Coming of Age: I. The Novitiate

SEPTEMBER, 1925

I. THE NOVITIATE

BY HELEN DORE BOYLSTON

February 8, 1918. — What if I were to scream? I may yet. It would be so un-English and such awfully bad form. I’d love to do it. It would disturb all these good Sisters from their naps and knitting. The Major would be sent for, and he would hang over my bed and breathe on me and say ‘ Hmm.’ Out of the tail of my eye I can see that Marston, the Canadian nurse in the next bed to me, has reached out and stolen my hot claret, and is now drinking it under the bedclothes. She is a peach.
It’s not that I mind being in bed. I don’t even mind having the flu and trench fever. It was quite interesting at first and is not unpleasant even now. Nor have I any particular passion for work. I always was lazy. The real root of the matter is that I realize that the spring offensive will soon be on, and unless I get out of here I shall miss it.

February 11. — I have prevailed upon the Major to let me get up. I am now allowed to dress and wander about the château. It is a lovely old place.

February 12. — I have been at the Major again, this time to let me go home. The Harvard Unit Matron remarked casually that there is to be a dance in our mess Thursday night. I feel that I am going to that dance, though I have n’t mentioned my conviction to the Major. In fact I have n’t even said there is to be a dance, but I have followed him about persistently. Wherever he goes, there am I also. I skip before him blithely that he may not fail to observe my unbounded energy. I carol gayly in the halls. This morning when I heard him stumping through the lower hall I came tearing wildly down the stairs, slipped, and landed in a joyful heap at his feet. From the floor I beamed at him.
‘Good morning, Major,’ said I.
‘Good heavens!’ said he.
‘Major,’ said I urgently, ‘may I go home Thursday?’
He peered at me over his spectacles and puffed. It seems to me that he had the air of one who feels a trifle foolish. I was sitting on his foot, which may explain that.
‘Good God, yes!’ he said at last.
‘Do anything you like. You ‘re worse than the Wandering Jew!'
‘Oh, thank you, Major,’ I cooed ‘You are a darling!’

February 14. — Home at last! I came over in the ambulance, back over the familiar roads, past the little lake and through the village, past the machine-gun training camp and the hospitals, standing dim and dripping in the rain. The sentries all knew me and grinned, and my heart leaped at the sound of many pairs of boots squelching in the mud.
In my room in the hut the little stove is all hot and glowing. The wind is singing the same old song through the cracks in the wall. The corner of the canvas nailed to the wall is still hanging down where the tack fell out last year. The brown blanket on my cot is rough to the touch after the silk puffs at Villa Tino, but I have dreamed of that old blanket. And there is a hollow in the quilt that covers the coal-box, where Molly has been sitting to read. That is one advantage of having a roommate. When you come home from somewhere the room always looks lived in.

February 15. — I went on duty on C-5, medical, this morning. It is Miss McKayne’s ward.
There’s a strange soul. I wander what she thinks of it all? She is old, and narrow-minded, and crumpled and tired, and she works on and on in the confusion, worrying about all the little unimportant things, bewildered by the big ones, pretending to be rather fierce, in self-defense. And so she slaves and mismanages, and adores her boys, and nags their very souls out about cigarette butts and keeping their lockers clean. I wonder if she thinks at all? One never can tell about people.
The mail sergeant came to the ward this afternoon bringing me a registered package containing Hamilton Borrough’s picture — he wearing the fulldress uniform of the Irish Guards. He was a handsome creature, but rather stupid. For the life of me I can’t see why I fell for him so hard. If only he had n’t come back it would have been all right, but I do hate an anticlimax. That whole thing was rather amusing. I met him at the Y. M. C. A. movie show, to which he had come with Ruth Brewster, who also had just met him that day. I don’t remember whom I was with. But I perceived that here was an exceedingly handsome major with a roving eye. ‘ Is this yours? ‘ I whispered to Ruth. ‘No,’ said she. ‘Just a war ration.’ So I sat down on the other side of him, and I meant nothing at all when I brushed his nice fur glove across my cheek. He took it entirely the wrong way. And I only smiled because the movie was amusing or something, though I don’t remember what it was about, now. Anyway . . .

