Miss Nightingale's Nurses

by Kate Eastham

  ‘No what ifs, Rose. The Russians are all in Sevastopol; we are pushing towards them. I really don’t think they will be coming up to us.’

  ‘But that doctor said they had some Russians attack camp only last night.’

  ‘Well, they didn’t get far with that, did they?’ said Ada, knowing that she was not really sure of her ground and needing to change the subject fast. ‘Where do you want this box of bandages?’

  ‘Over—’

  They both jumped at a heavy explosion from the front line. Ada grabbed Rose and they clung together until the noise had died down.

  ‘No need to worry,’ called the doctor. ‘They won’t reach us up here.’

  ‘See?’ said Ada. ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘Well,’ said Rose, ‘he also said that we are all right when the guns are sounding, it’s when they go quiet … that’s when the wounded will come.’

  ‘I’ve heard that too,’ said Ada as she bent over the box to explore the contents. She saw that Lampeter and his new acquaintance were still deep in conversation. Not much preparation going on there by the look of it, she thought, annoyed. Maybe they’re discussing our plan of action. Then the guns fell quieter for a few minutes and she caught the gist of their conversation. It seemed to be about the larger, heavier rifle bullet that the Russians had been using since the spring. They were now equivalent to the British and French ammunition and left a bigger hole in the body.

  His new partner laughed grimly. ‘It’s time I got some more practice with the knife.’

  ‘I think this might be your opportunity,’ said Lampeter, ‘but I wish we could do this somewhere further out of reach of the shelling.’

  ‘True,’ said his companion. ‘And another thing, the Russians can resist attack so well – they are adept at building bunkers and protecting them with thick timbers and earthworks. And the speed at which they can repair those defences – it’s quite incredible.’

  Doesn’t sound like we stand much of a chance, thought Ada. We need all hands on deck here. She looked up again to see Lampeter pulling a pistol and some bullets from his doctor’s bag. ‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘What does he think he’s going to do with that?’

  ‘What was that?’ asked Rose, still a bit shaky and distracted.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Right,’ said Rose, sounding like she was trying to calm herself down, ‘when the casualties start to flood in we need to treat only those who have a chance of survival. Those who are fatally wounded we will have to leave, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Ada, terrified of what that might be like in reality.

  Lampeter and the new man were now moving trestles and boards around, making them into tables to take the wounded in need of treatment. Ada heard Rose suggest that they erect some rope with sheets draped over to act as a screen for any surgery, so as not to distress the other men.

  Good idea, but it won’t do anything about the noise, thought Ada, remembering so well the sound of the saw.

  Trying to keep busy was the best way of coping but they were coming to a point when there were only so many times that you could count bandages or wipe down a table.

  Finally the big guns fell silent.

  Lampeter and his new friend looked at each other and then came over to the nurses to check that all was set. They knew it wouldn’t be long.

  ‘Hello, I’m Nurse Houston,’ smiled Ada, extending her hand to Lampeter’s handsome friend.

  ‘George Rossiter,’ he said, taking her hand and firmly shaking it. ‘I’m the medical officer up here at camp.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Ada, enjoying the feel of his dry, warm hand. ‘Oh, and this is Rose, Nurse Blackwood,’ she said, looking around for her friend. Rose nodded to Rossiter but chose not to take his hand.

  There was movement at the door of the tent and they all looked up in expectation of their first casualty. It was, however, a young man wearing a dog collar who stepped nervously in through the door.

  ‘Ah, Chaplain,’ said Rossiter, ‘glad to see you could make it. I fear we will be in need of your services very soon.’

  Ada instantly felt sorry for the young man. He looked terrified. He tried to smile at them but his face was twitching nervously. She was glad to see Rose step over and take his hand.

  ‘Now, Chaplain, why don’t you say a prayer with us before we all get too busy,’ she said.

  The young man, sweating freely in his starched collar and black wool coat, seemed to be pleased with that idea and his shoulders relaxed a little. Still holding Rose’s hand, he was just opening his mouth to start when they heard a shout from outside the tent.

