A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front

by Olive Dent

  ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est, m’sieu?’

  ‘Oh! that. It means “Mam’slle Promenade.”’ Then, with true colonial enterprise making good his opportunity, he added, ‘Will you?’

  The M.O. was questioning the patients to-day about their appetite and diet when one boy volunteered the information that he fancied a bottle of Bass and thought one per day would do him a world of good.

  ‘But Bass is jolly scarce out here, boy,’ the M.O. reminded him. ‘I can’t buy myself a bottle at any price, simply can’t get it.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you what to do, sir,’ came the quick and unabashed retort. ‘Put me on two bottles a day and I’ll give you one for yourself.’

  A general laugh, the M.O. took up the boy’s diet sheet and wrote:

  ‘Stout, pints, one.’

  Chapter XXX

  A Big Push – July 1916

  ‘BLISS WAS IT in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.’

  We knew what to expect. For days and nights past we had heard the guns ceaselessly cannonading. So when the batman woke us at six one morning with the message that every one was to go on duty as quickly as possible, we were not surprised.

  We washed, dressed, and breakfasted hurriedly. It was a glorious morning with great glowing shafts of streaming sunlight warmly irradiating the camp. The tent walls had as usual been rolled back, thus making of the wards a roof and a floor. We could see therein a great stir and bustle, but what was it caused a sick pain at the heart and hastened our hurrying footsteps?

  In every walk there were wounded soldiers, a bus-load of the more slightly wounded cases at one marquee, motor-ambulances with stretcher after stretcher of more seriously injured burdens bringing up the rear, men being carried pick-a-back by orderlies, others being brought on the ‘four-handed seat,’ others trudging along with the aid of a walking-stick.

  Tunics had been torn to free wounded arms, breeches had been ripped for access to injured legs, boots had been discarded in favour of huge carpet slippers or bandages, heads were swathed, jaws tied up, bandages stained with dirt and blood.

  Almost every boy was clay-caked, the hair full of yellow clayey dust, the face thinly crusted with it, the moustache partly embedded in it. One Jock I subsequently found with puttees caked to the legs which were covered with set clay as evenly as a plaster-of-Paris limb.

  ‘Good morning, boys,’ we called as soon as we were within speaking distance.

  And a very volley, a regular cheer came to our white-clad, white-capped party. ‘Good morning, sisters.’

  ‘We’ll soon have you fixed up.’

  ‘That’s all right. We’ve shifted them, so it’s worth it.’

  The first batch of patients we treated stands out in any memory. They were fed, bathed, put into clean pyjamas, had their wounds dressed, were each given Blighty tickets and cigarettes, and lay with faces expressive of the personification of blissful contentment.

  Presumably, they had reached the acme of Tommy Atkins satisfaction. But no! A gramophone in adjoining lines struck up a song associated with limelight, red noses, checked suits, flat long-soled boots, and knotty walking-sticks. Immediately those boys howled out the chorus. Their cup of joy was full.

  On and on we worked, forgetful of time and remembering our own meal only as we became exhausted. Trestle beds with a paliasse, or donkey’s breakfast, as the boys call them, had been laid down in the wards. The church tent, the store tent, and the Y.M.C.A. hut had been requisitioned, and some Indian marquees sprang up infinitely more quickly than the proverbial mushroom.

  These took the slight cases of which, fortunately, there was a very large proportion. The expansion, also fortunately, was a matter of speed in treatment rather than excess of numbers.

  Every one ‘mucked in’ in that magnificent wholehearted way British people have when they are ‘up against’ anything. Armchair critics who love to talk about ‘red tape’ ought to have seen the work being done. Rank and officialdom were forgotten, chiefly by those who held the one and were held responsible for the other. Every one turned with enthusiasm to the task they had in hand. Stately methods of procedure were most emphatically and unceremoniously dropped. In a big push, in battle, there comes a time, I understand, when it is ‘every man for himself.’ In the aftermath of a big push, in hospital, it is at all time ‘every man and woman for “the men.”’ And that has to have direct interpretation, whereas in more leisurely times a certain section of the staff, the clerical and the stores section, for example, must, of course, work indirectly for the boys.

