Diary of a Nursing Sister - 19th October 1914

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Monday, October 19th.—Rouen, 9 p.m. Got here late last night, and all the wounded were taken off straight away to the two general hospitals here.

One has 1300 cases, and has kept two people operating day and night. A great many deaths from tetanus.

Seen General French's 2nd despatch (of September) to-day in 'Daily Mail.' No mail in, alas! Had a regular debauch in cathedrals and baths to-day. This is the most glorious old city, two cathedrals of surpassing beauty, lovely old streets, broad river, hills, and lovely hot baths and hair shampooing. What with two cathedrals, a happy hour in a hot bath, a shampoo, and delicious tea in the town, we've had a happy day. The train stays here to-night and we are off to-morrow? for ——?

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 18th October 1914

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Sunday, October 18th, 9 p.m.—Got under way at 6 a.m., and are now about half-way between Paris and Rouen. We outskirted Paris. Passed a train full of Indian troops. Put off the four wounded women at Paris; they have been a great addition to the work, but very sweet and brave; the orderlies couldn't do enough for them; they adored them, and were so indignant at their being wounded. Another man died to-day—shot through the pelvis. One of the enterics, a Skye man, thinks I'm his mother; told me to-night there was a German spy in his carriage, and that he had "50 dead Jocks to bury—and it wasn't the buryin' he didn't like but the feeling of it." He babbles continually of Germans, ammunition, guns, Jocks, and rations.

Sunday is not Sunday, of course, on a train: no Padre, no services, no nothing—not even any Time. The only thing to mark it to-day is one of the Civil Surgeons wearing his new boots.

We shan't get any letters yet till we get to the new railhead. I'm hoping we shall get time at Rouen to see the Cathedral, do some shopping, have a bath and a shampoo, but probably shan't.

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 17th October 1914

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Saturday, October 17th.—We are to stay here till Monday, to go on taking up the wounded from the 1st Division. They went on coming in all yesterday in motor ambulances. They come straight from the trenches, and are awfully happy on the train with the first attempts at comforts they have known. One told me they were just getting their tea one day, relieving the trenches, when "one o' them coal-boxes" sent a 256 lb. shell into them, which killed seven and wounded fifteen. One shell! He said he had to help pick them up and it made him sick.

10 p.m.—Wrote the last before breakfast, and we haven't sat down since. We are to move back to Villeneuve to-morrow, dropping the sick probably at Versailles. Every one thankful to be going to move at last. The gas has given out, and the entire train is lit by candles.

Imagine a hospital as big as King's College Hospital all packed into a train, and having to be self-provisioned, watered, sanitated, lit, cleaned, doctored and nursed and staffed and officered, all within its own limits. No outside person can realise the difficulties except those who try to work it.

The patients are extraordinarily good, and take everything as it comes (or as it doesn't come!) without any grumbling. Your day is taken up in rapidly deciding which of all the things that want doing you must let go undone; shall they be washed or fed, or beds made, or have their hypodermics and brandies and medicines, or their dressings done? You end in doing some of each in each carriage, or in washing them after dinner instead of before breakfast.

The guns have been banging all the afternoon; some have dropped pretty near again to-day, but you haven't time to take much notice. Our meals are very funny—always candles stuck in a wine bottle—no tablecloth—everything on one plate with the same knife and fork—coffee in a glass, served by a charming dirty Frenchman; many jokes going on between the three tables—the French officials, the M.O.'s, and us. Our own bunks are quite civilised and cosy, though as small as half a big bathing-machine—swept out by our batman.

We have some French wounded and sick on the train.

I see some parsons are enlisting in the R.A.M.C. I hope they know how to scrub floors, clean lavatories, dish out the meals, sleep on the floor, go without baths, live on Maconochie rations, and heave bales and boxes about, and carry stretchers; the orderlies have a very hard life—and no glory.

Must turn in.