February 17. — I relieved on C-5 this afternoon. It was nice to be back — I had been on duty there when I want sick. Many of the boys I knew were still there, but they are up and around now and they were dears to me. They sat me, almost by force, in a chair in front of the stove, and served me tea. They brought me bread and butter and their best jam. They fried me eggs, which they brought to me on a tin plate not too clean. But it did n’t matter. It is like that on all the wards. The boys love to do things for the Sisters.
When I was settled with my tea they gathered around and, according to the custom of the male in any group in which he feels at home, began to yarn. Their tales were of the war, and at first they tempered their language because Sister was there and might be offended by rough talk. But after a little they forgot that she was there at all, and never have I heard such stories. In reward for my silence there was revealed to me a strange world in which there were only men — a world of life and death and love and hate, but not like any world I had ever known. There were tales of friendships of men for their horses, tales of the strange ways of shells and bombs, tales of violence and horror, tales overflowing with the simple poetry of the peasant mind, tales of days and nights and attacks and retreats. And through it all ran the theme of the comradeship which is created by danger and hardship. ‘My mate, ‘e,’they began.
And I listened. Around us the dingy tent-walls billowed and flapped; the smoky lantern sputtered in the draughts; the toes of our shoes burned merrily in the lower damper of the stove — along with the toast. The air smelled of smoke, and wet canvas, and eggs frying in butter, and there was an incessant and cheerful clump-clump of heavy boots on the board floor.

February 19. — A Boche plane was over to-day, taking pictures. We nearly got him.
Camp is full of rumors as usual. One is that the Boche plane dropped a paper saying, ‘We are going to wipe you out the twenty-fourth.’ That is the night the moon is full.
And here we are, three hospitals, lying along the one line of railroad that goes to the front. We are surrounded by anti-aircraft schools, machine-gun schools, and training camps, and an ammunition dump. Naturally, with all these excellent objectives the merry Boche is n’t going to stop to disentangle what may be hospitals from the rest, especially as we have no distinguishing marks.

February 22. — Human beings are so ridiculous! This evening I bumped into Molly by the cookhouse door, and we wallowed along together, not saying much. Bye had come off duty early, and as we came up the hut steps her door flew open with characteristic abruptness, letting out a flood of warm air and light, and a smell of cocoa.
‘I say,’ Bye called to us, ‘I’ve got a box from home! Bring your pajamas in here and undress. Ann and Libby will be down in a minute. Never mind your fire.’
There is something so satisfying about these evenings, with their long companionable discussions and their atmosphere of affectionate comradeship. Men are always clamoring that women don’t understand friendship — meaning, of course, that only they, as the lords of creation, are capable of it. I hate to differ with you, my lords, but these women understand it.
I like to watch them as they talk. Molly, curled up on the bed, always picturesque; wearing very chic pajamas; her brown hair hanging over her shoulder in a thick braid, and her eyes sparkling. She argues with unexpected clarity and emphasis for one with so piquant a nose.
And Libby, round-eyed and æsthetic-looking, sitting bolt upright against the wall, her face flushed with eagerness and enthusiasm and her hands clasped tight between her knees in her attempts to keep her opinions from running away with her temper.
Ann Peyton is the one pretty girl among us, except Bye. She is twenty-three. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, and slender. She looks like a child, but there is a shadow behind the blue twinkle of her eyes, and a pallor in her cheeks. A generous, sweet-tempered girl, full of drawling witticisms into which there creeps, at times, a tinge of bitterness — and with good reason. She had been married just a month to a young Captain in the Royal Air Force, a childhood sweetheart, when he was reported missing. He has n’t been heard of since, and that was about eight months ago. She still believes him alive.
And then Bye. There is a good deal of the devil in Bye. She stands, usually, half leaning against the table in the centre of the room, gesticulating with little nervous jerks as she talks. Now and again she rocks back and forth slightly for emphasis, and her greatest joy is to involve Molly and Libby in a political argument. Molly is a Canadian, and Libby English, with an American education. Both have violent convictions. Bye starts the game by aiming a few bitingly sarcastic comments at any existing political situation. Instantly Molly and Libby pounce, and the rest of us settle down to eat and watch the fur fly.

