Mobile No. 1, France, 1915.
I am really not in France but Belgium. I cannot tell you just where, but it is within ten miles of the firing line, and not far from the place where so many of our boys from home have been sent. I thought when I came here that it would be entirely English, as the lady who gave the hospital is an American married to an Englishman. The English are not far away but they are taken to their own hospitals.
We belong to a little wedge of the French that is in between the English and Belgians. It is a regular field hospital and is composed of a great many portable huts or sheds; some are fitted up as wards, another the operating room, another the pharmacy, another supply room, laundry, nurses’ quarters, doctors’ quarters, etc. It is a little colony set down in the fields and the streets are wooden sidewalks.
The first night I arrived I did not sleep, for the guns roared all night long, and we could see the flashes from the shells quite plainly; the whole sky was aglow. The French and English guns sounded like a continuous roar of thunder; but when the shells from the German guns landed on this side we could feel a distinct shock, and everything in our little shanty rattled.
Yesterday I saw my first battle in the air between German and French aeroplanes. We could scarcely see the machines, they were so high up in the air, but we could see the flashes from their guns quite distinctly and hear the explosion of the shells. To-day a whole fleet of aeroplanes passed over our heads; it was a wonderful sight.
There are about one hundred and fifty beds in all here.
I have been inspected by doctors, captains, generals, and all kinds of people till I am weary. I hope they are satisfied at last, but I cannot go off the hospital grounds until I have two different kinds of passes given to me,—one is a permission to go on the roads about here and the other is good as far as Dunkirk.
We have a man in our ward who had a piece of shrapnel the size of an egg in his abdomen; they had to take out about half a yard of intestines, which had been torn to pieces. He was also shot through the shoulder, in the arm and leg. As we got him within two hours after he was wounded there was no infection, and having a clever surgeon he is getting along famously. Another poor chap has lost his right arm and shot through the liver as well as being cut up by piece of shrapnel—he is getting well also. Two have died, and it is a blessing; for to live in darkness the rest of one’s life is worse than death. The Germans are using a new kind of gas bomb that blinds the men.
It is pouring rain to-night and cheerless enough here, but I can only think of the poor men in the trenches.
I got a joyful surprise to-day—a letter from Mr. Bell enclosing post office order from Mr. Calhoun, of Philadelphia. Nothing gives me so much pleasure as to help these poor people.
It is beginning to get cold. I shall get bed socks for the men, for they have not enough hot water bags to go round and all suffer from cold feet.
I passed Colonel MacLaren’s hospital in the train—it is very impressive to see the rows and rows of white tents. I also saw some Canadian nurses in the distance, and did so want to get out and speak to them.
I must go to bed now to get warm. As long as one keeps going the cold is not so apparent but when one sits still it is not pleasant.
There are four English, three American and three French nurses here.