AN AMERICAN NURSE IN THE GREAT WAR
_E.D. Cushman_
(Time 1914-1920)
_The Turk in Bed_
The cold, clear sunlight of a winter morning on the high plateau of
Asia Minor shone into the clean, white ward of a hospital in Konia
(the greatest city in the heart of that land). The hospital in which
the events that I am going to tell in this story happened is supported
by Christian folk in America, and was established by two American
medical missionaries, Dr. William S. Dodd, and Dr. Wilfred Post, with
Miss Cushman, the head nurse, sharing the general superintendence:
other members of the staff are Haralambos, their Armenian dispenser
and druggist, and Kleoniki, a Greek nurse trained by Miss Cushman. The
author spent the early spring of 1914 at the hospital in Konia, when
all the people named above were at work there.
The tinkle of camel-bells as a caravan of laden beasts swung by, the
quick pad-pad of donkeys' hoofs, the howl of a Turkish dog, the cry
of a child--these and other sounds of the city came through the open
window of the ward.
On a bed in the corner of the ward lay a bearded man--a Turk--who
lived in this ancient city of Konia (the Iconium of St. Paul's day).
His brown face and grizzled beard were oddly framed in the white of
the spotless pillow and sheets.
His face turned to the door as it opened and the matron entered. The
eyes of the Turk as he lay there followed her as she walked toward
one of her deft, gentle-handed assistant nurses who, in their neat
uniforms with their olive-brown faces framed in dark hair, went
from bed to bed tending the patients; giving medicine to a boy
here, shaking up a pillow for a sick man there, taking a patient's
temperature yonder. Those skilled nurses were Armenian girls. The
Armenians are a Christian nation, who have been ruled by the Turks for
centuries and often have been massacred by them; yet these Armenian
girls were nursing the Turks in the hospital. But the matron of the
hospital was not a Turk, nor an Armenian. She had come four thousand
miles across the sea to heal the Turks and the Armenians in this land.
She was an American.
The Turk in bed turned his eyes from the nurses to a picture on the
wall. A frown came on his face. He began to mutter angry words into
his beard.
As a Turk he had always been taught, even as a little boy, that the
great Prophet Mohammed had told them they must have no pictures of
prophets, and he knew from what he had heard that the picture on the
wall showed the face of a prophet. It was a picture of a man with a
kind, strong face, dressed in garments of the lands of the East, and
wearing a short beard. He was stooping down healing a little child. It
was our Lord Jesus Christ the Great Physician.
As Miss Cushman--for that was the name of the matron--moved toward his
bed, the Turk burst into angry speech.
"Have that picture taken down," he said roughly, pointing to it. She
turned to look at the picture and then back at him, and said words
like these: "No, that is the picture of Jesus, the great Doctor who
lived long ago and taught the people that God is Love. It is because
He taught that, and has called me to follow in His steps, that I am
here to help to heal you."
But the Turk, who was not used to having women disobey his commands,
again ordered angrily that the picture should be taken down. But the
American missionary-nurse said gently, but firmly: "No, the picture
must stay there to remind us of Jesus. If you cannot endure to see
the picture there, then if you wish you may leave the hospital, of
course."
And so she passed on. The Turk lay in his bed and thought it over. He
wished to get well. If the doctors in this hospital--Dr. Dodd and
Dr. Post--did not attend him, and if the nurses did not give him his
medicine, he would not. He therefore decided to make no more fuss
about the picture. So he lay looking at it, and was rather surprised
to find in a few days that he liked to see it there, and that he
wanted to hear more and more about the great Prophet-Doctor, Jesus.
Then he had another tussle of wills with Miss Cushman, the white
nurse from across the seas. It came about in this way. Women who are
Mohammedans keep their faces veiled, but the Armenian Christian nurses
had their faces uncovered.
"Surely they are shameless women," he thought in his heart. "And they
are Armenians too--Christian infidels!" So he began to treat them
rudely. But the white nurse would not stand that.
Miss Cushman went and stood by his bed and said: "I want you to
remember that these nurses of mine are here to help you to get well.
They are to you even as daughters tending their father; and you must
behave to them as a good father to good daughters."
So the Turk lay in bed and thought about that also. It took him a
long time to take it in, for he had always been taught to hate the
Armenians and to think low thoughts about their womenfolk. But in the
end he learnt that lesson also.
At last the Turk got well, left his bed, and went away. He was so
thankful that he was better that he was ready to do just anything in
the world that Miss Cushman wanted him to do. The days passed on in
the hospital, and always the white nurse from across the seas and the
Armenian nurses tended the Turkish and other patients, and healed them
through the heats of that summer.
