 Chapter 9 of Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 By Anonymous Chapter 9 With Number Field Ambulance 1 Billets, Life at the Back of the Front, April 2, 1915 to April 29, 1915 The fighting man shall from the sun take warmth and life from the glowing earth, speed with the light-foot winds to run and with the trees to newer birth, and find when fighting shall be done great rest and fullness after dearth. Julian Grenfell Good Friday and Easter, 1915, the mayor's chateau, a walk to Buvry, the new billet, the guns, a taube, the back of the front, a soldier's funeral, German machine guns, gas fumes, the Second Battle of Ypres, Good Friday, April 2, we got into Boulogne on Wednesday from Soteville at 5 p.m. and as soon as the train pulled up a new sister turned up to replace sister. So I prepared for the worst and fully expected to be sent to Avre or Etreta or Rouen, and began to tackle my six-and-a-half-months accumulation of belongings. In the middle of this, Miss from the matron-in-chief arrived with my movement-orders to proceed forthwith to report to the OC of Number Field Ambulance for duty. So hell became heaven and here I am at railhead waiting for a motor ambulance to take me and my baggage to Number Field Ambulance wherever it is to be found. The railway transport officer at Boulogne let me come up as far as Santo Mare or rather the next waiting-place beyond to Number Ambulance train and get sent on by the RTO there. We waited there all yesterday, lovely sunny day, and in the evening the RTO sent me on in a supply train which was going to the railhead for Number Field Ambulance. The officer in charge of it was very kind and turned out of his carriage for me into his servants and apologized for not having cleared out every scrap of his belongings. The mess of Number F*** saw me off with many farewell jokes and witticisms. This supply train brings up one day's rations to the first corps from Avr and takes a week to do it there and back. This happens daily for one corps alone so you can imagine the work of the ASC at Avr. At railhead he is no longer responsible for his stuff when the lorries arrive and take up their positions and on with the trucks. They unload and check it and it is done in four hours. That part of it is now going on. When we got to railhead at 10.15 p.m. the RTO said it was too late to communicate with the field ambulance and so I slept peacefully in the officer's bunk with my own rugs and cushions. We had tea about 9 p.m. I had had dinner on Number F***. This morning the first thing I saw was Number F*** ambulance trains lumbering in the sun on the opposite line so I might just as well have come up in her except that there was another sister in my bed. After a sketchy wash in the supply train and a cup of early tea from the officer's servant I packed up and went across to Number F*** for breakfast, many years that my having got the sack so soon. The RTO has just been along to say that Major F*** of Number F*** clearing hospital here will send me along in one of his motor ambulances. 11 a.m. had an interesting drive here in the motor ambulance through a village packed with men billeted in barns and empty houses, the usual aeroplane buzzing overhead and a large motor ambulance convoy by the wayside. We are in the town itself and the building is labeled Number F*** field ambulance dressing station for officers. The men are in a French civil hospital run very well by French nuns and it has been decided to keep the French and English nurses quite separate so the only difference between the two hospitals is that the one for the men has French sisters with R-A-M-C orderlies and M-O's and the other for officers has English sisters with R-A-M-C orderlies and M-O's. There are forty-seven beds here all officers, one army sister in charge, myself next and two staff nurses, one on night duty. There are two floors I shall have charge of the top floor. We are billeted out but I believe mess in the hospital. All this belongs to the French Red Cross and is lent to us. The surgical outfit is much more primitive even than on the train as field ambulances may carry so little. The operating theatre is at the other hospital. As far as I can see at present we don't have the worst cases here except in a rush like Neuf-Chapel. It will be funny to sleep in a comfortable French bed in an ordinary bedroom again. It will be rather like Le Mans over again with a billet to live in and officers to look after but I shall miss the jocks and the others. Later generals and red hats simply bristle around. A collection of them has just been in visiting the sick officers. We had a big Good Friday service at eleven and there is another at six p.m. The Bishop of London is coming round today. All good Friday, ten p.m. Who said active service? I am riding this in a wonderful mahogany bed with a red satin quilt in a panelled room with a sort of furniture drawing rooms have on the stage and electric light and medallions and bronzes and oil paintings and old engravings and blue china and mirrors all about. It is a huge house like a chateau on the Place where generals and officers are usually billeted. The fat and smiling caretaker says she's had two hundred since the war. She insisted on pouring eau de cologne into my hot bath. It is really a lovely house with polished floors and huge tapestry pictures of the staircase and all this well within range of the German guns. Here last night in the ASC officer's kind but musty little chilly second-class carriage it is somewhat of a change and I hadn't had my clothes off for three days and two nights. This billet is only for one night. Tomorrow I expect I shall be in some grubby little room nearby. It has taken the town commandant, the OC of number Field Ambulance, a French interpreter and an RHA officer and several NCOs and orderlies to find me a billet. The town is already packed tight and they have to continue the search tomorrow. This afternoon I went all over the big French hospital where our men are. The French nuns were charming and it was all very nice. The women's ward is full of women and girls, blessé by shells, some with a leg off and fractured, all very cheerful. One shell the other day killed thirty-one and wounded twenty-seven, all Indians. I am not to start work till tomorrow as the wards are very light. Nearly all the officers up part of the day so at six p.m. I went to the Bishop of London's Mission Service in the theatre. A staff officer on the steps told me to go to the left of the front row where all the red hats and gold hats sit. But I funked that and sat modestly in the last row of officers. There were about a hundred officers there and a huge solid pack of men, no other woman at all. The Bishop, looking very white and tired but very happy, took the service on the stage where a Padre was thumping the hymns on the harmonium, which shuts up into a sort of matchbox. It was a voluntary service and you know the nearer they are to the firing line the more they go to church. It was extraordinarily moving. The Padre read a sort of liturgy for the war, taken from the Russians, far finer than any of ours. We had printed papers and the response was, Lord have mercy, or grant this, O Lord. It came each time like base clockwork. Troops are just marching by in the dark. This passed the hospital this afternoon. I must go to sleep. The Bishop dashed in to see our sick officers here and then motored off to dine with the quartermaster general. He's had great services with the cavalry and every other brigade. Easter Eve, ten p.m., have been on duty all day till five p.m. They are nearly all evacuated in a few days, so you are always getting a fresh lot in. Our army sister turned up today in a motor from Poporinj to take the place of the two who were originally here who have now gone. At six this morning big guns were doing their morning hate very close to us, but they have been quiet all day. Two days ago the village two and a half miles southeast of us was shelled. I found my own new billet this morning before going on duty. It is in a very old little house over a shop in a street off the big plaza. It is a sort of attic and I am not dead sure whether it is clean on top and lively underneath, but time will show. The shoplady and her daughter, Maria Therese, are full of zeal and kindness to make me comfortable, but they stayed two hours watching me unpack and making themselves agreeable. And when I came in from dinner from the cafe, where we now have our meals, quite decent, she and Papa and M.T. drew up a chair for me to cozy in their parlor to my horror. At eight p.m. the town suddenly goes out like a candle. All lights are put out and the streets suddenly empty. After that at intervals only motorcyclists buzz through and regiments tramp past going back to billets. They sound more warlike than anything. Such a lot are going by now. Easter Sunday three p.m. The service at seven this morning in the theatre was