A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front

by Olive Dent

  THE NIGHT BIRD

  But the longest night ends and joy cometh with the morning. The restless tossings have ceased, the breathing is soft and regular. The dew-laden air accentuates the foetid smell of the wounds. I go to the door of the marquee to roll back the walls, and I lean for a moment against the bamboo pole, a surge of emotions overpowering me – aching pity, immeasurable sadness, a sense of human limitations – often indeed – human impotence. Then the joy of success, the transcendent happiness of helping to snatch back a life from the Gates of Death.

  And there afar and unwavering, a pale primrose star, the inky darkness giving way to a soft grey-blue silver-lined, then a pink flush heralding a thousand shafts of ruddy, glowing light, and – rosy as our hopes, radiant with promise – there breaks the Dawn.

  Chapter XXVII

  Under Canvas

  FOLLOWING ON THE coming of the American units to our neighbourhood, we have had quite an influx of nurses, and had to give bed and breakfast accommodation to so many other passing guests, that almost half of our staff are again under canvas. I fortunately am among the tented crowd. I say ‘fortunately’ for the weather is most friendly – indeed, it is ideal canvas weather. A ‘canvas existence’ is great fun. It has its pros and its cons, but the pros are so delightful as to outweigh the cons, especially when these latter are made light of with true active service philosophy. The dog walks into the bell-tent in the middle of the night and rudely awakes one by vigorously licking one’s face, and exhibiting other unseemly symptoms of canine affection. The bantam proclaims about 3 a.m. that he is roosting on the foot of one’s bed, by violently crowing in a piercing falsetto, an unappreciated solo, from which he refuses to desist even though he has hurled at him a damp sponge, a rolled-up knot of a handkerchief, a comb, an orange, and many a ‘Shoo, Christopher, shoo, you little wretch!’

  Field mice scuttle across the doors on early morning travels as we dress, insects always and perpetually hold high revel, earwigs are discovered holding a confab in the folds of one’s apron, while one nurse is found asleep with a lighted candle in her tent – No, she isn’t ill, only left on the light to scare the rats.

  Yes, it is ideal canvas weather, weather when it is delightful to lie in bed at night and gaze through leafy, high acacias to a far, far, interminably far, blue-black, star-studded sky. It is delightful to pause for a few hours in the rapid whirl of a crowded life, and watch a grey mauve twilight linger over a Corot landscape. It is delightful to lie and watch the soft, gold light of the early sun spangling innumerable diamond dewdrops. It is delightful to hear the rain pattering on tent roof, and to smell the good smell of refreshed green things and damp earth.

  It is not quite so delightful, however, to be awakened in the wee, small hours by the rain pattering on one’s face, to be obliged to get up hurriedly, scramble into slippers and raincoat, and go out sleepily and stammeringly into the darkness to fumble and fasten down tent ropes and tent flaps, which latter have been well turned back because the evening was originally so warm.

  Then, too, it is not quite so delightful to find the rain invading the tent and again pattering on one’s face, especially when two people are sleeping in a bell-tent, and the opportunities of evasion are thus halved. For the geometrical fact rarely finds more graphic demonstration than in this particular application, – half a bell-tent is considerably less than a whole. Still, what would you? A leaky bell-tent is not so bad as a leaky dug-out.

  It is somewhat in the nature of a drawback, too, to go on duty on a beautifully fine morning, and to come back after a drenching shower to find one end of the bed sodden, to see a pair of shoes with a little pool of water in the ball of each foot, – it will be days before they dry, – and to make the pleasing discovery that the rain has been joyously cannonading on one’s best outdoor uniform. Leaves, spiders and wood bugs in one’s wash and bath water are frequent occurrences, while overnight the acacia leaves flutter upon one’s face and hair with persistent, babies-in-the-wood effort. Towards creeping things one grows to an amazing tolerance, indeed, to a live-and-let-live nonchalance, a mild interest which would have astounded one in pre-war days. For what is the use of killing a busy, little, shining, black chap of a beetle as he skuds across the tent floor? Nature is so bountiful that she breeds for a higher rate of mortality than we can ever inflict. So even though we squash with the heel of our slipper every spider, earwig, wood-louse, and beetle we saw that would not ensure our immunity from invasion, nor our clothes being free of others when we take them down from the tent-peg.

  Instead, we let them get on with that tremendous business called life and give preliminary inspection of our clothes before dressing.

  Life in a bell-tent is very circumscribed and circumvented. Though one possess ever so little wealth, wardrobe or worldly goods, still is it difficult to encompass all including camp-bed, camp-bath, basin, chair and a trunk within a floor space whose radius is six feet. And π r2 minus a tent-peg wholly and completely surrounded by a collection of dressing-gowns, overalls, coats, skirts, mackintoshes and great coats, is a very tight fit. When, moreover, one shares the bell-tent with a second person, one at times comes to the conclusion that the world is too much with us, and it is just a little difficult to love one’s neighbour as one’s self.