_War and Massacre_
As summer came near to its end there broke on the world the dreadful
day when all Europe went to war. Miss Cushman's colleagues, the
American doctors at the hospital, left Konia for service in the
war. Soon Turkey entered the war. The fury of the Turks against the
Armenians burst out into a flame. You might see in Konia two or three
Turks sitting in the shadow of a little saddler's shop by the street
smoking their hubble-bubble water-pipes, and saying words like these:
"The Armenians are plotting to help the enemies of Turkey. We shall
have to kill them all."
"Yes, wipe them out--the accursed infidels!"
The Turks hate the Armenians because their religion, Islam, teaches
them to hate the "infidel" Christians; they are of a foreign race and
foreign religion in countries ruled by Turks, though the Armenians
were there first, and the Armenians are cleverer business men than the
Turks, who hate to see their subjects richer than themselves, and hope
by massacre to seize Armenian wealth.
Yet all the time, as the wounded Turks were sent from the Gallipoli
front back to Konia, the Armenian nurses in the hospital there were
healing them. But the Turkish Government gave its orders. Vile bands
of Turkish soldiers rushed down on the different cities and villages
of the Armenians.[64] One sunny morning a troop of Turkish soldiers
came dashing into a quiet little Armenian town among the hills. An
order was given. The Turks smashed in the doors of the houses. A
father stood up before his family; a bayonet was driven through him
and soldiers dashed over his dead body; they looted the house; they
smashed up his home; others seized the mother and the daughters--the
mother had a baby in her arms; the baby was flung on the ground and
then picked up dead on the point of a bayonet; and, though the mother
and daughters were not bayoneted then, it would have been better to
die at once than to suffer the unspeakable horrors that came to them.
And that happened in hundreds of villages and cities to hundred of
thousands of Armenians, while hundreds of thousands more scattered
down the mountain passes in flight towards Konia.
_The Orphan Boys and Girls_
As Miss Cushman and her Armenian nurses looked out through the windows
of the hospital, their hearts were sad as they saw some of these
Armenian refugees trailing along the road like walking skeletons. What
was to happen to them? It was very dangerous for anyone to show that
they were friends with the Armenians, but the white matron was as
brave as she was kind; so she went out to do what she could to help
them.
One day she saw a little boy so thin that the bones seemed almost to
be coming through his skin. He was very dirty; his hair was all matted
together; and there were bugs and fleas in his clothes and in his
hair. The hospital was so full that not another could be taken in. But
the boy would certainly die if he were not looked after properly. His
father and his mother had both been slain by the Turks; he did not
know where his brothers were. He was an orphan alone in all the world.
Miss Cushman knew Armenian people in Konia, and she went to one of
these homes and told them about the poor boy and arranged to pay them
some money for the cost of his food. So she made a new home for him.
The next day she found another boy, and then a girl, and so she went
on and on, discovering little orphan Armenian boys and girls who had
nobody to care for them, and finding them homes--until she had over
six hundred orphans being cared for. It is certain that nearly all of
them would have died if she had not looked after them.
So Miss Cushman gathered the six hundred Armenian children together
into an orphanage, that was half for the boys and half for the girls.
She was a hundred times better than the "Woman who Lived in a Shoe,"
because, though she had so many children, she _did_ know what to
do. She taught them to make nearly everything for themselves. In the
mornings you would see half the boys figuring away at their sums or
learning to write and read, while the other boys were hammering and
sawing and planing at the carpenter's bench; cutting leather and
sewing it to make shoes for the other boys and girls; cutting petrol
tins up into sheets to solder into kettles and saucepans; and cutting
and stitching cloth to make clothes. A young American Red Cross
officer who went to see them wrote home, "The kids look happy and
healthy and as clean as a whistle."
_The People on the Plain_
As Miss Cushman looked out again from the hospital window she saw men
coming from the country into the city jogging along on little donkeys.
"In the villages all across the plain," they said to her, "are
Armenian boys and girls, and men and women. They are starving. Many
are without homes, wandering about in rags till they simply lie down
on the ground, worn out, and die."
Miss Cushman sent word to friends far away in America, and they sent
food from America to Turkey in ships, and a million dollars of money
to help the starving children. So Miss Cushman got together her boys
and girls and some other helpers, and soon they were very busy all day
and every day wrapping food and clothes into parcels.
