QUARTERMASTER CAMPBELL AND ORDERLY COOK MAKE PLASTER PYLONS
(Photo, Reginald Haines)
The Hospital was more than fortunate in its R.A.M.C. detachment, which, though small, was excellent of its kind. Sergt.-major Harris was in charge of it from August 1915, until his demobilisation in July 1919. When he was promoted to the rank of corporal and sent to Endell Street, his friends in the 35th Company R.A.M.C. kindly prophesied failure and disaster; but he remained there for four years as one of the pillars of the hospital. His experience had been gained in the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade and in the South African War, and he had not had the advantage of any training in the work of a warrant officer. However, his sense of responsibility and his devotion to duty overcame all obstacles, and his value to the hospital grew with his rapid promotion. There were occasions on which neither the Doctor-in-Charge nor he felt sure of the correct procedure, and then they would shut themselves up in her office with ‘King’s Regulations’ and ‘Regulations for the R.A.M.C.,’ and make a careful study of those wonderful and intricate volumes. Emerging later, with minds made up, they pursued the line of action decided upon, with an air of confidence and custom, very impressive to all who witnessed it.
In the sergt.-major, the medical staff had a loyal supporter, who never failed to back up their authority. He adopted the hospital; took it to his heart; and often sacrificed Mrs. Harris and his own leisure to its service. When women were added to his detachment he trained and drilled them, and guarded them in a manner almost paternal. In the sergeants’ mess of the 35th Company R.A.M.C., which he visited occasionally, he upheld the credit of his hospital and of his mixed Company. After such visits, he would tell the Doctor-in-Charge interesting details, chiefly about the discipline in other hospitals, where men habitually stayed out all night, and where lists of forty or sixty defaulters were of daily occurrence. ‘Nothing like that here, Doctor,’ he would say, with pardonable self-congratulation.
He was assisted and supported in his duties by Sergt. Robertson, who began as a private in 1915, and whose reliability and excellence soon brought him promotion. His good nature was unfailing. He believed that the Endell Street Hospital showed the way to all others, and his chivalry towards women, whether working under him or as his officers, never failed; his avuncular manner included them all.
When the hospital opened, Privates Bishop, Price, and Hedges, who had been in France with the Corps, and who had enlisted in February 1915, were transferred to the 35th Company R.A.M.C., and included in the Endell Street detachment. The help of such experienced nurses in the first year was invaluable and their places were always in the serious wards, where the heaviest cases and the greatest need of skill were to be found. Later, when all men of class ‘A’ were sent abroad, they found wider fields of usefulness and more thrilling experiences in France and in the East.
Corpl. Musselbrook was theatre orderly. Under the training of the Chief Surgeon and Sister, he had become very expert in his duties, when to every one’s regret he was suddenly called in and sent, with several hundred other R.A.M.C. men, to be trained and transferred into an infantry regiment. He took with him a document certifying him to be a trained theatre orderly; and on the strength of this, he subsequently got back into the R.A.M.C. and was sent to Salonika and Russia. On his return to England in 1919, he came to Endell Street and related his experiences and successes. He described his feelings when he went to a hospital in Salonika and was detailed for duty in the operating theatre. How the major, in his apron, holding out his gloved hands, stood silently watching him arrange the patient; how he himself perspired with anxiety, as he placed the hands and folded the clothing; and how suddenly he was asked: ‘Where have you been?’ When he replied that he had been at Endell Street, it was a joy to find that the major had been there too, and that he shared Corpl. Musselbrook’s admiration for that place and for its women surgeons. Through all the months that followed, he had one important post after another, attributing his success to the early training and to the document, which he always kept on him.
Corpl. Washington succeeded him in the operating theatre, and soon equalled him in skill and keenness, remaining at his post through several years of pressure. He was a favourite with the rest of the staff, and on summer mornings, when ices were sold in the canteen, Orderly Tanner might be met slowly ascending the stairs, consuming an ice with her right hand and carrying another for Washington in her left.