A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front Read online

  At Noyella two French Red Cross nurses came with collecting boxes and, later, distributed bread and coffee to the troops. One, who happened to be dressed in indoor costume, white from head to foot, looked very dainty and charming as she stood smiling good-bye, and to her a disappointed Tommy called in mock angry tones, ‘Arrah, begone wi’ ye, ye little baste. Niver a drap nor a crumb hae ye geen mi. Wait till ye come to ould Oireland,’ the which she evidently regarded as some gracious speech for she beamed on him and smiled anew.

  Here, too, two French officers descending from our compartment flicked out a golosh belonging to one of our girls. The sight of a brilliant, blue-clad, gold-braided, medal-emblazoned figure bowing and presenting a characteristically English, size-six golosh on the palm of his hand was deliriously funny.

  At the end of our railway journey we learnt that the hospital to which two of us were allocated was a tent hospital situated on a racecourse three or four miles out of the town. We climbed into a waiting ambulance car, the mackintosh flap at the back was dropped, and we shot off into Stygian darkness – cheery! Once we heard ‘Croix Rouge m’sieu,’ and saw a flash of a lantern – evidently some ‘barrier.’ Then the car pulled up, and we tumbled out to be received by the night superintendent nurse. Still more cheery!

  We were taken to the night duty room, and in about three minutes’ time were wondering why on earth we were so consummately foolish as to volunteer for nursing service. It was 2.30 in the morning, the door of the duty room was swollen and would not close, an icy draught played along the floor, the kettle refused to boil for some time, though finally some very weak tea was made. We were most impolitely hungry, for we had not been able to buy food on the railway journey, and we could cheerfully have eaten twice the number of meagre-potted-meat-plentiful-bread sandwiches provided. The sister lucidly and emphatically explained to us that she had no idea what ‘people were thinking about’ to send out such girls as we, girls who had not come from any ‘training school,’ girls who had ‘not had any hospital training,’ – what use could we possibly be?

  We had before heard unheeded tales of the edged tongues of women of the nursing profession, tales to which we refused to give credence. That early morning hungry, cold, tired, with little fight in us, and no inclination to dilate on our own various qualifications, we came within an ace of believing them. Fortunately, however, neither of us were either overwhelmed with, or impressed by, our manifold shortcomings. Also we were so lacking in awe as to prefer having more faith in the knowledge of the Government than the opinion (or possibly the prejudice) of an individual nurse. To the credit, too, of the said nurse and her profession let me record that, in less than a month’s time she was a staunch friend, and between us all there was mutual liking and respect.

  Our meal ended, we were taken to a wooden hut which we learned afterwards had just been finished that day, – carpenter’s tools, trestles and shavings were lying round. In each of our bunks was a camp bed, a soap box on which stood a wash-bowl and a candle, – all lent us because our kit had not got through. We sternly shut out all thoughts of our home bedroom and bed, and hurried into the camp apology.

  Thursday. On duty in the wards.

  CHAPTER IV

  Camp Nursing

  THE FIRST DAY’S duty in a camp hospital is a perplexing, nonplussing affair. Primarily, I wasn’t certain where I was. For a bird’s eye view of the camp would have revealed a forest of marquees and a webbing of tent-ropes. The marquees sometimes clustered so close that the ropes of two roofs on the adjoining side were not pegged to the ground, but were tied overhead, the one to the other, so supporting each other and saving space. Between such dual marquees was a tarpaulin passage, usually spoken of as a tunnel.

  Each row of marquees was known as a ‘line,’ and named as a letter in the alphabet. Thus ‘A’ line consisted of eight or nine tents, known as A1, A2, A3, and so on. All these marquees were exactly alike, and as we nurses passed from one to the other several times in the morning, it was at first a little difficult to know whether one was in Al, A3, or A5.

  Later, one grew to recognise each by certain little signs and symbols, this one because the floor squeaked, that one because a small hole was burnt in the side, that one because it had a little rent near the door, that one because it had had an extra dose of colouring material, used to render the marquees less noticeable and also waterproof, and that one because it was nearest the sisters’ duty bell-tent.

