Ruth C—has just been in to see me a moment. She is on night duty and is working very hard. She says there never in the world were such wonderful patients, that no matter how much they are suffering they are “quite all right, thank you, Sister,” and they won’t ask for things, and when she asks them if they are in pain, they say, “Not too much, Sister.” The first night she says she went all to pieces, but nobody saw her; now she too is getting steadier. That first night she was responsible for 90 men, many of whom were in the most awful condition. It was no wonder that it got on her nerves a bit. She was so much interested in my letters from you, as she has had no word from St. Louis, in fact no letter at all as yet. I can really see very little of her since I am in charge and so much in the midst of the group all the time. In London, Miss Dunlop and I went to everything together, and here the Matron and I go in pairs, or my own assistant, Miss Taylor, and I. From a personal point of view there are lots of disadvantages in being the head. I have to be on show all the time and always have to meet people and be sociable and go to all the functions, and I hate having things better than the rest of my people. For instance, our table in the mess hall has a tablecloth instead of oilcloth, and sometimes we have little extra things like strawberries when the others don’t. By and by things won’t have to be that way. But the Matrons here are very much honored and set apart and kotowed to in a way that disturbs our democratic American spirit.
Dad’s letter was so wonderfully cheering and helpful. It is so pathetic the way one can lose sight of one’s inspirations if one’s feet are tired, or the way one can forget one is on a crusade if there is no drinking water to be had for half a day, and can be just an ordinary uninspired human female and be fretful and discouraged because you don’t like the tone of voice of a supervisor. It is my job of course to keep before my people the why of our coming and to keep their spirits up. As the director said this morning, we must never be discouraged or depressed, that our biggest job is to keep our people full of enthusiasm. Sometimes it is hard if one’s own head aches, but it really is not hard for those of us who understand the meaning of our being here. No coffee for breakfast can actually blind some people to visions, and tea offered them five times a day can make them speak in a way that will really antagonize the people we have come to help. Our minds and bodies are funny things. There is not much thrill in putting your tired, luxury-loving body to bed on a hard camp cot after washing it as well as you can in a cup of warm water. We shall probably have mattresses issued to us when we can get them, but in the meantime the canvas cot is not so bad when it has a folded blanket in it. We have no business to bring ourselves up to be so finicky. Nobody should ever always “have to have two pillows or she can’t sleep a wink” or be “terribly dependent on sugar” or “just has to have so much sleep” or “just can’t touch a thing with cheese in it.” Those of you who have kids to bring up, if you want to make them adaptable to every possible circumstance, do make them eat everything at any time, or be able to get along without anything. Make them sleep any way on anything at any time, and you are giving them something worth more than rubies. My nurses are not bad about these things. On the whole they are bricks, and I have had and am having the very minimum of trouble. I really have been proud of them, the fine way they traveled. There wasn’t a murmur, only jokes, the day they had nothing to eat from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., standing about all morning on the boat—there weren’t seats enough to go around—and in the train all afternoon.
Saturday, June 30, 1917.
Dearest Dad and Mother
and all the rest:—
It is a cold, rainy day and you’d be surprised to know how really cold it is. At night the night nurses are already wearing all their heavy underwear and their sweaters and their capes. I don’t quite see how they are going to manage when real winter comes. It is hard to realize that it is only the end of June. We had just two warm days, but when the sun is out it gets warmed up around the middle of the day, but most days coats are very comfortable. I am having a new blue serge uniform made here in town, for I can foresee that, with my office work, I shall be wearing the “stuff” uniform much more than the white ones. My office which was the jockey-room of the grandstand, in one corner of the back, is a very pleasant room. It is about as large as the central one of our Training School offices at home. The furniture is a large plain table covered with a dark blanket, shelves and cupboards made of boxes, a small folding table, some camp stools, a couple of straight chairs, and some matting. But the effect is quite cozy, and some reddish art squares on the stained boxes make the room quite cheerful.
I have not written for about two weeks, for there has been very little to write and I have not felt much like writing, since we have had no mail at all since those first few letters that reached us here just after we got here. I have kept thinking that I would put off writing until I had some letters to answer. But none have come. To-day the doctors got a whole batch, but there were only two letters for the nurses. That is the way our mail has been coming through, one or two letters at a time. It seems very probable that some of our mail has been lost or missent, for the few of us who have received letters say that reference is made in them to previous letters which have never arrived.
