the Danger List, his relatives are sent for and may be with him whether
it is the visiting afternoon or not. (If they come from the provinces
they are presented with a railway pass and, if poor, are allotted
lodgings near the hospital, a grant being made to them from our
Benevolent Fund.) For the information of the V.A.D.'s who answer
visitors' questions in the Enquiry Bureau at the main entrance to the
hospital, a copy of the Danger List hangs there, and it is on record
that an awestruck child, seeing this column of patients' names, and
reading the heading, asked, "What does 'Danger List' mean? Does it mean
that it's dangerous to go near them?" Now in Ward C 22 a patient, a
cockney, was on the Danger List--which circumstance availed nothing to
depress his spirits. In spite of considerable pain, he poked fun at the
prospect of his own imminent demise, and was himself the chief offender
against the edict of quietness which "Sister" had issued for her ward.
He _would_ talk; and he _would_ talk about undertakers, post-mortems,
epitaphs and the details of a military funeral. "That there top note of
the Last Post on the bugle doesn't 'arf sound proper," he said--a
verdict which anyone who has heard this beautiful and inspired fanfare,
which is the farewell above a soldier's grave, and which ends on a
soaring treble, will endorse. "But," he went on, "if the bugler's 'ad a
drop o' somethin' warm on the way to the cemetery, that there top note
always reminds me of a 'iccup. An' if 'e 'iccups over me, I shall wanter
spit in 'is eye, blimey if I won't."
This persiflage had been going on for a couple of days and getting to be
more and more elaborate and allusive, infecting the entire ward, so
that the fact that the man was on the Danger List had become a kind of
catchword amongst his fellows. Entered, in all innocence, the clergyman.
("The very bloke to put me up to all the tricks!"--from the irreverent
one.) At the same moment a walking patient, also a cockney, who had been
reading a newspaper, gave vent to a cry of feigned horror. "Boys!" he
announced, "it says 'ere there's a shortage of timber!"
Guffaws greeted this sally. Everyone saw the innuendo at once--everyone
except the clergyman, and when he grasped the point, that Ol' Chum
So-and-So was on the Danger List and a shortage of timber was supposed
to imply that he might be done out of a coffin, he was visibly shocked.
Perhaps he did not understand cockney humour.... However, one may add
that our irrepressible friend, at the moment of writing, is off the
Danger List (albeit only after a protracted struggle with the Enemy at
whom he jeered), and is now contriving to be as funny about life as he
was funny--and fearless--about Death.
I caught sight to-day of another cockney acquaintance of mine, whose
Christian name is Bill, trundling himself down the hospital drive in a
wheeled chair. Perched on the knee of his one leg, with its feet planted
on the stump which is all that is left of the other, was his child, aged
four. Beside him walked his wife, resplendent in a magenta blouse and a
hat with green and pink plumes.
The trio looked happy, and Mrs. Bill's gala attire was symbolical. When
Bill was in my ward he too was on the Danger List. I remember that when
he first came to us, before his operation, and before he took a turn for
the worse, his wife visited him in that same magenta blouse (or another
equally startling) and that for some reason she and "Sister" did not
quite hit it off, "had words," and subsequently for a period were not on
speaking terms. Later, when Bill underwent his operation, and began to
sink, his bed was moved out on to the ward's verandah. Here his wife
(now wearing a subdued blouse) sat beside him, hour after hour, while
little Bill, the child, towed a cheap wooden engine up and down the
grass patch, oblivious to the ordeal through which his parents were
passing. It was my business, as orderly, to intrude at intervals upon
the scene on the verandah, to bring Bill such food as he was able to
tolerate. On the first occasion, after Bill's collapse, that I prepared
to take him a cup of tea, Sister stopped me. "Don't forget to take tea,
and some bread and butter, to that poor woman. She looks tired. And some
milk for the child." "Very good, Sister." I cut bread-and-butter, and
filled an extra mug of tea. "Orderly! What are you doing?" Sister had
reappeared. And I was rebuked because I was going to offer Mrs. Bill her
tea in a tin mug (the patients all have tin mugs) and had cut her
bread-and-butter too thick. I must cut dainty slices of thin
bread-and-butter, use Sister's own china ware, and serve the whole
spread on a tray with a cloth. All of which was typical of Sister, who
from that day treated Bill's wife with true tenderness; and Bill's wife
became one of Sister's most enthusiastic adorers.
