Nursing Career

Nursing Career

         During World War I  Britain lost almost a quarter of a million of her young men.  The ones who were not killed suffered many injuries, and some of them were horribly disfigured.   We nurses saw most of them only briefly, on their way back home, where they were repaired and rebuilt during their convalescence.  Some were too badly injured to be moved, and all we could do was sit with them and comfort them while they died. 

         Most of the time we were kept just behind the front lines, in field hospitals.  We cleaned and bandaged wounds.  We disinfected stretchers, blankets and instruments, as well as soldiers infested with lice and fleas.  We wrote letters on behalf of blinded soldiers.  The very worst cases were gas poisoning.  With mustard gas the body starts to rot after about twelve hours.  The skin blisters and the eyes become extremely painful.  Nausea and vomiting begins.  The gas attacks the bronchial tubes and strips it of its mucous membrane, so swallowing becomes almost impossible.  Chlorine gas blinded, and it became painful to watch lines of soldiers, arms on each other’s shoulders, groping their way along.

         When we were on leave I couldn’t help think that if those at home saw the effects of the war on their loved ones they would not have encouraged the boys to go off and fight “for king and country.”

         I stayed nursing after the war ended.  I loved the work but caring for some of the wounded and maimed took every ounce of energy and compassion we had.  Some of those affected by the trauma wrote stories and poems.  One of the most affecting was called “Suicide in the Trenches”, by Siegfried Sassoon;

I knew a simple soldier boy/who grinning at life in empty joy

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark/and whistled early with the lark,

In winter trenches, cowed and glum/with crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain/no one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye/ who cheer when soldier lads walk by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know/ the hell where youth and laughter go.