A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front

by Olive Dent

  No wonder a little fear of hospitals is engendered within them.

  It is our privilege, pleasure and pride to dispel that fear, – a pride which actually grows to a conceit. It is very feminine to enjoy rising above expectations, and to hear stumbling expressions of gratitude after a dressing, – to be assured that ‘it feels luvly’ or ‘I was dreading that, sister, and it didn’t hurt a bit’ – is as the sound of music in one’s ears. It is a form of vanity of which we are not ashamed, indeed, we revel in it. We try as hard to gain such compliments as any actress ever works to ‘get over’ the footlights, as hard as any passé professional beauty fishes for her toasts of yesteryear. We treasure those whispered thanks more dearly than ever we treasured whispered conservatory compliments, for we know the one is sincere, whereas….

  Most nervous patients are reassured by ‘chipping,’ for ‘chipping’ is the language they best understand. It is so much more human and cheery than the ‘ministering angel stunt.’

  ‘Now, little chappie, swinging the lead, eh? We’ll soon fix this up. Nothing very much the matter, is there?’ and with a soak of hydrogen peroxide and warm sterile water, caked dressings soon give way. The clay-covered, blood-spattered surrounding skin is washed with the same lotion or with ether soap and, possibly, an area shaved – as in the case of head and calf wounds – and the wound itself is cleaned and dressed.

  ‘Is the plugging out, sister?’ a boy will sometimes ask, when one takes up the bandage to bind up the wound – and then, of course, one does feel conceited!

  ‘Is it a Blighty one, sister?’ we are invariably asked, perhaps by the owner of a gaping gash three or four inches long.

  ‘That scratch a Blighty one! Good gracious, boy, you’ll be marked “Active” very soon. Still, of course,’ altering the tone of voice, ‘in three or four days’ time the medical officer is sure to have too many Blighty tickets to carry round, and we might persuade him to get rid of two when he reaches your cot.’

  Such a beatific smile dawns that there is nothing to be seen above the bed-clothes but two crescents of inflated cheek and a wide, red mouth. And he is left to his beatitude.

  Unfortunately, there are times when our little nonsense talk of welcome is stilled, when we hurry round – or send an orderly – to see that each case is comfortable, while we give our whole attention to one in particular. For he has come in with the ominous, red-bordered field-card and the syllable ‘Sev.’ following the diagnosis, e.g. ‘G.S.W. rt. humerus sev. cpd. frac. rt. femur,’ indicating a gunshot wound of a severe character and a compound fracture. Possibly the journey to hospital has aggravated the poor boy’s injuries, the jolting of car or carriage may have brought on a haemorrhage or has exhausted strength already much enfeebled.

  More blankets and hot water bottles, the saline bag and the hypodermic needle play their part or, perhaps, after the consultation comes an immediate visit to the theatre, or perhaps … ‘All you can do, sister, is to make him comfortable. A third of a grain of morphia …’

  Then follow some of the bitterest moments one is called upon to endure, – to feel an intensity of helpless pity, to chafe against a surging feeling of impotence, to watch, to wait and yet to do nothing, nothing of any telling value. One welcomes any little need of the patient’s. One poor boy one night whispered, ‘I don’t know what I want. I seem to be slipping away,’ and at his request there were changed and changed again the pillows, the cushions, the position of the limb, the cradle, the bedclothes, his lips were moistened, his face wiped and then he spoke again.

  ‘I know now why you nurses are called “sisters.” You are sisters to us boys.’ With a lump in the throat, and stinging tears at the back of the eyes one could only silently hope to be ever worthy of the name.

  Chapter VI

  Active Service in the Snow

  SNOW HAS FALLEN persistently for a fortnight. Its coming was presaged by leaden skies and dull grey shadow clouds, which delighted the Australian and New Zealand nurses who were unaccustomed to half-lights, and some of whom had never seen snow. Then one morning we awoke to find the camp mantled in whiteness, the tents roofed and the tent ropes powdered with fairy-poised flakes, while a flaming, early sun shot red shafts of light through a silhouetted fringe of tall poplars, whose high branches dangled clumps of mistletoe like so many deserted rooks’ nests.

