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"Mary Rose O'Donnell"
Love Under Fire, The War Brides
by
Alice Bateman
CHAPTER SIX
Oh, Diary, I haven't written anything here for weeks now. I don't know where to start, so very many things have happened. Well, I guess first of all, I should tell you about Theo. On the Saturday following my last entry here, I got a letter from a close friend of his, saying that Theo was injured, and could not write himself, and telling me that he was being kept in a hospice in France. I was so frantic, the letter did not say anything about how badly he was injured, or where. I immediately joined the Red Cross, and am now writing from a small village where we have a makeshift hospital. We have been told over and over not to write down any place names anywhere, in case our correspondence or notebooks fall into enemy hands, so that's all I can say.
I am choking back tears as I write. Even before I left Scotland, Theo was dead.
I didn't need to wait for the official notification. I felt it when he died. In the few days before he died, we were so very close in spirit, it was as if we were sitting side by side, talking, inside my own head. I'll never know if this was just a product of my own imagination, or whether he was really here with me. I choose to believe it was real.
On the Monday night, I woke up so cold and icy, and Theo was not in my mind at all. There were goosebumps all over my flesh. This was the night before I left for my work with the Red Cross in France. I knew immediately that he was dead.
I screamed and yelled at God, I hated him for a time, for giving me this love and then tearing it away. I ran to my Auntie Flo's room, and told her that I was afraid my Theo was dead. She held me in her arms for the rest of that night, and soothed me as well as she could. But there was nothing she could do or say during those horrible hours that helped to ease the misery in my heart and soul.
January 17, the day that should have been my Wedding Day, I spent here, in a freezing rain storm, totally numb to the world, surrounded by wounded and dying young men.
Writing about this now, Diary, all the pain comes rushing back. And this is six weeks or so later.... I'm not even sure how long, I have been living in a fog of pain and fear, afraid to feel. Doing what I must, striving with all my might to help the injured soldiers. It kills me when we have struggled and struggled to bring some young man back to a semblance of health, to only have him sent back to the lines. A couple of times we have had one of them back here within a week, more grievously wounded than before.
Sometimes it seems so futile, the work we do. Sometimes it's as if we are killing them with our own hands, patching them up so that they can fight again. It may seem very perverse, but I am always happiest when one of the young men is incapable of returning to fight, and has to be sent home, missing a limb, or his eyes, or his mind.
Shell shock. A phrase that has been bandied about among the doctors here recently. It refers to those who come to us with their minds vacant, deep inside themselves, retreated totally from the insanity around them. Sometimes after a few days, these boys come back to reality, and when they do, they're screaming out their agony at seeing those around them die. The buddies that they travelled thousands of miles with, their best friend who enlisted on the same day they did, blown to bits in front of their eyes. More than one of these boys has told me of the crushing guilt they feel, to be left alive when so many others are dead.
I've become harder. I've had to, or my heart would be broken a hundred times a day. I've had to lock my compassion and hurt for the suffering young men deep inside myself, buried deep with my own pain. Now, it seems like a dream, the time I spent with my Theo, poor dead Theo.
A couple of weeks after I came over here to France, I finally found out exactly what happened to my Love. He stepped on a landmine on the beach where his Company landed during one of the invasion attempts, and half his body was blown away. One arm gone, one leg gone, part of his handsome face. He was unconscious, thankfully, and died while still unconscious.
It hurts so very much to talk of this, to think of him in this way. I am so very grateful that I didn't manage to see him, so that I can remember him as he was when he walked into that dance, when he walked into my home that Sunday morning, that seems so far away and so unreal now. Seems almost like somebody else's memories and not my own.
I have to say that I'm glad I knew him, that I had the chance to experience this phenomenon called Love. I hope that he was not, as I had thought, the love of my life, because I do not want to live the rest of my life alone.
There is a doctor here that kind of stirs my soul, as much as I hate to admit this after losing Theo so recently, but it is so. Daniel Reese, from the United States, North Carolina. He also has a lovely voice with a sweet and pleasant accent. I feel like a traitor to Theo's memory each time I see Daniel and my heart beats a little faster. I'm not ready to think about or say that I'm in love, but he is always giving me lingering looks, and I find him on my mind just before sleep, or first thing in the morning. He has also been present in a few dreams that I can remember, but only dreams of working with him here.
We have talked over hurried meals a few times, and I will continue to talk with him when I have the opportunity, but I will do my best not to become so immersed in him as I was with Theo. I am open-minded again, open to the possibility of someone new in my life, but the pain of losing Theo is still much too fresh and raw to think of becoming anywhere near 'serious' with someone else right away. A friendly cup of coffee, or a shared meal, does not mean that we'll be running off to get married.
I keep thinking of Auntie Flo, and of how her young man was killed, and of how she was carrying his child. Wondering if I would be happier or sadder if Theo and I had 'done the deed,' and I had become pregnant. I'll never know, these are just thoughts that chase each other around and around in my head.
Oh, excuse me, Diary, I must go, I have to run to the compound. I hear jeeps coming in, and jeeps usually mean more wounded to deal with. One of my duties is to be there when the men are loaded off the jeeps, to offer any who can eat and drink some coffee or tea and chocolate, to talk to them calmly, to find out where they're hurt {this is usually all too obvious} and give them whatever small comfort I can.
Besides these 'welcoming' duties, I also help with bathing the patients, writing letters for them, cleaning the bedpans, changing linens, and sometimes assist in changing dressings or other simple procedures. I have had no formal training as a nurse, so just lend a hand with whatever I can when my other duties are caught up. People comment on the fact that I never stop working, stop moving, but it is the only way I can get through the days. If I am not busy every single moment, thoughts of Theo and what could have been rush into my head, driving me crazy.
One thing this war has drummed into all our heads, no matter what personal tragedy we have to endure, there is always someone with a worse and more heartbreaking tale to tell. There are always new casualties, of the heart and soul, and of far too many physical bodies. Too many young women suddenly left alone to face the world with small children to raise, and no husband and father left to help them. In this respect, I have tried to tell myself that I am lucky that Theo and I did not have much time to spend together. Our love was still new and didn't have the chance to grow so large and deep that I would have died if I'd lost him.
A chum of mine here has a friend who had three small boys under five, and when her husband was killed, she killed herself. She left her boys to an uncertain future because she felt she could not live without her husband. Even in the depths of the pain I felt when I knew that Theo was dead, it did not cross my mind once that I should kill myself to be with him. There's too much work to be done in this world to kill one's self. This is the most selfish act I can imagine. There are enough enemies out to kill us all that we do not have to do this to ourselves! God alone knows how long any of us have on this earth, but whatever time He gives us, we should cherish, and not take our own lives.
Here I am, still writing and writing, when I MUST get out to the compound, Diary. More later...