Women as army surgeons

The streets of Paris were strangely altered and unfamiliar, with closed shops and whole blocks of houses empty and shuttered. The Government was at Bordeaux, and the Louvre and all places of amusement were shut. Only the churches were crowded, and from their dark interiors the side altars shone out, brilliantly lighted and surrounded by women and children on their knees. Day by day they trooped past the altars, lighting the candles and offering their prayers; and day by day the casualty lists grew longer and the number of crêpe veils in the streets increased.

Life was not easy for the women of Paris, but they bore themselves with great dignity and courage. Their attitude was calm and reticent; they took over men’s posts in the shops and work-rooms, or on the trams and railways, as a matter of course, and carried out their duties with quiet efficiency.

The uniform of the Women’s Hospital Corps soon became known, and secured a cordial reception for its members in the bureaux and offices which they had to visit, as well as on the boulevards. Strangers would offer them gifts of socks and mittens. Old ladies, with tears running down their cheeks, would lift their outer skirts and rummage in the poche intérieur to bestow a few francs with a blessing upon them. An Englishman, choking with emotion, put two sovereigns into a doctor’s hand as she passed him on the stairs of the Hôtel. Shopkeepers asked about ‘les blessés’ and sent presents of sweets and biscuits. The greengrocer added an extra cauliflower to the purchase! Flower-women ran after them and pressed bunches of roses into their hands.

At the entrance of the Hôtel when ambulances were unloading, elderly men in silk hats and black kid gloves would crowd round and offer to carry the stretchers, or would follow the bearers inside, with the kit—often a very dirty kit—in their arms. The sight of the suffering moved them so that they turned aside and wept. They brought violets and roses and cigarettes for the men. They stood outside the doors to listen to them singing, and they wrung the hands of the doctors silently and went out. The people were deeply moved, but not cast down. They had settled down to war, and even then they were confident of victory, since the English were with them.

The cordiality of the people, the general sympathy and the inspiration of a common cause, combined with the beauty of Paris and the charm of the autumn weather to make these days a wonderful memory.

The organisation of the hospital proceeded rapidly, and the amount of heavy surgery and acute sepsis which came in taxed the energy and resources of the surgical staff. Dr. Garrett Anderson acted as chief surgeon and Dr. Gazdar took charge of the officers’ ward. Other workers fell into their places and a sort of routine was gradually evolved. The duties of administrator, or Médecin-en-Chef, fell to Dr. Flora Murray, and when she was not issuing stores or counting linen, she would be receiving the countless visitors who came to see the wards.

The French Red Cross wished the hospital to have a directeur, and for this purpose they attached to it M. Aubry, a French gentleman who was at leisure during the closure of the stock exchange. He spoke French only, and his duties as director were purely nominal. He was considerate and genial, and the staff became very fond of him. He had a son in the Dragoons of whom he was immensely proud; and the arrival of a grandson, or petit dragon, was a great social event in which every one shared. He seemed to spend several hours a day chatting with any one who had time to listen to him, and occasionally he joined the mess for tea. He helped the work of the hospital greatly by bringing in one of his clerks, M. Gohin, to take charge of the registers and returns.

The French Army required an immense number of returns to be made. These had to be rendered in the form of a nominal roll, on the fifth day, the tenth day, and the twenty-fifth day of each man’s stay in hospital. As the men did not all come in on the same day, the return of the yellow or blue or white cards—as the case might be—was never-ending. The British made it simpler, for one nominal roll went every week to the War Office and a copy of it to the R.A.M.C. authorities in Paris.

M. Gohin was unfit for military service, but he certainly made good by the skill with which he managed a very complicated and tiresome piece of clerical work.

