I have an interesting job now, and it is my own, which is rather a mercy.
Sarah MacNaughtan, 5 December 1914
Late one evening at No. 1 Belgian Field Hospital an ambulance driver wandering the corridors found Sarah MacNaughtan restocking a linen cupboard. They were short-handed, he explained to the nurse. They needed someone to help them unload the ambulances at the railway station at Furnes, where the patients would be put on a hospital train. There wouldn’t be much for her to do: just a bit of help with the lifting, sorting out personal belongings, linen and such. A spare pair of hands. Everyone knew that Miss MacNaughtan never said no; usually she didn’t even need to be asked. She was older than most of the staff at No. 1 Belgian Field. She was also a wealthy, intelligent and sensible woman, and when she saw a problem she wanted to solve it. So she got her coat and hat and climbed into the cab of the ambulance.
It was a short journey into town, but she was tired and had to force herself to listen to the chatter of the driver. They were observing the blackout in town and she couldn’t tell one building from another as they drove carefully through the streets to the station. They could barely see to unload their patients, but they got them down and MacNaughtan walked ahead to find a place for the stretchers. It was even darker inside the station than outside and it took a while for her eyes to get used to it. She had expected an empty platform, with a few porters and bearers waiting about with torches, having a quick smoke, ready to take their patients from them. Instead she seemed to have stepped into a nightmare. The whole platform was filled with wounded men lying on stretchers, blankets or just a bit of straw. She couldn’t see any porters or bearers – simply a blurred mass of broken men, abandoned in the dark.
Somebody waved at her. Did she know when the train was coming? She shook her head and picked her way carefully back towards the station entrance. They couldn’t leave their patients here; they’d have to take them back to the hospital until the station was clear. There’s no point, said the driver, it was like this most nights. Hospital trains were always late, and sometimes they were delayed by whole days. Her guess was as good as anyone’s as to when it would arrive tonight. And no, there were no staff to look after the injured in the meantime.
MacNaughtan went back into the station and wandered as far along the platform as she could, picking her way through men and stretchers. There were patients from her own hospital, men she had nursed just days before, who she had thought would be safely in Calais by now. There were groups of men from other hospitals further away. Worst of all, there were men who had come here straight from the battlefield, wearing the bloodstained dressings applied at the aid posts and with the mud of the trenches still coating their uniforms. When the men heard the rustle of her skirts as she walked past in the dark, they asked her for water, chocolate or a bit of bread, as they hadn’t eaten since the day before. A sudden thought stopped her in her tracks. She realised why no one was looking after the men: no one knew they were here. They had been forgotten in the darkness and cold, everybody thinking they were someone else’s responsibility.
Nurse MacNaughtan took off her hat and coat, rolled them into a bundle and went back to the waiting ambulance. She told the driver to return to the hospital. She and the bearers would be staying. She would need the ambulance’s torches and medical supplies; in fact, she’d need everything in the ambulance that wasn’t nailed down. Waving away his questions, she told him to send someone to collect them at sunrise. The bearers looked at each other, but didn’t argue. You didn’t cross Miss MacNaughtan when she had that look on her face.
MacNaughtan had noticed a goods shed to one side of the main hall. It would do for an instant medical post. After clearing it, she laid out the supplies from the ambulance. It wasn’t much, but they were used to doing a lot with very little at No. 1 Belgian Field. She asked the bearers to patrol the hall with their torches and bring her the very worst cases. Soon the goods shed began to fill with stretchers. MacNaughtan knelt on the cold, hard floor and treated the wounded with the few supplies she had. She cut dressings into the smallest usable pieces, and removed those hurriedly applied on the battlefield. She tore bandages into strips, and gently supported broken limbs. She found a small sink in one of the station corridors and began to wash away the worst mud and blood that caked many of the wounds. The water was cold, but at least there was water. She found a tin mug from somewhere so that the thirsty men could have a drink.
