And it is not only the men that are brave but the women too. This afternoon I have been trying to arrange for one of our “B. V. D.’s,” as the doctors call them, meaning the “V. A. D.’s” to get a permit to go to a hospital in E., where her brother is. He has been wounded but not seriously enough to be sent back to England. She has had one brother killed, another is a prisoner, and now this youngest brother is wounded, and she is the cheeriest, bravest little thing you ever saw. Another has had three brothers killed, and you would never dream it to see her. A third, whose fiancé was killed about a month ago, I am a little worried about; she is driving herself into the work so hard. Oh, there are so many pitiful people over here it keeps one’s heart torn up the whole livelong time. You can’t get away from the sorrows of people ever. Not that one wants to, if there is anything that can be done, but at home there are times, thank God, when one can forget all the woe of the world, and pain and sorrow, but not here. It is before your eyes every waking minute and in your ears even in your sleep when the feet go marching, marching by.
Last evening I had a beautiful walk with doctor Veeder. The sunset was glorious, and we walked along roads that looked like Corot pictures. After quite a long time we came out from our woodsy road to an open space which seemed to extend away for a mile or so without any grass or any trees on it. It was getting dark and we could not distinguish things clearly, but Dr. Veeder said he thought this was the place where the daily practice in trench warfare went on. We walked a bit over the very rough field and heard voices, though we could not see any one. Pretty soon an officer appeared from nowhere, and when we asked him if we could look around, he said “Certainly,” and he himself conducted us. The field had been made into a regular practice battle field. It was criss-crossed with trenches and craters. But the worst was the dummy men placed all over everywhere. These dummy men the men have to learn to bayonet as they rush by, so as to learn how to use their bayonets even in the narrow trenches. Our officer and another who joined us explained things to us and told us it was a relief to have some one new, to talk to, as they have to stay out there in the trenches with their men from 10P.M.to 9A.M.when they are relieved by another batch. It was most wonderfully interesting; but impresses the horror of warfare on me even more than it has been impressed before. The trenches were most wonderfully and elaborately made and have dugouts and lines of communication and bayous and many other technical things which I could not grasp fully at the first hearing.
Another incident that happened to one of my nurses this past week made more very vivid impressions. I say “incident” because that is all it was in the life of the camp, but the young woman said it was the most interesting day she ever spent. She, Miss Cuppaidge, had been detailed to go with a doctor, an anæsthetist, and an orderly to a “Casualty Clearing Station.” When called for, small groups like this are sent up from the base hospital whenever there is a big drive. I received an order that Miss Cuppaidge was to go for her “gas training” at a certain time. The group is just got ready and kept at their regular jobs until an order comes for them to proceed to the “C. C. S.” At the appointed time for the training Miss Cuppaidge went to the “gas school” in the neighboring training camp. There she and four others, nurses from other hospitals, were taken in charge by an officer. They first had minute instructions about properly adjusting their gas masks. These are rather complicated,as they are regular respirators. A piece through which they breathe has to be held in the mouth, and a pair of padded clamps shut off the nose. This is inside the mask which fits around the face and is held on by straps around the head. They must learn to put on the things and fix the clamps and mouth pieces in six seconds. They then have to learn how to breathe just through the mouth without choking or what is worse, Miss Cuppaidge said, without dribbling. They also have to get used to the queer sensation in the ears when they swallow. When the masks are all right and everybody is breathing all right, they are put into a gas-filled room. This gas is just a tear gas. They are left there five minutes, then taken out and they are asked about irritated eyes. If there is irritation the masks are leaking or improperly adjusted. They are then taken into trenches where other gases are liberated to get them used to the odors, so that they can detect the presence of gas quickly. Some gases are so deadly three breaths of it will cause death, hence the hurry in quick detection and quick adjustment of masks. Some of these gases travel six and seven miles. As near as I could make out the gases are mainly of two sorts, a chlorine gas and a “phosgene” one. The officer lectured to the nurses upon the effects of these gases and about the treatment of them and inthe middle of the afternoon sent them home smelling like the dickens, but, as Miss C. said, entirely unafraid of gas and quite prepared to guard against it if they meet it. Their gas outfits they have hitched to them all the time when near the place they are likely to meet it. We shall have other small groups go up to the C. C. S. after this one is called out and I mean to be detailed to go with one. These parties stay sometimes only a few days and sometimes a few weeks, but I certainly mean to go if I can persuade the authorities to let me leave Miss Taylor in charge. I have so little contact with the patients and so little of anything but office work and receiving officials and company of all sorts I believe that they would think I ought to have a little of the real war work.
The hospital end of my work is going very smoothly, because I have excellent supervisors, and the head nurses are all doing very well. For those who are interested I will mention that Miss Stebbins is the Day Surgical Supervisor, Mrs. Hausmann the Night Med. Sup., Miss Habenicht is the Day Med. Sup., and Miss Claiborne the Night Surg. Sup. The place is so big and there are so many lines of tents to be covered we have a supervisor for the medical side and a separate one for the surgical side both night and day. Some of you people at home would be amusedto see our night supervisors on a rainy night. In rubber hats, coats, and rubber boots and carrying a lantern they go ducking about in and out of tents, having a beautiful time, they say, splashing about and tripping over tent ropes. Any way we all seem to be thriving under these new conditions. We all are getting very brown. All have enormous appetites and can eat with relish the tinned bully beef that we get four or five times a week and the hard dark war bread. Never again will I talk about wrapped bread. Here, as somebody said the other day, loaves of bread are used to spike the cart wheels. But we eat it just the same in huge slices.
Our food question is a problem. It does not need to be as poor as it is, and I mean to see pretty soon that it is improved. The trouble really is with the help. My domestic problems are driving me crazy, but this last week I appealed for help and Captain Veeder has been asked to assist me to clean our places and work out some kind of scheme. Our kitchen is one of the old stalls, quite open at the end as stalls are. Other stalls are used for storage, and oh the dirt. I had not been assigned enough help at first and anyway there had been such a muddle of V. A. D.’s working in the Mess, some old good-for-nothing soldiers, hangers-on, and a few Belgian girls who help take care of the nurses’ room and do odd jobs,I could not possibly see what I was going to do with the place for some time. To add to my difficulties the V. A. D.’s draw a certain ration from the British quartermaster and pay into the Mess a certain amount of money, and the American nurses’ ration was to be quite different, and the whole arrangement quite different. There are 40 V. A. D.’s and 64 nurses. Consider the problem. I got some fairly decent French women to come and clean and help cook. The American man cook could not talk to them and had a fit, for whenever his back was turned, they did things he did not mean to have done. I got the place cleaned only by getting extra fatigue men up with shovels and brooms. We are to be whitewashed to-morrow. An extra American has been put on to keep the other man company and give him somebody to talk to! The French women are to keep on cleaning and are to do the dishes that the British soldiers have been swishing around in tubs of cold water. The V. A. D.’s are gradually being put in the wards, where they won’t have a chance to have tea so many times a day. Everybody can have it five times a day if desired!
