ARMY NURSING SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 50, 22 November 1917, Page 3

ARMY NURSING SERVICE

"Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Service, the Territorial Force Nursing Service, and their vast reserves, might well share with the Ito.vnl Navy tho description of being 'the Silent Navy,' " states a writer in the "Daily Telegraph." "Over the splendid work and devotion of the 19,000 or so of trained, skilled women there has hung a veil of reticenco and reserve that has barely been lifted. An investiture by the King will include the names of a few of those who are called up to receivo the decoration of the Royal lied Cross, who tip to February 1, had numbered 850, or possibly of one or two of that distinguished company of women upon whom tlio Military Medal—some fifteen at the present time—lias been conferred.

"Queen Alexandra, as its head, to whom tho entire service owes reconstruction, is wont to receive the nurses | at Marlborough House after these ceremonies, and is deeply interested in tho honours that the.y have earned. It can be stated, too, upon the most direct authority, that tiie Queen herself follows the work of the nurses with the closest attention. None, in fact, is prouder or more appreciative of their noble labours than Queen Mary, whoso knowledge of all that they accomplish is full and ceaj]2lete._ But of tho special grace and untiring*labours, of the calm courage that gave steadiness and selfcontrol to men in agony who were called upon to suffer the further terrors of bombs falling in the very wards where they had hoped for haven, no indication is given to the nation at large. In trains under Zeppelin attack, despite tho blazonry of humanity for which the Red Cross stands, on hospital ships and in open boats, the work that British nurses have done constitutes a chapter that will 6tand in the proudest annals of the Empire. "It is a well understood tradition of the service that nurses do not talk of what tliey have done. If they did more would have been heard of the general tale of ordered efficiency since that first call-up on August 5, 1914, when, quietly and without the least fuss, the whole nursing personnel of general hospitals were mustered and slipped away quietly to destinations unknown, but 'somewhere in France.' No woman has ever carried upon her shoulders a burden of higher responsibility than that which Miss Bccher, R.R.C., the matron-in-chief, has borne. She has, of course, been magnificently supported by those ■women whom her own 'rigVit judgment [ in all tilings' has selected to be principal matrons in France, in Salonika, in Egypt, and Mesopotamia. And tho niatron-in-cliief with the Australian, tho Canadian, tho New Zealand, and the South African armios have been worthy daughters of the Empire in conjunction with them. All of them regarded signal acts of long-sustained attendance as when convoy after convoy brought down its loads of men needing instant attention and hours of laboiiT, or sheer disregard of shel\-fire on the part of the sisters and nurses, merely as part of the duty to be done. Certainly such deeds were not to bo bruited about, as conferring honour on thoso who did them above that belonging to those to whom the opportunity came -not. "That is the attitude that has kept stories gloriously horoio from any sort of publicity. And even when, as a tribute that many now feel should he rendored to tho nurses, some littlo glimpses are officially permitted into the obscurity, it was on the understanding that individual names save where the supremo sacrifice of all has heen made should not be mentioned. To the plain, unvarnished facts so simply told those concerned can supply this hiatus. Others are held to have no concern in this detail.

"Wo shall never know the whole epic, for those who made it keep back the personal clement and emphasise rather the bravery and endurance of the men—in suffering even as in the fierce grij) of battle. To all the highest qualities of womanliness—the gentleness, the patience, the sympathy— and the lore of surgery and medicine, the matrons and sisters and nurses of the military service have added an heroic disdain for personal danger that throws into yet blacker shame the attacks of the enemy on the helpless and the wounded, over whom (to civilised peoples, at least), the Red Cross floats as the symbol of protection."