A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front Read online

  A very handsome and useful present it was, too. The body of the car was built, of course, in the style of a van. Every inch of space was utilised thoroughly effectually, its restricted space and condensed utility being reminiscent of a restaurant car or ship’s kitchen.

  At the end behind the driver was a cooking stove enclosing two ringed jets supplied with gas made in an attached cylinder. On top of the stove were two large urns fitted with taps, on an adjacent shelf a few dripping tins, frying pans and other cooking utensils.

  No attempt, of course, could be made to roast or fry on anything like an extensive scale, boiling and stewing, that most economical form of cooking, being intended for usual adoption. A sink and tap claimed admiration and the spontaneous question regarding the water supply. That, it seemed, came from a tank accommodated on the roof.

  Two benches ran along either side of the car lengthwise, a door being at the end, and having a half section to open and with a small ‘counter’ attached. Overhead and under the benches were excellent, little cupboards, one being on the drawer principle for the reception of towels, and such supply of linen as the kitchen might boast. A window and the usual electric fittings provided light, and, as we looked round in very emphatic feminine appreciation of the elimination of the unnecessary, and the inclusion of everything that was required, still we gazed and still our wonder grew that one small car could carry so much that was commendable.

  Chapter XXIX

  My Diary Again

  MISS —— RANK Nurse

  CORPS V.A.D. HOSPITAL Z General has been granted fourteen days’ leave from 8/11/16 to 21/11/16.

  N.B. – She should report her arrival in writing to the Matron-in-Chief, War Office, London, S.W., immediately on arrival in England, on attached form.

  Signed — —

  H.Q., I.G.C., Colonel, D.D.M.S.,

  31.10.16 for D.M.S., L. of C.

  THE ABOVE TYPEWRITTEN message delivered me one bleak autumn morning sends me into a condition bordering on a paroxysm of joy, not that I am pleased to leave my work and the boys, but that, after almost thirteen very full and busy months’ work, I long, as do most other people, to go home and for a fortnight be luxuriously spoiled. Here, there are so many demands on one’s pity, one’s womanliness, one’s protection, one’s self-reliance, that one becomes a little exhausted and glad to return for a few days to the free and somewhat careless existence of pre-war days.

  In addition to a warrant to travel issued to ‘H.M. Forces Overseas (in Uniform),’ I receive also A.F.W. 3337 – this presumably is to be an alphabetical progress of mine – and learn that it is strictly forbidden to take on leave bombs, shells, shell-cases, trophies captured from the Enemy, and Uncensored Letters, that it is my duty to give no information of a military nature to any one while on leave in England, and that I am to have the M.L.O. or R.T.O. vouch for any delay of journey.

  I pack in incredibly short time, join two other V.A.D.s, and we set off. We interview the R.T.O., and receive an ordre de transport pour l’expédition d’Armée Anglais, a very imposing affair of impressive hue and corresponding size. Among the Effectif, Matériel et Approvisionnements is a class that interests us, being the Nature du transport. Here we find that, under the heading of officiers, sous-officiers, et soldats, there isn’t room to write trois infirmières, so we are classified on the next line with the chevaux et mulets.

  This is by way of being as good as a Canadian’s story of the company commander who wanted some goods transported, and who gave directions that if mules were not available, the matter had to be placed in the hands of a party of intelligent N.C.O.s.

  The train by and by meanders into the station, and we climb from the depths of the railway line to the heights of a compartment. Some English officers help us to settle our luggage. We thank them and chatter idly among ourselves. One of the officers asks us how we would like the window, – closed or open. We tell him, and return to our conversation. Another asks us if we object to smoking. We state our wishes, and resume our conversation. Another asks us if the heating of the compartment is rather excessive. We reply, and then retire to our own conversation. Finally, after a time one of the officers blurts out:

  ‘Do talk to us, won’t you? We haven’t spoken to an English girl for months.’

  So we all laugh, and the conversation becomes general until we reach the port of embarkation, when we bid good-bye to our khaki companions, – ships that pass in the night.

  On board we seek dinner or its nearest approximation, and to the usual query of ‘What have you?’ we receive the reply, ‘Pressed beef’ – and we have had bully five days out of the past seven! – ‘cold roast beef, ham, and tongue.’ For a second course we ask for ‘something sweet,’ and are brought the only article available, jam! plum and apple!!

