Dr. Elsie Inglis

‘And we are prouder of our Serbs than ever. I do hope the papers at home have realised what the 1st Division did, and how they suffered in the fight in the middle of September. General Genlikoffsky said to me, “C’était magnifique, magnifique! Ils sont les héros”; – and another Russian: “We did not quite believe in these Austrian Serbs, but no one will ever doubt them again.”

‘Personally, I have been awfully well, and prouder than ever of British women. I wish you could have seen trained Sisters scrubbing floors at Medgidia, and those strapping transport girls lifting the stretchers out of the ambulances so steadily and gently. I have told in the Report how Miss Borrowman and Miss Brown brought the equipments through to Galatz. We lost only one Ludgate boiler and one box of radiators. We lost two cars, but that was really the fault of a rather stupid Serbian officer. It is a comfort to feel you are all thinking of us. – Your loving sister,

‘E. I.’‘In an Ambulance Train between‘Reni and Odessa, Jan. 24, 1917.

‘Darling Eve, – Now we have got a hospital at Reni again, for badly wounded, working in connection with the evacuation station. We have got the dearest little house to live in ourselves, but, as we are getting far more people out from Odessa, we shall have to overflow into the Expedition houses. Reni itself is quite a small village. I remember thinking Reni a most uninteresting place – crowds of shipping and the wharf all crammed with sacks. It was just a big junction like Crewe!

‘The hospital at Reni is a real building, but it is not finished. One unfinished bit is the windows, which have one layer of glass each, though they have double sashes. When this was pointed out, I thought it was a mere continental foible. When the cold came I realised that there is some sense in this foible after all! We cannot get the wards warm, notwithstanding extra stoves and roaring fires. The poor Russians do mind cold so much. But they don’t want to leave the hospital. One man whom I told he must have an operation later on in another hospital, said he would rather wait for it in ours. The first time we had to evacuate, we simply could not get the men to go. Nice, isn’t it?

‘We have got a Russian Secretary now, because we are using Russian Red Cross money, and he told us he had been told in Petrograd that the S.W.H. were beautifully organised, and the only drawback was the language. Quite true. I wish we were polyglots. We have got a certain number of Austrian prisoners as orderlies, and most of them curiously can speak Russian, so we get on better. Did you know I could speak German? I did not until I had to! This is a most comfortable way of travelling, and the quickest. We have 500 wounded on board, twenty-three of them ours. I am going to Odessa to find out why we cannot get Serb patients. There are still thousands of them in Odessa, and yet Dr. Chesney gets nothing but Russians. The Serbs we meet seem to think it is somehow our fault! I tell them I have written and telegraphed, and planned and made two journeys to Ismail, to try and get a real Serbian Hospital going, and yet it doesn’t go.

‘What did happen over the change of Government? I do hope we have got the right lot now, to put things straight at home, and carry through things abroad. Remember it all depends on you people at home. The whole thing depends on us. I know we lose the perspective in this gloomy corner, but there is one thing quite clear, and that is that they are all trusting to our sticking powers. They know we’ll hold on – of course – I only wish we would realise that it would be as well to use our intellects too, and have them clear of alcohol.’

‘In an Ambulance Train,‘near Odessa, Jan. 25, 1917.

‘You don’t know what a comfort it is on this tumultuous front, to know that all you people at home have just settled down to it, and that you’ll put things right in the long run. It is curious to feel how everybody is trusting to that. The day we left Braila, a Rumanian said to me in the hall, “It is England we are trusting to. She has got hold now like a strong dog!” But it is a bigger job than any of you imagine, I think. But there is not the slightest doubt we shall pull it off. I am glad to think the country has discovered that it is possible to have an alternative Government. If it does not do, we must find yet another.

To her little Niece, Amy M‘Laren‘On an Ambulance Train,‘near Odessa, Jan. 25, 1917.

‘Darling Amy, – How are you all? We have been very busy since we came out here: first a hospital for the Serbs at Medgidia, then in a Rumanian hospital at Braila, and then for the Russians at Galatz and Reni. In the very middle, by some funny mistake, we were sent flying right on to the front line. However we nipped out again just in time, and the station was burnt to the ground just half an hour after we left. I’ll tell you the name of the place when the war is over, and show it to you on the map. We saw the petrol tanks on fire as we came away, and the ricks of grain too.

