A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front (7 page)

Ration biscuits, otherwise irreverently known as dog biscuits, only required considerate treatment to be
responsible for quite agreeable puddings and porridge – reminiscent of the schoolroom ‘milk’ pudding, it is true, but what would you? We are on active service which is the English equivalent of
C’est la guerre
, both of which accompanied by a philosophical smile or a rueful shrug of the shoulders, as the case may be, are supposed to cover a multitude of deficiencies.

Mice, quite an alarming bag of them, we used to catch with a basin, a thimble, and a piece of stick. Our vegetable sieve was a biscuit tin with holes jabbed in with a jack-knife. The sphere of usefulness of things was never confined, too. Our mimosa bloomed daintily as ever from a glass which originally held Florence Cream, while a charmingly bright touch was given by a polished, oblong cocoa-tin holding holly and red berries.

One of the first essentials in camp housekeeping is to rid oneself of all one’s tenderly cherished notions, and all one’s dearly loved susceptibilities on the subject of housekeeping, so soon as one enters the mess room. We used to disobey every canon of housewifery ritual and emerge unscathed: boil water over a stick fire held together by three bricks, and yet not get the water smoked, have the dishes washed in hot water and soda, and yet the few gilt-edged specimens
we possessed obstinately, serenely and successfully retained their gilt for several strenuous months. Our knives we plunged into a jug of hot, soapy water, and yet the handles remained staunchly attached to the blades. The dish washing used to be done at breakneck speed, and although we had upwards of a thousand dishes washed per day, we had no casualties for a fortnight – once, at any rate – so our soldier men set a very good example to the average scullery maid. Indeed, our boys were treasures, though now and again they liked to twit themselves for doing ‘women’s work.’ ‘Wouldn’t I make a good wife for some one, sister?’ one used to ask me, as he slapped a wet flannel round the floor or cut up the bread for meals. Poor boy, he had been very badly gassed in the memorable first Hun attack, and he was still subjected to dreadful, prostrating headaches.

Active-service housekeeping, interesting though it is, soon, however, begins to pall even on the most fervent apostle of the domestic arts.

Housekeeping is an exhaustive business even when one has only a small home family to cater for. How much more is it so when the family is one of sixty-five people and with meals duplicated – breakfast at
7
, at 7.30, and then for the night sisters at 8, ‘snack’ lunch
of the buffet variety from 9 to 10, two midday lunches, two teas, two dinners, and invariably some individual meals to keep warm for sisters delayed.

Then, too, much as one wishes to make more comfortable and homelike the life of those hard-working women, yet one cannot have the same vim and enthusiasm, nor experience the same fascination in ‘keeping house’ for sisters as one does in working for, and tending, our brave boys. So most nurses and sisters gladly shake from their feet the dust of the mess-kitchen and wend their way back to the wards.

S
CENE
I.
The
H
OME
S
ISTER
interviews the
C
OOK
.
          
Time
9.30
a.m.

H
OME
S
ISTER
seated at table in mess. Enter
C
ORPORAL
.

H. S. Good morning, Corporal.

C. Good morning, Sister.

H. S. What can you give us for meals to-day?

C. [
dryly
]. Well, it’s wot have we got.

H. S. I thought you might manage rissoles. That would be a nice change.

C. Yu-u-s. [
Pause, continuing
]. I don’t know wot we’ll make them of.

H. S. Well, there are the remains of last night’s joints.

C. Well, there isn’t much.

H. S. I’ll see what there is. [C.
disappears.
] These men have no initiative – and no interest. What a pity we don’t have V.A.D. cooks. Women are so very clever in using up left overs. Just like the French, who can make a really marvellous meal out of a scrap of garlic, a piece of dripping the size of a walnut, and the claws of a deceased pigeon.

[
Re-enter
C.
with dish, whereon
extremely clean bones.
]

C. There isn’t enough there, yer know, Sister.

H. S. [
in very hopeful voice
]. Oh, I don’t know, there are some quite nice pieces there. Besides, you could eke it out with bully. I want you to make two rissoles for each sister. That will be a hundred and thirty [
in a final tone
]. That’s settled. Oh, yes, and you might, too, make an extra two dozen for the night sisters.

C. [
aside
]. Well, she has some ’opes.

H. S. Vegetables and milk pudding you’ll serve as usual, except that we should prefer them rather better than usual in the actual serving. The potatoes yesterday were very lumpy.

