CHRISTMAS DAY AT STE. EUVERTE.--GOING THE ROUNDS.--YOUNG
HEROES.--ARRIVALS DURING THE NIGHT.--A GLIMPSE OF THE DEAD-HOUSE.
I have not, so far, given a description of our new Hospital, nor any
particulars in connection with individual cases; and I cannot do better
than submit to my reader a revised copy of some notes I made while on
duty that Christmas night. These may furnish a tolerable idea of the
nature of our work, and of such reflections as the time and place
suggested to me.
The Church of Ste. Euverte at Orleans is a fine old Gothic building, in
the style of the twelfth century. Its exterior would present few
interesting details, except for the crumbling granite walls, and the
ancient carved portals, on which the hand of time may be plainly traced.
The interior also is devoid of ornament; but the rich stained glass in
the windows is not likely to be equalled by any attempt of our modern
artists in the same line.
The nave is about 300 feet long, and broad in proportion, while the
plain vaulted roof springs lightly from the massive pillars which
support it. The High Altar is of granite, as well as those in the
chapels, and they in nowise relieve the cold stern appearance of the
building. It had now become the third Hospital which we of the
Anglo-American Ambulance had set up in this hotly-contested city.
It was late on Christmas Eve that I repaired to the Church, and took my
turn of night duty. The night was bitterly cold. It had been freezing
for weeks, and the snow lay deep and crisp underfoot. Let me describe
what followed in the present tense.
As I approach the long narrow street, at the end of which the gloomy
mass of buildings can be seen through the darkness, I hear the steady
pace of the Prussian sentinel who keeps guard before the gate. The dim
light of a lantern hanging above the door shows my uniform as I pass,
and the soldier, checking his half-uttered "Halt!" salutes. The door is
opened by a Zouave, who also salutes; but this time in French fashion.
He is an old Mexican campaigner, and wears, among other decorations, the
war-medal given by his now deposed Sovereign, who is spending Christmas
at Wilhelmshöhe, a broken exile. He swings open the heavy, studded oak
door, and I enter. I pause for a moment to contemplate a scene, the
misery and pain of which none could realise who have not beheld it.
Along the central aisle, to the right and left, are double rows of
beds, each with its suffering occupant. On every pillar hangs a lamp,
one to every four beds. Precisely the same arrangement has been made
along the side aisles.
Between every fourth and fifth pillar a stove is burning, with the
bright and cheery blaze of a wood fire. Thus a dim light is cast over
the beds of the patients, but not sufficient to penetrate the gloom of
the lofty roof. Impressive as the sight is taken as a whole, the deep
interest which it excites is heightened by the thought that every one of
those 300 beds bears its wounded sufferer, and that each sufferer could
tell his own long history of privation and pain.
Assuredly the saddest congregation that this old Church has ever held!
Around the stoves are huddled knots of soldiers, French and German,
whose common affliction has changed bitter foes into sympathising
friends. These are men whose wounds are comparatively light; and who,
poor fellows, for five or six days have not enjoyed the privilege of a
bed. They lie in all postures around the fires, trying to sleep,--a
difficult task with a broken arm, wrist, or rib, or with severe flesh
wounds; and they have no covering of any kind, and only a little straw
and the hard flags to rest upon.
Passing along the lines of beds are Sisters of Charity, who administer
every comfort they can, arrange the patients' beds, smoothe their
pillows, and whisper words of solace and consolation. In the stillness
of the Christmas night the tones of agony and suffering echo through the
Church, which for centuries has resounded at that hour with the grand
and solemn music of the Midnight Mass. What a comment on the words of
the "_Gloria in Excelsis_," in which these Christians say they believe!
"_Et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis._" Man, I cannot but observe
to myself, thou art as much a scandal as a mystery to the reflecting
mind!
