(SPOILER ALERT!!)
Jackie French's novel, "A Rose for the ANZAC Boys", is a luminous work dedicated to the untold stories of the women in World War I.
The book is effectively commences with a post-war setting, in 1975, of a boy pushing his grandfather up the hill to the ANZAC memorial. The boy, Lachie, does understand the importance of the ceremony, but is a little flustered with all the staring eyes. Lachie's grandpa, a soldier of WWI, lays his own rose, a faded bloom among the lurid florist flowers. Saluting, he states formally "A rose for the ANZAC boys. Rest in peace, my rose." And then, almost like a flashback to war-time, the story begins.
"It began with letters."
Margery Macpherson, more simply known as "Midge", is the leading character in this story. The scene is lightly set using Midge's letter to Miss Davies, who seems to be the caretaker back at home, in New Zealand. However, she is stuck in a 'Miss Hollington's School for Young Ladies', an academy as boring as the name sounds. Midge herself is yearning for the adventure and danger her older brother Doug and twin Tim must be experiencing in the front lines of battle. She can't even be a nurse, until she is 23; "Eight years away! The war will be over by Christmas." It was only 1915.
Her passion is further stoked when her aunt Eulalie describes a horrific scene within a letter. 2 nurses, for every 230 young soldiers. The nurses are stretched to their limits. "I cannot remember the last time that I slept - there is never a moment where it does not seem cruel to take a nap, knowing the agony that you must leave untended."
Just as Midge finishes reading her letters, 2 other ambitious girls, Anne (a caring, proper daughter of an earl) and Ethel (a good-natured, humorous daughter of a Yorkshire grocer) come and find her under the willow tree, quickly exchanging chitchat before informing Midge that the 'Hollow Beast' or, Miss Hollington, the principal needs to see her.
Midge's mind finally overloads as she receives the telegraph that states Tim's death. Fervently she denies it, even finding proof, that the telegraph was dated the 22th, and her twin's letter was dated the 24th.
In the darkness of the dormitories, she talks with her friends, creating an idea fueled with the trio's longing for adventure.
"Midge was silent. Serving cocoa - it was a long way from nursing, like Aunt Lallie. No romantically holding a mug of water to a dying soldier's lips, or striding onto the battlefield to bring back the wounded, or driving an ambulance through a hail of bullets. But Ethel was right. No one would let them go and nurse in France, not for years and years. But they might just let them do this. And maybe she'd meet soldiers over there who'd fought with Tim, or who knew someone who had. And even if no one knew anything about Tim at all - well, she'd be fighting in the same war as him and Doug. She'd be doing something. Something grander and braver that studying irregular verbs. Something for King and country!
'Well?'
Midge lifted her chin. 'You're on.'"
And so, the girls' first adventure started there, in the utter black of midnight.
At first it is easy, their canteen receiving only a handful of released French soldiers, with the trains of 400+ patients always rumbling past. It is not until an ambulance driver, Slogger, her friend Jumbo and their dog, Dolores inform them that all wounded men was now ordered to be delivered to their canteen, with the first push of thousands of men being that night. After a day and night of nothing but serving, slicing bread, and stirring cocoa, for the delirious soldiers she realizes quickly, that this was work, not adventure.
And it goes on. Cocoa and more cocoa, loaves after loaves.
When she is complaining to the baker of the incorrect bread mass, she meets three soldiers, who, by their language, seem to be Australian, and one in particular - Gordon Marks. He invites her to a cup of coffee, and even as he leaves to go back to the battlefield, they keep in touch via letters. But lives are unimportant little things on the front line, and Midge's new friend is lost, almost instantly. But she gains a new one, Harry, who was the one to introduce her to Gordon.
And the letters go, back and forth, back and forth. It is in fact a very useful technique that French uses here, so that she does not need to describe every scene, or everyone's moods. By simply placing all of it within a letter, where it is not deemed awkward to have a description of the conditions, she can create an appropriate mood or setting to which she can then move on with with the story.
Midge is even taken in as a reliever for Slogger, who had some injuries that disabled her from driving her truck. What she sees as a ambulance driver brings her into the stark reality of this war. It wasn't adventure at all.
As soon as Slogger is ready to go again, Midge receives a final errand - drive Colonel Mannix to a casualty station.
The Colonel is one rude officer. Along with his two other friends, he waits for Midge to open the door for all of them, always calling her Miss Er..., even though she has countlessly corrected him, as well implying an insult to New Zealand (which I found just a tad offensive, haha).
The Colonel and his friends leave her in the rain to park the car, while they dash into fancy French restaurant. She slops into the restaurant, while the Colonel orders a feast fit for kings. Midge feels very overwhelmed by the the rich food, the wine and the manner of the Colonel. She excuses herself, leaving to stand in the rain outside.
"How was it possible, she thought, to despise a man so much? How many men like this were wandering through the war while the men she'd tended were dying?"
But where to go? She can't go back to the routinized life back at the canteen. So, she decides to go where Aunt Eulalie is, at the casualty station.
She is hardly checked over before shoved into work. Cut, strip, drip. The method for preparing a patient before their only surgeon could work - cut the clothing, peel it off, give the patient the anesthetic.
To Midge, the world is a blur, focusing only on her job. It is not until Aunt Lallie finally finds her and makes her wash, rest and eat. "She walked to the tent flap, then turned. 'This isn't surgery, my dear. It's butchery.' She left."
Midge is allowed to spend a couple of months at most, as she is unofficial, but is really a luxury.
And life for her goes on. Everything flits by in high speed, even the funerals are only short prayers by the chamberlain. "'Funerals are for the living', he explained one day. 'There are rarely any families to grieve here. The dead are in God's arms whether I say a long prayer or a short one.' He shrugged. 'These days the living need me more'"
Midge even meets Harry once again, with a minor injury to his arm.
But it is time again to leave the station, and Midge resumes her life at the canteen. But the Americans have come to their aid, indicating that victory, and an end to this madness, is near.
When the war ceases, it is time for Midge to go home. The fates of her loved ones are told in the form of letters and telegrams, and the story ends with in light flourish. (I'm not gonna spill the beans here!)
Lachie takes the spotlight at the end too, at ANZAC Day, 2007. He fully understands his role now, having participated in the Afghanistan battles himself. He recalls a small speech said by his Pa between his silences.
"They called it a noble cause. But we were the ones who gave it nobility. You go with such idealism. You fight, because doing nothing would be worse. And then you find that wars are run by the same men who run everything else, who make the money, give the orders. All they give you in return is a little glory.
And the friendship, but that isn't theirs to give."
Lachie salutes, saying: "A rose for the ANZAC boys. Rest in peace, Pa. We shall remember them."
The themes explored contain your usual store of loss, tragedy, adventure and romance, but one in particular - the 'forgotten army' of the women in war. Also, as a minor theme, I enjoyed French's viewpoint about the generals in the war, about the politicians who have no idea what their orders mean. I have not yet read so much within this genre, but I think most of these are quite traditional and stereotypical topics within a novel of World War One.
The pace is quite slower than those of action or fantasy category, so I'd suggest this to those who are more patient readers, and also don't mind the slightly more gory scenes.
Jackie French's words really had a big impact on me. I loved her way with words and how each sentence is carefully crafted to fit.
Sorry to whoever had to just read that huge review/summary/spoiler...well that's 5 minutes of your life that you're never getting back!
