A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front (18 page)

The rain is occasionally responsible for some few strenuous minutes. Thus the other night a sudden gust of wind accompanied by driving rain burst open the dual outside doors of a hut, the dual inside doors leading to the theatre, and also several windows.

I ran to close the doors snatching up on my way two green-lined umbrellas which figure in sun-cure cases. These I gave to men with limbs on extensions, and whose beds could not be moved immediately. Much amused they were to lie in bed with an open umbrella at two o’clock in the morning. Beds were drawn out to escape open windows or a leaking roof, mackintosh sheets placed on beds that could not be drawn aside until the orderly could be summoned, bowls placed to catch the drippings from the roof, then help was obtained and the two cases of beds plus extension apparatus had to be dealt with.

Night duty during winter weather is somewhat of a Dantesque affair alternating between an inferno of cold and work-filled, perhaps grief-laden, patches of light. The marquees are very cosy, tightly-laced blankets wherever doors occur, and stoves cheerily filled. Between each marquee one dodges up to the knees in snow and slush buffeted by wind and sleet, and dipping under the eaves of the snow-laden tents
with ill-luck as dogged as in tilting the bucket. In the surgical tents, – where dressings have sometimes to be done every four, and sometimes every two hours, – one develops into a quick-change artiste at shedding and donning garments.

The normal outfit of a night nurse on winter duty consists of woollen garments piled on cocoon-like under her dress, a jersey over the dress and under the apron or overall, another jersey above the apron, a greatcoat, two pairs of stockings, service boots or gum boots with a pair of woolly soles, a sou’wester, mittens or gloves (perhaps both) and a scarf.

But there are other nights, nights of spring and early autumn with sheets of streaming, silver moonlight when not a breath stirs. The tent walls are rolled back, and looking down the alley of marquees one can see way down to the silent valley below, nights of radiant, faultless beauty bringing to mind Omar Khayyam’s stanza, and Matthew Arnold’s ‘Apollo Musagetes,’ nights at one with peace and meditation or with nightingales and love, but with foul carnage and blood lust, man’s enmity and man’s agony – No!

Once on a time I held the extraordinary opinion that night nursing was dull, that all the nurse did was to arrange the patients’ pillows, give a few sleeping
draughts, hot drinks, hot water bottles, an occasional dose of cough mixture, put out a light or two, shade others, and sit down to do a little sewing to prevent her being bored before morning came, and the patients were to be washed, and beds made.

That, by the way, was in the days before the war, when I had no acquaintance with ghastly wounds which require dressing every two hours, when the multiple-wound case was the exception and not the rule, when a ward which was then considered acute we should now regard as full of ‘convalescents,’ when cerebral hernia, tracheotomy, trephine, colotomy, laparotomy, and the evil-smelling gas gangrene were comparative rarities, and certainly not to be found in any one batch of patients, when convoys were unknown, and there was no possibility of the tent-door being pushed aside in the middle of the night, and new patients in the form of pain-wearied men in dirty khaki being deposited on one’s beds.

My introduction to active service night nursing was a small hut under the same roof as the theatre, a few of the more anxious cases being brought there for special watching.

Poor boys, almost every patient in addition to other wounds and injuries, had had a leg amputated, and I
used to go round from one to another in the dimly-lighted ward with an electric torch, and flash on the light to see that each stump was correct and there was no sign of haemorrhage.

With regard to work on ‘the lines,’ so far from being dull, one is kept ceaselessly busy, for, in addition to dressings, many four-hourly foments, four-hourly charts, periodical stimulants and feeds, – the latter including jaw-cases where the mouth must be syringed and washed and the india-rubber tube attached to the feeding-cup cleaned and boiled, – there comes the unending, infinitely pathetic call of ‘Sister, sister, may I have …’ a drink, my pillows moved, my heel rubbed, now my toe, my splint moved, my bandage tightened, my bandage slackened, the tent or the window closed – or opened – a blanket off, a blanket on, a hot-water bag, a drink of water, of lemonade, of hot milk, of hot tea, now a cold drink, sister, to cool my mouth, a crease taken out of the under-sheet, the air-pillow altered, my hands and face washed, my lips rubbed with ointment, my fan, that fly killed, a match, a cigarette lighted, another drink, some grapes, my apple peeled, a cushion under my arm, under my back, a pad of cottonwool under my heel, knee, arm, a bed sock put on, the bed-clothes tucked in, I feel sick, I can’t go
to sleep. Shall I have an antiseptic, – the almost invariable name for anaesthetic, – ‘to-morrow when my wound is dressed?’ Then when the gamut is exhausted – ‘What time is it?’ ‘What kind of weather is it?’ ‘Can’t I have a prick, sister? Can’t I have a comforter?’ (hypodermic injection). ‘Ask the M.O. when he comes.’

