A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front (2 page)

Tuesday.
Our party of a hundred V.A.D.s – members of St. John’s Ambulance Association, St. John’s Ambulance Brigade and the British Red Cross Society – left Charing Cross Station this morning. It may be the station of Infinite Sorrows, of heart-breaking farewells, but our going, at any rate, was quite unheroic.

The place was very crowded with nurses, khaki men and officers, and a sprinkling of business passengers, and there may have been tears and piteous partings, but most of us were too busy attending to hand luggage, camp kits, vouchers and corner seats to be either observant or to listen for anything in the minor key.

We had a very good and very quick crossing with not even a floating bottle to deceive ourselves that an enemy submarine was near. Only warships, dull grey from funnel to watermark, cruised around, and our escort hugged us close. I had been thrilled a few days before in reading the account of a well-known journalist who described himself sitting on deck in his life-saving jacket. He must have had a bad attack of ‘cold feet,’ for in our case such a precaution was not taken by any one, not even by one of our most popular princes who happened to be aboard.

Arrived at Boulogne, the passengers ‘travelling
Military’ were straightway disembarked, and we nurses went to an hotel where we were allocated to various hospitals, – all in Northern France, – and to which we were to proceed on the morrow. It was here we saw a new aspect of hotel life. I shared a room with a girl I had never before seen. It was seven feet by nine, with a sloping roof having two rafters and a skylight, and with lime-washed walls. Ce n’est pas magnifique mais c’est la guerre. War accommodation, and the bill next morning was a war bill!

As we went downstairs a small crowd of other V.A.D.s were standing round a bedroom door shrieking with laughter. They invited us to come along to ‘their room’ and then we laughed too. The room looked like a picture after Hogarth. It contained five beds, three of them fat, French, wooden beds, two of them little iron ones, and it had lately been vacated, or rather was about to be vacated, by some officers. The bedclothes were lying about in piled heaps, there was a kilt, a Sam Browne, a couple of revolvers, a tin of tobacco, some cigarettes, haversacks and spurs and, tied to one of the bed posts, … a huge hound. He stood with drooping ears and tail, looking so very sheepishly and apologetically at us that we all laughed helplessly. Some one controlled herself sufficiently to pat him,
and he whacked a great tail strenuously from side to side looking more ludicrous than ever … An Active-service bedroom, evidently.

We had tea at a café beloved of peacetime days. The room was crowded with khaki, – the cakes as good as ever and the proprietor and staff casual as ever at presenting
l’addition
and taking pay. We waited so long for our
addition
, that we thought we might be charged ground-rent, and we amused ourselves with the French poodle who begs for oblong pieces of sugar to be placed on his nose – sugar was plentiful then! – at the ‘brass hats’ foraging for
éclairs
and
petits fours
with the pertinacity and perseverence peculiar to a brass hat, and at the variety in mackintoshes and trench-coats – some with a
flair
, some
en Princesse
, some belted, some collared in lambskin, some high to the ears like a wimple and so on. As we returned to the hotel, we shop-gazed, and became enamoured of a delectable blouse in ivory crepe-de-chine with tiny, lapis lazuli buttons. Then we scolded ourselves, – for this was only our second day in uniform, – and whipped the offending Eve out of us.

Wednesday.
We walked along to the Casino passing on our way the garage where were drawn up in a line upwards of a hundred ambulance cars of all makes
and many of them gifts, e.g., from the British Farmers, from the County of Berkshire, from the Salvation Army, and so on. It was a very good sight to see so many fine cars smartly drawn up with their bonnets in line as though some one had called out briskly, and in stentorian tones, ‘’Shun. By the left, D
RESS
.’

On by tram to Wimereux. Passed a company of British ‘bantams’ marching along singing to the accompaniment of a mouth organ, and with a rag-tag and bob-tail following of bare-legged Boulounnaise fisher-girls and old men, zinc buckets on arm. We wondered idly what the British Tommies first thought of things, – of the Boulounnaise women with woollen pants to ankles, and bare feet slipped into heelless sabots, of the mistress of the
charcuterie
who dusts the sausages displayed in the shop window with a feather duster, of the little boys called in by
maman
from play and deprived of their black, sateen pinafore to be arrayed in outdoor costume of goat skin coat, Homburg hat, buttoned boots and socks, – and of what the French first thought of the British Tommies especially, say, on occasion when in throaty unison they announced:

‘O
–
o
–
ah, it’s
’
snice ter get up i’ th’ moarnin’,

But it’s snicer ter lie in bed;’

or when in mournful accents they declared:

‘Old Soldiers never die, never die, never die,

Old Soldiers never die
,

They fade away.’

Without doubt it must be difficult for the French and certainly an occasional strain on their
entente cordiale
feelings and intent to have their towns, their trams, their cafés, their restaurants, their streets and shops overrun with us British as is the case in Boulogne, Havre, Rouen, Abbeville, Amiens and most of the towns of Northern France. We English would assuredly have found it so if French people had been garrisoned at York and Leeds, Birmingham and Leicester. One wonders if we would have been as forbearing, as gracious, as friendly as our neighbours are under the circumstances.

At Wimereux we climbed up to the cemetery, which has been extended to include a military section for the fallen British. Long lines of smoothed graves, each headed with a little wooden cross, – it is a picture of majestic simplicity, of infinite pathos, nothing tawdry, nothing trivial, nothing but the grandeur of simplicity. We think of the poor, maimed bodies, all that
remain of that grace of English youth and comeliness, of the beauty that is consumed away, of man turned to destruction. We think of Time who unheedingly dims the proud stories of those valiant heroes. Each little, smoothed grave means a tragedy, a gap in some home across those dark waters. Our age has paid its price for the nation and the race. Those are the dead who won our freedom. May we cheat Time, and ever retain the thought. May it compel us to greater patience, greater fortitude, greater forbearance in the work that is to come.

We turn from the graves and leave our dead to their bravely-earned rest on the little wind-swept hill. May they sleep in peace.

WE LEFT THE
Gare Maritime shortly after 2 p.m. The train loitered leisurely onwards for the next twelve hours. Some V.A.D.s went to Etaples where the big S.J.A.B. hospital is situated, some went to Havre, some to Le Treport, some to Versailles to the Palace Hospital there, some to Rouen.

The journey was interesting enough while daylight lasted. We waved to all the British Tommies we passed, and they cheered and waved energetically in return, and we interrupted two games of Soccer by throwing from the carriage window illustrated papers and cigarettes.

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.

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.