MAINLY RETROSPECTIVE
Hospital work again. How strange we felt. A sad-faced little Serbian
lady, widowed through typhus, was interpreting for the out-patients
while Jo was away; but she was alone in the world and did not want to
go--so Jo, homesick for her beloved out-patients, had to make the best
of it and do other work. The Serbian youth who had been put on the staff
as secretary, was dangerously ill with typhoid fever, which he had
picked up at Kragujevatz. The typhus barrack was a children's hospital,
containing little waifs chosen from the out-patients, and a few women.
In the early days when we had first arrived at Vrntze there were several
overfilled Serbian and one Greek hospital. They were only cafés and
large villas, unsanitary, stuffy, and overworked. The windows were never
open, and through the huge sheets of plate glass could be dimly seen in
the thick blue tobacco smoke a higgledy-piggledy crowd of beds. Often
two men lay in one bed covered with their dirty great coats, while
typhus patients and wounded men slept together. One man lay unconscious
for several days in the window, his feet in his dinner-plate. At last he
died, his feet still in the dinner. Mr. Berry took on a hydropathic
establishment which had been completed just before the first Balkan War.
This was used as the central hospital, where the staff lodged, and the
most serious surgical cases were nursed. In the basement an
operating-room was rigged up, there were bathrooms, disinfecting-rooms,
a laundry, and an engine-house, where gimcrack German machinery in fits
and starts provided us with electric light and hot water. The village
school on the hill opposite was annexed and cleaned by a sculptor, a
singer, a painter, and a judge of the Royal Horse Show. This was run as
a convalescent home, and was the cause of many a muddy sit down, as it
lay on the top of a greasy hill.
Other large buildings were gradually added, sulphured, and cleaned until
we had six hospitals, one of which was run for some time in connection
with the Red Cross unit.
Typhus had not stricken the village badly, but the old barracks were
full of cases which developed several days after each batch of wounded
came.
The Red Cross unit took on the typhus barracks. Mr. Berry, seeing that
surgery was for the moment a secondary thing, and having received a
batch of Austrian prisoners riddled with typhus, built some barracks not
far from the school. Glass was unobtainable, so thin muslin was used for
the windows.
The first precaution against bad air that Mr. Berry took in preparing
his chief surgical ward was to smash all top panes of the windows with a
broom, thus earning the name of the Window Breaker. Whenever the wind
blew through the draughty corridors and glass rattled down from the
sashes, word went round that "Mr. Berry has been at it again."
Our unit and the Red Cross ran a quarantine hospital together. It was
originally the state café and lay in the park of the watering-place.
Near by were the sulphur baths. We ripped out the stuffy little wooden
dressing-rooms, to the joy of the bath attendant, who possessed the
facsimile of Tolstoi's face, and with the _débris_ we built a large shed
outside for the reception of the wounded.
In the early days they came in large batches from other hospitals,
pathetic septic cases, their lives ruined for want of proper care. We
put their clothes in bags for future disinfecting, and the men, mildly
perplexed, were bathed, shaved, and sent to the "clearing-house," as it
was called. Those who developed typhus went to the barracks, and the
rest were drafted to the various hospitals in the village.
The clothes were first sulphurized to kill the lice, and then, until Dr.
Boyle's disinfector appeared, boiled. This was important, as typhus is
propagated by infected lice. Even forty-eight hours of sulphur did not
destroy the nits. One day the sulphur-room was opened after twenty-four
hours. Live lice were discovered congregated round the tops of the bags.
Jan put some in a bottle. They immediately fought each other, tooth and
nail, rolling and scrambling in a mass just like a rugby-football scrum,
and continued the fight for twelve hours at least, thus proving that the
scientific writer who says that the louse is a delicate creature and
only lives a few hours off the body can know little of the Serbian
breed.