February 27. — To-night when I stopped to look at the bulletin board in the mess on my way to dinner I found my name posted for duty on A-l in the morning.
There is no ward in the hospital which has the atmosphere of A-l. In the first place it’s a bone ward,— mostly femurs, — which means backbreaking work, of course, but it also means that it is a ward where the patients stay for ages. Shattered bones are a long time healing. I had my very first war-duty there, too, months ago, and for the first time heard myself called ‘Sister’ in tones which made my throat ache. A great many of those boys are there still and nearly all of them were of the ‘Old Contemptibles’ — Kitchener’s mob.
I am thrilled at going back, though my thrill is a little subdued because Knowlton is the Sister in charge there now; and Knowlton — well, Knowlton is the amazon type. Hard-boiled, aggressive, ill-bred, vain, and undeniably efficient. We do not like each other, but we manage to get on very well. I keep my mouth shut and work, and Know leaves me to it, generally.

February 28. — Knowlton was actually glad to see me this morning.
The first thing I heard when I went into the ward was Hilley, playing ‘White Wings’ on the gramophone. I don’t believe he has had that record off since I was here before.
Know gave me back my old side — with Hilley and old Dad. Forty patients. But then they are hard dressings, all of them, so it is n’t as easy as it. sounds. I was so pleased to get that side again. Know isn’t so bad after all. And I worked. Lord, how I worked. My back is busted in two to-night. Slowly down the ward, doing the dressings and making the beds. Old Dad beamed and beamed at me, turning his grizzled head from side to side on the pillow as I went up and down the ward, until by and by he fell asleep. That plucky old thing came all the way from Australia to fight for the England he had never seen. He is over sixty. No one can imagine how he got into the army. But he did. And now he lies here in the base hospital with his leg torn to pieces. He’s a crotchety old dear, always roaring about something. But the time when I was here before he shot a temp and complained of pain in his thigh. It being laid wide open anyhow, I took a look along the bone — Dad meantime cursing the roof off — and found a walled-in pus pocket. I picked up a scalpel, told Dad to look out the window a minute — that I was going to hurt him, so to be prepared. And then, before he knew what I was about, I slit the thing open. At least two cupfuls of pus poured out, and his relief was tremendous at once. Of course his temp dropped. I put in a packing and watched it for a few days. It cleared right up. And that was absolutely all, but Dad thinks there is nobody in the world fit for me even to walk on. Naturally I spoil him to death.
And then there is Hilley. His hip was shattered with an explosive bullet and the story of how it happened would keep you awake nights for a week. He is an Irish Guardsman — and everybody in the hospital knows him. Long and thin, with a rather fine face, also long and thin, keenly intelligent and decorated with a very snappy black moustache. He has been on the ward for nine months, tied to a Balkan frame, and he is the heart and soul of A-l. He bucks the boys up no end. Always singing or joking or wrangling about something. He never complains, although he is tortured daily, and he is never consciously the ‘sunshine of the ward.’ He just is, because of his unquenchable exuberance. We have always been great friends. I adore him. We have old jokes that we cherish, and certain formulas of greeting and leave-taking.
It was Hilley who started the boys all saying good-night to me with one voice. They think it is a great joke, but there is a sweetness of intention underneath it that makes me value it greatly.
I wondered if they had forgotten. There were new boys in the ward, of course. But when it came time to go I stood in the doorway as usual and said good-night to the boys near at hand. Like a flash Hilley was pulling himself up on that frame, hand over hand, yelling, ‘Hey, mates! Shut your noise! Sister’s going!’
There was a grinning silence, while I said in a rather small voice, which I tried to keep from shaking, ‘Goodnight, lads. Sleep well!’
With a crash that shook the hut eighty voices responded, ‘Good-night, Sister.’
The new boys stared. Knowlton flew out of the office.
‘For God’s sake, Boylston! What on earth are you doing?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied meekly. ‘Just saying good-night to the boys.’
‘Well, for the luvva Mike! I should think you were.’