rather wonderful. Rows of officers and packs of men. We have been busy in the ward all morning. I'm off two to five and shall soon go out and take eased chocolate Easter eggs to the men in the hospice. The officers have any amount of cigarettes, chocks, novels, and newspapers. A woman came and wept this morning with my billeter over their two sons who are prisoners not receiving the parcels of tobacco and pan and gâteau that they send. They think we ought to starve the German prisoners to death. This morning in the ward I suddenly found it full of gold hats and red tabs, three generals in their aid to camps visiting the sick officers. Easter Monday it is a pouring wet day and the mud is flanderish. Never was there such mud anywhere else. A gunner-major has just been telling me you get a fine view of the German positions from the cathedral tower here and could see the shells bursting like the pictures in the sphere. He said his guns had the job of peppering la bassé the last time they shelled this place and they gave it such a dusting that this place has been let severely alone since. He thinks they'll have another go at this when we begin to get hold of la bassé, but the latter is a very strong position. It begins to be unhealthy to get into any of the villages about three miles from here which are all heaps of bricks now. I'm leaving my billet to-morrow as they want us to be in one house, and our house is the mayor's château, the palatial one, so we shall live in the lap of luxury as never before in this country and have hot baths with eau de cologne every night or cold every morning. And the woman is going to fare our cuisine there for us, so we shan't have to wait hours in the café for our meals. There is only one waiter at the café who is a beautiful, composed, rapt, silent girl of sixteen, who will soon be dead of overwork. She is not merely pretty but beautiful with the manners of a princess. I shall be glad to get away from my two kind billeters. Every night I have to sit in cosé before going to bed, and ma billeter watches me in and out of bed and tells me my nightgown is très pratique, just like the officers anglais have, but she calls me with a lovely cup of coffee in the morning. They've been so kind that I dread telling them I've got to go. An officer was brought in during the night with a compound fractured arm. He stuck a very painful dressing like a brick to-day, and said to me afterwards, I've got three kids at home, they'll be awfully bucked over this. He had said it was nothing to write home about. Another who was chaffing everybody all day long was awfully impressed because a man in his company, I mean platoon, who had half his leg blown off, said when they came to pick him up, never mind me, take so and so first, just like those chaps you read up in books, you know. It was decided that he meant Sir Philip Sidney. Yesterday afternoon I had a lovely time taking round chocolate Easter eggs to our wounded in the French hospital. The sweetest, merriest, ma-sir took me round and insisted on all the orderlies having one too. They adore her and stand up and salute when she comes into the ward, and we had enough for the Gen Fee and the grannies in the women's ward of Blasey. They were a huge success. Those men get very few treats. She also showed me the maternity ward. Tuesday, April 6, 10 p.m. I am writing in bed in my lovely little room overlooking the garden and facing some nice red roofs and both the old towers of the town, one dating from Le temps des Espagnols in Le Château, instead of in my attic in the narrow street where you heard the tramp of the men who vien des tranches in the night. We had a lovely dinner served by the fat and très amable Marie in a small, paneled dining room with old oak chairs and real silver spoons the first I've met since August. So don't waste any pity for the hardships of war. And an officer with a temperature of 103 degrees explained that he'd been sleeping for 16 days on damp sandbags among the dead Germans. Nothing coming in anywhere, but when it does begin we shall get them. The Army Directorate of Medical Services is going to arrange for us to go up with one of his motor ambulances to one of the advanced dressing stations where the first communication trench begins. It is at the corner of a road called Harley Street which he says is too unhealthy where I may not be taken. Won't it be thrilling to see it all? Officer's trench talk is exactly like the men's only in a different language. It has been wet and windy again so I did not explore when I was off this afternoon but did my unpacking and settling in here. With so many moves I have got my belongings into a high state of mobilization and it doesn't take long. Last night at the café one of the despatch riders played Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Elgar like a professional. It was jolly. The officers are awfully nice to do with on the whole. Wednesday, April 7, in bed, 10.30 p.m. It has been a lovely day after last nights and yesterday's heavy rain. We are busy all day admitting and evacuating officers. The long one had to be got ready in a hurry this morning and Mr. L took him down specially to the train. A very nice brigade major came in in the night with a shell wound in the shoulder. This morning a great jagged piece was dug out with only a local anesthetic and he stuck it like a brick, humming a tune when it became unbearable and gripping on to my hand. I was off at 5 p.m. and went to dig out Marie Therese from my old billet to come with me to Buvery, the village about two and a half miles away that was shelled last week. It is about halfway to the trenches from here. It was a lovely sunsetty evening and there was a huge stretch of view, but it was not clear enough to make anything out of the German line. She has a taunt and a grand mare there and has a laissez-passe soigne une tainte malade which she has to show to the sentry at the bridge. I get through without. The taunt is not at all malade. She is a cheery old lady who met us on the road. M.T. pointed me out all the shell holes. We met in past an unending stream of khaki, the men marching back from their four days in the trenches, infant officers and all, steadily trudging on with the same coating of mud from head to foot, packs and rifles carried anyhow, and the trench look, which can never be described and which is grim to the last degree. Each lot had a tale of limping stragglers in ones and twos and threes. I talked to some of these, and they said they'd had a very rough night last night, pouring rain, water up to their knees, and standing to all night expecting an attack which didn't come off. But some mines had been exploded meant for their trench, but luckily they were ten yards out in their calculations, and they only got smothered instead of blown to bits. And they were sticking all this while we were snoring in our horrible, warm, soft beds only a few miles away. We went on past some of the famous brick stacks through the funny little village full of billets to the church where Les Salus was going on. We passed a dressing station of number field ambulance. The Crommer had two sergeants billeted with her who seemed pleased to have a friendly chat. Some of the men I said good-night to were so surprised, not knowing our grey coat and hat. I heard them say to each other, English, Marie Therese simply adores the anglais, they are so gay, such bon courage, they laugh always and sing, and they have beaucoup de fiancés françaises pour passer le temps. She told me they had yesterday a boy of eighteen who was always treased, but bien poli, and he knows six languages and comes from the University of London. When he left for the trenches he said, Je vais à l'amour, but he has promised to come and see them on Saturday or Sunday, s'il n'est pas mort ou blessé, she said as an afterthought. Her own young man is à la guerre and she is making her true though. They do beautiful embroidery on linen. I was pretty tired when we got back at eight o'clock, as it was a good five-mile walk, part of the way on fiendish cobblestones, and we are on our feet all day at the dressing station. But I am very fit and all the better for the excellent fresh food we have here. No more tins of anything, thank goodness. Thursday, April 8. Talking of billets, a general and his staff are coming to this chateau to-morrow, and we three have got to turn out, possibly to a house opposite on the same square which is empty. We live in terror of unknown powers that be, suddenly sending us down. The CO and every one here are very keen that we should be as comfortably billeted as possible. They said today, later on you may get an awful place to live in. Of course we are aiming at becoming quite indispensable. If you can once get your medical officers to depend on you for having everything they wanted hand and for making the patients happy and contented and the orderlies in good order, they soon get to think