She worked on for hours, until 3 a.m., her eyes red and strained, her back and joints aching. She had treated everyone the bearers had brought her, but there were still so many men outside on the platform. She simply didn’t know what else she could do for them. Then one of the bearers stuck his head round the door: he had heard the hospital train in the distance. Soon smoke, light and the noise of train doors banging open against carriage sides filled the station. MacNaughtan stood motionless as one by one her patients were carried off. None of the train staff seemed to notice her presence. She had done too little, she thought. She had redressed a few wounds and applied some splints, but the men on the platform had been hungry, thirsty and cold throughout the night. Tomorrow would be different.
At sunrise the ambulance came back for her and the bearers. In her room at the hospital she saw the deep bruising on her knees, caused by hours of kneeling on the hard shed floor. Every joint burned and she could barely move her hands. But it wasn’t pain that kept her awake that morning: it was the knowledge that more work waited for her at the station. By midday she was up, writing a list of things she needed. Then she went to the market in Furnes to buy coffee, bread and vegetables. From the hospital kitchen she got two huge marmites and portable stoves, and as many enamel mugs as the staff were willing to give her. From the medical stores she took dressings, bandages, splints, blankets and morphine. Bearers loaded it all into an ambulance and then she returned to Furnes station. There she found a fleet of ambulances, their bearers unloading wounded men and carrying them into the station, with more arriving from every direction.
The stationmaster was surprised that one of the ambulances brought supplies and a determined English nurse. MacNaughtan assured him that she wouldn’t be a burden on him and his staff. All she needed was an empty corridor with a sink and a hook for her gas lamp. Station staff and bearers unloaded her ambulance, bringing in the supplies as the station platform grew crowded once again with wounded men waiting for the next hospital train. Then the staff left, wishing her luck and silently thankful that someone was taking charge. MacNaughtan immediately fired up the burners on her stoves to prepare coffee, cocoa and vegetable soup. Some of the men from the previous night had gone, but the hospital train hadn’t been able to take them all. They were soon indistinguishable from the new arrivals. By the light of her single lamp she saw hands reaching out for a mug from her tray. It was all right, she kept repeating. There was plenty for everyone – she’d be back with more.
And so began Nurse MacNaughtan’s second night at Furnes station. She filled and refilled hundreds of cups and tended the badly wounded; she changed dressings and handed out half a morphine tablet here and there along with the cocoa and the soup. Gradually the station seemed to come to life. Men sat up and warmed their hands on their mugs. Those who had the energy exchanged a few words; there was even some laughter. When the hospital train finally arrived at the first light of dawn, its bearers and orderlies were surprised at the transformation. There was none of the silence and heavy cold they remembered from previous journeys. Instead the patients seemed lighter, and the staff could smell coffee, not blood. This time the station was emptied completely, and when the wounded men had all gone, MacNaughtan began to wash up hundreds of tin cups and scrub the cauldrons so that she was ready for the next night.
From then on, caring for the abandoned men on the platform of Furnes station became Nurse MacNaughtan’s sole purpose. She thought of little else, running between the markets, the hospital and the passage that became her kitchen at the station. On that first evening she had taken over an eight-foot stretch of corridor, but by the end of the first week the entire corridor was hers, and instead of one gas lamp on a hook there was now a whole string of them. Four stoves burned under the cauldrons and there were sacks of onions, potatoes, leeks and cabbages, together with bags of dried peas and lentils and boxes of coffee, cocoa and sugar – all paid for out of her own pocket. Other staff at No. 1 Belgian Field gave up their precious spare time to help her. By the second week the improvised kitchen was full of nurses sitting on vegetable sacks, laughing and chatting as they peeled and chopped ingredients for the soup, while orderlies filled baskets with chunks of bread. The station came back to life, just like some of the men lying on the platforms, who lifted themselves up and tried to comb their hair tidy whenever a nurse approached.