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 16th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Friday, October 16th, 2 p.m.—Have had a very busy time since last entry. The shelling of the village was aimed at the church, the steeple of which was being used by the French for signalling. A butcher was killed and a boy injured, and as the British Clearing Hospital was in the church and the French Hospital next door they were all cleared out into our train; many very bad cases, fractured spine, a nearly dying lung case, a boy with wound in lung and liver, three pneumonias, some bad enterics (though the worst have not been moved). A great sensation was having four badly wounded French women, one minus an arm, aged 16; another minus a foot, aged 61, amputation after shell wounds from a place higher up. They are in the compartment next three wounded officers. They are all four angelically good and brave and grateful; it does seem hard luck on them. It was not easy getting them all settled in, in a pitch-dark evening, the trains so high from the ground; and a good deal of excitement all round over the shelling, which only left off at dusk. One of the C.S.'s had a narrow shave on his way from the train to the R.T.O.; he had just time to lie flat, and it burst a few yards from him, on the line. S. and I stayed up till 3 a.m. and then called the others, and we got up again at 8 and were all busy all the morning. It is a weird business at night, picking your way through kitchens and storerooms and wards with a lantern over the rickety bridges and innumerable heavy swing-doors. I was glad of the brown overall G. sent me, and am wearing the mackintosh apron to-day that N. made me. We are probably staying here several days, and are doing day and night duty entire—not divided as last night. I am on day. We have a great many washings in the morning, and have to make one water do for one compartment—(the train ran out of water this morning—since refilled from the river alongside); and bed-makings, and a lot of four-hourly treatment with the acutes. The enteric ward has a very good orderly, and excellent disinfecting arrangements. It is in my division of the train. Lack of drinking water makes things very difficult.

I thought things were difficult in the hospitals at Le Mans owing to lack of equipment, but that was child's play compared to the structural difficulties of working a hospital on a train, especially when it stands in a siding several days. One man will have to die on the train if we don't move soon, but we are not full up yet. Twenty-seven men—minor cases—bolted from the church yesterday evening on to the train when the shells were dropping, and were ignominiously sent back this morning.

It has so far been the most exciting journey the train has had. Jack Johnson has been very quiet all the morning, but he spoke for a little again just now. I'm going to have a rest now till four.

Four Tommies in one bunk yesterday told me things about the trenches and the fighting line, which you have to believe because they are obviously giving recent intimate personal experiences; but how do they or any one ever live through it? These came all through the Retreat from Mons. Then through the wet weather in the trenches on the Aisne—where they don't always get hot tea (as is said in the papers, much to their scorn). They even had to take the tea and sugar out of the haversacks of dead Germans; no one had had time to bury for twelve days—"it warn't no use to them," they said, "and we could do with it."

In the Retreat they said men's boots were worn right off and they marched without; the packs were thrown away, and the young boys died of exhaustion and heat. The officers guarded each pump in case they should drink bad water, and they drank water wrung out of their towels!

"And just as Bill got to the pump the shell burst on him—it made a proper mess of him"—this with a stare of horror. And they never criticise or rant about it, but accept it as their share for the time being.

The train is to-day in a place with a perfect wood on both sides, glowing with autumn colours, and through it goes a road with continual little parties of French cavalry, motors, and transport waggons passing up it.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 15th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Thursday, October 15th, 10 a.m.—Braisne. Got here about 8 o'clock. After daylight only evidence of the war I could see from my bed were long lines of French troops in the roads, and a few British camps; villages all look deserted. Guns booming in the distance, sounds like heavy portmanteaux being dropped on the roof at regular intervals. Some London Scottish on the station say all the troops have gone from here except themselves and the R.A.M.C. There are some wounded to come on here.

There is an R.E. camp just opposite in a very wet wood, and quagmires of mud. They have built Kaffir kraals to sleep in—very sodden-looking; they've just asked for some papers; we had a few. They build pontoons over the Aisne at night and camp here by day.

