Finding Themselves: The Letters of an American Amy Chief Nurse in the British Hospital in FranceStimson, Julia C. (Julia Catherine)
History
Finding Themselves: The Letters of an American Amy Chief Nurse in the British Hospital in France
Stimson, Julia C. (Julia Catherine)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Phil said that after the dressing the wound felt very much more
comfortable. He eats finely and is now having the time of his life,
having all his old friends visit him and make much of him. I have not
had much time to talk with him since I have been back, for of course
there was accumulated work for me to attend to, but I am so relieved to
have him here it does not matter whether I have time to spend with him
or not. I have seen that he has plenty of magazines and picture puzzles
to do, and he has been reading to-day all the letters from the various
members of the family that I have received in the past month, and also
the copies of all my letters to you all. I shall see him to-night
probably. We shall have him up in a chair out in the sun to-morrow; in
fact he may have been out to-day. He is occupying a tent alone although
there are 13 other beds in the tent where he is. I have said that he
does not need to stay alone, but while we are light it can easily be
managed. He has a convalescent patient as his personal servant, a “blue
boy,” as we call them, a “light duty patient” who is so proud because he
has an officer to wait on. There are American orderlies in his division
of course, but the blue boy fetches his meals and putters over him, etc.
Of course my nurses are in charge.
I brought all his kit and belongings down with him in the ambulance. I
have his metal helmet hanging here in my office. You can’t really
imagine what a narrow escape he had until you see the dent in the edge
of the thick steel hat that was made by the piece of shell. It broke the
edge and made a curved dent about an inch wide. It is a perfect miracle
he was not killed. It was the helmet that saved his life. He is so
marvelously fortunate, for no permanent damage has been done, and Major
Clopton does not think he will have any permanent disability, and he
might so easily have been killed or paralyzed by that little piece of
shell.
Friday, Sept. 28, 1917.
Yesterday afternoon I was writing a little note here in my office when I
heard the bugles sound for calling the convoy party and I finished my
note saying, there comes the convoy we have been expecting and I must
get busy. I must tell you how busy we got. It is now a little more than
24 hours later. On my way to the receiving tents I met a sergeant, who
said to me that the men coming in were in very bad shape. They were
being carried out from the receiving tents as fast as possible, after
their cards had been made out and their throats examined for diphtheria
suspects. We have had a lot of diphtheria brought to us and a number of
our own people have caught it. We now have four nurses away in the
contagious hospital near here, one has diphtheria and the other three
had positive throats without any clinical symptoms, so they just have to
be kept away from everybody until they are negative. So all suspected
throats are isolated in a special line until cultures can be made and
examined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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