Part 10

The experiences of Madame Brunot and her sister, Miss Mole, who lived at Cambrai for over two years under German rule, provide an example of patient and unselfish work, carried on in the most trying circumstances with splendid courage and devotion. Madame Brunot is of English birth, married to a Frenchman resident in Cambrai. On the outbreak of war she telegraphed to her sister, Miss Mole, to come and help her in an ambulance station which she was establishing in her house, affiliated to the Union des Femmes de France. Miss Mole left for Cambrai at once, arriving on August 13, 1914. There followed a few days of suspense during which the French and English armies were retreating day by day nearer to Paris, and then, on August 26, the German army poured through Cambrai. A battle raged in the streets in front of Madame Brunot’s house and in the trenches behind her garden. Beds for twenty-two had been prepared, but in a very short time fifty wounded were picked up and laid on mattresses provided by people of the quarter. While Miss Mole was tending the wounded whom the French and German soldiers dragged inside their gates, Madame Brunot went out under fire with her man-servant to rescue a French soldier who had been overlooked. The first dressings were done at once, but not until late at night was even a German doctor available. The next day the worst cases were sent to the civil hospital for operation, and then returned to the ambulance station to be cared for. During the following days and nights work was incessant, but after a fortnight all the wounded were transported as prisoners to Germany and the ambulance station practically closed. Miss Mole then went to one of the big hospitals in the town and was allowed to work for a time in the English wards, where she described the men as being “in an incredible state of neglect.” She was afterwards asked to take over the case of an Irish officer said to be dying of tetanus. By courageously begging some serum from the German authorities, in spite of a hostile reception, and then by her devoted nursing, she won the officer back to life, and was able to set him on the road to health before he was transported to Germany for internment. Madame Brunot, meanwhile, had been doing all she could for the English wounded in the hospitals, visiting them constantly with gifts of fruit, eggs, milk, and puddings, and all the time doing her utmost to be allowed to reopen her ambulance station. In October, 1914, the German permission was obtained. Madame Brunot and Miss Mole were therefore able to continue their nursing till the Germans again closed the ambulance station in March, 1915. During these months the work was terribly hard, for the staff was shorthanded and the patients were practically helpless, being mostly cases of paralysis or men with amputated limbs. Miss Mole narrowly escaped losing her arm from blood-poisoning, contracted while dressing a very septic case. It was only after several operations and six months of painful and anxious treatment that Miss Mole recovered the use of her arm. After the closing of the ambulance station for the second time, the sisters did all they could for the English and French prisoners in Cambrai, arranging to send them food, gifts, and messages by every means they could devise.

Early in 1916 they took up this work for the prisoners in a more organised way, working under the Mairie of the town, and using their house as a depôt for garments and food. “Being very short of money,” wrote Miss Mole, “I also gave lessons in English, by which means I was able to buy bread. This meant self-denial on the part of the people who sold it to me, as we were all on bread rations. Food was very scarce, and without the American _ravitaillement_ we should certainly have starved.”

As time went on life grew increasingly difficult, and the German _régime_ became daily more severe. Many of their friends were arrested, some evacuated from their houses, and others sent as hostages to Germany. In November, 1916, Madame Brunot and Miss Mole were turned out of their house, and were thankful to take refuge in a tiny dwelling half shattered by aeroplane bombs. At last, all hope of further service being gone, they applied to join a train of refugees, and were allowed to leave Cambrai in December, 1916.

No women could have worked harder than these sisters during more than two years for the wounded, the prisoners, the desolate and poor of the forlorn city--cooking, sewing, giving without thought for themselves, uttering no complaints, forgetting their own need in the bitter need around them. A terrible journey home, preceded by the inevitable internment in Germany, might have seemed the finishing stroke; but, undaunted by all they have seen and suffered, the sisters have gathered their courage to build up life afresh, and to restore something of all that was so suddenly crushed for them and for thousands more, in the world-wide disaster of the war.

XXXI

SOME ARMY NURSES

The noble host of Army nurses contains few names which are known to the general public; but for those who scan the _Gazette_ with care there stand out women whose deeds swell the ever-lengthening list of heroines, not only by shining acts of gallantry but by month after month of patient, devoted work. The wonderful Army Medical organisation has covered a vast field, and the endeavour has been throughout the war that in any place, in any region, where sick and wounded soldiers are likely to be congregated, there should always be a supply of nurses to minister to them. Soldiers removed from the battlefield are handed over from the ambulances directly to nurses, and are never from that time onwards, whether in trains, ships, or hospitals, at home, in France, or in the remotest of the battle zones, away from the care of trained nurses.

The short accounts of work which follow have been received from typical nurses, who, following the traditions of their service, specially ask to remain anonymous.

The first type of hospital nearest to the battlefield where nurses are allowed to work is the casualty clearing station. An idea of the work can be gained from a sentence in a nurse’s letter home: “Fights in the air are very common, but we are so busy we rarely have time to look.” The casualty clearing stations have frequently been under bombardment, and bomb-dropping from aeroplanes is so usual an occurrence as to be hardly worth mentioning. Among the many reports of nurses under shell fire is that of a staff nurse who, “although knocked down by the explosion of a shell, resumed her work until all the patients were evacuated.” Another nursing sister was present in the operating theatre when it was wrecked by the explosion of a 15-inch shell, which wounded her. In spite of her wound she remained at work for five hours, and displayed great courage in continuing to attend to patients.

