A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front (10 page)

During the July push several German helmets were brought down as souvenirs. I remember one man, with wound dressed and waiting for the Blighty train, seated outside the tent, asking me to admire his ‘millinery,’ a Prussian helmet, round which he had placed a string of dandelions.

Yes, they are cheery, happy, casual sort of rascals, content, so long as they get their ‘Blighty tickets and
a bit of furlough,’ to come back again and take up the game of ‘dodging Fritz and Co.,’ and strafing the ‘blinking old sossidge eaters.’

A
N
A
PPRECIATION

‘
SEVEN CASES MARKED
for England, five “Lying Train B,” and two “C Sitting.” I had better go to the Red Cross Stores and get their clothes,’ – their ‘trousseau’ or ‘going-away dress,’ the men usually call the outfit.

As I leave the tent, I make a mental note of what I want. Seven shirts, five pairs of pyjamas, five pairs of bed-socks, five woollen helmets, seven pairs of cuffs, or mittens, and two thick scarves, since November weather in the Channel is too raw and bleak to take risks. Then, too, I had better replenish our stock of bath-gloves and ‘Dorothy bags’ – more commonly known among the men as ‘Sister Susie bags’ – our small pillows, milk covers, and nightingales.

What a godsend to us is the tiny, tightly packed
room known as the Red Cross Stores! To convey what its comforts have meant to the maimed, bruised men they have clothed, to realise what it means to have such a supply to draw from, no human words are in any way adequate. The imagination might succeed a little better, though even then it would fall as far short of the reality as a child’s attempted conception of a billion of anything.

We nurses
know
how much the gifts and comforts are appreciated, and we would emphatically assure all the women who have associated themselves with the distaff part of war work that every garment or article made, earned from some painracked man his grateful, heartfelt, though inarticulate, thanks. Every stitch they have made meant a few minutes’ greater comfort – and correspondingly less pain – from an aching body tortured on our behalf, for our defence and our birthrights. It is in no way a far-fetched statement to say that some garments – such as pneumonia jackets and cholera belts – have prolonged a man’s life. Many needlewomen have deplored and belittled their share in the war’s work; they have deprecated their efforts because these have not necessitated the donning of a uniform and the complete upheaval of their former life. If they would imagine what the comfort and warmth
of their nice, smooth, home-knitted socks are to cold, chilblained feet, if they could see the men snuggling head and frost-nipped ears into their cosy Balaclavas, if they could witness – as we nurses have done – how a small jaconet-covered pillow, placed under the scapula of a man with his arm in an extension, has secured for the poor man a good night’s rest, there would be no more deprecating talk, no more half-sighing comments that ‘I don’t seem to be doing much. I’m only a Sister Susie.’ Be proud you are a ‘Sister Susie.’ You are doing some of the most valuable war service. The comfort supplying department is as necessary to the Army Medical Service as the Commissariat or the Clothing Department is to the army in the field. The fighting forces are infinitely glad of the existence of Sister Susies and their nimble fingers.

There are two sets of people I should like to take for half-an-hour into the Red Cross Stores of any E.F. Hospital. One is our fighting men and the other is the women slackers. I should like the men to see those many, many garments, each bearing tangible proof of myriads of kind thoughts towards them and aching desires to help them, sometimes, doubtless, with hopes and fears, dumb sorrow and poignant anxiety woven into every loop of sock and meshed
muffler. The slackers would, I hope, be shamed by those many evidences of tireless industry and by the unselfishness those garments epitomise into going and doing likewise.

Look at this scarf. It was worked by frail fingers, the unevenness of the knitting shows that – done by a child or an old lady. No, not by a child, the scarf is too long for a child’s patience and concentration. Not only are the kind old knitter’s hands frail, her eyesight is failing, too. Here the dropped stitches have been picked up not quite correctly, here the matching of the wool is not accurate. But perhaps the latter was due to the limitations of the village shop, for one feels certain from the quality of the wool that the scarf was knitted by an old villager with not too many pennies to spare.

Here is a bundle of neatly hemmed calico handkerchiefs labelled ‘Blackcote Girls’ School, Std. II.’ Std. II sounds very juvenile, and evidently there underlies a Herculean effort. One conjures up a vision of curly dark and golden heads, earnestly bent over the squares of calico, as chubby two-inch-long fingers laboriously push hot and sticky needles through the calico, and occasionally into the pink flesh, in valiant attempts to do their baby share of the war-work.

Last night one of ‘my boys’ died. He had gas gangrene, and he cried continually, ‘Where’s my lavender bag, sister? My wound does smell so.’ I heaped some lavender bags into a piece of muslin and slipped it under his top pillow, besides hanging other satchets round him wherever possible. There are dozens of other boys who appreciate the lavender bags, boys who are nauseated by the smell of their wound whilst it is being dressed. For their sake it is good to see a new consignment, bunches of half a dozen sprigs of lavender, the stalks serving as handle, and the blooms shielded with a muslin cover caught with ribbon, an excellent time-saving, handy, convenient method of sending out the lavender.

The neat idea of the bags is typical of the dispatch with which all the work in the stores has been done. Any woman interested in needlework could not fail to note with admiring approval how cleverly garments and comforts have been designed to obtain simplicity of making, convenience of wearing, and the greatest economy of effort in their production. She need only look at the cut and the putting together of each article to see that they have been planned thoroughly well and ingeniously before ever the scissors were introduced to them, planned so as to make the best
use of the material and the shortest use of the worker’s time. They are sensible, useful, got-together-quickly garments, that are a credit to the needlewomen who have so efficiently made them.

