A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front

by Olive Dent

  But, seated among the débris of five letters and two parcels, I, like a bacchante, laugh her to scorn. I love my joy in extravagant draughts.

  Since the ‘Sister Dora’ cap is taboo, and we have the handkerchief cap with which to tie up our head, one V.A.D. has cut her hair short in the fashion of the bob-crop of American children. She quite rightly argues long hair to be an unnecessary waste of time and energy, – unnecessary since her head must never now be uncovered except in her own bunk. One called her a wise Virgin, but we others contented ourselves by dubbing her a strong-minded female, the while conservatively and foolishly retaining our own questionable crowning-glories.

  Goaded to action by absent friends, two of us – V.A.D.s – went to be photographed this afternoon. We mounted interminable stairs eventually to find the occupants of the studio eating rissoles round a gas stove. We selected our scenery with the idea of eliminating the florid, while the operator selected our attitude and posture with the idea of including the picturesque, clamped irons behind us and stood critically before us. ‘Si triste, trop triste,’ we were abjured. ‘Pas belle, pas belle,’ we were assured – a truly nasty blow. ‘Un petit plus gai. L’air joyeux,’ we were invited. ‘Comme ça, comme ça,’ we were exhorted as he licked his lips north, south, east and west. We obeyed in a comparative degree while he twisted our heads to a revue-girl, picture-postcard allure. This we disobeyed in very positive degree, remembering Devonshire House, and finally giving us up as a bad bargain he shrugged his shoulders until they were almost on a level with his parietal bones, hopelessly squeezed the bulb, and extravagantly bowed us out past his cardboard Watteau terraces, and his papier-maché eighteenth century pedestals in superlative disgust. We left in subdued mood, conscious of our shortcomings in the matter of English stiffness.

  A drizzling November afternoon so B— and I borrowed an umbrella before going for a walk in the forest. The owner of the umbrella having recognised that our nursing staff, like the Apostles, have most things in common had taken the very necessary precaution to fasten on the handle a luggage label bearing her name!

  Up a very steep and rugged pathway an old, old crone was tugging a handcart piled high with faggots. So B— and I pushed behind. Turning her head at the unexpected lightening of the load, – for she evidently thought some of the faggots had fallen, or the cart like the chords of Tara’s harp had come asunder, – she showed us a face so ludicrous in its dismay and amazement as to make a delightful study. Our lack of conventional decorum astounds and mystifies the French.

  Like silly children we walked on and on not thinking of our return journey so were very glad to accept the lift afforded us by some English Tommies on a steam-roller. Even more astounded looks from the French passers-by!

  A dreadful day. The morning bitterly cold, and the fires refusing to light. The boys put on paraffin and soon the marquees were full of fumes. Then the wood smoked until it seemed as though we would all be kippered. Five convoy patients warned for England. They and their wounds to be dressed in forty-five minutes. A convoy in. Several patients to X-ray and some for operation; two of latter rather bad and very busily sick. No off-duty, but took quarter of an hour to go to the dentist to have a tooth stopped. A hectic evening, dressings, beds, diet-sheets, blighty tickets, temperatures, etc., etc. Frost very severe and only half a pailful of water obtainable. Caught my finger on a bed-rail, overturned and broke the nail. Very tired and cold. No fires in the mess, and only half a jugful of water for washing and hot bottle. The wick of my oil stove dropped into the well. My chilblains particularly energetic. I had indigestion and no aqua menth pip and a tactless neighbour persisted in singing ‘When you come to the end of a perfect day.’

  The country now is lovely, great hanging sheafs of wistaria, laburnum and lilac, the chestnut spires reared in pink and white profusion, and in the meadows round the camp hosts of buttercups, white marguerites, and great yellow daisies.

  On the latter I seized with rapture, and then discovered they were plutocratic relations of our John-go-to-bed-at-noon suffering, too, from the very common ailment, swelled head. Only here the ailment justified itself most picturesquely. We have harebells and lovely, blue cornflowers growing wild, and a most delightful, carmine-coloured clover with a conical head which bursts usually into flamingo-pink. The up-patients go out and bring us back armfuls of flowers with which we deck the tents. Lately we have been going to the forest for lilies-of-the-valley, but they are ‘over’ now, so we have to content ourselves with Geoffrey Plantagenet’s flower, the yellow broom. We get great branches of that, – and in our particular wards it appears to best advantage, in a ‘vase’ which is made out of the case of a British 18-pounder picked up by one of our R.A.M.C. men after Mons.