March 8. — One would never dream there was a war on! We have had a grand clearing-out in preparation for the spring offensive and the hospital is nearly empty. So everybody is rejoicing in abundant time off. Matron says we’d better grab all we can, because it looks as though we should have a hot time later.
I have n’t written in this lately because I ‘ve been too busy. There is a new crowd in at the Senior Officers’ School and they have nearly rushed us off our feet. It is great fun, because no matter how complicated things get they have to go back up the line at the end of the month — and we should worry.
It is a fascinating game, this playing at love with people who can’t stay long enough to be serious. One feels so safe. I hate these long-drawn-out affairs — generally. Now and then, of course . . .
It happened this way, this time. I was reading in the coal-box one evening when Ruth rushed in, all out of breath.
‘Oh, Troubles, dear! Thank God, you ‘re not doing anything! Get your mess uniform on quick! Jinks and I need you. Meet us in Matron’s sittingroom in ten minutes.’ And she fled without explanation.
Now there is this about the crowd — they never ask questions and they never let each other down. I was in Matron’s sitting-room in five minutes — my veil a little askew, but otherwise all right. I found Ruth and Jinks with four men. There were hasty introductions. Jinks was obviously engrossed with a Scotch major. Very good-looking. I should have liked him myself. Ruth had taken on an English major and an Irish one. This left the other Englishman to me. Major Gracie. Ruth explained all in one breath — Ruth is always breathless — that ‘hisnameisreallyAlfredTraversGraciebutwecallhimDonbecauseitdoesn’ttakesolongtosay.’
We went down to the Hotel Du Lac for dinner — wandering through the back lanes and byways of the village, after the manner of all Sisters and officers en route to dinner. Don Gracie is a darling. It was one of those sudden things that occur to me from time to time. We looked at each other and I fell.
Since then I have dined every single night with him. Sometimes alone and sometimes with the crowd.
And yet — I wonder about it — and myself. What is the real truth of it? Are we a lot of silly jackasses, or are we just normal young people having a good time, or are we all a little mad, and chasing shadows? There is no way of knowing.
Don is a nice-looking creature — tall and blonde, with a nice little clipped moustache and even nicer brown eyes. I wonder what he looks like in civilian clothes. He’s very clever and writes really good poetry.

March 9. — The spring offensive is on the way! The boys have all been recalled and there is an unpleasant tension in the air. Don left to-day. I was to have had a farewell luncheon with him this noon, but of course Knowlton changed my time at the last minute and I could n’t go, so after a while he appeared at the ward and stayed about, an hour. He is the first of the crowd at the school to go. Lord, but the thought of what is coming makes me sick. I wonder if it will be worse or better this time. The crowd at the school will all be killed — they always are.
I don’t see why we are n’t all crazy. We ought to be. And yet, after saying good-bye to Don — both of us feeling miserable and tragic — I went off duty and went out to dinner with Mol and Libby and Jerome and had the time of my life.
Well — what else is one to do?
Later we all went to a dance in the mess. It was an excellent dance!
When will the war start?

March 10. — We are getting as much time off as possible while the hospital is empty. I had 11-5 off to-day, and went up the hills with Bye. Gorgeous day out. Warm. At the top of the range we stretched out in the long matted grass and lay quiet, soaking up the warmth, chewing grass-stems, and staring out across to where the Channel sparkled in the morning sun. But I felt a little sick. I always feel that way before a push. Never have time to after it starts. I think Bye felt a bit off, too.

March 14. — I’m tired. Too many parties. And it is raining. It has always rained. It will never do anything else. It beats on the tents with paddy fingers. It drips from the ridgepoles. It leaks into everything. The bread tastes musty. The mud flows over the roads like lava. My feet are wet and my head aches. The boys are cross. I’m tired of parties, and of straining my eyes for a glimpse of the hills which are not there because of the rain clouds. I’m tired of waiting for the war and of listening to wheezy gramophones.

I wish I wars in bed.

March 23. — I’ve forgotten what has happened since I wrote in this last. Nothing interesting anyway. The weather has been rotten. Spring in I hardy!
But — on Thursday the Boche attacked along a fifty-mile front. We are about due for the first lot of the poor lads. I hear they took Bullecourt, but lost it again. I feel as the poor lads must feel after they’ve watched the dressing-tray coming slowly all down the ward, until at last they know that they are next. The war is on.