they can't do without you. There are two nice tea shops where all the officers of the first and second divisions go and have tea. On Saturday morning they sent three hundred shells into Quincy in revenge for their trench blown up. See today's communique from Sir J. F. Friday, April 9, 10.30 p.m. An empty house was found for us on the same square, left exactly as it was when the owners left when the place was shelled. It was filthy from top to toe, but we have found a girl called Gabrielle to be our servant and she has made a good start in the cleaning today. There are three bedrooms, mine is a funny little one built out at the back, down three steps, with two windows overlooking a corner of the square and our road past the hospital. It is my fourth billet here in a week and Gabrielle and I have made it quite habitable by collecting things from other parts of the house. We are back in our own rugs and blankets again without sheets and there is no water on yet, but we filled our hot water bottles at the hospital and are quite warm and cozy and locked up. I shall have to let Gabrielle in at six thirty tomorrow morning. She is going to shop and cook for us with help from the kind Marie at the chateau, who is a guest at our present more military mode of living. The chateau is now swarming with staff officers to whom Marie pays far less attention than she does to us. When the wind is in the right direction you can hear the rifle firing as well as the guns and they are often shelling aeroplanes on a fine day. We have two bad cases in tonight, one wounded in the lung and one medical transferred from downstairs where the slight medicals are. A captain of the h*** hid in the back this morning when he was crossing in the open to visit a post in his trench, has a little freckled jock for his servant who dashed out to bring him in when he fell. Most gallant, you know, he said. They adore each other. Joch stands to attention, salutes, and says yesem when I gave him an order. Their friends troop in to see them as soon as they hear their hit. So many seem to have been wounded before, nearly all in fact. Those are coming in very irregularly, I don't quite know why. Saturday, April 10th, 10.30 p.m. It is difficult to settle down to sleep tonight. The sky is lit up with flashes and star shells, and every now and then a big bang shakes the house, above the almost continuous thud, thudding, and the barking of the machine guns and the crackling of rifle firing. They are bringing in more to-day, both here and at the hospice, and we are tired enough to go to sleep as if we were at home. I shouldn't wonder if the night-sister had a busy night. We had to rig up our day-room for an operation this evening. They have always taken them over to the hospice where they have a very swanky modern theatre. We couldn't manage to get any food to-day for Gabrielle to cook for us, as our rations hadn't come up, so we went back to the café. Gabrielle has been busy netwying all day, and the house feels much cleaner. The dead silence, darkness, and emptiness of the streets after eight o'clock are very striking. Sunday, April 11th. This afternoon they shelled Bouvry, the village I went to with Marie Therese on Wednesday, and wounded eleven women and children. The advanced dressing-station of number of field ambulances took them in. The promise to send us in one of the motor ambulances to Harley Street, the name of the first communication trench, has been taken back until things quiet down a little. There was an air-battle just above us this evening. A taube sailing serenely along not very high and not altering her course or going up one foot for all the shells that promptly peppered the sky all round her. You hear a particular kind of bang and then gaze at the taube. Suddenly a shining ball of white smoke appears close to her and uncurls itself in the sun against the blue of the sky. As it begins to uncurl you hear the explosion, and however much you admire the Germans' pluck and hope he'll dodge them safely, you can't help hoping also that the next one will get him and that he'll come crashing down. Isn't it beastly? It was so near that the French were calling out excitedly, Douche, eat this song! But he got away all right. Another officer dangerously wounded was transferred to my ward today from the French hospital. He was feebly grappling with a seven-penny which he could neither hold nor read. Anything to take my thoughts off that beastly war, he said. A small parcel of socks, sigs and chocks came today. Soon after I found the road below was covered with exhausted trench stragglers resting on the curb, the very men for the parcel. They had all that and one mouth organ. Wasn't it lucky? One jock said, That's the first time I've heard a woman speak English since I left Southampton six months ago. Gabrielle cooked a very nice supper for us tonight, which I dished up when we came in. It is much more fun camping out in our own little empty house than in the Grand Chateau, but I didn't have time to look at nearly all the lovely engravings there. Streams of columns have been passing all day. One gun team had to turn back because one of the off horses had jibbed and refused to go any farther. Though it is past eleven p.m., the sounds outside are too interesting to go to sleep. The bangs are getting louder. Those who vien des tranches are tramping down and transport wagons rattling up. Monday, April 12th. No mail today. This has been a very quiet day. Fewer columns, aeroplanes and guns, and the three bad officers holding their own so far. The others come and go. Tuesday, April 13th. There is something quite fiendish about the crackling of the rifle firing tonight, and every now and then a gun like mother speaks and shakes the town. Last night it was quite quiet. All leave has been stopped today, and there are the wildest rumours going about of a big naval engagement, the forcing of the Narrows, and the surrender of Saint-Mihiel, and anything else you like. These medical officers have always hung on to the most hopeless, both here and at the hospice, beyond the last hope, and when they pull through there is great rejoicing. It doesn't seem somehow the right thing to do to undress and get into bed with these crashes going on, but I suppose staying up won't stop it. Wednesday, April 14th. Very quiet day. It always is after exciting rumours which come to nothing, but it has been noisier than usual in the daytime. I rested in my off-time and didn't go out. The Victoria League sent some awfully nice lavender bags today, and some tins of keetings which will be a future use I expect. Just now one is mercifully and strangely free from the minor scourges of war. The German trenches captured at Neufchappel and now occupied by us are full of legs and arms which emerge when you dig. Some are still caught on the barbed wire and can't be taken away. We are not being at all clever with our rations just now and manage to have indescribably nasty and un-eatable meals. But we shall get it better in time by taking a little more trouble over it. We had scrambled eggs tonight which I made standing on a chair because the gas ring is so high, and sister holding up a very small dim oil lamp, but they were a great success, and then we had soup with fried potatoes in it and tea. Thursday, April 15. This afternoon has been a day to remember. We've had our journey up to the firing line to a dressing station just over a half-mile from the first line of German trenches. It is between the two villages of Givenchy and Quincy, this side of La Basse. The journey there was through the village I walked to with Marie Therese, which has been shelled twice since we came, and along the long-wide straight road the British army now knows so well, paved in the middle and a straight line of poplars on each side. As far as you could see it was covered with two streams of khaki, with an occasional string of French cavalry, one stream going up to the trenches after their so many days' rest, and the other coming down from the trenches to their rest. We soon got up to some old German trenches from which we drove them months ago. They run parallel with the road. On the other side we saw one of our own field batteries hidden in the scrub of a hedge, not talking at the moment. There were also some French batteries hidden behind an embankment. The German guns are trained always on these roads that our ASC driver cheerfully, but they don't generally begin not till about four o'clock. So as it was then two-thirty we weren't alarmed. They know it is used for transport and troops, and often send a few shells on to it. We sat next to him and he did showmen. Before long we got into the area of ruined houses, and they are a sight. They spell war and war only. Anything else, but perhaps an earthquake, could make such awful desolation. In a few of the smaller cottages with a roof on, the families had gone back to live in a sort of patched-up squalor, but all