  Camp life in these glorious spring days teems with interest and swarms with ants. Ants! – we have hundreds of thousands of them. ‘Maiden aunts, they must be,’ says a Scotch patient, ‘for they are so fussy and such busybodies.’ They invade the annexes, which we use as food cupboards, and though we commend their energy and enterprise, we condemn their violation of the treaties of cleanliness and possession. A tin of jam gets hastily put away over night, then next morning it is a seething black mass. A pot of sugar left for a few hours presents a heaving, black surface the next time one goes to it.

  Accordingly we stand all edibles in a tea-bowl, and surround them with a moat of water. The enamelled bread-pan we have on wooden supports which have been soaked in paraffin.

  The patients are often quite interested in the wee beasties. Some of them tell us fearsome yarns of the depredations of the white ants in colonies where they have seen service. They call us to watch any particular little cutenesses our own ants display, give adequate admiration to the engineering feats the tiny things occasionally perform, – and only once soundly rated their lack of intelligence, and that was when I found a company in the medicine cupboard. Even then, however, some one vindicated them. ‘P’raps they’re fed up with the war, sister, and want to go west.’

  ‘May bugs’ we have too. One dropped on my bed last night. It was ‘Van-in’ for he fell on his shiny, russet-red back. He was about two inches long, and I removed him on a newspaper to the front line of trenches as materialised by a ditch in the hedge. Big, fat moths fly in at night and after bobbing round inconsequently for a time invariably flap on one’s face.

  Bloated, Germanic-looking spiders come up miraculously through the boards in the tent floor, ditto hairy worms with sloshy bodies and busy little iridescent beetles that seem to have much to do, and very little time to do it in. Crickets sit outside our bell-tents and scream piercingly, and in the wet weather there come in snails and rain. To snails we are inured, but before the invasion of the rain we beat a retreat. However, it isn’t possible to manoeuvre much a six-foot camp bed in a small bell-tent, and after the drippings of rain have successfully followed the bed in its circuitous movings, there is nothing for the tent’s inmate to do but hoist an umbrella, and report the matter in the morning.

  But camp-life in fine weather is glorious – glorious are the nights when the nightingale sings in the forest which borders our camp. Glorious are the times when we lie abed looking out on a moon-bathed sky with scurrying mysterious clouds, nights when we tell ourselves that there is no war. Glorious it is to sit and watch a rose sunset fade to mauve twilight, with a honey-coloured moon, – long drawn-out nights when one’s life has time to pause, and one takes a moment to think. Then one loses the charm, turns sideways in the deck-chair, swallowing the lump in one’s throat, a lump partly occasioned by the beauty of the evening, partly by one’s sheer physical tiredness, and partly by the memory of a torn and gaping wound and of a magnificent young life dying behind a red screen in the ward yonder, quickly as the sunset.

  Chapter VIII

  A B.E.F. Christmas

  CHRISTMAS WITH US began a week or ten days before December 25. We weren’t afraid of its being long-drawn-out or of palling on the boys, for our hospital is usually j
ust like a glorified casualty clearing-station. Our patients move so quickly. Besides, none of us O.A.S. people are of the blasé or bored type.

  Festivities began by some Y.M.C.A. ladies bringing round presents for the patients. These presents were of two well-chosen varieties – useful, and capable of noise – and the men had their choice. The useful kind were notebooks and pencils, and both were soon busily used media for Christmas wishes to Blighty. The others were little sheep, ducks, lambs, etc., which could be made to emit noises travestying a baa, quack, etc. The boys were rather shy, as usual with strange ladies, so I picked up a sheep, made it bleat, declared it awfully fascinating, and generally set the ball going. One of the ladies asked me to accept it as a mascot, and the boys’ tongues soon loosened when one of them said it was ‘scarcely the thing for sister to be associated with a black sheep.’

