Bed Of Roses

To Whom It May Concern/ Bed Of Roses                  Introdution    May 2008
by Anita Dresden                             


The old woman sat in the rocker, and plucked absently at the shawl that was draped over her knees.
She frowned slightly as she recalled having told the nurse that she was cold and would have prefered a knee rug. But these young ones, they don't listen. These young nurses, when they finished their shifts and walked out of the nursing home, they had their own lives.A mischeiveous smile tugged at her lips. Time may have gone on but still young girls were the same.

         She was always cold now, cold right down to her bones, just like it had been that winter in 1944. A gut wrenching cold that  didn't leave you, no matter how many rugs you used.
She shut her eyes but she wasn't asleep, far from it. As she sat there in the afternoon spinters of sun light, she was transported back in time, sixty years to be precise.
A time of uncertainty, when nothing was taken for granted, a time when things were done impulsively and unpredictably. People took the moment and ran with it, because that might well be the last they had left to them.

         The war meant many things to many people, to the young it was a time of excitement which gave the young men a chance to be heroes and the young ladies a chance at indepenance. However both objectives were hard won and to most it was a time of constant fear and for some, imminent death.

         To the doctors and nurses at the small hospital situated just outside the little french town of Royan, the days were a continual mellee of broken and fearfully maimed bodies, one days work much like all the rest.

         The old woman remembered when she had first come to Royan Base hospital in 1944. It had been August the twenty first, her birthday, she was nineteen. Too young to leave home, too young to have to put youth aside, and definitely to young to be exposed to the rigors of war.
But then, when was the right time, no one could answer the rhetorical question and so she had arrived from Australia employed as a nurse in one of the units that the British had commandeered as a evac hospital.
It was the middle of the war, there was no leisurely intoductory tour of the faciluty, were she was shown the ropes of her new post. The day was just breaking on that 21st August 1943 as a young Annie Preston alighted from the vehchile that had delivered her thus far.

         Old Annie's eyes blinked with suprise at the vividness of a sixty-four year old memory and she gasped with the reality of where her mind took her.
.
She had felt so bewilderd and more than a little frightened at the new life stretched before her. She had been about to push open the glass front doors when she heard it.
'Nurse!' Then again louder and urgent. 'Nurse!' Help needed here!'
It all seem to happen in slow motion, from the moment that Annie turned to see the irrate young medic in a long white coat, gesturing wildly to the back of the ambulance, to when she had run over to see a man as young as herself his face contorted in a mask of pain.
Speaking softly, yet saying nothing in particular Annie smiled reassuringly and gently lifted his hands that were clutched across his abdomen.
“There you are,' the smile was painted on Annie's face as she walked with the ambos and held the young mans hands so the doctor could assess the problem. Her eyes maintaned contact with the wild eyed patient at the same time willling her heart to stop pounding so loudly.
'Stomach wound!Theatre -Now!' the doctor shouted gesturing that people get out of the way as the small group made its way through the front doors and main ward of the hospital on their way to the theatre.
         
         Annie was vaguely aware of two rows of iron cots, most of which were occupied, as they transported the wounded man through the ward to a small makeshift theatre. Here they were quiqkly and efficently joined by two other nurses, who to Annies great relief seemed to preempt the doctors needs before he voiced them.
The following forty minutespast in a blur as the young doctor and his team endeavoured to save the mans life.
Annie reguarded the patients eyes, deeply blue and wide with fear. He reminded Annie of her brother Lester who had desperately wanted to join his older sister but was needed to run the farm at home. Right now Annie thanked God that Lester was at home, and not the young man stretched out on the gurney fighting for his life.

That had been Annie's introduction to her life as a nurse during the people's war. To this day she didn't know the name of the young soldier, as he became one of the many that she tended to as they came to Royan, most fighting for their lives, others to recover from more superficial wounds.

         Royan was  picturesque village, situated at the mouth of the Gironde Estuary on the Alantic Coastline of France .But the war had brought to it a fear and tension that even the laughter of the children could dispell. Indeed many of the townships children had been evacuated to where ever it was deemed safer.

         Annie Preston was fortunate enough to be billeted with the hospital superintendants family.  Docctor Frankston, the superintendant was a little bit younger than Annies dad. He and his wife, Bette had a large family and there was a constant coming and going in the house. Although it was quite small the Frankston home was always large enough to acccomodate one more, if the need arose,and it frequently did.
Ernest and Bette had three of their own children and Annie found that they aleiviated a lot of her homesickness and brought her many laughs.  Strangley they reminded her of her family in Australia and during the time that she stayed with them Annie became very attached to the french family.
The Frankstons lived in an apartment building in the centre of Royan, squeezed insignificantly inbetween Madame Bloismere who ran the best  bakery on the coastline,and Professor and Madame Tresslar,an older couple who owned a small jewellery shop.
         Across the road was an old man everyone knew as Peter. Annie had not seen him very much however every morning when she left for work there he stood in his doorway a hand raised in salute.  No one seemed to know much about him, but Annie had overheard the doctor and his wife discussing their neighbors one evening as they prepared for bed. Returning from the bathroom she heard the doctor's low tenor saying softly.
“They took his daughters you know,they wore the star of David so...” here he clicked his fingers. There was a silence in which Annie wondered what he meant. Then the doctor went on, “... in the night they came, like bombastic wolfs. In the morning the girls, they were gone and old Peter was on his own.”

Annie heard Bette take a deep breath and then she heard the fear in the womans voice as she whispered, “ Oh Ernest what of Selina? What if...” The rest of the sentence was abruprly stopped short and followed by a small cry and desperate breaths and the occasional creek of the mattress.
Annie realizing she was intruding on a private moment, went further down the hall to her room, wondering what the convsrsation had meant.


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