Part 5

To-day our Major Fife, the U. S. Army man who joined us in St. Louis, with two other regular army men, took over the command of the hospital, and Col. J. left. Col. J., the English O. C. (Officer Commanding), has been perfectly charming, and we are all very sorry to see him go. He has been transferred to a neighboring hospital camp, not very far away, so we still may see something of him. Yesterday afternoon, late, I had a little tea party here in my office, which was very delightful. A few days ago I had met the two Colonels of the Australian hospital camp, which is on the other side of the race course, and as the one who is the M. O. (Medical Officer) said he wanted to meet Major Murphy, I invited him and the other O. C. and had Major Murphy and Col. J. and Miss Taylor, and we had a very nice party, with tea, bread and butter, and jam. Then afterwards we took the visiting Colonels down to see some of the American apparatus that we are using on some of our cases. Our Surgical Hut looks like a carpenter shop. We have about ten beds under a wooden canopy frame, to which the poor shattered legs of our blown-to-pieces men are fastened. When a leg is broken in half a dozen places and there are several gaping infected wounds besides, it is something of a trick of carpentry and mechanics to make the poor fellows comfortable, put on extensions so the legs won’t contract, and yet make it possible to irrigate the wounds. We have some wonderful arrangements. It is remarkable the way pulleys and ropes can be arranged so that the men can pull themselves up with their hands to let the nurses rub their backs and change their beds. So many men come to us with terrific bedsores to add to the distress of their shattered legs it takes much ingenuity to take care of them. We have one man who is practically slung in hammocks which are attached with counter weights to the frame over the bed. These small hammocks, or slings, go, one under his shoulders, one under his lower back, and then his leg is in a frame with weights attached to the foot. Rubber tubes are run in and out of his thigh, and knee, and his wounds are irrigated through these tubes which are perforated. This method of irrigating is the Carrel Method. The men in this hut are getting to feel they are such an interesting show, so many people come to see them, that they have begun to make fun by rattling a coin in a tin box and taking up a collection when people ask what they are doing that for.

It’s about time I went up to my room now, as it is after nine and the doctors are beginning to go to their tents and I must sit here ticking away on the machine with the door open. Some nurses came in to talk to me so I was disturbed, even when I thought I had got away from them. They meant well and only came to inquire if I was not well, because they thought I did not look well and were worried. Wasn’t that dear of them. It’s only a lack of proper sleep that makes me look a bit queer. I am not a bit sick, just a bit “groggy.” I really am quite brown, and my hair is quite curly! from all this dampness. It rains part of every day almost.

Good-night for now. It is always fun to think at night, maybe I will get a letter to-morrow. You just cannot imagine how much letters count. I never had them count so much before.

Much love to you all.

J.

Rouen, France. July 16, 1917.

I am inclosing a copy of a letter Miss Taylor received to-day, in reply to the letter she wrote to Private Murphy’s mother, the day after her boy died here. He was here of a gunshot wound in the chest, one of those treacherous injuries that seem to be getting along all right and then knock a man out with a sudden hemorrhage. The boy was not even on the Seriously Ill or the Dangerously Ill list, and the worst part was that he died before we could get the priest to him. We have a Catholic priest as well as C. of E. and Nonconformist padres always in attendance. They live on the grounds. Of course a formal notice of the man’s death was sent to his mother through the War Casualty Office, but Miss Taylor wrote to tell his mother the details, and to explain why the priest was not with him when he died. Her reply is so typical of the bravery of English women I want you to see it.

“To Assistant Matron:--

“I thank you for so kindly answering my letter for my dear lad Pte. W. Murphy. I am quite sure you all concerned did what possibly could be done for him. I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. I’ve felt it very keenly, more than I can ever say, but I have the satisfaction of knowing he was cared for by a woman at the last and given a decent grave. Perhaps God took him then because he was then fit, he was a good boy at home to us and I know the last three years of his life he honestly tried his level best. I think God understands us each one best. I should like you to thank the nurse personally for me who was with him at the last, and every night you brave women are remembered in our prayers. My wee daughter aged three years prays, ‘God bless our nurses at the front.’ I have not received his treasure bag and am sorry as my little son aged 15 yrs., who was passionately attached to our dear lad, hoped to have his rosary, but perhaps I shall get it--only you asked me to let you know if I did not receive it. I must now conclude, thanking you once again, believe me

“Yrs. sincerely

“Bell Brown.”

