An Onlooker in France 1917-1919Orpen, William, Sir
History
An Onlooker in France 1917-1919
Orpen, William, Sir
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives; World War, 1914-1918 -- Pictorial works
and with this I departed for Amiens, where I reported to the Colonel
of the X---- Hospital. Over a whisky-and-soda I gave him the "slip,"
and he looked at my arm and said, "Yes, scabies," and I was put into
the isolation ward and treated for this disease. How more people did
not die in that hospital beats me. I personally never got any sleep,
and left in a fortnight nearly dead. Lights were out at 10 p.m. This
sounds good, but there were about eight of us in the ward. I had to
have my foot treated every three hours. The man in the next bed to
mine was treated for something every two hours; and nearly all the
other beds were treated three or four times during the night. For all
these treatments the lights blazed about twenty times each night, and
some of the treatments were very noisy. At 6.30 a.m., in the dark, the
nurse came round, and anyone who was not dying was turned out of bed.
Why, I know not: there was no heat in the place. If you were well
enough you went off to a soaking sort of scullery and heated some
water over a gas-jet and shaved. If you were not well enough, you sat
in your dressing-gown on a chair. You were not allowed to sit on your
bed. At 8 a.m. you were given an extraordinarily bad breakfast--porridge
with no milk, tea with no sugar, bread with--most days--no butter. (p. 060)
After breakfast you could go to bed again, but this was not allowed if
you were going to be let out during the day, as I was most of the
time. So there you sat again, freezing, till an orderly came and said
your bath was ready, usually about 9.30 a.m.--three hours after you
had left your bed. The bath was in an outhouse about fifty yards
across the yard from the ward. In hail, rain or snow, you had got to
go there. In it I was boiled in a bath, scrubbed all over with a
nail-brush, and then smothered all over with sulphur--wet, greasy,
stinking sulphur rubbed in all over me. I dressed by putting on a pair
of pyjamas first. These more or less kept this grease from getting
through to my other clothes, and I was allowed out to work--a sick,
freezing, wet individual. But my room at the "Hotel de la Paix" was
warm, and I sat over my "Flamme Bleue" all the morning. After I had
been treated with sulphur for "scabies" a couple of weeks, a hole came
in my throat just like the one I had on my foot--a white hole with a
black band round it, and all the flesh for about six inches beyond it
a deep scarlet. One morning the boy who washed me said: "I beg your
pardon, sir, but what are you being treated for?" "Scabies," said I.
Said he: "Don't say I said so, sir, but show the M.O. that thing on
your neck. You haven't got scabies, and this sulphur will kill you
soon." So I waited for the M.O. till he did his rounds. When he came
to me he said the usual, "Everything all right with you?" "No," said
I. "I've got a scabie on my neck that is worrying me." So he had a
look at it and said: "I don't think this treatment is doing you much
good.
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