C. Well, that potato-masher you got down town isn’t no good, Sister.

H. S. [
interrupting
]. No? I thought myself that a little longer boiling of the potatoes might have improved matters. Now about dinner. Have you any suggestions?

C. [
dryly
]. Well, it’s wot have we got.

H. S. I thought of a tapioca soup, – it is so nourishing, – fricassée of chicken, steamed peach pudding with a sweet sauce, and cheese straws, as your share of the meal.

C. [
aside
]. I
don’t
think. Her and her fancy ideas. I’ll let her see [
turning to
S
ISTER
]. Well, what about the stock, Sister?

H. S. The chicken bones, of course.

C. I’m afraid they’re nothing
but
bones, Sister.

H. S. [
in hopeful tones
]. Well, eke it out with bully. [C.
produces bones.
] Good gracious, where are the pieces of chicken for the fricassée?

C. Well, Sister, there are that many dratted dogs about.

H. S. But haven’t you got a safe, man?

C. Yes, Sister, only the door hinge has been off this three month.

H. S. I reported the matter. Hasn’t it been mended? [
Writes industriously on memorandum.
] To return to the matter of the soup, Corporal.

C. Well, Sister, if you give me a few soup cubes, a tin of tomatoes, a bottle of sauce and a few potatoes to thicken it, I might manage something.

H. S. And in place of the fricassée?

C. Well, Sister, we’ve got a lot of Maconochie in hand. What if we got rid of some of those? I could put in a couple of penny packets of curry powder and –

H. S. We’ll leave it at that. See that the pudding is good.

C. Yes, Sister … pudding. What about the peaches? They hadn’t any at the canteen last night, and stores aren’t due in till Saturday, and then they’ll likely be late.

H. S. [
despairingly, after long pause
]. What do you suggest?

C. Well, Sister, I could give you prunes and custard, but we’ve had them five times this week. And the apricots’ll want soaking, so you couldn’t have those very well until to-morrow. And the sisters don’t seem to care about raisins. And the bread puddings – oh, well, they’re a wash-out. And you’d spotted dick yesterday lunch. And the under-cook, he isn’t very handy, so there’s no chance of him making you any of these fancy puddings in advance this afternoon. So what do you think about duff and treacle?

H. S. [
icily
]. Suet pudding and treacle, then.

C. And, Sister, I don’t see how I’m to manage the cheese straws.

H. S. And why?

C. Well, it’s like this, Sister. We’re on half-rations and drew no cheese for three days, and I don’t suppose I’ll get any for another three.

H. S. [
more icily
]. Omit the cheese straws.

[
Pause. Then exit
C.]

H. S. [
soliloquising sighingly
]. It’s very, very disappointing somehow, when one tries one’s hardest. Let me see, I drew up quite a nice dinner for the sisters to-night, – a tapioca soup, fricassée of chicken with creamed potatoes, steamed peach pudding and sauce, and cheese straws. And what are we to have? – a query soup, disguised Maconochie, suet pudding and treacle … Well, we’re on active service. I suppose we must take the rough with the smooth … only sometimes it seems all rough and no smooth.

[
Re-enter
C.]

C. Sister, Jock has been inoculated and will be off duty the next twenty-four hours. My leave has just come through and I’ve got to go at eleven o’clock. So I don’t know how you’ll manage for lunch and dinner,
with nobody in the cook-house … By the way, Sister, you promised me some cigarettes when I went on leave …

[
Collapse of
S
ISTER
.]

WHEN A FEW
cheery souls, such as the men of our Army, get together, nicknames inevitably abound. I have encountered a great many Army-bred nicknames in the past two years, have been present at the baptism of some. ‘Orderly, I wish you could find time to give me a shave to-day,’ once remarked a smooth-faced boy of eighteen. ‘A what!’ came in chorus from the other more mature men of the ward. ‘Orderly, you’ll need a microscope or some forcing lotion. A shave, indeed!’ And for the rest of the time the boy was in the ward, he was known as ‘The Young Shaver.’

It was in the same ward that we had another young boy who was very fond of chocolate. Hence, although he was ‘a good plucked ’un’ and had been wounded
twice he became known to many and sundry as ‘The Chocolate Soldier.’

