Pretty soon Colonel J., who is the English member of the R. A. M. C. (Royal Army Medical Corps) who is to escort us nurses to London to-morrow, went and brought over to our table a friend of his, a Major F., also R. A. M. C. This last man was a lean, hollow-eyed man of about 40, who pretty soon got talking, and for the next hour I heard such tales as I hardly ever thought could be true. He had been a German prisoner of war for eleven months. On the way to the prison camp he had been kept in a railway carriage without food or water for three days. At German towns through which the train passed and where they always stopped, he said it frequently happened that women in Red Cross uniforms came to the stations and offered the prisoners cups of tea or milk and held them to their lips, only to snatch them away again and jeer and call them “schweinhund.” He told of the treatment in the camps, where the prisoners in the dead of winter had only the rags of their uniforms to wear, their great coats had been taken away from them, and they slept on sacks of straw without even a tent or any kind of a roof over them. He said he saw men die at the rate of seven a day from starvation. He said he never in all his hospital experience has seen such emaciation from either cancer or tuberculosis as he saw among the prisoners there who were starving. He saw men kiss the shoes of their guards and beg like babies for bread. Not the British Tommies but some of the other prisoners did this. The men had no opportunity to wash and no soap. Their beards and hair hung down to their waists and were alive with lice. He was in several different prison camps. The final one was one where he was sent as a punishment for writing a letter of protest to the American Ambassador. The letter was never delivered, and he was sent to a camp where he was the only British person among thousands of Russians. He had complained because parcels sent to prisoners by their friends were not delivered to them but were allowed to rot and mildew and be eaten by rats. He was exchanged after eleven months’ torture, he called it, in January, 1916. He himself had dysentery and scurvy but not typhus. After he recovered he was put in charge of a hospital ship, which was recently torpedoed. Of the 600 sick and wounded that he had on board he lost only 27.
He told of a hospital ship crossing the Channel just behind his ship on one trip within 500 yards of his ship and of its striking a mine. There were no wounded on board at the time, but 12 nurses and officers and crew. One of the destroyers which was convoying his ship went to the rescue and got alongside the sinking hospital ship and a little French trawler also got alongside. Nine of the 12 nurses and the men all jumped and landed on the destroyer, but no sooner were they on that boat than it also struck a mine and was blown to atoms, and everybody on it and on the trawler was blown to bits. The three nurses who were in the water were picked up by Major F—’s boat. He is here in Liverpool fitting up another hospital ship and will probably be ordered East again to bring back more wounded.
He asked if Miss Dunlop and I would like to see his ship. Would we? We got our coats in a jiffy and flew off with him in a taxi to one of the docks quite a way off. His boat is a big ship that was a passenger ship between here and South America. He has taken out the cabins and made big wards and has accommodations for 800 sick or wounded men. I never saw anything so cleverly done as the way he is making over that ship. He has a splendid operating room, an X-Ray complete equipment, a steam laundry, and absolutely everything that a modern big city hospital has. It will be ready to sail, he said, in ten days, although to us there seemed to be an enormous amount yet to do. They no longer have women nurses on the hospital ships.
We came back from the dock by an “overhead” tram and got here about eight o’clock, although it was as light as four o’clock. Miss Dunlop and I then went to dinner together. Ruth Cobb and Rachel Watkins (our nice dietitian) spent the afternoon in Chester and had a wonderful time, they said. People are so wonderfully nice. The kids on the street salute us, and people come up and ask if we aren’t American nurses and if they can’t do something for us, and take nurses to tea and put them on the proper trams and show them all sorts of courtesies.
I had just come in to start to write, about nine o’clock, when Major Murphy[4] was announced, and I went down to see him. He had called to see if there was anything he could do for us and to find out if we were all right. They are so considerate and good to us. I told him of our wonderful experience this afternoon, and just then Colonel J. and Major F. hove in sight and as I wanted Dr. Murphy to hear some of Major F—’s tales I introduced him, and soon left them, to come up here and write.
It is now almost eleven and Miss Dunlop has been in to tell me the latest instructions she has received from her Majors. We always have to compare instructions and see which of us knows the most about what is going to happen. If we have the same experiences as the nurses of the two previous Units, we are to be much fêted in London, and are to be reviewed by the Queen. We have been trying desperately hard on shipboard to learn how to march and keep step and to right about face without falling over ourselves, but I fear we won’t be much on looks when it comes to being reviewed. I trust we are not expected to curtsy. And now I must hustle to bed, for to-morrow will be an exciting day. Good night and so much love to you all. If only you were all having this wonderful experience with me nothing more could be desired.
J.
Wednesday, June 6, 1917.
Dearest Family:—
I have not written since that day in Liverpool, and now we have been ten days in London. If only I had the ability to write what we have seen and what we have felt. The contrasts have been so great some of us have almost lost our mental equilibrium. We are fêted and cheered and taken from one entertainment to another and made much of by people of every class; and then between such social affairs we visit hospitals, military hospitals, because it is necessary for us to see how such hospitals are run. First we see 1700 men, young men with faces or arms or legs blown off, and then we go to a tea at a fancy club; next we see 500 blinded men fighting their way back into normal life by learning various occupations, then we are taken in a body to the silliest musical comedy that was ever staged. Again we see thousands of crippled soldiers brought out to see the King give decorations to 350 heroes and heroines, soldiers and nurses, or “the next of kin” all in black, and we nearly choke when a blinded officer is led up to the King by his orderly who directs his every move, and lame men go hobbling up to receive their medals, and we watch the King use his left hand to shake hands with one man, because the man’s right arm is gone, and then we go to St. Paul’s and see the Stars and Stripes carried up to the altar with the 64 British flags to be blessed at an “Empire day” service, while thousands and thousands of people sing “O God, our help in ages past.”