  The chaplain closed his mouth as two orderlies ran in carrying a man on a board.

  ‘Help, help!’ they shouted. ‘This man has been caught by heavy fire. We’re losing him fast.’

  Lampeter was there first and it didn’t take him long to assess the situation. The man had been shot through the belly, a big gaping wound visible only briefly to Ada and Rose as he lifted the grey blanket covering him. Ada thought it looked very bad and she could tell by Rose’s face that this man must be one of those they would consider fatally wounded. He is dying in front of our eyes, thought Ada miserably, and there is nothing we can do about it.

  The doctors tucked the blanket round him and soothed him as best they could, telling him that he was going to be just fine. The patient was beginning to draw his legs up in pain and his face was contorted. ‘Give him some laudanum,’ said Lampeter, his voice steady, ‘and take him over to the far side of the tent.’

  Rose swiftly went to find the laudanum. After she had administered a few drops she asked the stretcher-bearers to move him. Ada went with her. Rose took a low stool and sat by the man.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said to Ada. ‘I’ll just give him some sips of water. If you could go and find me a bowl of water and a sponge, so I can wipe his face?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Ada, her heart swelling with pride for her friend, whose only concern was to stay with her patient.

  While Rose sat, Ada continued to check that all the supplies were in place and that the tables were ready to receive the wounded.

  After about an hour, Rose called her over. The man had stopped breathing and his unseeing eyes now stared up to the canvas roof of the tent. When Rose stood up from the stretcher there was a smudge of bright red blood on her white apron. She looked down and muttered something about changing it but then the chaplain was back in the tent and came over to say a prayer with her.

  As Ada went to find a clean apron for Rose, another stretcher was coming through the door. This poor man had apparently blown away the side of his own face. Dr Rossiter quickly explained that he had seen these cases before: men driven mad by months of constant bombardment and night raids; men not able to face another foray into enemy territory; men who felt their only option was to turn their guns on themselves.

  Lampeter leant over to have a closer look. ‘He must have put a musket in his mouth and pulled the trigger, but his grip on the gun has slipped and he’s taken out the left side of his face,’ he pronounced grimly. ‘Get me a wet towel,’ he added. ‘All we can do for now is cover it. If he survives then we can look at some kind of surgery. But unfortunately in seeking a quick end to his daily suffering I think this man has ensured a protracted and painful death.’

  ‘I’ll get him some laudanum,’ said Rose, frowning at Dr Lampeter and then assuring him that they could manage the patient. ‘I do wish he wouldn’t pronounce like that over the patients,’ she muttered to Ada. ‘The man can still hear him.’

  They administered a dose of laudanum but the poor man was becoming agitated and starting to rant about getting his gun. He kept shouting out that he wanted to die, begging that they just let him go. Ada stayed with him, trying her best to soothe him, but he was beyond all comfort. The guns had started up again and each time a shell exploded the man screamed out.

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nbsp; The chaplain came over and started to say the ‘Our Father’. This caught the man’s attention and he started to calm. The chaplain, visibly shaking, continued to pray and recite psalms. This seemed to be the only way to comfort the poor soul.

  Now that the guns had started up again Rossiter thought there might be a break before the next lot came in, and suggested that they step outside for refreshment and leave the chaplain to his work.

  Ada was amazed to find that he had arranged for a tray of tea to be brought over and they sat, incongruously, on wooden chairs outside the tent, taking tea as if – just for a moment – they were on some picnic or church outing. As they sipped tea, the guns continued to sound, and all except Rossiter flinched each time the shells seemed a bit too close. Dr Rossiter was lively and talkative as he sat next to Ada. She thought that he was probably much more nervous than he was letting on, and that the talking was a sign of that. At least it was a distraction, especially for Rose, who was still very shaky.

  When Rossiter at last fell quiet Ada got the opportunity to ask him a question that had been burning in her mind since she had arrived at camp.

