J.
Rouen, France. July 16, 1917.
I am inclosing a copy of a letter Miss Taylor received to-day, in reply to the letter she wrote to Private Murphy’s mother, the day after her boy died here. He was here of a gunshot wound in the chest, one of those treacherous injuries that seem to be getting along all right and then knock a man out with a sudden hemorrhage. The boy was not even on the Seriously Ill or the Dangerously Ill list, and the worst part was that he died before we could get the priest to him. We have a Catholic priest as well as C. of E. and Nonconformist padres always in attendance. They live on the grounds. Of course a formal notice of the man’s death was sent to his mother through the War Casualty Office, but Miss Taylor wrote to tell his mother the details, and to explain why the priest was not with him when he died. Her reply is so typical of the bravery of English women I want you to see it.
“To Assistant Matron:—
“I thank you for so kindly answering my letter for my dear lad Pte. W. Murphy. I am quite sure you all concerned did what possibly could be done for him. I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. I’ve felt it very keenly, more than I can ever say, but I have the satisfaction of knowing he was cared for by a woman at the last and given a decent grave. Perhaps God took him then because he was then fit, he was a good boy at home to us and I know the last three years of his life he honestly tried his level best. I think God understands us each one best. I should like you to thank the nurse personally for me who was with him at the last, and every night you brave women are remembered in our prayers. My wee daughter aged three years prays, ‘God bless our nurses at the front.’ I have not received his treasure bag and am sorry as my little son aged 15 yrs., who was passionately attached to our dear lad, hoped to have his rosary, but perhaps I shall get it—only you asked me to let you know if I did not receive it. I must now conclude, thanking you once again, believe me
“Yrs. sincerely
“Bell Brown.”
All day yesterday and in the night we heard the booming of guns, and the night nurses say the windows in our surgical hut rattled. It was the loudest I have heard since we have been here. And every time I hear them those words of one of our patients come to my mind: “Some poor devils are getting theirs.” The men recently sent down from the front tell us that rumor has it that there is going to be a big drive in a few days. We wonder if it has begun and if we shall be getting more convoys in. Our hospital is not half full now, we have been sending out so many convoys over to “Blighty.” We need to be a little busier for our best good. The weather is lovely, very cool at night, we always sleep under blankets, warm in the sun. Almost every day it rains at least a part of the day, but the ground here is so sandy there is very little mud. It is a drizzling evening, but it is cozy and pleasant here in my office. It is getting on toward ten and outside in their tents I can hear the voices of some of our officers talking together, and from time to time across the road come bugle calls, and there is that faint bustling sound of large numbers of people getting ready to be quiet for the night. We are in the midst of such thousands and thousands of people, mostly soldiers, and all day long there are myriads of soldier sounds, bugle calls, tramping of feet, motor cycles, lorries, bands playing, men’s voices, sharp commands, the slap of the hand on the musket in salute, the popping of small bombs or guns all day long from the practice trenches near here. On the fourth of July we thought how like a home Fourth it was, but here the popping and the shots sound every day. And it is not fireworks that are being shot off. At neighboring camps there are experts in bayoneting, experts in gassing, experts in Hate Talk. There are actually special men who sometimes talk to as many as three thousand men to make them feel that their chief business is to kill. It is incomprehensible. Whenever will this toppling world right itself? It will be a long time before we come home. The more we know the more sure we are that it is going to be a long business. And the man who wrote “The picture, That I saw that day, Of home folks bidding home good-by, For traitor seas, And ‘somewhere,’ Out beyond the seas, And after that, Just God, And what He wills,” was right. That is the situation.
July 19. Such nice letters to-day. It is such fun to get the home news and to learn the details of your doings. We are not working hard and we find it embarrassing to have people take it for granted that we are overdoing all the time and suffering real hardships. We are comfortable and well fed and have interesting work and many very interesting diversions.
There is a lot of very simple entertainment back and forth among the camps. Once or twice every week there is a tea party or a tennis party with tea or a concert with refreshments somewhere here. To-morrow we are going to return some of the many courtesies that have been shown us and be “at home” to our neighbors here on the Race Course: No. 10 General Hospital and No. 1 Australian General. The party will be out of doors and there will be tennis and a baseball game between nurses and officers. The officers are having baseball suits made for them by the nurses. These suits are to be very gay skirts, so that they will be as much hampered as the women. We have started our V. A. D.’s on baseball against the American nurses. They take to it like small boys and find it “ripping.” It has been the best mixing process I ever invented. It is a great sight these lovely evenings between eight and nine to see the crowd of hilarious nurses careering over the grass between the hedge and the fenced-off center of the course where all the tents are, and hanging on the fence a couple of hundred “blue boys” or convalescent patients in their blue hospital suits. Then the officers come straggling out after their dinner, peacefully smoking their pipes, and they line up and root and laugh too and coach. It does not look much like war. It does everybody the best possible good, for it has them all roaring with laughter, and sends them off to bed in the best of humor, like a bunch of kids.
The English tea parties are charming, and I think myself in a storybook every time I go to one. The uniforms of the English Sisters are so gay and bright with their flowing caps and red-bordered little capes, and all the men are in uniform, and the little tables set out on the grass are under large sunshades, or there are special marquees set up for the occasion, and it’s all very gay. Last week around at No. 10 General after the tea party, they had games, tennis for some, hunting for hidden treasure in the grass and hedge (I found a souvenir spoon in a mole hole), and a potato and spoon race, and also a tug of war that was so fiercely strenuous that it left many of us with cricks in our necks ever since. The tug of war seems to be a favorite sport. Our white-dressed nurses with their scarlet-lined blue capes look mighty pretty on these occasions. Of course different groups of nurses and doctors get off for different parties. They are usually from 5 to 7 or after 8.