There are times too, when one hurriedly tiptoes along the ward at the mention of ‘sister’ only to find that it is not a call for help, but merely a patient talking in his sleep.

Oh, the glad pleasure and the relieved happiness occasioned by a goodly orchestra of many-sounding, many-toned snores! Then one feels that one’s ‘boys’ are at last in comfort and at ease. No wonder so many poets have chosen sleep as their theme, for an inestimably precious gift it is to the over-wrought, pain-wracked body. Cases of insomnia are fairly infrequent with us, for the boys are usually ‘dog-tired’ by trench life, which, with its myriad dangers, has developed among our men the restless, broken, fitful sleep of the hunted animal. So our boys either sleep exhaustedly, the sleep of complete physical weariness, or they sleep brokenly. Thus the R.F.C. boy flies busily each night, invariably in trouble about gauge or propeller or because ‘she is sulky and kicks.’ The Canadian admonishes a rebuke
presumably to another Canadian. ‘Don’t swear so much, mate. There’ll be a curse brought down on the place if you swear so much.’ Meanwhile the Corporal is ‘getting the wind up,’ in dire distress because the rations are not getting through.

‘Sister, I’ve lost my letter and two bottles of stout,’ calls out a delirious patient. ‘We’ll find them to-morrow when it is light.’ ‘Sister, where is my shrapnel helmet? That man washed himself in it, and never gave me it back.’ ‘I got it from him, and it’s in your locker now.’ ‘Sister, aren’t the stretcher bearers coming? Aren’t they ever coming? Oh, look, sister, somebody’s going to get hold of me. They’re nearly up to me. I can’t stand up for my leg. Somebody’s tied my feet. Where’s my rifle? He’s got me, he’s got me, and I haven’t my rifle … Oh God! … Oh, my leg. Oh, for a taste of good sweet water. Mate, your hands are free, and I can’t bear this. Shoot me, mate, shoot me.’

‘Died in hospital.’ ‘What a pity,’ say some people, ‘that he was brought the journey just to die.’ But it was not a pity at all. Friends of men who have died in hospital have the great consolation of knowing that they had a comfortable bed, drinks for which they crave, at will. They were warm and well tended, and they had – most blessed of all! – drugs. Thank God there is
opium and omnopon and morphia to still such delirium as the above.

Naturally, we have had nights never-to-be-forgotten, nights of aching anxiety and grim, gruesome tragedy, nights that have seared themselves into our brain for as long a time as we shall possess human knowledge and human understanding, nights when we have shared and suffered with delirious patients the stench, the choking thirst, the sound of groans, – all the devilish horror and wracking torture of living again the eternal age with its waiting, waiting, waiting in No Man’s Land, nights when a dying man on whom morphia has had no effect has persistently cackled ragtime while another, – one of the very, very few who have realised they are in the Valley of the Shadow, – reiterated again and again ‘I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying.’

There are moments, too, that have seemed a life’s span, tense moments when we have fought for a life with strychnine, morphia, salines, nutrients, and hot-water bottles, crowded moments when, our lamps throwing Rembrandt shadows and gleams round the dark tent with its rows of huddled, maimed forms, there has been plugged and stemmed a haemorrhage from a place where the surgeon could not ligature,
reverential moments when one has stood wiping the dew from the face, taking the clutching hand that perpetually seeks to hold to something, moistening the lips of him who is passing through the Valley of the Shadow. One’s eyes smart and feel filled with salt as a man with life ebbing, – oh! so painfully quickly, – grasps one’s hand and says ‘Sister, God bless you.’ The full meaning of the remark arrests one, its sanctity, its solemnity, the benedictory significance of the words spoken under such circumstances engulf one. It is not as the smug person would say – one feels amply rewarded for what one has done. Not at all. One only feels so utterly unworthy and mean and small.