  Life under canvas is a very public affair, a very free and easy affair. It is surprising what a barrier is swept aside when one doesn’t possess a door. I can only suppose Diogenes had a lid to his tub, otherwise I can’t conceive how he managed to philosophise. For life under canvas is very provocative of conviviality.

  All and sundry passers-by see one seated within the wigwam and pause for conversation, which invariably gets drawn out, and just as invariably gets extended to impromptu hospitality. The entertaining is alfresco. Usually the guests overflow on to the grass at the door of the tent. A stove burns, merrily boiling water for coffee, two girls sit sewing in deck chairs. One pores industriously and disgustedly over some darning. Two sit on the floor of the tent with arms round their knees, and looking like two little Hindoo idols.

  Darkness is falling. A candle in a hanging lantern is lighted within the tent. The warm glow of candle light, the cosy glow of the stove, the grouping, the triangular outline of the tent, the background of acacias, the dull grey-blue, silver-streaked sky, – the effect is charming.

  ‘PETTICOAT LANE’

  The hostess calls across offering a cup of coffee, to be met with the unfailing, active service affirmative.

  ‘Thanks awfully but bring it across, old dear. I’m in bed reading how the war is progressing,’ – the only uninterrupted time one gets for the deed.

  Numerous good-nights by and bye are exchanged and return invitations are being issued.

  ‘Do come round to see me, I’m No. 3, Petticoat Lane.’

  ‘Come in to coffee to-morrow night. I’m the centrepiece in the Gutter.’

  ‘You haven’t been round to my place for ages. I’ve moved to Piccadilly you know, No. 2.’

  ‘Oh, by the way did you hear about our moving? We two were in a bell-tent under the trees, and some casual mention was made of its being a damp spot, but we heard nothing further.

  ‘Last night we went for a walk into the forest, and on coming back at the end of an hour were electrified to find the only home we possessed had gone, been moved stock, stone, and barrel, and not so much as a piece of paper or a circle of flattened grass to show where it had been.

  ‘However, it was no use being dumbfounded, so we set off on a tour round the quarters and finally discovered it with furniture and equipment complete. Funny thing when one’s home goes wandering.’

  Chapter XXVIII

  Active Service Kitchens

  I COULDN’T NURSE, but I could cook,’ several women have said to me when I have been on leave in England. ‘Tell me something about the cooking, and what are the kitchens like?’

  The kitchen of a hospital housed in a building which has previously been, say, a seminary, or
convent, or chateau, is, of course, the kitchen attached to the building, – enlarged, probably, and equipped more or less well.

  The kitchen of a camp hospital usually consists of a wooden roof and a square of cement. On the latter are placed the stoves, with tables adjacent, and with a row of boilers near.

  Round the stoves and along by the boilers a wooden wall is erected to keep off draughts. Quite probably the rest of the kitchen will be left open, a welcome and necessary condition of affairs in summer, when a few ground sheets will successfully combat any showers. During the winter the kitchen will probably be temporarily boarded in. A little wooden hut will act as larder if no other more permanent building be near. Our mess kitchen is an example of the utilisation of existing buildings. It consists of two, open-fronted, loose boxes formerly used for horses. One acts as larder, while in the other are accommodated a stove, table, and a boiler for hot water.

  Any woman used to a ‘well-equipped kitchen,’ – a term which often includes shining rows of innumerable and unnecessary pots and pans, patent utensils, special storage jars and elaborately made storage boxes, – would be immediately impressed with the austere bareness, and the outstanding sparsity of things in a camp kitchen. But ‘active service’ is a term to be translated quite literally and to be given the most comprehensive of meanings.

  A utensil is an article to be extensively utilised, and if its use does not justify a strenuous existence it is promptly dumped, for its space is more valuable than its presence. Thus the boilers are busy night and day not merely boiling water, but also acting as porridge pots, stock pots, soup pans and pudding pans. The circumscribed kitchen, too, is the scene of much crowded activity, for here thousands of meals are cooked per day, hundreds of men supplied with porridge and tea for breakfast, a certain number of eggs cooked and rashers of bacon fried, several hundreds of pints of soup made for dinner, meat and fresh vegetables prepared and cooked, milk or suet or bread pudding cooked for some hundreds of men, a great quantity of ‘milk-rice’ boiled for the ‘milk-diet’ patients, a certain number of minced and boiled chicken diets supplied, a certain number of custard puddings made, probably a number of fish diets prepared, and several pints of beef tea made.

  In the afternoon barley water, more cooked fish, cooked eggs, and some hundreds of pints of tea will be supplied, while in the evening a similar quantity of cocoa will be in demand. Meantime, preparations for the next morning’s breakfast and dinner will be proceeding apace, while emergency meals for convoy patients, – stews, soups, tea or cocoa, – may be required at very short notice.