  ‘Do you remember the army wife, Miriam, who gave birth to a baby?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember them very well. Only baby born in camp. I was down with a fever at the time and they had to summon Lampeter from Balaklava to deliver it.’

  ‘Well, it was more Nurse Houston who delivered the baby,’ said Lampeter, seeing how Ada glanced at him.

  ‘You did it?’ said Rossiter. ‘What a fine thing, Nurse Houston – a midwife as well as a nurse.’

  ‘Well, we worked together,’ said Ada, seeing how uncomfortable Lampeter looked.

  ‘Teamwork,’ said Rossiter. ‘Even better. That’s exactly what we need here in this tent today, teamwork.’

  Ada smiled and looked over at Lampeter again, but he didn’t meet her gaze and was shifting around restlessly. Then he jumped up from his seat and walked back inside the tent as if he’d just remembered something that he urgently needed to do. Ada noticed that after he’d gone Rose kept looking across to where he’d been, as if trying to work something out.

  The chaplain had fallen silent inside the tent. After a while he emerged to tell them that the poor man who had tried to kill himself had just died, and was out of his misery at last.

  The big guns were still sounding and it looked like there would be even more waiting before the inevitable casualties filled up the tent. Ada saw Lampeter pacing up and down; none of them could settle. She just wished that it would all start – this waiting was becoming unbearable.

  In fact the bombardment continued all night and it would not be until the next day that the full horror of war would be revealed to Ada.

  As soon as first light came, the casualties started to pour in through the door of the tent.

  ‘Let’s split up into two teams,’ said Lampeter to Rossiter. ‘Nurse Houston and I will deal with emergency surgery, you and Nurse Blackwood stay outside the tent and separate those who should go in for treatment from those who have no hope of survival. Those poor devils need to be left outside with the chaplain.’

  ‘Righto,’ said Rossiter, turning to Rose. ‘We’ll put the dead round the back of the tent.’ Ada felt a shudder go through her as they all nodded in agreement of the grim plan.

  Before she was separated from Rose, she went over and gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘Just keep going; we’ll get through this.’ Ada didn’t know where the words were coming from; she was terrified and shaking inside, but somehow seemed to be able to appear calm on the outside. She could see that Rose was trembling, so she gave her a quick hug and then it was time to get cracking.

  Lampeter was shouting for her, and as she moved swiftly to join him, she called back over her shoulder: ‘Watch out for Billy, will you?’

  ‘I will,’ promised Rose.

  They were quickly swept up in the first batch of casualties: men with faces blackened by gunpowder, uniforms torn to shreds, bloodstained, battered and mangled, with bandages wrapped around heads, limbs, bodies. Men crying out in pain, writhing on the makeshift stretchers, or lying still and moaning, or silent with a deathly pallor.

  Rossiter took charge, quickly excluding those who were too far gone.

  Two cases were deemed fit for surgery: a soldier with a horrific wound on his right lower leg and another with an arm blown away to the elbow.

  Ada was in the thick of it now, no time to even think about feeling faint. ‘Move this one round behind the screen,’ she instructed the orderlies, indicating the leg injury and quickly picking up some scissors to cut away the remains of the man’s uniform. She couldn’t avoid cutting through strips of skin as well, but she did her best to expose the injury and Lampeter was quick to make his assessment.

  ‘He’s already lost a good deal of blood,’ he said urgently. ‘We need to move swiftly.’

  Ada quickly applied a leather tourniquet to the man’s thigh, and Lampeter moved to make an incision just below the knee. With the first cut of the knife the man shouted out and tried to get up, but the orderlies were on hand to hold him fast.

  Lampeter worked away with fierce concentration. ‘Pass me the saw,’ he said, then, ‘Hold the leg.’

  Tooth snagged bone as the strokes went through cleanly.

  ‘Pull away the limb,’ he said and Ada did, shocked by how much it weighed.

