A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front (19 page)

Instead, we let them get on with that tremendous business called life and give preliminary inspection of our clothes before dressing.

Life in a bell-tent is very circumscribed and circumvented. Though one possess ever so little wealth, wardrobe or worldly goods, still is it difficult to encompass all including camp-bed, camp-bath, basin, chair and a trunk within a floor space whose radius is six feet. And π
r
²
minus a tent-peg wholly and completely surrounded by a collection of dressing-gowns, overalls, coats, skirts, mackintoshes and great coats, is
a very tight fit. When, moreover, one shares the bell-tent with a second person, one at times comes to the conclusion that the world is too much with us, and it is just a little difficult to love one’s neighbour as one’s self.

Life under canvas is a very public affair, a very free and easy affair. It is surprising what a barrier is swept aside when one doesn’t possess a door. I can only suppose Diogenes had a lid to his tub, otherwise I can’t conceive how he managed to philosophise. For life under canvas is very provocative of conviviality.

All and sundry passers-by see one seated within the wigwam and pause for conversation, which invariably gets drawn out, and just as invariably gets extended to impromptu hospitality. The entertaining is alfresco. Usually the guests overflow on to the grass at the door of the tent. A stove burns, merrily boiling water for coffee, two girls sit sewing in deck chairs. One pores industriously and disgustedly over some darning. Two sit on the floor of the tent with arms round their knees, and looking like two little Hindoo idols.

Darkness is falling. A candle in a hanging lantern is lighted within the tent. The warm glow of candle light, the cosy glow of the stove, the grouping, the triangular
outline of the tent, the background of acacias, the dull grey-blue, silver-streaked sky, – the effect is charming.

‘PETTICOAT LANE’

The hostess calls across offering a cup of coffee, to be met with the unfailing, active service affirmative.

‘Thanks awfully but bring it across, old dear. I’m in bed reading how the war is progressing,’ – the only uninterrupted time one gets for the deed.

Numerous good-nights by and bye are exchanged and return invitations are being issued.

‘Do come round to see me, I’m No. 3, Petticoat Lane.’

‘Come in to coffee to-morrow night. I’m the centrepiece in the Gutter.’

‘You haven’t been round to my place for ages. I’ve moved to Piccadilly you know, No. 2.’

‘Oh, by the way did you hear about our moving? We two were in a bell-tent under the trees, and some casual mention was made of its being a damp spot, but we heard nothing further.

‘Last night we went for a walk into the forest, and on coming back at the end of an hour were electrified to find the only home we possessed had gone, been moved stock, stone, and barrel, and not so much as a piece of paper or a circle of flattened grass to show where it had been.

‘However, it was no use being dumbfounded, so
we set off on a tour round the quarters and finally discovered it with furniture and equipment complete. Funny thing when one’s home goes wandering.’

I COULDN’T NURSE,
but I could cook,’ several women have said to me when I have been on leave in England. ‘Tell me something about the cooking, and what are the kitchens like?’

The kitchen of a hospital housed in a building which has previously been, say, a seminary, or convent, or chateau, is, of course, the kitchen attached to the building, – enlarged, probably, and equipped more or less well.

The kitchen of a camp hospital usually consists of a wooden roof and a square of cement. On the latter are placed the stoves, with tables adjacent, and with a row of boilers near.

Round the stoves and along by the boilers a wooden wall is erected to keep off draughts. Quite probably
the rest of the kitchen will be left open, a welcome and necessary condition of affairs in summer, when a few ground sheets will successfully combat any showers. During the winter the kitchen will probably be temporarily boarded in. A little wooden hut will act as larder if no other more permanent building be near. Our mess kitchen is an example of the utilisation of existing buildings. It consists of two, open-fronted, loose boxes formerly used for horses. One acts as larder, while in the other are accommodated a stove, table, and a boiler for hot water.

Any woman used to a ‘well-equipped kitchen,’ – a term which often includes shining rows of innumerable and unnecessary pots and pans, patent utensils, special storage jars and elaborately made storage boxes, – would be immediately impressed with the austere bareness, and the outstanding sparsity of things in a camp kitchen. But ‘active service’ is a term to be translated quite literally and to be given the most comprehensive of meanings.

A utensil is an article to be extensively utilised, and if its use does not justify a strenuous existence it is promptly dumped, for its space is more valuable than its presence. Thus the boilers are busy night and day not merely boiling water, but also acting as porridge
pots, stock pots, soup pans and pudding pans. The circumscribed kitchen, too, is the scene of much crowded activity, for here thousands of meals are cooked per day, hundreds of men supplied with porridge and tea for breakfast, a certain number of eggs cooked and rashers of bacon fried, several hundreds of pints of soup made for dinner, meat and fresh vegetables prepared and cooked, milk or suet or bread pudding cooked for some hundreds of men, a great quantity of ‘milk-rice’ boiled for the ‘milk-diet’ patients, a certain number of minced and boiled chicken diets supplied, a certain number of custard puddings made, probably a number of fish diets prepared, and several pints of beef tea made.