All day yesterday and in the night we heard the booming of guns, and the night nurses say the windows in our surgical hut rattled. It was the loudest I have heard since we have been here. And every time I hear them those words of one of our patients come to my mind: “Some poor devils are getting theirs.” The men recently sent down from the front tell us that rumor has it that there is going to be a big drive in a few days. We wonder if it has begun and if we shall be getting more convoys in. Our hospital is not half full now, we have been sending out so many convoys over to “Blighty.” We need to be a little busier for our best good. The weather is lovely, very cool at night, we always sleep under blankets, warm in the sun. Almost every day it rains at least a part of the day, but the ground here is so sandy there is very little mud. It is a drizzling evening, but it is cozy and pleasant here in my office. It is getting on toward ten and outside in their tents I can hear the voices of some of our officers talking together, and from time to time across the road come bugle calls, and there is that faint bustling sound of large numbers of people getting ready to be quiet for the night. We are in the midst of such thousands and thousands of people, mostly soldiers, and all day long there are myriads of soldier sounds, bugle calls, tramping of feet, motor cycles, lorries, bands playing, men’s voices, sharp commands, the slap of the hand on the musket in salute, the popping of small bombs or guns all day long from the practice trenches near here. On the fourth of July we thought how like a home Fourth it was, but here the popping and the shots sound every day. And it is not fireworks that are being shot off. At neighboring camps there are experts in bayoneting, experts in gassing, experts in Hate Talk. There are actually special men who sometimes talk to as many as three thousand men to make them feel that their chief business is to kill. It is incomprehensible. Whenever will this toppling world right itself? It will be a long time before we come home. The more we know the more sure we are that it is going to be a long business. And the man who wrote “The picture, That I saw that day, Of home folks bidding home good-by, For traitor seas, And ‘somewhere,’ Out beyond the seas, And after that, Just God, And what He wills,” was right. That is the situation.

July 19. Such nice letters to-day. It is such fun to get the home news and to learn the details of your doings. We are not working hard and we find it embarrassing to have people take it for granted that we are overdoing all the time and suffering real hardships. We are comfortable and well fed and have interesting work and many very interesting diversions.

There is a lot of very simple entertainment back and forth among the camps. Once or twice every week there is a tea party or a tennis party with tea or a concert with refreshments somewhere here. To-morrow we are going to return some of the many courtesies that have been shown us and be “at home” to our neighbors here on the Race Course: No. 10 General Hospital and No. 1 Australian General. The party will be out of doors and there will be tennis and a baseball game between nurses and officers. The officers are having baseball suits made for them by the nurses. These suits are to be very gay _skirts_, so that they will be as much hampered as the women. We have started our V. A. D.’s on baseball against the American nurses. They take to it like small boys and find it “ripping.” It has been the best mixing process I ever invented. It is a great sight these lovely evenings between eight and nine to see the crowd of hilarious nurses careering over the grass between the hedge and the fenced-off center of the course where all the tents are, and hanging on the fence a couple of hundred “blue boys” or convalescent patients in their blue hospital suits. Then the officers come straggling out after their dinner, peacefully smoking their pipes, and they line up and root and laugh too and coach. It does not look much like war. It does everybody the best possible good, for it has them all roaring with laughter, and sends them off to bed in the best of humor, like a bunch of kids.

The English tea parties are charming, and I think myself in a storybook every time I go to one. The uniforms of the English Sisters are so gay and bright with their flowing caps and red-bordered little capes, and all the men are in uniform, and the little tables set out on the grass are under large sunshades, or there are special marquees set up for the occasion, and it’s all very gay. Last week around at No. 10 General after the tea party, they had games, tennis for some, hunting for hidden treasure in the grass and hedge (I found a souvenir spoon in a mole hole), and a potato and spoon race, and also a tug of war that was so fiercely strenuous that it left many of us with cricks in our necks ever since. The tug of war seems to be a favorite sport. Our white-dressed nurses with their scarlet-lined blue capes look mighty pretty on these occasions. Of course different groups of nurses and doctors get off for different parties. They are usually from 5 to 7 or after 8.

Then in the Y. M. C. A. huts there are frequent forms of entertainment, not only for the convalescent patients but for the staff. A “concert” usually means a kind of variety show. All kinds of pretty good troupes are sent out to go the rounds of the various hospitals, and then, too, each hospital has its own band, which is trained or run by the Y. M. C. A. people. We here have some very unusual Y. M. C. A. people. A Prof. B., his wife, and son are living here and giving their whole time to this work. They are from Cambridge, both father and son. I am told that the father is a professor of theology, and the son of archæology. They are very talented people, quite eccentric geniuses, all of them, I should judge. The father leads the band, the son plays the little organ in our chapel, the mother hovers around, and all the time some one of them is in attendance at the Y. M. C. A. hut to help the boys play and to manage the many concerts and lectures that take place there all the time. The first time I met Mrs. B. was the first night I arrived. The first thing she said to me was, “Good gracious, how funereal you look!” I was in my dark uniform and it was after dark in the evening and I did look like a crow, but then! She was very cordial afterward and has been very charming to us all. She gave a big tea for us in the hut one Sunday afternoon and had many officers, Y. M. C. A. workers, and nurses there to meet us. Everybody here is devoted to the B.’s and they add much to the community life. Both father and son are tall, thin, stooped, spectacled souls. The son is more or less of an invalid, it seems.