I begin my rounds, visiting first the more urgent cases. To some of the
greatest sufferers I give morphia in pills, or else introduce it in
solution under the skin, by means of a syringe with a sharp perforated
needle affixed. The effect is wonderful. In a few minutes they are out
of pain, and fall asleep quietly. In this manner I am compelled to
silence those whose groans would disturb the other patients. I now go on
in succession, stopping at every bed to satisfy myself as to the
condition of its occupant, giving medicines when required, arranging
bandages here and there, and soothing with hypnotics those whose wounds
prevent their sleeping.
This done, I repair to the sacristy, which serves the purpose of a
surgery and a waiting-room, and read before the fire for an hour, when I
return to the Church to see that all is right, and that the infirmarians
are awake and at their posts. As I stand in the Sanctuary and listen, I
can hear the heavy tread of the watchers pacing to and fro: nothing
else, save the heavy breathing of the sleepers. What a change in less
than two hours! The cries of pain are silenced, and the restless day of
suffering is succeeded by a night of calm repose;--a pleasant sight for
the surgeon, and one which is entirely due to that friend of humanity,
so long as rightly administered,--the drug opium. To be prepared,
however, for emergencies, I return to my room, and lay out my
instruments so as to be ready for an operation if necessary; secondary
hemorrhage, and such-like mishaps, being of frequent occurrence.
Were such an accident to take place, I have but to send for my "sleeping
partner," Dr. May, whose quarters are next door; and who is only bound
to be present when sent for by the responsible officer on duty for the
night. Thus as the hours advance, and my previous hard day's work begins
to tell upon me, I grow sleepier every moment, and am soon nodding in my
chair before the fire. But I have scarcely become unconscious when I am
roused by an _infirmier_, who tells me that two men are awake and in
their intense agony are creating a disturbance. I rub my eyes, shake
myself together, and proceed to see them.
The first I come to is a young Prussian artillery volunteer. He is only
sixteen, a mere boy, with large blue eyes, fair soft complexion, and
fair hair, and, though stoutly built, has very white and delicate
hands. His graceful and engaging manner, and his developed mind, show
that he is of a good German family. Yet he is but a private soldier.
What has induced him to leave his home and country at such an age? Two
reasons alone,--hatred of the French, and a thirst for glory. Poor boy!
his leg has been shattered by the fragment of a shell. His large tearful
eyes turn to me as I approach his bed, and a kind smile comes over his
face, so pale and worn with suffering. He takes my hand, and begins his
sad story,--of a kind familiar enough by this time. He tells me that the
pain from his wounds has become insupportable; that he can neither eat
nor sleep; that every day makes him thinner and weaker; and that he
thinks he shall not last long. With as favourable a forecast as I can
muster up, I try to cheer him, and give the poor fellow hopes which I
fear can never be realised. I bid him go to sleep. I give him some
morphia to help that consummation, wish him good-night, and leave him.
My next patient is a subject of special interest to me. I received him
some weeks ago into my ward, suffering from a comminuted fracture of the
leg; in other words, the limb was very badly crushed. He gave me to
understand that he came of a respectable and wealthy family in
Wiesbaden. He was the only son of his mother, and the last of his name;
and in saving his life, I should save his mother's too, for he believed
that she would not survive him.
Never did I see a man cling more passionately to life, and never had one
stronger motives for so doing; but never again did I see a man so ill
and yet so incredulous of his danger. Now in the stillness of this
Christmas night I come to his bedside to see him die. For days and
nights I have helped him all in my power; I have denied him nothing that
I could give him; and he has always been so gentle and affectionate that
every trouble I took for him was truly a pleasure. He speaks French and
English fluently, is a graduate of the University of Bonn, and is young
and good-looking. All through his illness he has had one thought in his
mind, and that was his mother. He now complains of excessive weariness
and pains in every part of his body. He is an Evangelical, and at my
request the clergyman had visited him late that evening. I speak to him
in a low voice, and tell him that I fear he is not better. It appears
that his last efforts at speaking have been too much for him; he is now
too weak and prostrate to do more than gasp out something about his
mother, home, and Fatherland. Now his lips quiver, now they cease to
move, and a cold sweat stands out in large beads over his face. I
smoothe his pillow and wipe his forehead, as I had often done before.