While waiting to hear from Washington about increased rations on account of the greatly increased cost of food over here we are taxing everybody a franc a day for extra green things for the Mess. The U. S. A. allows 40 cents a day pernurse for messing. The usual custom is to draw not as many rations as there are persons to provide for, then to draw the difference in money and buy extra things with the money. But over here that scheme at 40 cents a day cannot work, food is too high. So a cable has been sent to Washington. The doctors are not having this trouble because they always expect to buy most of their food out of their salaries. They draw their regular rations and buy lots of stuff, then divide the cost among the whole group. They have a much smaller group to take care of and are not complicated as I am by the servant or V. A. D. problem. They have American men looking after them. Oh well, I can begin to see light ahead now, and although no one likes the food, as it is they are not starving. A slice of ham all dried up to nothing and dark army bread and tea and possibly a little marmalade does not make a very good breakfast for Americans, but it will keep one going if enough bread and butter is eaten. We are now getting coffee, such as it is, and I mean to see about cereal very soon. Eggs have been seven cents apiece, not centimes but cents. I am not letting my perfectly good dietitian put her energies on this domestic problem of ours, for I am keeping her for the poor sick soldiers, and in a few days or weeks I mean to have a regular diet kitchen started for her. My “Home Sister” isfinding the complication of four kinds of help and several languages almost too much for her, but between us all we shall plow through this mire, and now that Dr. Veeder has turned his attention upon our difficulties I am sure we shall get through them all right. You ought to hear me engage servants in French. They understand and come. When they see some of the difficulties of lack of hot water, etc., they go, and I have to begin all over again. It is a great life.
One of the greatest things about it is meeting so many different kinds of people. Two such nice Australian Sisters were here to call upon me this afternoon. And the New Zealanders are so very polite and nice, and these little V. A. D.’s are charming. Anyway I am glad I am here, only I wish you were all here too. Then things would be ideal. You’d all love this beautiful country, and this quaint old city that is nearly swamped under this enormous influx of strange foreign people. The paper to-day says (we get a little single-leaf edition of theLondon Daily Mail) that our troops have landed in France. I hope thousands more come along soon, so that all this beastly business can be stopped soon. People are counting on the coming of our troops so much. Everybody says France needs help badly. Surely our forces can bring an end to all this frightfulness. No mail yet. None at all exceptthose written for my birthday. Oh well, that is war. Loads and loads of love to you all.
Sunday, July 8, 1917.Rouen, France.
Such a nice lot of letters as we got to-day. There is very little difference between Sundays and other days here, except perhaps a little more business than usual is done on Sundays, but mail comes and goes these days just like other days. Ever since we came only one or two letters for nurses have been dribbling along through until to-day when some people got as many as 12 or 14 letters, and great was the rejoicing thereat.
Dr. Veeder can do no medical work at all just now, Phil will be interested to know, or in fact doctoring of any kind. At the present time he is spending his entire time quartermastering. He is entirely responsible for the officers’ mess and does all the buying and planning, arranging about cooks, cleaning up, etc., and he is doing it well too, and with a mighty good grace. He has been helping us up at the “Sisters’ Mess” with our problems and has been pursuing coal to its lair, and getting whitewash from nowhere, and doing all sorts of miracles that only a very persistent and determined man can do. The result is that all the doctors and nurses are able to do their work in a much better way than if a less efficientperson were back of their food and comfort. But Dr. Veeder’s spirit in doing his particular job and doing it well, even though it is so absolutely different from what he was trained for, and what he would prefer, is the spirit which is found throughout the whole organization. It does one’s heart good to see the way men who are Ph.D.’s can do regular orderly work, and put a lot into it, and get a lot out of it, and the way accountants can be stretcher bearers, and other highly trained men do the rough work in laboratory and mess hall.
There is a remarkable spirit of service and glad service everywhere. Of course there have been a few grumblers who have complained that they did not come ’way out here to do this or that, but most of the men have been converted by coming into contact with the attitude of men like Dr. Murphy. All that has been necessary is a few words from him to make them pretty much ashamed. And words haven’t been necessary often. For when they realize that Dr. Murphy has not performed a single operation since he has been here, but has been putting all his ability in organizing and administering, and being up nights and days, seeing convoys out and convoys in, seeing that they are all properly ticketed and all their forms are properly made out, finding out why sufficient oil has not been left for thelanterns of the night orderlies, why only 6 eggs were delivered to one of the tents when 12 were ordered, letting the nurses know who the right person is to give the up-patients permission who wish to leave the compound to attend the Catholic Church across the road, going personally to buy a better oil stove for the night-nurses’ supper hut, finding out why the ward-master did not notify a particular nurse long enough before a convoy was to go out so that her patient could be ready, etc., etc.—when they realize all these things and a thousand more that he is doing all the time that he did not come out to do, they pretty generally shut up and put all their energies on the job that has been given them.
Last night the Director saw a convoy come in just about midnight. It was a pretty big bunch of men and it took some time. One was in such a condition that he had to go to the operating room about 3. Dr. Clopton operated. At 4.45 a convoy was sent out to catch a particular ambulance train, and Dr. M. was down at The Point, as our receiving tent is called, to see them off. At 7.30 he was at the service in our little chapel, all the morning he was down in the tents conferring with the other doctors and making plans to get the things they needed in their work. At 2 he brought a Red Cross official to talk over some things in their work with me, and I know that at 4.30he had an appointment with a neighboring Colonel. When he sleeps I know not. In the intervals of doings like these he comes to ask me if I will make out a list of magazines I would like for the nurses, or he sends roses and vases to put them in! We are lucky to have such a man at the head of an expedition like this. His kindness and genuine goodness reach down to the most ordinary private. Late yesterday afternoon he was batting ball with a bunch of enlisted men. They of course are crazy about him, as are all the people who work with him. There is never a matter too trivial for his attention or too vital and too important for discussion with him.
This letter was not meant for a eulogy, though it seems to have turned into one. But my attention has turned to our unusual good fortune in having such a leader, by the fact that other Chief Nurses do not always get the kind of help and coöperation that I am getting. What would I do if I had forbidden my nurses to do something which I felt was wrong or inadvisable and then the director of the Unit reversed the action? It is an unbearable situation to conceive, but I am afraid some Chief Nurses may have to face just such difficulties. But here such a situation could not possibly exist. Other Units have sneered a little at what they call our religious attitude, having nightly services on the boat, regularattendance at services here, and making the whole thing a prolonged act of service. But as Dr. Murphy said when he talked to our nurses that last night in London, there is only one way of bearing the close contact with such pain and sorrow, of bearing whatever discomforts we may ourselves have to bear, of working out our own internal problems of antipathies or antagonisms, of keeping our souls serene, and that is by doing it all with the deepest religious motive and in utter devotion to service. I have heard him say many times, “We have come to serve in whatever way we can and as long as we are needed.” And so I look ahead to the future with the greatest peace of mind. I am not afraid of any difficulties with my women or with the men.
