Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front Part 21

When we got to railhead at 10.15 P.M. the R.T.O. said it was too late to communicate with the Field Ambulance, and so I slept peacefully in the officer's bunk with my own rugs and cushion. We had tea about 9 P.M. I had had dinner on No.--.

This morning the first thing I saw was No.-- A.T. slumbering in the sun on the opposite line, so I might just as well have come up in her, except that there was another Sister in my bed.

After a sketchy wash in the supply train, and a cup of early tea from the officer's servant, I packed up and went across to No.-- for breakfast; many jeers at my having got the sack so soon.

The R.T.O. has just been along to say that Major ---- of No.-- Clearing Hospital here will send me along in one of his motor ambulances.

11 A.M.--Had an interesting drive here in the M.A. through a village packed with men billeted in barns and empty houses--the usual aeroplane buzzing overhead, and a large motor ambulance convoy by the wayside.

We are in the town itself, and the building is labelled No.-- F.A.

Dressing Station for Officers. The men are in a French Civil Hospital run very well by French nuns, and it has been decided to keep the French and English nurses quite separate, so the only difference between the two hospitals is that the one for the men has French Sisters, with R.A.M.C. orderlies and M.O.'s, and the other for officers has English Sisters, with R.A.M.C. orderlies and M.O.'s. There are forty-seven beds here (all officers). One Army Sister in charge, myself next, and two staff nurses--one on night duty. There are two floors; I shall have charge of the top floor.

We are billeted out, but I believe mess in the hospital.

All this belongs to the French Red Cross, and is lent to us.

The surgical outfit is much more primitive even than on the train, as F.A.'s may carry so little. The operating theatre is at the other hospital.

As far as I can see at present we don't have the worst cases here, except in a rush like Neuve Chapelle.

It will be funny to sleep in a comfortable French bed in an ordinary bedroom again. It will be rather like Le Mans over again, with a billet to live in, and officers to look after, but I shall miss the Jocks and the others.

_Later._--Generals and "Red Hats" simply bristle around. A collection of them has just been in visiting the sick officers. We had a big Good Friday service at 11, and there is another at 6 P.M. The Bishop of London is coming round to-day.

_Still Good Friday_, 10 P.M.--Who said Active Service? I am writing this in a wonderful mahogany bed, with a red satin quilt, in a panelled room, with the sort of furniture drawing-rooms have on the stage, and electric light, and medallions and bronzes, and oil-paintings and old engravings, and blue china and mirrors all about. It is a huge house like a Chateau, on the Place, where Generals and officers are usually billeted. The fat and smiling caretaker says she's had two hundred since the war. She insisted on pouring eau-de-Cologne into my hot bath. It is really a lovely house, with polished floors and huge tapestry pictures up the staircase. And all this well within range of the German guns. After last night, in the A.S.C officer's kind but musty little chilly second-cla.s.s carriage, it is somewhat of a change. And I hadn't had my clothes off for three days and two nights. This billet is only for one night; to-morrow I expect I shall be in some grubby little room near by. It has taken the Town Commandant, the O.C. of No.-- F.A., a French interpreter, and an R.H.A. officer and several N.C.O.'s and orderlies, to find me a billet--the town is already packed tight, and they have to continue the search to-morrow.

This afternoon I went all over the big French hospital where our men are. The French nuns were charming, and it was all very nice. The women's ward is full of women and girls _blessees_ by sh.e.l.ls, some with a leg off and fractured--all very cheerful.

One sh.e.l.l the other day killed thirty-one and wounded twenty-seven--all Indians.

I am not to start work till to-morrow, as the wards are very light; nearly all the officers up part of the day, so at 6 P.M. I went to the Bishop of London's mission service in the theatre. A staff officer on the steps told me to go to the left of the front row (where all the red hats and gold hats sit), but I funked that and sat modestly in the last row of officers. There were about a hundred officers there, and a huge solid pack of men; no other woman at all. The Bishop, looking very white and tired but very happy, took the service on the stage, where a Padre was thumping the hymns on the harmonium (which shuts up into a sort of matchbox). It was a voluntary service, and you know the nearer they are to the firing line the more they go to church. It was extraordinarily moving. The Padre read a sort of liturgy for the war taken from the Russians, far finer than any of ours; we had printed papers, and the response was "Lord, have mercy," or "Grant this, O Lord." It came each time like ba.s.s clockwork.

Troops are just marching by in the dark. Hundreds pa.s.sed the hospital this afternoon. I must go to sleep.

The Bishop dashed in to see our sick officers here, and then motored off to dine with the Quartermaster-General. He's had great services with the cavalry and every other brigade.

