Part 3

We are all just hanging around, that is why I have so much time to write. “Matron” said she would just carry on in the usual way and later she would show me what I am to do. The first thing we have to do is to find out how to do things in the English way, particularly the records. Then later the English sisters are to be withdrawn, we understand. We have not nearly enough nurses for this hospital, so some of the “V. A. D.’s” are to be left until we receive reënforcements from America. The “V. A. D.’s” are like our Nurse’s Aids, Voluntary Aid Detachments. They have apparently done wonderful things during this war. They have no regular training, but after one or two years of active service they have many of them become very proficient. Here we find them doing all sorts of things. Some are in the tent wards, and some are detailed for mess duty and take entire care of the mess hut and the meals. In a New Zealand hospital that we visited there were five of the nicest “V. A. D.’s” doing all the cooking for 400 patients. They were women of maturity and position at home, who had come on from New Zealand at the request of the Matron in Chief and were serving entirely without pay and doing wonderful work. Their hut kitchen was the best-looking kitchen we had seen anywhere. We are told here that word has been sent back to the States that we need more help. I should like 65 more Red Cross nurses from St. Louis, or if I can’t have them, 65 of the Nurse’s Aids that we trained. They would certainly find here a sufficient outlet for their energies. They could be of the greatest help, and on the whole I do not know but that I should rather have the Aids that I know than a lot of trained nurses that I do not know. If Miss Bridge can get this word on to Miss Noyes, I hope she will. Our nurses’ aids’ blue uniforms and aprons would be excellent, but they would need some kind of a cap, I think, and certainly a traveling or outdoor uniform.

I think our equipment is going to be fine. Rubber hats and rubber boots may be needed later, but we can get them very easily, I think, by sending to London, or possibly in the city here. I got a dandy rubber hat, in London. I am not to wear my white uniforms yet a while, at the Matron’s suggestion, so that the people here can tell me from the rest of my group. There is now no way of distinguishing me from the rest except my height. My assistant matron, Miss Taylor, is the smallest in the Unit. The nurses have a good deal of fun about our appearance together.

It has been fine to have so much time to write to-day, for when we get started I do not think we shall have much free time. And at night I do not know whether I can use this precious typewriter without disturbing all the other nurses on the other side of my room wall. I think I shall have to train them to get used to it. More marching feet tramping along, and helmeted heads appearing over the hedge!

You all seem so far away. Not a scrap of mail since we left and no immediate prospect of any.

I am now due to go and have tea (the third time to-day) with “Matron” and the Senior Chaplain. So good-by for now.

* * * * *

P.S. I decided not to draw a picture this time. Our baggage came and we are quite happy. So to-morrow we begin work. I hope you are all well and having a good time. Good night and loads of love to you all.

J.

Rouen, France. Sunday, June 17, 1917.

We have been told in our instructions about letter-writing that we may now state where we are. So now you can all know definitely just where we are. We got our first mail from home day before yesterday, and I can tell you there was great excitement. It is just a month to-day since we left St. Louis and it seems like a year. The latest date of any of my letters was May 27th. But now that the letters have actually begun to come we feel more hopeful that we are not entirely cut off from our friends. It has been a rather dreary feeling to know that up to now, none of you knew where we were or where we were going, but soon we ought to be in regular communication.

We have been here just a week to-night and are beginning to get over our strangeness. We have learned much of our duties and do not now feel that we can never learn them all. All the nurses have their regular places of duty and are getting to know their patients, and what to do for them. Fortunately for them we have not received any new convoys of men during the week, but we have been sending some out every day or night; but in a few days, after we are a little more accustomed to our duties, we shall begin to get in more wounded by the hundred. There are only five or six of the English nurses left here with us, and they are to go this week, we understand. The Matron, who is a most pleasant and helpful person, is to stay here another week, which gives me the shivers, for two weeks is an awfully short time in which to learn the ropes, and all this first week I have not been doing much more than attend to my nurses’ work and their quarters, equipment, etc. But to-morrow I am going to retire to the Matron’s office and stay there. One of my little jobs is to hire cooks and maids for the nurses’ mess and quarters, and I am also hunting a stenographer. Between 40 and 50 V.A.D.’s are to stay on with us here, and we are mighty glad to have them, for they are splendid. I understand that our C.O. (Commanding Officer) has cabled home, or is going to cable home as soon as he has proper British authority to do so, for more help for this hospital. I have said that I want 40 more nurses and 25 carefully picked nurses’ aids. I think Miss Bridge could pick out the ones that are the most capable and the most adaptable and the most willing to endure difficulties and do without luxuries and even some comforts. I feel quite sure that there are 25 of that kind among the large number that we trained these past months. I do hope that the Red Cross will give the authority for them to come out with the regular nurses.