My women are splendid. A few, of course, have periods of rearing, but they all have steadied down most beautifully. And I think now that it was emotions strained almost beyond endurance at first that caused the rearing. We are all happy, contented, and well, and I am so proud of the spirit of coöperation I find among them I can hardly express it. I certainly have some wonderfully splendid women with me. Some of them have queer exteriors and some queer ways, but they are fine within. Every now and then I put on the bulletin board some little poem about the meaning of the war and the ideals we are fightingfor, or a paragraph from some newspaper about America’s quick response to the call for help to defend these ideals, and you ought to see their heads go up and their eyes brighten. They don’t care that they have had bully beef twice in one day or that the knives and forks are sticky, and they have no tablecloths or butter dishes. It would be so hopeless if one did not get a response. My bulletin board is the side of a packing box put on a standard just outside the mess door.
I seem to write such queer things. I was going to tell you about our Fourth of July party. We invited the other American Unit (from Cleveland) down to a baseball game and tea. It was a great success, as the day was fine and we could have our refreshments on the grass under some trees. Miss Watkins, our dear dietitian, and some of the others worked all the afternoon getting sandwiches, and strawberries, and tea, and little cakes, and lemonade ready, which the doctors paid for. It was a great success. Then after dinner we went up to No. 9 General, where the Clevelanders hold forth, and had a little dance in their nurses’ mess hall. We stopped at 11, as we all had a half hour’s walk home. It was a wonderful night. Dr. Allison and I brought up the rear of the procession and discussed the affairs of the universe.
July 10. Ruth and I have been to town thislovely afternoon to do a few errands and wander around the quaint little back streets and visit the wonderful churches. I am having an extra serge uniform made. It has already been a month in the making, but it will probably be finished soon now. It looks as if it were going to be very satisfactory. Before we came back to our camp we had supper at a very French place and enjoyed our omelette aux champignons, sole frite, petits pois au beurre, salade aux fines herbes and café and pêches to the very limit, although we had to pay the very limit for it, and all felt very extravagant when we saw the bill. Food is very expensive, but the French are not losing anything from the English and American trade. They tack on all sorts of prices to everything they can get away with. It is very restful and relieving to the mind to get away from the hospital, and I try to do it at least once every week for the best part of an afternoon.
We are not working too hard here, any of us, but I find that I am pretty tired most of the time because I cannot escape from my responsibilities at any time, even when I am off duty, which is not much except in the evenings because I am right in the middle of things all the time, and each one of the sixty-four has some question to ask almost every time they see me. You see everything over here is different, the details are hard to learn,or rather they are hard to get over to each one of the sixty-four. I have not been sleeping very well for the same reason. I hear every one that goes by my room and I hear all the women in my hut get to bed and all they have to say as they get ready for the night, and I hear them all get up in the morning etc. But I keep thinking that I shall get used to all of this and not be so noticing. I am better than I was in London or on the boat. I have my room fixed up so that it looks quite comfortable. I probably shall spend most of my spare time down here in the office in the grandstand, for down here I am more isolated from my responsibilities. Just outside are the doctors’ tents, but when they perform their ablutions out here in front of my door, it does not disturb me in the least, because it is not up to me whether they are as comfortably taken care of as possible. Their quarters are even more primitive than ours. Many of them are two in a tent in which they can hardly stand upright, and their toilet articles are laid on a box and their clothes they have to hang on the tent pole. We all have a little washstand, and an enamel basin and pitcher and pail, which were furnished us since we arrived here. With that and a small table and a little shelf and some hooks in the corner we can be very civilized.
Hot water is a very great problem, for all ourwater for cooking, washing dishes, and bathing 104 women is heated in two small tanks over little coal fires, and the supply is very inadequate. But little by little things get made more practical and sensible. So many things were unnecessarily uncomfortable. My next domestic job is to find out how to get dishes for one hundred people washed when hot water is entirely insufficient, so that they are not always sticky and smelly. I presume it can be done, but at present I acknowledge I am baffled. I am taking it for granted that you are interested in these sordid details. They really seem very important over here, although to you in America they probably do not rank as highly as stopping hemorrhages and writing letters for dying soldiers. They truly don’t to us all the time. But this is a trivial letter meant for only a few who want to know details.
To-day our Major Fife, the U. S. Army man who joined us in St. Louis, with two other regular army men, took over the command of the hospital, and Col. J. left. Col. J., the English O. C. (Officer Commanding), has been perfectly charming, and we are all very sorry to see him go. He has been transferred to a neighboring hospital camp, not very far away, so we still may see something of him. Yesterday afternoon, late, I had a little tea party here in my office, which was very delightful. A few days ago I had met the twoColonels of the Australian hospital camp, which is on the other side of the race course, and as the one who is the M. O. (Medical Officer) said he wanted to meet Major Murphy, I invited him and the other O. C. and had Major Murphy and Col. J. and Miss Taylor, and we had a very nice party, with tea, bread and butter, and jam. Then afterwards we took the visiting Colonels down to see some of the American apparatus that we are using on some of our cases. Our Surgical Hut looks like a carpenter shop. We have about ten beds under a wooden canopy frame, to which the poor shattered legs of our blown-to-pieces men are fastened. When a leg is broken in half a dozen places and there are several gaping infected wounds besides, it is something of a trick of carpentry and mechanics to make the poor fellows comfortable, put on extensions so the legs won’t contract, and yet make it possible to irrigate the wounds. We have some wonderful arrangements. It is remarkable the way pulleys and ropes can be arranged so that the men can pull themselves up with their hands to let the nurses rub their backs and change their beds. So many men come to us with terrific bedsores to add to the distress of their shattered legs it takes much ingenuity to take care of them. We have one man who is practically slung in hammocks which are attached with counterweights to the frame over the bed. These small hammocks, or slings, go, one under his shoulders, one under his lower back, and then his leg is in a frame with weights attached to the foot. Rubber tubes are run in and out of his thigh, and knee, and his wounds are irrigated through these tubes which are perforated. This method of irrigating is the Carrel Method. The men in this hut are getting to feel they are such an interesting show, so many people come to see them, that they have begun to make fun by rattling a coin in a tin box and taking up a collection when people ask what they are doing that for.
It’s about time I went up to my room now, as it is after nine and the doctors are beginning to go to their tents and I must sit here ticking away on the machine with the door open. Some nurses came in to talk to me so I was disturbed, even when I thought I had got away from them. They meant well and only came to inquire if I was not well, because they thought I did not look well and were worried. Wasn’t that dear of them. It’s only a lack of proper sleep that makes me look a bit queer. I am not a bit sick, just a bit “groggy.” I really am quite brown, and my hair is quite curly! from all this dampness. It rains part of every day almost.
Good-night for now. It is always fun to think at night, maybe I will get a letter to-morrow.You just cannot imagine how much letters count. I never had them count so much before.
Much love to you all.
J.
Rouen, France. July 16, 1917.
I am inclosing a copy of a letter Miss Taylor received to-day, in reply to the letter she wrote to Private Murphy’s mother, the day after her boy died here. He was here of a gunshot wound in the chest, one of those treacherous injuries that seem to be getting along all right and then knock a man out with a sudden hemorrhage. The boy was not even on the Seriously Ill or the Dangerously Ill list, and the worst part was that he died before we could get the priest to him. We have a Catholic priest as well as C. of E. and Nonconformist padres always in attendance. They live on the grounds. Of course a formal notice of the man’s death was sent to his mother through the War Casualty Office, but Miss Taylor wrote to tell his mother the details, and to explain why the priest was not with him when he died. Her reply is so typical of the bravery of English women I want you to see it.