‘Our hospital at Galatz was in a school. I don’t think the children in these parts are doing many lessons during the war, and that will be a great handicap for their countries afterwards. Perhaps, however, they are learning other lessons. When we left the Dobrudja we saw the crowds of refugees on their carts, with the things they had been able to save, and all the little children packed in among the furniture and pots and pans and pigs.

‘In one cart I saw two fascinating babies about three years old, sitting in a kind of little nest made of pillows and rugs. They were little girls, one fair and one dark, and they sat there, as good as gold, watching everything with such interest. There were streams of carts along the roads, and all the villages deserted. That is what the war means out here. It is not quite so bad in our safe Scotland, is it? – thanks to the fleet. And that is why it seems to me we have got to help these people, because they are having the worst of it. I wonder if you can knit socks yet, for I can use any number, and bandages. Do you know how to roll bandages? Blessings on you, precious little girl. – Your loving aunt,

Elsie.’

‘I have had my meals with the Staff. Unfortunately, most of them speak only Russian, but one man speaks French, and another German. One of the Sisters speaks English. The man who speaks German is having English lessons from her. His despair over the pronunciation is comic. He picked up Punch and showed me YOU. So, I said “you.” He repeated it quite nicely, and then found another OU. “Though,” and when I said “though,” he flung up his hands, and said, “Why a practical nation like the English should do things like this!”’

‘S.W.H.,Reni, March 5, 1917.

‘Darling Mary, – We have been having such icy weather here, such snowstorms sweeping across the plain. You should see the snowdrifts. One day I really thought the house would be cut off from the hospital. The unit going over to Roll was quite a sight, with the indiarubber boots, and peaked Russian caps, with the ends twisted round their throats. We should have thoroughly enjoyed it if it had not been for the shortage of fuel. However, we were never absolutely without wood, and now have plenty, as a Cossack regiment sent a squad of men across the Danube to cut for us, and we brought it back in our carts. The Danube is frozen right across – such a curious sight. The first time in seven years, they say – so nice of it to do it just when we are here! I would not have missed it for anything. The hospital has only had about forty patients for some time, as there has been no fighting, and it was just as well when we were so short of wood. We collected them all into one ward, and let the other fires out.

‘The chief of the medical department held an inspection. That was an inspection! The old gentleman poked into every corner. Took off the men’s shirts and looked for lice, turned up the sheets, and beat the mattresses to look for dust, tasted the men’s food, and in the end stated we were ochin chesté (very clean), and that the patients were well cared for medically and well nursed. All of which was very satisfactory, but he added that the condition of the orderlies was disgraceful, and so it was. I hadn’t realised they were my job. However, I told him next time he came he should not find one single louse. He was very amused and pleased.

‘Dr. Laird and I have a nice snug little room together. That is one blessing here, we have plenty of sun. Very soon it will begin to get quite hot. I woke up on the 1st of March and thought of getting home last year that day, and two days after waking up in Eve’s dear little room, with the roses on the roof. Bless all you dear people. – Ever your loving aunt,

‘Elsie.’‘March 23, 1917.

‘We have been awfully excited and interested in the news from Petrograd. We heard of it, probably long after you people at home knew all about it! It is most interesting to see how everybody is on the side of the change, from Russian officers, who come to tea and beam at us, and say, “Heresho” (good) to the men in the wards. In any case they say we shall find the difference all over the war area. One Russian officer, who was here before the news came, was talking about the Revolution in England two hundred years ago, and said it was the most interesting period of European history. “They say all these ideas began with the French Revolution, but they didn’t – they began long before in England,” he thought. He spoke English beautifully, and had had an English nurse. He had read Milton’s political pamphlets, and we wondered all the time whether he was thinking of changes in Russia after the war, but now I wonder if he knew the changes were coming sooner.

‘Do you know we have all been given the St. George Medal? Prince Dolgourokoff, who is in command on this front, arrived quite unexpectedly, just after roll call. The telegram saying he was coming arrived a quarter of an hour after he left! General Kropensky, the head of the Red Cross, rushed up, and the Prince arrived about two minutes after him. He went all over the hospital, and a member of his gilded staff told matron he was very pleased with everything. He decorated two men in the wards with St. George’s Medal, and then said he wanted to see us together, and shook hands with everybody and said, “Thank you,” and gave each of us a medal too; Dr. Laird’s was for service, as she had not been under fire. St. George’s Medal is a silver one with “For Bravery” on its back. Our patients were awfully pleased, and inpressed on us that it carried with it a pension of a rouble a month for life. We gave them all cigarettes to commemorate the occasion.

