torpedoed ships.
Down at the other end of the concourse, closer to the exit, her mother, along with various other WVS groups, would be serving the men tea and biscuits, the first drink, some men told her, they had had since leaving France.
A soldier, grey-skinned and dead-eyed, standing in the line a couple of yards away from them caught Tilly’s eye. He was being supported by the man next to him, who looked equally done in.
‘Grab these two,’ Tilly told Agnes, the two girls stepping up to the men, and only just in time, Tilly recognised as the soldier being supported stumbled, and almost fell into her arms.
‘Sorry, miss,’ his companion, hollow-cheeked with exhaustion, his face grimy with oil and dirt, apologised. ‘No offence.’
‘None taken,’ Tilly assured him, gesturing to her uniform. ‘That’s what we’re here for. Has he got any injuries, do you know?’
She could almost see the soldier, who had been looking defensive and wary, relax a little at her words, as Tilly gently set the semi-conscious man back to his feet so that his companion could once again support him.
Tilly had learned that every soldier seemed to have a pal, a mate, someone from his unit who stood by him and for him, and who took charge of him when he was injured.
‘Shrapnel in his leg. They wanted to hospitalise him when we came ashore but he refused. He’s from up north – Newcastle – and he wants to get home. His brother’s bought it, see, and he wants to tell his mam and dad himself. Doesn’t want them to hear from anyone else.’
Tilly nodded and swallowed back her pity, telling the soldier, ‘That’s all very well but his parents won’t thank him if he makes his own wounds worse. That leg needs attending to.’ They both looked down at where fresh blood was seeping through the grimy bandage wrapped round the other soldier’s thigh.
Tilly could see both relief and gratitude in the companion’s eyes. ‘Just as well he’s out of it,’ he told Tilly with an attempt at a grin. ‘That’s the trouble with these ruddy North-Easterners, they don’t know when they’re down.’
‘Got to get home,’ the injured man suddenly muttered, pulling away from his friend. ‘Got to tell me mam and dad about our Tommy.’
He lurched forward and then stopped his eyes widening with shock before he looked down at his own thigh. Bright red blood was now soaking through the bandage. He put his hand on it and then removed it, staring at his own bloodstained hand.
He was haemorrhaging, Tilly guessed.
‘Quick, Agnes, go and get Mr Ogden. Tell him we’ve got a haemorrhage. We need to lie him down and lift his leg up.’
Almost before she had finished speaking soldiers were moving into action, clearing a space, lying their comrade down. Tilly had her first-aid kit with her, but it contained only the basics, she was reluctant to apply a makeshift tourniquet when there might be shrapnel in the wound that her actions could push in further.
The soldier had opened his eyes, and Tilly could see the panic in them.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him softly. ‘You’re home now, and you’re safe.’
‘Gotta see me mam. Don’t let me die before I’ve seen her,’ he pleaded, tears filling his eyes and running down his cheeks, making clean runnels in the dirt.
‘We won’t let you die,’ Tilly assured him. He had reached for her hand and she held it tightly, and kept holding it just as she held his gaze as Agnes returned with the leader of their brigade and two of the more senior members.
‘It might be a shrapnel wound,’ Tilly told the brigade leader quietly. ‘He wouldn’t let them hospitalise him when he came ashore. He wants to get home to tell his parents about the loss of his brother.’
The other members of the brigade were working quickly and efficiently to stem the bleeding as Tilly spoke, sliding a stretcher beneath the young soldier.
It wasn’t until the soldier was being stretchered away that Tilly looked up and realised that one of the men who had assisted with him was Dulcie’s brother, Rick, although she had to look twice before she could be sure that it was him. There was no sign of the good-looking charm on his face now. Even his curt nod in her direction in confirmation of his recognition of her was a world away from the easy manner she remembered. Not that she had any fondness for Dulcie’s brother now. He had led her on, no doubt to boost his own ego, without thinking how she might feel about his behaviour. She had been such a naive girl then, she thought ruefully with the benefit of nearly six months of extra maturity behind her. An idiot, really, to be taken in by someone as vain as Rick, and not worth wasting her tears on. Well, she knew better now. She was a popular girl, with young men eager to take her out, but Tilly had learned her lesson in one sharp and very painful evening. She would never allow herself to be so gullible or easily hurt again. Nor would she ever be naive enough again to fall for a handsome face. In fact, she was off men, full stop, and had decided that instead of risking getting her heart broken she was going to concentrate on putting her energy into helping as much as she could with the war effort.
Her glance at Rick was cool and professional, letting him know that she wasn’t the silly young girl who had quivered with delight just to be in his arms. Then she saw in his expression and bearing what she had seen in so many returning soldiers. It wasn’t just the loss of friends and comrades that marked them, it was the loss of pride and confidence as well. They had been saved from potential death and imprisonment not by their own endeavours but by the endeavour of others, rescued from France’s beaches like helpless children, as one soldier had already described it to her.
‘You stand there in line waiting, not knowing if you’re even going to make it to the boats. Three days we were standing there waiting. It does something to you inside your head,’ he had told her. ‘It takes something from you that you know you’ll never get back.’
Nodding brusquely at Tilly – how could a girl like her possibly understand the hell that had been Dunkirk? – Rick still felt raw and shocked by what he had experienced. Raw and shocked and shamed by the way they’d had to turn tail and run. It didn’t matter how often he’d heard older, more experienced soldiers saying, ‘He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day,’ his pride, not just in himself but in his country, had been put through a firestorm from which he had emerged harder, angrier and determined to defeat the Germans . . .
Rick turned away from Tilly to rejoin the remnants of his unit. The lad who’d been stretchered away was seventeen. He’d lied about his age so that he could enlist with his older brother, the brother they’d had to leave behind in the mud with his head shot off and his brains splattered all over the road, after an aerial attack by the Luftwaffe. Rick had yelled out a warning but Tommy had been helping a young mother with her children, carrying a young boy too exhausted to walk, as they fled along with others, because the Germans were invading their country.
The mother and her children had died with Tommy, and the dozens of others the Luftwaffe had sprayed with gunfire.
Tommy’s brother had insisted on burying what was left of Tommy, after he had finished throwing up. Rick suspected that the boy had half hoped to be killed himself, watching the risks he had taken afterwards.
It wasn’t glorious and heroic: it was dying on the roadside with your head blown open; it was blackened arms and legs separated from rotting bodies strewn along the road to the coast like lifesize dolls’ limbs; it was fear