the bigger houses and parts of streets were mere jagged shells. The two villages converge just where we turned a corner from the La Basse road into a lane on our left where the dressing station is. A little farther on is Windy Corner, which is a very hot place. We had before this passed some of our own reserve unoccupied trenches, some with sandbags for parapets. But now we suddenly found ourselves with a funny barricade of different colored and shaped doors, taken from the ruined houses, about eight feet high on our right. This was to prevent the German snipers from seeing our transport or MAs pass down that lane to the communication trench, which has its beginning at the ruined house which is used by the field ambulance as one of its advanced dressing stations. It is called No. 1 Harley Street. Here we got out and the first person we saw was Sergeant P., who was theatre orderly in No. 7 at Pretoria. He greeted us warmly and took us to Captain R., who was the officer in charge. He also was most awfully kind and showed us all over his place. We went first into his two cellars where the wounded are taken to be dressed instead of above where they might be shelled. They had a queer collection of furniture, a table for dressings and some oddments of chairs, including two carved oak dining room chairs. Round the front steps is a barricade of sandbags against snipers' bullets. The officer's room above the cellars was quite nice and tidy, furnished from the ruined houses, and with a face of daffodils. He had been told the day before to allow no one up the staircase because snipers were on the lookout for the top windows, and if it were seen to be used as an observing station it might draw the shells. However just before we left he changed his mind and took us up and showed us all the landmarks, including the famous brick stacks where there must be many German graves. But we all had to be very careful not to show ourselves. The garden at the back has a row of graves with flowers growing on them, and neat wooden crosses with little engraved tin plates on, with a name and regiment. One was an unknown British soldier. There were no wounded in the dressing-station this afternoon. The orderlies showed us lots of interesting bits of German shells and time fuses, etc. The house was full of big holes, with dirty smart curtains, and hats and mirrors lying about the floors upstairs among the brickwork and ruins. They then took us a little way down the communication trench called Hartford Street, under the marble arch to Oxford Circus. It is quite dry mud over bricks and very narrow, and goes higher than your head on the enemy side, and has zigzags very often. You can only go single file, and we had to wait in a zigzag to let a lot of men go by. They streamed past almost continually. One officer invited us to come and see his dugout, but it was farther along than we might go without being awfully in the way. We had before this given one stream of ingoing men all the cigarettes, chocolates, writing paper, mouth organs, keydings, pencils and newspapers we could lay our hands on before we started, and we could have done with thousands of each. Every few minutes one of our guns talked with a startlingly loud noise somewhere near, but Captain R said it was an exceptionally quiet day, and we didn't hear a single German gun or see any bursting shells. It was a particularly warm, sunny day, and the men going into the trenches were so cheerful and jolly that it didn't seem at all tragic or depressing, and there was nothing but one's recollections of the Aime and Ypres after what they call a show, to remind one what it all meant and what it might at any moment turn into. One hasn't had before the opportunities of seeing the men who are in it and not at the bases or on the lines of communication while they are fit, but only after they are wounded or sick, and the contrast is very striking. All these after their rest look fit and sunburnt and natural, and the one expression that never or rarely fails whether fit, wounded or sick is the expression of acquiescence and going through with it that they all have. If it failed at all, it was with the men with frostbite and trench feet, who stuck it so long when winter first came on, before they got the braziers, and in the long rains when they stood in mud and water to their wastes. Now think, Heaven, the ground is hard again. I saw three small children playing about just behind the dressing station, where some men unloading a lorry were killed a few days ago. The women and children are all along the road absolutely regardless of danger as long as they are allowed to stay in their own homes. The babies sit close up against the tommys who are resting by the roadside. We saw a great many wire entanglements so thick that they look like a field of lavender a little way off. From the top windows of the ruined house we could see long lines of heads, picks and shovels, going single file down Hartford Street, but they couldn't be seen from the enemy side because of the parapet. Friday, April 16. At about 7.30 this evening I was writing the day report when the sergeant came in with three candles and said an order had come for all lights to be put out and only candles used. So I had to put out all the lights and give the astonished officers my three candles between them, while the sergeant went out to get some more. The town looks very weird with all the street lamps out and only glimmers from the windows. It was kept pretty darkened before. It may be because of the zeppelin at Beilul on Wednesday or another may be reported somewhere about. This afternoon I saw a soldier's funeral which I have never seen before. He was shot in the head yesterday and makes the 411th British soldier buried in the cemetery. I happened to be there looking at the graves and the French gravedigger told me there was to be another buried this afternoon. The gravedigger's wife and children are with the Al-Mans he told me, the other side of Labasse and he has no news of them or they of him. It was very impressive and moving the Union Jack on the coffin, a thin wooden box, on the wagon and a firing party and about a hundred men and three officers and the Padre. It was a clear blue sky and sunny afternoon and the Padre read beautifully and the men listened intently. The graves are dug trench-wise very close together, practically all in one continuous grave, each with a marked cross. There is a long row of officers and also seven Germans and five Indians. The two sepulons reported last night must have gone to bed after putting out all our lights, as nothing happened anywhere. The birds and buds in the garden opposite make one long for one's lost leave, but I suppose they will keep. We have only nine officers in today, everything is very quiet everywhere, but troop trains are very busy. 10.30 p.m. it is getting noisy again. Some batteries on our right next to the French line are doing some thundering, and there are more star-shells than usual lighting up the sky on the left. They look like fireworks. They are sent up in the firing line to see if any groups of enemy are crawling up to our trenches in the dark. When they stop sending theirs up, we have to get busy with ours to see what they're up to. It's funny to see that every night from your bedroom windows. They give a tremendous light as soon as they burst. When I went into the big church for benediction this evening at 6.30, every estamine and cafe and tea shop was packed with soldiers, and also as usual every street and square. At seven o'clock they were all emptying, as there is an order today to close all cafes, et cetera, at seven instead of eight. All lights are out again tonight. Another aeroplane was being shelled here this evening. Sunday, April 18, 9.30 p.m. It has been another dazzling day. A major of one of the Indian regiments came in this evening. He said the bush are throwing stones across to our men wrapped in paper with messages like this written on them. Why don't you stop the war? We want to get home to our wives these beautiful days, and so do you, so why do you go on fighting? The sudden beauty of the spring and the sun has made it all glaringly incongruous, and everyone feels it. One badly wounded officer got it going out of his dugout to attend to a man of his company who was hit by a sniper in an exposed place, one of his subalterns told me. His own account, of course, was a rambling story leaving that part entirely out. This next shows how the Germans had left nothing to chance. They have about twelve machine guns to every battalion, and are said to have had twelve thousand when the war began. Passing through villages, they packed ten of them into an innocent-looking cart with a false bottom. We captured some of these empty carts, and some time afterwards found them full of machine guns. Gold hats and red hats have been dropping in all day. They do on Sundays, especially after church parade. Saturday, April