The following is a description by a nurse of the casualty clearing station work: “We were usually very full of patients--at one time convoys every other day, besides a constant stream in small numbers. Eighty-eight patients passed through the ward I was in in one day, leaving us fifty at night. If the fifty beds were full, the stretchers were placed on trestles until sometimes it was most difficult to move. We had a very good system with the new cases. Perhaps fifty would come in at once. They were got into bed, undressed, washed, and fed. The medical officer went round and looked at all the wounds. If he decided they were to be evacuated, red labels were placed on the bed-rail if they were to go by train lying, blue labels if they were to go sitting, and white labels if they must go by barge. Those for immediate operation had one with ‘Theatre’ written on, pinned on the outer blanket, so that we could tell at a glance what to do for each.”

Another nurse writes: “When I think of these boys being carried in wounded, ay, wounded almost beyond all recognition, but smiling bravely to the last, it makes one feel proud to be British. As our Padre said, we did God’s own work up there.”

The nurses on the hospital trains have a fine record of service. Though less monotonous than the life in a stationary hospital, it is a curious existence to be living permanently in a train, continually travelling to and fro on one stretch of line, nursing in cramped quarters and under particularly tiring conditions. Three nurses recently received the Military Medal “for conspicuous bravery under fire, on No. 27 Ambulance Train.” The train was carrying a full load of nearly five hundred sick and wounded away by night from a town in the vicinity of the Somme front, when an aeroplane attack began. Five bombs fell in the immediate neighbourhood of the train. The windows were smashed and the lights went out. The train gave a heave which threw some of the patients out of their cots. One of the sisters is reported to have called out to the men in her coach: “Now, be quiet and good, boys, till I light a lamp.” This she managed to do, and the men declared that her hand never trembled. The commanding officer reports that “the sisters went about their work coolly, collectively, and cheerfully, and that by their magnificent conduct they not only allayed alarm among the helpless patients and those suffering from shell shock, but caused both patients and personnel to play up to the standard which they set.”

Wonderful work, too, has been done by the nurses in the hospital ships in conditions of ever-increasing danger. “We landed 1300 wounded yesterday morning,” writes a hospital ship sister on the cross-Channel service. “It was a wonderful experience ... nearly nine hundred were on the decks and steerage with broken arms, etc. All the eighty-four in my ward were stretcher cases.... The work was terrific.” There is now an all too long list of nurses who have suffered shipwreck at the hands of the enemy, while some have lost their lives. When a great ship was recently torpedoed in the Mediterranean the nurses had a narrow escape. One of them has described her experience in the open boat as follows: “Our safety lay in keeping as far from the ship as possible, heavy seas making the pull to land out of the question. The huge swell increased the fear for the safety of our boat, as we were sitting waist-deep in water. Baling was of no use; the harder we baled, the quicker we filled. A cry from the back of the boat caused all eyes to turn in time to see the ship first list to port side, then turn and take a long, straight dip beneath the waves. The sea was wilder and rougher than ever, and three gigantic waves in succession completely swamped our small boat, and all that was left to us now was to cling to the ropes in the boat and to each other.” Eventually, however, the nurses were rescued just in time by a destroyer. Such experiences are no longer rare adventures--they are the hourly anticipation of all workers who serve in hospital ships, since the Germans have ceased to regard the badge of the Red Cross as a sacred and inviolable symbol.

A description is given elsewhere in this book of work in a typical base hospital. If comparisons are possible, perhaps the most unselfish of all hospital work is that which falls to the lot of those sisters and nurses whose duty is the care of the sick and wounded German prisoners. To have to expend their energy and devotion on Germans is unwelcome work for any Englishwomen to-day, but the spirit in which these nurses accept their difficult task is well illustrated by the following account from a sister who is in charge of a ward of German prisoners in a great military hospital in London. She says: “The German prisoner of war in hospital in England comes on the whole as a pleasant surprise, though a nurse gets an unpleasant shock when she is detailed for duty amongst the prisoners. For several months I have been in charge of a large number of wounded Germans, and I find them on the whole quite good patients. At first their cleanliness and habits are not all that can be desired, neither do they bear pain well. But they give very little trouble, and are extremely grateful for what is done for them. They are very observant, and make themselves quite useful as soon as they are able to get about. They are of great assistance to the nurses in carrying round screens, wheeling dressing-trollies, etc. Perhaps the most striking thing about them is the almost womanly care which, without exception, they give to a comrade more sick than themselves. As patients much may be said in their favour, and the work amongst them is a wonderful experience.” No better proof could be given of how the true nurse’s instinct dominates her entire work; her care for her patients, and, above all, her appreciation of their good qualities, overcoming her natural and instinctive prejudice.

To the nurses of the war, it will be admitted by all, belongs the crown of women’s war service. Their ranks contain many heroines whose names and deeds will never be chronicled; but their selfless devotion, their courage, their unquestioning acceptance of any risk, and their willing sacrifice of personal comfort, health, even life itself, will stand for all time in the proudest memorials of these tragic years.