  The early morning’s work consisted of making twenty beds, dusting twenty-four lockers, taking twenty-four temperatures, and tidying the wards. Then came a snack lunch, and a change of apron followed by the giving of the necessary medicines, a couple of inhalations, the applying of two or three fomentations, a small eusol dressing, the dispensing of one or two doses of castor oil, and the cleaning of a linen cupboard.

  Then came the boys’ dinner for which most of the up-patients went to the (marquee) dining-hall, leaving only two boys sitting at the ward table. They ate their meal with the keenest Tommy Atkins enjoyment, heads low over the business, knife and fork plying energetically over stewed rabbit and baked potatoes.

  A ‘LINE’ OF WARDS

  Watching them was a bed-patient with acute gastritis and on ‘no diet.’ Silence, but for the hardworked cutlery and then in the very driest of Cockney accents came the bed-patient’s remark: ‘Ite, drink and be merry, fer ter-merrer yer snuffs it.’

  In the afternoon, more medicines were to be given, the washing of patients was to be done and the beds made. At five o’clock came tea and off-duty.

  The newcomer to a camp hospital finds matters very different to what she has been accustomed in England; no hot water, no taps, no sinks, no fires, no gas-stoves, a regular Hood’s ‘November’ of negation. She probably finds the syringe has no suction, that all the cradles are in use, and there is none for the boy with bad trench feet, that there are only six wash-bowls for the washing of a hundred and forty patients, and that there is nothing but a testing stand, and a small syringe with which to help the medical officer through a dozen typhoid inoculations.

  These drawbacks seem a little depressing and overwhelming at first, but the adaptable girl soon learns to overcome such minor difficulties. None of them are insurmountable, and if she conspires with sorry Fate she can soon mould things nearer to her heart’s desire.

  Thus, the absence of taps, hot water, and sinks one chafes against for two or three days, and then gets accustomed to the existing conditions and substitutes. The syringe will have better suction if the piston be wrapped round with a few strands of white cotton from one of the boys’ hussifs. Two boards tied together with strings in a V shape can keep up the bedclothes as effectually as a cradle, while the needle of the inoculation syringe can be sterilised by holding it with a pair of forceps in a test tube of boiling water.

  On active service it is a case of improvising, improvising, improvising, and one article in its time plays many parts. Thus the other day a hut door was being propped open with a tin of bully beef – the beef being subsequently eaten at the night orderlies’ supper. Once, too, we had an enamelled pie-dish, a curious thing for us to possess; no one knew how we came to have it. That pie-dish was used for the sterilisation of instruments, wash bowl, filled with moss as a receptacle for forest flowers, for fomentations, once for the making of a linseed poultice and as a bain-marie. The only thing I never saw it used for, was the baking of a pie.

  Its uses, by the way, I haven’t given in chronological order!

  The casual reader may wonder that there should be much improvisation and some people may affirm that the correct equipment ought always to be there. Such a statement, however, would be an utterly thoughtless one. The correct equipment is not always either imperative or essential. And with an army, only the essential in the way of equipment counts. Brains and forethought, – or otherwise, common sense, – must substitute immense amounts of baggage.

  Incidentally, the curtailing of baggage explains much of th
e ‘pinching’ and borrowing that goes on in the Army, a practice to which every one sooner or later descends, – no, I mean resorts. The private property of an individual is sacred, the Government property is only held on a very insecure lease.

  Thus if one wants paraldehyde in E lines, and F lines has some, then obtain it. If A lines has a syringe, and your need is too desperate to await getting it through a proper channel, secure G’s syringe. If you want paraffin for the heating of a patient’s feed and D has more than they require, beg, borrow or steal D’s surplus, but get it. Of course, playing the game as one does, the paraldehyde goes back immediately, the syringe is sterilised and returned, you render to Caesar the paraffin that is Caesar’s directly you get your daily issue. Failing this, you are ‘a rotter’ and the whole camp soon knows the fact and safeguards itself against you.

  ‘Pinching’ is always quite an accepted condition of affairs. Meeting an orderly carrying some planks of wood on his shoulders the other morning, I said in somewhat slipshod fashion, ‘And what are you making yourself, Smith?’ ‘As usual, sister, I’m making myself a thief,’ came the unhesitating reply. All the consolation the late owner of any article may receive is the overworked tag, ‘You’re unlucky, mate. You shouldn’t have joined.’