The town, when we arrived, was a bouquet of assorted and nasty smells,
of which the authorities seemed proud. We cleaned up the streets by
running a little artificial river down the gutter. Mr. Berry had the
chief of the police sacked and instituted a sort of sanitary vigilance
committee. We took over the local but very primitive sewage works--a
field into which all the filth of the town was drained.
The slaughter-house was discovered. It was an old wooden shed built
over the lower end of the stream which washed the village from end to
end, draining successively the typhus barracks, the baths, and all the
hospitals. The shed itself was old and worm-eaten. The walls were caked
with the blood of years, yet the meat was always hung against them after
having been well soused in the filthy water. Mr. Berry decided to build
a new one: some of the money was subscribed through Mr. Blease by the
Liverpool Liberal Club; the rest Mr. Berry paid himself. At once the
state began to quarrel with the commune as to the ownership of the
proposed treasure. So the smells disappeared and the town engineer was
furious, saying he would "Put all right" when we left.
Luckily one of the chief men in the town had lived in America and knew
the value of cleanliness. Mr. Berry was offered an honorary Colonelcy;
but he refused, saying he would prefer to be made sanitary officer for
the town.
[Illustration: IN-PATIENTS.]
The spring came, bringing with it no fighting. A great offensive was
expected, had been ordered, in fact, but we heard later that the army
refused to advance. The work was very much lighter. Very few men were
entirely helpless. The hospitals, which were still emptying themselves
and whose men were coming to us, sent the survival of the fittest. Most
of the beds were carried out under the trees after the morning
dressings were done, and the men lay gossiping and smoking when they
could get tobacco. Outside visitors were rare. The Serbian ladies do not
go round the hospitals with cigarettes and sweets, and to find a Serbian
woman nursing is an anomaly.
Report says that many flung themselves into it with energy during the
first Balkan War, but that four years of it, ending with typhus, had
dulled their enthusiasm. It is not fair to blame them. To nurse from
morning till night in a putrid Serbian hospital with all windows closed
requires more than devotion and complete indifference to life. Three
Serbian ladies came to sew pillow cases and sheets every afternoon, and
one of them gave up still more time to teach the patients reading and
writing.
But the town was full, in the summer, of smartly dressed women, and the
village priest never once visited our hospitals. Hearing of the English
missions and their work, peasants began to come from the mountains
around, and the out-patient department became, under Dr. Helen Boyle, a
matter for strenuous mornings.
Many of these poor things had never seen a doctor in their lives. Serbia
even in peace-time had not produced many medical men, and those who
existed had no time to attend the poor gratis.
The percentage of consumptives was enormous. Every family shuts its
windows and doors for the winter and proceeds industriously to spit, and
so the disease spreads.
Diphtheria patients rode and walked often for ten hours and waited in
the courtyard, and people far gone with typhus staggered along in the
blazing spring sun.
One jolly old ragatops with typhus arrived in the afternoon with a
violent temperature, and Jo settled him comfortably in the courtyard
with his head on a sink until Mrs. Berry should come in to see about
taking him into the barracks. He seemed quite happy about himself, but
very worried about his blind beggar brother and his two half-blind
children, whose sight had been ruined by smallpox.
For the latter nothing could be done.
Another time she kept two boys waiting to see if Mrs. Berry could take
them into her typhus barracks. One had scarlet fever, and the other was
a young starving clerk in a galloping consumption, thirty-six hours from
his home.
Afraid to raise their hopes, and not knowing if there would be room for
them, Jo told them that they were to have some very strong medicine that
could only be administered two hours after a dose of hot milk and
biscuit (the medicine was only bovril). By this time Mrs. Berry arrived
and managed to squeeze the boys in.
However, we were told to clear the hospitals, for the wounded were
expected.
"What could be done with the scarlet fever boy?" At last an idea came:
"The Mortuary," built by the Horse Show Judge with such joy. The
mortuary that we had all gone to admire as a work of art.
But the scarlet fever boy did not seem to see it that way, for in the
night he escaped, and we have never seen him since.