“To Assistant Matron:—
“I thank you for so kindly answering my letter for my dear lad Pte. W. Murphy. I am quite sure you all concerned did what possibly couldbe done for him. I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. I’ve felt it very keenly, more than I can ever say, but I have the satisfaction of knowing he was cared for by a woman at the last and given a decent grave. Perhaps God took him then because he was then fit, he was a good boy at home to us and I know the last three years of his life he honestly tried his level best. I think God understands us each one best. I should like you to thank the nurse personally for me who was with him at the last, and every night you brave women are remembered in our prayers. My wee daughter aged three years prays, ‘God bless our nurses at the front.’ I have not received his treasure bag and am sorry as my little son aged 15 yrs., who was passionately attached to our dear lad, hoped to have his rosary, but perhaps I shall get it—only you asked me to let you know if I did not receive it. I must now conclude, thanking you once again, believe me
“Yrs. sincerely“Bell Brown.”
All day yesterday and in the night we heard the booming of guns, and the night nurses say the windows in our surgical hut rattled. It was the loudest I have heard since we have been here. And every time I hear them those words of one of our patients come to my mind: “Some poordevils are getting theirs.” The men recently sent down from the front tell us that rumor has it that there is going to be a big drive in a few days. We wonder if it has begun and if we shall be getting more convoys in. Our hospital is not half full now, we have been sending out so many convoys over to “Blighty.” We need to be a little busier for our best good. The weather is lovely, very cool at night, we always sleep under blankets, warm in the sun. Almost every day it rains at least a part of the day, but the ground here is so sandy there is very little mud. It is a drizzling evening, but it is cozy and pleasant here in my office. It is getting on toward ten and outside in their tents I can hear the voices of some of our officers talking together, and from time to time across the road come bugle calls, and there is that faint bustling sound of large numbers of people getting ready to be quiet for the night. We are in the midst of such thousands and thousands of people, mostly soldiers, and all day long there are myriads of soldier sounds, bugle calls, tramping of feet, motor cycles, lorries, bands playing, men’s voices, sharp commands, the slap of the hand on the musket in salute, the popping of small bombs or guns all day long from the practice trenches near here. On the fourth of July we thought how like a home Fourth it was, but here the popping and the shots sound everyday. And it is not fireworks that are being shot off. At neighboring camps there are experts in bayoneting, experts in gassing, experts in Hate Talk. There are actually special men who sometimes talk to as many as three thousand men to make them feel that their chief business is to kill. It is incomprehensible. Whenever will this toppling world right itself? It will be a long time before we come home. The more we know the more sure we are that it is going to be a long business. And the man who wrote “The picture, That I saw that day, Of home folks bidding home good-by, For traitor seas, And ‘somewhere,’ Out beyond the seas, And after that, Just God, And what He wills,” was right. That is the situation.
July 19. Such nice letters to-day. It is such fun to get the home news and to learn the details of your doings. We are not working hard and we find it embarrassing to have people take it for granted that we are overdoing all the time and suffering real hardships. We are comfortable and well fed and have interesting work and many very interesting diversions.
There is a lot of very simple entertainment back and forth among the camps. Once or twice every week there is a tea party or a tennis party with tea or a concert with refreshments somewhere here. To-morrow we are going to return some of the many courtesies that have been shown usand be “at home” to our neighbors here on the Race Course: No. 10 General Hospital and No. 1 Australian General. The party will be out of doors and there will be tennis and a baseball game between nurses and officers. The officers are having baseball suits made for them by the nurses. These suits are to be very gayskirts, so that they will be as much hampered as the women. We have started our V. A. D.’s on baseball against the American nurses. They take to it like small boys and find it “ripping.” It has been the best mixing process I ever invented. It is a great sight these lovely evenings between eight and nine to see the crowd of hilarious nurses careering over the grass between the hedge and the fenced-off center of the course where all the tents are, and hanging on the fence a couple of hundred “blue boys” or convalescent patients in their blue hospital suits. Then the officers come straggling out after their dinner, peacefully smoking their pipes, and they line up and root and laugh too and coach. It does not look much like war. It does everybody the best possible good, for it has them all roaring with laughter, and sends them off to bed in the best of humor, like a bunch of kids.
The English tea parties are charming, and I think myself in a storybook every time I go to one. The uniforms of the English Sisters are sogay and bright with their flowing caps and red-bordered little capes, and all the men are in uniform, and the little tables set out on the grass are under large sunshades, or there are special marquees set up for the occasion, and it’s all very gay. Last week around at No. 10 General after the tea party, they had games, tennis for some, hunting for hidden treasure in the grass and hedge (I found a souvenir spoon in a mole hole), and a potato and spoon race, and also a tug of war that was so fiercely strenuous that it left many of us with cricks in our necks ever since. The tug of war seems to be a favorite sport. Our white-dressed nurses with their scarlet-lined blue capes look mighty pretty on these occasions. Of course different groups of nurses and doctors get off for different parties. They are usually from 5 to 7 or after 8.
Then in the Y. M. C. A. huts there are frequent forms of entertainment, not only for the convalescent patients but for the staff. A “concert” usually means a kind of variety show. All kinds of pretty good troupes are sent out to go the rounds of the various hospitals, and then, too, each hospital has its own band, which is trained or run by the Y. M. C. A. people. We here have some very unusual Y. M. C. A. people. A Prof. B., his wife, and son are living here and giving their whole time to this work. They are from Cambridge, both father and son. I am told that the father is a professor of theology, and the son of archæology. They are very talented people, quite eccentric geniuses, all of them, I should judge. The father leads the band, the son plays the little organ in our chapel, the mother hovers around, and all the time some one of them is in attendance at the Y. M. C. A. hut to help the boys play and to manage the many concerts and lectures that take place there all the time. The first time I met Mrs. B. was the first night I arrived. The first thing she said to me was, “Good gracious, how funereal you look!” I was in my dark uniform and it was after dark in the evening and I did look like a crow, but then! She was very cordial afterward and has been very charming to us all. She gave a big tea for us in the hut one Sunday afternoon and had many officers, Y. M. C. A. workers, and nurses there to meet us. Everybody here is devoted to the B.’s and they add much to the community life. Both father and son are tall, thin, stooped, spectacled souls. The son is more or less of an invalid, it seems.
We have just heard a piece of news that delights us very much and that is that Miss G. is to come over to be “Matron-in-chief for France” as the corresponding official is called for the other nursing forces. I had already written, as had the Chief Nurses of some of the other Units, asking MissN. to send us some one to advise us, and make uniform regulations for us all and standardize our actions and customs. Now, each Chief Nurse is entirely responsible, under her Commanding Officer, who leaves all the details to her, for every little thing. And the consequence is that there are as many ideas about discipline, uniforms, hours of duty, social usages, etc. as there are Chief Nurses. Miss G. will be ideal for this position. Dr. Alexander Lambert was here last evening and he told us that she was coming. It may be that she has only been sent for, but I hope it means that she is to come. We have received word that five American nurses are to be added to our force here soon. We don’t know where they are to come from or anything about them. It was an official notice that we had yesterday that 33 were to arrive at Havre, five of whom are to be sent to us. We shall be glad to see them whoever they are. Five of our V. A. D.’s are to be taken when the Americans come.
