A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front (13 page)

Our gramophones suffer from the common complaint of most people and things on active service – they are sadly overworked. So much so that after a few very crowded hours of glorious fame they grow capricious, wilful, and finally stubborn.

But the boys are capable of marvellous achievements in the way of repairs. Once the spring of the gramophone broke – I need scarcely use the word ‘once,’ for this is a most frequent accident. On this particular occasion, however, I was rather distressed about the occurrence, for the gramophone was borrowed, and to acquire another spring takes much persuasion, a wait of three or four weeks, and, incidentally, twenty or so francs. The boys assured
me it would probably be very easily mended, and I left the matter so.

Returning later to the marquee, I was horrified. A couple of newspapers were spread over the table, and, apparently, a kind of engineer’s bench was strewn all over the papers.

Every screw in the gramophone which would unscrew was unscrewed. Every pin that would come away had come away. Every fitted part that would undo was undone. Practically every patient had his finger – or, worse still, his ten fingers – in the
mélange
, while the two bed patients at either side of the table were tendering much unwanted and disregarded advice, and soiling the sheets by their examination of loose nuts.

Then, cook-house bugle sounded, and they gathered up the scattered fragments and wrapped them in the newspapers.

Tea presumably refreshed and strengthened them from the fray, for after tea they got the spring from its easing and put it in the fire. Then they brought it out and hit it with a tent mallet, and the spring recoiled and hit one of them. They broke a pair of scissors and a jack-knife, bent a tin-opener and a bed-key, utilised the end of a milk tin, some string, and a bent safety-pin –
but
they mended the gramophone.

The men quite often whistle and hum to the tune of the gramophone, and sometimes they sing and harmonise so sweetly. Once they did so to the music of – a mouth-organ! Now I had always been trained to a great aloofness and something of an intolerance with respect to the mouth-organ. But, it seems, there are mouth-organs
and
mouth-organs. This one was evidently of the
and
variety.

For a time I was amused at the rapt expression, the absorbed air, and twisted features of the player, as with head so much on one side as to be almost parallel with his shoulder he passionately exhorted the instrument to sound.

Then from one tune to another, he drifted into ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ One boy began to whistle very softly. Then another, and another, until all joined in verse and refrain, verse and refrain.

I was quietly rubbing a patient, and not an alien sound was to be heard in the ward. The last note died away, melancholy and lingering, and for quite a minute no sound was made.

Then we all looked at one another, some one laughed, and we all joined. There are occasions in life when it is wise to laugh.

TOMMY IS A
sentimental cuss. A certain nurse took a bunch of forget-me-nots down to the ward yesterday morning, and last night, in rather mystified tones, remarked that it seemed very depleted. A huge grin from one end of the marquee to the other! Then confession.

Practically every man had taken a spray of forget-me-nots to enclose in a letter to his ‘girl.’ Some of the little flowers had gone to Australia, some to California, some to Winnipeg, some to South Africa, and some to the British Isles – and some of the ‘girls’ had been married twenty years!

Yes, Tommy is a sentimental cuss, and surely we nurses are worse. For didn’t that selfsame sister make a special visit to the market to buy another
relay of forget-me-nots for the boys in the other tents!

Quite an exciting time this afternoon. Another nurse and I were washing our hands in the duty tent, when we heard the fire alarm, and looking out saw the wall and roof of a marquee in adjacent lines on fire. We cleared the tent ropes at a bound, and raced off calling to the orderlies to bring fire extinguishers and fire buckets.

Several men were already throwing on water and using extinguishers, and we two helped the sisters get the patients out of that tent and one very near to it. It was rather weird hearing the crackling and sizzling overhead as we worked.

As ill-luck would have it, the cases were all surgical, several with back, chest, and lower limb injuries. Those who could hobble were taken out wrapped in a blanket, the others were carried out in bed, and I don’t remember one of them feeling heavy.

The orderlies soon had the fire under, and no one was any the worse except for a drenched tunic or a bedraggled cap. What lent celerity to our actions was the knowledge that a marquee can burn down in three or four minutes.

When I returned to duty, a new tent roof and sides had been put up, the ward cleaned, and no trace left of the fire. Quick work.

To-day I went into a ward expecting to find some freshly-made tea for one of my sick boys. Instead, I found the tea boiling industriously on top of a red hot stove after having been brewed a quarter-of-an-hour.

‘It’s my fault, sister,’ volunteered one boy. ‘I told them it was time to make it, but I have since discovered my watch was ten minutes fast,’ holding out a very active-service watch with cracked glass, and quite an accumulation of dirt on the dial. ‘If my watch wasn’t in such a delicate state,’ continued the unabashed culprit, ‘I’d knock its wretched face off for being so fast and forward.’

The Australian sisters asked the remainder of our nursing staff to coffee last night, it being Anzac night. Some bright individual suggested our dressing for the event in fancy dress, and we all took up the idea with gusto. Why? Because, having to work hard, we like to play hard, too, – and we so rarely get the latter opportunity. Besides, most people, especially when
they occur in numbers, rarely outlive the childish love of ‘dressing up.’

So some of the girls put on their kimonos and came as Japanese ladies, and one put on her mackintosh, sou’wester and puttees, and called herself a back-to-the-land young Amazon. Another draped her ‘wardrobe’ curtain of spriggled muslin around her in pannier fashion, wore a white blouse, and tied a ribbon round her summer hat and came as a shepherdess. She looked delightfully pretty.

One found an overcoat and a concertina in the Red Cross stores, and came as an itinerant musician, and when we heard her samples of music, we were glad she was itinerant, and didn’t mind how soon, nor how far, nor how long, the itinerary was.