This makes him alive to the fact that I am in my old place at his
bedside. He takes my hand, presses it feebly in his, looks earnestly
into my face, and becomes again unconscious. By this time several of the
Sisters and one or two of the infirmarians have assembled around the bed
of the dying man. For some minutes the brave fellow remains motionless;
his breathing becomes shorter and shorter; when suddenly he starts
convulsively forward, and makes an effort as it were to rise; his eyes,
which are now fixed and glassy, stare out with a vacant expression, and
he falls back heavily a corpse. As we gaze for a second, the old tower
clock strikes the hour, the sentinel on watch cries out in reply to the
challenge of his superior officer who is on his rounds, "One o'clock and
all's well". Yes--all is well,--only a poor soldier has given up his
life into the hands of his Maker, for his country's cause. One more
German mother has lost her son,--one more German heart is desolate.
Not many minutes elapse before the fair youth of yesterday is lifted on
a _brancard_, or stretcher, and conveyed to the dead-house. Here the
bearers tumble the body on the cold shiny floor and leave it until
morning, when the mayor's cart will convey it and the other lifeless
remains in that ghastly chamber, to the brink of a deep pit at the back
of the church, and into that they will be roughly heaved. A little
quicklime will be thrown in, then a little earth; and the burial
ceremony is over. Thus the scene closes for this brave lad, who was my
friend as well as my patient. "_Dulce et decorum est_," wrote Horace.
Here is the reality of that boast.
Having seen that all is quiet again, I return to my fireside in the
sacristy. When I am once more in my cosy chair, the details of what I
have witnessed,--to such scenes,--alas, I am now accustomed,--pass from
my thoughts, and are replaced by others of a different and more
agreeable nature. The little bunch of holly which is set above the
Tabernacle on the High Altar reminds me that it is Christmas morning;
the glow of the burning wood brings before me the recollection of that
bright fireside at home across the water; and as my eyelids gradually
close, many a well-known and much loved face appears before me as if to
cheer me in this solitude.
I have slept thus for nearly two hours, when my pleasant dreams are put
to flight for the second time by the infirmarian of the watch, who tells
me in an excited manner that a young Bavarian soldier is bleeding
profusely from the mouth, and cannot live if I delay many minutes. I
despatch a messenger in haste to call Dr. May; and another second takes
me to the bedside of the dying man.
This patient, a young Bavarian, has been shot through the open mouth.
Curiously enough, the ball had traversed the substance of the tongue
from apex to base, and had buried itself in the back of the throat, from
which position it has hitherto been impossible to get it removed.
At once I compress the common artery of the neck with my thumbs, and
while thus supporting him, kneeling up behind him in bed, I am able for
the time being almost to stop the blood completely. But when I look into
the basin that is placed beside me on a stool, I perceive to my horror
that it is half full of what appears to be pure blood. I now ask the
infirmarian why he had not made me aware of the fact, and called me
sooner. He answers that some five minutes previously the sick man had
sat up in bed, and had been, as he thought, very sick in his stomach. By
the extremely faint light he had not perceived that what the sick man
was ejecting was blood. Immediately upon discovering the true state of
things, he had come for me.
In a few minutes Dr. May arrives; but he and I are both too late. The
man becomes ghastly pale, and writhes as if in a fit, then he is still
for an instant, and sinks heavily and without life into my arms.
A momentary feeling of sadness comes upon me, while I gaze on the
remains of that unhappy young man, the victim of such an awful, such an
unnatural death! But I must quickly repress my feelings; I have to see
that these sleepy fellows remove the body, change the bedding, and
clean the blood from the floor, so as to make way for another, who will
at once occupy the place that has been thus left empty.