  Active-service nursing, like all other nursing, is intensely fascinating and interesting. The men come practically straight from the trenches, and are deeply grateful for, and appreciative of, the cosy beds, the nicely-cooked food, the absence of vermin, the cleanliness and brightness of the wards, and our attempt to make them comfortable and happy. They have not grown irritable with the tediousness of long nursing or wearisome convalescence, and they have the excitement of a forthcoming trip to ‘Blighty’ to cheer them.

  On the nursing side one has the pleasure and satisfaction of quick results and rapid progress. A jaw case, say, comes in with some of the flesh shot away by high explosive, the surrounding skin spotted with small black patches, clotted and caked with blood, dust and clay in the moustache.

  One syringes and washes the wound with peroxide followed by a lotion, shaves the face where necessary, washes the skin with hydrogen peroxide, or ether soap and warm water, continues to syringe the wound frequently and dress it with eusol, until, at the end of a few days, – three or four, perhaps, for jaw cases are notoriously quick in healing owing to the good circulation of blood in the face, – the patient is ready for evacuation to England.

  It has been a pleasure and delight to have the wound progress so quickly, and the work has been thoroughly enjoyable, but now comes the little disappointment of active-service nursing. One does not see the completion of the case, the subsequent grafting and building which ultimately makes so wonderful a cure for the poor boy.

  Active-service nursing is distinctly chequered, here to-day and there to-morrow, wherever the work is heaviest, and with unexpected happenings occurring with nonplussing frequency. The time-table person who doesn’t like to be disturbed from the even tenor of her ways would find little joy in it. By which I have no intention of conveying the suggestion that routine and methodical work are at a discount. They were never more essential. In addition, extra demands are made on one’s resource, one’s adaptability, one’s originality, one’s power of organisation, one’s ability to cope with a great, and often unexpected, influx of work, and one’s faculty for seizing on the essential and omitting the trivial, – quite probably a matter of vital importance.

  Chapter V

  ‘Convoy In’

  IT IS NINE o’clock in the morning, the ward work is completed and the dressings about to begin. In each dual marquee the floors and lockers have been scrubbed with cresolis and water, the beds have been made, the linen chest, food cupboard and dressing-box – courtesy titles, by the way, they are only packing cases, – which stand in the tunnel between the marquees have been cleaned and put in order, the table scrubbed and set out with lotions, drums and dressing materials, and one puts on one’s gown preparatory to taking down the dressings while looking forward to a good, uninterrupted morning’s work.

  ‘Lints, splints, bandages and cod-liver oil.

  Fall in A, fall in B,

  Fall in all the company.

  Fall in at the double.

  Fall in at the double.’

  So sounds the bugle, and the stretcher-bearers hurry off. The interruption has already come. A convoy is in.

  In the course of a few minutes the tent-door parts and our cases arrive, usually as many as we have empty beds. The walking cases are in khaki, clay covered, mud-stained, blood-stained, clothing ripped, head perhaps bandaged, arm in a sling or hand bandaged, face boasting pads of gauze and adhesive plaster or, perhaps, foot in huge ‘trench slippers,’ – in which latter case the patient is probably carried in pick-a-back.

  Each patient has his temperature taken and is, if necessary, fed. The walking cases are given a seat by the stove pending an inquiry into the nature of their injuries, and one goes to see the stretcher cases installed ready to have their blanket bath. The older patients meantime look on very interestedly, adding jest and jibe to the welcome extended.

  ‘Now, laddie, what is the matter?’

  ‘Oh, they caught me in the back, sister.’

  ‘Serve him right for running away, doesn’t it, sister?’ says the stretcher-bearer, as he very gently helps him on to the bed. A smile from the damaged gladiator shows that he takes the ‘chipping’ in the right spirit.

  ‘And you, old chappie?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ is the revealing reply.

  ‘Ah! You’re an Australian.’

  ‘Sure, sister,’ giving me an answering smile. ‘Dinkum.’

  A case with a leg in box-splints waits a minute until we push under the biscuits (a mattress is in three pieces each known as a ‘biscuit’) a fracture board.

  ‘Somebody been pulling yer leg, mate?’ asks his neighbour.

  ‘No, just got my pad on. I’m batting next innings.’