4 A. M., March 24. — They’ve come! Convoy after convoy. I’ve been working all night. Just got off.
Fritz has broken through our lines. It’s hideous. The field dressing-stations and casualty clearing-stations have all been destroyed and we are getting the boys direct from the line. There have been no stretcher cases so far. Fritz is killing any wounded who can’t walk well enough to get away. And those walking wounded! I could scream when I think of them.

Our first warning that the convoys were coming was the steady hum of ambulances — ambulances winding over the road in the moonlight as far as the eye could see, with scarcely a yard between them. Just black beetles, crawling, and not a light anywhere.
It was about an hour after supper, and there was an air raid on. Not a very bad one, but our shells were coming over so low that our hair stood on end listening to them. Ruth and I were standing outside the mess looking at the air raid when we heard a low note, a steady drone, under the scream of the shells. After one startled look at one another we started for Matron’s office, neither of us saying a word.
Just as we reached the administration hut the first ambulance stopped in front of us, the others close behind. We had to wait until the boys were taken out. Nearly every one should have been a stretcher case. Ragged and dirty; tin hats still on; wounds patched together any way; some not even covered.
Their faces were white and drawn and their eyes glassy from lack of sleep. Some of them were not more than sixteen or seventeen and they stood ghastly in the moonlight, waiting to be told where to go. There were great husky men, crying with the pain of gaping wounds and dreadfully swollen, discolored, trench feet. There were strings of from eight to twenty blind boys filing up the road, their hands on each other’s shoulders and their leader some bedraggled, bandaged, limping youngster.
Every one had a cigarette in his mouth and another behind his ear. And they grinned at us. Grinned! ‘Cheerio, Sister. Got a blighty this time!’ Over it all the shells whistled, the Gothas growled, and the searchlights swept the sky. Now and then a bomb exploded in the distance and those poor devils jumped horribly — and then grinned again at ‘Sister.’ They were sickly things, those grins.
Ruth and I stood beside the road with the tears rolling down our cheeks, trying to smile back. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to look at marching men again, anywhere, without seeing those blinded boys with five and six wound stripes on their sleeves, struggling painfully along the road.
Matron sent us to the D Lines. She said there were five hundred in this convoy, and that there were stretcher cases on the way. If she sent Topsy Stone with us did we think we three could clean up the five hundred wlkers?
We thought that we could, though Heaven knows how we thought we were going to do it.
In the D Lines dressing-tent we made a frantic effort to systematize our work. We had a small table for the medical officer, and a large table, piled with bandages and splints, boric ointment, sponges, and a basinful of Dakins for wet dressings. Then there were two smoky lanterns and an enfeebled primus stove.
Ruth, armed with a pair of scissors, stood in the doorway and beckoned the boys in, two or three at a time. Because there was so much to do it was impossible to try to take the stiff, dried bandages off carefully. The only thing to do was to snatch them off with one desperate yank. Poor Ruth! She could hardly stand it. She’d cut the dressing down the middle, the poor lad looking on with set jaw and imploring eyes. Ruth’s own eyes were full. There’d be a quick jerk; a sharp scream from the lad; a sob from Ruth; and he was passed on to the medical officer, and Ruth began on the next.
The medical officer looked at the wound, said ‘Wet — dry — boric ointment’ or ‘Splint’ to the orderly sitting at the table. The orderly scribbled the order on a bit of paper and gave it to the lad, who moved on to Topsy and me.
They came much too fast for us, and within fifteen minutes were standing twenty deep around the dressing-table. As the hours went by we ceased to think. Our hands moved automatically. We were hardly conscious of the shuffling of feet and the steady drip-drip, wounds bleeding from surface vessels torn open when Ruth took off the dressing. I remember hearing a soft thump now and then. I suppose somebody fainted, but there was no time to look up. We were needed elsewhere, for stretcher cases, at that very moment.
After a while Topsy had to give it up, and went away, very white. She was sick before we started anyway.
We ‘re through now, just as the dawn is coming. I don’t know whether I’m sleepy or not. But when I close my eyes the bandages go on rolling and winding and staining crimson. The blur of faces is still there in the sputtering lantern-light, and I hear the ceaseless shuffle of feet. So I’m writing in this until they all go away and I can sleep.
Molly is n’t in yet. I wonder where she went. Operating, I suppose.