twenty-fourth. We were watching hundreds of men pass by today, whistling and singing on their way to the trenches. News came to us this morning of the Germans having broken through the trench lines north of Ypres and shelled up a whole fringe, which was out of range up to now, but it is not official. The guns are very loud tonight. I hope they're keeping the Germans busy. Something is sure to be done to draw them off the Ypres line. Sunday, April twenty-fifth. The Plum Gooding was something to write home about, and the quartermaster sent us a tin of honey today, the first I've seen for nine months. A general came round this morning. He said the Canadians and another regiment had given the Germans what for, for this gas fumes business north of Ypres, got the ground back and recovered the four guns. The beasts of Germans laid out a whole trench full of suaves with chlorine gas, which besides being poisonous, is one of the most loathsome smells. Of course everyone is busy finding out how we can go one better now, but this afternoon the medical staffs of both these divisions have been trying experiments in a barn with chlorine gas, with and without different kinds of masks soaked with some antidote, such as lime. All were busy coughing and choking when they found the ADMS of the... division, getting blue and suffocated. He'd had too much chlorine and was brought here looking very bad, and for an hour we had to give him fumes of ammonia till he could breathe properly. He will probably have bronchitis. But they found out what they wanted to know, that you can go to the assistance of men overpowered by the gas if you put on this mask, with less chance of finding yourself dead too when you got there. They don't lose much time finding these things out, do they? On Saturday I shall be going on night duty for a month. Monday, April 26th, 11 p.m. We have been admitting, cutting the clothes off, dressing and evacuating a good many today, and I think they are still coming in. There is a great noise going on tonight, snapping and popping and crackling of rifle firing and machine guns, with a sudden roar of our 9.2s every few minutes. The thundery roll after them is made by the big shell bounding along on its way. Two officers were brought in last night from a sap where they were overpowered by carbon monoxide. Three of them and a sergeant crawled along it to get out the bodies of another officer and a sergeant who'd been killed there by an explosion the day before. It leads into a crater in the German lines and reaches under the German trenches, which we intended to blow up. But they were greeted by this poisonous gas last night, and the officer in front of these two suddenly became inanimate. Each tried to pull the one in front out by the legs, but all became unconscious in turn, and only these two survived, and were hauled out up twenty feet of rope ladder. They will get all right. The wounded ones are generally in the excited stage when they arrive, some surprised and resentful, some relieved that it is no worse, some very quiet and collapsed. Captain... showed me his periscope today. You bob down and look into it about level with his mattress, and then you see a picture of the garden across the road. He has seen one made by Ross with a magnifying lens in it so good that you can see the mustaches of the bosh in it from the bottom of your trench. The noise is getting so beastly I must knock off and read punch. Tuesday, April 27, have been busy all day and so have the guns. When the fifteen-inch howitzers began to talk, the old concierge lady at the ODS trotted out to see l'orage and found a cloudless sky and, mon Dieu, it was les canons. It is a stupendous noise like some gigantic angry lion. The official accounts of the Second Dash for Collet reach us through the times two days after the things have happened, but the actual happenings filter along the line from Saint-Homer, GHQ, as soon as they happen, so we know there's been no real breaking through that hasn't been made good, or partially made good, because if there had, the dispositions all along the line would have had to be altered and that has not happened. The ambulance trains are collecting the Ypres casualties straight from the convoys at Pulperinj, as we did at Ypres in October and November, and not through the clearing hospitals, which I believe have had to move farther back. Wednesday, April 28. Here everything is as it has been for the last few days, except the weather, which is suddenly hot as summer. Rather more casualties, but no rush, and the same crescendo of heavy guns. Some shells were dropped in a field just outside the town at 8.30 yesterday evening, but did no damage. Thursday, April 29, 4 p.m. The weather and the evenings are indescribably incongruous. Tea in the garden at home, deck chairs and sweep under the walnut tree came into one's mind, and before one's eyes and ears are motor ambulances and stretchers and dressings, and the everlasting noise of marching feet, clattering hoofs, lorries and guns, and sometimes the scurril of the pipes. One day there was a real band, and everyone glowed and thrilled with the sound of it. I strayed into a concert at 5.30 this evening, given by the Glasgow Highlanders, to a packed house full of men and officers. I took good care to be shown into a solitary box next to the stage, as I was alone, and guessed that some of the items would not be intended for polite female ears. The level of the talent was a high one, some good part-songs, and two real singers, and some quite funny and clever comic, but one or two things made me glad of the shelter of my box. The choruses were fine. The last thing was a brilliant effort of the four part-singers dressed as comic sailors, which simply made the house rock. Then suddenly, while they were still yelling, the first chords of the king were played, and all the hundreds stood to attention in a pin-drop silence while it was played, not sung, much more impressive than the singing of it, I thought. We have had some bad cases in today, and the boy with the lung is not doing so well. My second inoculation passed off very quickly, and I had not been off duty for it. 1914-1915 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mary Ann Coleman-Hipkins. Diary of a nursing sister on the western front. 1914-1915 by Anonymous, Chapter 10. With number B, field ambulance 2. Thistaburt, May 9 and May 16. May 6, 1915 to May 26, 1915. We have built a house. That is not four times throwing. We have gained a peace, unshaken by pain forever. War knows no power. Safe shall be my going. Secretly armed against all death endeavour. Safe, though all safety is lost. Safe, where men fall. And if these poor limbs die, safest of all. Rupert Brock, 10. With number B, field ambulance 2. Thistaburt, May 9 and May 16. May 6, 1915 to May 26, 1915. The noise of war. Preparation, Sunday, May 9. The barge. The officer's dressing station. Charge of the black watch. May 9, Thistaburt. May 16, the French hospital. A bad night. Shell doubt. Back at a clearing hospital. For duty at a base hospital. Thursday, May 6, 3am. It was a very noisy day and I didn't sleep after 2pm. There was a good lot of firing going on tonight. A very muddy officer of 6ft4 was brought in early yesterday morning with a broken leg and it is a hard job to get him comfortable in these short beds. Yesterday at 4am I couldn't resist invading the garden opposite which is the RA headquarters. It is full of lovely trees and flowers and birds. I found a black bird's nest with one egg in. From the upper windows of this place it makes a perfect picture with the peculiarly beautiful tower of the cathedral as a background. Friday, May 7, 1am. The noise is worse than anywhere in London. Even the King's Road. The din that a column of horse-drawn bolt-rattling wagons make over cobbles is literally deafening. You can't hear each other speak. And the big motor lorries taking the munitions of war up are almost as bad. These processions alternate with marching troops, clattering horses and French engines all day and very often all night. And in the middle of it all there are the guns. Tonight the rifle fire is crackling. Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig have been up here today and everyone is telling everyone else when the great attack is going to begin. There are three field ambulances up here and only work for two. Th and th. So the th is established in a huge school for 500 boys where it runs a great laundry and bathing establishment. A thousand men a day come in for bath, disinfection and clean clothes. 