If this were a summer resort, people would say the weather could not be more delightful. I have my little table and typewriter and my camp chair out on the grass under the trees in the little grove where the nurses’ quarters are. There is a delightful breeze, and the blue sky is full of fluffy white clouds. The sun is very warm, and down in the tents where the patients are it is not so ideally summer-resorty. But with the side awnings up, a nice breeze blows through and the men said they were very comfortable. The sun was so hard on some of the nurses who had to go in and out of the tents a great deal to do the dressings of the patients who are kept out of doors under big parasols or temporary awnings of some sort, that at Major Murphy’s suggestion I got large, broad-brimmed hats for the whole lot. To-day they have found them a great comfort. They certainly look a bit informal with their large farmer hats on and their white dresses, but they look sensible and comfortable. We are likely to have trouble with the laundry question as water is scarce, also starch, and there are labor problems to be reckoned with. We all have white aprons that Mrs. R. insisted on our bringing from London. We are glad she did, as we already find we need them badly, not because of the laundry question but because of the nature of the cases. We have very badly wounded men and their dressings are terrible.

Amputations are being done almost every day. Yesterday I went down to the “Theater Hut” to see how our nurses were going to handle a very bad case, for the “Theater Sister” is to be taken away soon. Our people at home would marvel to see what fine work can be done when all the water used has to be heated on top of a small oil stove and all the instruments boiled the same way. The poor boy whose leg had to be amputated was in such bad shape, he could have only the minimum of a general anæsthetic, but local anæsthesia was given. Besides having both legs badly hurt, his lower back is in terrible shape from injury; after the operation he was put on his face on his bed. Before eight o’clock one of the nurses held his head up so he could have a smoke! And this morning he says he is “in the pink,” which means feeling fine. It is perfectly wonderful, their fortitude, and it is making us all so ashamed for all the complaining we have done. Their bravery is harder to bear than anything else. The other day I nearly disgraced myself when the Matron took me with her to the large tent from which all outgoing patients are sent off in ambulances to the trains or boats. It is a large empty tent with benches around it where the “sitters” wait to have their papers and tickets looked over, and a dirt floor where the stretchers are put. Most of the men are smoking cigarettes as they wait. One man was pointed out to me as having both legs off and one arm and part of the remaining hand also, but he was smiling cheerfully and chaffing with the sisters, and although overwhelmed by the awfulness of his condition I did not grasp the full meaning of it until as I passed him he said, “Sister, will you put out my cigarette for me.” Stooping over him, I took it out of his mouth and asked him if he didn’t want any more of it as it wasn’t half burned away. And he said, pulling out his huge bandaged hand from under the blanket, “No, sister, thank you, I only want a little of it since I can’t take it out of my mouth after I once get it in.” I wonder what any of you would do under circumstances like that. It seemed as though my throat would burst, and I had to think very quickly how absurd it would be for the new Matron to weep before all those heroic, stoical men and the matter-of-fact, externally brusque but inwardly most kind, English officer, and orderlies, so I got myself together speedily while I was putting out the cigarette in the sand with my boot toe. And he was only one, and there are thousands like him.

Two of our men were buried by the explosion of a mine. The one who had his head out in the air put his hand over the face of the other so that the latter could breathe and did not suffocate, but the first was badly hurt in the chest. There are hundreds of stories like these. The nurses are always telling something new about their men. Little things that come out in the course of conversation, enough to fill a book. One of the most pitiful groups are the “shell shocks.” The other night the explosion of shells could be distinctly heard, and almost all these cases shook as though they were having convulsions all night. As one of them said, “Some poor devils are getting theirs now.” One interesting case was brought in unable to speak several days ago. The other night he fell out of bed, and sat up and said “Sister, I can talk now.” These shell-shock cases are always falling out of bed, it seems.

Yesterday I went to town for the first time since I have been here. I went for the straw hats. I went into the Cathedral, which is by far the most beautiful I have ever seen, I think, with the exception of that at Milan. It is going to be a constant joy to have that place to visit. Rouen is an interesting city and has good shops. It swarms with uniforms of all hues.