‘It was rather satisfactory to see how the hospital looked in its ordinary, and even I was fairly satisfied. I tell the unit that they must remember that they have an old maid as commandant, and must live up to it! I cannot stand dirt, and crooked charts and crumpled sheets. One Sister, I hear, put it delightfully in a letter home: “Our C.M.O. is an idealist!” I thought that was rather sweet; I believe she added, “but she does appreciate good work.” Certainly, I appreciate hers. She is in charge of the room for dressings, and it is one of the thoroughly satisfactory points in the hospital.

‘The Greek priest came yesterday to bless the hospital. We put up “Icons” in each of the four wards. The Russians are a very religious people, and it seems to appeal to some mystic sense in them. The priest just put on a stole, green and gold, and came in his long grey cloak. The two wards open out of one another, so he held the service in one, the men all saying the responses and crossing themselves. The four icons lay on the table before him, with three lighted candles at the inner comers, and he blessed water and sprinkled them, and then he sprinkled everybody in the room. The icons were fixed up in the corner of the wards, and I bought little lamps to burn in front of them, as they always have them. We are going to have the evening hymn sung every evening at six o’clock. I heard that first in Serbia from those poor Russian prisoners, who sang it regularly every evening.

‘The mud has been literally awful. The night nurses come up from the village literally wet through, having dragged one another out of mud holes all the way. Now, a cart goes down to fetch them each evening. We have twenty horses and nine carts belonging to us. I have made Vera Holme master of the horse.

‘I have heard two delightful stories from the Sisters who have returned from Odessa. There is a great rivalry between the Armoured Car men and the British Red Cross men, about the capabilities of their Sisters. (We, it appears, are the Armoured Car Sisters!) A B.R.C. man said their Sisters were so smart they got a man on to the operating-table five minutes after the other one went off. Said an Armoured Car man: “But that’s nothing. The Scottish Sisters get the second one on before the first one is off.” The other story runs that there was some idea of the men waiting all night on a quay, and the men said, “But you don’t think we are Scottish Sisters, sir, do you?” I have no doubt that refers to Galatz, where we made them work all night.’

‘Reni, Easter Day, 1917.

‘We, all the patients, sick and wounded, belonging to the Army and Navy, and coming from different parts of the great, free Russia, who are at present in your hospital, are filled with feelings of the truest respect for you. We think it our duty as citizens on this beautiful day of Holy Easter to express to you, highly respected and much beloved Doctor, as well as to your whole Unit, our best thanks for all the care and attention you have bestowed upon us. We bow low and very respectfully before the constant and useful work which we have seen daily, and which we know to be for the well-being of our allied countries.

‘We are quite sure that, thanks to the complete unity of action of all the allied countries, the hour of gladness and the triumph of the Allied arms in the cause of humanity and the honour of nations is near.

‘Vive l’Angleterre!

‘Russian Soldiers, Citizens, and the Russian Sister,

’Vera V. de Kolesnikoff.’‘Reni, March 2, 1917.

‘Darling Eve, – Very many thanks for the war prayers. They are a great help on Sundays. The Archbishop’s prayers that I wanted are the original ones at the beginning of the war. Just at present we are very lucky as regards the singing, as there are three or four capital voices in the unit. We have the service at 1.30 on Sunday. That lets all the morning work be finished. I do wonder what has become of Miss Henderson and the new orderlies! And the equipment! We want them all so badly, not to speak of my cool uniform. That will be needed very soon I think. It is so delicious to feel warm again. We are having glorious weather, so sunny and warm. All the snow has gone, and the mud is appalling. I thought I knew the worst mud could do in Serbia, but it was nothing to this. We have made little tiled paths all about our domain, and keep comparatively clean there. I wish we could take over the lot of buildings. The other day I thought I had made a great score, and bought two thousand poud of wood at a very small price. It was thirty-five versts out. We got the Cossacks to lend us transport. But the transport stuck in the mud, and came back the next day, having had to haul the empty carts out of mud holes by harnessing four horses first to one cart and then to another. It was no wonder I got the wood so cheap. One of our great difficulties has been fuel.