Two of my people heard me say the other day that I wished I had my violin here, so yesterday they went down to Rouen and bought me one. I wish you could hear the accounts of how they did it, for neither of them has any French or knows anything about violins. But it was a violin all right that they brought out to me wrapped up in a newspaper, and last night it played perfectlygood tunes in the mess hall. One of the V. A. D.’s plays the piano very well, so we had a fine time trying out the instrument. To-day I have some bad blisters on the ends of the fingers of my left hand, which makes it almost impossible to write on the typewriter. We have not much music here, but a few popular dance airs.
Loads of love.
Julia.
July 25, 1917.
I do not know how to write about our doings of the past few days, for I cannot write numbers, and it is only numbers that would give you any idea at all of what we have been doing. I wrote in my last letter, I think it was, that we were not working hard, well, we have begun our hard work, and for our own sakes we are glad of it. In the past 24 hours we have admitted more patients than the total capacity of the Barnes and Children’s Hospital, not the average number of patients, but the total capacity. And all these patients have been bathed, fed, and had their wounds dressed. Some of course were able to walk and could go to the bath house and the mess tents, but most of them to-day are stretcher cases, and oh, so dirty, hungry, and miserable. The mere (I say mere, but it is really the most important part of the whole thing) proper recording ofthe names, numbers, ranks, nearest relatives etc., is in itself a huge task. Of course the nurses don’t have all that to do, but they have a lot of it. The boys who are stretcher bearers must be so lame, they can hardly move, for just consider what it means to lift down out of ambulances as many patients as that, and then afterwards carry them as far sometimes as a city block, for we filled our farthest tents to-day. It is most remarkable how things have gone. There are many aching backs to-night, for all the beds are very low and the stooping is terrific, but every one has been a brick. Many of the nurses have worked 14 straight hours to-day, and many of the doctors had only two or three hours’ sleep last night, and were working all day. The difficulty to-day was, that we had to put patients into rows of tents that have not been used for some time and were not equipped, and our warning was not long enough to prepare. We had the beds ready, but little else. To-night things have straightened out a lot, but it is going to be a busy night as we are to send out a convoy, and get another in. Three additional night nurses are on to-night, taken from the day force that has to stretch itself a little thinner.
Our nurses don’t need any “Hate Lecture” after what we have seen in the past few days. We have been receiving patients that have beengassed, and burned in a most mysterious way. Their clothing is not burned at all, but they have bad burns on their bodies, on parts that are covered by clothing. The doctors think it has been done by some chemical that gets its full action on the skin after it is moist, and when the men sweat, it is in these places that are the most moist that the burns are the worst. The Germans have been using a kind of oil in bombs, the men say it is oil of mustard. These bombs explode and the men’s eyes, noses, and throats are so irritated they do not detect the poison gas fumes that come from the bombs that follow these oil ones, and so they either inhale it and die like flies, or have a delayed action and are affected by it terribly several hours later. We have had a lot of these delayed-action gassed men, who cough and cough continuously, like children with whooping cough. We had a very bad case the other night who had not slept one hour for four nights or days, and whose coughing paroxysms came every minute and a half by the clock. When finally the nurses got him to sleep, after rigging up a croup tent over him so that he could breathe steam from a croupkettle over a little stove that literally had to be held in the hands to make it burn properly, they said they were ready to get down on their knees in gratitude, his anguish had been so terrible to watch. They said they could not wish the Germans any greaterunhappiness than to have them have to witness the sufferings of a man like that and know that they had been the cause of it. It is diabolical the things they do, simply fiendish, and like the things that would be expected from precocious degenerates.
I cannot imagine what kind of change is going to take place in our minds before we get home. There are so many changes coming over our ideas every day. They are not new ideas, for many people have had them before, since the beginning of this war, but they are new to us. Human life seems so insignificant, and individuals are so unimportant. No one over here thinks in any numbers less than 50 or 100, and what can the serious condition of Private John Brown of something or other, Something Street, Birmingham, matter? One’s mind is torn between the extremes of such feelings, for when a nurse takes the pulse of a wounded sleeping man and he wakes just enough to say “Mother,” she goes to pieces in her heart, just as though he weren’t only one of the hundreds of wounded men in just this one hospital.
This morning when the big rush was on, I was in the receiving tent when the last three men were unloaded: One had his head and eyes all bandaged up and seemed in very bad condition, so I went with the stretcher bearers to see if Icould help get him into bed. The eye specialist was sent for at once, and got there in a few minutes. We untied the big triangular bandage that was keeping the wads of cotton on his head and eyes, and found his eyes in a terrible condition from being bandaged for over 24 hours without attention. We soaked off the dressings with some boric solution that I had procured from the Operating Hut. There was not even a single basin in the tent to which the man had been brought, not to mention a nurse or medicines. After a while we got the eyes open a tiny bit so that they could be examined and washed out a little, and then the doctor blew out: “It’s a perfect crime to send a man down here in this condition, look at this puncture wound of this eye, and see what a terrible condition his eyes are in. A whole lifetime of blindness will probably be the result.” The patient was delirious and quite incapable of understanding. Just then an older officer came along and heard the remark and said: “Crime! my dear boy, you’ve got absolutely the wrong point of view. How could they keep a man like this up there at the front, from which they have sent him? Don’t you realize that at a place like that every wounded man is simply a hindrance and must be gotten out of the way? Just stop and think how well they are doing to get so many of them to us in any decent shapeat all.” Then the other one said: “Oh, I suppose so. War’s the thing now, all right.” After he was dressed, and things had been straightened out a bit, this patient was transferred to one of the lines that is better equipped to take care of such serious cases. He was put on the “Dangerously Ill,” and word was sent to his mother! His head injury is bad, so maybe he wont live to be blind. (Later. He is much better now and will get well and probably have the sight of one eye.)
No man leaves here in his own clothes. It couldn’t be done. All the things have to be sent to be disinfected and then they go to the clothes tent, and then are just drawn, as clothes for so many men, when the convoys go out. That is unless they are going to the Convalescent Camp or back to a base, then they are fitted as nearly as possible and given a full equipment, but the men going to England are fixed up just so that they can travel. They are lucky if they can stick to their little comfort bags in which are their little treasures. Just so many pins that must have so many moves is all they are. And they are so good and patient. They are so grateful, it just makes everybody wish she were a dozen people and could do twelve times as much as she can possibly do with her one set of arms and legs.
But what will we think when we get throughwith it all? How are we going to stand the mental strain? Yet others do, and go on being normal, cheerful human beings, teaching bayoneting one hour, and playing tennis the next, or having tea with pretty nurses. Oh, it’s a queer world! as the orderly said who came to tell me of a few more hundred wounded expected in soon. “Isn’t it a cruel world?”
July 30, 1917.