100 French women do the laundry work in huge tubs and there are back disinfecters and drain and ironing rooms. The men of the FA do the sorting and all the work except the washing and ironing and the beautifully cared for English cart horses that belong to the FA and the wagons and the motor ambulances and the equipment are all kept ready to move at a moment's notice. Colonel B. showed me all over it this evening it is done at a cost to the government of seven shillings per man washed and clothed. My blackbird has laid another egg. Friday May 7th 10 p.m. A pitch dark night raining a little and only one topic the attack tomorrow morning. The first RANC barge has come up and is lying on the canal ready to take on the cases of wounds of lung and abdomen to save the jolting of road and railway. It is to have two sisters but I haven't seen them yet. She'll go in the morning. Went round this morning to see but the barge hadn't arrived. There are a few sick officers downstairs who are finding it hard to stick in their beds with their regiments in this job close by. There is a house close by which I saw this morning with a dirty little red flag with a black cross on it where the CNC and 30 Commanders of the First Army met yesterday. The news today of Hill 60 and the gasses is another spur to the grim resolve to break through here that can be felt and seen and heard in every detail of every arm. Grandmother is lovingly talked about. The town, the roads and the canal banks this morning were so packed with men, wagons, horses, bows and lorries that you could barely pick your way between them. Since writing this an airplane has been circling over us with a loud buzz. The sergeant called up to me to put the lights out. We saw her light. There is much speculation as to who and what she was. She was not big enough for our big bus as she is called who belongs to this place. No one seems ever to have seen one here at night before. We are making flannel masks for the CO for our men. Our fat little Gabriel makes the most priceless soup out of the rationed beef, which none of us are any good at, and carrots. She mothers us each individually and cleans the house and keeps her wee kitchen spotless. 4am the 9.2 is just beginning to talk. Here is a true story. One of our trenches at Wavinshey was been pounded by German shells at the time of NCH. A man saw his brother killed on one side of him and another man on the other. He went on shooting over the parapet. Then the parapet got knocked about and still he wasn't hit. He seized his brother's body and the other men's and put them up into the parapet with sandbags and went on shooting. When the stress was over and he could leave off he went around and saw what he was leaning against. Who did that? he said, and they told him. They get awfully sick at the big print headlines and some of the papers. The hill's sixty-thrill. Thrill indeed. There's nothing thrilling about plowing over parapets into a machine gun with high explosives bursting around you. It's merely beastly. Said a boy this evening who is all over shrapnel splinters. Saturday, May 8th, 9 a.m. This is Dirtag. Could anybody go to bed and undress? I have been cutting dressings all night. One of the most stabbing things in this wall is seeing the lines of empty motor ambulances going up to bring down the wrecks who at this moment are sound and fit and all absolutely ready to be turned into wrecks. 10.30 p.m. Dirtag was a washout but it is to begin at 1.15 p.m. tonight. It didn't. The tension is more up than ever. A boy who has just come in with a poisoned hill broken-hearted because he is out of it while his battalion knows it says you'll be having them in cut loads over this. Sunday, May 9th, 1.30 a.m. The lions are roaring in full blast and lighting up the sky. Have been busy tonight with an operation case who is needing a lot of special nursing and some admissions. One in at 11 p.m. who is only wounded at 9 o'clock. I hope these magnificent walls and rumblings are making a mess of the barbed wire and German trenches. There seems to be a pretty general opinion that they will retaliate by dropping them into this place if they have time and pulverizing it like he prayers. 5.25 a.m. It has begun. It is awful. Continuous and earthquake-ing. 9.30 a.m. Embed. The last ten minutes of rapid did its damnedest and then began again and we are still thundering hell into the German lions. It began before five with a fearful pounding from the French on our right and hasn't left off since. Had a busy night with my operation case and the others, he is doing fine and in every spare second getting ready for the rush the MIs were stood very early. The ADMS came to count empty beds. It is tonight they'll be coming in. Must try and sleep but who could yesterday and today? Monday, May 10th, 9.30 a.m. We have had a night of it. Every field ambulance barge, clearing hospital and train are blocked with them. The MOs neither eat nor sleep. I got up early yesterday and went down to the barge to see if they wanted any extra help as the other two were coping with the wounded officers and had a grim afternoon and evening there. One MO, no sisters, four trained orderlies and some other men were there. It was packed with all the worst cases dying, hand bleeding and groaning. After five hours we had three-fourths of them out of their blood-soaked clothes dressed, fed, hemorrhaged stocked, hands and faces washed and some asleep. Two died and more were dying. They all worked like bricks, the MO and another from the other barge which hadn't filled up sent up to the ODS when my hour-for-night duty there came to ask if I could stay and got leave. At 11pm four sisters arrived, I don't know how, they'd been wired for. Two for each barge, so I handed over to them and went to the ODS to relieve the other two there for night duty. The place was unrecognisable. Every corner of every floor filled with wounded officers, some sitting up and some all over wounds and three dying and others critical and they still kept coming in. They were all awfully good strewn about the floor, some soaked the skin from wet shell-holes on their stretches waiting to be put to bed. One had had such a jolly Sunday afternoon lying in a shell-hole with six inches of water in it and a dead man, digging himself in deeper with his trench-tool whenever the shells burst near him. He was hit in the stomach. One officer saw the enemy through a periscope sniping at our wounded. 4pm in bed. It seems quiet today, there are so few guns to be heard and not so many ambulances coming. All except the hopeless cases will have been evacuated by now from all the field hospitals. There was a block last night and none could be sent on. The clearing hospitals were full and no trains in. Those four sisters from the base had a weird arrival at the barge last night in a car at 11pm. It was a black, dark night. Big guns going in a sudden descent down a ladder into that Nelson's cockpit. They were awfully bucked when we said, oh, I'm glad you have come. They buckled to and set to work right off. The cock, who had been helping magnificently in the ward was running after me with hot cocoa. It was my last meal except a cup of tea and promised to give them some. One wounded of the monsters there said, he didn't mind no thing now. He'd seen so many dead Germans as he never thought on. As always, they have lost thousands, but they come on like ants. They have only had about seven new cases today at the ODS, but two of last nights have died. A padre was with them. They had no market this morning for fear of bombs from airplanes. There's been no shelling into the town. Tuesday, May 11th, 6.30pm, in bed. I went to bed pretty tired this morning after an awful night. Only a few of the less seriously wounded had been evacuated yesterday, and all the worst cases, of course, left. And slept like a top from 10.30 to 5, and fearless fit as anything after it. The fighting seems to have stopped now and no more have come in today. Last night a stiff, muddy figure, all bandages and straw on the stretcher was brought in. I asked the boy how many wounds. Oh, only five, he said cheerfully. Nice clean wounds, machine gun, all in and out again. The padre came at 7.30pm and had a celebration in each ward, but I was too busy to take any notice of it. One of these officers was hit by a German shell on Sunday morning early, soon after our bombardment began. He called about till he was hit again, twice, by other shells. And then lay there all that day and all that night, with one drink from another wounded's water bottle. Everyone else was either dead or wounded round him. Next morning his servant found him and got stretcher-bearers, and he got here. I don't know how they lived through that. Wednesday, May 12th, 6.30pm, slept very well. I hear from Gabrielle that they have had a hard day at the ODS. No new cases, but all the bad ones, very ill. My little room is crammed with enormous lilac, white and purple from our wee garden, which I'm going to take to our graves tomorrow in Jamtons. Thursday, May 13th, 11am, can't face the graves today. Have had an awful night. Three died during the night. I found the boy who brought his officer in from between the German line and ours on Sunday night, crying. This morning over the still figure under a brown blanket on a stretcher. Of the other two brought straight in from the other dressing station. One only lived long enough to be put to bed, and the other died on his stretcher in the hall. The OCC last night, now this war has come, we've got to tackle it with our gloves off, but it takes some tackling. It seems so much nearer and more murderous somehow in this field ambulance atmosphere, even then it did on the train with all the successive hundreds. We can see Notre Dame de Lorette from here. The chapel and fort stand high up in that flat maze of slag heaps, mineheads and sugar factories just behind the line on the right. 