Our Growing Departments
With our ever-increasing beds, all the departments in the hospital increase accordingly. In the early days we had R.A.M.C.T. men entirely in the offices, stores, post office, etc. Now nearly all – or at least the greater proportion – of the men have disappeared. Some have gone abroad with the R.A.M.C., others have transferred to fighting units, and many are on hospital ships. Then the problem was, who was to replace them?
I remember, a very long time ago, one of t
The Massage Department
(By an Officer Patient)
Throughout Wandsworth Hospital, during the morning, the busiest portion of the day, there is no place busier or more animated than the massage rooms. Here good-natured banter, laughter, cheerfulness, and strenuous activity intermingle to form an atmosphere exclusively its own; and from here one emerges with both a mental and physical tonic – feeling that a most pleasant break has been made in the more or less monotony of routine hospital life,
Freedom and Discipline: The Hospital’s Ideal
A new patient asked us, the other day, to tell him what were the “rules” of the hospital. It was a temptation to reply off-hand that there are no rules. Indeed, this would only have been an almost excusable exaggeration of the actual state of affairs, for at the 3rd L.G.H. the manufacture of rules has been wisely reduced to a minimum. Those of our patients who have experienced the rigid restrictions of the conventional Military Hospital have mor
Examination Paper
Set by Sergt. Tom Roberts for those desirous of stripes and promotion (Irish)
Sec. 1.
Time allowed: half-day leave
I. Describe a method of directing an enquiring stranger from Main Hall to D4 Ward (not D Ward). All signs of direction, if any (or none), may be availed of. Answer not to contain more than 125 words. Extra marks will be given to a lucid explanation of the system (also if any) on which B Block wards are reached before A Block ones.
II. For orderlies
Time for a bit of 'slush' I think [or is it 'gush'?]
The Men in Blue
When Nurse is pleased, and I’ve been good,
And not sat playing with my food,
Or smeared the nursery window pane,
Or put coal in my luggage train,
The thing she always lets me do
Is go to see the men in blue.
I used to look in thro’ the gate,
But that’s been boarded up of late;
But this I do not really mind,
For from the railway bank I find
That I can get a splendid view
Of lots and lots of men in blue.
CATS
To the outsider and the uninitiated, the 3rd L.G.H. is all that its title implies, but to some at least of the dwellers within its gates it is nothing more nor less than a home for cats of every persuasion – cats with four legs, cats with two, striped cats, plain cats, the domestic cat, and the undomesticated cat – but it is of the first mentioned we would write; the second class is apt to be viewed with a jaundiced eye (we have suffered at their hands!), and so on to the third and fourt
Sister
There is a deal of difference, in hospital, between the word Sister and the word Nurse. Sister is, of course, a Nurse. But Nurse is not a Sister. However, there is nothing to prevent you calling Nurse ‘Sister’ – provided that Sister herself is not at your elbow. If she is, you had better be careful, both for your own sake and for Nurse’s. Some wearily-wise orderlies, and many patients of my experience, apostrophise all the female officials of a hospital as ‘Sister.’ The plan has
Will I... Won't I...?
Shall I... Shan't I...?
They love me, they love me not,
They love me, they love me not,
They love me...
Oh go on then - Now, where was I.... ?
This might be the last entry for a while. There's plenty more available, but it takes a lot of time, and sometimes I feel just a tad depressed at how few times it gets read In fact, looking back, there are many blogs which are totally devoid of text, but even they manage to get scores of views. I think perhaps this is time that I could be spending more profitably [but not in the financial sense!].
Sue
The Post Office
The work of the post office is by no means the least important of
“Going Sick”
By one of our Post-Office V.A.D.’s
I began by having the shivers: I had them when I walked down corridors, I had them equally when I sat in the safe seclusion of the post office. I decided gloomily that they were certainly “ushering in” something – were, in short, as the Home Nursing Manual would express it, the “invasion of the symptoms.” The only point was, the symptoms of what?
As soon as I got home I took my temperature with the instrument supplied to me at the Home Nurs
The Australians
An Impression by a Night Nurse
In they came, tall, loose-limbed, wondering greatly what it was all going to be like. They had practically travelled from one end of the world to the other, but what was distance to them? In spite of all their curiosity of England they were still haunted by a kind of nostalgia for those far-away vast places they had left behind. You could see them dreaming of huge expanses of sky and land here in the huts where there was a well-proportioned r
Our Visit to Buckingham Palace
One morning a registered parcel came for the C.O. It contained 130 invitations for a tea-party to be given by His Majesty to his soldiers in hospital. There was also an invitation for the Matron and one Sister. We decided to draw lots for the Sister, and Sister Barrett was the lucky one.
Then came a busy time collecting the names of the men. We tried to send those who had been longest in the hospital, and regretted that everyone could not go; but I am sure
FIRST STEPS IN NURSING
When one is young and at school one has no option in the matter – one has to do exams. The only escape is to be ill, and then one’s fond mother can send an excuse. If one does exams when one is grown up and quite old, it is entirely one’s own fault, and one only has oneself to thank. These were the reflections which occurred to me, somewhat late in the day I confess, as I sat waiting for my home nursing exams. We sat round an outer room, and a clerk called our number
I thought that I knew what the word 'Spruce' meant, but it had a very different meaning during the Great War.