  Whatever our hand found to do on that memorable day and the four following days, we did with all our might. Our colonel and medical major, kept waiting a few minutes in the middle of the night for a convoy they were to receive, put off their coats and helped cut bread and butter for the coming patients.

  A dentist, finished his dental work, did nursing-orderly duty far through the night. The padre ladled out soup and tea, at which he said he was an expert through long practice in soup kitchens and at Sunday School teas. He ran about unceasingly, too, giving patients drinks, quite a big item in the case of newly wounded men and with the weather very hot.

  He also acted as additional barber and went round with safety razor preparing for our further attention, surrounding surfaces of wounds on shin, cheek, jaw, and head.

  ‘My word, sister,’ we were repeatedly assured, ‘that razor’s a treat; it’s a champion. And the padre!’ – mentioning in an impressed undertone the decoration he wore and the rank he held – ‘Sister, he’s a real toff. The right sort o’ sky-pilot, he is. One o’ the best.’

  Then, in true Tommy Atkins spirit of refusing to be impressed for too long a time, there would come a little chuckle, and, ‘Say, sister, eeh, eeh, eeh, should I offer him tuppence?’

  Laughter, tears, immense satisfaction and pleasure, immeasurable pain and disappointment were commingled that day. One lived very many times in a torrent of emotion, agonised by a flood of pity, racked by an intensity of sympathy, tortured by an exquisite, mental pain, almost overwhelmed by the passion to help to fight for those lives.

  Oneself at such times lives through an acuteness of mental suffering hitherto unparalleled in life, and one strange, curious self is busily concerned with steriliser and instruments, dishes and lotions, hot-water bottles, extra blankets and black coffee. Then later a chance description of one’s self travels back as gossip will do.

  ‘She’s one of those calm, collected sort of beings who would have made a good surgeon. Doesn’t fuss, you know.’

  As ithers see us!

  Fortunately.

  So the day wore on and night came. Without – a night of glorious July summer, with palest saffron, flamingo and purple lights, and one gem-like star, a night of ineffable beauty and peace, and within – a vision of Hell, cruel flesh-agony, hideous writhings, broken moanings, a boy-child sitting up in bed gibbering and pulling off his head bandages, a young Colonial coughing up his last life-blood, a big, so lately strong man with ashen face and blue lips, lying quite still but for a little fluttering breathing.

  The boy goes to the theatre to be trephined – he later made an excellent recovery – the night sister takes charge of the Colonial and his neighbour; the medical officer asks me to have a man’s name put on the D.I. list. ‘No hope.’

  ‘Sonny, I’m giving out field-service post cards,’ I tell him. ‘Perhaps you would like me to write yours and save you the trouble. I’m just taking your mother’s address from your pay-book.’

  Three photographs drop out, a mother and father in ‘Sunday-best’ clothes, an elder brother, a gunner, and ‘Yours, Alice.’ The boy rouses himself from his listlessness to tell me she is ‘the best girl in the world, a munition worker’ – proudly – ‘making thirty shillings a week.’

  As I write the address, put away his pay-book, and moisten his lips, the faces float before my eyes. Alice would weep, but the mother and father would just look numbly into the fir
e. For them there would be no outlet in a passion of grief, only an aching, gnawing want to hear the voice, see the well-set-up figure and the laughing face, that dreary want to be endured so long as life lasted. And the gunner would tighten his lips and feed the guns more determinedly.

  The electric lights are shaded to facilitate and invite sleep. The dressings are now only minor ones, and we carry round a tray, and dress by the aid of hurricane lamp and flashlight. Finally we come to the last one, and leave the patients to the night staff.

  ‘Any help required?’ we ask our neighbours in adjoining lines.

  ‘No, every one seems to have finished.’ So we turn towards the quarters.

  For a time no one speaks. Then, ‘What a wastage of human life!’ comes somewhat bitterly; ‘a useless waste!’

  ‘Never!’ comes another voice passionately, the tone indicating the strain endured during the long, long day.

  ‘How can the gift of those lives be called a “useless waste”? Is it a waste for men to fight, to suffer, and to die for all that they hold dear – their liberty, their ideals, and their loved ones? God made man in His own image, a little lower than the angels. I’ve realised that fact anew to-day. I’ve seen that Man can ascend to almost Godlike heights, to realms of sublimity unsuspected.