9pm, ODS. Everything very quiet here. A gunner just admitted says there will probably be another big bombardment tomorrow morning, and after that another attack, and after that. I suppose, some more for us. Another says that the charge of the black watch on Sunday was a marvellous thing. They went and took plain the pipes. The major who led it handed somebody his stickers he probably shouldn't want it again. It is very wet tonight, but they go up to the trenches singing ragtime. Some song about we are always respected wherever we go, and another about singing a song, a song with me, come along, along with me. 11pm, just heard a shell burst. First the whistle screams and then the bang. Wonder where. There was another about an hour ago, but I didn't hear the whistle of that. Only the bang. I shouldn't have known what the whistle was if I hadn't heard it at Brezny. It goes in a curve. All the men on the top floor have been sent down to sleep in the cellar. The shell has busted. 12.15pm, just had another, right over head. All the patients are asleep luckily. 1.30pm, there was one more near enough to make you jump, and a few more too far off to hear the whistling. A sleepy major has just waked up and said did you hear the shells? Black guards are they? The sky on the battle line tonight is the weirdest sight. Our guns are very busy. And they are making yellow flashes like huge sheets of summer lightning. Then the star shells rise. Burst and light up a large area while a big searchlight plays slowly on the clouds. It is all very beautiful when you don't think what it means. Two more, the last very loud and close. It is somehow much more alarming than Brezny, perhaps because it is among buildings and because one knows so much more what they mean. Another, the other side of the building. An ambulance has been caught out so someone must have been hit. I've lost count of how many they've dropped but they could hardly fail to do some damage. 5am, daylight, soaking wet and no more shells since 2am. We have admitted seven officers tonight. The last justin says there have been five people wounded in town by this peppering. One killed. I don't know of civilians or soldiers. That bombardment on Sunday morning was the biggest anyone has ever heard. More guns on smaller space and more shells per minute. Nine officers have died of wounds here since Sunday and the 10th will not live to see daylight. There is an attack on tonight. This has been a ghastly week and now it is beginning again. The other two sisters had quite a nasty time last night lying in bed waiting for the shells to burst in their rooms. They do sound exactly as if they are coming your way and nowhere else. I rather think they are dropping some in again tonight but they are not close enough to hear the whistle. Only the bangs. There is an officer in tonight with a wound in the hand and shoulder from a shell which killed 11 of his men and another who went to see four of his platoon in a house at the exact moment when a percussion shell went on the same errand. The whole house sat down and the five wounded none killed. Saturday, May 15th, 10pm. Tension up again like last Saturday. Another tag is happening tomorrow. Everyone except three sick downstairs has been evacuated and they have made accommodation for a thousand at the French hospital which is the fourth FA main dressing station and headquarters. All officers with a seriously or slightly wounded are to be taken there to be dressed by the MOs in the specially arranged dressing rooms and then sent on to us to be put to bed and coped with. Now we have got some French batteries of 75s in our lines to pound the earthworks which protect the enemy's buried machine guns which are the most murderous and deadly of all the clever arrangements and to stop up the holes through which they are fired. We've also got more divisions in it along the same front and our heavy guns and all our batteries are in better positions. Some more regiments have been called up in a hurry and empty ammunition carts are galloping back already. This morning I took some white lilac to the graves of our 12 officers who died of wounds. Their names and regiments were on their crosses and died of wounds. FA and RIP. It was better to see them like that pro-patria than in those few awful days here. 1030. Just admitted a gunner suffering from shock alone. No wound. Completely knocked out. He can't tell you his name or stand or even sit up. But just shivers and shudders. Now he is warm in bed he can say thank you. I wonder what exactly did it? The arrangements the f*** FA happened to have the use of at the French hospital with its up to date modern operating theatre for tackling the wounds in a strictly aseptic and scientific way. Within a few hours of the men being hit are a tremendous help. Certainly the ones who pass through number f*** get a better chance of early recovery without long complications than most of those we got on the train. And while they are waiting evacuation at the clearing hospitals they have every chance both here and at the French hospital where all the trained orderlies except two are on duty and practically all the M.O.'s. But of course there are a great many of the seriously wounded that no amount of aseptic and skilled surgery or nursing can save. Sunday 1130 a.m. May 16th. They began coming in at 3.30 and by 8 a.m. the place was full to bursting. We managed to get all the stretch cases to bed and as many of the others as we had beds for without sending for the other two sisters who came on at 8.15 and are now coping. Most of them were very cheery because things seemed to be going well. Two lines of trenches taken all the wire cut and some of the earthworks down but it is always an expensive business even when successful only then nobody minds the expense. There are hundreds more to come in and the seriously wounded generally get brought in last because they can't get up and run but have to hide in trenches and shell holes. One man wounded on Sunday and found Friday night had kept himself alive on dead men's emergency rations. They were all soffing wet with blood or mud or both. The b***h lost heavily. I heard one officer say they drove us back five times. After breakfast I went to the cathedral and then boldly beaded the big dressing station at the French hospital where all the dressings are done and the men evacuated. Armed with a huge linen bag of cigarettes, chocolate and writing cases which came last night. I met the CEO who said I could have a look around and then rowed me for not being in bed and said we should be busy tonight and for some time. It was very interesting and if you brought your reason to bear in it not too horrible. Every corridor, waiting room, ward and passage was filled with them. The stretchers waiting there to and on the floors and the walking cases which on the AT we used to call the sitting arts in groups and queues. No one was fussing but all were working at full pitch and very few of the men were groaning but nearly all were gruesomely covered with blood and they looked pretty awful on the bear gory stretchers with no pillows or blankets just as they are picked up on the field. Many are asleep from exhaustion. What cheered me was one ward full of last Sunday's bad cases all in bed and very cheery and doing well. They loved the writing cases etc and said it was like Christmas and they wouldn't want to leave there now. A great many of this mornings had already been evacuated and they were still pouring in. One has to remember that a great many get quite well though many have a ghastly time in store for them in hospital. The barge is in the canal again taking in the non-jalters. Some store at young Tommy's at number four were talking about the prisoners. They told me there weren't many taken because they found one in a jock's uniform. I've drawn my curtain so I can't see those hateful motor ambulances coming in slowly full and going back empty fast and must go to sleep. A simply loathe the sight of those MAs admirable inventions though they are had a look into a lovely lorry full of one hundred pound shells in the square. Seven p.m. Only one officer has died at the ODS today but there are two or three who will die. They have evacuated and filled up three times already. The news from the scene of operations is still good