  She made sure that Lampeter had enough swabs and was able to proceed with tying off the blood vessels. She then handed him the needle and suture thread and he expertly stitched up the stump.

  Ada calmly held the dressing pad in place while one of the orderlies wrapped a firm bandage round the stump, then in record time the man was moved back out into the body of the tent. They had no time to clean up properly. Ada just had to do the best she could, knowing that another patient would be brought through straight away. As she quickly wiped down the wood of the makeshift table, the soldier with his arm blown off was brought through and placed on the trestles. This man was awake and cursing with pain. Ada swiftly administered some laudanum drops while Lampeter looked at the wound.

  Ada had thought she was prepared for anything after all she’d already seen, but this was the worst so far. When the field dressing was removed, strips of flesh hung around a lump of raw meat and bone. Most of the arm had gone. Blood was dripping down freely.

  The soldier looked over to what was left of his right arm and simply said, ‘Well, doc, I suppose I’ll have to learn to write with me other hand now.’ He then slumped back and told them to get on with it.

  Ada and Lampeter worked well together and she was proud of what a neat job Lampeter managed to do. She couldn’t help but marvel at the way that they were working on casualty after casualty, keeping going, striving to do their absolute best for each and every injured soldier. Lampeter took a big swig of brandy from his flask then offered it to Ada. She took it without hesitation and didn’t even splutter. But there was little time for celebration before the next case came through.

  This man was shot through the shoulder. Lampeter told him it looked like he’d been hit by ball shot because it had bounced off the bone and lodged into soft tissue. It was outside of the chest cavity, thankfully, and had missed the large blood vessels, so he might do well.

  Before they started extracting the shot, they gave the man some brandy and Lampeter poured some of his trademark iodine into the wound and over the medical instruments, wiping them clean on a rag. Then he took up a long knife and some forceps, first gently exploring with the knife while the man groaned in pain, and then going in with the forceps to pull out the ball shot, showing it to the soldier with a flourish before dropping it into a tin pot.

  The man managed a hoarse, ‘Thank you, doc,’ as Ada cleaned him up, deftly applying a bandage before the patient was carried away.

  Back outside the tent Rossiter and Rose were struggling to keep up with the number of men needing assessment. They worked well together: Rossi
ter making the decision as to which direction the men would go and Rose dealing with any dressings or laudanum or instructions to the chaplain.

  Some were an easy decision. Those with holes blown through the abdomen were often awake and coherent but stood no chance of recovery. Rose and Rossiter worked together to tie some kind of covering over exposed wounds, then reassured the patients and told them that another doctor would be seeing them soon. Rose would give laudanum and ask the stretcher-bearers to take them over to the chaplain.

  There were many with head wounds. Those who were awake and able to communicate would have the wound dressed and then be taken into the tent. But some came in with injuries too severe for recovery and these again were sent over to the chaplain.

  Rose told Ada later that she soon realized that those who arrived shouting and screaming were the ones who were most likely to do well. The quiet ones were the most worrying and either needed to go straight to the surgeon or straight to the chaplain.

  Many times the wretched men, covered in black dust and blood, grabbed at Rose and held on to her for dear life. As they pressed into her body she would smell the gunpowder and feel the rawness of their injuries. She tried to stay calm but often found herself struggling with the soldiers, waiting for Rossiter to come and help her break free.

  The whole team worked side by side throughout that long day, never tiring until the flow of casualties started to wane. Only then did they begin to feel their aching backs and the weight of exhaustion. Only then did they see each other’s stained and bloodied faces and clothing.

  The chaplain had prayed with and prayed for dying men all day, and he now sat on a wooden chair looking desolate. Around him lay four men, very quiet. One had laboured breathing and was starting to sound the death rattle. The exhausted chaplain went over to where he lay to say the final prayer.

  The stretcher-bearers took the body round the back of the tent shortly afterwards to lie with the others.

  When Rose and Rossiter finally entered the hospital tent, it was crammed with men, moaning, groaning, some calling out names trying to check if their mates had made it.