  ‘To-day’s stories of the fighting, told to us red-hot from the lips of the boys who have lived them, those stories and the many little incidents we have all witnessed, have shown us that, while war may be a great wastage, it is also a great purifier. It has brought out valour indescribable, self-sacrifice unforgettable, patience and magnificent endurance untellable. And are these nothing worth?

  ‘I have heard little scraps of conversation to-day; I have seen little acts of self-sacrifice, kindliness and thoughtfulness between the men, that have made me feel reverent. There may be brutality, bestiality, fiendish recklessness, devilish remorselessness, anguishing mutilation and destruction in war, but to-day I have met fortitude, devotion, self-abnegation, that has brought with it an atmosphere of sanctity, of holiness.

  ‘I am too tired to sleep, too tired to do anything but lie and look up at the wooden roof of the hut, too tired to do anything but think, think, think, too tired to shut out of sight and mind the passionate appeal of two dying eyes, and a low faint whisper of “Sister, am I going to die?”

  ‘But, oh, how glad I am to have lived through this day! With the stinging acute pain of all its experiences raw on me, I say it has been a privilege to undergo these sensations. For the pain will pass, since all pain ultimately dies, but what will endure for ever is the memory of the nobility, the grandeur, the approach to divinity we have all seen. It has made better women of us all; it has brought knowledge to our understanding, life to our ideals, light to our soul.’

  Chapter XXXI

  ‘Proceed Forthwith’

  ‘THE HOSPITAL HAS been accepted by the Americans, and will be taken over within a fortnight.’

  The official news came like a metaphorical 5.9, notwithstanding the fact that we knew the offer had been made. We had not, indeed, attached a great deal of importance to the fact, for the floating of rumours and the discussion of possibilities, many of which latter never even reach the stage of probabilities, are quite the recognised thing in the army.

  Having lived happily, and worked still more happily in the one hospital for twenty strenuous and crowded months, we had all grown to love, if not actually ‘every stick and stone’ of the place, at any rate their equivalent marquees and tent-pegs. So we had deluded ourselves like the Micawbers, with the idea that ‘something would turn up’ in our favour, that the Americans might not accept our particular hospital, that it was too large for a unit new to active service, that it might be too far from their base – any old reason would do.

  A CORNER OF THE NURSING QUARTERS WITH A ‘WIGWAM’ AND TWO ‘HEN COOPS’ IN THE DISTANCE

  Then following on the news came the order to hold ourselves ‘in readiness to proceed forthwith.’ What did ‘forthwith’ mean? It might mean two hours, half a day, a day, three days. At present it couldn’t be translated as anything more explicit than ‘forthwith.’

  Meantime the nursing staff was sent about its business of packing, and while the hut resounded with the scuffliings of twelve busy inmates reminiscent of the tossings and pawings of twelve unruly horses in twelve circumscribed loose boxes, one sister told the historic tale of the nurses who had received similar instructions to ‘proceed forthwith’ to the War Office. No. 1 went immediately in a taxi, No. 2 presented herself in the evening of the same day, No. 3 arrived next morning, while No. 4 came at the end of three days.

  It is all very well in song to pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, but it is the packing of the kit-bag with overflowing kit that is the trouble. One collects a wonderful accumulation of impedimenta – word deliberately chosen – in twenty months, even if one does live in a bell-tent or in a bunk which measures only 6 ft. by 10 ft. Hence vacillating owners stand indecisively over piles of clothing and equipment, keeping articles ‘that really might prove useful’ – and frequently don’t – while discarding others for which ‘there is absolutely no room whatever,’ only to find that they are the very articles most required a couple of days later. The Belgian scrub-women receive enough discarded garments to set up an old clo’ establishment.

  ‘Can any one lend me anything to poke out drawing-pins?’ asks a voice, the owner betraying a typically active-service disregard of the nature of the article supplied, or the person who supplies it.

  All penknives and scissors seemingly being already engaged, ‘Use a safety-pin,’ she is advised. And so armed she sets to work to take down her Kirchner girls, her Bairns-father drawings, her khaki portrait gallery, and her family snapshots.

