first day I entered the hospital; and I had no reply. On the last day
they were still asking it; and still I had no reply. That question was:
When will the United States enter the war?
Observe the form of that question. They did not say If, but When? For
to most of them it seemed inevitable that, sooner or later, we, the big
sister republic, with kindred form of government and ideals, should
come to see what France, with her fine lucidity, had seen for so long:
that she is battling not alone for her own right to exist as a free,
unenslaved nation--though assuredly she is doing that--but for America
also, and for the doctrine of democracy, as opposed to the doctrines of
force and the gauntleted fist, all over the world.
But also, quite aside from this, the French soldiers want us to come in
because they like us personally. They like us and they want us to fight
upon their side.
Not long ago Georges expressed these sentiments in a nutshell. He
had been lying staring up at the Stars and Stripes, which, with the
Tricolor, was tacked above the ward door.
“It’s pretty,” he remarked pensively, “that starry flag. It’s not bad
at all, truly! And it goes well with ours. It would be pleasant to see
them both flying at large over Verdun--_n’est-ce-pas_, mees?”
As I write this, that wish of a wounded French soldier boy has come
true.
MISS GREENHORN GOES A-NURSING
“Watch that man!” said the nurse to her volunteer aid, nodding toward
a bed that had been tilted at an angle by means of wooden blocks
inserted under the legs, so that its occupant, a wounded Frenchman,
lay downhill, his feet higher than his head. He looked as if he were
past the need of watching and were dead already, that rigid, immobile,
white-draped figure. His face was a livid mask, with heavy shadows
beneath the closed lids, pinched nostrils, deep carved lines of pain
round the bluish mouth, and a black unkempt bristle of beard that
showed up startlingly against the white of the pillows. Not a movement,
not a stir or visible breath or touch of warm living color. He was a
fresh arrival, thirty-six hours from Verdun, and in the morning--if he
lasted that long!--he was going up for operation. Both of his legs were
broken above the knees.
“Watch that man!” warned the nurse again from the door. “I’m going off
duty for two hours. Lord, I’m tired!”
“Oh, I’ll watch him all right,” promised the young aid confidently.
“That’s what I’m here for,” she added with dreamy sweetness.
The nurse walked over to the bed, bent down and took the soldier’s
pulse.
“He seems all right,” she murmured dubiously. “Pretty weak. Well, keep
an eye on him.” She sighed a sigh of pure fatigue and departed.
Left to herself, the auxiliary fussed about the ward for a few minutes,
after which she, too, crossed to the bedside of the man on whom she
had been commanded to keep an eye. For a space she stood staring down
watchfully upon him. That was what she had been told to do, and she did
it conscientiously.
Then, her duty performed, she returned to her seat at the table and
commenced a letter to a girl friend. And while she is thus engaged, and
the stage is set for action--and probably tragic action--let me give a
brief thumbnail sketch of her.
It was a big war hospital in France, and the volunteer aid was a girl
from the Middle West who, in a fine white flame of enthusiasm for
the Allied cause, had come all the way from her native town as fast
as train and ship could bear her in order to nurse the fine, brave,
glorious and magnificent French soldiers. For it was with such glowing
adjectives that she described them, and she could not even think of
them without springing tears. The dear, rugged, war-torn heroes, flat
upon beds of pain, with romantic white bandages bound about their
brows, gazing up at her with unutterable gratitude in their dying
eyes. For it was thus, movie-wise, she pictured them; and she pictured
herself as a nurse, a sort of ministering-angel-of-mercy ingénue cast,
divinely compassionate, dressed for the part in pure spotless white
garments, on her head that very becoming French coif--it had looked so
attractive in the pictures; she really must have one of them--bending
over a dying _poilu_, soothing his fevered brow with cool white
fingers, murmuring gentle words of hope, promising to write to his
mother, and finally kissing him good-by into Heaven. She had read of
nurses doing that, of soldiers whispering faintly, “Kiss me good-by for
my mother!” And she knew--she had a sure instinct--that she would be
good in that part. For, as she told her girl friend, she had so much
sympathy and tenderness in her nature!
