A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front (12 page)

He came at a time when we were having a short-lived lull, and I had time to listen and to beguile him to talk of his trails, his shacks, the habits of the bear, the wolf, the lynx and the sable. He used to tell me of a snow-clad earth, a racing dog sleigh, the cold pinge of an atmosphere fifty or sixty degrees below zero, until I imagined it was a book of Jack London’s to which I was listening.

Then, unfortunately, the lull came to an end. Convoys were arriving, beds were wanted, ‘Canada’ would take longer to get well than A.S. conditions can deal with, so he was regretfully evacuated to England.

He came from the Midlands, and described every one as a ‘card.’ Certainly he himself was a ‘card.’ He was transferred to the surgical hut from a marquee via the operating theatre and was placed on the bed, a limp figure reeking of chloroform. A few minutes later he had shot up in bed, and astounded us all by demanding in a loud voice, ‘Who’s swinging the lead?’ this evidently prompted by the remark of a passing orderly.

‘Here, lie down, colonel,’ said this same orderly, helping to suit the action to the word with considerable dispatch, for the patient had a head wound.

‘I’m not a colonel, I’m a full-blown private.’

‘All right. Lie down, full-blown private.’

Quietude for a while as he gazed round. Then, – for he had been transferred to a ward where we had all the head cases – ‘I’m in the wrong dug-out. Who brought me here? I want to go to the other dug-out for my tabs. I left two hundred tabs there. Can’t I go, sister?’

His memory for a few days was rather uncertain, and one of his idiosyncrasies was to affirm that he had had nothing to eat. One afternoon he was telling me he was ‘starved,’ and I said ‘Oh, come, now, surely not. Tell me what you have had to-day.’

‘Well, I’ve had my temperature and my pulse, some
medicine and a pill, a bath and my bed made, and a needle in my arm. But that’s all.’

I admitted that it certainly wasn’t a very satisfying diet, but since I had personally fed him at dinner time with a large plateful of minced chicken, mashed potatoes, and bread, followed by two plentiful helpings of delicious custard pudding, I really did not feel unduly anxious about any dietetic deficiencies.

After a few days he got along in truly marvellous fashion, and to our inquiries was always ‘A.1 at Lloyds, sister,’ ‘Splendid, I’m only swinging it now. I’ll be able to put off my turban’ – his head bandages – ‘indoors very shortly, shan’t I, sister?’ He ‘chipped’ the other men ceaselessly, and soon was in such good form that, to our loss and his delight, he was whisked off to Blighty.

There are lots and lots of other boys, too, whom it is a pleasure to remember.

‘Ike’ – he had somewhat of an out-size in noses – was a delightful man, just a common every-day sort of Tommy, with no ‘birth,’ little education, and, on the surface, nothing particularly attractive about him. Yet there was something extremely likeable in his nature. I suppose it was ‘jest his way.’

There was a boy, too, who hailed from ‘Noo Yark,’ and who guessed he wasna goinga stay outa precious scrap like this, especially if he could help a Britisher and do down a durned German. The dressing tray he alluded to as ‘this dope,’ and the Medical Officer as ‘the quack.’ He used to talk of handing people the lemon, and one night when he had toothache, he expatiated on the virtues of a dandy dentist of his down Pittsburg way. A man he suspected of swinging the lead he referred to as a great husky guy, and the Blighty cases he spoke of as the men who were recommended for shipment to England.

‘Call ’em live freight and be done with it, Yank,’ the other boys suggested.

There was an acute gastritis boy, too, one who was so ill he could not take the bananas I was handing round to all the other patients, so as I passed his bed I dropped a half-blown rose on his pillow.

‘Oh, sister, it reminds me of home and my garden,’ and he picked it up and kissed it – a pathetic little action I pretended not to see.