Diphtheria was so prevalent that the Red Cross on receiving a patient,
gathered in the whole family for a few days, inoculated, washed, and
gargled it. They also toured the villages around, digging out typhus and
other infectious cases, thus stopping the spread of infection. They had
a most energetic matron, Miss Caldwell, who had already nursed in
Cettinje during the Balkan Wars, and we have already told how she
managed the Montenegrins.
Often the patients came in ox-carts. Too ill to be lifted out, they had
to be examined and treated in the carts. Dr. Boyle acquired a special
nimbleness in jumping in and out of these contrivances armed with
stethescope, spoons, bowls, and dressings. We accumulated a congregation
of "regulars," who came to be dressed every day--gathered feet,
suppurating glands, eczema, etc.
One old mother with a bad leg was bandaged up with boracic ointment and
told to come back in two days. She came. Jo undid the bandage. All the
old lady's fleas had swarmed to the boracic till it looked like a
fly-paper. After which we used Vermigeli.
All wore brightly woven belts, sometimes two or three, each a yard and a
half long, tightly wound round their bodies, thus making their waists
wider than their hips. One girl was black and blue with the pattern
showing on her skin, and many men were suffering from the evils of tight
lacing.
The village priest received belts as fees from the peasants when he
married them. He sent us a message to say he had some for sale, so we
went in a body to his house, were received by his daughter, who looked
like a cow-girl, turned over a basketful of belts, and bought largely.
After which he put up the price.
Jo went on night duty for the first time.
A queer experience this, starting the day's work at half-past seven in
the evening and finishing at seven in the morning--breakfasting when
other people are dining; hearing their contented laughter as they go off
to bed; and then a queer loneliness and the ugly ticking of a clock. One
creeps round the big ward. What a noisy thing breathing is. Some one
groans, "Sestra, I cannot sleep." This man has not been ordered morphia.
Silence once more broken only by the sound of the breathing, distant
howling of dogs from the darkness or the hoot of an owl. The old
frostbite man coughs; he coughs again insistently. Both say "Yes" to hot
milk. So down to the big kitchen, some mice scatter by, the puppy wakes
up and thinks it is time for a game. A woman's voice calls loudly,
"Sestra." Taking the milk off, Sestra hurries across the courtyard and
along the corridor to the little rooms with the puppy tugging at her
skirt. The woman wants water; she has wakened the other women--they want
water. When silence again comes back into the ward, one notes
instinctively the vivid colouring of the two big blue windows at the far
end, the long lines of beds disappearing into the darkness, the dim
light of the lantern on the table showing up the cheap clock and a few
flowers. The intensity of light upon this clock is only equalled by the
intensity of one's thoughts upon the clock. The minute-hand drags on as
though it were weary with the day's work. A groan ticks off the quarters
and cries for water or milk the half-hours. At last one o'clock. Time
for a midnight meal. Eggs and cocoa hurriedly eaten without appetite in
the kitchen, but breaking the monotony. Back to the ward again, one of
the patients very restless, in great pain. Poor fellow, he has had a
long and hard time of it, fifteen months in bed and all due to early
neglect.
"Sestra," he says, "sestra," and holds out a handkerchief heavy with
coin. "Tell the doctor to take me down to the operating-room and cure me
or not let me wake up."
Between four and five there is more movement in the ward. Groans give
way to yawns. In the windows the blue is paling to grey. Cocks are
crowing now quite close, now faintly, like an echo. Suddenly the world
is filled with work, "washings, brushings, combings, cleanings,
temperatures, breakfasts, medicines, some beds to make, reports, all
fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, until at last the day-sisters come
and relieve, and yawning at the daylight one eats warmed-up dinner while
the others are having breakfast."
After a seven weeks' absence one was bound to miss many old friends in
the ward. Some had gone home, others were back in the army. Old Number
13, the king of the ward, was still there. He had a dark brown face and
white hair, and was furious if any dared to call him a gipsy.