  ‘What’s the damage here?’ one asks while glancing at the field card of a boy who, it seems, has inflammation of the cellular tissue of the feet, – briefly indicated as I.C.T.,’ – and as one passes on, one overhears his little joke related to his neighbours. ‘The M.O. at the field dressing station looked at my feet, prodded them, pinched them, poked his fingers at them, and didn’t know what to say so finally he wrote down I.C.T. – I can’t tell.’

  Meantime the newest arrival is claiming attention – a young boy with bad trench feet, purple, red, swollen, and with big black blisters from which later we get a great amount of fluid. As he is being very carefully transferred from stretcher to bed, one talks in the manner made familiar by a dentist, and with the objective of distracting the patient’s attention a little from the matter in hand.

  ‘I think you’re the baby of this ward, sonny.’ The stretcher is raised on the level of the bed. ‘How old are you? Sixteen?’

  ‘No, sister, nineteen.’ I take each foot while an orderly lifts him bodily.

  ‘Nineteen! Oh, surely not so old. Sixteen, and you’re a drummer boy,’ slipping a cushion under his calves and arranging a ‘cradle.’

  ‘No, sister.’

  ‘What! Are you really a soldier with a rifle to fight with!’ I am tucking in the bedclothes. He gives a sly little smile and a drop to his voice.

  ‘No, sister. The Army doesn’t give yer a rifle ter fight with. It gives yer a rifle ter clean.’

  I dutifully laugh and go to another tent in the line, – a ‘line’ consists of four, six, eight or nine marquees according to the division, surgical or medical, and according to the cases, heavy or light.

  In this tent the newcomers have already been put to bed, and look up expectantly to see what kind of reception is accorded them. Occasionally boys have subsequently confessed to me they didn’t like at all the thought of coming to hospital. They ‘had an idea the sisters were strict,’ – a politely vague term which presumably covered all the supposed feminine shortcomings whic
h ever existed.

  ‘Good-morning, boys – two, three – five, six new guests at our hotel.’

  ‘Yes, sister,’ says the orderly. ‘And we charge seven and sixpence a day for bed and breakfast, don’t we?’

  ‘Certainly, and other meals at à la carte prices. Nursing and medical attendance a guinea a day. Hope no one has lost his pay-book.’

  A general smile at the little nonsense, and every Tommy Atkins of them is at ease.

  The walking cases usually go to the steam-bath and how they do enjoy the visit, especially when it happens to be weeks since they had their last bath! The bed-patients are blanket-bathed. Meantime khaki and trench clothing have been hurried out of the ward with all dispatch, since the fight against vermin is most strenuous, most vigilant, and ever unceasing.

  The dressings taken down, the wounds are seen by the medical officer and the dressings done. A meal follows, a cigarette, and then the boys go to sleep. And how they do sleep – deep, heavy, stupefying sleep it is! Poor, weary, buffeted humanity! Thank Heaven for an infinitely precious boon.

  Only one wakeful boy among the newcomers, and he assures me he doesn’t feel like sleep, the bed is too soft. Oh yes, he is quite comfy; it is cushy, très bon, he is affirming, cinq bon. I overhear the latter, a new piece of slang to me, and immediately my footsteps are stayed.

  ‘And why cinq bon?’

  ‘Five bon, sister.’

  ‘Yes, but why five?’

  ‘Oh, five bon, sister, a nap hand.’

  I have spoken of the occasional aversion which some of the boys confess to have wholly needlessly harboured against hospital life. Another feeling, natural enough, I suppose, but equally needless and ungrounded is that of fear. Many of our patients are sturdy young Britons who have never had any ache or pain more dangerous or severe than toothache in all their healthy young lives, and to them ‘hospital’ is a word which expresses a world of woe, which ought really to be writ all in capitals. They imagine surgeons with large, long knives and hawk-like eyes ruthlessly walking up and down ready to ‘chop.’ They imagine severe sisters, fully armed with terribly efficient forceps, ready to pull determinedly at all caked dressings and bandages. They have in their youth heard eloquent parents give exceedingly intimate, and exceedingly inaccurate, accounts of the troubles that befell them in such and such hospital ‘when I had a crool time of it, me dear,’ and when ‘I lay on me back five months on end.’ They have, too, at more recent date reverentially listened to the accounts of healed warriors, – personal and embellished accounts of hideous sufferings, accounts picturesquely told in billets at night when conversation otherwise might have languished.