Then again there was ‘Chikko’ – as the men dubbed him – aged seventeen, who laughed his way through life, and who refused to cure himself of the excellent habit even if there was a silly old war going on. ‘Wings’
was in the ‘Royal Flying Corpse, sister. I hope you’ll always keep a bed ready for me here, as I’m sure to drop in one night, accent on the “drop.” Possibly I’ll come through the roof of the sisters’ mess, and won’t there be a mess! Pardon, sister.’

Excellent boys all of them. It has been an education and a pleasure to know them, and to work among them.

THE MORNING DAWNED
bright and warm, so warm that the up-patients took out their chairs and sat on the grass which does duty as lawn, while the tent walls were rolled back for the benefit and pleasure of the bed patients.

The sun was so ingratiating that it wooed one or two boys into doing ‘a bit o’ weeding’ in our ‘garden,’ and into transplanting some horticultural specimens, so anaemic and so badly suffering from debility that their genus could not be determined. ‘And good transplanting weather, too,’ prophesied the rheumatic patients. ‘We shall have rain before the day is out.’

About noon the rain comes, sending us all on duty after lunch, fully armed against its torrential attentions – two pairs of stockings, gum boots, shortest dress,
belted mackintosh, together with sou’wester in place of, or over, our cap, since diving in and out of dripping tents soon gives one’s stiffest, starchiest cap the appearance of a time-worn dish rag, added to which is the obvious danger of achieving a portentous cold.

One goes on the rounds with a medicine basket filled with half-a-dozen bottles, a couple of medicine glasses, towel, and small rinsing bowl. No sooner does one leave the tent than a particularly spiteful gust of wind comes, raises one’s mackintosh like a balloon, and flaps the towel – which has hitherto been folded, but is now rebellious – with stinging lashes on one’s hand, the rain pinging on one’s face with seemingly delightful venom.

One struggles along and nearly tumbles into each tent, the wind is so typically March. Then another round is made with mouthwashes, gargles, and inhalations, the while one gets nicely soaked dipping under the tent eaves, and has rivulets running off one’s sou’wester and down one’s back. Next follows the round for straightening, and possibly remaking beds, with the consequent stripping of the mackintosh and, perhaps, sou’wester in each tent. Meantime the rain has gained in vigour and persistence, so much so, that it finds out the faulty parts in the tent roof and walls.

The orderly is called, and together we go round seeing to the closing of those ventilators which are allowing the rain to enter, placing bowls to catch innocuous drippings, pulling forward beds out of harm’s – and the rain’s – way.

Teatime comes, and so does the ward sergeant with ‘warnings’ for the England cases – ‘a quarter-of-an-hour, sister.’ One hurries from tent to tent, completes the filling-in of Blighty tickets, sees that the quite naturally excited travellers have had a plentiful tea, and that their kit is quite correct, hurries to the duty tent for a better scarf than the one with which a departing hero is contenting his happy self, bids goodbye all round, and splashes back to a tent, where an orderly has just reported four new admissions.

Temperatures are taken, blanket baths set in progress. Then one wades back to the nursing quarters through a paddock pied with rain-spattered daisies, dripping cowslips, and celandine. A gust of wind and rain considerably assist one’s entry into the hut containing our bunks.

One throws off sou’wester and mackintosh, draws off gum boots, and attempts to remove, at least, a small portion of the thick clayey mud with which they are richly encrusted. Then comes a change of stockings
and dress, leaving the other woefully bedraggled skirt spread out to dry over one’s camp bath, and enviously commending the forethought of the wise virgin who has had an over-skirt made from a ground sheet. Then off to the mess room for a much appreciated cup of tea before going back to duty.

Here trouble meets us at the outset, for a particularly energetic gust of wind has blown down the duty tent, and we find an orderly and a medical officer crawling under the flapping tarpaulin preparatory to righting matters. The pole is soon hoisted, and while great execution is being done with a tent mallet, every human being in sight begins chasing after the diet-sheets, temperature charts, Blighty tickets, and laboratory slips which, presumably glad to escape from the privacy of the duty tent, are rioting giddily overhead. A tantalising chase it is, for many of the papers settle just long enough for us to almost reach them before whirling waywardly up, and successfully out of reach again.