‘April 18, 1918.

‘I am writing this sitting out in my little tent, with a glorious view over the Danube. We have pitched some of the tents to relieve the crowding in the house. They are no longer beautiful and white, as they were at Medgidia. We have had to stain them a dirty grey colour, so as to hide them from aeroplanes. Yesterday, we had an awful gale, and a downpour of rain, and the tents stood splendidly, and not a drop of water came through. Miss Pleister and the Austrian orderly who helped her to pitch them are triumphant. Do get our spy-incident, from the office. My dear, they thought we were spies. We had an awful two days, but it is quite a joke to look back on. The unit were most thoroughly and Britishly angry. Quite rightly. But I very soon saw the other side, and managed to get them in hand once more. General Kropensky, our chief, was a perfect brick. The armoured car section sent a special despatch rider over to Galatz to fetch him, and he came off at once. He talks perfect English, and he has since written me a charming letter saying our sang-froid and our savoir-faire saved the situation. I am afraid there was not much sang-froid among us, but some of us managed to keep hold of our common sense. As I told the girls, in common fairness they must look at the other side – spy fever raging, a foreign hospital right on the front, and a Revolution in progress. I told them, even if they did not care about Russia, I supposed they cared about the war and England, and I wondered what effect it would have on all these Russian soldiers if we went away with the thing not cleared up, and still under suspicion. After all, the ordinary Russian soldier knows nothing about England, except in the very concrete form of us. We should have played right into the devil’s hands if we had gone away. Of course, they saw it at once, and we stuck to our guns for England’s sake. The 6th Army, I think, understands that England, as represented by this small unit, is keen on the war, and does not spy! We have had a telegram from the General in command, apologising, and our patients have been perfectly angelic. And the men from all regiments round come up to the out-patients’ department, and are most grateful and punctiliously polite. So all is well that ends well.

‘We had a very interesting Easter. You know the Russian greeting on Easter morning, “Christ is risen,” and the answer, “He is risen indeed.” We learnt them both, and made our greetings in Russian fashion. On Easter Eve we went to the church in the village. The service is at midnight. The church was crowded with soldiers – very few women there. They were most reverent and absorbed outside in the courtyards. It was a very curious scene; little groups of people with lighted candles waiting to get in. Here, we had a very nice Easter service. My “choir” had three lovely Easter hymns, and we even sang the Magnificat. One of the armoured car men, on his way from Galatz to Belgrade, stayed for the service, and it was nice to have a man’s voice in the singing. We gave our patients Easter eggs and cigarettes. Except that we are very idle, we are very happy here. Our patients are delightful, the hospital in good order. The Steppe is a fascinating place to wander over, the little valleys, and the villages hidden away in them, and the flowers! We have been riding our transport horses – rather rough, but quite nice and gentle. We all ride astride of course.

‘On Active Service

‘To Mrs. Flinders Petrie,

Hon. Sec., Scottish Women’s Hospitals.

‘Reni, May 8, 1917.

‘Dear Mrs. Petrie, – How perfectly splendid about the Egyptologists. Miss Henderson brought me your message, saying how splendidly they are subscribing. That is of course all due to you, you wonderful woman. It was such a tantalising thing to hear that you had actually thought of coming out as an Administrator, and that you found you could not. I cannot tell you how splendid it would have been if you could have come… I want “a woman of the world” … and I want an adaptable person, who will talk to the innumerable officers who swarm about this place, and ride with the girls, and manage the officials!

‘I do wish you could see our hospital now. It really is quite nice. Such a nice story: – Matron was in Reni the other day, seeing the Commandant of the town about some things for the hospital, and when she came out she found a crowd of Russian soldiers standing round her house. They asked her if she had got what she wanted, and she said the Commandant was going to see about it. Whereupon the men said, “The Commandant must be told that the Scottish Hospital (Schottlandsche bolnitza) is the best hospital on this front, and must have whatever it wants. That is the opinion of the Russian Soldier.” Do you recognise the echo of the big reverberation that has shaken Russia. We get on awfully well with the Russian soldier. Two of our patients were overheard talking the other day, and they said, “The Russian Sisters are pretty but not good, and the English Sisters are good and not pretty.” The story was brought up to the mess-room by quite a nice-looking girl who had overheard it. But we thought we’d let the judgment stand and be like Kingsley’s “maid” – though we don’t undertake to endorse the Russian part of it!