On “Sprucing”
By an Authority
Fact and Fiction in Unequal Portions
The South African War, if it consummated no other useful purpose, enriched the English language with such words as “trek,” “commandeer,” “kopje,” “veldt,” “in” and “out-span,” and other expressions of a similar illuminating quality, but I cannot call to mind, since the commencement of this Universal Upheaval, any
FIRES
Fires that require lighting and feeding were, we are convinced, invented by a close relative of the evil one. Whether as penance for our sins or as a foretaste of things to come is beside the mark; and from this you will gather that we have suffered, and you will not be mistaken.
Imagine yourself in charge of a ward full of sleeping men and a coke fire, and, having kept a vigilant eye on your stove (of surely the most diabolical pattern created) up till about 11.15 p.m., you leave it
Tittle-Tattle on the Gate
Written in collaboration by the R.P’s of the 3rd L.G.H.
“ ‘Ere, Bill, look at ‘R.P.’ on the bloke’s sleeve. What’s it mean?”
“Rookie-Pincher,” sneered an Australian patient, winking behind the policeman’s back at a pretty girl in the road.
Perhaps this little colloquy sums up as well as anything the military policeman’s position. It is a hybrid one – something between St. George and the Dragon; but it may be asserted that the “copper” is “preyed upon” as much
THE THEATRE PARTY
Dear Old Bill,
Have been lying awake for hours, so it seems. Have you ever noticed how you get bubbles in your think-tank when you cannot sleep? Well, that’s how it is with me tonight and I remember the note I owe you. The Sister is down at the other end of the ward, snugly tucked in her chair before the fire, and seems (Note, I say seems) snoozing, with a pleasant smile on her face, and this dim religious light has got into my veins, so here goes for my thinks and impr
SCULPTOR AND SURGEON
How they Collaborate at the 3rd L.G.H.
A new department has been formed at the 3rd L.G.H., which for the first time brings the sculptor’s art to the assistance of the surgeon.
For years artificial limbs have been provided by the Government for men who need them, and now, thanks to the experiment carried out here with such successful results, the Director-General, Sir Alfred Keogh, has given orders that the men who have suffered such injuries to their faces as to cause
MORE “DON’Ts FOR PATIENTS
By one in C8
DON’T put “Tonight’s the Night” on the gramophone when Nurse is cross. (Her evening off has probably been postponed till Friday.)
DON’T ask Sister for cigarette cards if she looks worried. (She is most likely having an interview with Matron tomorrow morning.)
DON’T develop new symptoms when the M.O. is snappy. (You will get scant sympathy if he was three tricks down on his “no trumps re-doubled” last night.)
If the M.O. prescribes No.9’s, DON’T
The One O’clock Brake:
How our Patients See the Sights of London
Around the main entrance, in no semblance of military order, were gathered familiar hospital figures – a score of patients in blue. The sun shone intermittently through the racing clouds, and as the wind blew with a shrewd tang the men had the forethought to array themselves in great coats. Rumbled up the drive the punctual brake – a pair of iron-grey horses driven by an iron-grey coachman.
The presiding deity with consumma
Halfway through typing this, some little bell started ringing in my brain - what was it that sounded so familiar? Did it have some modern day parallel in my life? Aaaahh.... then I realised.
All I will say is just take note of the first and last letters of the author's surname, and dwell a little...
PROBLEMS IN THE PAY OFFICE
By the Staff Sergeant in Charge
The method of arriving at the figure for the monthly distribution of allowances has been a difficult problem to the greater number
Two separate accounts of Zeppelins [or just the fear of] at night:
The Diary of a Zepp. Night
By a Girl Orderly
(Passed by Censor)
9.15. – Night Sister blows in rather hurriedly. “All lights out, and just run round to the other wards.” Start off on my travels, beginning by badly barking my shins on a radiator. Make a frantic dive for the door and land with a resounding crash into a screen. Start once more, and eventually arrive – falling over every possible object en route. Dash ups
THE CAPTIVES' HOMECOMING
An Impression, by a Night Nurse, of the Arrival of the first Convoy of Wounded Exchanged Prisoners from Germany.
We waited for them to come with a sense of expectation, a thrill that was very close to tears. Passing the gates of the hospital grounds we saw a tense crowd throbbing with pent-up sympathy. They were arriving. One felt, as we saw them in the cars, some of them such pitiful sights, that nothing in all the world would be enough to make up for those drear
A Nursing Orderly’s Day
By Pte. Ward Muir, R.A.M.C. (T.)
3rd London General Hospital
Wandsworth, S.W.
Aug., 1915
My Dear Dick,
Yes, it’s rather a change from one’s ordinary life, but you’re wrong in surmising that I find my new career sad and painful. I wouldn’t minimize the suffering which the mere existence of this hospital implies; the fact remains that I have enjoyed more jokes in the few weeks since I became a Nursing Orderly than in many a long month of peaceful civilisatio