It came to pass, after a week of pitiful anxiety, that the Medical
Officer pronounced Bill safe once more. "Bloke says I'm not goin' ter
peg art," he told me. I congratulated him and remarked that his wife
would be thankful when he met her, on her arrival, with such splendid
news. "I'll 'ave the larf of my missus," said Bill. "W'en she comes, I
shall tell 'er I've some serious noos for 'er, and she's ter send the
kid darn on the grarse ter play. Then I'll pull a long fice and hask 'er
ter bear up, and say I'm sorry for 'er, and she mustn't tike it too
rough, and all that; and she 'as my sympathy in 'er diserpointment: _she
ain't ter get 'er widow's pension arter all_!"
I believe that this programme was carried through, more or less to the
letter. Certain it is that I myself overheard another of Bill's grim
pleasantries. He was explaining to madame that they must apprentice
their offspring to the engineering trade. "I wanter mike Lil' Bill a
mowter chap, so's 'e can oil the ball-bearings of me fancy leg wot I'm
ter get at Roehampton." The "fancy leg" ended by being the favourite
theme of Bill's disgraceful extravaganzas. He would announce to Sister,
when she was dressing his stump, that he had been studying means of
earning his living in the future, and had decided to become a professor
of roller skating. He would loudly tell his wife that she would never
again be able to summons him for assault by kicking: the fancy leg would
not give the real one sufficient purchase for an effective kick. And she
was not to complain, in future, about his cold feet against her back in
bed: there would be only one cold foot, the other would be unhitched and
on the floor. And of course there were endless jokes about what had been
done with the amputated leg, whether it had got a tombstone, and so
forth: some of the suggestions going a trifle beyond what good taste, in
more fastidious coteries, would have thought permissible. But Bill had
his own ideas of the humorous, and maybe his own no less definite ideas
of dignity. In this latter virtue I counted the fact that although once
or twice, when he was very low, he gave way to a little fretting to me,
he never, I am convinced, let fall one querulous word in the presence of
his wife. She sat by her husband's side, and when things were at their
worst the two said naught. The wife numbly watched her Bill's face,
turning now and then to glance at the activities of little Bill with his
engine, or to smile her thanks to the patients who sometimes came and
gave the child pickaback rides. When I intruded, I knew I was
interrupting the communings of a loving and happily married pair; and
the "slangings" of each other which signalised Bill's recovery and his
wife's relief, did nothing to shake my certitude that, like many slum
dwellers, they owned a mutual esteem which other couples, of superior
station, might envy.
Personally I have never known a cockney patient who did not evoke
affection; and as a matter of curiosity I have been asking a number of
Sisters whether they liked to have cockneys in their wards. Without a
single exception (and let me say that Sisters are both observant and
critical) the answers have been enthusiastically in the affirmative.
XIII
THE STATION PARTY
An earnest shopman not long ago tried to sell me a pair of
marching-boots, "for use"--as he explained, lest their name should have
misled me--"on the march." Had he said "for use after the war" he might
have been more persuasive. When I told him that marching-boots were no
good to me, it was manifestly difficult for him to conceal his opinion
that, if so, I had no business to flaunt the garb of Thomas Atkins. When
I added that if he could offer me a pair of running-shoes I might
entertain the proposition, his look was a reproach to irreverent
facetiousness.
A grateful country has presented me with one pair of excellent
marching-boots. But a hospital ward is no place in which to go clumping
about in footgear designed to stand hard wear and tear on the
high-roads; and my army boots, after two years, have not yet needed
re-soling. I wore them, it is true, during my period of service with the
Chain Gang, as a squad of outdoor orderlies, engaged in road-making, was
locally called. And I wear them when we have a "C.O.'s Parade"--an
occasion on which naught but officially-provided attire is allowable. It
would take a century of C.O.'s parades, however, to damage boots put on
five minutes before the event and taken off five minutes after: the
parade itself necessitating no sturdier pedestrianism than is involved
in walking less than a hundred yards to the ground and there standing
stock-still at attention.