  The men were very funny about these animals. In one ward they tied Blighty tickets to their coats and filled in the tickets fully – somewhat after this style: ‘C sitting. Able to walk on board. No. 19425618, Pte. Spud Tamson. Corps: First Field Canteen, Wet Division. Ship: Friendship. Diagnosis: Homesickness Acute. Signed: H. Oppit, Major, R.A.M.C.’

  Some ‘were willing to sprint on board,’ some ‘delighted to jump on board’; one diagnosis was ‘swinging the lead,’ another ‘acute wangling,’ while a duck had an operation paper tied to it, ‘I certify that I am willing to undergo an operation for strangulation, and after the post-mortem to be stuffed.’

  Round the hospital are forests from which we got lots of evergreens and mistletoe. Our Christmas trees we garnished with scraps of discarded cotton wool to represent snow, and decorated with crackers, etc. Wonderful results we got from an outlay of a solitary franc. Then the boys cut out mottoes from paper wrappings: ‘Christmas Greetings,’ ‘God bless the lads in the trenches,’ ‘Heaven bless our sisters,’ ‘A Happy New Year to all.’ The boys had their own way entirely with the decorations, and incidentally pulled one another’s legs unmercifully, tied Christmassy ribbons and holly to the big, wooden, extension supports to which one boy’s leg was attached, stuck little golly-wogs on top of the cages over injured limbs, tucked mistletoe in the chart-board of a boy with his head and face all bandaged like a mask, warning him ‘Now, be careful, sister may want a pair of gloves this Christmas, and you being such a good-looking chap, well, well, well …’

  One night the hospital orderlies had, by way of relaxation, a fancy-dress ball. It was held in the Y.M.C.A. hut – what should we out here do without these huts? – and lasted from seven o’clock till ten. We sisters went and looked on at the proceedings after dinner, got on the platform, judged the competition waltzing, and awarded the prize, fifty ‘luxury smokes,’ for the best costume.

  The whole business was great fun. The boys had determined to lend an air of reality to the ball, and almost half had dressed as girls – or should I say as females? – so that when the couples danced together the sight wasn’t very incongruous. What did look incongruous was to see every one smoking, the ‘flappers’ and the ‘Duchess of Devon-shires,’ the ‘pierrettes’ and the ‘Army sisters,’ not to mention the ‘matrons.’

  Our theatre orderly came as a matron, his get-up being a great success – cap well over the brow, with only two little wisps of fringe showing, trim little black suede shoes and smart stockings, and the usual regulation uniform. He acted the part, too; came and sat with us on the platform, thereby deceiving many of the other orderlies, and was full of jibes. When one of us remarked that he had changed his dress very quickly, for he had been on duty until eight o’clock, he agreed, adding: ‘Much quicker than the ordinary matron. But then I’m no ordinary woman.’ The great lead-paper star he had on in the place of the usual medal (‘The Star, don’t you know, much more exclusive than the R.R.C.’) came unstuck, so he borrowed a safety-pin from an adjacent V.A.D., saying: ‘Thanks, so much, I’ll remember you in my next list.’

  An Australian unit adjoins ours, so, of course, there were lots of ‘Bushmen.’ And gee! how they could dance! The two best dancers, to whom we unanimously gave the prize, were Australians. One ‘Tassie,’ gowned in a kimono lent by a kindly V.A.D., was a fruit-grower, or something of that sort, from Tasmania, evidently much of a dog in civil life, and also no mean cosmopolitan. Certainly he never learnt to boston as he did on a Tasmanian fruit farm. He and his partner bostoned and rag-waltzed until my very toes itched again. They had itched already many days before with chilblains and trench-feet symptoms, but this was a pleasing, irritating, alluring, tantalising itch, that made me long to defy the inviolable Army rule that sisters must not dance on active service.

  On Christmas Eve some of the sisters went carol-singing round the wards. I was coming late to the quarters, for I had been ‘specialing’ a case. It was a perfect night, very mild, raining moonlight, with the valleys great pools of sombre silence, and the air beautifully still, so still that one could hear when a car had its speed changed on a fairly distant hill. The carols sounded inexpressibly sweet, and one sensed, probably for the first time, the holy character of the Christmas festival.

  Arrived at the mess I found that some patients who, apparently, had nothing wrong with their lungs, were acting as waits and were singing to those sisters who were at dinner (the latter consisting of busy-time rations of bully beef, potatoes, macaroni cheese, and a cup of coffee).

