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 these boys 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 and
nurses 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. Their ranks 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.