I was glad to get all your letters yesterday and day before yesterday. According to the accounts of the very cold weather they had here last year our patients and any patients in the neighborhood are going to need all the warm knitted things they can get. Nurses say that the solutions in their bottles froze in the tents and their first early morning duties were to thaw out the bottles. We hear that this hospital is to be hutted before the Autumn, which will be much better for the winter, but even then there will not be any steam heat. When I have the Matron’s office, which is the jockey-room of the grandstand of this old race course, I shall have a large table and some shelves, also a little stove for cold days. We are all so delighted and interested to hear from Elsie’s letter that more Units are being ordered out. And we are all so glad we were in the first lot.

A Colonel commanding a neighboring base has just been to call. He rode down, he said, to pay his respects to the “American Matron.” He was very charming and we had a nice talk. He says he is going to ask us up to tea. He “goes in for a garden and all that, you know.” I am meeting so very many delightful people. All the Matrons from the various hospital camps near have either been to call or invited us to concerts at their grounds. Last night there was such a pretty affair at the Australian camp,[5] a concert, a kind of variety show given by members of the camp, orderlies, cooks, and other regular army people, but really very clever. It was out of doors, of course, under some lovely trees, and there must have been 400 to 500 people there as audience, all in uniform of some sort: mostly officers and nurses and Y. M. C. A. workers, etc. It began at 8 and lasted until about 10.30. Refreshments were served from a large tent, and it was all very pretty and very English.

Ruth C--has just been in to see me a moment. She is on night duty and is working very hard. She says there never in the world were such wonderful patients, that no matter how much they are suffering they are “quite all right, thank you, Sister,” and they won’t ask for things, and when she asks them if they are in pain, they say, “Not too much, Sister.” The first night she says she went all to pieces, but nobody saw her; now she too is getting steadier. That first night she was responsible for 90 men, many of whom were in the most awful condition. It was no wonder that it got on her nerves a bit. She was so much interested in my letters from you, as she has had no word from St. Louis, in fact no letter at all as yet. I can really see very little of her since I am in charge and so much in the midst of the group all the time. In London, Miss Dunlop and I went to everything together, and here the Matron and I go in pairs, or my own assistant, Miss Taylor, and I. From a personal point of view there are lots of disadvantages in being the head. I have to be on show all the time and always have to meet people and be sociable and go to all the functions, and I hate having things better than the rest of my people. For instance, our table in the mess hall has a tablecloth instead of oilcloth, and sometimes we have little extra things like strawberries when the others don’t. By and by things won’t have to be that way. But the Matrons here are very much honored and set apart and kotowed to in a way that disturbs our democratic American spirit.

Dad’s letter was so wonderfully cheering and helpful. It is so pathetic the way one can lose sight of one’s inspirations if one’s feet are tired, or the way one can forget one is on a crusade if there is no drinking water to be had for half a day, and can be just an ordinary uninspired human female and be fretful and discouraged because you don’t like the tone of voice of a supervisor. It is my job of course to keep before my people the why of our coming and to keep their spirits up. As the director said this morning, we must never be discouraged or depressed, that our biggest job is to keep our people full of enthusiasm. Sometimes it is hard if one’s own head aches, but it really is not hard for those of us who understand the meaning of our being here. No coffee for breakfast can actually blind some people to visions, and tea offered them five times a day can make them speak in a way that will really antagonize the people we have come to help. Our minds and bodies are funny things. There is not much thrill in putting your tired, luxury-loving body to bed on a hard camp cot after washing it as well as you can in a cup of warm water. We shall probably have mattresses issued to us when we can get them, but in the meantime the canvas cot is not so bad when it has a folded blanket in it. We have no business to bring ourselves up to be so finicky. Nobody should ever always “have to have two pillows or she can’t sleep a wink” or be “terribly dependent on sugar” or “just has to have so much sleep” or “just can’t touch a thing with cheese in it.” Those of you who have kids to bring up, if you want to make them adaptable to every possible circumstance, do make them eat everything at any time, or be able to get along without anything. Make them sleep any way on anything at any time, and you are giving them something worth more than rubies. My nurses are not bad about these things. On the whole they are bricks, and I have had and am having the very minimum of trouble. I really have been proud of them, the fine way they traveled. There wasn’t a murmur, only jokes, the day they had nothing to eat from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., standing about all morning on the boat--there weren’t seats enough to go around--and in the train all afternoon.

Saturday, June 30, 1917.