March 27. — We are all getting fearfully tired. I could go to sleep standing up. Rand Wray and Captain Dudley have n’t been to bed for three days and nights. And Colonel Putnam has thanked us formally and informally for our coöperation. Already we hold the record for British hospitals on the Western Front. In ten days we admitted 4853 wounded, sent 4000 to England, did 935 operations, and only twelve patients died!

April 4.—There’s a pause in the war!
Meantime we have cleared out the hospital and are nearly empty once more — and ready for the next rush.
We sent twenty-six boys from A. Q. this morning. All my femurs have gone. It was like breaking up a happy home. To be sure they were tremendously thrilled at going to Blighty, but they have been so many long months in dingy old A-l that they have grown to love it. And we were good to them.
They were such children. I remember once buying bright-colored neckties for the entire ward, and tying them on each of the men myself. And they all sat up, grinning perkily at one another and slicking back their hair. There will be no one now to yell a rousing good-night to me when I go off duty. All the traditions of A-l went to England this morning.
I just could n’t bear it. Hilley did n’t even pretend he wanted to go, and begged to be let off. I went out to the ambulance with him, and he clung tightly to my hand all the way. I almost cried. The ward will be a silent place without him.
It’s queer I should have been so shocked and startled. I knew they could n’t stay forever. At least I knew it with my mind. But all the time I felt that Old Dad would go on grumbling forever, there by the door, and that Hilley would always play ‘White Wings’ on the gramophone for hours every day, and that Taffy the Welchman would sing me the Whale’s Lullaby every afternoon, and that Cherry would go on joking with me and biting the sheet to stifle his moans while I was doing his dressing.
I just never thought that it would all end. How stupid I am. I went on blindly, loving them all, and loving their foolish ways and inarticulateness and contrariness. And now they are all gone. The Colonel came in, walked through the ward, followed by a sergeant, pointed them out, one after another, and went out at the door at the other end of the ward; and he left consternation behind him. But even then I did n’t realize it. He said, ‘Have them ready in an hour.’ And we did.
And now the ward is already filled with strange lads. It will never be the same again. Nothing ever is, of course. But I will never be so foolish as to forget it as I did this time.
Come to think of it, to-day is my birthday. How extraordinary. I’ve just remembered it. And I’m twenty-three.
What a year this has been!
Two nice letters from Don. He is a dear.

April 9. — I had a very peaceful night. Sent, five of the boys to Blighty, but that was all that happened in my house.
My orderly is a scream. He’s deaf, and consequently gets himself into all kinds of ridiculous scrapes. Last night he leaned up against the stovepipe to take a nap. Now that stovepipe is very ancient and when he leaned on it it cracked. Of course he did n’t hear it, and presently, just as he was dozing off, the pipe gave a fearful screech and fell on him. I laughed so hard I could n’t help him, and he finally crawled out by himself, a foot thick with soot and swearing frightfully. The poor old dear! He’s too old to be puttering around dark tents full of dying boys.

April 10. — Everybody is going to be exhausted before this drive is over, it’s so long-drawn-out. But they are all so game. I did n’t know people could be like this.

April 11. — Another peaceful night, the easiest yet.
I got up early to-day, and after tea Ellen James and I went off for a walk. It was the first real spring day we’ve had for a long while, and it was good. We wandered down the beach road and turned off through the half-wild lane that loses itself among the pines on the lake shore. The air was warm, and heavy with the smell of burning brush, and the outlines of the hills and the sand dunes were hazy and unreal in the drifting smoke. Far up over our heads a solitary plane moved, a speck against the blue. We lingered for a while in the warm, lazy quietness, and then came out into the village. The contrast took my breath away.
Against a background of thatched cottages, green rows of slender poplars, and a shrine, all mirrored in the tiny lake, the huge army-trucks thundered by, grinding and squealing. Heavy boots clumped over the cobbled streets, cavalry officers swung past, jingling, ambulances bumped emptily, and from the direction of No. 18’s camp we heard ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever,’ being played as only a military band can play it.
James and I looked at each other and grinned. ‘Well, anyway, we’re living!' James said, and there was a ring in her voice.