So great had been her zeal to help along the above lines that she had
not tarried to take any tiresome, humdrum courses in nursing. For the
war might be over any time, she argued, and she couldn’t bear to lose
a single precious instant. And so she had come right on. She had come
right on, and with fool’s luck she had arrived in Paris at an opportune
moment--for her. A mighty drive was on on the Western Front, and the
backwash of French wounded was pouring in--a vast, unending, sanguinary
tide. It was the tail end of summer, a terrific, heart-breaking summer,
on top of a terrific heart-breaking spring, and no let-up in sight.
Doctors and nurses and aids were exhausted, pegged out, at the end of
their tethers. Some of the workers had collapsed under the abnormal
tension, and the rest toiled on, showing their fatigue by curt crisp
orders, by quick bursts of irritation or sudden explosions of savage
temper. It was into this dynamic atmosphere that romantic little
Miss Greenhorn walked one day, utterly incompetent technically and
spiritually, but self-confident, unabashed, full of her dream of those
fine, splendid French soldiers--poor, wounded darlings!--and strong
in the belief of her own divine function to succor and save--in that
very attractive coif: And they gave her a place. Such was the stern
necessity of the hour. Here was another pair of hands, another pair
of feet; certainly they could scrub tables, carry slops, run errands,
and thus divert fatigue from the more important trained members of
the corps. And so Miss Greenhorn donned her coif--her premonition
concerning it was right; it was, indeed, very fetching--and prepared
blithely to materialize her Florence-Nightingale-Mary-Pickford dream.
They assigned her to a small ward of ten. The orderly had not arrived,
which is a salient characteristic of orderlies, and the nurse bade her
take a pail of slops to the lavabo. It was a heavy pail, too heavy for
her slight shoulders. After that she carried piles of blood-stained
linen to the same destination, and following hard upon that several
morning bedpans. It was not distinguished work, and dainty little Miss
Greenhorn performed these lowly duties with a disdainful nose in air.
’Twas not for this she had traveled all the way to France! The ward
doctor, noting the contemptuous, gingerly fashion in which she held her
burdens at arm’s length from her immaculate linen costume, murmured
ironically to the nurse:
“We’ve got a queen in disguise among us. Look out!”
Presently she was set to make a bed. Now in the course of all her
fair young life Miss Greenhorn had not made half a dozen beds, and,
moreover, she did not deem it a matter of grave importance. Still she
was willing to oblige.
“Poor man!” she breathed, hanging above him tenderly.
“How grateful he must feel toward me!” And, smiling her
Florence-Nightingale-Mary-Pickford smile, she began pulling away a
sheet at random. The soldier let out a yell of fury:
“Imbecile! Are you trying to kill me? Oh, _mon Dieu_! Get out!”
The nurse dropped her work and came running. It appeared that, instead
of the bed sheet proper, the novice had got hold of another which,
quadruple-folded, formed part of the padding of a wooden fracture-box
that held the soldier’s broken leg; and with the first tug she had all
but capsized the entire apparatus and spilled fracture-box, leg and
soldier out upon the floor.
Miss Greenhorn backed off from the scene, deeply mortified. Her
sensitive feelings were hurt. The man had called her an imbecile!
The very first words a French soldier had addressed to her--to her
who had traveled five thousand miles to nurse him--had been not “You
are heavenly kind, miss!” or “Kiss me, for I am dying!” but a brutal
“Imbecile! Get out!” It was a rude jolt to her rosy dream. In addition,
the nurse reprimanded her sharply, and for the next two back-breaking
hours she made beds under a dragon eye of supervision, made and remade
them.
Everything she did was wrong, clumsy, maladroit, and had to be altered
twice, thrice, while the men turned pale under the prolonged strain and
sweated or muttered nervously “Let be, mees! Enough! Oh, good God!”
After her first mishap they were deadly afraid of her. And so sensitive
spots went unbathed, uneased; temperatures shot up, and infected wounds
began to throb, while little Miss Greenhorn took her first lesson
in nursing. It was hard upon her, for everyone within the circle of
her inexpert activities became irritated and vented their irritation
freely; but it was even harder on her victims, the soldiers of France
she had come so far to serve.