4 p.m.—We have only taken twelve cases on as yet, but are having quite an exciting afternoon. Shells are coming at intervals into the village. I've seen two burst in the houses, and one came right over our train. Two French soldiers on the line lay flat on their faces; one or two orderlies got under the train; one went on fishing in the pond close by, and the wounded Tommies got rather excited, and translated the different sounds of "them Jack Johnsons" and "them Coal-boxes" and "Calamity Kate," and of our guns and a machine-gun popping. There is a troop train just behind us that they may be potting at, or some gunners in the village, or the R.E. camp. There have been two aeroplanes over us this afternoon. You hear the shell coming a long way off, rather like a falsetto motor-engine, and then it bursts (twice in the trees of this wood where we are standing). There is an endless line of French horse transport winding up the wood on the other side, and now some French cavalry. The R.T.O. is now having the train moved to a safer place.

The troops have all gone except the 1st Division, who are waiting for the French to take their place, and then all the British will be on the Arras line, I believe, where we shall go next. (There's another close to the train.) They make such a fascinating purring noise coming, ending in a singing scream; you have to jump up and see. It is a yellowish-green sound! But you can't see it till it bursts.

None of the twelve taken on need any looking after at night besides what the orderly can do, so we shall go to bed.

We had another shell over the train, which (not the train) exploded with a loud bang in the wood the other side; made one jump more than any yet, and that was in the "safer place" the R.T.O. had the train moved to.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 14th October 1914

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Wednesday, October 14th.—Still in the siding "waiting for orders" to move on. There's a lot of waiting being done in this war one way and another, as well as a lot of doing. What a splendid message the French Government have sent the Belgian Government on coming to Havre! exciting for the people at Havre: they used to go mad when dusty motor-cars with a few exhausted-looking Belgians arrived in Havre.

We seem to be going to Rouen and up from there. Villeneuve is going to be evacuated as a military P.O. centre and other headquarters, and Abbeville to be the place—west of Amiens.

I had an excellent night, no sheets (because of the difficulties of washing), my own rug next me, and lots of blankets: the view, with trucks on each side, is not inspiring, but will improve when we move: have only been allowed walks alongside the train to-day because it may move at any minute (although it has no engine as yet!), and you mayn't leave the train without a pass from the Major.

M.O.'s and Sisters live on one waggon, all our little doors opening into the same corridor, where we have tea; it is a very easy family party. Our beds are all sofas in the daytime and quite public, unless we like to shut our doors. It is pouring to-day—first wet day for weeks.

Orders just come that we move at 8.46 for Abbeville, and get orders for the Front from there.

6.30 p.m.—Another order just come that our destination is Braisne, not Abbeville. They have always seen shells bursting at Braisne. I'm glad it's Braisne, as we shall get to the other part next journey, I expect.

8.45 p.m.—Started at last.

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 13th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Tuesday, October 13th.—At last I am on the train, and have just unpacked. There is an Army Sister and two Reserve, a Major ——, O.C., and two junior officers.

Don't know yet what messing arrangements are. We each have a bunk to ourselves, with a proper mattress, pillow, and blankets: a table and seat at one end, lots of racks and hooks, and a lovely little washing-house leading out of the bunk, shared by the two Sisters on each side of it: each has a door into it. No one knows where we are going; we start this afternoon.

6 p.m.—Not off yet. We had lunch in a small dining-car, we four Sisters at one table, Major —— and his two Civil Surgeons at another, and some French officials of the train at another. Meal cooked and served by the French—quite nice, no cloth, only one knife and fork. They are all very friendly and jolly.

In between the actual dealing with the wounded, which is only too real, it all feels like a play or a dream: why should the whole of France, at any rate along the railways and places on them, be upside down, swarming with British soldiers, and all, French and English, working for and talking of the one thing? everything, and every house and every hotel, school, and college, being used for something different from what it was meant for; the billeting is universal. You hear a funny alternation of educated and uneducated English on all sides of you, and loud French gabbling of all sorts. By day you see aeroplanes and troop trains and artillery trains; and by night you see searchlights and hear the incessant wailing and squawking of the train whistles. On every platform and at every public doors or gates are the red and blue French soldiers with their long spikey bayonets, or our Tommies with the short broad bayonets that don't look half so deadly though I expect they are much worse. You either have to have a written passport up here, or you must know the "mot" if challenged by the French sentries. All this from Havre and St Nazaire up to the Front.

