stream, Sybil quickly gathered a good handful of the damp moss. Having squeezed it of excess moisture, she placed it gently over Tom's wounds, before covering them with the improvised wadding made from his vest. Resting Tom's right hand upon the wadding, telling him to hold it there, she tore strips from his shirt and tied them firmly in place.
"Moss?" asked Will, unable to disguise his incredulity.
"Yes. It's very absorbent and for some reason it helps to prevent infection, although no-one really knows why. It's been used to dress wounds for centuries. Apparently, the Irish used it to treat their wounds after the battle of Clontarf back in the eleventh century. And the English have the nerve to call the Irish savages!"
Sybil's obvious proficiency in dressing Tom's injuries now drew open praise from Will.
"Well I never! You obviously know what you're doing miss, make no mistake" he said, clearly very impressed by what he had just witnessed.
"I ought to" said Sybil in the most matter-of-fact of tones and now engaged in tying off the last of the torn strips of shirt around Tom's injured arm. "You see, I'm a qualified nurse. I volunteered during the war".
"Oi you! Yes, you! A... A... Atkins!" mocked the man's angry voice. "Just wot the fuckin' 'ell d'yer think yer doin'?" Still holding Danny fast in his arms, the young soldier turned to find, standing but a matter of a few feet from him, his corporal, red in the face, spittle flecking his lips and almost apoplectic with rage.
"C...corp, I…."
"This aint no fuckin' nursery! Stop playin' bleedin' mursemaid to a fuckin' Shiner! Give that Irish slut back her brat and then git yerself where yer belong! And be quick abowt it 'less yer want my boot up yer arse!"
The corporal stabbed his forefinger savagely in the direction of a small detachment of British soldiers a short distance away across the station yard. Obviously from the same regiment as the young private, despite standing to attention, all were grinning broadly, clearly highly amused by the situation in which their pal now found himself.
Bestowing the warmest of smiles upon Will, having taken Danny from out of his arms, it was now and in the most aristocratic, cut-glass English voice she could muster, in a subconscious emulation of her eldest sister Mary when single-handedly she had saved Tom from the unwelcome clutches of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, that Sybil now proceeded to vent her fury on the hapless British army corporal.
"Corporal!" she thundered.
Then, much to the continuing amusement of his men, with Danny in her arms, Sybil now subjected the foul-mouthed NCO to a blistering tirade, under which the man visibly wilted, as she told him just exactly what she thought of him and the behaviour of most of the British Army over here in Ireland. This ended with the corporal himself stammering; in his case an abject apology and shamefaced, offering, of his own volition, to immediately seek out one of his regiment's Medical Officers to come and dress Tom's arm and give him something for the pain.
Author's Note:
The 2nd Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment was posted to Cork in 1919.
It is a little known fact, but still perfectly true, that during the Great War extensive use, eventually on an industrial scale, was made of sphagnum moss in the manufacture of surgical dressings and swabs, most of the moss being gathered from bogs in both Ireland and Scotland. Its absorbent properties were already well-known, but for reasons which were not understood at the time, it also helped to prevent infection. The reason for this was because of its antiseptic properties, the chemicals contained in the structure of the plant helping to inhibit the growth of bacteria. The moss was also used for the cushioning of broken limbs.