A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

I have never had to give so much stimulant to any patients as we have had to give to these men; all the first night I was going round giving milk and brandy, or bovril, to the worst cases, while the night sister sponged those whose temperatures were the highest; several of the men were on ten ounces of brandy for the first few days. They have been so overworked, and underfed, for some months past that they did not seem to have an ounce of strength left to battle with the fever.

An Army Lady Superintendent is supposed to take charge of a ward herself—generally the officers' ward; but I have not taken a ward yet, as, until we fill up, there are enough sisters, and it seems more profitable for me to go round supplying the sisters' needs from the stores, looking after the cooking, and the house-boys, and the washerwomen (I fear that my hair will turn grey in my efforts to keep the typhoid linen separate), to say nothing of the cows, which are not a success; and we have had to resort to frozen milk from Australia—generally good, but sometimes there is a difficulty about unfreezing it.

We have no Quartermaster here, and the man in charge of the stores is quite unused to his job, so I have to see to a great many things with which an Army Lady Superintendent has, as a rule, nothing to do.

I am very much afraid some of our orderlies will be getting typhoid; of course they find it difficult to realise a danger they can't see, and though we all lecture them about taking precautions, we are so busy ourselves, that it is difficult to enforce them; and just at first there were so many patients quite unconscious and with severe diarrhœa and hæmorrhage, so that it meant constant changing of sheets, &c., by the orderlies.

I think I told you some of the orderlies were ill when our first patients (from the train accident) arrived; it proved to be a form of dengue fever they had, and now the medical officers also are indulging in it; it is rather like influenza—high fever for two or three days, and then they are very weak and pulled down for a few more days. I only hope the sisters will refrain from having it until the orderlies have had a little more education: at present they are about as useful as an average ward-maid at home, and the sisters have to act as sister, staff nurse, and probationer too; but I don't want to grumble at them as they are working well, anxious to learn, and very patient with the men (some of them half delirious) who call "Orderly, orderly" all day long.

If they had had a few R.A.M.C. men amongst them, or even one or two R.A.M.C. ward-masters, it would have been easier; as it is, there is not a single man amongst them who knows anything of the usual routine in a hospital, though they are well up in "First Aid" (for which we have no use here).

The buildings are getting on, and we are ready for more patients as soon as they can get a train to bring them down. We hear nothing of more medical officers, sisters, or orderlies as yet.

One of the men said to me that he did not think any of us could understand what a luxury it was to have a wash, a comfortable bed, and clean clothes; that for months he had been marching and sleeping (in the open) in one suit of clothes, frequently wet through, and remaining wet until the sun came out to dry them; he said that on the high veldt the nights were very cold, and they frequently had nothing but their greatcoats to sleep in; if they were lucky, and the baggage waggons had kept up with them, they would also have a blanket and perhaps a mackintosh sheet; but that the baggage waggons had a habit of getting stuck at the last drift, and then they had only what they carried.

If we had only come out to South Africa to nurse this one batch of thirty officers and men back to health, I think it would have been worth while, for they were just about as bad as they well could be, and one can't help thinking of the anxiety of their poor friends at home, who will have seen them reported on the "danger lists" from their Field Hospitals; and we go plodding on night and day trying to make them pull round. Only one man has died, and I think the rest will get on, though some of them are still pretty bad.

Captain —— had Cheyne Stokes breathing for two nights, and made us very anxious, but now he is distinctly better.