We have just heard a piece of news that delights us very much and that is that Miss G. is to come over to be “Matron-in-chief for France” as the corresponding official is called for the other nursing forces. I had already written, as had the Chief Nurses of some of the other Units, asking Miss N. to send us some one to advise us, and make uniform regulations for us all and standardize our actions and customs. Now, each Chief Nurse is entirely responsible, under her Commanding Officer, who leaves all the details to her, for every little thing. And the consequence is that there are as many ideas about discipline, uniforms, hours of duty, social usages, etc. as there are Chief Nurses. Miss G. will be ideal for this position. Dr. Alexander Lambert was here last evening and he told us that she was coming. It may be that she has only been sent for, but I hope it means that she is to come. We have received word that five American nurses are to be added to our force here soon. We don’t know where they are to come from or anything about them. It was an official notice that we had yesterday that 33 were to arrive at Havre, five of whom are to be sent to us. We shall be glad to see them whoever they are. Five of our V. A. D.’s are to be taken when the Americans come.

Two of my people heard me say the other day that I wished I had my violin here, so yesterday they went down to Rouen and bought me one. I wish you could hear the accounts of how they did it, for neither of them has any French or knows anything about violins. But it was a violin all right that they brought out to me wrapped up in a newspaper, and last night it played perfectly good tunes in the mess hall. One of the V. A. D.’s plays the piano very well, so we had a fine time trying out the instrument. To-day I have some bad blisters on the ends of the fingers of my left hand, which makes it almost impossible to write on the typewriter. We have not much music here, but a few popular dance airs.

Loads of love.

Julia.

July 25, 1917.

I do not know how to write about our doings of the past few days, for I cannot write numbers, and it is only numbers that would give you any idea at all of what we have been doing. I wrote in my last letter, I think it was, that we were not working hard, well, we have begun our hard work, and for our own sakes we are glad of it. In the past 24 hours we have admitted more patients than the total capacity of the Barnes and Children’s Hospital, not the average number of patients, but the total capacity. And all these patients have been bathed, fed, and had their wounds dressed. Some of course were able to walk and could go to the bath house and the mess tents, but most of them to-day are stretcher cases, and oh, so dirty, hungry, and miserable. The mere (I say mere, but it is really the most important part of the whole thing) proper recording of the names, numbers, ranks, nearest relatives etc., is in itself a huge task. Of course the nurses don’t have all that to do, but they have a lot of it. The boys who are stretcher bearers must be so lame, they can hardly move, for just consider what it means to lift down out of ambulances as many patients as that, and then afterwards carry them as far sometimes as a city block, for we filled our farthest tents to-day. It is most remarkable how things have gone. There are many aching backs to-night, for all the beds are very low and the stooping is terrific, but every one has been a brick. Many of the nurses have worked 14 straight hours to-day, and many of the doctors had only two or three hours’ sleep last night, and were working all day. The difficulty to-day was, that we had to put patients into rows of tents that have not been used for some time and were not equipped, and our warning was not long enough to prepare. We had the beds ready, but little else. To-night things have straightened out a lot, but it is going to be a busy night as we are to send out a convoy, and get another in. Three additional night nurses are on to-night, taken from the day force that has to stretch itself a little thinner.

Our nurses don’t need any “Hate Lecture” after what we have seen in the past few days. We have been receiving patients that have been gassed, and burned in a most mysterious way. Their clothing is not burned at all, but they have bad burns on their bodies, on parts that are covered by clothing. The doctors think it has been done by some chemical that gets its full action on the skin after it is moist, and when the men sweat, it is in these places that are the most moist that the burns are the worst. The Germans have been using a kind of oil in bombs, the men say it is oil of mustard. These bombs explode and the men’s eyes, noses, and throats are so irritated they do not detect the poison gas fumes that come from the bombs that follow these oil ones, and so they either inhale it and die like flies, or have a delayed action and are affected by it terribly several hours later. We have had a lot of these delayed-action gassed men, who cough and cough continuously, like children with whooping cough. We had a very bad case the other night who had not slept one hour for four nights or days, and whose coughing paroxysms came every minute and a half by the clock. When finally the nurses got him to sleep, after rigging up a croup tent over him so that he could breathe steam from a croupkettle over a little stove that literally had to be held in the hands to make it burn properly, they said they were ready to get down on their knees in gratitude, his anguish had been so terrible to watch. They said they could not wish the Germans any greater unhappiness than to have them have to witness the sufferings of a man like that and know that they had been the cause of it. It is diabolical the things they do, simply fiendish, and like the things that would be expected from precocious degenerates.