The train is one-third mile long, so three walks along its side gives you exercise for a mile. The ward beds are lovely: broad and soft, with lovely pillow-cases and soft thick blankets; any amount of dressings and surgical equipment, and a big kitchen, steward's store, and three orderlies to each waggon. Shouldn't be surprised if we get "there" in the dark, and won't see the war country. Sometimes you are stopped by bridges being blown up in front of you, and little obstacles of that kind.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 11th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Versailles, 7 a.m., Sunday, October 11th.—At 3 a.m. at Chartres an officer of a Zouave Regiment, in blue and gold Zouave, blue sash, crimson bags like petticoats, and black puttees, and his smartly dressed sister, came into my carriage; both very nice and polite and friendly. He was 21, had fought in three campaigns, and been wounded twice; now convalescent after a wound in the foot a month ago—going to the depôt to rejoin. Her husband also at the front, and another brother. I changed at Versailles, and was given tea, and a slight wash by the always hospitable station duty Sisters, who welcome you at every big station. The No.— G.H. here they belong to is a very fine hotel with lovely gardens, and they are very proud of it—close to the Palace.

10 a.m., Juvisy.—I am now in an empty 1st class saloon (where I can take a long walk) after a long wait, with café au lait and an omelette at Juvisy, and 'The Times' of October 5th.

There is a pleasing uncertainty about one's own share on Active Service. I haven't the slightest idea whether, when I get to Villeneuve in half an hour's time, I shall—

(a) Remain there awaiting orders either in a French billet, a railway carriage, or a tent;

(b) Be sent up to Braisne to join a train; or

(c) Be sent down to Havre to ditto.

We had a man in No.— Stationary who got through the famous charge of the 9th Lancers unhurt, but came into hospital for an ingrowing toe nail!

Villeneuve, 5 p.m.—Like a blithering idiot, I was so interested in the Gunner's Diary of his birthday "in my hole" that I passed Villeneuve Triage, and got out the station after! Had to wait 1-1/2 hours for a train back, and got here eventually at 12. Collared four polite London Scottish to carry my baggage, and found the Sister in charge of Train Ambulance people.

I wish I could describe this extraordinary place. It is the Swindon of France; a huge wilderness of railway lines, trains, and enormous hangars, now used as camps and hospitals. Sister B. is encamped in a shut-off corner of one of these sheds surrounded by London Scottish cooking and making tea in little groups; they swarm here. I sleep to-night in the same small bed in an empty cottage with a Sister I've never seen before. We meal at a Convent French Hospital. I delivered my "Very Urgent" envelope to the R.T.O. for the Director of Supplies, and reported to Major ——, and after lunch had an hour's sleep on The Bed. There are rows of enterics on stretchers in khaki in this shed, waiting for motor ambulances to take them to Versailles No.— G.H., being nursed here meanwhile. There are also British prisoners (defaulters) penned in in another corner, and French troops at the other end!

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 10th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Saturday, October 10th.—"Orders by Lt.-Col. ——, R.A.M.C., A.D.M.S., Advanced Base Headquarters, October 10th, 1914. Sister —— will proceed to Villeneuve Triage to-day, and on arrival will report to Major ——, R.A.M.C, for duty on Ambulance Trains."

So it's come at last, and I have handed over my officers, and am now installed by the R.T.O. in a 1st class carriage to myself with all my kit, and my lovely coat and muffler, and rug and cushion, after a pleasant dinner of tea, cheese, and ration biscuits in the Red Cross Dressing Room, with a kind Army Sister.

The R.T.O. this time has given me (instead of 12 A.S.C. men) a highly important envelope marked Very Urgent, to give to the Director of Supplies, Villeneuve, whoever he is.

Change at Versailles in about six hours, so I may as well try and get some sleep.

I was really sorry to say good-bye to my kind old Madame Bontevin, 22 Rue de la Motte, and fat Fanny, and charming Isabel, and my nice little room—(a heavenly bed!)—and ducky little gay garden, where I've lived for the last month; and my beloved Cathedral, and lots of the Sisters I have got to know.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 9th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Friday, October 9th.—My compound fractured femur man told me how he stopped his bullet. Some wounded Germans held up the white flag and he went to them to help them. When he was within seven yards, the man he was going to help shot him in the thigh. A Coldstream Guardsman with him then split the German's head open with the butt-end of his rifle. The wounded Tommy was eventually taken to the château of the "lidy what killed the Editor somewhere in this country."

