Over the Seas for Uncle Sam Part 11

Well, we delivered our cargo and started back, when sure enough, one dark night, we got it again. This time, though, I was standing under the bridge, and in the explosion a piece of rail was hurled against me that broke both legs.

A big Swede, who had always a hand out to help everybody, hoisted me into a lifeboat, but in launching it was smashed up. I was in the water and I certainly thought my last hour had come, but I found the big Swede was swimming beside me, and he dragged me onto a piece of board floating by. I lay there until it was light and in answer to our S. O. S., American destroyers came on and picked up our boats. Was I glad to see the good old American flag? _Was_ I! I didn't know much when they hauled me aboard--the pain was pretty bad, but they sent me to a hospital over there, and before long I was around again, fine as ever. Takes more than a German sub to keep me down.

I went back to the States in style on a transport. As I always carried my Union book I had no trouble in getting another new outfit, once I reached my home port. I set out for France on a cargo vessel. Well, say, it was clear sailing over. We met our convoy and they hoisted up their signal flag. We were all of two hours making it out. At last we could read it, it spelled:

"What are you doing,--bringing Brooklyn Bridge over with you?" They were making fun of our queer-shaped bridge. Well, we started back, but I know things always happened in threes so I was pretty sure we'd get it going home. I was right.

It was my watch, late in the afternoon. I was keeping a sharp lookout when I saw the torpedo scudding toward us.

"Wake of a torpedo in starboard bow!" I yelled. Say, that vessel wheeled like a streak--and the torpedo missed. But the next one didn't. Bing!--I felt the big s.h.i.+p quiver under me, and the explosion that followed blew me so high that I came down in the paint locker with my arm under me.

You'd think I'd be used to torpedoing by this time, and could keep my sea legs under fire, but I didn't. I'm getting better though, and I'm waiting to get a shot at Fritz that will send him where he'll stay for a while. I certainly am glad every time I hear we've sunk one of them, but I always wish I was one of the crew of that lucky s.h.i.+p.

CHIEF NURSE STEVENS SPEAKS:

UNDER THE RED CROSS BANNER

I WAS educated abroad. That's how I came to love France and England almost as well as my own country. I was in my teens when I returned to America. I had always wanted to be a nurse. Even while at school I longed for the days when I should be old enough to begin training. It was my calling, and, when I left school, I answered it.

I trained in France, England and America. I had practised but a short while when I married. My husband was a surgeon, and from him I learned more of nursing than I could ever hoped to have acquired from text-books. We were always together. We played and worked and traveled all over the world. When he died, it was like a great light going out. I did not know where to turn--I did not know what to do. Even to this day I cannot get used to his being away from me. It always seems as though he were on one of his professional trips and would return.

And then in 1914, just six months after his death, war came, and I knew that my place was in France, so I sailed at once and enlisted in the nursing corps.

Those were the days before the great base hospitals were established--the days when the dead and wounded were left in piles awaiting such care as could be given them by the handful of overworked doctors and nurses.

It was there I found my "son." We had come to a group of white-faced boys--the mark of death on their brow. Lying a little apart from the others was a young Frenchman. He had an ugly shrapnel wound on his shoulder. He was unconscious when we found him, but he was so appealing, so young, that my heart went out to him. His clothes were stained with dirt and blood, and the mud was caked on his cheek, where he had fallen.

When we moved in, he opened his eyes. "Maman," he said, and smiled at me. I think that was what won me completely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by International Film Service.

Torpedoes cost money--they are often recovered and fired again.]

I watched over his convalescence and learned that his own mother was not living, so when he was well once more and ready to return to duty, I adopted him as my "_fils de guerre_," and to this day I hear from him twice a month--and such letters! Full of his battles and his play at the rest billets--his dreams and his hopes. He is France at her best, with the love of youth and life and country in his heart.

There were sights on that battlefield you never forget--never. It was the bodies of Frenchwomen left dead by the Germans that haunt me--the women they dragged from captured France and took with them to their trenches. We used to thank G.o.d when we came upon these girls that we found them dead. At least these few were out of their unfathomable depths of misery at last.

After ten months of nursing in France, the doctors ordered a rest--no--commanded it, so I left the service and went to England to visit an old schoolmate, now married. Her husband was at the front, but her father, a peer, whose name is a great one in England, lived with her.

He had known me since childhood. He was very fond of me. He was a man of great importance to the government, but he had a delightful way of dropping all the cares of State, once he reached home, and of romping with his two tiny grandsons whom he adored.

In their home I found the quiet I craved, and, as I grew stronger, I longed to get back once more to duty. I knew so well the desperate need for trained workers. My friends sensed my growing restlessness and Violet's father spoke of it at dinner one evening.

