This letter has grown to be very long because it has rambled all over the field. It must call a halt now, for soon it will be time to have supper, then practise hymns for Christmas Eve.
J.
Dec. 28, 1917.
The wind is swirling and howling outside and it is very cold, about the coldest day we’ve had, I think. I have put a little table over nearer the stove than my big desk-table is and here a couple of feet away from the fire, the heat is quite noticeable. It’s an amusing sight to see Miss Taylor and me doing our work down here mornings with mittens on. With those nice fingerless ones, we can typewrite or write most comfortably. It’s the wind that is making things so cold this evening. Not that it has been warm on the days when there was no wind, for it has been for over two weeks that some fire buckets in my sitting-room have been solid ice. Useful in case of fire, I can hear some one say. Yes, but to-day some chemical fire extinguishers, that I have been making a big howl for, have arrived upon the scene and I shall sleep more peacefully, for our huts are like match-boxes. Every morning the water in our pitchers is frozen and the ink in fountain pens. We have to jerk our tooth-brushes out of the glasses and pry the soap off of the soap-dishes. In the Mess, our drinking-water bottles have ice in them, like the Waldorf. There is one story that some believe and some don’t, but the nurse swears it is true, and that is—that her hot-water bottle was frozen solid in the morning in her bed. I asked about it and learned that it had been placed outside her sleeping bag and had slipped down to the foot of the bed where the blankets were loose, but it was frozen. It is most amusing the howls one hears in the mornings; it is so hard to get up. The fires don’t get things warmed up a bit, for a long time, and it is like getting up out of doors. We all have schemes about how to dress at night so that dressing in the morning will necessitate the least exposure and the least changing. It is awfully funny and doesn’t hurt us a bit. The chilblains hurt and are awful, but heroic treatment helps. There are parades of barefoot ladies who go and walk in the snow nights, then come in and rub and roar; then there are the cold-water foot baths, which are said to be worse than the snow treatment. Occasionally a day or two off duty is necessary for very bad hands or feet. Almost everybody wears two pairs of woolen stockings and monstrous shoes, and oh! the money that is being spent on having shoes made to order—very high ones with extra thick soles. But on the whole a stranger would think our group looks mighty fat and well. There are a lot of coughs that hang on. To-day, for instance, out of my 99 women, I have just three off duty sick,—one has an infected thumb; another an infected toe; and the third, poor dear, has been having a painful attack. But at home in steam-heated apartments, we could not do better than that. Some dear lambs walk with a good deal of a limp when they first go on duty in the mornings, but as the days progress their feet feel better. I have been awfully lucky, though I came near getting some trouble started. I walked downtown with Major Veeder last Sunday, when we were going down to dinner, and that night the balls of my feet and the heels got very burning and swollen, but vigorous treatment stopped the trouble.
This is a very quiet Sunday—Dec. 30th, 1917,—and every nurse is having a full half day off duty. We have over eight hundred patients, but there are not so very many that are desperately sick. I want to tell you all about our wonderful Christmas and I hope I won’t be much disturbed, for I am in the office, as Miss Taylor is off duty. The nurses and doctors, helped by a few home gifts, raised about $600 to be spent for Christmas. About $200 of that, it was decided, was to go to some Rouen charity for children. So one cold day, Major Murphy, Major Veeder, and I went to look up the names of some philanthropic organizations that had been given us by the Mayor. I forgot to say that the first move was a call that Major Veeder and I made on the Mayor to get a list of the accredited charities. You would have been amused and proud (?) to hear me explain in slow and careful French who we were and what we wanted. But I got it over, and the list was sent us with many respectful salutations. When we visited some of the societies on the list, we had a most interesting time. We three would take turns in speaking the French and explaining what we wanted. We’d rehearse on the front door steps like so many kids. We visited a refuge for little boys—such a poor, bare place, managed by a priest and some sisters; then a sort of industrial school; then the office of the Society for the care of war orphans. Here we got the names of ten families to which we could send special New Year’s baskets. We decided to give something to each of these societies, and, in all, spend about $200. There has been lots of fun about the baskets, for the doctors auctioned off the privilege of having a family, and with each family there went the name of a nurse who was to help. Many of the families got visited yesterday, and baskets of clothes and toys and food were purchased, and on New Year’s morning, they are going to be delivered.