_Easter Eve_, 10 P.M.--Have been on duty all day till 5 P.M. They are nearly all "evacuated" in a few days, so you are always getting a fresh lot in.

Another Army Sister turned up to-day in a motor from Poperinghe to take the place of the two who were originally here, who have now gone.

At six this morning big guns were doing their Morning Hate very close to us, but they have been quiet all day. Two days ago the village two and a half miles south-east of us was sh.e.l.led.

I found my own new billet this morning before going on duty; it is in a very old little house over a shop in a street off the big Place. It is a sort of attic, and I am not dead sure whether it is clean on top and lively underneath, but time will show. The shop lady and her daughter Maria Therese are full of zeal and kindness to make me comfortable, but they stayed two hours watching me unpack and making themselves agreeable! And when I came in from dinner from the cafe, where we now have our meals (quite decent), she and papa and M.T. drew up a chair for me to _causer_ in their parlour, to my horror.

At 8 P.M. the town suddenly goes out like a candle; all lights are put out and the street suddenly empty. After that, at intervals, only motorcyclists buzz through and regiments tramp past going back to billets. They sound more warlike than anything. Such a lot are going by now.

_Easter Sunday_, 3 P.M.--The service at 7 this morning in the theatre was rather wonderful. Rows of officers and packs of men.

We have been busy in the ward all the morning. I'm off 2-5, and shall soon go out and take E.'s chocolate Easter eggs to the men in the hospice. The officers have any amount of cigarettes, chocs., novels, and newspapers.

A woman came and wept this morning with my billeter over their two sons, who are prisoners, not receiving the parcels of _tabac_ and _pain_ and _gateaux_ that they send. They think we ought to starve the German prisoners to death!

This morning in the ward I suddenly found it full of Gold Hats and Red Tabs; three Generals and their A.D.C.'s visiting the sick officers.

_Easter Monday._--It is a pouring wet day, and the mud is Flanderish.

Never was there such mud anywhere else. A gunner-major has just been telling me you get a fine view of the German positions from the Cathedral tower here, and can see sh.e.l.ls bursting like the pictures in 'The Sphere.' He said his guns had the job of peppering La Ba.s.see the last time they sh.e.l.led this place, and they gave it such a dusting that this place has been let severely alone since. He thinks they'll have another go at this when we begin to get hold of La Ba.s.see, but the latter is a very strong position. It begins to be "unhealthy" to get into any of the villages about three miles from here, which are all heaps of bricks now.

I'm leaving my billet to-morrow, as they want us to be in one house. And our house is the Maire's Chateau, the palatial one, so we shall live in the lap of luxury as never before in this country! And have hot baths with eau-de-Cologne every night, or cold every morning. And the woman is going to faire our cuisine there for us, so we shan't have to wait hours in the cafe for our meals. There is only one waiter at the cafe, who is a beautiful, composed, wrapt, silent girl of 16, who will soon be dead of overwork. She is not merely pretty, but beautiful, with the manners of a princess!

I shall be glad to get away from my too kind billeters; every night I have to sit and _causer_ before going to bed, and Ma-billeter watches me in and out of bed, and tells me my nightgown is _tres pratique_, and just like the officers Anglais have. But she calls me with a lovely cup of coffee in the morning. They've been so kind that I dread telling them I've got to go.

An officer was brought in during the night with a compound-fractured arm. He stuck a very painful dressing like a brick to-day, and said to me afterwards, "I've got three kids at home; they'll be awfully bucked over this!" He had said it was "nothing to write home about."

Another, who is chaffing everybody all day long, was awfully impressed because a man in his company--I mean platoon--who had half his leg blown off, said when they came to pick him up, "Never mind me--take so-and-so first"--"just like those chaps you read of in books, you know." It was decided that he meant Sir Philip Sidney.

Yesterday afternoon I had a lovely time taking round chocolate Easter eggs to our wounded in the French hospital. The sweetest, merriest _Ma-Soeur_ took me round, and insisted on all the orderlies having one too. They adore her, and stand up and salute when she comes into the ward; and we had enough for the _jeunes filles_ and the grannies in the women's ward of _blessees_. They were a huge success. Those men get very few treats. She also showed me the Maternity Ward.

_Tuesday, April 6th_, 10 P.M.--I am writing in bed in my lovely little room overlooking the garden, and facing some nice red roofs and both the old Towers of the town (one dating from le temps des Espagnols) in le Chateau, instead of in my attic in the narrow street where you heard the tramp of the men who viennent des tranches in the night. We had a lovely dinner, served by the fat and _tres aimable_ Marie in a small, panelled dining-room, with old oak chairs and real silver spoons (the first I've met since August). So don't waste any pity for the hardships of War! And an officer with a temperature of 103 explained that he'd been sleeping for sixteen days on damp sandbags "among the dead Germans."