For a whole week now I have been entirely “on my own” here with the nursing, and the hospital has not stopped! We have been continuing to get in convoys and to send them out, not big ones but varying from 30 to 100 patients. The other night at midnight I went down to the receiving tent to see how a convoy coming in was managed, and it was one of the most interesting hours I ever spent. The big marquee has about two feeble electric lights in it; some of the doctors had electric torches, but it was all very dim and spooky. The ambulances backed up near to the door, and our stretcher bearers were all there ready to receive their patients by the time they had stopped. We get telephone messages when to expect a convoy. The stretchers are brought in and laid on the dirt floor as close together as possible. Then another group of men begin at once to examine the tickets that are fastened to the coat of each man, and assign them to particular tents where men with similar injuries or in similar condition are taken care of. Another couple of men hand out steaming hot soup, and the doctors talk to the men a little, but do not examine them there at all. Then very quickly the stretcher bearers come and carry out the men that have been assigned, out through the opposite end of the tent out into the darkness off to a bed in some comfortable tent where a nurse and an orderly are waiting to get the poor tired creature into bed. They give baths if they can; and get the infected and dirty clothes listed and off to the fumigator, and unless the patient is in very bad condition let him go right off to sleep. The doctors have found that the men are much more in need of a good sleep than of a doctor’s care right off, and, unless absolutely necessary, dressings are not changed until the morning. That night 64 men, most of them stretcher cases, were brought in, assigned, given soup, and taken off to their wards (tents) in 25 minutes, which you see is pretty speedy work.
The men have very little to say when they first come in. They are tired out and forlorn and often in pain and dazed. They some of them seem surprised to see Americans taking care of them, but they don’t say much. They answer wearily, “Not so bad, Sister” or “A bit rocky, sir,” but later some of them tell most awful stories. One of them told the other day of getting caught on a barbed wire entanglement on which he was thrown by the explosion of a shell and of hanging there all day before he was rescued. It had happened early in the morning, and the rescuing party could not get to him until after dark. Another told of lying out between two lines of trenches three days. He was hurt in the hip and could drag himself only a few inches at a time. He got water from the bottles of the dead soldiers. We get not only surgical cases but a good many medical ones, pleurisy, nephritis, trench fever, lots of them, and all sorts of heart conditions. We also get a good many not due to military life, appendicitis, injuries from kicks from horses, infections, etc., but most are “G. S. W” (gunshot wound). Some are unbelievably awful, whole parts blown away, as for instance all the flesh across the shoulders or between the thighs, where a shell tore right through from behind. I cannot see how some of them live, and live so bravely and cheerfully.
And it is not only the men that are brave but the women too. This afternoon I have been trying to arrange for one of our “B. V. D.’s,” as the doctors call them, meaning the “V. A. D.’s” to get a permit to go to a hospital in E., where her brother is. He has been wounded but not seriously enough to be sent back to England. She has had one brother killed, another is a prisoner, and now this youngest brother is wounded, and she is the cheeriest, bravest little thing you ever saw. Another has had three brothers killed, and you would never dream it to see her. A third, whose fiancé was killed about a month ago, I am a little worried about; she is driving herself into the work so hard. Oh, there are so many pitiful people over here it keeps one’s heart torn up the whole livelong time. You can’t get away from the sorrows of people ever. Not that one wants to, if there is anything that can be done, but at home there are times, thank God, when one can forget all the woe of the world, and pain and sorrow, but not here. It is before your eyes every waking minute and in your ears even in your sleep when the feet go marching, marching by.
Last evening I had a beautiful walk with doctor Veeder. The sunset was glorious, and we walked along roads that looked like Corot pictures. After quite a long time we came out from our woodsy road to an open space which seemed to extend away for a mile or so without any grass or any trees on it. It was getting dark and we could not distinguish things clearly, but Dr. Veeder said he thought this was the place where the daily practice in trench warfare went on. We walked a bit over the very rough field and heard voices, though we could not see any one. Pretty soon an officer appeared from nowhere, and when we asked him if we could look around, he said “Certainly,” and he himself conducted us. The field had been made into a regular practice battle field. It was criss-crossed with trenches and craters. But the worst was the dummy men placed all over everywhere. These dummy men the men have to learn to bayonet as they rush by, so as to learn how to use their bayonets even in the narrow trenches. Our officer and another who joined us explained things to us and told us it was a relief to have some one new, to talk to, as they have to stay out there in the trenches with their men from 10 P.M. to 9 A.M. when they are relieved by another batch. It was most wonderfully interesting; but impresses the horror of warfare on me even more than it has been impressed before. The trenches were most wonderfully and elaborately made and have dugouts and lines of communication and bayous and many other technical things which I could not grasp fully at the first hearing.