Sundry other youthful clerks also came from M. Aubry’s office to assist in the wards, and his concierge, M. Roget, took the hospital under his wing. M. Roget had been with M. Aubry for a great many years, and he loved and admired him dearly. His affection frequently prompted him to discuss the appearance and ways of his master when he was ‘en colère.’ At such times he was said to resemble a wild beast, and no one could calm him except Roget. Every morning, in a white pinafore, with a little watering-pot in his hand, M. Roget would perambulate the central hall, covering the pavement with moist curls and twists. Then he would throw a little sawdust about and leave it for some one else to sweep. He was a great man for rumours, and when he was not giving details of his anatomy and his pathological condition, he would have mysterious tales of a hundred trains that had gone from Paris to the Front to bring in German prisoners; of spies and plots within the walls of Paris; or of great military events which were to end the war in six weeks.

The management of the Hôtel itself was in the hands of M. Casanova, who acted as directeur under the Company which had built and owned it. He was short and stout, with a flowing black beard, and soft, well-manicured little hands, very courteous and agreeable, prolific of promises, which for some reason never seemed to be fulfilled. He was moved to the very depths of his self-indulgent soul by the war and the proximity of suffering and wounded men. He would descend at night in his pyjamas if he heard a convoy coming in, and penetrate to the wards to see what was going on, and to offer help. Though not in the best of health, he would fetch hot water or lift weights. He would reach out a trembling hand to hold things, while he wiped his eyes with the other. His sympathy and distress, combined with a desire to kiss the busy hands of the doctors, made him a touching figure.

In his train were always strange ladies, wrapped in blankets, who followed him and peeped round the doors. His rooms were luxurious. His menu was spécial. But he roused himself to serve and to help with all sincerity. Unfortunately, his relations with M. Aubry became somewhat strained at a later stage, for he had a passionate temperament. There were wont to be terrible domestic uproars below stairs. M. Casanova’s method of administering justice was to declare that some one was coupable of breaking into the wine-cellars, eating too much butter or causing the cheese to disappear. He accused everybody, and everybody asserted his innocence; so he said they must draw lots as to which of them must be chassés. The lot fell on four Belgian girls who hung about the place and did services; at this the rest of the staff was up in arms, and M. Perrin, the engineer, said, if they were chassés, he also would be chassé; and in a perfect storm of rage and recrimination it was decided that every one was to be chassés. M. Perrin disappeared. The apparatus for the supply of hot water and heating ran down in his absence, and the Belgian girls wailed that they were being cast upon the streets.

The Médecin-en-Chef waited upon M. Casanova in the interest of the girls. He presented her with twelve cakes of soap and some scent:

‘As a testimony of my admiration for your courage and nobility,’ he said.

And, kissing her hand, he added:

‘The members of l’équipe under your distinguished direction, madame, are models of virtue and devotion; but there are others of whom one can say nothing but evil.’

His mood, however, softened, and in the morning it was understood that no one was to leave, and, to the relief of all concerned, M. Perrin returned and resumed his duties.

The officials of the French Red Cross were delighted with the rapid way in which the hospital had got to work, and took a great interest in all that was being done there. Not infrequently Madame Pérouse, accompanied by M. Falcouz, would arrive to pay a visit at eight o’clock in the morning. The first greetings over, she would suggest going to greet the officers—‘prendre de leurs nouvelles,’ so she put it. At that hour the ward work was in full swing, and any one who has had experience of nurses knows how the Sister feels when visitors arrive before she is ready. British officers, too, prefer to have time to breakfast and shave before being inspected. But the dear old people were oblivious of their embarrassment and entered the ward with genial ‘Bonjours.’ They asked the major how he was and he replied, with grave courtesy, ‘Merci, madame; merci, monsieur.’ They asked the others one by one if they spoke French, and they replied severally, ‘Pas beaucoup,’ or ‘Un petit peu.’ And so, bowing and gracious, they passed on their tour of inspection.

In those days very few officers seemed able to speak French, and intercourse with their French brothers-at-arms in neighbouring beds was inconveniently restricted. Referring to the language, one of them said, ‘The insuperable difficulty of this campaign is the language—it’s unspeakable!’ And some of the doctors echoed his opinion heartily.

Left alone on duty one night, a surgeon wished to talk to a wounded French officer and was obliged to ask for the assistance as interpreter of a nurse who had a reputation as a linguist.

