NURSING GERMANS.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 2 October 1917, Page 1

NURSING GERMANS.

ENGLISH GIRL IN AFRICA. Miss Mabel Packham, A.R.C.C., who is now in England, contributes an article on her personal experiences in Africa to "Central Africa." She was selected to be the English sister for the hospital at Mrogoro, for whom the Germane telegraphed. The German official who summoned her to receive instructions asked her if she would like to go to Mrogoro. 'Not so," was tho reply; but, noting her interlocutor's look of annoyed consternation, Miss Packham added, "I will go to nurse your sick if you need me." On her way to Mrogoro her escort told her that' Kitchener was dead, but she answered quietly, "He will probably resurrect somewhere else, and till she learned the truth from the English themselves looked upon the assertion as a fable. One day the enthusiastic doctor, as he made his round, remarked, "Schwester, we have taken one of your motor cars, and in it were three men. Perhaps one is General Smuts." "Perhaps," was the sarcastic answer; then Miss Paskham spoke out frankly. "I am here by myself, an English woman cut off from everyone, with the enemy, nursing their sick, and you delight to bring me such news. Is it German to do so?" The doctor, apologising and ashamed, withdrew, but the arrow found its mark; she was bothered no more with idle tales, and the Germans treated her with courtesy and kindness.

From the patients and medical staff she received gratitude and absolute trust. One of the former wrote, "I can never thank you enough; my three weeks in hospital have given mo a very high ideal of English sisters." On September 2<lth packing had been go ing on all day; some of the sick were carefully put on stretchers and carried to the station; the Red Cross train was ready, steam up, and the medical staff arrived at the hospital. "We are going, Schwester. Will you take care of our sick, nwomen and children, and will you ask for clemency for them?" "The advancing troops are English,'' Miss Packham replied, '' and there will be no need; I should bo ashamed to call my people countrymen if they treated your people as you have treated ours." So the Germans departed, and left Miss Packham alone in the town with one faithful boy—alone in a dead town, with everything likely to be of use to the English blown up, food, flour mill, powder, soda factory, station, oil a heap of ruins. Then came the turn of the Africans to loot, and when the English arrived, the men eaten up with fever, exhausted with long marching, hungry and faint for want of food, the hospital grew full and overflowed. But there was only one sister to nurse them, and nothing for them to cat.

Six months later the loth Stationary Hospital came up. with its stafl'fl' of matrons and sisters, its large medical equipment,-its crowds of orderlies. Then Miss Packham came linme.