Read Online Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) by B A Lightfoot - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: B A Lightfoot
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very big parcels and they don’t need much to drink in the desert. If you get close to them they are very smelly and they spit at you if they are angry.
Your writing is very good now so keep trying hard at school. Are you good at sums as well?
Don’t forget to help your Mam with Sadie and Mary and make sure that Ben doesn’t get into any mischief.
I sometimes do my washing but mostly it is done by the Arabs that work in the barracks. They are also pretty good at darning socks.
I am pleased that you liked your bible and I know that you will look after it. I bet that you were really excited when you opened the parcel from Father Christmas and found a doll.
Love
Dad
***
Increasingly, the war seemed very distant for Edward and his colleagues and the Egyptians themselves seemed to be fairly unmoved by their presence. The training marches were becoming a feat of endurance. The wind was oppressively hot and the sun beat down mercilessly as the soldiers marched through the desert in full marching order. Even when they rested, the only respite for them was to shelter behind a blanket stretched over a couple of rifles. The feeling amongst the soldiers was that the main purpose of the army was to get you as fed up as possible so that you welcomed any change. More and more they felt a little bit cheated. This was not what they had trained for and what they had volunteered for. They wanted the chance to show what Salford men were made of. They wanted to give the Hun that bloody nose.
Such was the tedium that, when they were ordered at the beginning of May, to reinforce the beleaguered garrison on Gallipoli in Turkey, they all sang lustily in the cattle trucks which took them from Abbassia to Alexandria, regulating the beat of the song to the clip of the wheels. It was cold and dark as the train rumbled through the night but their spirits were high.
On the quayside, the early morning mist lay like a cold embrace over the sea and clung around the buildings that housed the offices of the great shipping companies. British names stood out reassuringly over many of the doors. Leaning out of the train window Edward watched the large, flat bottomed Arab dhows emerging out of the mist then disappearing again, wrapped by the slight breeze into the damp, white folds. Incomprehensible shouted greetings, warnings and instructions between the Arabs echoed over the slowing rhythm of the carriage wheels.
Approaching the looming presence of the Royal Naval vessels the sounds from the mists changed. Anguished voices, crying out from desperate pain, began to colour the spectrum of noise; scraping on Edward’s suddenly taut nerves. When the shrouds of the morning fog parted he saw the rows of stretchers lined up on the dusty dockside between London bound crates of dates and figs and bales of cotton destined for Blackburn and Bolton.
He watched the sailors and medical orderlies unloading these ships that had come in from Gallipoli with the injured on board. The seemingly endless stream of heavily bandaged, agonised men flowed down the gangplanks and slowly covered the quayside. A cargo of pain and suffering waiting for whatever transport could be made available. Nurses moved amongst them dispensing strong painkillers and the stimulating medicine of firmly, but gently, delivered feminine kindness. They held cigarettes in the blistered lips of men with useless, or no, hands. For some of them, the kind eyes and the soothing nicotine became their last living memory.
Edward tried to suppress the shudder as he looked out over the wasted acres of the dying and the dead. His mind struggled to embrace the size and severity of it. There had been many Turkish soldiers injured in Egypt but what he was witnessing now, on this harbour side, was maiming on a massive scale. So many men with legs and arms missing or with major head injuries, the blood stained bandages binding the stumps of arms that had once driven the industry of Lancashire. The
Your writing is very good now so keep trying hard at school. Are you good at sums as well?
Don’t forget to help your Mam with Sadie and Mary and make sure that Ben doesn’t get into any mischief.
I sometimes do my washing but mostly it is done by the Arabs that work in the barracks. They are also pretty good at darning socks.
I am pleased that you liked your bible and I know that you will look after it. I bet that you were really excited when you opened the parcel from Father Christmas and found a doll.
Love
Dad
***
Increasingly, the war seemed very distant for Edward and his colleagues and the Egyptians themselves seemed to be fairly unmoved by their presence. The training marches were becoming a feat of endurance. The wind was oppressively hot and the sun beat down mercilessly as the soldiers marched through the desert in full marching order. Even when they rested, the only respite for them was to shelter behind a blanket stretched over a couple of rifles. The feeling amongst the soldiers was that the main purpose of the army was to get you as fed up as possible so that you welcomed any change. More and more they felt a little bit cheated. This was not what they had trained for and what they had volunteered for. They wanted the chance to show what Salford men were made of. They wanted to give the Hun that bloody nose.
Such was the tedium that, when they were ordered at the beginning of May, to reinforce the beleaguered garrison on Gallipoli in Turkey, they all sang lustily in the cattle trucks which took them from Abbassia to Alexandria, regulating the beat of the song to the clip of the wheels. It was cold and dark as the train rumbled through the night but their spirits were high.
On the quayside, the early morning mist lay like a cold embrace over the sea and clung around the buildings that housed the offices of the great shipping companies. British names stood out reassuringly over many of the doors. Leaning out of the train window Edward watched the large, flat bottomed Arab dhows emerging out of the mist then disappearing again, wrapped by the slight breeze into the damp, white folds. Incomprehensible shouted greetings, warnings and instructions between the Arabs echoed over the slowing rhythm of the carriage wheels.
Approaching the looming presence of the Royal Naval vessels the sounds from the mists changed. Anguished voices, crying out from desperate pain, began to colour the spectrum of noise; scraping on Edward’s suddenly taut nerves. When the shrouds of the morning fog parted he saw the rows of stretchers lined up on the dusty dockside between London bound crates of dates and figs and bales of cotton destined for Blackburn and Bolton.
He watched the sailors and medical orderlies unloading these ships that had come in from Gallipoli with the injured on board. The seemingly endless stream of heavily bandaged, agonised men flowed down the gangplanks and slowly covered the quayside. A cargo of pain and suffering waiting for whatever transport could be made available. Nurses moved amongst them dispensing strong painkillers and the stimulating medicine of firmly, but gently, delivered feminine kindness. They held cigarettes in the blistered lips of men with useless, or no, hands. For some of them, the kind eyes and the soothing nicotine became their last living memory.
Edward tried to suppress the shudder as he looked out over the wasted acres of the dying and the dead. His mind struggled to embrace the size and severity of it. There had been many Turkish soldiers injured in Egypt but what he was witnessing now, on this harbour side, was maiming on a massive scale. So many men with legs and arms missing or with major head injuries, the blood stained bandages binding the stumps of arms that had once driven the industry of Lancashire. The
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