Strict economy, too, one notes. Look at this washrag, ingeniously made by knitting up the torn-off selvedge discarded from lengths of calico! And these slippers made from linoleum and scraps of strong cloth.

Occasionally women may have felt a little depressed as the conscience-salvers recited the ancient tale of socks with ‘no shape,’ and shirts with ‘neckbands as large as waist-belts.’ It is an immense pity if they were adversely influenced by these remarks, if they allowed the ridicule to diminish their energies.

Personally, I have never seen any such imaginary garment as the conscience-salvers love to cite and at which they love to sneer. Among many thousands of shirts, socks, pyjamas and bed-jackets, I have never seen one but was not very well made. Certainly I have never seen one garment of which we have not been able to make excellent use. So all the needlewomen who sew for ‘our boys’ via the Red Cross, can rest assured that they do their ‘bit,’ a bit that is most gratefully appreciated, and they can continue to ply their needle and thread into wool and cotton and flannel,
and stitch, stitch, stitch for the boys who have gone forth to fight.

The above was written in the autumn of 1915. Since then we have in some branches made less call on the Red Cross. For example, pyjamas and stockings for England cases are drawn from the quartermaster’s stores, but for the many needlework, and the countless little extra comforts which the Red Cross supply, all we nurses, on behalf of the ‘boys,’ are deeply grateful and extremely appreciative.

AN O.A.S. CONCERT
is a much more exciting affair than any one at home would ever imagine. We come from far and near to a concert. When the chairs and forms are filled – which happens all too soon – we sit on billiard tables and overturned buckets, and even on the floor. The fortunate part of the overflow audience outside, stand on ration boxes and look in at the window, while the unfortunate part roams up and down, hearing a snatch of the performance here and another there, and living in hopes of the time when some cramped mortal may become tired of hanging on by the toes of one foot to a three-inch square of ration box, and will give up his place to the wandering snapper-up of greatly considered trifles.

THE D.D.M.S. PAYS HIS OFFICIAL VISIT OF INSPECTION, ON WHAT IS COMMONLY KNOWN AS ‘WIND-UP,’ OR ‘EYEWASH,’ DAY

The front of the orchestra stalls looks like the
pool of Bethesda. For hither have been brought those lying cases which can be carried, patients stretched in invalid chairs, boys with much bandaged legs or great bundles, representing feet, tenderly placed on another chair before them.

Artistes assure us that we are ‘topping audiences’ for none of us are
blasé
and none of us are bored. We all join enthusiastically in the choruses, and it is quite amusing to have bandaged boys, choleric colonels, dashing majors, gentle nurses and high-spirited V.A.D.s firmly assuring every one in general and no one in particular:

‘Left, left
,

I’d a jolly good home

And I left.’

or sighing against

‘The day when I’ll be going down

That long, long trail with you.’

Poor boys! Some who have sung those words with us have already gone down the trail.

The staging effects are a positive triumph of adaptation. The footlights are in biscuit tins, the
hospital gear provides endless props and wardrobes. ‘The Bushrangers,’ for example, were in hospital shirts, red ties, riding-breeches, leggings, boots and ‘dinkum’ hats. A rustic invariably appears in khaki trousers, tied under the knee with string, cotton shirt from hospital acting as smock, and one of the familiar red ties.

A West Indian band delighted us one night to more, and ever more, encores … and their instruments? All home-made, one from a cigar-box, one from a tin tobacco box, one from a tin basin, and one – of the flute variety – from a piece of thin metal tubing.

The programmes usually assure us that an ‘egg-proof curtain will be lowered repeatedly during the performance. The artistes believe that prevention is better than cure.’ We are often respectfully asked, too, to keep our seats and ‘maintain a sympathetic silence until the conclusion of the performance. Several doctors are included in the audience.’

‘The Management,’ said one notice, ‘has arranged for the provision of beds in the Medical Hut for any members of the audience who contract sleeping sickness.

Wigs – by Jove!

Songs – by the way.

Costumes – by inspection of the Censor.

Jewellery – by the Sixpence-ha’penny Bazaar.

Entr’acte
–
Descendez au bar.

The programmes are cheerily informal affairs with a lack of big type that would send a leading lady or an actor manager into a fit of apoplexy.

Here is a typical one:

1. We commence.
   
2. Smith asks Romeo for a row.
   
3. Brown wants to sing – so let him.
   
4. Jones bursts into song.
   The audience will probably burst into tears.
   
5. Robinson will oblige.
   
6. Smithson insists and won’t be kept back.
   
7. Sketch – Some lorry inspection.
   

[It was.]

1. Robinson with a smile and a kit bag.
   
2. The Animated Forceps throws things about, including himself.
   
3. Encore Smith.
   
4. Jones tours an old-fashioned town.
   
5. Brown gives a pathetic recitation about four ‘CO.’ sparking plugs.
   
6. Smithson refuses to wait any longer.
   
7. We must be patriotic to conclude.
   

The ‘advertisements’ give playful little digs at all and sundry. The sergeant in charge of the clothing stores finds he has a space wherein he is described as –

‘Dealer in cast-off clothing.

Old boots collected.

Get a chit.’

Harrison and Williamson, who happen to have had a good deal of night work with transport, are described in another square as

‘F
URNITURE
R
EMOVERS

The Moonlighters’ Friends.’

The Railway Transport Section are, in another space, made into a Limited Liability Company who are

‘T
OURIST
A
GENTS

Tours arranged to the British Isles.’

One announcement which the boys much appreciated, for they have a great taste, – if I may say so, – for alcoholic jokes is:

‘Rye and Barley’s Whiskey.

TRY ONE.

TRY ANOTHER.

TRY ANOTHER.

TRY ANOTHER.