I cannot imagine what kind of change is going to take place in our minds before we get home. There are so many changes coming over our ideas every day. They are not new ideas, for many people have had them before, since the beginning of this war, but they are new to us. Human life seems so insignificant, and individuals are so unimportant. No one over here thinks in any numbers less than 50 or 100, and what can the serious condition of Private John Brown of something or other, Something Street, Birmingham, matter? One’s mind is torn between the extremes of such feelings, for when a nurse takes the pulse of a wounded sleeping man and he wakes just enough to say “Mother,” she goes to pieces in her heart, just as though he weren’t only one of the hundreds of wounded men in just this one hospital.

This morning when the big rush was on, I was in the receiving tent when the last three men were unloaded: One had his head and eyes all bandaged up and seemed in very bad condition, so I went with the stretcher bearers to see if I could help get him into bed. The eye specialist was sent for at once, and got there in a few minutes. We untied the big triangular bandage that was keeping the wads of cotton on his head and eyes, and found his eyes in a terrible condition from being bandaged for over 24 hours without attention. We soaked off the dressings with some boric solution that I had procured from the Operating Hut. There was not even a single basin in the tent to which the man had been brought, not to mention a nurse or medicines. After a while we got the eyes open a tiny bit so that they could be examined and washed out a little, and then the doctor blew out: “It’s a perfect crime to send a man down here in this condition, look at this puncture wound of this eye, and see what a terrible condition his eyes are in. A whole lifetime of blindness will probably be the result.” The patient was delirious and quite incapable of understanding. Just then an older officer came along and heard the remark and said: “Crime! my dear boy, you’ve got absolutely the wrong point of view. How could they keep a man like this up there at the front, from which they have sent him? Don’t you realize that at a place like that every wounded man is simply a hindrance and must be gotten out of the way? Just stop and think how well they are doing to get so many of them to us in any decent shape at all.” Then the other one said: “Oh, I suppose so. War’s the thing now, all right.” After he was dressed, and things had been straightened out a bit, this patient was transferred to one of the lines that is better equipped to take care of such serious cases. He was put on the “Dangerously Ill,” and word was sent to his mother! His head injury is bad, so maybe he wont live to be blind. (Later. He is much better now and will get well and probably have the sight of one eye.)

No man leaves here in his own clothes. It couldn’t be done. All the things have to be sent to be disinfected and then they go to the clothes tent, and then are just drawn, as clothes for so many men, when the convoys go out. That is unless they are going to the Convalescent Camp or back to a base, then they are fitted as nearly as possible and given a full equipment, but the men going to England are fixed up just so that they can travel. They are lucky if they can stick to their little comfort bags in which are their little treasures. Just so many pins that must have so many moves is all they are. And they are so good and patient. They are so grateful, it just makes everybody wish she were a dozen people and could do twelve times as much as she can possibly do with her one set of arms and legs.

But what will we think when we get through with it all? How are we going to stand the mental strain? Yet others do, and go on being normal, cheerful human beings, teaching bayoneting one hour, and playing tennis the next, or having tea with pretty nurses. Oh, it’s a queer world! as the orderly said who came to tell me of a few more hundred wounded expected in soon. “Isn’t it a cruel world?”

July 30, 1917.

Dearest Family:--

This is just a letter to you, not a general epistle to the United States. Major Murphy has just cabled to-day that we are all well, and the reason that there has been such a long delay in your getting our letters from France is that they were held up in London. We do not know why. A number of friends have cabled, and that is how we know that our letters have not been received. I spoke to the Major about it this morning, as so many nurses have said they thought they had better cable, and he said he would cable Miss Hudson at once, which he proceeded to do. I began this last evening, but was interrupted by having an orderly bring me a huge bunch of sweet-peas, mignonette, etc. from a nice Colonel commanding a neighboring Infantry Base Depot. Of course I had to stop and put them in such vases as we have. I brought some down to the officers’ mess, where they were just finishing dinner, and where I had to stay and chat a bit.

This afternoon we have had distinguished guests! Mrs. Christie, the Chief Nurse of the Presbyterian Unit from N. Y. and three of her nurses motored down from E. to call on me and more especially Miss Allison of the Cleveland Unit. It was pleasant to see them and to compare notes.