BEHIND THE FIGHTING LINE IN FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2515, 17 July 1915, Page 11

BEHIND THE FIGHTING LINE IN FRANCE

NURSES AND SOLDIERS. What does a woman seo whom nursing work takes her close to tho red line of war which runs across the north of France? Only a woman so occupicd can possibly get there, for in the fighting zone the old, gallant, French saying, "Placo for ladies," lias taken a gallant, new form. "No place for ladies." But Miss Grace Ellison, tho Englishwoman of a recent book describing a year's stay in a Turkish harem, has heard tho sound of the guns, and tho other day in Paris sho told to a special correspondent (Mr. J. Milne), of the "Daily Chroniclo," her experiences. "In September last," she remarked, "I came to France to see whether, with some medical training I had had, I ' could bo of any use in the way of nursing. I already knew Franco well, the French people, and their beautiful language, so thcro wero no initial obstacles to get over, but there were plenty of others. During a journey to Bordeaux, where many of the French wounded were sent in the early stages of the war, I saw how they suffered and how finely they-bore themselves. Voluntarily I tried, to help them hero and there, and that gradually led. to tho French Red Flag Nursing , Corps, which we- have created and staffed with .150 English nurses."■ Those nurses are engaged in tho French military hospitals, which, when the war broke out, said Miss Ellison, had no women nurses at all. They had men orderlies, but everything was on such simple, even primitive lines that, when the Germans, like the Assyrians of old, came down on an unprepared country, there was much hardship among the wounded French. The nuns, who had been the nurses in "France, were no longer there to assuage and Ileal. In peace time France had no trained nurses on the scale we know them. The idea that women should be nursing wounded men right up at the front, where the trenches have been a mixture of mud and blood, was oven rather new. But this was the idea behind the English folk who set afoot

the French Red, Flag Nursing Corps, and it got warm and decisive support from M. Millerand, the French Minister of War. , The Caddess In the Car, ■"I have," said Miss Ellison, • "had a military motor-car placed at my disposal, with, authorisation to, go about in tho inspection of our nurses. ■ -The speotacle of a woman, an English woman, flying a.long iii a car driven by uniformed French soldiers lias, however, been so strange to French commanding officers that often they have stopped me, anyhow, until I showed my authority and explained my mission. Recently; I wanted to visit a little place not specifically mentioned in my passes, and I was smilingly turned back. 'No, madame,' said an agreeable lieutenant, 'you cannot go so near the trenches without a. special permit from the general directly commanding.'' When I sought him out, he said, 'Nay, it is too risky, and you are too valuable for us to let/ you run any risk.' " Naturally, Miss Ellison has gained -a. wonderful knowledge of the ever-changing human picture immediately behind the French trenches, for the hospitals there are like periscopes among the wavos of wounded. "One cannot," she said, "speak too highly of the work of the French doctors, and the results they have sometimes obtained from original methods of treatment'. . For instance, they have been treating typhoid with injeotions of gold solution. They have found it good for patients, with'sup-

purating wounds, to be placed in tho sun. Tliey have, ill uerro cases particularly, found tho application of electricity ver.v valuable." Those remarks led Miss Ellison to a neat little analysis of • the relationships between tho French doctors and her British nurses. "On the one hand,", she said, "you have originality, springing from the French imagination, based on a high, scientific training. On the other hand, you have a liigiily-traincd nursing faculty based on a well-defined system— informed originality, seeking new lights, and an established order, working ou what 'lias been proved. This combination of the Fronch doctor and tho English trained nurse has been remarkable in its results, although a dear nurse did say to me, 'It's surprising what tliey achieve considering their methods.' Her canny, Scottish mind would not have let her turn tho remark round about and praise tho wonder of new applications to war wounds, but her heart, being Scottish, was right there all the time. ■ With the common French soldier Miss Ellison's nurses are heroines and saints all in one, although generally be can only call them "Mees." When he goes back to the firing line, if he has been just' slightly wounded, or down to a base hospital, if lie needs Test, he writes letters of thanks to "Mees"; never love-letters, because the secret of them is a lost art in France while the war lasts. ' Some of tho English nurses,. when they come homo from Rheims and thereabout, will have admirable bundles of those humble lays to bring with them. In turn, they cannot say .c-nough of the splendour qf the French soldier in hospital, as in battle, of his gaiety oven while he suffers, of the with which he will thank tho "Mees"' who has bound up the-stump of an amputated hand. The Sore Sight of Wounds. "Oh," said Miss Ellison, "it is bard to be among the wounded at an advance military hospital, and to see the sights there. I. have seen'a frost-bitten foot drop off—a black tiling, that might have been burned. First, it would turn black, then toes would fall off, and filially the whole foot. There have been a great many eye wounds, the inevitable result of_ trench shooting, and they are. especially painful to see, as well as to bear., War is terrible,. but all. the suffering which wounds, can inflict does not damp the ardour of the French fighting man a little bit. He is simply magnificent, unconquerable, conquering, and no sacrifice is too great for the victory on which he 6urely counts. Then our British nion are so well fitted out in every manner, as compared with the French _ soldier. The Englishman has_ everything in keeping, the best of equipment, and from his boots to his forage cap lie is all a piece. The Frenchman strikes you as a mosaio of things, with simplicity, oven a certain scarcity, for its note. Each is a bonnie Tighter, one the complement of the other, and I don't know whether I am prouder to be a British woman, or to be helping nurso the French." Cun Fire and Nerves. ' The nerve rack which destroys»soldiers long under gun fire in the trenches lias, Miss Ellison told me,- found its best salve in the presence of women nurses in the forward French military hospitals. In one a soldier, in his delirium, jumped out of a window, crying that the Boches were after liim. A .sudden noise would cause a patient to start, his thought being that he was ill the trenches again, with a shell about to burst. Quiet is the only healing, for this nervous disorder—quiet and a woman's touch by a bedside. Miss Ellison asked tho French doctors whether the foreign accent of the nurses might not bo taken by delirious men as the accent of Germans—Boches—and so be disturbing. They thought not, coming from • women, and they were right, for tho little band of English women have obtained a perfect influence over their patients, who, even when tliey-are too ill'to move, look their thanks and get it back in a motlnirly smile. A certain picture of the lighter side of war as the hospitals know it, lingers fondly' in Miss Ellison's memory. It is that of a plain French soldier having his nails pared and cleaned by a win- | some English nurse, and ' himself scrubbed up generally. The whole busi-ness-tickled'him tremendously, and he sat and laughed and laughed. A thing like this had never been known to him before, had never been dreamt of as a possibility, and it was so odd 1 Perhaps, too, ho asked himself. ."What's tho use of spring cleanii'tp a fellow who's going back to be shot?" But, anyhow, he was happy, happy physically, like a cat purring in the summer sun now rising for tho French soldier.