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 8th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Thursday, October 8th.—There was a very picturesque and rather touching scene at No.— this afternoon. They had a concert in the open quadrangle, with vined cloisters on all four sides, and holy statues and crucifixes about. In the middle were the audience—rows of stretchers with contented Tommies smoking and enjoying it (some up in their grey-blue pyjamas), and many Orderlies, some Sisters and M.O.'s and French priests; the piano on a platform at one end.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 7th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Wednesday, October 7th.—I have been down to the station this evening; heard that St Nazaire is being given up as a base, which means that no more ambulance trains will come through.

The five Germans in my ward told me this morning that only the Reichstag and the Kaiser wanted the War; that Russia began it, so Deutschland mussen; that Deutschland couldn't win against Russia, France, England, Belgium, and Japan; and that there were no more men in Germany to replace the killed. They smiled peacefully at the prospect and said it was ganz gut to be going to England. They have fat, pink, ruminating, innocent, fair faces, and are very obedient. I made one of them scrub the floor, as the Orderly had a bad arm from inoculation, and he seemed to enjoy it. Only one is married.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 6th October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Tuesday, October 6th.—I am now dividing my time between the top floor of Tommies and five Germans and the Officers' Ward, where I relieve S. —— for meals and off duty. There are some bad dressings in the top ward. The five Germans are quiet, fat, and amenable, glad to exchange a few remarks in their own language. I haven't had time to try and talk to them, but will if I can; two of them are very badly wounded. Some of the medical Tommies make the most of very small ailments, but the surgicals are wonderful boys.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 2nd October 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Friday, October 2nd.—They continue to die every day and night at both Hospitals, though we are taking few new cases in now.

I am frightfully attached to Le Mans as a place. The town is old and curly, and full of lovely corners and "Places," and views and Avenues and Gardens. The Cathedral grows more and more upon one; I have several special spots where you get the most exquisite poems of colour and stone, where I go and browse; it is very quiet and beautifully kept.

No.— Sta. is also set in a jewel of a spot. A Jesuits' College, full of cloisters covered with vines, and lawns with silver statues, shady avenues and sunny gardens, long corridors and big halls which are the wards; the cook-house is a camp under a splendid row of big chestnut trees, and there is of course a chapel.

Our occupation of it is rather incongruous; there is practically no furniture except the boys' beds, some chairs, many crucifixes and statues, terribly primitive sanitary arrangements and water supply. We have to boil our instruments and make their tea in the same one saucepan in the Officers' Ward; you do without dusters, dishcloths, soap-dishes, pillow-cases, and many other necessities in peace time.

My little Train-Junior has been taken off that job and is to rejoin her unit, so I settled down to a prospect of the same fate (No.— G.H. is at Havre again! and has still not yet done any work! so you see what I've been rescued from). I met Miss —— to-night and asked her, and she says I am going on the train when it comes in, so I breathe again.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 30th September 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Wednesday, September 30th.—Have been doing the sick officers all day (or rather wounded). They are quite nice, but the lack of equipment makes twice the work. We are still having bright sunny days, but it is getting cold, and I shall be glad of warmer clothes. The food at the still filthy Inn in a dark outhouse through the back yard has improved a little! My Madame (in my billet) gives me coffee and bread and butter (of the best) at 7, and there is a ration tin of jam, and I have acquired a pot of honey.

On duty at 7.30 a.m.—At 12 or 1 we go to the Inn for déjeûner: meat of some sort, one vegetable, bread, butter, and cheese, and pears. Tea we provide ourselves when we can.