Another came as a ‘Blighty case’ in khaki mackintosh, khaki scarf muffled to the ears, ‘dinkum Aussy’ hat, and feet and legs swathed in bandages and encased in immense trench slippers. She had the usual two ‘Blighty tickets’ appended, duly filled in, and with the information that 5,000,000 units A.T.S. (antitoxin-serum) had been given!

One martyr had draped her brown army blanket around her, and done entangling feats with her hair and ruinous things with her complexion to represent
herself as an Indian squaw. Others wore Australian hats, loose blouses and ties, and V.A.D. skirts as bush girls, thus paying compliment to our hostesses.

After songs and games, drinking coffee and nibbling sandwiches, we gave cheers for all Australian nurses and all Australian boys, for whom some of us have such a partiality that we are accused of having the familiar complaint of ‘Australitis.’

And so to bed, as Pepys would say. The worst, however, of an Anzac night is that it is followed by an Anzac morning. As one girl said when the batman woke her at getting-up time, ‘I thought to myself “Dear me, I hope I’m not going to have a bad night.”’

As many as possible of the nursing staff were asked to attend the funeral this afternoon of a V.A.D.

When we arrived at the cemetery it was just in time to join the cortege.

A cordon of R.A.M.C. lined the road, and down it passed the padre followed by the pipers wailing a dirge. Next came the coffin, a plain, unstained wooden one covered with the Union Jack. Then came the A.D.M.S., and some other staff officers, and then we nurses – Q.A.I.M.N.S., Territorial, Reserve, St. J.A.A., and B.R.C.

We grouped ourselves round the grave, and the padre read the address exquisitely and most impressively. It was a beautiful spring afternoon with a fleckless blue sky and floods of soft sunshine. A bird on a bough swayed up and down up and down, with a continual cheep-cheep, cheep-cheep. We all stood taut and still, at attention, and the words rolled magnificently to us.

‘Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.’

The Union Jack is folded and laid aside, the pageantry and the impressive dignity of the scene loses its grip on one. Instead there comes to mind a picture of the dead girl, white and still, with closed eyes and crossed hands. We hear the rattle of ropes, the coffin is lowered, the swaying bird becomes a blurred vision. A French peasant woman with a tiny bunch of half-faded violets is sobbing loudly. The grave faces of the English nurses grow a little more set.

Then come the prayers, the Last Post – poignant and haunting – and the volley. Two French nurses drop into the grave a bunch of carnations, we take our flowers and lay them by the grave and turn to go back through the cemetery.

No matter what consolation is proffered, death is always an irreparable loss. But surely it is better to have it come when doing work that counts, work of national and racial weight, than to live on until old and unwanted.

And what a magnificent end to one’s life, to lie there among those splendidly brave boys in the little strip of land which the French Government has given over in perpetuity to our dead. Thousands of the children that are to be, will come to such cemeteries, and will be hushed to reverence by the spirits of those who are not, by the spirits of the fallen that will for ever inhabit the scene.

May eternal rest be given to the poor shattered body and glory eternal to the ever lasting spirit!

Such a charming remark was made to me to-day. He was the shyest of patients, so gentle, quiet and retiring, and as I tucked him in – somewhat silently, perhaps, for I had given up hopes of wooing him to talk – he looked up at my St. John’s Ambulance Brigade badge and said, ‘Sister, I know now what S.J.A.B. means. It stands for, “She’s just a brick.”’

A EUSOL FOOT-BATH

A most interesting morning – had a peep inside an
Army Veterinary Camp. At that end of the camp where we entered was a huge, rectangular tank, about twelve feet high, and with an inclined approach at one end and a descent at the other. The tank was filled with medicated water, and horses suspected of skin diseases were driven up the ascent and into the tank, across which they were obliged to swim to the descent on the other side; and the remarkable thing is that the horses are rarely refractory.

Near by was a small pond, cement-lined and filled with medicated water. This was used as a foot-bath, and in it were tethered to a post some horses with foot injuries. After the foot-bath, each was to have a eusol dressing.

Several slight surgical cases were in a compound.

‘We have good and bad patients just as you do,’ we were told. ‘This rascal persists in biting his bandage and disarranging the dressing. It will be guard-room for you, old chap, if you don’t mend your ways.’

But the ‘old chap’ took shamelessly little heed of the warning, and hobbled away off to a coterie of disabled friends, one with a huge bandage round the neck as though he were suffering from a sore throat, another with a huge swab and plaster on his nose, two others
with ankle injuries, and a fifth evidently nearing convalescence.

The more serious surgical cases were in stalls. Each had his medical chart giving the diagnosis and, occasionally, the temperature. The latter, of course, is more frequently charted and a more important matter in medical cases of, say, pneumonia or bronchitis. Several drainage tubes were to be seen in wounds, the treatment of which is very much on the same lines as the treatment of human wounds.

The dispensary had its usual store of lotions, drugs, and medicines – the latter two much in request from the numerous coughs, colds, and heart troubles which exposure and a harrowing life bring in their train.

Near by was a rectangular piece of ground, cemented, covered with straw and ground-sheets, and with a pile of blankets. This was used as an operating table, and to it were brought the cases for operation. Hind and fore legs were tethered, and the patient was pulled down, chloroformed, covered with a blanket, and the operation began.

In an adjacent paddock, forty or so convalescents were being exercised by grooms who kept them trotting in a circle, the laggards and ‘lead-swingers’ being called to attention in a very firm, sergeant-major sort
of tone that seemed to be more effectual than the cracking of the never-applied whip.

All those who have sampled the famous Maconochie stew will relish the flavour of a Scotchman’s little joke cracked to-day in one of the wards.