Dearest Dad and Mother and all the rest:--

It is a cold, rainy day and you’d be surprised to know how really cold it is. At night the night nurses are already wearing all their heavy underwear and their sweaters and their capes. I don’t quite see how they are going to manage when real winter comes. It is hard to realize that it is only the end of June. We had just two warm days, but when the sun is out it gets warmed up around the middle of the day, but most days coats are very comfortable. I am having a new blue serge uniform made here in town, for I can foresee that, with my office work, I shall be wearing the “stuff” uniform much more than the white ones. My office which was the jockey-room of the grandstand, in one corner of the back, is a very pleasant room. It is about as large as the central one of our Training School offices at home. The furniture is a large plain table covered with a dark blanket, shelves and cupboards made of boxes, a small folding table, some camp stools, a couple of straight chairs, and some matting. But the effect is quite cozy, and some reddish art squares on the stained boxes make the room quite cheerful.

I have not written for about two weeks, for there has been very little to write and I have not felt much like writing, since we have had no mail at all since those first few letters that reached us here just after we got here. I have kept thinking that I would put off writing until I had some letters to answer. But none have come. To-day the doctors got a whole batch, but there were only two letters for the nurses. That is the way our mail has been coming through, one or two letters at a time. It seems very probable that some of our mail has been lost or missent, for the few of us who have received letters say that reference is made in them to previous letters which have never arrived.

For a whole week now I have been entirely “on my own” here with the nursing, and the hospital has not stopped! We have been continuing to get in convoys and to send them out, not big ones but varying from 30 to 100 patients. The other night at midnight I went down to the receiving tent to see how a convoy coming in was managed, and it was one of the most interesting hours I ever spent. The big marquee has about two feeble electric lights in it; some of the doctors had electric torches, but it was all very dim and spooky. The ambulances backed up near to the door, and our stretcher bearers were all there ready to receive their patients by the time they had stopped. We get telephone messages when to expect a convoy. The stretchers are brought in and laid on the dirt floor as close together as possible. Then another group of men begin at once to examine the tickets that are fastened to the coat of each man, and assign them to particular tents where men with similar injuries or in similar condition are taken care of. Another couple of men hand out steaming hot soup, and the doctors talk to the men a little, but do not examine them there at all. Then very quickly the stretcher bearers come and carry out the men that have been assigned, out through the opposite end of the tent out into the darkness off to a bed in some comfortable tent where a nurse and an orderly are waiting to get the poor tired creature into bed. They give baths if they can; and get the infected and dirty clothes listed and off to the fumigator, and unless the patient is in very bad condition let him go right off to sleep. The doctors have found that the men are much more in need of a good sleep than of a doctor’s care right off, and, unless absolutely necessary, dressings are not changed until the morning. That night 64 men, most of them stretcher cases, were brought in, assigned, given soup, and taken off to their wards (tents) in 25 minutes, which you see is pretty speedy work.

The men have very little to say when they first come in. They are tired out and forlorn and often in pain and dazed. They some of them seem surprised to see Americans taking care of them, but they don’t say much. They answer wearily, “Not so bad, Sister” or “A bit rocky, sir,” but later some of them tell most awful stories. One of them told the other day of getting caught on a barbed wire entanglement on which he was thrown by the explosion of a shell and of hanging there all day before he was rescued. It had happened early in the morning, and the rescuing party could not get to him until after dark. Another told of lying out between two lines of trenches three days. He was hurt in the hip and could drag himself only a few inches at a time. He got water from the bottles of the dead soldiers. We get not only surgical cases but a good many medical ones, pleurisy, nephritis, trench fever, lots of them, and all sorts of heart conditions. We also get a good many not due to military life, appendicitis, injuries from kicks from horses, infections, etc., but most are “G. S. W” (gunshot wound). Some are unbelievably awful, whole parts blown away, as for instance all the flesh across the shoulders or between the thighs, where a shell tore right through from behind. I cannot see how some of them live, and live so bravely and cheerfully.

And it is not only the men that are brave but the women too. This afternoon I have been trying to arrange for one of our “B. V. D.’s,” as the doctors call them, meaning the “V. A. D.’s” to get a permit to go to a hospital in E., where her brother is. He has been wounded but not seriously enough to be sent back to England. She has had one brother killed, another is a prisoner, and now this youngest brother is wounded, and she is the cheeriest, bravest little thing you ever saw. Another has had three brothers killed, and you would never dream it to see her. A third, whose fiancé was killed about a month ago, I am a little worried about; she is driving herself into the work so hard. Oh, there are so many pitiful people over here it keeps one’s heart torn up the whole livelong time. You can’t get away from the sorrows of people ever. Not that one wants to, if there is anything that can be done, but at home there are times, thank God, when one can forget all the woe of the world, and pain and sorrow, but not here. It is before your eyes every waking minute and in your ears even in your sleep when the feet go marching, marching by.