A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front Read Online Free

patients meantime look on very interestedly, adding jest and jibe to the welcome extended.
    ‘Now, laddie, what is the matter?’
    ‘Oh, they caught me in the back, sister.’
    ‘Serve him right for running away, doesn’t it, sister?’ says the stretcher-bearer, as he very gently helps himon to the bed. A smile from the damaged gladiator shows that he takes the ‘chipping’ in the right spirit.
    ‘And you, old chappie?’
    ‘Not too bad,’ is the revealing reply.
    ‘Ah! You’re an Australian.’
    ‘Sure, sister,’ giving me an answering smile. ‘Dinkum.’
    A case with a leg in box-splints waits a minute until we push under the biscuits (a mattress is in three pieces each known as a ‘biscuit’) a fracture board.
    ‘Somebody been pulling yer leg, mate?’ asks his neighbour.
    ‘No, just got my pad on. I’m batting next innings.’
    ‘What’s the damage here?’ one asks while glancing at the field card of a boy who, it seems, has inflammation of the cellular tissue of the feet, – briefly indicated as I.C.T.,’ – and as one passes on, one overhears his little joke related to his neighbours. ‘The M.O. at the field dressing station looked at my feet, prodded them, pinched them, poked his fingers at them, and didn’t know what to say so finally he wrote down I.C.T. – I can’t tell.’
    Meantime the newest arrival is claiming attention – a young boy with bad trench feet, purple, red, swollen, and with big black blisters from which laterwe get a great amount of fluid. As he is being very carefully transferred from stretcher to bed, one talks in the manner made familiar by a dentist, and with the objective of distracting the patient’s attention a little from the matter in hand.

    ‘I think you’re the baby of this ward, sonny.’ The stretcher is raised on the level of the bed. ‘How old are you? Sixteen?’
    ‘No, sister, nineteen.’ I take each foot while an orderly lifts him bodily.
    ‘Nineteen! Oh, surely not so old. Sixteen, and you’re a drummer boy,’ slipping a cushion under his calves and arranging a ‘cradle.’
    ‘No, sister.’
    ‘What! Are you really a soldier with a rifle to fight with!’ I am tucking in the bedclothes. He gives a sly little smile and a drop to his voice.
    ‘No, sister. The Army doesn’t give yer a rifle ter fight with. It gives yer a rifle ter
clean
.’
    I dutifully laugh and go to another tent in the line, – a ‘line’ consists of four, six, eight or nine marquees according to the division, surgical or medical, and according to the cases, heavy or light.
    In this tent the newcomers have already been put to bed, and look up expectantly to see what kind ofreception is accorded them. Occasionally boys have subsequently confessed to me they didn’t like at all the thought of coming to hospital. They ‘had an idea the sisters were strict,’ – a politely vague term which presumably covered all the supposed feminine shortcomings which ever existed.
    ‘Good-morning, boys – two, three – five, six new guests at our hotel.’
    ‘Yes, sister,’ says the orderly. ‘And we charge seven and sixpence a day for bed and breakfast, don’t we?’
    ‘Certainly, and other meals at
à la carte
prices. Nursing and medical attendance a guinea a day. Hope no one has lost his pay-book.’
    A general smile at the little nonsense, and every Tommy Atkins of them is at ease.
    The walking cases usually go to the steam-bath and how they do enjoy the visit, especially when it happens to be weeks since they had their last bath! The bed-patients are blanket-bathed. Meantime khaki and trench clothing have been hurried out of the ward with all dispatch, since the fight against vermin is most strenuous, most vigilant, and ever unceasing.
    The dressings taken down, the wounds are seen by the medical officer and the dressings done. A meal follows, a cigarette, and then the boys go to sleep. Andhow they do sleep – deep, heavy, stupefying sleep it is! Poor, weary,