Part 14 (1/2)

Heasy, Betty, and I in celebration of two years' active service had permission to give a small dance in the mess at the beginning of the new year. We trembled lest at the last moment an ambulance train might arrive, but there was nothing worse than an early evacuation next morning and all went off excellently. I was entrusted to make the ”cup,”

and bought the ingredients in the town (some cup), and gravely a.s.sured everyone there was absolutely ”nothing in it.” The boracic powder was lifted in my absence from the _Pharmacie_ to try and get the first glimmerings of a slide on that sticky creosoted floor. The ambulances, fitted with paper Chinese lanterns, were temporarily converted into sitting out places. It was a great show.

There was one job in the Convoy we all loathed like poison; it was known as ”corpses.” There was no chance of dodging unpopular jobs, for they worked out on an absolutely fair system. For instance, the first time the telephone bell went after 8 a.m. (anything before that was counted night duty) it was taken by a girl whose name came first in alphabetical order. She rushed out to her car, but before going ”warned” B. that when the bell next went it would be _her_ job, and so on throughout the day.

If you were ”warned,” it was an understood thing that you did not begin any long job on the car but stayed more or less in readiness. If the jobs got half through the alphabet by nightfall the last girl warned knew she was first for it the next morning.

To return to the corpses. What happened was that men were frequently falling into the ca.n.a.ls and docks and were not discovered till perhaps three weeks later. An ambulance was then rung up, and the corpse, or what remained of it, was taken to the mortuary.

One day Bobs was called on to give evidence at a Court of Enquiry with regard to a corpse she had driven, as there was some mystification with regard to the day and hour at which it was found. As she stepped smartly up to the table the Colonel asked her how, when it occurred some ten days ago, she could be sure it was 4.30 when she arrived on the scene.

”It was like this,” said she. ”When I heard it was a corpse, I thought I'd have my tea first!” (This was almost as bad as the tape measure episode and was of course conclusive. I might add, corpses were the only jobs that were not allowed to interfere with meals.)

”Foreign bodies,” in the shape of former Belgian patients, often drifted up to camp in search of the particular ”Mees” who had tended them at Lamarck, as often as not bringing souvenirs made at great pains in the trenches as tokens of their grat.i.tude. It touched us very much to know that they had not forgotten.

One night when my evening duty was nearing its close and I was just preparing to go to my hut the telephone bell rang, and I was told to go down to the hospital s.h.i.+p we had just loaded that afternoon for a man reported to be in a dying condition, and not likely to stand the journey across to England--I never could understand why those cases should have been evacuated at all if there was any possibility of them becoming suddenly worse; but I suppose a certain number of beds had to be cleared for new arrivals, and individuals could not be considered. It seemed very hard.

I drove down to the Quay in the inky blackness, it was a specially dark night, turned successfully, and reported I had come for the case.

An orderly, I am thankful to say, came with him in the car and sat behind holding his hand.

The boy called incessantly for his mother and seemed hardly to realize where he was. I sat forward, straining my eyes in the darkness along that narrow quay, on the look-out for the many holes I knew were only too surely there.

The journey seemed to take hours, and I answered a query of the orderly's as to the distance.

The boy heard my voice and mistook me for one of the Sisters, and then followed one of the most trying half-hours I have ever been through.

He seemed to regain consciousness to a certain extent and asked me from time to time,

”Sister, am I dying?”

”Will I see me old mother again, Sister?”

”Why have you taken me off the Blighty s.h.i.+p, Sister?”

Then there would be silence for a s.p.a.ce, broken only by groans and an occasional ”Christ, but me back 'urts crool,” and all the comfort I could give was that we would be there soon, and the doctor would do something to ease the pain.

Thank G.o.d, at last we arrived at the Casino. One of the most trying things about ambulance driving is that while you long to get the patient to hospital as quickly as possible you are forced to drive slowly. I jumped out and cautioned the orderlies to lift him as gently as they could, and he clung on to my hand as I walked beside the stretcher into the ward.

”You're telling me the truth, Sister? I don't want to die, I tell you that straight,” he said. ”Goodbye and G.o.d bless you; I'll come and see you in the morning,” I said, and left him to the nurses' tender care. I went down early next day but he had died at 3 a.m. Somebody's son and only nineteen. That sort of job takes the heart out of you for some days, though Heaven knows we ought to have got used to anything by that time.

To make up for the wet autumn a hard frost set in early in the year.

The M.T. provided us with anti-freezing mixture for the radiators, but the antifreezing cheerfully froze! We tried emptying them at night, turning off the petrol and running the engine till the carburettor was dry (for even the petrol was not above freezing), and wrapping up the engines as carefully as if they were babies, but even that failed.

Starting the cars up in the morning (a detail I see I have not mentioned so far), even in ordinary times quite a hard job, now became doubly so.

It was no uncommon sight to see F.A.N.Y.s lying supine across the bonnets of their cars, completely winded by their efforts. The morning air was full of sobbing breaths and groans as they swung in vain! This process was known as ”getting her loose”--(I'm referring to the car not the F.A.N.Y., though, from personal experience, it's quite applicable to both.)

Brown or Johnson (the latter had replaced Kirkby) was secured to come if possible and give the final fillip that set the engine going. It's a well-known thing that you may turn at a car for ten minutes and not get her going, and a fresh hand will come and do so the first time.

This swinging left one feeling like nothing on earth, and sometimes was a day's work in itself.

In spite of all the precautions we took, whatever water was left in the water pipes and drainings at the bottom of the radiators froze solidly, and sure enough, when we had got them going, clouds of steam rose into the air. The frost had come to stay and moreover it was a black one.

Something had to be done to solve the problem for it was imperative for every car to be ready for the road first thing in the morning.

Camp fires were suggested, but were impracticable, and then it was that ”Night Guards” were inst.i.tuted.