  They made such a pretty Christmas-card sort of picture, – the glass doors of the mess thrown open, the warm light streaming out and catching the dark outlines of sundry tall poplars, the boy-blues grouped round singing, one holding a lighted lantern, the square collapsible sort that has the old-world, ‘langthorne’ look about it.

  Christmas Day we sisters again gave entirely to the boys. We bought them sausages for breakfast, and that, with the hospital’s ration of bacon, ‘did them proud,’ so they said. They had some nice roast beef and the orthodox pudding for dinner, and then we sisters provided their tea. Our boys chose tinned salmon!! (no, thank heaven for our conscience’s sake, we are not in medical wards), potted meat sandwiches, scones, rice cake, sultana cake, Christmas cake, assorted buns, jellies and fruits, while they received sundry gifts of sweets, chocolates, and nuts through philanthropic channels. This, with crackers and two-penny worth of primrose crinkled paper and a franc’s-worth of yellow daisies, made a great show.

  Supper was the same menu, for we had provided so as to ‘be on the safe side,’ but, horrors upon horrors! what were our agonised feelings on walking into one marquee to find that the men there had saved their dinner bottle of stout until supper, and were consuming it to the foregoing culinary accompaniment! We thought of handing round immediately four grains of calomel or a ‘number nine’ to every sturdy person present, and then, we considered, a benignant deity looks after people’s tummies at Christmas time, so we stilled our many qualms, and next morning no one was a whit the worse.

  On Christmas Day the Australian unit near us presented some religious tableaux, a manger scene, the Three Shepherds, the arrival of the Wise Men, and so on. The tableaux were most beautifully staged, especially considering we are on active service, but Australia in play is just as Australia is in work, very thorough, very effective, and, – despite the almost always negative state of conditions, – she always ‘gets there.’

  Christmas-boxes? Lots of the boys hung up their stockings, and we put in something for each patient in our ward, even if it were only a khaki handkerchief or a piece of fancy soap, with, of course, always a packet or tin of cigarettes. All our bunks for two or three days before Christmas were sights to behold, – scarcely fighting room for the inhabitant herself, what with bundles of mittens, notebooks, pencils, comforters, scarves, packets of sweets, smokes, etc., etc. Visitors got no farther than the door for the best of reasons. By the way, one patient hung up his – well, as a matter of fact – his pants, and wrote a letter to Santa Claus, asking for Blighty tickets as his Christmas-box, but next morning – ‘Narpoo, no bon’ – the chimney was
n’t wide enough and Santa Claus had presumably passed by. Later on, however, round came the major, felt the man’s toes, asked him if his feet felt numb, etc., etc. Then ‘C sitting, sister, please’ – and the man had got his Christmas-box, and, what is more, was on his way Blighty-wards within two hours.

  We ourselves were not so fortunate with Christmas-boxes. For the sake of war economy a Christmas parcel from home was all we allowed ourselves, and great fun we had warming up large plum-puddings over small spirit-stoves, and Blighty mince-pies over biscuit-tin lids held over the aforesaid stoves. Primitive sort of réchauffé, but excellent good they all were, which is typical of the perverse, contrary way cooking has.

  Chapter IX

  Housekeeping on Active Service

  THIS EXTRAORDINARY WAR is in many ways surprisingly ordinary. Men who have dreamed of the panoply of mediaeval war, of the clash and clang of strife, of galloping chargers and uplifted steel find themselves standing in a sodden trench where, for days and days, they never have an opportunity of seeing a German. Or, worse still, they are miles behind the line installing telephones and electric lights. Women who have felt themselves uplifted by the deeds of those pioneers in the Crimean War are called on to housekeep! And yet, of course, electric lights are required, and nursing staffs must be fed, and the practice of putting each man and woman to their trade will in no way mar the efficiency of things.

  The nursing quarters of most of the camp hospitals in France consist of a wooden hut for the mess-and-sitting-room – by the way, it is almost solely the one and very rarely the other, – a shed of some kind for the cook’s kitchen, and bell tents, marquees, Alwyn huts, Armstrong huts, and wooden huts for the housing of the staff.