A Rose for the Anzac Boys by Jackie French

omelette! Where did she get the eggs?’
    ‘She’s been giving the hotel’s dishwater to the widow Bodin for her pigs. And in return Madame gets six eggs a day, of which we are to get two in return for being properly sympathetic about Madame’s bunions and the difficulty of getting good endives with the Boche in Belgium.’
    ‘She’s not complaining about the endives again?’
    ‘She is. “The best endives come from Belgium, mademoiselle , as everybody knows…” ’
    After the omelette was duly eaten, accompanied by thin chicory coffee and a slice each of the heavy sour bread thatwas all civilians in France could get these days, they made their way across the road and through the station courtyard to the platform, carrying the clean aprons that Madame’s brother’s sister-in-law washed and starched and ironed each day. The shadows were already turning into darkness; the lamplighter just starting his round through the town.
    The platform was empty, apart from the station master’s wife, slowly brushing the cobwebs from the office windows, and a cat, curled up as though war, trains and the imminent invasion of her territory by hungry soldiers was beyond all possibility.
    Ethel was at the canteen already, instructing one of their new volunteers in the art of making one loaf of bread stretch into thirty sandwiches. Ethel looked different from a year ago, thought Midge, thinner, every movement quick and decisive as though there was no time to waste a single gesture.
    ‘Haven’t you sliced bread before, lass?’ she was saying patiently to the new helper. ‘You wet the bread saw first, then you slice from one side, then turn the loaf over and cut from the other side. Otherwise you end up with doorstops, all thicky one side and thinny the other. No, there’s no butter. This isn’t the Ritz and we ran out of marge last week.’
    ‘Darling, did you have any breakfast?’ Anne asked.
    Ethel looked up. ‘Breakfast? I can’t remember. Do you know those blighters forgot to drop off our powdered milk? We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got—halfstrength, or quarter-strength if there’s a rush.’
    ‘Eat,’ said Anne firmly. ‘Madame sent you a ham roll.’
    Ethel took the roll and bit into it absently. ‘You remembered the aprons?’
    ‘Darling, I always remember the aprons. Now, stop fussing and eat your nice roll—well, your quite nasty roll come to think of it.’
    Midge fastened her apron and let the talk wash over her. How many nights like this had they lived now?
    Slowly the platform began to fill up with stretcher cases and wounded men. The next hospital train was due in an hour.
    It looked like being an easy night, Midge decided. The vehicles in the courtyard were just the usual ambulances, with no trucks or carts roped in to help. No push or major battle at the moment, then. Just the usual stretcher cases that needed to be shipped to England or Paris: men unlucky enough to be caught by stray shrapnel or unwary enough to show their heads above their trench; men with trench foot; the shell-shock cases the army insisted on calling ‘neurasthenia’, denying any possibility that the war itself might be to blame for the screams and terrors.
    ‘Wuff grff?’
    Midge looked up as a familiar doggy figure bounded through the men on the platform. Dolores sat in front of her expectantly, her tail wagging. She had put on weight the last few months, partly from begged cocoa, but also from the crusts the men fed her. No matter how hungry they were, it seemed that a crust was a small price to payfor the familiar homelike smell of dog and a large wet lick across the chin.
    ‘You’re going to need a corset if you get any fatter,’ Midge told her. She reached for the bowl they kept for Dolores these days, and filled it with cocoa. At least it kept the big dog from sticking her nose in the men’s pannikins.
    Down at the other end of the station Jumbo accompanied a small mob of men onto the platform, their