Isobel opened her eyes, gasped for air, and screamed. She could only discern blurred monochrome shapes drifting like clouds on a windy winter’s day across her field of vision. The only clear sounds were high pitched bleeps, accompanied by a rumbling, thunder-like, drone. But the smell of her surrounding was familiar. It made her cringe, and she started to cry. It was the pungent antiseptic odour that pervades all hospitals.
She reached out, trying to connect with something, anything. But Isobel couldn’t control her arms, they flailed when she tried to reach for anything. She had a sensation of floating, moving through space, followed by soft sheets being wrapped around her. She closed her eyes.
Isobel was familiar with hospitals; she was, after all, an ambulance driver in London. But she couldn’t remember any details of what happened to her, what had brought her to a hospital, presumably as a patient. Her last memory was of a loud, unfamiliar noise. Someone had said it sounded like a plane, or a lot of planes.
Her parents had reluctantly supported her decision to volunteer for the Metropolitan Ambulance Service, but she knew her mother would have preferred her to take on a more suitable role to support the war effort. She had suggested she join Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild. But Isobel could not see how soldiers dying in better socks or matching uniforms would help their families. Her father had vetoed her joining any of the newly formed active services, even though there was no possibility of her being posted in France. He reminded her that her two brothers were already serving their king and country in active service, that her duty was to support the war effort, not become a distraction, a protest for women’s suffrage.
The ambulance service had been a compromise, but Isobel had been delighted when she was stationed in the east end of London. Poplar had been merely a name on a map until then. She was billeted at the house of a family whose two children had been evacuated to Wiltshire. The husband was serving in France and Maisy was grateful for the company and the extra income from a lodger.
Life was frugal in their tiny, terraced house, but Maisie’s husband had bought her an upright piano before the war began and, in what little spare time they had, Isobel started to teach her the basics of hand placement and scales. Maisie worked long hours in a munitions factory and Isobel took every shift she could, so their time together was limited, and progress was slow.
She must have fallen asleep because, when she opened her eyes, it was dark. But not the pitch black that she was accustomed to in the countryside, nor the faint gas glow through a window that was familiar in Poplar. There were lights on somewhere, but her vision was still not clear.
Isobel was vaguely aware that she had been fed at some time, there were no hunger pangs from her belly. She assumed she was being fed liquids as she had no recollection of eating a meal. Her vision was still blurred and her hearing limited. She feared a head wound, there was no other explanation. And there was that sound in her memory, the droning of engines coming from somewhere above her, but distant.
People had rushed onto the street to see what was causing the sound. She remembered her first sight of the planes, a whole squadron, silhouetted like flies against a clear sky. She counted fourteen, but counted again to make sure of the number. They looked majestic, dreamlike; they couldn’t possibly be a threat. Then a policeman was shouting at them to get inside, to take cover.
Her crew had been performing a practice drill, training two new members. Everyone was in a good mood, and they all wanted to see what the planes were and, more importantly, whether they were friend or foe. The policeman shouted again, but he made no attempt to move the ambulance crew.
“They’re Gothas,” Glen muttered from behind her.
Isobel knew the name, but it didn’t make sense. The Gotha was a German bomber, she didn’t know any details of them, but they were often mentioned in the newspapers. There couldn’t possibly be so many approaching London.
“Twenty. There’s twenty of the blighters. We’d better take cover.”
It was Glen again, the leader of their crew. As he spoke the first of the planes was almost overhead and they could see something dropping from the lead plane.
“It’s a bombing raid. Get down.”
Before Isobel drifted into sleep again. She remembered the sound of an explosion, the searing pain from many simultaneous wounds. The smell of burning flesh.
When she woke it was a new day. There was noise and bustle all around her. Although her vision was no clearer, she could make out more noises, voices, they made no sense, but the sounds relaxed her. Whatever had happened that day was drifting further back in her memory. The important thing now was to survive, to live, to see her parents and brothers again.
When she was offered sustenance, albeit from a bottle. She drank eagerly. Sleep followed shortly.
Over the next few days and weeks, Isobel focused on what she could feel. She was warm, comfortable, satiated. They were the factors which would aid her recovery. The accident, her past, was behind her. Whatever the future held was what she must concentrate on.
The day Isobel woke without greeting the day with a scream, was a turning point. She had all but forgotten about those planes, the droning, the pain. Her sight was clearing, sounds were clearer, although she still couldn’t understand what was being said, couldn’t respond. She vowed to learn to speak again, to recover whatever senses she could. It was her duty to survive.
Days turned into weeks, and the smell of the hospital had been replaced by one that was warm and cosy. She recognised her name, although her mother’s voice had changed. It was softer, the stern notes had replaced by a younger tone. Maybe the events of the last weeks or months had changed her. Isobel had no sense of the passage of time.
The present slowly replaced the past and Isobel found her voice returning. Simple words, almost childlike. She understood more too. Colour had returned in her vision and shapes were more focussed. She was getting better.
It took time for the memories of that raid by German bombers to fade in her memory, but it did. The present was more important than the past. She needed to learn, to communicate, even to gain full control of her arms and legs.
One morning Isobel woke, and the past had gone, not entirely, but it was now part of another life, a previous existence. She had an older brother, just the one, he was called Jonathon. He played with her, as did her mother and father.
As she grew, she forgot everything that had gone before. She was a new Isobel, a cherished child. She had a new life, and it was good.
By the time she reached her late teens, she was studying history at school, researching stories on the internet which related to London and the varying roles of women in that turbulent time. Isobel sensed that she had an empathy greater than the other students had concerning the First World War, the Great War as she now thought of it, the war to end all wars.