World War One Survivor Essay, Research Paper
Imagine me helping the war effort.Tending to those back from the war.The notice said,”Look after our soldiers”,but as an impressionable child,I belived what the picture showed
The sign was up,bold and proud on St Mary’s Hospital wall.The picture showed a young nurse helping a smiling soldier in a warm cosy room.Thebig,bold,black letters shouted,”Help look after our soldiers.Enroll in the war effort today!”.All I wanted to do was help those smiling soldiers,just like in the picture.So I went to the hospital and signed up.The next day,Mum took me back to St Mary’s where I recived my new uniform,a brilliant white uniform,finished off with pearly white buttons,a pair of white shoes and my name badge, Victoria James boldly placed.It looked like an intruder in my sea of white.
My first weeks were quiet because men had only recently left their homes,so there was not really much to do.My ward was bright white,complete with white sheets on the clean undisturbed beds.The ward had a strong smell of disenfectant,so strong it gave everyone a headache.All of listened to the wireless about the latest revelations in Germay,France and almost all over the world,and wondered if our loved ones were still alive.Also,we worried about a sudden surge of soldiers,injured on the front line.As the war progressed,so did the death toll of our patients.The first I remember tending to was a young man,about twenty three years old,just returned from Germany.He was in a bad way.Nothing like what the picture had led me to believe.No smiling young men,glad to be home had passed through here.Just angry and depressed men,either with fatal or terrible injuries or with the knowlage that if they ever recovered,they would have to go back to their platoon.
The young man’s name was John Davis,if I recall correctly,a very plesant man.His right leg had been severely injured and so had his left arm.I was his nurse until his leg was amputated and he went home.I never saw him again.
Soon I regreted joining the war effort.The poster had filled me with fals images,made me think that I would be a ’smiling nurse’ too,but seeing all these soldiers made me very unhappy.The doctors were in panic and many nurses had left,unable to handle the horror infront of them.Their tales of terror had shocked them.The war grew and grew.The patients kept on coming to us ,many on the brink of death,begging us to save them.The families grieved ovr their loved ones,sometimes thanking us for our efforts,sometimes blaming us for not helping enough.
One morning,I went to my ward,and there I was introduced to Gerald Williams.Another young man sent home from the front in France.He had some injuries but his shell-shock was awful.I was assigned to be Geralds’ nurse,and I cared for him as best I could.Although it was difficult,I had to persist.First I tended to his wounds.He had a dislocated shoulder,deep cuts all over his body and some fingeres missing due to an explosion.I tended to all of these but his shell-shock was the most severe.He didn’t want the light off at night,as it reminded him of night patrols,he didnt’ like loud noises,which startled him and reminded him of of the immense noise in the trenches in France.I tended to himevery day for as long as I could.His injuries had soon healed but the shell-shock was still an intruder in his mind.He was desperate to see his family but no one knew them of could find