  After our meal we go to our cabins, where the other V.A.D.s and I are so impressed and intimidated by Hunnish frightfulness, and the exceeding power and omnipresence of Hunnish submarines, that we undress, go to bed and sleep soundly until, about 3.30 a.m., the overhead voice says:

  ‘We’re not moving.’

  ‘No,’ the other inmate of the cabin drowsily agrees.

  ‘Look out and see what is the matter,’ coaxes the upper voice.

  ‘Look out yourself,’ impolitely suggests the drowsy voice.

  ‘But I can’t get out so easily as you,’ remonstrates the upper voice.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right. Otherwise we would have been torpedoed by now. Go to sleep.’

  And we sleep steadily until the stewardess awakes us. We breakfast, have our warrants examined, jolt happily down the gangway, and into the waiting train. Then on, past copse and hedgerow, by hill and hollow, through little valleys which are a riot, a superb glory of reds and russets, gold and brown. Here is the black-green of fir and pine, the honey gold and bronze of bracken, the sapgreen of turnip patch, the rich deep brown of overturned earth, the chrome yellow of gorse, then a ribbon of water edged by feathery, silver-stemmed birches, and, yes, really – a golf course. How topping to be home again!

  We positively have battalions of rats out here. Awfully impertinent and daring they are, too, – drink out of the fire-buckets in the daytime, sniff round the bread-bin, and generally comport themselves in defiant manner. Last night I was massaging a patient when a rat scurried over my toes. Another night I went to the food cupboard after dark. It is an alcove in the marquee, and I felt something more velvety than the canvas wall brush my hand. It was a retreating rat!

  Extraordinary how intense is the interest men can whip up over a rat hunt. The medical ward master occasionally brings his ferrets and puts them under the tent floors. Then sundry fox-terriers and any other available mongrels stand round backed by patients in all stages of convalescence, orderlies, sisters, and M.O.s, biggest babies of all. There is much yapping and excitement, much handling and gripping of brooms and sticks, tent mallets and garden scissors. Yells of execration go up when the rats run out, squealing, to meet their fate. And nothing short of the cookhouse bugle brings the game to a close.

  Got a lift by motor-ambulance from town to-day; we were a mixed bag. Sitting beside the driver were two sisters. A V.A.D. was sitting on the knee of the outer one, and I was sitting on a box beside the clutch, brake, and reverse pedals. In the car was a tremendous Brass-hat, ‘very metal polish,’ as the boys would say, a corporal, two privates, three baskets of fresh vegetables and two bundles of laundry.

  We are all rather sorry for ourselves today. We’ve been taking inventories – ‘sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.’ For we have been slow to realise that a dustbin is classified as a Bin Ash movable, a folding hospital arm-chair comes under the heading of Chairs Arm HP Fdg, a mirror under Glasses Looking HP, a string doormat under Mats Door Coir, and an enamelled dinner-plate under Plates Dinner End … A primrose by the river’s brim might have been a simple primrose to Peter Bell, but if that famous rustic had been in the Army he would have needed to be more explicit. Thus, a finger
-nail brush he would have had to describe as a Brush Ward Nail. Precept, too, teaches us to call a spade a spade, but the Army requires us to name a hearth shovel as a Shovel Fire Hand.

  NOCTURNAL INTRUDERS

  No, it isn’t red tape. It is one of the first essentials in an Army, precision. It is an excellent and very necessary precaution against vague and slovenly wording, which would inevitably incur loss, the duplicating of articles, and much preventable wastage of time and money.

  Just now among the patients we have a Russian, a member of the Canadian Army. His name abounds in z, s, k, and y, and other sneezy combinations of letters, but, as he pronounces it, it has a slight resemblance to ‘Charlie,’ so Charlie he is called.

  His language is a most amusing jumble of English, French, and American – all broken, broken sometimes to veriest bits.

  He is evidently a great fighter, has been through the Russo-Japanese campaign, and has the clasp of St. George, first, second and third class, besides other decorations. He loves bombs and machine-guns, and lies imitating the kerer-kerer-kerer-kerer-r-r-r-er whenever he hears the sound. The bayonet, too, he adores.