A return to the duty tent shows us, oh! what a fall was there. We look round, and ‘I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me.’ Inhalers and measures have been broken, medicine bottles overturned and smashed, the medicine cupboard has suffered in the encounter and has disgorged
much of its crowded contents, so that on the floor in an unsavoury-looking stream of tincture of iodine, tine. benz. co., methyl sal., and mist, alba., are to be found one-grain tablets of calomel, No. 9 pills, No. 13 pills, A.P.C. powders, soda bicarb. tablets, and similar little delicacies.

THE ORDERLY OFFICER TO THE RESCUE

A comparative degree of order being restored in a superlative degree of haste, the marquees are once more visited. Ground sheets are pulled across the doors of the tent, the lights are lighted, gramophones tinkle. Darkness has come, the planks laid between the tents to serve as footpaths become sodden, and hurrying feet occasionally skid and sideslip on them.

Once something furry scuttles by within an inch of one’s toe, and one has visual example of the familiar expression, ‘a half-drowned rat.’ Another round of the tents with gargles, inhalations, and medicines, and then an hour’s work with beds. This up-patient has not noticed that the rain has been falling on his pillow. The position of his bed is altered, and a new pillow obtained. Drippings have been falling on the overturned portion of sheet on another bed, so that must be remade in part, and a clean, dry sheet substituted. Another bed has had its counterpane slightly splashed, but a folded towel inserted between
it and the blanket meets every possibility of danger.

And so on we go until we are assured that every patient is warm, dry, and comfortable, and likely to remain so.

‘A dirty night for you, sister,’ the boys remark as we scramble into trench-coat and sou’wester.

But we have grown quite philosophical and stoical about the weather, besides isn’t rain good for the complexion? And one day, I suppose, we shall remember we once possessed a complexion and will want to regain it, – in those far-off coming days
après la guerre.

OF COURSE IT
would be
comme il faut
and according to tradition to say that the sound that reached one’s waking ears was the crowing of the cock, but, primarily, I am a truth-at-any-price person, and, secondarily – no, primarily, again – I am of the dormouse variety.

Thus, it takes a heavily footed batman with big army boots to parade the hut several times and splash relays of water into several waiting jugs before my sleepy ears are assaulted. Then, indeed, I do hear the cock crow, for in the nursing quarters we possess two spoiled darlings of bantams, Christopher and Emma, and Christopher is very vociferous, very lusty in the lung.

A hurried douche and dressing, with sundry
scufflings in adjacent bunks, reminding one of the sound of so many horses tossing in loose boxes, then comes the mess bell. Breakfast and then another bell, for our staff is so large that a later breakfast had to be instituted for ‘two-stripers,’ a concessionary half-hour which has led sleepy V.A.D.s to wish they had had the perspicacity to make a profession of nursing.

In the wards in the early morning one loses the sense of sound of outside things, but when temperatures are taken, medicines given, beds made and tent walls rolled back, one becomes conscious of ‘Lef … wheel,’ ‘Eye … srite,’ ‘Form foss,’ and the dull thud of marching feet.

Bang, bang … snap, snap, snap … spit, spit, from up the Bull-ring way, continues so evenly one loses the realisation of it. The medical officer, gargles, inhalations, foments and special medicines close one’s ears until the clatter of crockery warns one for ‘Come to the cook-house door, boys. Come to the cook-house door.’ We hurry to cut thin bread, and butter for a patient who would like ‘something to help down the milk,’ to get toast snippets for another to coax down some beef-tea, and to see that certain special diets are duly administered.

In the afternoon ‘another letter from Martha, another letter from home,’ urges one or two boy-blues to put on their long overcoats – invariably to be greeted with ‘Chelsea pensioner’ – and go for the mail. ‘Let’s get out the gramophone and have a tune,’ suggests one of the boys.

What a boon gramophones are! – as great a boon as that of card games. We are eternally grateful to the French king for whose benefit the card game was originated, and we equally bless the inventor of the gramophone.