Nurses also had to fight to be recognized

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Thursday, September 24, 1998

Nurses also had to fight to be recognized

By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Witness to War
The nurses coped with wrenching wounds and death, filth and the flu, the threat of shells and poison gas. But they were also fighting a battle on a different front.

After receiving a letter from home with news that her town was displaying a flag for the nurses, she wrote: "I'm glad someone appreciates the nurses. The patients are the only ones here that do. . . . We just have to fight for our very existence here."

In the fall, when the Army passed out tickets to receive donated Christmas packages from America, they skipped the nurses.

"Don't worry about our Christmas, no one over here worries about us, so why should you?" she wrote her mother and father. "We weren't given any cards or tickets or anything else, so we are just out of luck. 'S.O.L.' they say in the army. When I get back, you won't understand my language, not because it is French or German either."

Despite their difficulties, the nurses found ways to endure, and even raise their spirits.

"Sometimes we were invited to dances," she wrote. "The English and French could go home for rest, but it was too far for the Americans, so recreation was planned in plays and dances."

Humor helped them survive.

At one point, they were loaded onto trains for transport.

"We (nurses) were fortunate to have a toilet on board, but the men stopped along the way at different sidings," she wrote. "One of our nice doctors was caught with his pants down when the train started up unexpectedly. He really got an ovation from the crowd as he scrambled aboard clutching his clothes. We made fun out of every little incident and were hilarious at times."

Letters helped, too -- especially from her lieutenant friend.

"Had a letter from Pete," she wrote home. "He may be in the next town for all I know. He censors his own mail but is a very good soldier and wouldn't say a thing that wasn't right. Some people at home think that your mail coming this way is opened, but it isn't ever.

". . . Marg Cooper got a letter from one of the girls at the base today. It surely must be a wonderful place, but we are satisfied with this wild and woolly life until the snow flies at least. . . . Our tent is pitched on a kind of a hill and even though I have my cot propped up, my head is usually lower than my feet, and sometimes I wake up and find the bunk has sort of skidded during the night and my head is outside, with the flap of the tent forming a bib. Oh it's a great life if you don't weaken. . . . It may not be quite as comfortable as the little bungalows (at the base hospital) . . . but I like it fine."

And when there were no letters, they sang to keep their courage up.

After pitching tents near Ypres, she wrote: ". . . The boys found three pianos while they were searching the dugouts. They say some of the dugouts the Germans had were carpeted. Last night they brought one of the pianos back to camp and put it up in the Red Cross hut. Someone was clever enough to tune it and a lot of the boys can play, so we had quite a concert."

They sang all the songs written for the war, sometimes devising their own lyrics. For one called "The Rose of No Man's Land," they substituted the words: " 'Neath the war's red curse stands the Cross Red Nurse. She's the rose of no man's land."

Next: Days were filled with reminders of war's futility

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