April 15. — I’m operating nights again. This time with Major Cranston. I love working with him. When he operates one feels that things are really happening.
Day before yesterday we admitted 1100 in twenty-four hours, and we are averaging seventy to ninety operations a night, except on the nights when no convoy comes in. The night operating teams do only the emergency ops., of course. There are three teams, and we certainly are turning off the work.
Last night there was no convoy, so we were off duty for the night, and I slept from nine in the morning until eight this morning, — twenty-three hours, — waking only long enough to drink the tea Molly brought me yesterday afternoon. I expected to work again to-night, but did n’t have to.
In the intervals between work and sleeping I have built myself an armchair out of some boards, box covers, and fence rails. It sounds frightful, but it is really very comfortable and looks quite like any armchair when it is draped with a blanket.

April 24. — Gorgeous day out. I’d like to go fishing somewhere, with Dad. Later. It’s raining out now. I’m writing this in my room, curled up in the chair. Our few lumps of coal are burning merrily, Bye’s teakettle is beginning to sing, and the rain is pounding on the roof and streaming down the window. Bye is asleep on my bed and Molly is reading in the coal-box.
How comfortable they look — Bye’s curly head boring into the pillow, and Molly half out of sight in the coal-box, her nose buried in a book. I wonder what they think about when they sit staring into space, as I’m doing now? They’d be embarrassed if they knew that I was thinking about them — glad that they are here; grateful for their friendship; loving their notions and their ways and their moods. They’d laugh, too, at my sentimentality.

May 19. — We have just had a frightful air-raid. I’m not quite sure whether I’m all here or not. The telephone and telegraph wires are all down and for several hours now the ambulance-drivers have been bringing in what are left of the patients from other hospitals. This hospital escaped without a single casualty — goodness knows how. The ambulance-drivers say that Étaples is a mess. The nurses’ quarters of No. 1 Canadian were hit, and no one knows how many nurses have been killed and wounded.
It was about eleven o’clock, and Fred Wilson, Benny’s medical officer, was on the ward at the time, trying to do something for one of the boys who was dying. We were standing by the bedside when suddenly Fred stopped short in something he was saying, and we looked at each other with startled eyes.
The guns at Boulogne!
Something seemed to clutch at the pit of my stomach, as the hut began to tremble. Far away the sound came, like distant thunder.
We went out at once and stood looking up, and already we could hear a faint intermittent purr, growing steadily louder — Gothas, heavily loaded.
The moon was full; there was not a breath of air. Every hut and tent stood out as clearly as though their outlines had been cut with a razor. We could almost see the planes, and they seemed to be coming from all directions. And still no air-raid signal, and no sound from our guns. Across the hills we could see the tiny sparks of bursting shells and hear the dull roll of the barrage.
By this time the air was swarming with planes, and I grabbed Fred by the sleeve while seven hundred cold chills per minute chased along my spine. ‘Good God,’ Fred said, ‘we’re in for it!’ And at that instant came a flash from the beach, a long sobbing sigh, a terrific jar, and then a faint b-o-o-o-ng, among the stars. Archie had spoken. In another moment every gun for miles around had turned loose and was firing frantically, the shells whining in a dozen different keys. And all the time, his-s-s-s, a tremendous shock, and a blinding red flare. All the while the planes circled, closer and closer, until the machine-guns opened on them with their foolish little put-put-put. It was horrible, and yet — it had a kind of dreadful beauty —— the searchlights swinging and crossing, the yellow blaze of slowly dropping flares and star shells, the flash of bursting shells, and sometimes a great gold bug swooping out of the sky — Fritz caught in the searchlights — or again a hideous black bug against the moon.
The boys, terrified, were beginning to shout for Sister, and I flew for B-5, where they were most helpless. Fred followed me, and we walked up and down between the rows of beds, trying to quiet them. They were frantic with terror, and I can’t say that I was much better.
Seeing that all was well in that quarter, Fred and I went across to the other hut. I set my teeth and ran like blazes, and sprang through the door just as Major Cranston came in, bareheaded, and quite unconcerned. He ordered us to lie down on the floor at once, and stay there; and he went out again into the shrapnel. I had a sudden impulse to grab him by the coat-tails and pull him back. He is the one man we can’t afford to lose, but I did n’t dare to grab, though it made me sick to see him going out again.
When he had gone we started back to the other ward. Raid or no raid, you can’t leave the boys.
Halfway across the open space between the wards a bomb fell in the chalk pit behind the C Lines, and then another nearer. Something struck me across the shoulders and tripped me at the same time, and I found myself flat on my face in the mud, with Fred beside me saying quietly, ‘Lie still! The next one is going to land about here.’
I buried my face in my arms and waited. We could hear it coming — sizzling. I don’t remember that I thought anything, and I was n’t conscious of feeling anything. I simply waited, but I think I lived ten years in those few seconds. We heard it strike. There was a dreadful roar and a bloodred flare. I could see it even with my fingers pressed against my eyes. My ears rang and my head seemed to be bursting. Something fell with a crash in one of the huts. Earth and stone pattered down on us.
When I crawled to my feet I found that I was shaking all over, which surprised me, for I was still not conscious of any emotion. Fred, putting out a hand to help me, felt the tremor, and said gently: ‘Don’t you mind it. It will wear off in a little while. I did the same thing when I was up the line the first time.’ I could have blessed him for understanding, but I made no reply for fear he’d hear my teeth chattering. He was right, however. It did wear off in about half an hour. Meanwhile we went on to the hut, and the boys, seeing us coming in safe and sound, pulled themselves together and did very well in the hours that followed. The raid continued with the same vigor until three o’clock, and now we are trying to find places for the boys who have come in the ambulances. We all look seedy and tired. It is a bit wearing to be scared stiff for four hours.

