New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-05-17
Hazards of Nurses at Front
Recounted in Graphic Letters
British Women Tell of Constant Rain OF Shells and Sudden
Attacks from Ar-Nany Suffered Horrors
in Belgian and Serbian Retreats

OF these one was sent to Tirlemont.
that familiar name in the nrst acts OF
the war. and thence was deported 10
Germany for telling the German COM
mandant. with courageous indiscretlon,
what she thought of him. Another,
hearing Of her plight, pet out at once
from Brussels to the rescue. She had
TO travel the twenty-five miles on foot
or by potato cart, but before she was
far on her way she got into the hrlng
line. was nearly shot and forced to
turn back.
Later this nurse was sent TO Char
loroi. as il was in those days when the
German army was in the first lust OF
victorious possession. There were but
.hree nurses to seventy badly wounded
in a hospital with no water, no ward
furniture and scarcely any sheets. AT
first they were near starvation. There
was no bread ut first, no butter or
meat, no milk except for the worst
cases. For the first few days there
was nothing for any one but beer, po-
tatoes and leeks."
Yet this is the spirit in which the
, women worked in such circumstances
Cannot Tell of Horrors
81 think we were very lucky people
to have been allowed to help all
through those dreadful days of Charlie
ro. Nearly everything is burned down
and pillaged, and there was ilrlng on
the civilian population and other nor,
rors which / cannot tell you OF in this.
And then the letter goes on. Some OF
the nurses are very disappointed that
/ they have not had more nursing, but
it was not our fault" And then again,
"The people are so grateful. | am so
glad we came"
Such was the practical spirit of those
women. There is but one word OF COM
plaint in that letter, very English
word of complaint. BY German
orders. to prevent all risk of firing on
the troops, all shutters were to be lett
open and all windows to be kept shut,
so that the nurses had to sleep IN that
summer heat in closed rooms.
While British women had fallen into
German hands and were working in
such circumstances in Brussels ana
Charleroi, others. doctors, nurses and
orderlies, were with the Belgian army
in Antwerp and went through all the
siege. "They carried the wounded
through the streets with shells burst
p
gent cases and the dying to safety.
They held back the delirious and
soOthed the terrified. o. In one cellar
the nurses disarmed a man doctor who
had gone mad and was threatening to
shoot the wounded"
Also in Serbian Retreat
IL was not only in that first great
retreat through Belgium and France
that British women were involved in
all the perils of war There were Brit
ish women IN the terrible Serbian re-
treat, without shelter and with little
food, across the snow mountains into
Montenegro, and there were British
women who went through the lombard
ment OF LODI at the beginning of 1919
with a flying smbulMce column tray
cling backward AMI forward at the
front in train all Scratched and
denied with shrapnel," leaving LODI
just before the Germans entered it;
working for month without time 10
take off their clothes when they slept
and writing about il all: 1--WE are the
only English at the front, so consider
ourselves very lucky indeed"
There will be many stories TO be told
some day of all that British women
have seen and done and suffered at the
four corners of the Allied front in
these two and half years Of war
And while, in those first months. the
eager women who had answered the
call % war and gone into the heart OF
i,s dangers as quickly az any men
were working in the midst OF such
scenes in Brussels and Antwerp and
, Charleroi. others b. the thousands in
Great Britain were offering themselves
I for the same service.
| i was not only in the queues Of men
at the recruiting stations and in the
crowded camps that Great Britain
showed her courage for war.