After two hours of constant stooping, kneeling and lifting heavy and
helpless men, little red lightnings of pain began to play up and
down her spine, her shoulder muscles ached cruelly, and there was
a dull roaring in her ears. Her feet, too, already swollen in their
fashionable white buckskin pumps, began to hurt atrociously and to show
a congested purple beneath the transparent white-silken hose. Above all
things on earth, she desired to sit down five minutes and rest. Instead
of this the nurse bade her disinfect a bed. Another unwieldy mattress
to tug and haul about!
“Do I have to put this strong stuff into the water?” she demanded
plaintively, holding up the disinfecting fluid. “It’ll spoil my hands!”
She was proud of those hands. They were delicate and cool and white.
And, besides, they were part of the stage property of her movie dream.
“If you intend to disinfect the bed, do so,” returned the nurse dryly.
“The case in that bed died of gas gangrene, and I shouldn’t care to
expose another patient to the microbes, even at the risk of spoiling
your hands.”
“May I have a pair of rubber gloves then?”
“We’re short of rubber gloves just now. What we have are needed in the
operating room.”
Miss Greenhorn bent to her task in silence. Her cheeks were burning and
her eyes were blurred with tears of rage and fatigue. As she stooped,
dabbing futilely here and there with her cloth, the blunt voice of the
nurse came to her:
“Don’t shirk your work that way. That isn’t half disinfected. Here,
give me the rag.” And, squatting comfortably, she proceeded to give a
thorough demonstration. “Don’t be afraid to use a little elbow grease,”
she concluded ironically.
Miss Greenhorn bit back an angry retort. She had not come over to
France to do low, menial, scrubby, grubby work and then be treated like
a servant. At home she gave orders instead of receiving them. But aloud
she only said “Thank you!” so low that the nurse glanced at her keenly
and added: “Never mind. You’ll learn some day. Now suppose you wash all
the bedside tables. Remove everything from them first. And after that,
if there’s time, scrub the big table. Then the men’s _déjeuner_ will be
coming along. Have you got the hot drinks from the diet kitchen? Ah,
but I told you to do that always before eleven o’clock! The kitchen’s
closed now and the poor chaps have lost their nourishment for the
morning. Try not to fail on that again. Oh, before you begin on the
tables, please make me a hot compress for Number Two. You don’t know
how? Very well!” And with a smothered exclamation of impatience she
hurried off to make it herself.
Somewhat subdued, Miss Greenhorn began on her tables. A few minutes
later a peculiar sound from the adjacent bed caused her to look up and
then cry hastily:
“Oh, nurse! That poor man--Number Six--he’s vomiting.”
But the nurse, with the hot compress and a patient’s broken arm in her
hands, could not disengage herself instantly. Moreover, her patience
for the moment had gone into complete eclipse.
“When a man vomits, don’t call me!” she barked savagely. “Hold
something!”
But unfortunately little Miss Greenhorn could find nothing to hold.
Terribly disconcerted, she flew round wildly in a circle, like a kitten
chasing its tail, seeking a suitable vessel. But nothing seemed to
present itself to her distracted gaze. The pail? Obviously too large!
The bedside wine cup? Obviously too small! Oh, where---- But by this
time the nurse had caught up a basin and was supporting the sick man’s
head.
“He’s gone through everything,” she said wearily. “We’ll have to change
the entire bed. Fetch some linen. And next time use a little horse
sense, if you’ve such a thing concealed about your person.”
During the change the patient groaned horribly. The sweat of exhaustion
poured from his face. His flesh was clammy.
“Get some hot-water bottles,” the nurse ordered tersely. “No, never
mind, I’ll do it. You’d probably scald him!”
Miss Greenhorn returned to her tables, the corners of her mouth dipping
like those of a baby whose hands have been slapped. And during the rest
of the morning Number Six’s white face reproached her mutely.
In the afternoon she left another wide swath of errors behind her.
The men thanked her politely, but declined her kind offers to
shake up their pillows. When she took the temperatures she broke
three thermometers hand-running, and French thermometers were rare
commodities.
“I think they must have been cracked,” she apologized. “They snapped so
easily.”
Later, marking up the temperature charts, she made atrocious blunders.
Normal patients suddenly exhibited fever peaks high as the Himalayas.
The astounded ward doctor, discovering such a one and its source,
swore fervently and voted her a pest, with a double-barreled profane
adjective attached. That night her feet ached so that she cried when
she removed her shoes. And for that night and many nights thereafter
she had her dinner in bed and fell to sleep immediately from sheer
exhaustion.
