THE NEW ARMY NURSE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 145, 8 March 1918, Page 2

THE NEW ARMY NURSE

i\O "BEDSIDE MANNER."

(By Olive Dent, in the "Daily Mail.")

Miss Olive Dent, who has been nursing at the front for two years, has written in "A V.A.D. in France" one of tho jolliest as well as one of tho most human books of the war. In it she pays a glowing tribute to the fortitude, devotion, and self-abnegation of our fighting men, and incidentally she reveals the no less nobln spirit of the women who tend them so devotedly.

The now Army nurse is a very modern person. She may hail from Chicago or Melbourne, Alberta or Pimlico, Cape Town or Aberdeen, but, no matter what her birthplace, she is, like tho new Army soldier, an iconoolast.

She began in the early days of the war with the outward and visible sign of a nurse. She discarded the traditional bonnet and cloak and adopted short skirts, thick coats, a walkingstick, and boots with a three-quarter-inch solo fitted with "military rubbers."

The next step was more gradual, more subtle. She adopted the jargon of her patients and sne discarded the popular pone associated with a nurse. Tliis, doubtless, was a reflection from "the boys." For when a warrior and hero stoutly refuses to appear either or both, persisting in being a true Jkirnsfather "Bill," "Alf.," or "Bert," a nurse is not going to make much progress if she maintains an angel-of-morey attitude towards him. As she herself is quite capable of phrasing; it, "The ministering angel 'stunt' is a 'wash-out.' I have no use for it. It puts tho wind up a patient."

Tho soldier, likes to be addressed in his own funny language. In it he recognises a sign of freemasonry. He rarely desires spoken sympathy; he prefers to be "chipped." Hβ wants the women of Britain as well as the men to play the game, but above all to piny the game with nonchalance. He admires efficiency, but he adores efficiency combined with nonchalance just as whole-heartedly as he abhors '"swank" and pose. Even when the Eoehe is overhead, the "Archies" bellowing, and the shrapnel rolling off the hut roof, he wants no gentle murmurings of reassurance. Tho modern nurse has not ccasccl t to be loss' of a ministorini; angel in fact because she repudiates the title and "has no time for" the pose in practice. She can, when tho occasion domancls, bo just as sympathetic) just as pitying, just as soothing as ever woman was or could be.

A boy subaltern once told me: "We had marched some miles back I'roin the line whero wo had loft misery and anguish -unspeakable-dirfc, cold, vermin; bitter, dogged enmity; unceasing, purposeful vigilance; deliberate, premeditated mutilation of nature and man. .

"I was in a stupor, a trance of mental degradation, and ono of the first things that struck my numbed

brain was the vision of a nurse at a casualty clearing station. "Slio-was all in white (presumably dressing overalls), and to me she- typified cleanliness and purity, sweetness and loving kindness, idealism and revereuce. Almost I could have knelt and prayed to her. "As it was. I saluted, then waved my stick. She smiled, waved her hand in loturn, and disappeared into a marquee. 1 felt suddenly humanispd, uplifted. Her influence ■ stayed with me. That impersonal woman and hor work lemain a. lodestar to me." To death—perhaps sudden, relentless, unkind, seemingly unnecessary— we nurses inevitably grow resigned, but tho illimitable love and forgivouess that is to come drawfs any attempts at a "bodside mannor." We pray —yes. Only our Maker knows how wo have sometimes prayed, short little monosyllabic petitions, boaten and beaten out by a subconscious brain busied with othnr and purely pract : cal matters, prayers formulated quite unknowingly on behalf of/a perfect stranger and prompted by an anguish of pity, an infinity of aching sorrow. But of such moments "the boys" know nothing. They do not wajit to know. According to our queer little twentieth century codo of philosophy, all thoy ask from us in hospital life is that towards death we should have resignation and a stiff upper lip, and towards life nonchalance and a mouth that needs little provocation to turn up at tho corners.