This done, I pass round to the bedside of the young soldier whom it will
be remembered that I visited first. His dreams of glory are now at an
end; for he sleeps the sleep that knows no waking. Doubtless his spirit
is at peace. What would his mother feel did she know that her son had
died this lonely death in a dreary place, with no hand save mine, that
of a stranger, to wipe his brow! When he, too, has been consigned to the
dead-house, I return as before to the sacristy, where I take another
interval of rest.
Between four and five o'clock the infirmarian awakes me for the third
time, to say that there is a waggon at the gate with three wounded who
are begging earnestly to be admitted. I have only two vacant beds; the
third was occupied already by a bad case which had been lifted from the
floor. I order two of the arrivals to be brought in. Upon examination I
find that both have been badly frost-bitten in the feet. One, indeed,
showed me half his foot almost black and simply rotting off. Their tale
was a fearful one. They had been wounded,--one in the hip, and the other
in the fleshy part of the thigh--in a skirmish about a fortnight before,
near Beaugency. Overcome by loss of blood, each had dragged himself
into a thicket--for the spot was a lonely one in the open country; and
there they had remained in terrible frost and snow, during the whole
night and part of the next morning. Some peasants discovered them, and
they were removed to a cottage several miles distant. Here they had
remained until now without surgical treatment; and hence their miserable
condition.
Their sufferings are not to be described; and I administer at once a
hypodermic injection of morphia, which gives them speedy relief. Then I
go to see the remaining occupant of the cart. By a gleam of the lantern
I perceive that his leg is badly fractured; and the blood which oozes
through the bandages, and trickles down the mutilated remains of his
trousers, indicates that matters have not been improved by an eighteen
miles' journey over rugged country roads. The sight of this famished and
half-frozen unfortunate, whose agony is increased by the bitter cold of
the winter night, and his pitiful supplication to be let in, determine
me at once to make out a place for him. This is the work of a minute;
for I know of a comparatively light-wounded fellow whom I can dislodge
from his bed, although he is sound asleep and does not want to be
stirred. The garments of the new-comer are, some stripped, some cut off
him; and he is put into the bed which is still warm from its late
occupant. A hot bowl of bouillon is swallowed down with avidity; to the
fracture I adjust a temporary splint, for he is much too weak to undergo
an operation. A sleeping draught is given, and I leave him to enjoy some
hours' repose.
Once more I satisfy myself that all is right, the fires burning up, and
the men on duty at their posts; and as I yawn, and stretch my weary
limbs in the arm-chair again, I find it difficult to imagine that it is
Christmas Day.
Another walk round the Hospital, and dawn is here at last. Soon after I
repair to a neighbouring house, where I address myself to a large bowl
of café-au-lait, and a loaf of bread, with some Liebig's extract of
meat. This accomplished, I return and find our staff assembled, making
ready for the day's work. I give in my report to the chief, and
immediately set about attending to my own wounded.
I never felt the long watch in the least irksome, nor did the others. At
ten I assist my seniors during two amputations and a resection. One of
the amputations is our arrival of the night, who last occupied the
waggon: a consultation has just decided the fate of his limb.
The operations being over, I return to my men, and work away, with the
assistance of two male nurses and Soeur Berthe. The Sister is a native
of Luxemburg, as bright and active as possible, and my great mainstay.
At three my work is finished, and in our house on the Quai I get a good
substantial dinner. But I must still go back to Ste. Euverte, and wait
the expiration of my term of duty.
On looking into the dead-house to make sure that my poor friends of the
night, with their companions, had been committed to the grave by the
Mayor's officials, I perceive that one is still unburied, probably
because the dead-cart was full. It is the young soldier, on whose sad
end I have dwelt, I hope not too insistently. I felt very sorry for him.
Our affection in that short space had grown to be that of brothers; for
we were, after all, only boys together. I shall miss him even in the
stir and excitement of these unruly times. But I can do no more. Dr.
Mackellar comes to take my place, and my watch is at an end.