IX
I dona€?t remember in 1913 having any anticipation of war. Naval officers occasionally shook their heads and murmured a€?Der Taga€?, but we had been hearing that for years, and paid no attention. It served as a suitable basis for spy storiesa€“it wasna€?t real. No nation could be so crazy as to fight another except on the N.W. frontier or some far away spot.
All the same, First Aid and Home Nursing classes were popular during 1913, and at the beginning of 1914. We all went to these, bandaged each othera€?s legs and arms, and even attempted to do neat head-bandaging: much more difficult. We passed our exams, and got a small printed card to prove our success. So great was female enthusiasm at this time that if any man had an accident he was in mortal terror of ministerng women closing in on him.
a€?Dona€?t let those First Aiders come near me!a€the cry would rise. a€?Dona€?t touch me, girls. Dona€?t touch me!a€?
There was one extremely snuffy old man amongst the examiners. With a diabolical smile he laid traps for us. a€?Here is your patient,a€he would say, pointing to a boy scout prostrate on the ground. a€?Broken arm, fractured ankle, get busy on him.a€An eager pair, I and another, swooped upon him and trotted out our bandages. We were good at bandaginga€“beautiful, neat bandages we had practiseda€“carefully reversing as we went up a leg, so that the whole thing looked deliciously taut and tidy, with a few figure-of-eights thrown in for good measure. In this case, however, we were taken abacka€“there was to be no neatness or beauty here: stuff was already bulkily wound round the limb. a€?Field dressings,a€said the old man. a€?Put your bandages on top of them; youa€?ve nothing else to replace them by, remember.a€We bandaged. It was much more difficult to bandage this way, making neat turns and twists. a€?Get on with it,a€said the old man. a€?Use the figure-of-eight: youa€?ll have to come to it in the end. No good trying to go by the text-books and reverse from top to bottom. Youa€?ve got to keep the dressing on, girl, thata€?s the point of it. Now then, the bed is through the hospital doors there.a€We picked up our patient, having duly fixed, we hoped, the splints where splints should be fixed, and carried him to the bed.
Then we paused, slightly taken abacka€“neither of us had thought of opening up the bed clothes before arriving with the patient. The old man cackled with glee. a€?Ha ha! Havena€?t thought of everything, have you, young ladiesHa haa€“always see your bed is ready for your patient before you start carrying him there.a€I must say that, humiliated as he made us feel, that old man taught us a great deal more than we had learnt in six lectures.
Besides our text-books, there was some practical work arranged for us. Two mornings a week we were allowed to attend the local hospital in the out-patients ward. That was intimidating, because the regular nurses, who were in a hurry and had a lot to do, despised us thoroughly. My first job was to remove the dressing from a finger, prepare warm boracic and water for it, and soak the finger for the requisite time. That was easy. The next job was an ear that needed syringing, and that I was quickly forbidden to touch. Syringing an ear was a highly technical thing, said the Sister. Nobody unskilled should attempt it.
a€?Remember that. Dona€?t think youa€?re being useful by doing what you havena€?t learned to do. You might do a lot of harm.a€?
The next thing I had to do was to remove the dressings from the leg of a small child who had pulled over a boiling kettle on itself. That was the moment when I nearly gave up nursing for good. The bandages had, as I knew, to be soaked off gently in lukewarm water, and whatever way you did this, or touched them, the pain was agonising to the child. Poor little thing, she was only about three years old. She screamed and screamed: it was horrible. I felt so upset that I thought I was going to be sick then and there. The only thing that saved me was the sardonic gleam in the eye of a staff nurse nearby. These stuck-up young fools, the eyes said, think they can come in here and know all about everythinga€“and they cana€?t manage the first thing they are asked to do. Immediately I determined that I would stick it. After all, it had got to be soaked offa€“not only the child had to bear her pain, but I had to bear her pain also. I went on with it, still feeling sick, setting my teeth, but managing it, and being as gentle as I could. I was quite taken aback when the staff nurse said suddenly to me: a€?Not a bad job youa€?ve done there. Turned you up a bit at first, didna€?t itIt did me once.a€?
Another part of our education was a day with the District Nurse. Here again, two of us were taken on one day of the week. We went round a number of small cottages, all of them with windows tightly closed, some of them smelling of soap, others of something quite differenta€“the yearning to throw open a window was sometimes almost irresistible. The ailments seemed rather monotonous. Practically everyone had what was tersely referred to as a€?bad legsa€?. I was slightly hazy as to what bad legs were. The District Nurse said, a€?Blood poisoning is very commona€“some the result of venereal disease, of coursea€“some ulcersa€“bad blood all of it.a€Anyway that was the generic name for it among the people themselves, and I understood much better in years to come when my daily help would always say, a€?My mothera€?s ill again.a€?
a€?Oh, whata€?s the matter with her?a€?
a€?Oh, bad legsa€“shea€?s always had bad legs.a€?
One day on our rounds we found one of the patients had died. The District Nurse and I laid out the body. Another experience. Not so heart-rending as scalded children, but unexpected if you had never done it before.
When, in far off Serbia, an archduke was assassinated, it seemed such a faraway incidenta€“nothing that concerned us. After all, in the Balkans people were always being assassinated. That it should touch us here in England seemed quite incrediblea€“and I speak here not only for myself but for almost everybody else. Swiftly, after that assassination, what seemed like incredible storm clouds appeared on the horizon. Extraordinary rumours got about, rumours of that fantastic thinga€“War! But of course that was only the newspapers, No civilised nations went to war. There hadna€?t been any wars for years; there probably never would be again.
No, the ordinary people, everyone in fact, apart from, I suppose, a few senior Ministers and inner circles of the Foreign Office, had no conception that anything like war might happen. It was all rumoursa€“people working themselves up and saying it really looked a€?quite seriousa€?a€“speeches by politicians. And then suddenly one morning it had happened.
England was at war.