"I am a respectable farmer," he said, "and I own seventeen pigs, a
horse, and five sheep, a wife, and two children."
He loved to tell of his wedding. It was done in the correct old Serbian
style. He went with his mother and a gun to the chosen one's house,
where she was waiting alone, her parents tactfully keeping out of the
way. They abducted the lady, who was treated with great honour as a
visitor in her future father-in-law's house.
"Father" turned up next morning. Rakia was served, and father divulged
ceremoniously how many pigs he could spare to them for keeping his
daughter.
Number 13 wanted to know everything: how old was Jo, how much she was
paid?
"What, you are not paid?" he said in amazement. "Then the English are
wonderful! In Serbia our women would not do that."
Poor little John Willie still left a blank, though he had died long
before. His name was not John Willie, but it sounded rather like it, so
we just turned it into John Willie. He loved the name, and told his
father about it.
They sat all afternoon hand-in-hand, saying at intervals, "Dgonn Oolie,"
and chuckling.
Jan once had brought back from a spring visit to Kragujevatz some
horrible sun hats.
They were the cast-off eccentricities of the fashions of six years ago,
and had drifted from the Rue de la Paix to this obscure Serbian shop
which was selling them as serious articles of clothing. Jo tried them
on, and one of the nurses became so weak with laughter that she tumbled
all the way downstairs.
Finding them quite impossible, Jo bequeathed them to the ward, where
they were snapped up enthusiastically.
The ugliest was an immense sailor hat, the crown nearly as wide as the
brim, but the head hole would have fitted a doll. However, John Willie
fancied that hat and was always to be seen, a tiny, round-backed figure,
wandering slowly in a long blue dressing-gown, blue woolly boots, and
the enormous hat perched on the top of his pathetically drooping head.
One day poor little John Willie became fearfully ill. His parents
arrived and sat dumbly gazing at him for two nights, while he panted his
poor little life away. His friend the Velika Dete (big child), once a
fierce comitaj, was moved away from the "Malo Dete," to make more room,
and he sulked, while the Austrian prisoner orderlies ran to and fro with
water for his head, milk, all the things that a poor little dying boy
might need; and old Number 13 passed to and fro shaking his head, for he
had been long in hospital and had seen many people die.
A man with knees bent (he said with scroogling them up all winter in the
cold) was put in John Willie's place. The Velika Dete came back, but he
would not speak to "Bent Knees" for weeks.
By this time the Austrian prisoners were very well trained and made
excellent orderlies in the ward. An ex-Carlton waiter was very dexterous
in sidling down the ward: on his five fingers a tray perched high,
containing dressing-bowls and pots bristling with forceps, scissors, and
various other instruments.
His chief talent lay in peppering frostbitten toes with iodoform
powder--a reminiscence of the sugar castor.
Our housemaid was a leather tanner, whom Jo's baby magpie mistook for
its parent, as he fed it at intervals every morning. A Czech in typhus
cloths spent his days down in the disinfecting, operating and bathrooms.
He had been an overseer in a factory and had added to his income by
writing love-stories for the papers. A butcher was installed in the
kitchens. Once a week he became an artist, killing a sheep according to
the best Prague ideals.
All our prisoners, about forty in number, clung to the English hospitals
as their only chance of life, for in other places sixty per cent. had
died of typhus.
The Serbs, though bearing no animosity, could do little for them. We saw
the quarters of some men working on the road. These were show quarters
and supposed to be clean. Each room had an outside door. On the floor
was room for six men and hay enough to stuff one pillow. They had no
rugs, and the Serbs could give them none. The cold in the winter must
have been intense.
We had come back to this little world after seven weeks' wandering, and
almost immediately Jan had gone off to Kragujevatz with a broken motor.
While he was away Jo got letters from England and Paris, which made her
realize that things were rather in a mess, and we should have to go
home. We had left England intending to stay in Serbia three months, and
had been then nearly nine.
[Illustration]