It is quite a long time since I last wrote anything more than just short
handwritten notes. It was the 14th that my last letter was dated, I
find. Since that time we have been pretty hard at work. We had very
little let-up at all for about six weeks. Our numbers have kept over the
thousand mark all along, which means for us very little time for play.
I guess I will tell you about to-day which was rather typical. It was
bright and shiny when I went over to the Mess hall for breakfast. I can
tell you it is good preparation for an Arctic exploration expedition to
be living as we are. I sleep every night in woolen stockings and
knitted bed socks, woolen pajamas, that lovely light blue sweater mother
made for me, my Jaeger sleeping bag, which has two layers over and one
under, and then three folds of blanket on top of all that, topped off by
my heavy bathrobe, all this on me, the regular old hotbox that I always
used to be. Well, after a nice warm night in all that, with a hot-water
bag inside, it is not the nicest thing in the world to get up into an
utterly unheated room. The water from my hot-water bag makes very
comfortable bathing water (for all the bathing that I do then). But a
few vigorous arm exercises start up my blood enough to make me fairly
comfortable by the time I have on all my woollies. Over in the Mess hut
there are two nice little coal stoves, which make the place very
cheerful. There is a big coal stove in all our sleeping huts, but none
of the heat from the one in my hut can get as far as my end room. I hope
to get some kind of an oil stove that will heat things up a bit. I now
have a little single-burner coal-oil lamp on which I can heat a small
kettle of water, but it doesn’t do anything in the way of heating.
By the time we had finished breakfast (bread and butter, coffee,
scrambled eggs, and marmalade this morning) it was pouring, so we all
ran for our raincoats and hats, and then the six of us, Miss Taylor and
I and the two day and two night supervisors, walked down to my office
in the grand stand. There the batman had already started my tiny stove
and a cheerful little heat was beginning to make itself felt. It takes
about half an hour or more to read about the admissions, discharges,
operations, the condition of all the “S. I.’s” (Seriously Ill) and “D.
I.’s” (Dangerously Ill), and to hear that there did not seem to be
enough blankets for the outgoing convoy, many of whom were stretcher
patients, that there is difficulty about coal for some of the tents at
night, about this or that nurse’s good work when so and so had such a
terrific hemorrhage, and that an incoming convoy is just being unloaded,
apparently very badly wounded cases, but no report on them as yet. Then
the day supervisors go off to their lines to see about the new
admissions, see if the head nurses have everything they need, tell this
head nurse to send one of her assistants, who has such bad chilblains on
her hands that she can’t do the surgical dressings that she has been
doing, to report to a head nurse on one of the medical lines, where she
won’t have to be doing quite so many wet things, etc. At nine Capt.
Rainey, the acting head of the surgical side, comes for the written
report that the Night Surgical Supervisor has made out for him of the
most important cases. Then Major Fischel comes to ask about sick nurses.
We had told one nurse, who had reported a sore throat, to be here at
nine, and she was and was examined and advised. We had heard of another
nurse who had lost her voice, so she was sent for. Miss Taylor got her
figures of number of nurses on duty, number of yesterday’s operations,
etc., ready and took that and our big Night Report to the C. O.’s office
and came back to check up her list of the new S. I.’s and D. I.’s, to
all of whose families it is her job to write a personal letter. One day
she wrote as many as 25 of these letters. She had been out for “last
hours” yesterday, so there were a number for her to add to her list. The
official telegram is sent to all families, but it is one of the regular
jobs of this office to do all the personal corresponding with families.
Miss Taylor has learned to use a typewriter since she has been over here
and can write very fast on it. She does not like to have the little
secretary write these letters, for she often sends messages from the
boys to their families and likes to do them all herself. I begin by
writing my regular army form about nurses off duty. Then I made out
several formal communications to the Colonel, about the need of a sink
in the Nurses’ Mess, the need of a special new hut for sitting-room
purposes for my 104 women. We now have just the 12 feet at the end of
the Mess Hall which is quite inadequate. All the other hospitals in this
vicinity have special sitting-rooms, and I am going to keep at the R.
E.’s (Royal Engineers) until they give us one.
At 9:30 the nurses and V. A. D.’s begin to come up from the lines for
Red Cross supplies, which are handled through this office and a little
supply room we have next door. Pajamas, socks, mittens, old linen for
handkerchiefs for the patients, oilcloth, treasure bags, writing paper,
gramophone needles and records, razors, shaving soap, tobacco, record
books, magazines, cologne for rubbing backs, chewing-gum, back rests,
picture puzzles, cards, draughts, pipes, toasting forks, metal polish,
brad boards, sweets, irrigator cans, etc. All these things are actually
handled by us, not all the time, but some at one time and some at
another. The British Red Cross sends us these supplies on our
requisition every week. This morning we had very little to give out, for
our supplies for this week had not come. We keep store only from 9:30 to
10:30, but this morning there were a number of other things than
supplies that various nurses wanted to see me about. A V. A. D. wanted
to see me about special leave to England because her aunt is dying.