I do not say that hospital orderlies never go for a march: only that
marching bulks relatively so small in our programme that any special
equipment for the purpose sounds a little ironical. The issue of
ward-shoes, now, was a real boon. Not that all the pairs with which our
unit was suddenly flooded by the authorities proved as silent as they
were intended to be. Some of them squeaked; and the peregrinations of
the orderly thus afflicted were perhaps more vexatious to the ear of a
nervous patient at night than even the clatter of honest hobnails. And
the soles were thin. A pair of ward-shoes lasted me on the average one
month. If only worn within the ward they might have lasted
longer--though not so very much longer. According to regulations, you
were not allowed to wear ward-shoes except within the confines of the
ward. No doubt it was expected that every time you were sent on an
errand outside the ward you would solemnly take off your ward-shoes and
put on your marching-boots--then, on the return, take off your
marching-boots and put on your ward-shoes--but life as a nursing orderly
is too short for such elaborations of etiquette. It was nothing unusual,
when one was working in a ward which lay at a distance of quarter of a
mile from the hospital's main building, to be sent to the said main
building a dozen times in a single morning. This incessant
message-bearing had to be done, if not at the double, at any rate at
nothing slower than five miles per hour in the morning (the busy time);
in the afternoon a speed of four miles per hour might sometimes be
permissible. At all events, running-shoes, as I told the shopman, would
not have been inappropriate during certain periods of crisis.
From time to time our tasks were interrupted by the notes of a bugle--or
the shrilling of the Sergeant-Major's whistle--demanding our presence
for an intake of new patients. A party of orderlies was wanted to go to
the railway-station to help to remove stretcher-cases from the ambulance
train. The station lies at a distance of a mile from the hospital, and
this small pilgrimage, achieved a few score times, is practically all I
know of the veritable employment of marching-boots.
I regretted when a change of plans diverted the ambulance trains to the
central termini for evacuation. The interlude of a station-party trip
was far from unwelcome. Lined up on the parade ground we were put in
charge of a corporal. "Party, 'shun! Right turn! Quick march!" Off we
trudged, round the back of the hospital, down the drive, out past the
sentry and away along the road. Presently, "Party, march at ease!"
Cigarettes were lit, talking was allowed, and someone would raise a
tune. How pleasant it is to march to singing! To march to a
drum-and-fife band must be wonderful. Or a brass band--! Those joys will
never be mine. Almost all the marching I shall have done in the great
war will be summed up in these tiny promenades from the hospital to the
railway-station, their rhythm sustained by self-raised choruses, none
too melodious.
Occasionally an officer would be descried, on the pavement. Then "Party,
'shun!" Cigarettes were concealed. The song died. "Eyes left! ... Eyes
front! Party, march at ease!" The cigarettes reappeared, the song was
resumed. Approaching the station, "Party, 'shun!" Cigarettes were thrown
away. Here, in the chief street, we must make a smart show. A crowd is
gathered round the station gate, attracted by the array of Red Cross
vehicles within. Police are keeping back the curious. The way is
cleared for our arrival. "Left wheel!" Now is our one moment of glory.
We swing round, through the lane of gaping sightseers, and tramp-tramp
in style across the station yard and under the archway, flattering
ourselves (perhaps not without justification) that there are spectators
whose eyes pursue us with secret envy at the serious import of our task.
The station platform, when we reached it, was generally a blank
perspective devoid of all living creatures except ourselves. Fate
decreed that we should be summoned long before the train was due. I have
kicked my heels for many a doleful hour on that platform, and the
reflection that "they also serve who only stand and wait" was chilly
comfort if--as frequently happened--we had been hurried off dinnerless.
The convoys' arrivals always seemed to coincide with dinner-time. On our
return to the hospital we should find that the rations had been kept hot
for us. But, in the meanwhile, an empty stomach was a poor preparation
for the strain of carrying stretchers up the stairs from the station
platform to the ambulances; and those of us who could produce pennies
for automatic-machine chocolate gained an instant popularity. The
longest period of waiting drew to an end at last, however. The platform
assumed a livelier air. The station-master appeared from his den.
Officers of the Army Medical Service and the Red Cross strolled down.
And the stairs and platform echoed to the pattering of the feet of hosts
of industrious "Bluebottles," fetching stretchers and blankets.
The blue-uniformed volunteers who form a portion of the London Ambulance
Column are nicknamed the Bluebottles in allusion to their dress. It is a
nickname which, let me say at once, any man might be proud of. I know
not whether the history of the Bluebottles has yet been written, but
certain it is that their doings have got into newspaper print less often
than they deserved. For theirs is a double rôle which truly merits the
country's admiration. While carrying on the commerce of the Empire--that
vital commerce without which there would be bankruptcy and no sinews of
war, nor indeed any England left to defend--they have vowed themselves
also, of their own free-will, to the helping of the wounded. Day or
night the Bluebottle is liable to be called from his desk or his home by
the telephone: like the Florentine Brother of the Misericordia he must
instantly hurry into his uniform and rush to the place appointed. He may
be busy or he may be tired; no matter: his vow holds good. Off he goes,
to the railway-station to meet the hospital train and evacuate its
stretchers.