THE NIGHT BIRD

But the longest night ends and joy cometh with the morning. The restless tossings have ceased, the breathing is soft and regular. The dew-laden air accentuates the foetid smell of the wounds. I go to the door of the marquee to roll back the walls, and I lean for a moment against the bamboo pole, a surge of emotions overpowering me – aching pity, immeasurable sadness, a sense of human limitations – often indeed – human impotence. Then the joy of success, the transcendent happiness of helping to snatch back a life from the Gates of Death.

And there afar and unwavering, a pale primrose
star, the inky darkness giving way to a soft grey-blue silver-lined, then a pink flush heralding a thousand shafts of ruddy, glowing light, and – rosy as our hopes, radiant with promise – there breaks the Dawn.

FOLLOWING ON THE
coming of the American units to our neighbourhood, we have had quite an influx of nurses, and had to give bed and breakfast accommodation to so many other passing guests, that almost half of our staff are again under canvas. I fortunately am among the tented crowd. I say ‘fortunately’ for the weather is most friendly – indeed, it is ideal canvas weather. A ‘canvas existence’ is great fun. It has its pros and its cons, but the pros are so delightful as to outweigh the cons, especially when these latter are made light of with true active service philosophy. The dog walks into the bell-tent in the middle of the night and rudely awakes one by vigorously licking one’s face, and exhibiting other unseemly symptoms of canine affection. The bantam
proclaims about 3 a.m. that he is roosting on the foot of one’s bed, by violently crowing in a piercing falsetto, an unappreciated solo, from which he refuses to desist even though he has hurled at him a damp sponge, a rolled-up knot of a handkerchief, a comb, an orange, and many a ‘Shoo, Christopher, shoo, you little wretch!’

Field mice scuttle across the doors on early morning travels as we dress, insects always and perpetually hold high revel, earwigs are discovered holding a confab in the folds of one’s apron, while one nurse is found asleep with a lighted candle in her tent – No, she isn’t ill, only left on the light to scare the rats.

Yes, it is ideal canvas weather, weather when it is delightful to lie in bed at night and gaze through leafy, high acacias to a far, far, interminably far, blue-black, star-studded sky. It is delightful to pause for a few hours in the rapid whirl of a crowded life, and watch a grey mauve twilight linger over a Corot landscape. It is delightful to lie and watch the soft, gold light of the early sun spangling innumerable diamond dewdrops. It is delightful to hear the rain pattering on tent roof, and to smell the good smell of refreshed green things and damp earth.

It is not quite so delightful, however, to be awakened
in the wee, small hours by the rain pattering on one’s face, to be obliged to get up hurriedly, scramble into slippers and raincoat, and go out sleepily and stammeringly into the darkness to fumble and fasten down tent ropes and tent flaps, which latter have been well turned back because the evening was originally so warm.

Then, too, it is not quite so delightful to find the rain invading the tent and again pattering on one’s face, especially when two people are sleeping in a bell-tent, and the opportunities of evasion are thus halved. For the geometrical fact rarely finds more graphic demonstration than in this particular application, – half a bell-tent is considerably less than a whole. Still, what would you? A leaky bell-tent is not so bad as a leaky dug-out.

It is somewhat in the nature of a drawback, too, to go on duty on a beautifully fine morning, and to come back after a drenching shower to find one end of the bed sodden, to see a pair of shoes with a little pool of water in the ball of each foot, – it will be days before they dry, – and to make the pleasing discovery that the rain has been joyously cannonading on one’s best outdoor uniform. Leaves, spiders and wood bugs in one’s wash and bath water are frequent occurrences,
while overnight the acacia leaves flutter upon one’s face and hair with persistent, babies-in-the-wood effort. Towards creeping things one grows to an amazing tolerance, indeed, to a live-and-let-live nonchalance, a mild interest which would have astounded one in pre-war days. For what is the use of killing a busy, little, shining, black chap of a beetle as he skuds across the tent floor? Nature is so bountiful that she breeds for a higher rate of mortality than we can ever inflict. So even though we squash with the heel of our slipper every spider, earwig, wood-louse, and beetle we saw that would not ensure our immunity from invasion, nor our clothes being free of others when we take them down from the tent-peg.