  ‘Fritzy alway “Merci, kamerad.” Yuh, me alway Fritzy stick. Nahpoo, goot-bye, finee Fritzy.’

  ‘Forty-fours’ is ‘Charlie’s’ designation of drill, otherwise ‘Form Fours.’

  ‘Forty-fours awlri’ peace time. No fa’ warr. Mills bomb, Lewis, kerrupp, kerrupp, kerrerer, pop-pop-pop war time. Me no prisoner take. Yuh! me Fritzy stick. Uggh, ouch!’ and he rolls his eyes and puts out his tongue in just a little too realistic a manner.

  One hand-to-hand encounter with a Boche he so described:

  ‘Me Fritzy throat try catch. Fritzy of me the fingers eat’ – the Boche had bitten him. ‘Me Fritzy jaw with both hands pull. Fritzy ouch, uck! Jawbrok.’ Then as a little French blanchisseuse trips along the highway with a bundle of laundry:

  ‘Soam swell chicken, that.’

  ‘Me sick, ma warch sick,’ he assured us one day when his watch had lost time.

  ‘Me nar goot. Sick soldier nar goot. For soldier want husky guy. Me much sick. Me swing leat, nar. Two blarnkets, wootten cross, finee,’ though his despondency was not deep enough to prevent him from admonishing a youth, – with whose opinion on some matter he did not agree, – in choicest Russo-Americanese:

  ‘Hang crep on yar noase. Yar brain’s deat.’

  The night staff, who, of course, sleep during the day, have given the day people a hint of quietude by posting on their hut a little notice on the lines of the famous caution from the French Government:

  ‘Taisez-vous. Méfiez-vous,’ it reads. ‘Les oreilles dormants vous ecoutent.’

  The orderlies had a farewell supper tonight before being disbanded on account of the Americans taking over the hospital.

  They came to the officers’ mess to serenade, sang ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ ‘He’s a jolly good fellow,’ and, – and this was very sweet of them, – ‘When you come to the end of a perfect day.’

  The latter appealed to me, more especially as I heard to-day, rather strangely for the first time, that our hospital has the reputation of being a very happy one, and that it is remarked for the good fellowship and excellent working tone which exists between all its members, sisters, medical officers, orderlies, and outside staff. This, of course, is due to our having the very best and kindest of matrons and colonels, both of whom know how to get done thoroughly efficient work in a thoroughly pleasant manner. And that is a gift vouchsafed only to few. Every one is made to feel that her or his work is of value and importance, and what an admirable spur to pleased and proud effort that thought does make!

  Went to coffee to-night at W——’s, and there the conversation drifted to the subject of our sisters and their work. One, a Princess Christian nurse, went through the South African and a Balkan war. Another served in a couple of Balkan wars and has a knowledge of foreign affairs one never thought, could exist outside the Foreign Office. This one, a Canadian with, mirabile dictu, scarcely a soupçon of an accent, is quite a littérateur and has a remarkable genius for organisation. That one went through a Balkan war and was a prisoner in the hands of the Bulgars for three months. Another is a New Zealander, who was led to take up nursing through seeing a sister die on their lonely ranch.

  Then there was mentioned ‘Little Sister,’ one of the sweetest, most charming women I ever met, who had been in I-don’t-know-how-many countries, and who, of all her experiences, liked best the time she spent on a certain hospital ship in the Mediterranean. She used to tell, in particular, of being one Christmas Day up the Adriatic Sea, where at some port they encountered a couple of hundred Serbian refugees, frail women and old men, young children and tender babies.

  So the ship was scoured, every trunk and kit-bag searched for chocolate, sweets, Christmas pudding and Christmas cake just lately received from home, mufflers, stockings, coats, caps, anything useful that could be found.

  For two tiny new-born babies those Englishwomen had improvised little jackets of cotton-wool covered with gauze, after the style of a pneumonia jacket, and the mothers they had equipped with warm woollens from their own stock of underwear.

  Then So-and-so was instanced. Such a grey little life she had led in a dull little provincial town where she had lived and had her training. War broke out. She joined the service, and was sent to work in a marble palace in Egypt – Egypt, the land of sunshine, the land of colour, the land of a thousand antiquities, the vivid land, the baffling mysterious land, the fascinating, bewitching land!