In the afternoon barley water, more cooked fish, cooked eggs, and some hundreds of pints of tea will be supplied, while in the evening a similar quantity of cocoa will be in demand. Meantime, preparations for the next morning’s breakfast and dinner will be proceeding apace, while emergency meals for convoy patients, – stews, soups, tea or cocoa, – may be required at very short notice.

The responsibility for securing supplies rests with the quartermaster. His is the task of ensuring the presence of great quantities of tins of milk, tins of jam,
chests of tea, boxes of sugar, bags of rice and cereals, thousands of loaves of bread, tins of beef and vegetables, baskets of fresh vegetables, rounds and joints of fresh meat, gallons of fresh milk, stones of fresh fruit, boxes of dried fruits, tins of butter, crates of fresh eggs, and a very host of other things.

The quartermaster is not a popular person in the Army, for it is his business to detect and prevent waste, extravagance, ill-use of articles, and the dumping of the same before their usefulness is exhausted, – the latter a very vexed question on which there are quite frequently two opinions. Particularly is the quartermaster unpopular on issue days and at inventory times, during which latter equipment inspection takes place, and one’s bald brooms and brushes are laid out in naked shamefulness, – they are bald in their very earliest youth from stress of life! – one’s little secret stores of linen and hardware treasures dragged into the light of day, and hidden recesses ruthlessly invaded and just as ruthlessly plundered.

At most times, however, the quartermaster, like the banker, reminds one of the phrase in the prayer-book. He is an ever-present help in time of trouble. A camp hospital is put up on a piece of bare ground, probably some miles from a town, and the quartermaster’s
department acts as a dry-goods-grocery-drapery-coal-restaurant-medical stores. Beds, bedding, and bed linen are required, – the Q.M. Knives, forks, table necessities, cooking utensils, – the Q.M. Cradles, baths, instruments, lotions, drugs, – the Q.M. Chairs, lockers, tables, nails, screws, hammers, – the Q.M. Stationery, pens, ink, gum, – the Q.M. – who dispenses the two latter, by the way, in powder form. Just try to lead a Robinson Crusoe existence in a corner of a back garden, and an idea will be gained of where the quartermaster’s work begins, though never of where it ends.

‘You are interested in kitchens,’ said the Colonel of a base depôt in France. ‘Come and I’ll show you mine.’ So we went to two, large, wooden huts.

‘I don’t know whether it was justifiable pride or positive conceit which underlies this invitation, but I am very pleased to have had it,’ I remarked as I looked round, for the kitchens were beautiful, – spotlessly clean, exquisitely tidy and admirably well-ordered, though at the time, some thousands of dinners were being prepared.

The centre of the kitchen was occupied by stoves and some boilers, the asphalted floor round the bottom of
the stoves being edged with whitewash, a device which had its effective appearance as well as its utilitarian purpose. Round the walls, – liberally ornamented with cuttings from the illustrated papers of girls and girls’ faces, by the way, – were wooden benches scrupulously clean and boasting a few, highly polished, storage jars which had their origin in biscuit tins.

The dinner which was being cooked consisted of a most deliriously smelling stew made from the Army ration of mixed vegetables and meat, supplemented with fresh onions, carrots and suet dumplings. Many roasts of beef were being cooked in the ovens, some boilers were occupied with the cooking of beans, and others with the boiling of rice, which was subsequently to be served with treacle.

The menus for the past week were written on a sheet of paper pinned to the door of the larder. They made interesting reading, and were at least one tribute to the marvellous excellence of British organisation, that target at which so many spitefully-aimed, and stupidly-directed, little pebbles are thrown.

The breakfast each morning had consisted of tea, bread, fried bacon, boiled bacon, or boiled ham, and, on two mornings of the week, potted meat, and on a third, rissoles in addition.

Tea each day had consisted of tea, bread, cheese and butter, or cheese and jam, with Saturday’s and Sunday’s meal augmented with potted meat. Supper consisted of soup and bread or biscuits, of butter, cheese and biscuits or bread, with tea or cocoa.

The dinner menus for the week were as follows:

Among newcomers in a neighbouring garage one day was another type of kitchen and as it was a bird of passage I went to see it then and there.

It was a motor field kitchen which was being driven to a part of the French line, and was a gift from some Scottish body, whose name escapes my memory, to the Anglo-French Red Cross.