Myself, I have the deepest respect for the Bluebottles and for their
energy in a cause which must often be not only fatiguing, but, from a
commercial point of view, extremely inconvenient. It would be absurd to
pretend, nevertheless, that the less responsible khaki-wearing R.A.M.C.
do not cherish a mild contempt for all Bluebottles. There is no reason
for that contempt. It is idiotic, childish--a humiliating exhibition of
the silliness of masculine human nature. Members of our station-party
who had enlisted but a week back, and who knew nothing whatever of
their work, would, in a whisper, mock the Bluebottles--although every
Bluebottle had taken first-aid classes and passed examinations at which
most of the mockers would have boggled. The Bluebottles were "civilians"
... there you have it. We--who would probably never do any battlefield
soldiering in our lives--looked down on all civilians who had the
impudence to wear a uniform of any sort. Such is the behaviour of the
sterner sex at a moment when its sole thought should be of sensible and
efficient co-operation in the performance of duty.
For of course it was our duty to co-operate with the Bluebottles. The
theory with which we beguiled ourselves, that the Bluebottles were
physically starvelings and required our Herculean aid to lift the
stretchers up the stairs, was palpably nonsense. Still we told ourselves
that we, as disciplined soldiers, were here to give a hand to a civilian
mob who might otherwise faint and fail. A singular delusion! Time has
proved its falsity, for with the issue of fresh orders our
station-parties ceased to function: the Bluebottles now make shift
without us--and without, as far as I know, any mishap.
The hospital train was eventually signalled. We were ranked, at
attention, at the foot of the stairs. The Bluebottles stood by their
stretchers. There was hurrying hither and thither of officials.
Sometimes our Colonel, having motored from the hospital, appeared on the
platform to see that all was well, and you may be sure that we
endeavoured to look alert in his august presence. And finally the train
glided into the station.
The hospital trains seemed to be never twice the same: South Westerns,
North Westerns, Great Northerns, Midlands, Great Centrals, Lancashire
and Yorkshires--I saw them all, at one time or another, their sole
affinity being the staring red crosses painted on each coach. A coach or
two consisted of ordinary compartments, for sitting-up cases; the rest
were vans the interiors of which had been converted into wards by means
of bunks. Access to each van-ward was gained by a wide pair of sliding
doors in its centre. These doors, when the train had come to a
standstill, were opened by pallid-looking orderlies, who lowered
gangways and then gazed forth at us, while they awaited orders, with the
lack-lustre eyes of men who had been deprived of the proper allowance of
sleep.
As soon as the list of the Medical Officer on the train had been checked
with that of the Medical Officer on the platform, the evacuation began.
Walking-cases were sent off first--generally a tatterdemalion crew,
hobbling and shuffling along the platform, and, at one stage of the war,
with trench mud still clinging to their clothes. They seldom needed our
assistance: the Bluebottles (even if feeble folk) were deemed by our
corporal to be fit to give any weak walking patient an arm, or carry his
kit. The walking patients, in fact, were a mere episode. Motor-cars
whirled them off, five or six at a time, and they might be half through
the process of being bathed at the hospital before the last
stretcher-case was quit of the train. The stretcher cases were our
concern. Pairs of Bluebottles, each carrying a stretcher, entered the
van-wards and anon reappeared with their burden. Now came our cue to
act. As the stretcher approached the foot of the stair two of our number
stepped forth from the rank, each taking a handle from a Bluebottle; the
stretcher thus proceeded on its course up the stair carried by four men,
one on each handle--two Bluebottles and two R.A.M.C.'s.
That flight of iron stairs from the platform to the road seemed no very
arduous ordeal for the first half-dozen journeys. There was a knack
about keeping the stretcher horizontal: the front bearers must hold
their handles as low as possible; the rear bearers must hoist their
handles shoulder-high. It was all plain sailing and perfectly easy. Four
men to a stretcher is luxurious. At least it is luxurious on the level,
and if you have not far to go and not many consecutive stretchers to
carry. But when the convoy was a large one, when the bearers were too
few and you had no sooner got rid of one stretcher than you must run
down the stairs and, without regaining your breath, grab the handle of
another and slowly toil up again to the ambulances ... yes, even on the
coldest day it was possible to be moist with perspiration; and as for
the hot weather of the 1915 summer, when one of our Big Pushes was
afoot, or when returned prisoners came from Germany (those were
memorable occasions!)--you might be pardoned a certain aching in the
arm-muscles.