‘Ask him,’ said the surgeon, ‘if he has a pain in his stomach.’

The nurse bent over the bed and put the question:

‘Monsieur, avez-vous du pain dans l’estomac?’

The poor man had been shot through the body and was on a water diet. He indignantly repudiated the suggestion, assuring her that he had only taken what the surgeon had ordered for him and that under no circumstances would he do otherwise.

Both French and British officers were acutely shocked by the horrors through which they had passed, and most of them suffered from a painful reaction when the strain was relaxed. At first they could not rest in hospital, and their nights were haunted by terrible memories and anxious thoughts. One of them never told what he had seen, but night after night he covered his face with his uninjured hand and moaned:

‘The children. Oh! the children!’

He had left children of his own at home; and the sufferings of the little Belgians gave him no rest.

Older men were harassed and worn by anxiety, and distressed by the difficulty and precarious position of the allied Armies. The younger ones spoke of how ‘the British were hanging on with their eyelids’; or how the French were supposed to be ‘making a flank attack and were lost.’ Some in their depression feared defeat; others broke down with exhaustion and reaction.

To all of them, officers and men alike, hospital was a haven of peace and security. It was heavenly to lie in clean beds, to be cared for by Englishwomen, to be rid of regimental discipline and for the moment of responsibility too. The severity of their wounds, the operations, the pain were minor matters; for the time being they had found comfort and rest. Probably none of them had been in contact with women doctors before; but that did not make any difference. They trusted the women as they would have trusted men—passing the bullets which had been extracted from their persons from bed to bed and pronouncing the surgeon to be ‘wonderfully clever!’ The more convalescent patients visited the men who had undergone serious operations in the wards and cheered them with reminders that they were not ‘in the hands of the R.A.M.C.’ Their enthusiasm for the hospital was delightful and encouraging. When they got well and went away, it was like seeing boys go back to school.

The condition of the men was, if possible, worse than that of the officers. They had lain in queer wayside stations, waiting for trains, or on straw in stables and churches, hoping for transport. At Villeneuve, on the Paris railway circle, there was a goods shed with straw on the ground, in which officers lay at one end and men at the other. An R.A.M.C. doctor and a few men did what they could for them, and when the ambulances came out from Paris, the worst were picked out; but, for the rest, the weary waiting for a train continued. At Creil, forty miles from Paris, the accommodation was an open shed filled with straw. French and British lay huddled in groups, some covered by blankets, others by dirty sacks. A doctor of the French Army, very dapper in his red and blue plush cap, sorted them into trains, when any trains came. Several French soldiers stirred a mess of potage with a dirty stick. But of dressings or nursing there was no sign. Patiently and uncomplainingly these sufferers waited, often fifteen, twenty-four or more hours, while the rain poured down on the roof of their shed, and the wind swept drearily through the station.

At last, septic and wasted by fever, they were jolted by the ambulances over the ill-paved roads to Paris and hospital. Lieut. Lowe, whose only chance lay in getting into hospital without further delay, was brought down from Compiègne on a stretcher laid across an ordinary motor-car and held in position by an American doctor and a man with one hand. His thigh was badly fractured and very imperfectly supported; but with the help of morphia he endured the journey. From the first there was little hope of his recovery, but he lingered for some weeks, during which his sister was able to be with him, lavishing care and tenderness upon him to their mutual comfort.

The men were dirty and half-fed; many had not had a change of clothes or socks since they left England; but they were absolutely uncomplaining and began at once to appreciate their hospital surroundings. Women doctors were a novelty which served to enhance the importance and the grandeur of the gilded and marble halls in which they found themselves. ‘The doctors is ladies,’ they wrote in their letters home; and to the visitor who asked: ‘Is it really true that you have no men doctors here?’ the reply was: ‘And what will we be wanting men doctors for, sir?’

They found comfort in the presence of women and repose in the care lavished upon them, and with the philosophy of the soldier they let it rest there.