One youngster earned his nickname through mispronunciation. I took his name, number, etc., on admission, and then asked ‘What is the trouble, boy?’ ‘Synoblitus (synovitis) of the right knee, sister.’ So Synoblitus he became, which was duly shortened to Blitus, and then got to Blighty – which, poor boy, was more than he got, as the synovitis was too slight to merit an expensive, albeit very pleasant, journey westward.

As among schoolboys, the personal appearance is a fruitful source of nicknames. Thus a very tall, thin man, was dubbed ‘Pull through’ from his testified resemblance to the piece of cord and brass known as a pull-through, and used to clean the rifle. ‘Snowball’ was the owner of a bullet head covered with very, very fair, pale, straw-coloured hair, and when he lay tucked in bed with the bedclothes above his nose and only his fair hair showing, he really did resemble a large snowball. The cognomen ‘Snowflake’ on the other hand, was a piece of irony which was appreciated and enjoyed by the owner of the name as much as by any one else, for he was a native of Trinidad and dusky as could be. ‘Darkey’ had spent a good many years in Mexico, and had become very swarthy in the time.
‘Somebody’s darling’ had fair, curly hair, blue eyes, pink cheeks, and a bow mouth and was aged eighteen. ‘Charlie Chaplin’ shortened to ‘Charlie’ and ‘Chappie’ owed his name to his walk, or, more truthfully, to his feet which were inclined to be distant with one another. ‘Farmer Garge’ was a bluff and hearty, beef-and-beer, John-Bull type of man with a big, red face, and as much mutton-chop as the Army allows.

I am afraid I was responsible for one nickname. There was one little boy in the ward who simply wouldn’t talk. All we could charm from him was monosyllables, a few smiles, and many blushes. ‘Now, Magpie,’ I said one day when I went to make his bed, ‘talkative as ever I suppose.’ And ‘Magpie’ stuck to him. After he had left the ward the other men told me he had been accustomed to declare himself a woman hater! [he was aged eighteen] and one thing he didn’t mind about up the line was that there were no women. On protestation he admitted – oh, balm to my ’satiable vanity! – he didn’t mind ‘our sister,’ she ‘wasn’t half a bad sort, that she wasn’t.’

Then we had ‘Dormouse’ who had a truly voracious appetite for sleep, would sleep like the Seven Sleepers all night, and then doze like an octogenarian all day. ‘Rip Van Winkle’ was the name bestowed on a man of
similar tendency in another ward. ‘Tiny’ and ‘Bantam’ were playful pieces of irony, for both were Grenadiers whose toes came to the bottom of the bed. Ironical, too, was the designation of ‘Lightning’ to a bulky, leisurely moving man who, according to the consensus of general ward opinion, was ‘too slow to catch cold.’

One night, we had brought in two boys who came straight from the trenches bringing with them thick shocks of hair and semi-patriarchal beards.

‘Well, sister, have you any one you would like me to see?’ asked the divisional major of a nurse, when, a little later, he did his rounds. He referred, of course, to any anxious eases.

‘Yes,’ said she, interpreting his words quite literally and naughtily pointing out the two boys. ‘Here are Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday.’

Both joined the Major in a broad grin and ‘Crusoe’ and ‘Friday’ they remained so long as they stayed with us.

Certain nicknames are given as a matter of course – Jock to Scotchmen, Geordie to North countrymen, Taffy to Welshmen, Pat to Irishmen, ‘Aussy’ to Australians or otherwise ‘we from Kangerland,’ ‘Dads’ to any old – or rather should I say ‘old-looking’ man, – ‘Sonny’ and ‘Chikko’ to ‘youngsters,’ ‘Boy’ to all and
sundry. A man too, is often addressed by the name of the district from which he hails. ‘Now, Lancashire [or Warwick – or Gloucester, etc.], muck in. D’yer think yer a blooming sergeant-major?’

Nicknames spring up rife in these happy-go-lucky, soldier gatherings. The main thing is to possess one, for a nickname is a sign of good fellowship,
bon camaraderie
, popularity, a sign that the owner is admitted to the
coterie
of pals, a sign that he is ‘in the swim.’

‘
GET THE TEMPERATURE
down and then …’ The Medical Officer pauses significantly and smiles. Whereat the patient grins broadly at him and at the sister, and, as they move to the next bed, his thoughts have already landed in England.