  ‘Lend me a tin-opener or a safety-pin, Baby,’ calls another voice.

  ‘In a moment,’ ‘Baby’ replies. ‘I’ve just discovered that all my stockings are holed and I’m deciding to wear two pairs, so that the holes of the one may not coincide with the holes of the other. Like most riders, it takes a little working out.’

  ‘I’m glad it is cooler weather,’ remarks the Sensible Girl, who always gives us good advice. ‘We can wear more clothes and so save packing.’

  ‘Packing! I’m fed with it, and yet I’m surrounded still with things,’ grumbles one voice.

  ‘Oh, it’s the limit!’ growls the second.

  ‘I would I were a daisy,’ croons the third sadly.

  ‘You’d still be liable to be uprooted,’ comes the level tones of the Sensible Girl in well-timed reminder.

  Clothing and personal equipment packed, the camp furniture is next induced into the kit-bag. Certain sturdy wenches undertook this onerous task of inducement themselves, but, remembering the treacherous behaviour of beds that fold in concertina fashion, and of camp baths that collapse like a violin stand, I seek out skilled labour in the person of a long-established batman who has helped very many sisters to ‘proceed forthwith’ to hospital train, hospital ships and casualty clearing-station.

  He deals firmly with the furniture and summarily with the kit-bag, so much so that it and the two other bundles regulations allow are soon quite ready.

  ‘Your orders have come through tonight, movement orders to-morrow,’ I am told subsequently, a list of other nurses ‘proceeding forthwith’ being enumerated.

  ‘We’re lucky not to be moved en masse. Remember the night sixty-four sisters left No. Q?’ We are not likely to forget it, for the quarters were a second Caledonian Market of trunks, valises, suit-cases, spare deck-chairs, spare tables, buckets, washbasins, vases, straw mats, small rugs, homemade stools, packing-box furniture, great sausage-like kit-bags strained to bursting point, inadequate holdalls and self-advertising contents, discarded hats, boots and lingerie overflowing the refuse bins, a perfect plethora of impedimenta surrounding the mess, the huts, and lying round under the trees.

  ‘A few parrots in cages would complete the picture,’ remarked one
flippant V.A.D.

  Early on the morning following the coming of our orders, the cars drew up at our quarters, and it became our turn to ‘get moving.’ Our own kit-bags, stuffed to the furthest limit with our beloved Lares and Penates, are dragged out. Our own holdalls demonstrate an expressive and contradictory title, for they give positive proof of holding much, and they give evident signs of allowing much to escape. Suit-cases, attaché cases, wooden boxes, coats, mackintoshes, and lastly ourselves are packed into the various waiting cars.

  We have said good-byes, and give a last look round at our dearly loved hospital, where we have been so happy, at the grey, sun-glinted marquees wherein we have spent so many wonderful, life-pulsating months, at our wooden shacks, our Hans and Gretel ‘sugar houses,’ ‘wigwams,’ ‘hen-coops,’ and ‘rabbit-hutches’ nestling under the trees. The sorry feeling, a bedrock sorry feeling, will not be gainsaid, when:

  ‘You’re forgetting your iron rations,’ excitedly calls one of the home sisters. ‘You will be glad of these about eleven o’clock to-night when you have drowned your grief and are ready to sit up and take nourishment.’

  She hands up to us an active-service size biscuit tin tightly packed with sandwiches, another, – also out-size, – filled with bread and butter, together with a bag of hard-boiled eggs. These we ourselves have supplemented with a supply of fruit, one or two cut cakes, and the contents of sundry thermos flasks.

  The foremost driver cranks his car, the rest follow suit. A group of sisters, batmen, and dogs are speeding us on our parting way.

  ‘Good-bye, good luck, and cheerio,’ calls some one. We bid more good-byes, and wave others. The car starts. Peter, the camp pet, a ‘dog of sorts’ – several sorts, including, more especially, a good sort – jumps on the seat beside us and licks frantically our faces which we have just washed. We caress him ere we regretfully bundle him out, and away we go, Peter with flopping ears and lolling tongue racing after us in a cloud of dust.