  The responsibility for securing supplies rests with the quartermaster. His is the task of ensuring the presence of great quantities of tins of milk, tins of jam, chests of tea, boxes of sugar, bags of rice and cereals, thousands of loaves of bread, tins of beef and vegetables, baskets of fresh vegetables, rounds and joints of fresh meat, gallons of fresh milk, stones of fresh fruit, boxes of dried fruits, tins of butter, crates of fresh eggs, and a very host of other things.

  The quartermaster is not a popular person in the Army, for it is his business to detect and prevent waste, extravagance, ill-use of articles, and the dumping of the same before their usefulness is exhausted, – the latter a very vexed question on which there are quite frequently two opinions. Particularly is the quartermaster unpopular on issue days and at inventory times, during which latter equipment inspection takes place, and one’s bald brooms and brushes are laid out in naked shamefulness, – they are bald in their very earliest youth from stress of life! – one’s little secret stores of linen and hardware treasures dragged into the light of day, and hidden recesses ruthlessly invaded and just as ruthlessly plundered.

  At most times, however, the quartermaster, like the banker, reminds one of the phrase in the prayer-book. He is an ever-present help in time of trouble. A camp hospital is put up on a piece of bare ground, probably some miles from a town, and the quartermaster’s department acts as a dry-goods-grocery-drapery-coal-restaurant-medical stores. Beds, bedding, and bed linen are required, – the Q.M. Knives, forks, table necessities, cooking utensils, – the Q.M. Cradles, baths, instruments, lotions, drugs, – the Q.M. Chairs, lockers, tables, nails, screws, hammers, – the Q.M. Stationery, pens, ink, gum, – the Q.M. – who dispenses the two latter, by the way, in powder form. Just try to lead a Robinson Crusoe existence in a corner of a back garden, and an idea will be gained of where the quartermaster’s work begins, though never of where it ends.

  ‘You are interested in kitchens,’ said the Colonel of a base depôt in France. ‘Come and I’ll show you mine.’ So we went to two, large, wooden huts.

  ‘I don’t know whether it was justifiable pride or positive conceit which underlies this invitation, but I am very pleased to have had it,’ I remarked as I looked round, for the kitchens were beautiful, – spotlessly clean, exquisitely tidy and admirably well-ordered, though at the time, some thousands of dinners were being prepared.

  The centre of the kitchen was occupied by stoves and some boilers, the asphalted floor round the bottom of the stoves being edged with whitewash, a device which had its effective appearance as well as its utilitarian purpose. Round the walls, – liberally ornamented with cuttings from the illustrated papers of girls and girls’ faces, by the way, – were wooden benches scrupulously clean and boasting a few, highly polished, storage jars which had their origin in biscuit tins.

  The dinner which was being cooked consisted of a most deliriously smelling stew made from the Army ration of mixed vegetables and meat, supplemented with fresh onions, carrots and suet dumplings. Many roasts of beef were being cooked in the ovens, some boilers were occupied with the cooking of beans, and others with the boiling of rice, which was subsequently to be served with treacle.

  The menus for the past week were written on a sheet of paper pinned to the door of the larder. They made interesting reading, and were at least one tribute to the marvellous excellence of British organisation, that target at which so many spitefully-aimed, and stupidly-directed, little pebbles are thrown.

  The breakfast each morning had consisted of tea, bread, fried bacon, boiled bacon, or boiled ham, and, on two mornings of the week, potted meat, and on a third, rissoles in addition.

  Tea each day had consisted of tea, bread, cheese and butter, or cheese and jam, with Saturday’s and Sunday’s meal augmented with potted meat. Supper consisted of soup and bread or biscuits, of butter, cheese and biscuits or bread, with tea or cocoa.

  The dinner menus for the week were as follows:

  Monday.

  Roast mutton

  Meat pies

  Cauliflower

  Mixed vegetable ration

  Rice puddings

  Biscuits.

  Tuesday.

  Boiled mutton

  Roast mutton

  Stew

  Mixed vegetable ration

  Suet pudding

  Biscuits.

  Wednesday.

  Roast beef

  Boiled mutton

  Mixed vegetable ration

  Jam roll

  Biscuits.

  Thursday.

  Roast mutton

  Boiled mutton

  Cauliflower

  Mixed vegetable ration

  Rice pudding

  Biscuits.

  Friday.

  Roast mutton

  Boiled mutton

  Carrots

  Mixed vegetable ration

  Suet pudding

  Rice pudding

  Biscuits.

  Saturday.

  Roast beef

  Sea pie

  Stew

  Carrots

  Mixed vegetable ration

  Biscuits.

  Sunday.

  Boiled beef

  Roast mutton

  Boiled onions

  Mixed vegetable ration

  Dumplings

  Rice pudding

  Biscuits.

  Among newcomers in a neighbouring garage o
ne day was another type of kitchen and as it was a bird of passage I went to see it then and there.

  It was a motor field kitchen which was being driven to a part of the French line, and was a gift from some Scottish body, whose name escapes my memory, to the Anglo-French Red Cross.