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
I had to stop on my account of day before yesterday before I had
finished the day. At five I went off in the rain with the Ford with one
of the nurses I like very much--to bring some mail and things to our
isolated nurses in the Contagious Hospital up the road. (They are
diphtheria carriers--three of them.) On the way up the road we met an
ambulance convoy bringing in wounded men. There must have been over a
hundred of them from the long line of ambulances. And passing them,
marching out, were companies of men walking along in the mud and wet
and thinking of course that that was the way many, many of these would
be coming back, as those mangled things were in the ambulances. One
can’t get used to these sights. It chokes me every time I see the men
march away. We can always tell when they are going to the front, for on
top of all that they carry on their backs is a little white
bag--containing limited rations.
After we had left our things at No. 25, we went on down town, did our
errands, left a gramophone to be repaired for one of the wards--then
went into the Cathedral for the evening service at 6. It is most
wonderful, for only a few low lights are lighted, and the shadowy
arches, the several hundred kneeling black figures, the clear tenor
voice of the priest, who sings most of the service, the hundred
responses, make it all seem like something unreal--till one realizes
that the unreal part is that it seems so strange and unusual to us, for
there have been going on just such services as that in that Cathedral
since before America was discovered! Many of us go there often to the
six o’clock services, the only trouble is that one gets frozen stiff
after a few minutes. After leaving the Cathedral we wandered about the
little narrow, wet streets, looking into windows,--clattering along in
our nailed boots, so that we sound like soldiers (but our feet are dry,
though the streets are very wet). Then came a nice supper of hot, thick
soup, steak, crisp fried potatoes and a salad,--then back to the camp in
time to hear the evening report and see the night supervisors before
they went on duty. That evening I wrote in the office.
To-day is Nov. 1st, and Phil’s birthday. I can imagine how you all are
thinking about him. I am going to play somewhere with him this afternoon
and do whatever he wants to do. Yesterday I could hardly speak to him at
all, I was so busy all day. At 5.30 I went with him for three fourths of
an hour to hear a lecture in the Y. M. C. A. tent--It was by that fine
Dr. Kelman--the Edinburgh Presbyterian minister, who has been talking in
the U. S. He spoke on “Why America Is in the War”--spoke most
wonderfully--to the British the evening before when I was in town, and
Phil could not go because he wanted to attend a medical meeting
here--But to-night we will have dinner down town.
Loads and loads of love,
Julia.
Nov. 2, 1917.
Dearest Mother:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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