Next a caravan of snorting camels came swinging in to the courtyard
and, grumbling and rumbling, knelt down, to be loaded up. The parcels
were done up in big bales and strapped on to the camels' backs. Then
at a word from the driver the camels rose from their knees and went
lurching out from Konia into the country, over the rough, rolling
tracks, to carry to the people the food and clothes that would keep
them alive.
The wonderful thing is that these camels were led by a Turk belonging
to the people who hate the Armenians, yet he was carrying food and
clothes to them! Why did this Turk in Konia go on countless journeys,
travelling over thousands of miles with tens of thousands of parcels
containing wheat for bread and new shirts and skirts and other clothes
for the Armenians whom he had always hated, and never lose a single
parcel?
Why did he do it?
This is the reason. Before the war when he was ill in the hospital
Miss Cushman had nursed him with the help of her Armenian girls, and
had made him better; he was so thankful that he would just run to do
anything that she wished him to do.
_To Stay or not to Stay?_
But at last Miss Cushman--worn out with all this work--fell ill with
a terrible fever. For some time it was not certain that she would not
die of it; for a whole month she lay sick in great weakness. President
Wilson had at this time broken off relations between America and
Turkey. The Turk now thought of the American as an enemy; and Miss
Cushman was an American. She was in peril. What was she to do?
"It is not safe to stay," said her friends. "You will be practically a
prisoner of war. You will be at the mercy of the Turks. You know what
the Turk is--as treacherous as he is cruel. They can, if they wish,
rob you or deport you anywhere they like. Go now while the path is
open--before it is too late. You are in the very middle of Turkey,
hundreds of miles from any help. The dangers are terrible."
As soon as she was well enough Miss Cushman went to the Turkish
Governor of Konia, a bitter Mohammedan who had organised the massacre
of forty thousand Armenians, to say that she had been asked to go back
to America.
"What shall you do if I stay?" she asked.
"I beg you to stay," said the Governor. "You shall be protected. You
need have no fear."
"Your words are beautiful," she replied. "But if American and Turkey
go to war you will deport me."
If she stayed she knew the risks under his rule. She was still weak
from her illness. There was no colleague by her side to help her.
There seemed to be every reason why she should sail away back to
America. But as she sat thinking it over she saw before her the
hospital full of wounded soldiers, the six hundred orphans who looked
to her for help, the plain of a hundred villages to which she was
sending food. No one could take her place.
Yet she was weak and tired after her illness and, in America, rest and
home, friends and safety called to her.
"It was," she wrote later to her friends, "a heavy problem to know
what to do with the orphans and other helpless people who depended on
me for life."
What would you have done? What do you think she did? For what reason
should she face these perils?
Not in the heat of battle, but in cool quiet thought, all alone among
enemies, she saw her path and took it. She did not count her life her
own. She was ready to give her life for her friends of all nations.
She decided to stay in the heart of the enemies' country and serve her
God and the children. Many a man has had the cross of Honour for an
act that called for less calm courage. That deed showed her to be one
of the great undecorated heroes and heroines of the lonely path.
So she stayed on.
From all over the Turkish Empire prisoners were sent to Konia. There
was great confusion in dealing with them, so the people of Konia
asked Miss Cushman to look after them; they even wrote to the Turkish
Government at Constantinople to tell them to write to her to invite
her to do this work. There was a regular hue and cry that she should
be appointed, because everyone knew her strong will, her power of
organising, her just treatment, her good judgment, and her loving
heart. So at last she accepted the invitation. Prisoners of eleven
different nationalities she helped--including British, French,
Italian, Russian, Indians and Arabs. She arranged for the nursing of
the sick, the feeding of the hungry, the freeing of some from prison.
She went on right through the war to the end and beyond the end,
caring for her orphans, looking after the sick in hospital, sending
food and clothes to all parts of the country, helping the prisoners.
Without caring whether they were British or Turkish, Armenian or
Indian, she gave her help to those who needed it. And because of her
splendid courage thousands of boys and girls and men and women are
alive and well, who--without her--would have starved and frozen to
death.
To-day, in and around Konia (an Army officer who has been there tells
us), the people do not say, "If Allah wills," but "If Miss Cushman
wills!" It is that officer's way of letting us see how, through her
brave daring, her love, and her hard work, that served everybody,
British, Armenian, Turk, Indian, and Arab, she has become the
uncrowned Queen of Konia, whose bidding all the people do because she
only cares to serve them, not counting her own life dear to her.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 64: In reading this part of the story to younger children
discretion should be exercised. Some of the details on this page are
horrible; but it is right that older children should realize the evil
and how Miss Cushman's courage faced it.]