Dearest Family:—
This is just a letter to you, not a general epistle to the United States. Major Murphy has just cabled to-day that we are all well, and the reason that there has been such a long delay in your getting our letters from France is that they were held up in London. We do not know why. A number of friends have cabled, and that is how we know that our letters have not been received. I spoke to the Major about it this morning, as so many nurses have said they thought they had better cable, and he said he would cable Miss Hudson at once, which he proceeded to do. I began this last evening, but was interrupted by having an orderly bring me a huge bunch of sweet-peas, mignonette, etc. from a nice Colonel commanding a neighboring Infantry Base Depot. Of course I had to stop and put them in such vases as we have. I brought some down to the officers’ mess, where they were just finishing dinner, and where I had to stay and chat a bit.
This afternoon we have had distinguished guests! Mrs. Christie, the Chief Nurse of the Presbyterian Unit from N. Y. and three of her nurses motored down from E. to call on me and more especially Miss Allison of the Cleveland Unit. It was pleasant to see them and to compare notes.
My, but you all seem far away in another world. But it is fun to think about you. We feel now as though we had been here forever. If you have not read Lord Northcliffe’s new book, “At the War” do get hold of it, for it describes just what we are in the midst of, and everything about us and our surroundings etc., not really us—of course, but hospital people out here in general. One of our men lent me his copy. We are going to be very short of reading matter here very soon. We had a small library from our steamer books, but in Rouen, it seems, there are not many English books. (I’m reading some French, of course.) We have subscribed for a good many magazines, but none have come yet, nor papers. If you should mail a good novel once in so often, I believe it would reach us easily and it certainly would be appreciated. Another thing we would love to have is some music. Popular new dance music, or songs, and a hymn-book. We have rented a piano, butno one brought any music. We have some good singers, and we need some good popular airs. I believe I told you about the 12-franc violin some of my girls bought me. You’d be surprised what sweet tunes it can play! The three or four old torn pieces that were hanging around are almost worn out and I can see that if we enjoy playing and singing now, we will much more when the little sitting-room end of our mess hall is the only warm place to go to on a rainy, cold, winter night. So there are two things you can do for me. The Parcel Post is bringing things over from the States already, and I guess that is the best way to send things.
Everybody over here talks about the cold of the winter, and we shall have no heat except in occasional small oil stoves, or a coal stove, for each hut. Our tented Hospital is not to be hutted this year, as we have been told. But if the English could stand it last year, I am sure we can. Mrs. Whitelaw Reid has written to ask if we want sleeping bags, and I have replied “Yes.” We have rubber boots, rubber hats, and rubber coats, which we shall have to wear constantly. Washington is trying to work out some suitable uniform for us. It will take considerable imagination to design a costume that will be warm enough, short enough, washable, and suitable for use in tents where you must dress very infected wounds. Our whitecaps are absurd for popping in and out of low-entranced tents.
Elsie asks how the responsibility of taking care of all my people is burdening me. For a while it was a pretty big burden, but now it does not weigh nearly as much as it did. I have such splendid people here with me. Just a few have been a little troublesome, but nothing to mention. And the rest are loyal, affectionate, and entirely to be depended upon. The ten that came from Kansas City have been bricks. The two from Hannibal have turned out to be good nurses and fine women, and the rest, almost all of them, developed fine qualities that I really did not know they had in them. We have had so little trouble I cannot help wondering what it is, when I hear of difficulties the other Units are having. “Oh yes,” Matron X. said, “I have forbidden my nurses to go out with officers, but they are doing it.” We allow ours to go out with doctors, but have made the only restriction that they go in groups of at least three. They have been fine about it and go off half a dozen at a time, and have splendid walks, etc. “Yes, I’ve forbidden mine to smoke or drink wine in public, but they do it in private, and I don’t think it’s any of my business to meddle with their private lives,” said she. Our nurses talked the matter over at a meeting after I had presented the whole thing tothem, and voted to go on the water-wagon and not to smoke while they were over here, and they are doing it too! I don’t ask, or pry, but tell them how proud I am of them when I can tell other people of the stand my people took by themselves. Miss E. of the American Ambulance, who was down here, was so much impressed by the attitude of my nurses on these matters, she went back to Paris and told her nurses there about it, and said it made a big impression on them. It is hard not to drink wine where so much wine abounds, but we are not out in public places much, and one can always get water or their horrid cider. And the point is, my people are proud of themselves, and are proud to tell the English officers, who offer wine at parties, that we American nurses don’t drink wine. The officers say: “Aren’t you allowed to? your Matron won’t know.” Then they answer with pride, “It isn’t our Matron that won’t let us, we decided not to ourselves.” By that time the officers quit fooling, and say “Well, it’s a mighty good resolution, too.”
You can’t begin to guess how welcome your letters are. Some seem to come through so very quickly now. One of Mother’s dated July 12 reached me July 28th and Elsie’s of the 13th came just as fast. I wish Elsie’s kiddies could make jigsaw puzzles for our men. They are just crazyabout them, and we arrange tables so they can get at them, and they spend hours working on them. It is so much easier for the one-armed ones than reading. Couldn’t Billy make and send me one, or some knitted things. I’d give it myself to one of our boys and have the boy write Billy a letter. I wish I could send you pictures, but we can’t send a single thing. All the kodaks were taken, and we each had to sign a paper that we had none in our possession. I wish I could draw, there are so many wonderfully interesting and picturesque things about here, and right in our camp.
August 8, 1917.
We have just finished our weekly inspection by the “D. D. M. S.,” which means the Deputy Divisional Medical Supervisor, who is a very pleasant Colonel. Every Wednesday at 3.30 we all line up at the entrance to our camp and wait to meet him after he gets through inspecting No. 10 General Hospital. By “we” I mean our “C. O.” Major Fife, our “M. O.” Major Murphy, our Liaison Officer, a British Colonel, the Quartermaster, and the “Matron,” me. It really is a very pleasant occasion. We sit out there in the sun, if there is any, on a park bench and gossip until we see the D. D. M. S. aide appear from out of the last tent of No. 10, then we stand up and walkover a bit to greet him. He always shakes hands with me first and asks me how I am getting along, then salutes the others and has a word or two with them, then turns to me and asks what I want him to see. I usually turn to Major Murphy and ask him if he has anything special to show the Colonel, and Major Murphy says: “Let’s show the Colonel line so and so.” I have accidentally mentioned before what lines I would like to have visited. It is usually tea time when he comes, and, unless we tell the nurses to hold off with the tea until after the inspection is over, the tents are in a mussy state. So every Wednesday I usually warn two or three different lines that I may have them inspected. To-day as a matter of fact we went to three different lines that had not been warned, as Major Murphy wanted to show the Colonel some special cases. After inspection is over, the officers take him and his aide to tea in the Officers’ Mess, or I take him up to the Sisters’ Mess. While we were making rounds to-day, it began to pour, but one of my nice aides brought me an umbrella and Captain Schwab lent me his rain coat to save my clean white dress. When I went down to the point to wait for his Elegance, the sun was shining beautifully, but it was about the second peep of the sun we have had in over a week. And now it is pouring.—I had to stop then and put on my rain hat andcoat and go up to the Sisters’ Quarters with a Lieutenant from the Royal Engineers, who came to inspect the leaks in the roofs of the nurses’ huts. He saw them all right and will have them fixed.