Another V. A. D., who knows better and should have reported at 9 A.M.,
came to tell us of another bad boil on her arm and had to be sent to the
operating room and Capt. Rainey looked up. Several wanted to know if
they could go to a special concert to be given in a neighboring camp
to-night. The general invitation to all had come, but had not been
posted, or these need not have asked for permission. Then it was time
for the mail, which was huge this morning, and always has to be sorted
in this office, because no one else knows just what to do with a number
of letters each day that have to be specially looked after. This of
course is just nurses’ mail. We still get a lot of mail for the English
Sisters who were here before us. We often get many letters intended for
other American Units. I have the lists of nurses of all of the Units
that are with the B. E. F. and can readily send on straying letters. We
have nurses away at C. C. S. and some in the Contagious Hospital and we
must see to their forwarding. The mail this morning took a long time. As
soon as it is sorted it is sent up to the Mess, where the nurses will
get it at lunch time. My own six or seven personal letters I could not
look at till near one.
The Red Cross Supplies came along about 11:50 and had to be put away.
Miss Taylor had gone down to the lines to see the supervisors, see how
we needed to man the operating room for the afternoon, etc. Simone, the
little secretary, had been helping all morning with supplies, letters,
etc., and very quickly we got the things put away. Then a sergeant from
the O. C.’s office came to ask about a missing package of “knickers”
which should have arrived from London. He had found it and had that too
dumped in my office. As it contained some instruments that I wanted
right away, I wanted it unpacked here. Then Phil came along to share
some mail with us, but I told him he would have to come back later, for
it was just time for the O. C. to come for this morning’s interview, so
just as he and Ruth C., who had also dropped by to tell me about her
wonderful birthday mail, cleared out, along came Major Murphy. There
were several matters to take up with him, such as the possible removal
of a bed or two from several too-crowded tents, the matter of the
insufficient blankets, a little misunderstanding that some of our
American boys had had with the British Y. M. C. A. people, about which
the latter had come to see me yesterday afternoon. When the Major left,
I had to see about some notices for the nurses that I wanted them to
read at their lunch. Miss Taylor came back, Simone went off for her
lunch, and we sat a moment or two and looked at the headlines of the
two-sheet _Daily Mail_ and Paris _N. Y. Herald_ and read our home
letters.
At one we went up in a pouring rain to our lunch. We had baked beans,
cold bully beef, which is canned corn beef and not half bad, lettuce
salad, tea, bread and butter, and cheese, and stewed prunes. Miss
Taylor was to be off from 1:30 to 4:30 to go down town to do some
errands, so I came on back to the office and started some accounts,
writing of checks, etc. They were to have a big afternoon in the
operating room, but all was working out smoothly. For the next two hours
I worked steadily at my desk, acknowledging supplies, doing accounts,
and writing business letters. Simone was doing all sorts of routine
things for us on her typewriter. She is very useful and saves many steps
as well as many minutes. Miss Taylor and I have been trying to be very
punctilious about going off duty these days. She has been after me most
severely, and the only way to keep her quiet is to do as she says, so
off I go every day, alternating her.
Nov. 1, 1917.
I had to stop on my account of day before yesterday before I had
finished the day. At five I went off in the rain with the Ford with one
of the nurses I like very much--to bring some mail and things to our
isolated nurses in the Contagious Hospital up the road. (They are
diphtheria carriers--three of them.) On the way up the road we met an
ambulance convoy bringing in wounded men. There must have been over a
hundred of them from the long line of ambulances. And passing them,
marching out, were companies of men walking along in the mud and wet
and thinking of course that that was the way many, many of these would
be coming back, as those mangled things were in the ambulances. One
can’t get used to these sights. It chokes me every time I see the men
march away. We can always tell when they are going to the front, for on
top of all that they carry on their backs is a little white
bag--containing limited rations.
After we had left our things at No. 25, we went on down town, did our
errands, left a gramophone to be repaired for one of the wards--then
went into the Cathedral for the evening service at 6. It is most
wonderful, for only a few low lights are lighted, and the shadowy
arches, the several hundred kneeling black figures, the clear tenor
voice of the priest, who sings most of the service, the hundred
responses, make it all seem like something unreal--till one realizes
that the unreal part is that it seems so strange and unusual to us, for
there have been going on just such services as that in that Cathedral
since before America was discovered! Many of us go there often to the
six o’clock services, the only trouble is that one gets frozen stiff
after a few minutes. After leaving the Cathedral we wandered about the
little narrow, wet streets, looking into windows,--clattering along in
our nailed boots, so that we sound like soldiers (but our feet are dry,
though the streets are very wet). Then came a nice supper of hot, thick
soup, steak, crisp fried potatoes and a salad,--then back to the camp in
time to hear the evening report and see the night supervisors before
they went on duty. That evening I wrote in the office.
To-day is Nov. 1st, and Phil’s birthday. I can imagine how you all are
thinking about him. I am going to play somewhere with him this afternoon
and do whatever he wants to do. Yesterday I could hardly speak to him at
all, I was so busy all day. At 5.30 I went with him for three fourths of
an hour to hear a lecture in the Y. M. C. A. tent--It was by that fine
Dr. Kelman--the Edinburgh Presbyterian minister, who has been talking in
the U. S. He spoke on “Why America Is in the War”--spoke most
wonderfully--to the British the evening before when I was in town, and
Phil could not go because he wanted to attend a medical meeting
here--But to-night we will have dinner down town.
Loads and loads of love,
Julia.
Nov. 2, 1917.