A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front by Olive Dent Read Free Book Online Page B

a few other bunks inspected, we all felt competent to give authoritative advice on how to furnish a bed-boudoir-morning-smoke-drawing-room on a franc and a half. Chest of ‘drawers,’ whose characteristicwas that they did not draw, were built from small boxes on the cumulative principle and by the system of dovetailing. Then a chintz curtain was hung in front. Another chintz curtain served as a wardrobe. Indeed, chintz like charity covered a multitude of sins, the greatest of these being untidiness.
    Most ambitious dressing-tables and writing-tables were evolved by standing a sugar-box on end, knocking out the lower side, and nailing on top at the back a small narrow box. These made a brave show stained with permanganate of potash, or, later, when this got rare, with solignum. A camp-bed, too, is easily convertible into a ‘Chesterfield,’ flanked at either end with one’s pillows pushed into pretty cushion-covers. An admirable ‘Saxon stool,’ too, most of us possessed, fashioned from three sides of a box and stained. In post-war days house furnishers must look to their businesses, for the land will abound with men skilled in the art of dug-out furniture, and maidens nimble at throwing together O.A.S. furniture.
    Camp housekeeping was decidedly reminiscent of a picnic. One had the same makeshifts, the same
multum in parvo
with respect to cutlery and dishes, both as regards cooking and serving, the same triumphant adaptation of commonplace articles tosuperior purposes, the same feeling of everything turning out well in the end. Then, too, one had an additional satisfaction, that of being on active service.
    A ‘BAIRNSFATHER’ BUNK
    Three of us – all V.A.D.s – ran the home and mess, which at the time consisted of between sixty and seventy nurses. We were helped by batmen, all P.B. men, who cleaned the huts and tents, swept and washed floors, attended to our supply of drinking, cooking and washing water, – taps and sinks were unknown luxuries, – mended fires, washed dishes, cleaned and cooked vegetables, cut up and cooked meats, and generally did the heavier work. We planned the menus, laid the tables, carved, served out the different meals, cooked certain dishes, did the shopping, dusted, had the management of the home quarters, e.g. preparing rooms for newcomers, tending indisposed sisters, and were generally responsible for the hundred and one little trifles necessary to the smooth running of affairs.
    Man in pursuance of the domestic arts has often been suggested more or less facetiously as a solution of the domestic servant problem. The soldier man in this particular rôle proved himself a curious creature. Some of his virtues he owed to the fact of his being a soldier, and some of his idiosyncrasies to his sex.
    Thus his soldierly dispatch and obedience weremost refreshing to any woman subjected to a succession of pert maids who say ‘Yes, miss,’ and then execute the order at their leisure. Positively at first it was disconcerting to have such instant obedience, to have the batman rise in the midst of washing the floor to go and perform some duty casually mentioned. The Army rule, ‘The last order obeyed first,’ however, soon sinks into one’s mind.
    As workmen our batmen constituted the customary problem a man presents, – they always made a big fuss about having the correct tools. Whereas a woman will drive in a nail with a boot, a hair-brush, or a flatiron, a man must have his tool-bag by him ere he will undertake a little carpentry.
    Possessed of this, however, he will work the proverbial wonders. Our mess furniture was a triumph for our men. The sideboard began life as a huge packing-case for medical stores, so did our glass cupboard, our linen chest, our ‘wine-cellar,’ and our dwarf bookcase, all bravely stained brown and duly polished. Our best plant-stand did much praiseworthy duty, its packing-case pedestal draped in thin green bastiste, and the plant admirably enshrined in a