May 20-21. — Seven nurses were killed last night, and many more wounded. They say there were forty planes over.
The casualties in Étaples number over 3000. And the rumors are wild beyond description. Little knots of people gather on every corner and gesticulate frantically. The first greeting is invariably, ‘Gosh, did you hear —?’
I certainly did. I never heard so many wild tales in my life. Nobody knows what to believe.
Some of our shell-shock patients ran so far away that they have n’t come back yet. Three were found under the water tanks this noon.

May 22. — Last night was my last on night duty. It was decidedly hectic. We had three air raids. All patients who were able to walk, and all the personnel not on duty, were ordered to the hills — which look flat from an aeroplane and are not worth bombing.
Everybody on duty has to wear a tin hat, and at the first sign of an air raid must lower all the patients’ beds to the floor. The tin hats are a beastly nuisance. They weigh a ton, and seem as big as a carpet, until a nose cap comes whanging through the air. Then they feel about the size of a postage stamp.
We had a lovely time watching the crowd traveling to the hills. Sisters, officers, and Tommies, all cold and mad, and most of them only half-dressed and dragging blankets. Three times they scrambled across the field and up the hills. Three times they trailed back — madder every time.
We, having let the beds down as per order, sat perkily in the doorways of our huts, our tin hats cocked over one eyebrow, and leered at everybody who went by. At least we did until the third time. Then Fritz, apparently scared by something, dropped all his bombs at once, as one would drop an apronful of eggs. I went over backward in my chair. My tall Jock orderly gave one squawk and dived for the drainpipe in the gutter.
After that we stayed inside.

May 31. — We ‘ve been bombed every single night this week, except one, and then we stayed awake anyhow, expecting it.

June 5. — We celebrated our third anniversary in France with sports, tea for the people who are leaving, and a dance. I had a sudden attack of my old interest in athletics and won the 250-yard dash. Drapeau came in second. ‘Crannie’ yelled like anything and the Colonel swore and banged on his boots with his stick. Afterward one of the sergeants came up and solemnly presented me with a box of soap — the first prize.
The dance was a gorgeous success.