  The New Zealanders especially were charmed, but, nous autres, we all shivered into our warmest woollies, packed them tight on us like the leaves of a head of lettuce. ‘Positively I shall have to peel myself tonight,’ vowed one girl. And, indeed, it takes a good many woollen garments to replace the furs and fur coats to which we have accustomed ourselves within the past few years. Finally, one gets into one’s clothes, laces up one’s service boots – how long they are! – with clumsy chilblained fingers, or thrusts and stamps one’s feet into gumboots, having first donned two pairs of stockings, one pair of woolly ‘slip-ons,’ or a pair of fleecy soles, and probably padded cotton, or cyanide, wool round the toes. Then with a jersey, a mackintosh, and a sou’wester over one’s uniform, out into the snow to the messroom, with no path yet made. It is one of the few times one pauses to remember that one is ‘on active service.’

  Of course, almost every one has a cold, almost every one has a cough, and every one has chilblains. Some unfortunate creatures have all three. Our chilblains, true to their inconvenient and inconsiderate kind, have cracked, and the disinfectants among which we dabble in the wards, while keeping them aseptic, give them never a chance to heal.

  So each day, like Henry V’s veterans, we count our wounds and scars and say – well, we say many things.

  Cures? We dutifully rub on, and in, liniments while lacking faith in their efficacy. One brave soul the other night, driven to drastic measure by continuous irritation, walked boldly out into the snow in her bare feet. Some critics deplored her foolhardiness, some deplored her grandmotherly superstition and quackery, while we others stood round the door and applauded the courage of her action, though shivering at the sight of its stoic execution. Unfortunately for the complete success of the cure, she trod on a sharp stone.

  In the wards the patients are mildly excited over the snow, as being a new diversion. ‘Sister, may I take you tobogganning this afternoon?’ asks one boy with a bandaged head and a broken femur, but otherwise very cheerful. ‘Thanks so much. I should love it, and Jock will take me skiing, won’t you?’ I retort, whereat Jock laughs, for he is but very slowly ‘coming round’ again after ‘making a meal of a few bits of shrapnel,’ as he terms his poor abdominal injuries. ‘And you others – well, I think we might manage a bob-sleigh party, eh?’ ‘Oh, rather, sister!’ says a boy, peering over the top of his bed-cradle, which, by the way, he will need for many long weeks.

  Round the tent door stand the up-patients, eager to seize any chance surreptitiously to snowball orderlies and the French newspaper boy, and then to take mean advantage by an instantaneous retreat into the ‘dug-out.’ We hurry on with the morning work and its attendant duties and dressings, and as the afternoon and evening come, so, too, does the snow, faster than it can be raked from the tent roof and path. The stoves are filled with coal and coke, the tents are laced closely, blankets are hung purdah-wise over the lacings, the gramophone is kept busy, cards, draughts, and puzzles are brought out, and everything is ‘très bon, sister,’ as the boys say, ‘quite merry and bright.’ Only occasionally the minor tone is introduced: ‘There’s a few boys in the trenches would like to be here to-night.’

  The snow has ceased to fall when we leave at eight o’clock to go to the quarters, and the whiteness of the snow gives considerable light, We meet the night nurses coming on duty dressed cap-à-pie in wool and mackintosh, and looking like so many Lucy Grays coming with their lanterns through the snow. Lacking the decorum of Lucy, they shy some painfully well-placed snowballs at us, so we dip for a handful of snow. ‘Oh! hit me, but don’t hit my “hurricane”!’ sounds like a mean advantage, so we, stony-heartedly,
cry, ‘Put your “hurricane” at the leeward side of you – Fore!’ At other times it has been blowing a blizzard when we have exchanged duties, and then all we call is a ‘Good-night,’ with occasionally the soldier cry, ‘Sorry you joined, draftie?’

  Going to bed is a prodigious rite and ceremony. After a bath in a camp bath, which against the feeble force of chilblained fingers has a maximum resistance, immovability and inertia, and yet seems to possess a centre of gravity more elusive than mercury, one dons pyjamas, cholera belt, pneumonia jacket, bed socks, and bed stockings as long and woolly as a Father Christmas’s, and then piles on the bed travelling rug, dressing gown, and fur coat. Even in bed the trials of active service do not end on occasion. We found one girl lying in bed the other night with her umbrella up. The snow had melted and was trickling through the tent, and she was too tired to trouble about having matters righted, ‘I’m imagining it is a garden parasol, and I’m in a hammock, and it’s June.’ Gorgeous imagination!

  But this morning the rain has come, and we are as glad as the Ancient Mariner to see that rain, for to us it means the passing of the snow. Our camp has looked charmingly picturesque with the surrounding hills receding to a dim blue haze, a Futurist sun arrogant at dawn and sunset, and honey-gold at noon, sentinel trees, tall and gaunt, long, straight roads peopled occasionally by dark lines of passing soldiers, their marching muffled by the snow, their singing dying away as they quickly reach that distance where they look so much like toy soldiers. Poor boys! For their sakes more than our own we are glad to welcome the rain. Picturesque the snow may be, but the practical side of it is cruel.

  Chapter VII

  From My Diary

  A GLORIOUS AUTUMN afternoon. Went for a walk through the forest and met a big draft on its way up the line. A magnificent body of men, clear-eyed, bronze-faced, swinging tread. Their style of marching gave a good indication of their excellent fitness, for they simply swept along even although they were all wearing ‘tin-hats’ and were weighed with the full ‘humpy.’ Worming her way in and out between the troops was an old crone selling apples.

  What a pity we nurses have no kind of salute! I should dearly love to show the ‘boys going-up’ some little respect, just as I always want to pay tribute when I pass a soldier’s funeral. Walking on I stopped at a tree and began to pick ivy for the wards from its trunk. Another draft went past and one rogue began to sing, and soon every one else joined in:

  ‘Just like the ivy, I’ll be constant and true,

  Just like the ivy, I’ll cling to you.’

  I am becoming a complete nurse. I dab on the backs of my heels when I walk. I swish my skirts. I can lend an air of festivity to a ward with a clean towel, two red ties and a few green leaves. I know there are as many clean ends to a sheet as Euclid had sides to a square. I make beds with all the overturned sheets dressing from the left (or right), and with corners as exact as though a protractor had been at work, and as smooth as though a spirit level had been requisitioned. It seems a pity to lose the art, so I incline to being a chambermaid after the war. Or perhaps a post of bedder at Cambridge might prove more lucrative. A bedder is a woman with a black bonnet, no conscience, and an acquisitive instinct. I must secure the one, get rid of the other, and develop the third.

  I have just had a most enjoyable meal. That sounds a very greedy remark, but when I add that the meal was breakfast in bed, on active service, it will be interpreted as the acme of luxury, self-gratification and self-indulgence. Breakfast in bed, is, of course, only possible when one is ill – and I am brutally healthy – or when one has a ‘day off,’ and the latter is of a Spartan infrequency; my last was nine weeks ago.

  The home-sisters are supposed to bring the breakfast to us, but they are always so busy that a kindly-disposed friend saves them the trouble by bringing it along on her way to the wards. W— and B— brought mine this morning, each wearing that smile of reflected glee, – indeed, I might describe it as a grin, – which is ordinarily dispensed to the lucky possessor of a ‘day off.’

  ‘What a gorgeous breakfast,’ I cooed. ‘I only need the morning papers and my letters, for it to be absolutely a breakfast de luxe.’ The gorgeous breakfast? Well, it was on a japanned tray, which has seen very active service, and lost much of its veneer in the battles. It was guiltless of a traycloth and, of course, there was no serviette. However, a uniform cap soon supplies that deficiency.

  The teapot lid had its knob knocked off these many days ago. Pas de quoi. The tea was piping hot and delicious. The marmalade was enthroned in an egg-cup, Army pattern, blue enamel, bringing to one’s mind somehow the tea-shop term ‘one portion.’ The sugar-basin was an emptied potted-meat jar. ‘Dis-used’ jar I had nearly written, but it is anything but that, – its uses are legion. The milk jug’s origin was ditto. The plates were as far beyond reproach as Caesar’s much-vaunted wife, and were filled with a rasher of admirably cooked ration bacon, and crisp toast made from the excellent Army bread. A pat of delicious butter from a neighbouring French farm completed the total. Truly a gorgeous breakfast! I felt a sybarite.

  A SUNNY DAY

  A girl comes to an adjacent bunk. ‘U-u-u-gh! Where are my gum boots and sou’wester? It is snowing again. I knew it was going to do something offensive by the colour of the sky. Of course, I’m on the offensive about the occurrence, but—’

  ‘Napoo, napoo,’ shout several voices. I chuckle, then snuggle down.

  Took a dozen of the boys to church this morning, – a beautiful little service. The church is a marquee and the bell is rung by striking a suspended, empty shell-case with a piece of old iron. The tent floor has been stained brown with solignum, and we have a few forms to sit on. Our chancel is marked off by two primitive rails and backed by four brown screens, the reredos being of cream cloth stretched tightly, the top fringed with a little gold fringe. The service is beautifully simple, the hymns those well-known ones we have all sung since we were children, the ‘sermon’ a few minutes’ topical address on, say, ‘The Trenches of Life,’ ‘The S.O.S. Call,’ ‘The Making of an Attack.’ Then ‘Let us pray for victory, for those at home whom our absence has made desolate, for the navy and those in responsibility, for the sick and especially those in our hospital, for the triumph of the right, for the coming of peace.’ We all stand up at attention after the final hymn and sing the National Anthem, our feminine voices quite drowned by the men’s, and then, with the boy-blues, we all troop out into the soft, spring sunshine.

  Across the road is a large hall, one given by the Boy Scouts of Britain, and to it come any troops resting in the neighbourhood, for a day or two, on their way up the line. When the hall is packed with a khaki congregation of a thousand or more, it is a wonderfully impressive sight, especially when the heads are reverently bowed in prayer.

  In the evening our boys may go to an adjacent Y.M.C.A. hut, where a lantern service is held. I went last Sunday evening. The hymn ‘For those in peril on the sea’ was thrown on the screen. At the piano was a patient with a crutch at either side of him, poor boy. He played and we all sang lustily. Then came a prayer for help in our work and our life, and courage to meet death in its season. We had the hymn ‘Jesu, lover of my soul’; some scenes, accompanied by verbal comments, of life in the Holy Land, and lastly, the hymn ‘Oh God our help in ages past.’ It gave one an overpowering feeling of sadness to stand there in the darkness, singing:

  ‘Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

  Bears all its sons away;

  They fly forgotten, as a dream

  Dies at the opening day.’

  Our generation ended, these brave boys individually will be forgotten, but their deeds, dream-like in their amazing valour, have opened up a new day of freedom and independence which can never be forgotten. What a gift to posterity!

  We had a mail in to-night, the first for five days. One girl on her way to dinner called at the office on some errand, discovered the letters sorted, and took upon herself the glad task of playing postman. Accordi
ngly, she appeared in the mess carrying a great bundle of correspondence in her apron.

  Dinner was almost ended, and there was a general stampede towards a deserted table. We would have made a good picture for an illustrated paper as we all crowded round, a huddled mass of grey, white and red, heads and caps bobbing, aprons fluttering, hands greedily outstretched, the impatient mounted on chairs, the artful below burrowing their way determinedly to the front like so many sappers, the decorous, – or perhaps the merely inept, – contenting themselves with the outer fringe.

  A delayed mail is nearly as exciting as a Christmas mail. We are all greedy and insatiable, no matter how many letters we get. Newspapers we neglect and ignore, ingrates that we are, even going so far as to say ‘Only newspapers, how disappointing!’ though knowing well we will resort to them for home gossip with gusto on the morrow.

  ‘I don’t like embarras des richesses even in the matter of a mail,’ says a cautious Scotch soul next door. ‘I like to spread out my joys as I do my possessions, and make them go far.’