We are wondering so much whether you are getting our letters. Letters coming to us have told of a long stretch of time without word from us; in fact no letters had been received from any of us since we landed in France. Major Murphy cabled Miss Hudson a week ago that we were quite all right, so I hope none of you are worrying. We heard to-day that some postcards I sent on June 24th had been received, so it seems that cards go through safely anyway. I hope that by this time you are getting our letters. Wasn’t that account of my interview with the London reporter absurd? Of course I did not say all that bosh, but I did say that I could not make any comparisons between the American and the English hospitals. That is what she wanted me to do. I saw copies of that interview from San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, and St. Louis papers, which shows how far a little bit of “swank” can go.
It is ten days since I have written at all to any one. We have been very busy, and have all had long hours of work and I have not felt much like writing when I have had the time to do so. The pressure has now let up a bit, but I think it willbe only a temporary let-up. Our hospital is very full and we have many very bad cases. My nurses are beginning to show the effect of the emotional strain. Their nerves are a bit on edge, and I find that when they lose for a few days time-off-duty, as they all have been doing, they are not standing the strain and loss as well as they did the last time we were so busy. I have had about a dozen of them weeping, so I am hunting about for more forms of diversion. The continuous rainy, damp weather, the accumulating emotional strain, and the real hard work are having an effect upon them all that is bothering me. There is a convalescent hospital for Sisters at E., to which I can send one or two at a time for a short rest as soon as I can spare them. But I do not want to have to begin to do that yet. So we are having a little dance in our Mess to-morrow night and perhaps I can get up some bridge parties or some other games. Our sitting-room space is so small we are very much handicapped but if it will only clear up, we could play some outdoor games. You see my real problems are beginning. I would have given a good deal myself to have had some one like Mother to weep on, last Sunday. You can imagine how I miss my older women friends. Naturally I cannot do any weeping here, since I have to be wept on; but there are times when it would be such a comfort to be braced myself.
There was nothing really wrong on Sunday, but that day we had so many sick men to look after, and things got a bit complicated and several nurses got hysterical and I felt things were just too much. Any one would have thought so if they had seen our poor gassed men who are so terribly burnt. One of my most stolid nurses came to me that day and said “I just don’t know how I am going to stand it, taking care of so and so.” I said “Why not?” and she replied, “When he was brought in to us he was so badly burned we could hardly see any part of him that we could touch except the back of his neck; but that isn’t the worst part, instead of cursing or moaning he was singing, and I just can’t stand that.” It isn’t only women that are affected by these things, the men don’t weep often, but they come near it. And they get just as edgey and worn to a frazzle. They lose more sleep than the nurses do, for they have to get up in the night all the time, to operate, or attend to patients, or look after convoys, in or out.
I want to tell you about the most unique day I ever had in my life. It was last Monday when I and five other nurses went out for our gas training. All soldiers receive gas training, as you know, and are fitted with gas helmets, which they take with them to the front. Recently all doctors and nurses who go up to the Casualty Clearing Stations have been given gas training too. Only about ten nurses so far have had this training. We have already sent one surgical team to the front, including one nurse, and I have been quite determined that I shall go as soon as possible. Major M. hasn’t been altogether willing that I should, thinking that I ought to stay here with my children, but I have pointed out to him that Miss T. and the Supervisors could take care of them perfectly well, and he has consented to let me go. I want some real manual work with the patients and I can’t get it here, for I have to do so much office work. I have been going down to the operating room as much as I could to help a little and get my hand in, but I cannot get there often. Major M. says I can’t go with him, for I must not be gone while he is away, so I am to wait and go with Major C. Now about gas training. There is a regular school here where thousands of soldiers are given their training daily. It takes the greater part of the day. I cannot describe it. You will have to wait till I get home. But we had our masks tested first in a room filled with lachrymating gas; we were drilled in putting them on any number of times, for speed is a very important element, so each motion is counted and timed. We were lectured for an hour, the most interesting and barbarous lecture I ever heard in my life. It is at one and the same time the refinement ofscience and civilization, and of hideous barbarism. We had lunch in a dugout with the officers of the school, for the school is in the middle of a huge plain, and then we were taken into a trench filled with lachrymating gas so that we would know what it is like. This without helmets. Then with three officers, one before, one in the middle, and one behind our string of six nurses, and a medical officer standing outside, we were taken into a closed, tunnel-like affair into which chlorine gas was being poured in clouds from special pipes. We of course had our masks on and were all carefully inspected before we went in. This gas would not hurt us, they say, but we get the smell and get used to wearing the masks and are ready afterwards to get our certificate.
August 20, 1917.
The last letter I wrote was August 8th and here it is the 20th. The time goes so very rapidly I forget when I last wrote and am surprised to find that it is over a week. We have not been so very busy these past two weeks, I mean not as we were before then. It has not been raining as much these past few days, to our great relief, and we are beginning to get dried out a bit. When mattresses begin to get moldy inside of huts, it has been pretty damp. The spirits of my people are improving under the let-up of strain, but they are showinga few physical signs of the over-fatigue. We have been having a number of infected fingers and other little things and have really broken our good health record. I have one nurse, Miss S., away at E. for a ten days’ change at a lovely Convalescent Home for Sisters, and another is to go soon,—Miss M. who had a bad attack of bronchitis. Miss S. had a lot of little infections which showed she was below par. Then yesterday we had our most serious trouble, for we had to send Miss S. to the Hospital for Sick Sisters here in Rouen to have an operation due to an old injury. The British officials could not have been more courteous to us. They made it possible for our men to perform the operation and let one of my nurses go and stay with Miss S. The operation was a very long, serious one. Major M. and Major C. operated and Miss S. assisted while I held the arm. The operation was performed in the Operating Room of No. 8 General Hospital, which is five minutes’ ride from the “Sick Sisters” where there is no Operating Room. She was taken back in an ambulance before she was out of ether. The “Sick Sisters” is a lovely place on the other side of Rouen, about 8 miles from here. We go and come in a little Ford Ambulance. Major M. and I have been over to-day, and everything is getting along beautifully. We took our second patient over with us to-day,—Miss P., witha bad infected thumb. We are not supposed to keep a sick sister in Quarters more than 24 hours. We have been very lucky up to now in not having to send any one away. But this hospital is ideal. It is taken care of by British doctors and Sisters and is in a lovely location, higher than the spire of Rouen Cathedral. It is worrying to have my children sick, but it is good to know what excellent care they will get when they are sick enough to be sent away from us.
We have been having some lovely walks these past few days, since the rains have let up. There are loads of beautiful places to go to all around. One can take a little excursion boat from Rouen, down the river a bit, then get off and walk back here through the woods. Several times I have gone with some good walker into town, late in the afternoon, had supper in a most interesting little French café, and walked out here afterwards, making a nice walk of about 7 or 8 miles. The evenings are light and the sunsets wonderful and the crowds going home across the big bridges and out in our direction are most interesting. Ruth has walked one way with me but not the two. She is on day duty now, but I do not get a chance to go out with her very much as I cannot plan my free times much beforehand.