so they are all still cheerful. The difference to the wounded that it makes is extraordinary. That is why last Sunday's show was such a black blight to them and to us. Monday May 17th 10 a.m. Another night of horrors. One more died and two young boys came in who will die. One is a Gordon Highlander of 18 who says, That's glorious when you put him to bed. It was the long whirl of stretches and pitiful heaps on them. The sergeant stayed up helping till three and a boy from the kitchen stayed up all night on his own helping. In the middle of the worst rush the sergeant said to me you know they're shelling the town again and at that moment swoop, bang came a big one and we looked at each other over the stretcher with the same picture in our minds eyes of shells dropping in amongst the wounded who are all over the town. I hadn't heard them too busy but they didn't go on long. The bushes have been heavily shelling our trenches all day. One boy said suddenly when I was attending to his leg aren't you very foolish to be staying up here? Oh sorry he said I was dreaming you were in the front line of the trenches bandaging people up. Our big guns have been making the building shake all night. The Germans are trying to get their trenches back by counter attacking. Tuesday May 18th is it? 1am in bed. It has been about the worst night of all the worst nights. I found the wards packed with bad cases the boy of 18 dead. And the other boy died half an hour after I came on. Two more died during the night. Two lots evacuated and had to be dug out of their thick scenes up in bed and settled on stretches and all night they brought fresh ones in drenched and soaked with clayy mud and spadefuls and clammy with cold. Wednesday May 19th 12 noon Mr. Beep has been working at number at full pitch for 24 hours on end and had just gotten to bed when they sent for him there again. They are all nearly dead and so are the orderlies at both places but they never dream of grousing or shroking as they know there's not another man to be had. Two more officers died last night and three more were dying. The padre came and had a celebration in my ward three R.A.M.C. officers are in, badly wounded. They are extraordinarily good. Friday 21st May 3 a.m. last night the rush began to abate no one died and only one came in a general smash up he died tonight and a very dear boy died today I've lost count now of how many have died 24. The guards brigade here went by tonight from the trenches to rest singing here we are again and the song about the girls declare I am a funny man 11 a.m. the little Canadian sister has just been recalled I'm sorry to say but probably we shall get another one five Canadian officers came in last night the guns are making the dickens of a noise very loud and sudden yesterday they shelled the town again and two more sold out sunglice were wounded Saturday May 22nd 6.30 a.m. things have been happening at a great pace since the above and we are now in our camp beds in an empty attic at the top of an old chateau about three miles back which is number C.H. at just as I was thinking of getting up yesterday evening they began putting shells over into the town soon they were raining in three at a time my little room here is the sort of lean-to over the kitchen with no room above it so I cleared out to dress in one of the others and didn't stop to wash Gabrielle came running up to fetch me downstairs at the hospital which was only about 200 yards down the road the wounded officers were thinking it was about time captain moved his field ambulance one boy by the window had got some debris and then his eye from the nearest shell which burst in my blackbird's garden or rather on the doorstep opposite that was the one that caught me out of bed rather rapidly the orders soon came to evacuate all the patients at the French hospital about six minutes away three wounded had been hit in at MA coming in and the officers mess had won none of them were in and they were dropping all around it they came from the DDMS to the ADMS to evacuate the whole of the and field ambulances and within about two hours this was done everybody got the patients ready fixed up their dressings and splints gave them all morphia and got them onto these stretches the evacuation was jolly well done these servants appeared by magic each with every spot of kit and belongings his officer came in with they are in all cases checked by the sergeant on admission no matter what the rush is and the place was empty in an hour the din of our guns which were bombarding heavily and the German guns which are bombarding us at a great pace and the whistle and bang of the shells that came over while this was going on was a didn't to remember then we went back to our billet to hurl our belongings in our baggage and come away with the ADMS and his staff major and their two touring cars the division is back resting somewhere near here we got to bed about two a.m. after tea and bread and butter downstairs but sleep very little owing to the noise of the guns which shake and rattle the windows every minute we don't know what happens next about four this morning I heard a nightingale trilling in the garden two p.m. in the Chateau Garden it is a glorious spot with kitchen garden park, moat, bridge and a huge wilderness up and down plantation round it full of lilac copper beaches and flowering trees I've never seen before and birds and butterflies and buttercuts you look across and see the red brick chateau surrounded by thick lines of tents and hear the everlasting and cessant, thudding and banging of the guns it's not a French country house but a casualty clearing hospital with empty, once polished floors filled with stretches where the worst cases still are and some left empty for the incoming convoys over two thousand have passed through since Sunday week the contrast between the Chateau Garden where I'm lazing now on rugs and cushions with innumerable birds including a nightingale singing and nesting the cracking sound of the guns and the look of the place inside is overwhelming it is in three divisions the house for the worst cases and there are ten sections and the straw sheds and two schools in the village we had our lunch at a sort of inn in the village I've never hated the sound of guns so much they are almost unbearable it is a good thing for us to have the sudden rest I don't know for how long what happens next the general of the division had a narrow escape after we left last night the roof of his house is blown off just at the time he would have been there only he was a little late but an officer was killed six shells came into the garden and the seventh burst at his feet and killed him as he was standing at the door I'm glad they got the wounded away in time aeroplanes are buzzing overhead the aerodrome is here french monoplanes chiefly as far as one can see ten p.m. in bed we have now been temporarily attached to the staff here miss has given me charge of the tenth section which can take eighty line down with sunday 1915 in bed and my tent not a bell but an indian tent big enough for two comfortably I share with s nothing but the camp furniture we took out but will acquire a few red cross boxes as cupboards tomorrow it is a pairless night with a young moon and a soft wind frogs croaking, guns banging and a nightingale trilling it has been a funny day dazzling sun very few patients with monday very few interday again I have only six and am making the most of the chance of arrest in the garden one doesn't realise till after rush how useful arrest can be there has been a fearful bombardment going on all last night and yesterday and today it is a continual roar and in the night it is maddening to listen to you can't forget the ball, mosquitoes nightingales, frogs and two horses also helped to make the night interesting 8.30pm waiting for supper wounded have been coming in and we have had a busy afternoon and evening Wednesday May 26 no time to write yesterday had a typical clearing hospital field day the left out in the field wounded mostly Canadians had at last been packed up and came pouring in I had my tenth section of 80 beds nearly full and we coped in a broiling sun till we swelled it into little spots of grease finishing up with five operations in the little operating tent the poor exhausted Canadians were extraordinarily brave and uncomplaining they are evacuated the same day or the next morning such as can be got away to survive the journey but some of the worst have to stay in the middle of it all at 5pm orders came for me to join number b***** ambulance train for duty but I didn't leave till this morning at 9pm and am now on number b***** AT on way down to Old Bologna again later these orders were afterwards cancelled and I am for duty at a base hospital the end end of chapter 10 recording by Mary Ann Coleman Hipkins www.thisvoiceforyou.com end of a diary of a nursing sister on the western front 1914-1915 by Anonymous