Then for our patients, we bought pork, extra, for their dinner, and beer. The English Government sent them plum puddings. We wanted turkey or chicken, but found we could not afford it for so many. But they loved the pork. We had been making fancy Christmas stockings for days, and a committee, of which Ruth Cobb was chairman, had been having a very bad time trying to buy and get delivered enough supplies to fill them. There had been great fun filling them. We had requisitioned all the candy and cigarettes we could from the officers, and we got them to help fill, so by Christmas Eve, when we had about 750 filled, we thought we were quite safe, as a great many patients had been sent out, but that evening we were notified to be prepared to receive two convoys of a hundred each, during the night. The Committee almost wept, but they got very busy and by 10 o’clock on Christmas morning every patient in the hospital had received a stocking with fruit, tobacco, candies, nuts, and some kind of a present in it. Only one of the convoys had arrived by noon—the other one got delayed somewhere. The patients were just like little boys with their stockings, and the nurses had just as much fun with them as though they had been. The one-armed men could not untie the necks of their stockings, which had to be tied up tight, and so their shouts all through those tents: “Oh, Sister, come and snip mine next.” The Sisters dashed around, snipping and untying and pulling snappers and fitting on paper caps. The British Red Cross sent us a lot of decorations and things we could use for the stockings, and the Australian Red Cross gave some money as did the American Red Cross. The boxes the St. Louis Chapter of the American Red Cross sent for the Unit have not arrived yet.
Now about the singing on Christmas Eve, which was the loveliest part of the whole Christmas to me. At 8:15 about 50 bundled-up nurses left the quarters and walked down across the snow, each carrying her candle lantern. It was the loveliest sight, for the night was perfect. It was not too cold and the snow made everything so bright. I had my violin to start them with and keep them on the key. We began at one corner of the camp and just as soon as we had started we were joined by all the officers and a number of the enlisted men, and soon up-patients gathered around too, so as we went from place to place between the lines of tents we must have been a crowd of over 200 people. I wish you could have seen what I saw. I knew the tunes so well I could watch the others as I played. Officers and nurses, and patients and nurses looking together over one sheet of words (we had had the words mimeographed, for we have only two hymn books of the same kind), while one of them held the lantern so that the light fell on the paper. And all were singing so intently and so happily. One group of patients, who said they wanted to learn those “Yankee tunes,” pushed and shoved to be by me every time because they said they wanted to be near the “band.” We sang—“Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful.” That everybody knew; and “Hark, the Herald Angels,” and “It Came upon the Midnight Clear,” and “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem,” and “Holy Night, Silent Night.” We sang in eight places. It is something I shall never forget if I live to be a hundred, and I imagine a good many felt the same way. If there only were some other way we could have community singing. There is nothing like it. I was worn to a frazzle afterwards, but it was worth any amount of effort. The night nurses said the patients loved it, only there was not enough of it, though we sang for an hour and a half all together.
After the singing we in our hut had a little hut party. We had a little Christmas tree, with fool presents on it for each one of us with a rhyme. You don’t know what lovely tree decorations can be made out of the silver-foil out of candy boxes; a bit of gilt fringe which was carefully raveled was a great find. We had a nice little family party, ending with cocoa and little cookies; then parted for the night. At midnight Ruth and I went with a group of the Catholic nurses over across the road to the midnight service in their chapel.
Christmas night we had a party in our Mess for just our American officers and nurses. The Mess had been beautifully decorated with holly and greens and we had our dinner early (4 and 5), so that all the tables could be taken out and a stage set. Three or four of the doctors and a couple of nurses acted a little burlesque which they adapted from something they saw in Punch. It was full of local hits and was very amusing and clever. Then we had a monologue by another of the doctors, which was very good; then some songs by another doctor. Do you know “Joan of Arc, They are Calling You”? That was one of them. Then came the “Army Alphabet” written by two of the nurses and read by me. It wound up with a scene about “U is us as we used to be” and gave a chance for a bunch of pretty girls to dress up in mufti, and how pretty they did look after all this somber uniform stuff. They had a little business about going to say good-by to a friend of theirs who was just off for France as a nurse, then when I got to—
“Y’s for the years and years till we’ve done,
When we’ve healed every Tommy and killed every Hun,
Then old and decrepit and wrinkled and gray,
To America’s shores we’ll wend our way.
They set dogs on old ‘Rip’—
He was gone twenty years—
Oh, what will they do—
When this Unit appears?”