It was on one of these busy days that I discovered that the comical
prejudice of khaki against the Bluebottles was not (as I had hitherto
supposed) confined to the young swashbucklers of the home-staying
R.A.M.C. It was seldom our custom to enter the hospital trains. An
unwritten law decreed that Bluebottles only should enter the train: the
R.A.M.C. limited themselves to carrying work outside, on the platform
and stair. But on this occasion the supply of Bluebottles had, for the
moment, run short, and our party took a turn at going up the gangways
and evacuating the van-wards. As it happened, I and my mate on the
stretcher were the first khaki-wearers to invade that particular
van-ward. And as we steered our stretcher in at the door and down the
aisle of cots a shout arose from the wounded lying there: "Here are some
real soldiers!"
It was too bad. It was base ingratitude to the devoted band of
Bluebottles who had, up till that instant, been toiling at the
evacuation of the ward--and who, as I chanced to know, had been up all
the previous night, carrying stretchers at Paddington and Charing Cross,
while _we_ slept cosily. But--well, there it was. "Here are some real
soldiers!" Khaki greeted khaki--simultaneously spurning the mere
amateur, the civilian. I could have blushed for the injustice of that
naïve cry. But it would be dishonest not to confess that there was
something gratifying about it too. It was the cry of the Army, always
loyal to the Army. These heroic bundles of bandages, lifting wild and
unshaven faces from their pillows, hailed _me_ (a wretched creature who
had never heard a gun go off) as one of their comrades! My mate and I,
as we adjusted our stretcher at a cot's side, and braced ourselves
against the weight of the patient, winked covertly at one another. "A
nasty one for the Bluebottles!" he said. And it was.
All the same I seize this opportunity of offering my homage to the
Bluebottles. They have done--are still doing--their bit, and that right
nobly. Thousands of British soldiers have cause to bless them and also
to be thankful for the existence of that great voluntary institution,
the London Ambulance Column.
* * * * *
When at last the train had been emptied and the ultimate stretcher was
_en route_ for the hospital, our party gathered once more at the top of
the stair, lined up, and was glanced-over by the corporal lest any man
had seized the opportunity to play truant. There were occasions when
some thirsty soul, chafing at the rigours of the strict teetotalism
enforced by our rules, was found to have vanished in the hurly-burly:
his destination, the up-platform refreshment-bar, being readily
surmisable. He had cause to regret his lapse if it were noticed before
he slipped back unostentatiously into our ranks. Then, "Party, 'shun!
Left turn! Right incline--quick march!" Off we swung, out into the
streets--cheered by the urchins who still hovered round the gate--and
so, at the rapidest possible pace, home to dinner and a smoke: these (in
my case at any rate) being preceded by the thankful relinquishment of my
seldom-worn and therefore none too friendly marching-boots.
XIV
SLANG IN A WAR HOSPITAL
Every ward in the hospital has a bathroom attached to it, but in
addition to these there are two large bathrooms, each containing a
number of baths, which are used by walking patients and also by the
orderlies. The more recently built of these bathrooms is divided into
private cubicles. In the older one the baths are on a more sociable
plan, with no partition walls sundering them. The spectacle, in the
"old" bathroom, when a convoy of walking cases has arrived, is one which
should appeal to a painter. Clouds of steam fill the air, and through
the fog you perceive a fine mêlée of figures, some half dressed, some
statuesquely nude, towelling themselves or preparing to wash, or shaving
at bits of mirror propped on the window-sills. Pink bodies wallow
voluptuously in the deep porcelain-ware tubs, which are of the shape and
superb dimensions of Egyptian sarcophagi. Sometimes a patient with a
wounded arm, unable to help himself, is being soaped and sponged by an
orderly; or you may see a cheerful soul, with an injured foot, balanced
on the rim of the bath and giving himself all the ablutions which are
practicable without the disturbance of bandages. No one who has
frequented our bathrooms would ever doubt that the British Army loves
cleanliness and hot water. Of cold water I cannot speak with the same
enthusiasm.