At 7 or 8 we go to the Inn and have pôtage (which is warm water with a few stray onions or carrots in it), and tough cold meat, and sometimes a piece of pastry (for pudding), bread, butter, and cheese, and a very small cup of coffee, and little, rather hard pears. I am very well on it now since they changed the bread, though pretty tired.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 29th September 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Tuesday, September 29th.—We were sold last night after all. Trailed down to the station to await the train according to orders, and were then told by the A.D.M.S. that it had gone to Havre this journey, and couldn't be on this line till next week, and we could go to bed. So after all the embraces of Mme. and Fanny and Isabel, I turned up at 10.30 to ask for a bed. "Ma pauvre demoiselle," said fat F., hastening to let me in.

This morning Miss —— came down with us to the A.D.M.S.'s Office to find out how we could join the train, and he said: "Wait till it comes in next week, and meanwhile go on duty at the Hospital." I don't mind anything as long as we do eventually get on to the train, and we are to do that, so one must possess one's soul in patience. I am back with the sick officers at No.— Stationary.

There are rumours to-night of bad news from the front, and that the German Navy is emerging from Kiel.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 28th September 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Monday, September 28th.—There are hundreds of people in deep new black in this town; what must it be in Berlin? The cemetery here is getting full of French and British soldiers' graves. Those 1200 sailors from the three cruisers had fine clean quick deaths compared to what happens here.

We have got our baggage (kit-bags and holdalls) down to the station at the Red Cross Anglaise, and are sitting in our quarters waiting for the word to come that No.— train is in. Met Miss —— in her car in the town, and she said that it was just possible that the train might go down to Havre this journey, she wasn't dead sure it was doing this route! If so we shall be nicely and completely sold, as I don't know how we should ever join it. But I'm not going to believe in such bad luck as that would be till it happens.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 27th September 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Sunday, September 27th.—My luck is in this time. Miss —— has just sent for me to tell me I am for permanent duty on No.— Ambulance Train (equipped) which goes up to the Front, to the nearest point on the rail to the fighting line. Did you ever know such luck? There are four of us, one Army Sister and me and two juniors; we live altogether on the train. The train will always be pushed up as near the Field Hospitals as the line gets to, whether we drive the Germans back to Berlin or they drive us into the sea. It is now going to Braisne, a little east of Soissons, just S. of the Aisne, N.E. of Rheims. It is on its way up now, and we are to join it with our baggage when it stops here on the way to St Nazaire. We shall have two days and two nights with wounded, and two days and two nights to rest on the return empty. The work itself will be of the grimmest possible, as we shall have all the worst cases, being an equipped Hospital in a train. It was worth waiting five weeks to get this; every man or woman stuck at the Base has dreams of getting to the Front, but only one in a hundred gets the dream fulfilled.

There is no doubt that "the horrors of War" have outdone themselves by this modern perfection of machinery killing, and the numbers involved, as they have never done before, and as it was known they would. The details are often unprintable. They have eight cases of tetanus at No.— Stationary, and five have died.

All the patients at No.— have been inoculated against tetanus to-day. They have it in the French Hospitals too.

Went to the Voluntary Evening Service for the troops at the theatre at 5. The Padres and a Union Jack and the Allies' Flags; and a piano on the stage; officers and sisters in the stalls; and the rest packed tight with men: they were very reverent, and nearly took the roof off in the Hymns, Creed, and Lord's Prayer. Excellent sermon. We had the War Intercessions and a good prayer I didn't know, ending with "Strengthen us in life, and comfort us in death." The men looked what they were, British to the bone; no one could take them for any other nation a mile off. Clean, straight, thin, sunburnt, clear-eyed, all at their Active Service best, no pallid rolls of fat on their faces like the French. The man who preached must have liked talking to them in that pin-dropped silence and attention; he evidently knows his opportunities.

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 26th September 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

6 a.m.—At Sablé at 4 a.m. we were turned out for two hours; a wee open station. Mr —— and our Civil Surgeon were most awfully decent to us: turned a sleepy official out of a room for us, and at 5 came and dug us out to have coffee and brioches with them. Then we went for a sunrise walk round the village, and were finally dragged into their carriage, as they thought it was more comfortable than ours. Just passed a big French ambulance train full from Compiègne.