  X——, too, had thirsted all her life for adventure, and for thirty years life had been totally humdrum. But when war came she was sent to Salonika, where the sisters had to live in marquees – with hundreds of flies – because bell-tents could not withstand the sandy winds, and where occasionally they had to leave the marquees for the safety of dug-outs because the place was being bombed.

  From there she went to a hospital ship, which was torpedoed, she consequently having to spend three hours in the sea. Her next sphere of activity was a C.C.S., which later was bombed. Life in a camp hospital she found somewhat tame, but we assured her she was such a Jonah that something thrilling would no doubt befall us when she had been long enough with us to make the spell work.

  Z—— had lived for some months on a barge at a time when this mode of transport was much used for abdominal and spinal cases and fractured femurs. She had been on one of the many hospital ships lined up – a fleet of white and green symmetry – to take the wounded on the evacuation from the Dardanelles. And the evacuation was managed so brilliantly that not a single ship was required. From there she went to a C.C.S. situated in a beautiful French chateau, from there to duty on a hospital train, and then she came to us.

  ‘It is very nice and generous of you,’ suddenly spoke a quiet member of the party, ‘to give forth such unstinted admiration of our pukka sisters, their adaptability and their ability to work under strange and inimical circumstances, but do let us admire ourselves also. The V.A.D.s are not such small potatoes as some people would have them appear.

  ‘Look at G——. She has nursed for ten years, women and children’s work, but she has not had general training. Therefore she is a V.A.D., and counted untrained. Q—— is half-way through her M.D. degree, work she left to become a V.A.D.

  ‘R—— is a qualified dispenser and nursed for two and a half years, her training being uncompleted because she had to go with her family to the States. W—— is a fully trained nurse, but too young to join the Q.A.I.M.N.S., so she has become a V.A.D. until she is old enough to be eligible for the former corps.

  ‘S—— is a duly trained and qualified masseuse. E—— has the South African ribbon. She was in South Africa when war broke out, for her father was an Army doctor. She nursed there in a military hospital until she caught typhoid.

  ‘And apart from nursing, the V.A.D.s are not purely ornamental. W——, whom for months I never imagined capable of playing “The Blue Bells of
Scotland” with one finger, electrified me one day by playing to the boys in the Y.M.C.A. hut. Among other things she is an L.R.A.M.

  ‘Then the home-sister was getting grey hairs one day trying to sift out the batmen’s off-duty time so as to be strictly fair and just and to please every one, when Y—— laughed and said, “Make an arithmetical progression of it, old dear,” and in a minute she had it all accurately arranged. She’s a no mean mathematician, it seems.

  ‘M——, too, I noticed in the wards was pretty good with medicines, lotions, improvising apparatus, and generally fixing up things out of very little. Then one day a carefully guarded secret leaks out. She is a London B.Sc, while N—— is a London M.A.

  ‘I’ve an idea that if we laid bare the skeletons in more of the V.A.D. cupboards we should find quite a good share of brains attached to them.

  ‘And now, children, though not exhausted in subject, I’m tired of blowing our own trumpet, and, since there is nothing more left to eat or drink, I vote we go to bed.’

  Had an afternoon of malapropisms. A boy wrote and told his wife he was in hospital with ‘nerve-ritis,’ while another informed me he had not had his ‘two o’clock mometer.’ My momentary puzzled expression earned the assurance that he had ‘never had the mometer at two o’clock.’ So I gave him the thermometer, and all was well.

  ‘Sister in the next hut wants to know if you will send her an armful of omnopon,’ was the alarming message brought me a little later.

  Not desiring to aid such astounding extravagance – if not slaughter – I gave the messenger an ampule, but so dissatisfied was he at my meagre interpretation of ‘armful,’ that I explained, and he went off, smiling broadly at himself.

  Boarded a tram-car to-day wherein were seated two French girls and a British Colonial soldier, – a Military policeman.

  For a time the girls conjectured as to what the ‘M.P.’ on his arm-brassard might mean but, failing to come to any satisfactory conclusion, one of them finally plucked up courage and ventured: