The War Nurse

by Tracey Enerson Wood

  This didn’t ring true to me. “Are you sure they were from the Red Cross?”

  “German Red Cross, German army in disguise, who knows?” The major shrugged. He went on. “Upon arriving at the camp, our warm overcoats were taken away, and we were left to freeze in our uniforms, which by then were reduced to rags. We slept on sacks of hay without so much as a tent to protect us.”

  He plucked at his blue uniform sleeve, removing something I couldn’t see. “Order was kept by severely beating any prisoner who made an attempt at escaping or who, like me, tried to write letters in code, telling the truth and begging for help.” He stared straight ahead, his tone emotionless and matter-of-fact.

  “So many died. Malnutrition, Typhus. Dysentery. Torture.” He looked me dead in the eye. “I don’t know why I survived.”

  One of my nurses asked, “How did you escape?”

  I was glad for the question, for I could bear no more and could sense the rising level of anguish among the others as well as they shifted in their seats or fidgeted with their hands.

  “After nearly a year in hell, I was released in an exchange of prisoners.”

  As if that experience wasn’t horrifying enough, his new assignment was also harrowing. “I was put in charge of a hospital ship. In one trip across the Channel, we left in a convoy of two hospital ships, a destroyer, and a few others. The other hospital ship was about five hundred yards behind ours when it struck a mine. As it sank, the destroyer pulled up alongside, and the doctors, nurses, and crew aboard tried to leap onto it, with all but three of the nurses making it.”

  We all sighed in simultaneous relief and horror.

  “But shortly after they were rescued by the destroyer, it too hit a mine.”

  There was a collective gasp.

  “And your ship, did you pick up all of them?” I asked.

  He slowly shook his head. “The destroyer was blown to smithereens.” He looked about at our stricken faces. Perhaps at that moment, it occurred to him that we were all about to embark on a Channel crossing ourselves.

  “But we were able to rescue the three nurses in the water, yes we did. They were none the worse for wear.”

  We sat in stony horror still.

  “And no worries about mines now, mates. This was back in early 1916, you see. Since then, there’s been nonstop patrolling by the Flower ships.”

  Now we sat in silent confusion.

  “You know, the herbaceously named minesweepers. Leave it to the British to name heavily armed triple-hulled warships after flowers.”

  A few chuckled a bit.

  Nora asked, “Where is your hospital ship now?”

  “Well, uh…” The major hesitated. “It’s under repair. Hit by a torpedo.”

  There were a few more gasps.

  Nora got up and pushed in her chair as the stewards were clearing tables. “There isn’t any use worrying about the submarines. If the Germans are going to kill us, worrying isn’t going to prevent it. If they do kill me, I’m going to come back and haunt the whole German army.” With that, she marched off, head high.

  The major continued to try to ease the minds of the others. “I assure you, your passage will be nothing like that. The worst that will happen is a tummy ache from a light sea roll…or the British rations.”

  * * *

  On our last night in London, Dr. Murphy gathered the whole unit in one of the hotel dining rooms. Like the rest of the hotel, it had high ceilings and crystal chandeliers. But this room was lined with burled wood panels. We had had our high tea in it each afternoon. It was so sophisticated and proper, the nurses said it made them feel uncomfortable. They would stiffly hold out a pinkie as they sipped their tea in a small act of humorous mockery.

  Dr. Murphy had told me that he wanted to give a sort of pep talk, so I made sure that every last one of my nurses was in attendance and in uniform. A few of them were still wary of him after the harsh training experience, but having come to know him better, they knew his tough lesson came from a place of respect for nurses as professionals.

  It was a rather tight fit in the dining room, with eighty or so nurses, orderlies, and others seated in chairs or standing against the wall. The flowery wallpaper and elegant wall sconces seemed out of place for our apprehensive mood.

  Dr. Murphy cleared his throat and spoke softly and earnestly. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to begin a part of your life like no other before. The days ahead of you will be the most trying, the most difficult, the most painful of your lives. They will also be perhaps the most memorable and the most important.

  “You are likely to see things a person should never see. You will be doing more for your fellow human beings than you ever thought possible. You will witness pain and sorrow seemingly beyond endurance.”

  He paused, the room quiet, all eyes fixed on him. Then, in a stronger voice, he implored, “There is only one way of bearing such close contact with human suffering and with whatever discomforts we must ourselves bear, of working out our own problems and antipathies and antagonisms. One way to keep our souls serene and maintain the strength to go on. And that is to do it with the deepest religious motive and utter devotion to service. We have come to serve in whatever way we can and as long as we are needed.”

  I looked at my sixty-four nurses. They were young, fresh faced, and eager. Certainly, many came from difficult circumstances, but were they really prepared for the situation we were about to be thrown into?

  They nodded as they listened intently to Dr. Murphy and didn’t wince a bit when he mentioned the likely cases they would see: burns, horrific wounds, and amputations. They didn’t look away when he talked about living in cold, wet tents for a year, or two, or who really knew? My heart was lifted with their bravery and spirit, while another part of me, a nagging, doubting self, wondered if I had led these women down a path fraught with danger, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Not a one of them, nor I, would be the same person when we returned home.

  This was a responsibility I was to shoulder for the rest of my life. I vowed to protect them as well as I could while still ensuring their heroic sacrifices would not be in vain.

  The room was dead silent for nearly a minute after Dr. Murphy spoke as his words took hold in the minds of the assembled. Then, someone clapped. Then another and another, until the whole room erupted with clapping and cheering. I felt lifted up by their wondrous spirit. It seemed we could do anything indeed.

  The German U-boats were sinking large numbers of ships, and we were all apprehensive about crossing the Channel, despite the RAMC major’s attempts to reassure us. But we needn’t have worried. We would sail in a large hospital ship, clearly marked with huge red crosses and surrounded by warship escorts. As we left Southampton, the skies above us were guarded by buzzing airplanes. Even the Germans wouldn’t dare to attack.

  CHAPTER 4

  After the overnight sailing, we arrived at Le Havre, France, and following the now familiar English breakfast of fried eggs, baked beans, and smoked and blood sausages, the nurses disembarked from the ship and loaded onto a train that took us away from the coast and alongside the Seine. We were met at a station just outside Rouen and transferred onto ambulances. These were the same trucks that had just delivered wounded Tommies for their trip home to England and still smelled of their iodine and bandages. These were familiar, but they reminded me that we would have many more unpleasant sights and smells to get used to.

  I was fortunate to ride in the front of the ambulance with the driver, a chatty British chap named Benjamin, with arms too long for his sleeves and legs that nearly doubled up in the driving position. I worried about the nurses in the back as we bumped, sometimes violently, along a country road. Now and then, I got a peek at the Seine. It was mid-June, and the river was swollen within its banks and rather muddy-colored, but it flowed serenely between rows of flowering trees. It
was hard to believe a terrible war raged less than a hundred miles away.

  After a short drive, we arrived in Rouen just after lunch. My stomach was already rumbling by then, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to wait until dinner to eat. How spoiled we had gotten in England.

  Benjamin must have heard my protesting stomach. His accent was so strong, his phrases so unfamiliar, I had a hard time understanding him. “Gettin’ peckish? ’Alf the hour more, I should think. You like bubble and squeak?”

  “That will be lovely. Are we in downtown Rouen now?” We had entered a denser part of the city, with many stone and half-timbered buildings. We drove along the wide and gray Seine River that bisected the city. Long barges and other supply boats drifted up and down the river.

  “You’re in luck. We have an extra minute to see something special.” Benjamin turned down a side street, and a couple of blocks later, we were in an open plaza with a Gothic cathedral looming over it. It had double rectangular spires and three magnificent arched entryways. It rather reminded me of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City but was certainly far older.

  “That’s beautiful. Somehow, it seems familiar,” I said.

  Benjamin braked the truck to a stop but kept the engine puttering. “I present the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen.”

  “I think I’ve seen a painting of it.”

  “Only one? Dozens of paintings have been done of it. Every one of them by Monet.” He laughed.

  “As in Claude Monet? Yes, of course. I should have remembered. I love his art.”

  “Well, more lucky stars. He lives just down the river. Maybe you’ll run into him.” He wiggled the throttle about until it found its place with a crunch, and with fancy footwork on various pedals, we lurched ahead. “And Vincent van Gogh lived and is buried not far from here. This little corner of the world attracted quite the artists.”

  My eyes took in the beautiful city, with women pushing carts laden with fruits and flowers, the tidy cobblestone streets. And to think, Monet. But I shook my head to clear such thoughts. I wasn’t here on holiday.

  After leaving the heart of the city, the buildings grew farther apart, and the roadway worsened. I placed my hand on the ceiling of the truck to keep from falling into Benjamin or out the door. The ambulance rolled over several deep ruts, causing us to veer sharply side to side. My satchel flew off my lap, and I bumped my head on the doorframe.

  “Sorry ’bout that, ma’am. But here we are.” Benjamin sounded the horn. Ah-ooh-gah.

  The scene could not be more different from the charming small city. We were now somewhat outside the city, at a racecourse. We drove past a low fence with a broken gate and stopped at a row of wooden buildings with peeling white and green paint and loose and hastily tacked-on boards. It must have at one time been the grandstand. I caught scents of grass and flowers, with not a whiff of anything to do with horses.

  I crawled off the seat and went to open the back for the nurses, but Benjamin got there first. They came out, some rubbing their heads, others rubbing their eyes while yawning. If they could sleep through that ride, they should be well suited to life a hundred miles from a war front.

  “Just there are the offices.” Benjamin pointed to the grandstand. “Beyond that lies the hospital and the racetrack, should you feel the need to stretch your legs.”

  The setting reminded me of a state fair, with tents and paths through the grass and many people milling about. The dirt racetrack circled the preponderance of the tents, with a few tents on the grass outside the loop. Surrounding the huge, flat complex were thick hedgerows and stands of grand trees, sycamores and oaks, which were fully leafed out and magnificent.

  A middle-aged woman in a dark dress and white apron approached from the offices. She fanned her ruddy face. “Oh, you must be the Americans. We are ever so grateful to see you. I’m Matron Lipton. Come, let’s get you settled in.”

  * * *

  Matron Lipton, who was the British chief nurse, my counterpart, gave us the grand tour. The hospital was rows and rows of tents, the rows labeled A, B, and so on. Each tent had two to four rows of beds, about fourteen in total in each row. There were smaller, connecting tents between the long rows. Some tents had their sides rolled up, and some didn’t. In the ones with open sides, we could see rows of beds; maybe half were occupied, the empty ones made up with sheets and a blanket. Our unit consisted of about twenty doctors, sixty-five nurses, and about the same number of clerks, stretcher carriers, and other assistants, enough for a five-hundred-bed hospital. I counted the tents and estimated the number of beds in total. There had to be far more than five hundred.

  “Matron, if you please, how many patients are you equipped for?” I asked.

  “Well now, we don’t have nigh as many as before the Australians came to help us.”

  “Australians?”

  “Why yes, they run a smaller hospital at the other end of the racecourse. Then there’s the prisoner unit, just over there next to General 9, which is also being taken over by you Yanks. We’re the biggest of the three, of course.”

  Three hospitals, all on one racetrack. And prisoners? Mostly all in tents from what I could see. The only permanent structures were the grandstand, a few wooden huts behind it, and some open pavilions. “And how many beds does BEF Hospital 12 have?”

  “All told, thirteen hundred. Sometimes more.”

  I blinked, stunned by the number. As I stood there, managing staff numbers in my head, Matron Lipton had moved on, my nurses swarming about her like a group of children eager for story time. I double stepped to catch up with them. But I bit my tongue. It wouldn’t be fair to them or the matron to discuss my concerns at that moment.

  “After we get the nurses settled, perhaps we can have a chat alone,” I said.

  * * *

  Matron Lipton and I met in a set of rooms that she had already vacated for me in the back of the grandstand. It seemed to be part of a more or less permanent structure, made of thin wood rather than canvas like the patient tents. It was formerly a room for the jockeys, the matron told me.

  My office included a sitting area, which I paced out to be about eleven by fifteen feet, with adequate furniture: a table covered by a blanket, some bookshelves, and a desk. A soft yellow light shone from the electric floor lamp, and an oil stove heater stood in the corner, a teakettle on its flat top.

  She also showed me my own private rooms sectioned off in one of the larger huts for nurses. There was a metal cot with a thick mattress in the sleeping quarters and a sitting room with several chairs and scatter rugs. Each room had an electric lamp and windows to let in natural light. The rooms that would serve as home for my nurses were barely large enough for two cots and a small table between them, with trunks for their belongings at the foot of each bed. I hated having both an office and better living quarters than did they. But my work would require long hours of administrative work, and it would be beneficial to have a private office.

  “Fancy a cuppa?” Back in the small office under the grandstand, the matron tested the temperature of the kettle on the heater with a tap of her finger, then poured the steaming water into china cups.

  I smiled. Tea was a religion to the British. Lunch could wait, and probably would wait until dinner, I told my rumbling belly.

  “So now, what are your questions?” She slid a porcelain cup in front of me. “Sugar? We’ve been lucky to score a wee bit.”

  I shook my head. “No thank you.” I stared at the dark, loose tea scattered at the bottom of my cup. No tea balls here. I asked some basic questions and complimented the work they had been doing for three years. Straightforward things that seemed safe while I worked up to the hardest question. “I guess my next question involves the patient load. I’m not sure you’re aware, but we were advised that we were replacing all the personnel of your unit. But we are staffed for five hundred patients, not thirteen hundred.” />
  “I’m aware.”

  I sipped my tea, waiting for a further response.

  “We’ve learned to work shorthanded. You are no longer in the world of ‘staffed for five hundred.’ Right now, we have just short of two hundred patients, and that’s what we’re, as you say, ‘staffed for.’ Our precious doctors and nurses aren’t cutting out paper dolls, waiting for casualties to come in. We run at full bore, and when the inevitable deluge comes in, we do double shifts or task a prisoner to help or, in the worst cases, send for help from Blighty.” She took away my half-empty teacup. “We’ve worked our arses off. Now don’t bodge it up.” Her glare was half pride, half threat. “Anything else then?”

  I bit my lip. I needed to speak to our unit commander, not cause a rift with the person I was there to relieve. “Not just at this moment. Thank you for the tea. Tomorrow maybe a more in-depth tour, if you have time?”

  * * *

  At dawn on the fourth day of our tutelage by our British counterparts, I heard the distant boom of the cannons. It was a deep vibration, more felt in my bones than heard. On and on they thundered. I dressed hurriedly and pinned up my hair without first brushing.

  Matron Lipton was already at breakfast, pouring coffee from a tin kettle into a teacup. She glanced my way, then touched her own neatly arranged hair. “Blimey, there’s no need for you to be up so early. Take your rest now. You will be glad for it after we’ve gone.” She pulled a dainty teacup, embellished with pink roses, from a shelf. “Coffee? Or of course we have tea if you want to be civilized about it.”

  “Coffee will be fine, thank you. How does one sleep with the cannons so close? Don’t you feel you need to be ready to evacuate at any moment?”

  Matron Lipton paused after filling my cup halfway and cocked her head. “Cannons? Oh, one gets quite accustomed. And they’re not close. Just depends on how much the wind carries the sound. Now the casualty clearing stations, or CCSs, are much closer. Twenty kilometers or so from the front, not far out of range of the Big Berthas. We’re lucky to be assigned here.”