"Why not join the British army?" he asked me. "I'll try to get you a good post."

There were a number of guests present, and, as Sir Arthur sat quite far from me, I did not catch what he had said. But Violet had. She leaned across and called to me.

"You aren't listening to father--he means you." I turned toward him eagerly. "Why not join the British ranks?" he repeated. "You say you feel fit again and want to get out there. Well, I'll give you a chance to prove it."

I didn't believe he half meant it, for his eyes twinkled; but I caught at it.

"I cannot get to the front soon enough to please me," I cried. "Just try me and see," and no more was said about it.

The days pa.s.sed and the lovely English summer changed into autumn. I felt splendidly. One day I came in from a long walk. I glowed with health. I just knew that I could not remain idle another instant. I found Violet in the nursery with her babies. I told her I must go. She laughed at me.

"So long as you feel that way, it's fortunate this letter came for you this morning, isn't it?" and she laid in my hands a long, official-looking doc.u.ment, bearing the royal coat-of-arms in one corner.

I tore it open. It was a command to appear before the Matron-in-Chief of her Majesty's army. I knew by the time that I had finished reading it that Sir Arthur was responsible in a large measure. He was well aware of the fact that no neutral could serve in the Allied armies unless by royal order. I flew to the office of the Matron-in-Chief. My knees knocked together. Could I qualify in her eyes for a post at the front?

What transpired seemed like a golden dream to me. I was appointed Chief Nurse--or Matron, as they call us Over There--of a hospital s.h.i.+p holding four thousand beds! I did not show my inward tremors. If it could be done, I was going to do it--I, an American--and what was more I was going to make those British nurses on my staff love me in spite of themselves. I dared not think how afraid I was to tackle it. I just kept saying, "I'll do it! I've _got_ to, so I can."

I returned to Violet and dropped in a heap on a couch.

"What's happened?" she demanded--and I told her. She listened, her eyes like stars.

"How splendid! You can do it if anyone in the world can! You've proved your worth in France. Oh, I am so happy that you are to look after our poor boys!"

Sir Arthur came in at this moment. I knew by his smile that he had been listening.

"Well, well, so you are to be a Matron, are you?" he teased. I nodded. I was past speech.

"Perhaps you don't know that you will be gazetted as Major in the British army as well. That will probably be your official rank."

And a major I became on my floating hospital. I felt strangely alone at first. The only American among so many English. For the first time in my life I longed for my compatriots. Then one day as we lay at anchor in the harbor, I saw, some distance away, a battles.h.i.+p flying from her mast the Stars and Stripes. I began to cry, I was so glad to see my own flag again. I asked our wireless operator if he would send her a message.

"Will you ask an American officer aboard the Man-o'-War to come aboard the British Hospital s.h.i.+p and speak with an American woman?" The instrument snapped the message. The battles.h.i.+p caught it, and, a few hours later, I saw an American Naval officer for the first time in over a year.

I had never met him before, but I was so glad to talk with him of our own land that I dreaded the time when he must return to his s.h.i.+p. He went at length, and I followed him with my binoculars. It gave me a warm feeling around my heart to have a Yankee s.h.i.+p so close by.

Once I started to work in earnest, I found that my nurses were eager to cooperate with me in every way. Instead of resenting my authority over them, they were anxious to help me, and the fear I felt of my ability to handle this great task was swallowed up by the mountains of work before me. There was no time to fear or to rejoice. There was no time for self, with four thousand souls aboard who needed caring for each hour of the day and night. For our s.h.i.+p was loaded with the wounded from that desperate fighting in the Dardanelles.

There were a great per cent who came to us with hands and feet cruelly frozen, from the weeks and even months in icy trenches. Then there were sh.e.l.l-shock cases. One which appealed to us all was of a chaplain, adored by his regiment. Through the heaviest fire he had stood by his flock with no thought for his own safety. An exploding sh.e.l.l had brought on that strange state of aphasia. He did what he was told to do docilely and quietly, but he remembered nothing that had gone before.

He was sent back to London, his mind still clouded. I used to think of him often--his quiet, studious face and soldierly bearing and his eyes with their eternal question in them, which none of us could answer for him.

Months later I saw him again. The government was in need of a matron to take charge of a four-hundred-and-fifty-bed s.h.i.+p bound for South Africa.

Fierce battles were raging in Mesopotamia. I was selected for the task.

I had eight nurses and a hospital corps of fifty.

As I came aboard her, I saw a familiar figure standing by the gang-plank. I caught my breath. It was the chaplain himself. There he stood, smiling quietly, with hands outstretched.

"I am going with you, Matron," he told me, "to care for the boys."