At Le Mans the train broke up again, and everybody got out. We motor-ambulanced up to the Hospital with the three night Sisters coming off station duty. Matron wanted us to go to bed for the day; but we asked to come on after lunch, as they were busy and we weren't overtired. I'm realising to-night that I have been on the train four nights out of six, and bed is bliss at this moment.

I was sent to No.— Stationary at the Jesuits' College to take over the officers at one o'clock.

One was an angelic gunner boy with a septic leg and an undaunted smile, except when I dressed his leg and he said "Oh, damn!" The other bad one was wounded in the shoulder. They kept me busy till Sister —— came back, and then I went to my beloved Cathedral (and vergered some Highland Tommies round it, they had fits of awe and joy over it, and grieved over "Reems"). It is awfully hard to make these sick officers comfortable, with no sheets or pillow-cases, no air ring-cushions, pricky shirts, thick cups without saucers, &c. One longs for the medical comforts of ——

I hear to-night that Miss ——, the Principal Matron on the Lines of Communication (on the War Establishment Staff) is here again, and may have a new destination for some of us details.

The heading in 'Le Matin' to-night is:—

UNE LUTTE ACHARNÉE
DE LA SOMME A LA MEUSE
LA BATAILLE REDOUBLE DE VIOLENCE

If it redoubles de violence much longer who will be left?

Diary of a Nursing Sister - 25th September 1914

 

Diary of a Nursing Sister
on the Western Front

1914-1915

Friday, September 25th.—In train back to Le Mans, 9 p.m. We landed our tired, stiff, painful convoy at St Nazaire at 8.45 yesterday evening. The M.O.'s there told us our lot made 1800 that had come down since early morning; one load of bad cases took eight hours to unload. The officers all seemed depressed and overworked, and they were having a very tight fit to get beds for them at the various hospitals at St Nazaire. At about 10 p.m. the last were taken off by the motor ambulances, and we got some dinner on the station with our Civil Surgeon, who was looking forward to a night in a tent out of a train.

The R.T.O. found us an empty 1st class carriage in the station to sleep in, and the sergeant found us a candle and matches and put us to bed, after a sketchy wash provided by the buffet lady.

The din was continuous all night, so one didn't sleep much, but had a decent rest (and a flea). The sergeant called us at 6.30, and we had another sketchy wash, and coffee and rolls and jam at the buffet. Then we found our way to the hospital ship Carisbrook Castle. The Army Sister in charge was most awfully kind, showed us over, made the steward turn on hot baths for us, provided notepaper, kept us to lunch—the nicest meal we've seen for weeks! The ship had 500 cases on board, and was taking 200 more—many wounded officers.

A captain of the —— told me all his adventures from the moment he was hit till now. His regiment had nine officers killed and twenty-seven wounded. He said they knew things weren't going well in that retreat, but they never knew how critical it was at the time.

After lunch, we took our grateful leave and went to the A.D.M.S.'s office for our return warrants for the R.T.O. (I have just had to sign it for fourteen, as senior officer of our two selves and twelve A.S.C. men taking two trucks of stores, who have no officer with them!) There we heard that ten of our No.— Sisters were ordered to Nantes for duty by the 4.28, so we hied back to the station to meet them and see them off. They were all frightfully glad to be on the move at last, and we had a great meeting. The rest are still bathing at La Baule and cursing their luck.

While we were getting some coffee in the only patisserie in the dirty little town, seven burly officer boys of the Black Watch came in to buy cakes for the train, they said, to-night. They were nearly all second lieutenants, one captain, and were so excited at going up to the Front they couldn't keep still. They asked us eagerly if we'd had many of "our regiment" wounded, and how many casualties were there, and how was the fighting going, and how long would the journey take. (The nearer you get to the Front the longer it takes, as trains are always having to shunt and go round loops to make room for supply trains.) They didn't seem to have the dimmest idea what they're in for, bless them. They are on this train in the next carriage.

The Padre told me he was the only one at St Nazaire for all the hospitals and all the troops in camp (15,000 in one camp alone).

He had commandeered the Bishop of Khartoum to help him, and another bishop, who both happen to be here.

We are now going to turn out the light, and hope for the best till they come to look at the warrant or turn us out to change.