Nothing coming in anywhere, but when it does begin we shall get them.

The A.D.M.S. is going to arrange for us to go up with one of his motor ambulances to one of the advance dressing stations where the first communication trench begins! It is at the corner of a road called "Harley Street," which he says is "too unhealthy," where I mayn't be taken. Won't it be thrilling to see it all?

Officers' "trench talk" is exactly like the men's, only in a different language.

It has been wet and windy again, so I did not explore when I was off this afternoon, but did my unpacking and settling in here. With so many moves I have got my belongings into a high state of mobilisation, and it doesn't take long.

Last night at the cafe, one of the despatch riders played Chopin, Tchaikowsky, and Elgar like a professional. It was jolly. The officers are awfully nice to do with on the whole.

_Wednesday, April 7th._ _In bed,_ 10.30 P.M.--It has been a lovely day after last night's and yesterday's heavy rain. We are busy all day admitting and evacuating officers. The lung one had to be got ready in a hurry this morning, and Mr L. took him down specially to the train.

A very nice Brigade-Major came in, in the night, with a sh.e.l.l wound in the shoulder. This morning a great jagged piece was dug out, with only a local anaesthetic, and he stuck it like a brick, humming a tune when it became unbearable and gripping on to my hand.

I was off at 5 P.M., and went to dig out Marie Therese from my old billet, to come with me to Beuvry, the village about two and a half miles away that was sh.e.l.led last week; it is about half-way to the trenches from here. It was a lovely sunsetty evening, and there was a huge stretch of view, but it was not clear enough to make anything out of the German line. She has a tante and a grandmere there, and has a "_laisser-pa.s.ser soigner une tante malade_" which she has to show to the sentry at the bridge. I get through without. The tante is not at all _malade_--she is a cheery old lady who met us on the road. M.T. pointed me out all the sh.e.l.l holes. We met and pa.s.sed an unending stream of khaki, the men marching back from their four days in the trenches, infant officers and all steadily trudging on with the same coating of mud from head to foot, packs and rifles carried anyhow, and the Trench Look, which can never be described, and which is grim to the last degree. Each lot had a tail of limping stragglers in ones and twos and threes. I talked to some of these, and they said they'd had a very "rough" night last night--pouring rain--water up to their knees, and standing to all night expecting an attack which didn't come off; but some mines had been exploded meant for their trench, but luckily they were ten yards out in their calculations, and they only got smothered instead of blown to bits. And they were sticking all this while we were snoring in our horrible, warm, soft beds only a few miles away. We went on past some of the famous brick stacks through the funny little village full of billets to the church, where le Salut was going on. We pa.s.sed a dressing station of No.-- Field Ambulance. The grandmere had two sergeants billeted with her who seemed pleased to have a friendly chat.

Some of the men I said good-night to were so surprised (not knowing our grey coat and hat), I heard them say to each other "English!" Marie Therese simply adores the _Anglais_--they are so _gais_, such _bon courage_, they laugh always and sing--and they have "_beaucoup de fiancees francaises pour pa.s.ser le temps_!" She told me they had yesterday a boy of eighteen who was always _triste_, but _bien poli_, and he knows six languages and comes from the University of London. When he left for the trenches he said, "_Je vais a la mort_," but he has promised to come and see them on Sat.u.r.day or Sunday, "_s'il n'est pas mort, ou blesse_," she said, as an afterthought. Her own young man is _a la Guerre_, and she is making her trousseau. They do beautiful embroidery on linen.

I was pretty tired when we got back at 8 o'clock, as it was a good five-mile walk, part of the way on fiendish cobble-stones, and we are on our feet all day at the Dressing Station. But I am very fit, and all the better for the excellent fresh food we have here. No more tins of anything, thank goodness!

_Thursday, April 8th._--Talking of billets, a General and his Staff are coming to this Chateau to-morrow and we three have got to turn out, possibly to a house opposite on the same square, which is empty. We live in terror of unknown Powers-that-Be suddenly sending us down. The C.O.

and every one here are very keen that we should be as comfortably billeted as possible. He said to-day, "Later on you may get an awful place to live in." Of course we are aiming at becoming quite indispensable! If you can once get your Medical Officers to depend on you for having everything they want at hand, and for making the patients happy and contented, and the orderlies in good order, they soon get to think they can't do without you.

There are two nice tea-shops where all the officers of the 1st and 2nd Divisions go and have tea.