And now, the résumé complete, let us skip a week and return to Miss
Greenhorn as she sat writing a letter to her friend. Every few minutes,
true to her orders, she had risen for a look at the patient she had
been set to watch. She watched him dutifully, ignorantly. She was
still Miss Greenhorn, with one short week of experience. Not once
did it occur to her to query: What am I to watch this man for? What
is likely to happen? What shall I do if it does? And yet she was
not a particularly stupid girl. She was rather above the average in
intelligence and eagerness; but so firmly had she riveted her gaze
upon the romantic, the false, the pseudo-æsthetic aspects of her job,
that she was temporarily blinded to its actual features. But that the
unriveting process had already begun and was somewhat painful was
evidenced by her letter to her friend. And as the man she was set to
watch seems quiet, ominously quiet, let us peep a moment over her
shoulder:
“DEAREST AMELIA: This is the very first time I have had a chance to
sit down since I entered the hospital a week ago to-day. And oh,
Amelia, before I say another word, I want to tell you: Don’t come
over! Don’t, Amelia, don’t! With your delicate health you never would
be able to stand it. The work is simply terrible--hard, brutal,
back-breaking, menial. You should see my poor hands! And my feet! And
never a single word of thanks from anybody. They just seem to take
you and your sacrifices for granted, and they expect you to know how
to do things letter-perfect, right off the reel. Of course I don’t
know anything.
“The other day a soldier called me an imbecile, and that’s exactly
what I am, Amelia, a proud, presumptuous, ignorant little fool! But I
never dreamed how dangerous it is to be so ignorant. The nurse gives
you some mean, insignificant little job that does not seem to amount
to a hill of beans, and in the end it turns out to be something
horribly important, fraught with terrible consequences. For example:
The other day a man had a relapse and all but died simply because
I couldn’t find something quickly for him to vomit into. The first
consequence was that we had to change his bed. The second consequence
was that the extra effort fatigued him so he couldn’t eat any
lunch. The third consequence was that, having eaten nothing, in the
afternoon he had a relapse. For a while I thought he was going to
die. Those were dark hours for me, Amelia! That night I offered to
sit up with him--to make it up, you see. But the ward doctor said,
‘No, let’s give the poor devil a fighting chance!’ That was horrid,
wasn’t it? He’s atrocious, that young ward doctor, and he never loses
a chance to intimate what he thinks of my presumption in offering my
untrained services. He says my nerve, if he could get an X-ray of it,
would make the celebrated Colossus of Rhodes look like a pygmy. He
asked me seriously if I wasn’t ashamed when I woke up in the middle
of the night ‘to be so dumb--not damn, but dumb--ignorant!’ And I am,
Amelia. But I really think I’m beginning slowly to learn. There’s a
sick soldier they’ve set me to watch right now. So horribly pale! So
still! One----”
At this point Miss Greenhorn’s pen trailed off and she sat bolt
upright, staring before her into space. A sudden thought had smitten
her, almost with the force of a blow. Why was he so pale? Why was he
still? Why, in short, had she been set to watch him? She rose rather
hurriedly and went to his bedside. She would ask him what was the
matter. Really it was an inspiration!
“How are you?” she questioned gently.
“_J’ai froid_,” came the faint murmur from rigid lips.
“Ah! Cold, are you? Then I’ll get you some hot-water bottles and
they’ll make you warm. Nice and warm!” And Miss Greenhorn sped away
on her mission, delighted to be of service. “_Voilà!_” she cooed
soothingly a few minutes later, slipping the heated bags into the foot
of the bed. “Now you’ll soon be warm! Nice and warm and cozy!” And she
leaned above him solicitously, still vaguely troubled. Certainly he was
ghastly pale!
It was at this juncture that the ward doctor, a busy, brusque,
discerning young gentleman, blew into the room with a--
“Hullo, Miss---- How’s that fellow----” A single glance at the fellow
in question stopped the words as if a sudden hand had been clapped over
his mouth. He sprang forward and threw down the covers. The soldier lay
in a pool of blood. “My God! Hemorrhaging! Why didn’t you call me?”
He wheeled on her savagely. But Miss Greenhorn’s face had blanched
almost as white as the counterpane. Her hand went up to her trembling
lips.
