XXXI
SOME ARMY NURSES
Thenoble host of Army nurses contains few names which are known to the general public; but for those who scan theGazettewith care there stand out women whose deeds swell the ever-lengthening list of heroines, not only by shining acts of gallantry but by month after month of patient, devoted work. The wonderful Army Medical organisation has covered a vast field, and the endeavour has been throughout the war that in any place, in any region, where sick and wounded soldiers are likely to be congregated, there should always be a supply of nurses to minister to them. Soldiers removed from the battlefield are handed over from the ambulances directly to nurses, and are never from that time onwards, whether in trains, ships, or hospitals, at home, in France, or in the remotest of the battle zones, away from the care of trained nurses.
The short accounts of work which follow have been received from typical nurses, who, following the traditions of their service, specially ask to remain anonymous.
The first type of hospital nearest to the battlefield where nurses are allowed to work is the casualty clearing station. An idea of the work can be gained from a sentence in a nurse’s letter home: “Fights inthe air are very common, but we are so busy we rarely have time to look.” The casualty clearing stations have frequently been under bombardment, and bomb-dropping from aeroplanes is so usual an occurrence as to be hardly worth mentioning. Among the many reports of nurses under shell fire is that of a staff nurse who, “although knocked down by the explosion of a shell, resumed her work until all the patients were evacuated.” Another nursing sister was present in the operating theatre when it was wrecked by the explosion of a 15-inch shell, which wounded her. In spite of her wound she remained at work for five hours, and displayed great courage in continuing to attend to patients.
The following is a description by a nurse of the casualty clearing station work: “We were usually very full of patients—at one time convoys every other day, besides a constant stream in small numbers. Eighty-eight patients passed through the ward I was in in one day, leaving us fifty at night. If the fifty beds were full, the stretchers were placed on trestles until sometimes it was most difficult to move. We had a very good system with the new cases. Perhaps fifty would come in at once. They were got into bed, undressed, washed, and fed. The medical officer went round and looked at all the wounds. If he decided they were to be evacuated, red labels were placed on the bed-rail if they were to go by train lying, blue labels if they were to go sitting, and white labels if they must go by barge. Those for immediate operation had one with ‘Theatre’ written on, pinned on the outer blanket, so that we could tell at a glance what to do for each.”
Another nurse writes: “When I think of theseboys being carried in wounded, ay, wounded almost beyond all recognition, but smiling bravely to the last, it makes one feel proud to be British. As our Padre said, we did God’s own work up there.”
The nurses on the hospital trains have a fine record of service. Though less monotonous than the life in a stationary hospital, it is a curious existence to be living permanently in a train, continually travelling to and fro on one stretch of line, nursing in cramped quarters and under particularly tiring conditions. Three nurses recently received the Military Medal “for conspicuous bravery under fire, on No. 27 Ambulance Train.” The train was carrying a full load of nearly five hundred sick and wounded away by night from a town in the vicinity of the Somme front, when an aeroplane attack began. Five bombs fell in the immediate neighbourhood of the train. The windows were smashed and the lights went out. The train gave a heave which threw some of the patients out of their cots. One of the sisters is reported to have called out to the men in her coach: “Now, be quiet and good, boys, till I light a lamp.” This she managed to do, and the men declared that her hand never trembled. The commanding officer reports that “the sisters went about their work coolly, collectively, and cheerfully, and that by their magnificent conduct they not only allayed alarm among the helpless patients and those suffering from shell shock, but caused both patients and personnel to play up to the standard which they set.”
Wonderful work, too, has been done by the nurses in the hospital ships in conditions of ever-increasing danger. “We landed 1300 wounded yesterday morning,”writes a hospital ship sister on the cross-Channel service. “It was a wonderful experience ... nearly nine hundred were on the decks and steerage with broken arms, etc. All the eighty-four in my ward were stretcher cases.... The work was terrific.” There is now an all too long list of nurses who have suffered shipwreck at the hands of the enemy, while some have lost their lives. When a great ship was recently torpedoed in the Mediterranean the nurses had a narrow escape. One of them has described her experience in the open boat as follows: “Our safety lay in keeping as far from the ship as possible, heavy seas making the pull to land out of the question. The huge swell increased the fear for the safety of our boat, as we were sitting waist-deep in water. Baling was of no use; the harder we baled, the quicker we filled. A cry from the back of the boat caused all eyes to turn in time to see the ship first list to port side, then turn and take a long, straight dip beneath the waves. The sea was wilder and rougher than ever, and three gigantic waves in succession completely swamped our small boat, and all that was left to us now was to cling to the ropes in the boat and to each other.” Eventually, however, the nurses were rescued just in time by a destroyer. Such experiences are no longer rare adventures—they are the hourly anticipation of all workers who serve in hospital ships, since the Germans have ceased to regard the badge of the Red Cross as a sacred and inviolable symbol.
A description is given elsewhere in this book of work in a typical base hospital. If comparisons are possible, perhaps the most unselfish of all hospital work is that which falls to the lot of those sisters andnurses whose duty is the care of the sick and wounded German prisoners. To have to expend their energy and devotion on Germans is unwelcome work for any Englishwomen to-day, but the spirit in which these nurses accept their difficult task is well illustrated by the following account from a sister who is in charge of a ward of German prisoners in a great military hospital in London. She says: “The German prisoner of war in hospital in England comes on the whole as a pleasant surprise, though a nurse gets an unpleasant shock when she is detailed for duty amongst the prisoners. For several months I have been in charge of a large number of wounded Germans, and I find them on the whole quite good patients. At first their cleanliness and habits are not all that can be desired, neither do they bear pain well. But they give very little trouble, and are extremely grateful for what is done for them. They are very observant, and make themselves quite useful as soon as they are able to get about. They are of great assistance to the nurses in carrying round screens, wheeling dressing-trollies, etc. Perhaps the most striking thing about them is the almost womanly care which, without exception, they give to a comrade more sick than themselves. As patients much may be said in their favour, and the work amongst them is a wonderful experience.” No better proof could be given of how the true nurse’s instinct dominates her entire work; her care for her patients, and, above all, her appreciation of their good qualities, overcoming her natural and instinctive prejudice.
To the nurses of the war, it will be admitted by all, belongs the crown of women’s war service. Theirranks contain many heroines whose names and deeds will never be chronicled; but their selfless devotion, their courage, their unquestioning acceptance of any risk, and their willing sacrifice of personal comfort, health, even life itself, will stand for all time in the proudest memorials of these tragic years.