THE NEW ARMY NURSE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12244, 16 February 1918, Page 8

THE NEW ARMY NURSE.

NO “BEDSIDE MANNER.”

(By OLIVE DENT, in the “Daily Mail.”)

Miss Olive Dent, who has been nursing at the front for two years, has written in “A V.A.D. in France” one of the j oiliest as well as one of the most human books of the war. In it she pays a glowing tribute to the fortitude, devotion and self-abnegation of our lighting men, and incidentally she reveals the no less noble spirit of the women who tend them so devotedly. 'l'lie new Army nurse is a very modern person. She may hail from Chicago or Melbourne, Alberta or i'imlico, Cape Town or Aberdeen, but, no matter what her she is, like the hew Array soldier, an iconoclast. She began in the early days of the war with the outward and visible sign of a nurse. She discarded the traditional bonnet and cloak and adopted short shirts, thick coats, a walkingstick, and boots with a threc-quarter-inch sole fitted with ‘‘military rubbers.”

The next step was more gradual, more subtle. She adopted the jargon of her patients and sho discarded the popular pose associated with a nurse. This, doubtless, was a reflection from “ the boys.” For when a. warrior and hero stoutly refuses to appear either or both, persisting in being a true Bairnsfather “Bill,” " A If,” or “Bert,” a nurse is not going to make much pipgress if she maintains an angel-oi-mercy attitude towards him. As she herself is quite capable of phrasing it, “The ministering angel ‘stunt’ is a ‘ wash-out.’ 1 have no use for it. It puts the wind-up a patient.” /The soldier likes to be addressed in his own funny language. In it he recognises *a sign of freemasonry. He rarely desires spoken sympathy; he prefers to be “chipped.” Ho wants the women of Britain as well as the men to play the game, but above all to play the game with nonchalance. He admires efficiency, but he adores efficiency combined with nonchalance jnst as wholeheartedly as he abhors “ swank ” and pose. Even when the Boche is overhead, the “Archies” bellowing, and the shrapnel rolling off the hut-roof, he wants no gentle munnurings of reassurance.

The modern nurse has not ceased to be less of a ministering angel in fact because she repudiates the title and “has no time for” the pose in praotice. She can, when the occasion demands,_ he just as sympathetic, just as pitying, just as soothing as ever woman was or could be.

A boy subaltern once told me: “We had marched some miles back from the line where we had left misery and anguish unspeakable—dirt, cold, vermin ; bitter, dogged enmity; unceasing, purposeful vigilance; deliberate, premeditated mutilation of nature and man.

“ I was in a stupor, a trance of mental degradation, and one of the first tilings that struck my numbed brain was the vision of a nurse at a casualty clearing station.

“ She was all in white (presumably, dressing overalls), and to mo she typified cleanliness and purity, sweetness and loving kindness, idealism and reverence. Almost I could have knelt and prayed to her.

As it was, I saluted, then waved my stick. She smiled, waved her hand in return, and disappeared into a nmrI Ml suddenly humanised, upHer influence stayed with me. rhat_ir’"rsonal woman and her work remain a lodestar to me.”

Io deaf-t—perhaps sudden, relentless, unwind, seemingly unnecessary—we nurses inevitably grow resigned, hub the illimitable love and forgiveness that is to come dwarfs any attempts at a bedside manner.” We pray—ves. Only onr Maker knows how we have sometimes prayed, short little monosyllabic petitions, beaten and beaten out hv a subconscious brain busied with other and purely practical matters, prayers formulated quite unknowingly on behalf of a perfect stranger and prompted by an anguish of pity, an inanity ot aching sorrow. But of such moments “the bovs ” know nothing. They do not want to know According to our queer little twentieth century code of philosophy, all they ask from us in hospital life m that towards death we should have resignation and a stiff upper lip a „d " month frn L .1* ,ttJe prowration lo turn up at the corners.