“I--I--I didn’t know!” she whispered. “He complained of feeling cold,
and so I--I gave him hot-water bottles.”
“Yah! In case of hemorrhage, when a man’s bleeding to death, for
first-aid apply hot-water bottles! Fine! Where’s that tourniquet? I
tied it onto the foot of the bed myself.”
“The--what?” stammered Miss Greenhorn, immeasurably terrified. She
quailed before the look in his eye.
“Tourniquet! That piece of rubber tubing.”
“O-o-oh! That terra-cotta rubber thing, you mean! It made the bed look
untidy and so I undid it. Let me see. Where----”
But the door had already slammed upon the doctor, who returned
immediately with a tourniquet from the adjacent ward. Fortunately it
was not an arterial, but a slow, oozing hemorrhage, and so the man did
not die; but that was not Miss Greenhorn’s fault. And the doctor did
not spare her:
“Why did you suppose his bed was tilted up so that his feet were higher
than his head? Don’t you know that in itself is a sign of hemorrhage?
Why did you suppose that tourniquet was tied to the foot of this
particular bed? Do you see it on any of the other beds? That’s another
sign! And what did you suppose you were set to watch him for anyhow?
Zeppelins? You’ve been here a week now. Tell me, are you solid ivory
from the neck up?”
I am not going to repeat the remainder of his scathing remarks,
for he was angry and his nerves were none of the best. In justice
to Miss Greenhorn it must be said that she took her whaling like
a gentleman. She did not once glance at the doctor, but kept her
eyes fixed on the French soldier whose life she had jeopardized by
her criminal ignorance. And in that moment she jettisoned the last
fragments of her ministering-angel dream. Cool hands, fevered brows,
the kiss-me-for-I-am-dying business--all the false, sentimental rubbish
with which she had stuffed her romantic young head she let go by the
board forever.
And that, for us, is the end of Miss Greenhorn, save to mention that
she is a real person. She told me the tale herself six months later,
with tears only half of laughter in her eyes. And then she affixed the
moral, which in brief is this: That not all of France’s enemies are
behind the German guns.
From this solitary episode one may deduce most of the qualifications,
both natural and acquired, that a volunteer nurse’s aid should possess
before ever she sets foot inside a war hospital. First of all she must
have health. She must have the kind of health that does not break or
crack or crock or show signs of wear in bad weather; the kind of health
that can pile one hard day on top of another hard day, and one hard
week on top of another hard week, and one hard month on top of another
hard month, and keep right on without flagging or asking the captain
to stop the ship so she can get off and walk. Every auxiliary signs
on for a period of at least three months, preferably six months; and
in some hospitals abroad they sign on for the remainder of the war.
The work is too severe for a delicate constitution; it has been known
to put a crimp in a tough one; and it is unfair both to the soldier
and to the hospital plant to have human machinery that is apt to break
down any minute. This implies youth, resiliency, reservoirs of stored
strength, the unspent increment of physical endurance; and, therefore,
anyone outside the ages from twenty to forty should ponder deeply
before entering this most exacting branch of the service.
Aside from good general health, the volunteer aid should possess what
physicians term a high threshold to disease. She should not catch
things readily. Microbes should be unable to obtain a foothold. In this
respect even healthy people vary widely. One person will take the mumps
if there is a case in the next county; another may sleep in the same
bed with the victim and go unscathed. There was a young woman in our
ward who caught everything. Every little pirate microbe that sailed the
invisible seas of air with his jolly skull-and-crossbones flag knew her
for a friendly island, had her marked down in his log book, and put in
for food and repairs, sure of safe harborage.
Tonsillitis, grippe, infected finger, swollen glands, infected eye,
tonsillitis again--she had them one after another as fast as she
could, and she finally came home with the jaundice!
But let us suppose that the candidate has passed her physical
examination with flying colors; that her back is strong; that her feet
have not the slightest tendency to fallen arch; that she can eat stewed
horse without a regretful pang; that she sleeps like the traditional
top at night, and rises from her slumbers fresh as the traditional
daisy. There are still other natural qualifications to reckon with:
She must be able to subordinate herself to the will of others, to take
orders, to take hard, disagreeable, and often what she may consider
unjust orders from her superiors without opening her mouth to complain.