Yesterday we had two very interesting callers: Miss Draper and Miss Hoyt from New York.They looked very smart in neat gray and blue uniform suits with A. R. C. on the shoulder straps. They said they were sent to make inquiries about hospital needs for the American Red Cross. They were very charming and pleasant and I liked very much talking with them. They came just as we were starting to leave to attend to our operation, so we asked them to come back to supper, which they did. They had driven down from Paris in Major (Dr.) Alex. Lambert’s car, a humble Ford, they called it. It looked pretty beautiful to us.
On the 13th I got a telegram from Philip saying he had landed at Liverpool on the 11th. I wonder where he is and hope I shall be able to communicate with him soon. I had to stop there to take a patient’s mother down to see him. The boy is very badly hurt in several places, two legs and one arm. A nice Y. M. C. A. person just turned her over to me. It is a wonderful system that brings a relative out here, almost personally conducted the whole way. This Y. M. C. A. person also brought the brother of another of our patients, but he got here too late and I had to tell him that his brother died last evening. He can be here for the funeral to-morrow anyway, and he can talk to the nurses who looked after the boy in his last hours. The Y. M. C. A. lady took him away for the night, but will bring him back to-morrow.
There is not very much of special interest to chronicle just at present. I am very well myself and trust I am going to stay so. Our food is quite good and sufficient. We all have huge appetites from being out of doors so much.
We are longing for letters very badly. It must be about three weeks now since I have had a line from the States. I get some letters every day, but they are mostly from England about patients or from people in the locality, on business. There goes the third aëroplane that has flown over us in the past half hour. They are such pretty things. I should like to have a ride in one.
With loads of love to you all. This is a stupid letter, I know, but they can’t all be thrilling, for naturally there have to be many unthrilling days.
Julia.
August 28, 1917.
For almost 24 hours we have been having one of the severest wind storms I have ever seen. It has been beautiful. It has been pouring for two days, then last evening it began to blow, and such a whistling and shrieking and rattling as there was. Up in our grove our little huts were pretty well protected, but the trees lashed themselves with fury, and branches broke, and doors and windows slammed and smashed. Several small tents were blown down, but no seriousdamage was done. All day it has been blowing great guns and it has been gray and cold, like a late Fall day. I have been in the office all day doing accounts and other tiresome things, with one or two trips to the lines for various purposes. Miss Taylor had been off all the afternoon. I had tea in the Officers’ Mess, which made a diversion of a few minutes. One of my Colonel friends sent over some sweet peas and dahlias, and I took some down for the officers’ tables, and got invited to tea, so stayed a few minutes. Their mess is a bare, barracky kind of room under the grand stand.
Yesterday I had a little different kind of day. All the morning I was in and out of the office, down on the lines, and all over in the pour. Then at 12:30 the Major and I went over in the ambulance to the Sick Sisters’ Hospital to see our invalids and take out the final stitches. Our lady with the serious operation has been doing wonderfully well from the very beginning. She has been up and about for several days, though she was operated upon only nine days ago. She will be back on duty before very long, if everything continues as it has been going. We shall probably send her to the Sisters’ Convalescent Home for ten days after she is well enough to go. It is such a blessing to have such splendid places to have our sick nurses taken care of. I have onenurse now, at E., recovering from bronchitis, and just this operation case, and the nurse with the badly infected finger, so I feel we are doing mighty well. Well, after our visit to the hospital, we rode back to town in the pour, and had lunch at Rouen’s best hotel, the Hotel de la Poste. It is a regulation Continental hotel, full of staff officers, and has excellent food. We in uniform were the only Americans there, but we saw a number of our English friends. Afterwards we separated to do various errands. I had a long séance at the Base Cashier’s, where I received 18,000 francs from the British Government for my nurse mess, laundry, and field allowance for July, and had to sign my name 138 times. Then I went to the bank and deposited the money and straightened out some difficulties there. That bank is so stupid, and makes so many mistakes; one has to watch them very carefully. Then I paid a rations bill of £91, was picked up by the ambulance, went to buy a sewing machine for the nurses, and drove back to the hospital.
It poured all the time, but I enjoyed being out in the rain, for I was properly dressed. I had on my heavy army boots, leather gaiters, blue serge uniform under my nice belted tan raincoat, and my blue uniform hat. My feet were not exactly dainty and ladylike, but they were so comfortable and dry. All of us who have large enough feet aregetting our shoes from the quartermaster, and those with small feet are bewailing their fate. Our paths are all mud and sharp stones, and the ordinary sole of a woman’s regular shoe lasts about two weeks, and even when new does not prevent the stones from hurting one’s feet. The shoe question is going to be a problem this winter. I started the fashion of wearing these very heavy army shoes, then many clamored for them; since I wore leather gaiters yesterday, Major Murphy says he thinks I had better have all the nurses get them.
Sept. 2, 1917—Sunday: We all have rubber boots. Some had bought them for themselves and some were sent by Mrs. Whitelaw Reid. She is being a regular fairy godmother to us. She has sent me, as a personal present from her, the most wonderful Jaeger sleeping bag. It’s a perfect beauty, and so soft and warm. She is sending sleeping bags for all the nurses, but I imagine not fancy ones like mine. She sent us sheets and pillowcases, which we were so glad to have, as we had been using stained old things that had been issued to us from the hospital supplies. She also has sent extra hot-water bottles, instrument kits, rubber aprons, rubber coats, and hats, and she has just written that she is going to attend to getting gray uniforms for us. She is Chairman of the London Chapter of the American Red Cross,and is apparently much interested in the American nurses that are with the British forces. She has just written that she will send us woolen spencer waists to wear under our uniforms, if I want them. I think I shall let her send them. She has also written that she would like me to run over to London to talk things over with her. I should like to go, but I am afraid I cannot, as Dr. Murphy is just about to go up to the front with a surgical team.
I made my final trip over to the Hospital for Sick Sisters yesterday to see Miss S. before she goes to the Convalescent Home at E. She has entirely recovered, and has made a most remarkable record for herself and our surgeons. We shall have her back on duty in a very few days, probably about ten.
Sept. 3d: This letter has been written at several different sittings, and the result is going to be pretty poor. Now that I have not such interesting descriptions to give you or accounts of adventures, I am almost ashamed to send on these dull commonplace letters. It is a glorious, cool, sunny day to-day, and the hospital is not very heavy. I have been off duty a while, sitting under the trees up in our compound, reading anAtlantic Monthlystory aloud to Ruth as she lay on a blanket on the ground. Her mother has just sent her someCenturysand the AugustAtlantic. Weare getting theScribner, and Dr. Clopton brought me his AugustHarper’s Monthly, so we feel very rich. But for 69 American nurses these few copies won’t go very far. In a little while the band from a neighboring base depot is coming to play for our patients. I have been trying to manage this for some time, and at last the day has come. And to-night there is to be another little dance in our mess. All our tables have to be taken out, but we keep our guests after the ball is over, and make them bring the tables back and help set them for breakfast. To-night our officers are giving the party, and we are the guests, but in our mess, as that is the only possible place for dancing. We have had word from Washington that 30 more nurses are coming to us. We shall then lose our V. A. D.’s, for which I shall be sorry, for though they are more or less of a problem, the advantage of having an interesting group like them in such close contact outweighs any difficulties I may have with them.