ROUND THE HOSPITALS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16594, 18 January 1916, Page 8

ROUND THE HOSPITALS

SCENES IN THE WARDS. TIIE MEETING OF NATIONS. (Fbou Odd Own Coekesfondent.) liUNDOJN, Doouinlxir 3. Nothing brings more vividiy beloro tho nnag.nuXiuii Ulu umvvirsahty ol line Jiluipuo ami ttio multitude ol races vvUicli it enibruoca than a visit to almost auy ol tuo groat hospitals wiucdi to-day uxo liuiod with soldier pu-Uonta. l J r.ictieu.ily ovory important and infirmary m Uio iviagduia, and many hundreds of buildings to wiiich. suah wock i.-s entirely aro now devoted to ouring and tho health oi our men Ibroiien in tho wars. FroUiubly tho hospitais to wiiiok Now Zealand wounded have penotmtod in their unconscious passago Irora th.o ijorts to their resting places number some irundreds, and it is a very difficult matter to had ono anywhere \vh.icii has not now somo Now Zealanders in its beda, or has not quite recently had thcni. Just at present thero is a slight falling oil in tho numbers of our men. in Britian hospitals, for the dysentery crop from the last summer —largely due, I believe, to lack of proper cooking plant in the held, and to laok of variety in tho food—has tapered off with the autumn and with thp withdrawal of our force to rest camps on the islands. A few cases are obstinate, and thero will probably be a. handful of men who will have to return homo with chronic dysentery. Practically every suburb and locality of London has its military hospitals. Generally they aro hospitals already in existence when the war broke out; but King George's Hospital, where somo hundreds of our men have been treated, was built for tho new stationary office. Others were schools—from which tho children has-o been evicted, goodness knows whither, —and some of the most ooinfortable poor law infirmaries and old peoplo's homes, which are provided here on a scale of substantial comfort. Many, which havo grounds, have been enlarged by the construction of hutment annexes, a most economical and efficient form of accommodation. Tho grounds are invariably well laid out and pleasant, and the soldiers moving about in them, garbed in the warm, pioturesqne royal bluo uniform of the hospitals, are a constant centre of interest to passers by. I happened in one thick, foggy afternoon into one of the largest hospitals on the banks of the Thames, searching for New Zealanders. It was no great task, for the orderlies are so often asked the same question that they can generally tell you out of a thousand patients which, are from the dominion. Tho only confusion sometimes is between Australians and' New Zealanders, and that is a confusion which the average New Zealander, aftor the rigours of Gallipoli, does not in the least resent. What rivalry there was between the two forces in the training days in Egypt was transformed at onoe on April 25 into a mutual regard and respect. (Six months of that desperate fighting has toned dpwn somo of the asperities of neighbourly jealousy, and Australians and New Zealanders alike now desire nothing better than to have their nearest cousins for companions in arms. All through the hospitals one finds Australians and New Zealanders the closest friends, and the best guide to New Zealanders in any ward is any Australian who happens to bo there, too. At this Thames-side hospital I found my quarry being wheeled along to a window by two of his matee, lo " have a look at Ruapehu." It was a little pioce of irony from the North Island, for the most that one could see across the river was tho occasional shy outline of Westminster. The window was open and the eyes stung with the acrid fog. "It reminds you of a bush fire," said a trooper from Gisborne. And so it did, the slow, smoking fire that rolls across the tracks of the Motu and Mount Messenger, without much danger but with a great discomfort.

Just then the fog blew off a little. Westminster showed its venerable form more distinctly, and a little steamer -with a great mouth-full of barges in tow pushed her nose down stream on a. sloppy ebb-tide. "That's the limit," said my friend with, amazement, as she dropped her funnel to the deck to get through under the arches of the bridge. dose at nand were other New Zealandere, including a Maori. In another ward a bright, laughing-faced boy from the Upper Hutt, the favourite of the ward and of many visitors, lay half paralysed in his bed, riddled with bullets from the sweep of a Turkish machine-gun. Tho bullets are comparatively harmless, but the injury to tho spine, it is feared, is permanent. Tet ho is persistently cheerful, so far from tho blue skies of Wellington. FROM THE KING COUNTRY.

In another ward not far off a New Zealand trooper lay in the worst stages of enteric. Ho had not been long there, and the disease, as in so many cases, had declared itself long after he left tlio shores of Gallipoli. Ho was in a high fever, and scarcely conscious, and could only slowly and painfully spell his name—" G-r-i-f-f-e-n." He whispered something about the King Country, enough to denote his origin. lam glad to say that Griffon, of the King Country, is now quite himself again, thanks to the efficient treatment which is common to all Britieh military hospitals. In another hospital I found quite a large proportion of Maori patients. They are an interesting study. Many of them are inclined to despondency when they are really bad, and the change when their condition improves is striking. Some of them —bronchitis and dysentery cases —looked for a while pitiful, but the improvement as the disease burned itself out was remarkable, and there are no brighter men about the hospitals than the convalescent Maoris. The comradeship between the Maoris and the other New Zoalander6 —both officers and men —is a thing good to behold. One party of New Zealanders whom I mot were highly indignant because of a slight which they considered a ward sister had inflicted upon a Maori comrade—a slight which could not have been more resented if it had been directed against themselves. The victim himself was only indifferently upset. Like most Maoris, he was very fond of children, <md at the time I was being told of his insult he waa frolicking in the ward with a number of children from the neighbourhood. Another sidelight on the relations of. the two New Zealand races was provided by two members of tie C.Y.C., sitting by the bedside of a Ngaitahutoa, and gently tending him back to consciousness after an operation. Yet again, in the officers' mess at Weymouth, two of the closest friends were an ex-student of To Ante, a scion of Te Arawa, and the grandson of a New Zealand bishop. There was nothing simulated in their friendliness. Lifo in the wards is altogether simple and pristine compared with what our men have been roughing during the last few months. They tako quite naturally to nursing those of their comrades -who require it, and I frequently see different men in one particular hospital sitting by the bedsido of an Aucklander whose life has more than once been despaired of and reading extracts of the Auckland Herald to him. News of home is their great craving. They cry out for New Zealand papers as soon as they are able to take food. They want letters also, but the dislocations of the communications resulting from their removal from the fighting line to the hospitals in England have inured them to long waiting for the mails to overtake them. Another great curiosity is to hear of their comrades whom they left at the front. The inmates of a ward soon become a family of their own, despite the widely scattered regions from which they come. One can pick quite easily the Englishman who has been only a few years in the dominions and has enlisted in the overseas forces. He generally has some of his own people to see him. But although our men are so far from home, they are so well looked after that amongst many of the Tommies there is a feeling of being neglected, by comparison. A lady talking with one of our wounded the other day turned to the next bed and inquired of the occupant, " Are you a New Zcalandcr?" "No," was the wistful answer, "but I will be next time I am born." . Englishmen in the overseas forces are quito°pleased to see our men so '(veil treated and so "well patronised by visitors.. They feel that it is a small return for the benefit they have got from their migration to the dominions, and that it is helping to knit tho countries closer together. Almost every ward has its curiosity. The Maoris are a constant source of interest to visitors, and are themselves much tickled by the surmises which they overhear as to thoir nationality. The curiosity that moststruck mo in any hospital was a young English boy of 14£ years, who had bom fighting in "Flanders for five months with the Royal Artillery. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. He was ruddy and was sitting up in bed enjoying hugely the attentions and the smokes that visitors brought him. His chart hung above his bed. and I read tho disease—" Under age!" This, it scorns, was merely a way of fretting him back to his parents. He had given a false ago in enlisting.