NURSE'S LETTER FROM FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3046, 5 April 1917, Page 3

NURSE'S LETTER FROM FRANCE

WORK AND PLAY ' . ••■• \

It sounds somewhat Irish in the saying, but it is none the less true that the best part of the day is the night, writes an English nurso somewhere in l''rance.

After mess dinner at eight,' the day nursing staff is free until 7.30 the next •morning, so it is then that .we do our '"entertaining." This consists of going to one another's bunks or bell tents and having coffee' and biscuits , and fruit and chocolates—and conversation. ■■<

'The, hostess usually receives us in bed, which is wisdom on her part, for she is out of the way, and that is an important factor in an area where even inches count. The "guests" are customarily in dressing-gowns, garments which are as varied as the costumes at : a'fancy-dress hall, and which hail from the sphere of our fighting grounds. There' are dressing robes bought in Valetta, burnouses picked up in bazaars at "Alex," checked matinees from "les galleries" in the nearest provincial French town, little turned-up slippers from Salonika, comfortable, stodgy English slippers knitted by comfortable stodgy English, aunts, and utilitarian "slip-on's" hailing from Oxford Street.

"0.A.5." is rospdnsible for , some dreadful lapses and.some fearful makeshifts.' Our meals and our crockery are most unconventional;' To-night we drank black xoffeo from the cupscr<?iv of a vacuum flask, the cup-casing of a. spirit flask', a' medicine glass, a marmalade jar, "real china" cup, and a piece of porcelain which is penco days was used to contain face powder, and which was accepted with the remark "To what base uses. . . ." . We hadn't a, spoon, only a silver button hook*. We ate biscuits from the tin.

We talk as gourmets of the food wo eat, and discuss the "cakes from homo," dilating on the excellence of the cook, whether she be fat, autocratic, and of long domestic standing, or whether she be a young eisterjust rawly , recruited from a domestic science sohool. Our women are catholic.

Wβ partook heartily one night of lobster, cheese biscuits, black coffee, "plum. cake" from the canteen, and slept just as. heartily, and nest day laughed equally heartily at the rueful dismay of an old dug-out of our acquaintance who envied our digestion and rosy cheeks, '' ""

Of course we "talk shop." Ono asks the sister from the recovery hut how •the boy is progressing she sent for operation, and one of the theatre sisters answers X's inquiry'about her trephine.case, and Y's question , about her amputation case, and Z's. query about her laparotomy case, and we grow keenly interested in descriptions of others, until the girl who sleeps next to the theatre sister with only a , partition between them vows she trembles with fear at the possibility of the said ■ sister coming over in her sleep with a penknife as scalpel and curling, tongs as artery forceps. •■ The smile she raises is -well timed, for the conversaton has taken on a tragic tone. The sister from the recovery hut told how one patient on the dangerously-ill list did not want her to write to his wife "because there is si new baby coming thie ■week," of how word'had come through'from home that "little sonny's" mother is dead and ho must not be told yet,' and of how another, boy—only nineteen—had- openect dying eyes to see some' flowers she had taken into the ward, and_ how pleased he had been, for it reminded him of the garden at home. .We sit on_ the floor of the bell-tent and gaze out into' the night, a _ni<*ht when the sound of the guns is-insistent. Our eyes seek the horizon, and we suddenly feel a helpless band of futile women, agonis-ingly-impotent. ' . "Well, I must go,. and thnnks for your cold, coffee," the theatre sister !*• . marks. Her. little piece of naivete dispels our feeling of sadness. One's, moods occur in patohes on active service: ■ _■ Only ono night in. several months have we had an enemy aircraft alarm. Wp had brushed our hair convivially, and the .early birds had retired to rest when wo heard "-the "Stand to" bugle sounded, followed by "Lights out," and "Pall in at the double.' Racing cars, an;] the sound of many inarching feet were tho next sounds, and then camo a message that each nursing sister had to go to her post, for oure is a tout hospital, and a inarquce burns in thiw minutes—which is' not a great deal of time in which to removo helpless patients. • ■ ' In a few minutes we wore at the doore of tho wards, not entering in case of waking the patients, but gazing expectantly up into the sky and trying to feel as thrilled and frightened as we ought to have kMxwi But the .aircraft was beaten back, and all we suffered was the loss of an hour's sleep and a little unecessary preparation onthe following nights of placing in readiness our boots and thick coats. ■ ••• . .■■,..