Journal WWI June 3, 1917 The stresses and life of war is so depressing that depression consumes your life. I have been here (I�m not exactly sure where �here� is) for about a month and whatever Kenny tried to tell me couldn�t prepare me for the destruction and cruelty seen before my eyes. I watch men come in that have had there entire lower half of there body�s blown off by shells and bomb explosions. And yet they are still alive and breathing and talking and crying�the ones who can�t talk just cry. And I want to go over and just touch them and say everything will be ok but I am so busy caring for the men who might survive that I don�t have time to console those who are less fortunate. I thought I would come here and just bandage a few people and be able to see the sights a little. But I am kept here twenty-four hours a day and I am tending injured men around the clock. If I am not bandaging a man for a slight wound or helping a doctor out with an amputation or operation, then I am checking the men in the beds and trying to make them comfortable or having the orderlies take the dead ones away. When I find a man in a bed who is dead there are always people to fill the bed with. There is never not a line. But I try my hardest to make sure that the man can�t be revived. What if he is just sleeping? What if he just fainted? I do not want to make the mistake of burying a breathing man. But after about five minutes of checking him, another nurse, probably Betty, comes over and says �Hurry up and get him out of here- there are 30 men waiting for his bed!� But I always try to stay upbeat and have a smile on my face whether or not I know the man will die or survive. I mean, would you want the last face you see be a sad, gloomy face or a smiling beam of sunshine? I would prefer sunshine over gloom any day. But it gets hard some days. The food is bad, the water horrible, the conditions rancid. I wish that we had more money for more beds or supplies or something. But the way things are now, there won�t be any hope for the men here. I�m glad though that the unit is a little ways away from the actual front. Actually we are pretty far back, but I am grateful because there are so many men already and I have seen so much death here that the front must be absolutely mad. I wonder what I would be doing right now if I were home�I would probably be making dinner or helping mama with the laundry or talking to Kenny. I don�t have that many friends here because we don�t really have the luxury of sitting and chatting. Hopefully though, things will lighten up here and I will be able to talk some more with the nurses here. |