‘We have got some of the personnel tents pitched now, and it is delightful. It was rather close quarters in the little house. I am writing in my tent now, looking out over the Danube. Such a lovely place, Reni is – and the Steppe is fascinating with its wide plains and little unexpected valleys full of flowers. We have some glorious rides over it. The other night our camp was the centre of a fight. Only a sham one! They are drilling recruits here, and suddenly the other night we found ourselves being defended by one party while another attacked from the Steppe. The battle raged all night, and the camp was finally carried at four o’clock in the morning amid shouts and cheers and barking of dogs. It was even too much for me, and I have slept through bombardments.

‘It has been so nice hearing about you all from Miss Henderson. How splendidly the money is coming in. Only one thing, dear Mrs. Petrie, do make them send the reliefs more quickly. I know all about boats, but, as you knew the orderlies had to leave on the 15th of January, the reliefs ought to have been off by the 1st.

‘I wish you could hear the men singing their evening hymn in hospital. They have just sung it. I am so glad we thought of putting up the icons for them.

‘Good-bye for the present, dear Mrs. Petrie. My kindest regards to Professor Flinders Petrie. – Ever yours affectionately,

Elsie Maud Inglis.’‘May 11, 1917.

‘It was delightful seeing Miss Henderson, and getting news of all you dear people. She took two months over the journey. But she did arrive with all her equipment. The equipment I wired for in October, and which was sent out by itself, arrived in Petrograd, got through to Jassy, and has there stuck. We have not got a single thing, and the Consuls have done their best.

‘Mr. French, one of the chaplains in Petrograd, came here. He said he would have some services here. We pitched a tent, and we had the Communion. It was a joy. I have sent down a notice to the armoured car yacht, and I hope some of the men will come up. We and they are the only English people here.

‘The Serbs have sent me a message saying we may have to rejoin our Division soon. I don’t put too much weight on this, because I know my dearly beloved Serbs, and their habit of saying the thing they think you would like, but still we are preparing. I shall be very sorry to leave our dear little hospital here, and the Russians. They are a fascinating people, especially the common soldier. I hope that as we have done this work for the Russians and therefore have some little claim on them, it will help us to get things more easily for the Serbs. We have one little laddie in, about ten years old, the most amusing brat. He was wounded by an aeroplane bomb in a village seven versts out, and was sent into Reni to a hospital. But, when he got there he found the hospital was for sick only (a very inferior place!), so he proceeded on to us. He wanders about with a Russian soldier’s cap on his head and wrapped round with a blanket, and we hear his pretty little voice singing to himself all over the place.

‘Nicolai, the man who came in when the hospital was first opened, and has been so very ill, is really getting better. He had his dressing left for two days for the first time the other day, and his excitement and joy were quite pathetic. “Ochin heroshe doktorutza, ochin herosho” (Very good, dear doctor, very good), he kept saying, and then he added, “Now, I know I am not going to die!” Poor boy, he has nearly died several times, and would have died if he had not had English Sisters to nurse him. He has been awfully naughty – the wretch. He bit one of the Sisters one day when she tried to give him his medicine. Now, he kisses my hand to make up. The other day I ordered massage for his leg, and he made the most awful row, howled and whined, and declared it would hurt (really, he has had enough pain to destroy anybody’s nerve), and then suddenly pointed to a Sister who had come in, and said what she had done for him was the right thing. I asked what she had done for him; “Massaged his leg,” she said. I got that promptly translated into Russian, and the whole room roared with laughter. Poor Nicolai – after a minute, he joined in. His home is in Serbia, “a very nice home with a beautiful garden.” His mother is evidently the important person there. His father is a smith, and he had meant to be a smith too, but now he has got the St. George’s Cross, which carries with it a pension of six roubles a month, and he does not think he will do any work at all. He is the eldest of the family, twenty-four years old, and has three sisters, and a little brother of five. Can’t you imagine how he was spoilt! and how proud they are of him now, only twenty-four, and a sous-officier, and been awarded the St. George’s Cross which is better than the medal; and been wounded, four months in hospital, and had three operations! He has been so ill I am afraid the spoiling continued in the Scottish Women’s Hospital. Dr. Laird says she would not be his future wife for anything.