Up the wide stone steps, under the arch of purple Bougainvillea and you
are in my operating theatre. A curtain of mosquito gauze screens it from
the vulgar gaze. Behind these big wooden doors a week ago was the office
of this erstwhile German jail. To the left and right, now all clean and
white painted, were the living rooms of the German jailor and his wife,
but for the present they are transformed into special wards for severely
wounded men. On the lime-washed wall and very carefully preserved is
"_Gott strafe England_" which the late occupants wrote in charcoal as
they fled. Strange how all German curses come home to roost, and move us
to the ridicule that hurts the Hun so much and so surely penetrates his
pachydermatous hide. That the "Hymn of Hate" should be with us a cause
for jest, and "strafe" be adopted, with enthusiasm, into the English
language, he cannot understand. To him, as often to our own selves, we
shall always be incomprehensible.
Through the gauze screen on to the white operating table passed all the
flotsam of wounded humanity in the summer months. All the human wreckage
that marked the savage bush fighting from German Bridge to Morogoro came
to me upon this table. And its white cleanness, our towels and surgical
gloves and overalls, filled them with a sense of comfort and of safety
after weary and perilous journeys, that was in no way detracted from by
the gleaming instruments laid out beside the table. Even this chamber of
pain was a haven of refuge to these broken men after long jolting rides
over execrable roads.
But a particularist among surgeons would have found much to disapprove
of in this room. Cracks in the stone floor let in migrating bands of red
ants that no disinfectant would drive away. Arrow slit windows, high up
in the walls, gave ingress to the African swallow, redheaded and
red-backed, whose tuneful song was a perpetual delight. His nests
adorned the frieze, but they were full of squeaking youngsters and we
could not shut the parents out. So we banished them during operating
hours by screens of mosquito gauze; and to reward us, they sang to our
bedridden men from ward window-sills.
But despite these shortcomings of the operating theatre itself, we did
good work here, and got splendid results. For God was good, and the
clean soil took pity upon our many deficiencies. Earth, that in France
or Gallipoli hid the germs of gangrene and tetanus, here merely produced
a mild infection. Lucky for us that we did not need to inject the
wounded with tetanus antitoxin. But an added charm was given to our work
by the necessity of improvisation. Broken legs were put up in plaster
casings with metal interruptions, so that the painful limb might be at
rest, and yet the wound be free for daily dressings. The Huns left us
plaster of Paris, damp indeed but still serviceable after drying; the
corrugated iron roofing of the native jail provided us with the
necessary metal. Then by metal hoops the leg was slung from home-made
cradles, and I defy the most modern hospital to show me anything more
comfortable or efficient. Broken thighs were suspended in slings from
poles above the bed, painted the red, white and black that marked German
Government Survey posts. Naturally in a field hospital such as this, we
had no nurses; but our orderlies, torn from mine shafts of Dumfriesshire
and the engine sheds of the North British Railway, did their best, and
compensated by much kindliness for their lack of nursing training.
Sadly in need were we of trained nurses; for the bedsores that developed
in the night were a perpetual terror. Ring pillows we made out of grass
and bandages, but a fractured thigh, as you know, must lie upon his
back, and we had little enough rectified spirit to harden the
complaining flesh. But nurses we could not have at so advanced a post as
this. The saving factor of all our work lay in the natural goodness of
the men. They felt that many things were not right; for ours is a highly
intelligent army and knows more of medicine and surgery than we, in our
blindness, realise. But they made light of their troubles, as they
learnt the difficulties we laboured with. So grateful were they for
small attentions. That we should go out of our way to take pains to
obtain embroidered sheets and lace-edged pillows, absolved us in their
eyes from all the want of surgical nursing. Liberal morphia we had to
give to compensate for nursing defects. I have long felt that I would
rather work for sick soldiers than for any class of humanity; and in
fifteen years I have come to know the sick human animal in all his
forms. So that the least that one could do was to scheme to get the
precious egg by private barter with the natives, and to find the silk
pillow that spelt comfort, but was the anathema of asepsis. No wonder
that such splendid and uncomplaining victims spurred us to our best
endeavours and made of toil a very joy.