Then they had a scene to show how we would appear. It was killingly funny and brought down the house. Then we wound up with a dance. Lots of the group said it was the nicest Christmas they could possibly imagine. I was so glad, for it might have been so different, for Christmas is a lonesome time and nobody had time to be lonesome here. We have not had any mail for ages. Some packages came through the week before Christmas, but I have had no letters from the States since those that came written about November 24th. We keep hoping every day that a big batch will arrive.
All the hospitals around us are entertaining a lot this week. They are having “at homes” or concerts or little plays, and there seems to be something doing every afternoon or evening. It is an awfully good thing, and I really suppose we ought to give some sort of an affair here, but how I don’t want to!
Now good night and loads and loads of love to you all, you very dear ones. The Red Cross card Mother sent nearly broke me up,—especially what she wrote on the back.
Jule.
January 22, 1918.
I have just realized that it is about three weeks since I last wrote. I don’t know how it happened to be so long, except that I guess there has not been very much of special interest to say. I have not done all my thanking for Christmas presents yet and I have been getting along with those little by little and so had not noticed that I had not written a regular for so long. The past two weeks have been very mild, in great contrast to the month before. The warmish, damp weather has not been any too good for the general health of the group, for we have continued to have a good deal of the “flue,” as the British call the influenza. But the chilblains are all better.
The hospital has continued to have about the same number of patients right along. We vary between eight and ten hundred, sending out some every day and getting in convoys nearly every night. We get such a lot of medical cases now and such a lot of trench feet, which are such dreadful things. They are the result of wet and cold and are often very serious. They are very painful and sometimes result in gangrene. To-day one poor lad had to be told that he would have to lose both feet because of this trouble, and he is simply crushed. To-morrow he will buck up, but to-night it seems too much to be borne. We have some terribly sick men, but not so large a proportion of them as awhile ago. I am sending as many nurses away for their leave as I possibly can while the work is not so dreadfully heavy. I have had about thirty away for their fifteen days already. Ruth Cobb is in Paris now with Miss Watkins. Most of the nurses go to Paris. Three have been down to Cannes, but they were sent through the British authorities. In a few days my splendid assistant is going to Paris with three of her pals. I shall miss her very much as she is a wonderful right-hand man, and one I depend on a lot. After she gets back, which will be Feb. 8th, I expect to go for my leave. I am planning to go to London, for I want to see Elizabeth M. and I want to get away from nurses. I could not do that in Paris, nor at Cannes, nor at Mentone; besides which I don’t want to go to any of those places alone, and I can’t go very well with any nurses from here. So it’s London for me. I don’t mind the Channel trip, nor possibilities of air raids, nor bad weather.
I find I am right tired though it is not from hard, physical work of any kind, for I certainly am not doing that. I guess it is from responsibility, and more or less of a long-continued strain. Anyway a change will do me good. We all get fifteen days every six months if we can manage it. You see we are all overdue here, and there are so many of us I can’t possibly get around before the second fifteen days will be due. I will cable from London some time while I am there just to let you know I am there safely.
More strange gifts still come along.... I am not properly grateful for cast-off clothes, I’m afraid, especially when they are flung at one without a word. However, I ought to be ashamed to growl. But so many, many people have been so wonderfully good to us and have sent us such superlative things with dear notes saying that the best was none too good for us, I am afraid we are plain spoiled.
You can’t imagine what fun we have talking about what we will do first when we get home. It is a favorite game. Some want theaters, some want real concerts, like symphonies, some want warm, marble bath-rooms, some great big soft beds, some lovely fluffy evening clothes, some automobile rides in parks, some ice-cream. A whole lot want some kind of bread stuffs, muffins, biscuits, popovers, waffles, pancakes. That is what I want among other things, but most of all I want to see my family and my friends. The days go by rapidly, but it seems years since we left, and it is going to be a long, long time before we get home. We play games at the table about the food, pretending that it is something else. We have awfully good food considering, but of course it gets monotonous and tiresome, and one needs to be good and hungry all the time to enjoy it. But most of us are very hungry at meal-times and have good appetites; it is when you are a bit off your feed you think how nice it would be to have some good milk toast with real butter, real milk, and real bread. To-day, for instance, I’ll tell you what our food was. Breakfast: good oatmeal with boiled milk and sugar, coffee, war bread, which one of the group toasted before the fire for our table, “bacon” the eternal, which is fried ham, and not very good. Lunch: a kind of meat loaf, rice, with cheese (which we have about every other day), bread and butter, cocoa, and stewed figs, stewed without sugar. With the meat and rice was creamed yellow turnip. Dinner: brown meat and gravy, boiled potatoes and beets, coffee and a kind of chocolate bread-pudding, which somebody said was bread soaked in left-over cocoa. This really was not a very good day for food, but you see it was all nourishing, and it was cooked well, but it is not fancy. After lunches and dinners like that, if we have some candy or fruit cake in our rooms, we go and have some of that for dessert. Mother’s box from Charles with all the fancy things for a tea-party came yesterday. It had been opened and not very well repacked, so that the crackers and cookies were a bit the worse for the journey, but I think I can freshen them up. It is queer that any one should have found it necessary to open a box of crackers to see what it contained.