MacNaughtan and her team soon outgrew the corridor, so the stationmaster found her a proper room. It had an electric light, shelving and cupboards, so at last she could organise things properly. More and more nurses and orderlies joined her, and there were now three cooks working on the stoves during the busiest periods. She no longer had to worry about supplies, either: the town’s shopkeepers dropped off their sacks of unsold vegetables at the station every evening. Within the military hierarchy there was relief and gratitude for MacNaughtan’s work, conveniently expressed in a lack of interference.
She thought constantly about how to improve things. Making use of her own wealth, she ordered a little wheeled trolley with a hot plate from Harrods, which made the soup distribution much easier. When she noticed that many of her patients came in with cracked and broken boots, or with no shoes at all, her next order was for 1,000 pairs of the thickest wool socks that Harrods sold. Each evening, after the first rounds of drinks had been served, she loaded up her trolley with the socks and gave them out to anyone in need. One French officer lifted himself up to take a pair, but then suddenly turned his head away. As she moved closer, she saw that he had only one eye and it was full of tears. Was he all right? she asked. Did he need medical attention? Were the socks suitable? ‘Madam,’ the man replied, gathering himself and attempting a small bow, ‘in these socks I could take Constantinople.’
But MacNaughtan had a secret: she herself was chronically ill. She suffered from a form of anaemia that was incurable and that affected her joints and her circulation. So when she returned each evening to her room at No. 1 Belgian Field, she tried not to look at the bruises on her arms and knees, which never seemed to heal. Under her uniform her legs and arms were as thin as sticks, except for her joints, which swelled and burned when she sat down for too long. She was never able to sleep much and although she was handing out food all night, she almost forgot about eating herself. Only the hospital chaplain noticed her frailty and did his best to comfort her. He waited up each night and, when she returned from Furnes station, he helped her down from the ambulance. He always managed to save a plate of food for her, kept warm somehow, and sat with her in the kitchen while she ate. If there was no food left or she wouldn’t eat, he found a bottle of port from somewhere and poured her a good glass. The chaplain was also waiting for her when she returned from the station on Christmas Day. She had worked alone, as most nurses and orderlies were on leave, and she returned midway through the bitterly cold afternoon, staggering up the stairs of the hospital frozen and exhausted. When she summoned the last bit of energy to get into bed she found a warm hot-water bottle there, organised by the chaplain.
It wasn’t just MacNaughtan’s physical health that was frail. When she first arrived in Belgium, it had all seemed so simple: she had come to save lives and nothing else mattered. But as the war was grinding on, producing more and more casualties who were waiting helplessly at Furnes station, it was harder and harder to keep going. She had found it easier in the early days, when it was just her and the two bearers in her improvised kitchen at the station. Now that she led an entire team, she found it difficult to stay cheerful all the time and motivate the others. Her religious faith was also beginning to crumble under the strain. She knew that there were so many similar railway stations across the front, where men lay quiet and bleeding in the darkness and where there was nobody to care for them. One early morning when she returned from the station, a regiment of Belgian soldiers passed her on their way back to the trenches. They wore patched uniforms, but their little band played a jolly tune. She waved to them as they marched past and, when they were gone, she burst into tears.
Some of the casualties she encountered at the station revealed the worst of the war. There were men with horrific facial injuries, stripped of their dignity and their ability to speak. She saw how they watched the other men eat and drink. Only a few had somebody to help them feed through a straw. Most were beyond help and would soon die. One evening she looked across the station to see a mental case struggling against the bearers who tried to hold him still on his stretcher. Although he twisted and strained he didn’t make a sound; there was no raving and screaming, but total silence. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t a dream. She was awake and at Furnes station.
At the end of 1915, after more than a year in Belgium, Nurse MacNaughtan returned to England. Her doctors prescribed rest, but instead she gave talks about her work and raised money for war bonds before returning briefly to the war, working as a nurse in Russia. She was in London waiting for a new posting when her health collapsed in the spring of 1916. Sarah MacNaughtan died at her home in Mayfair in July at the age of fifty-two.
Shortly before she died she had written:
Some people enjoy this war. I think it is far the worst time … I have ever spent. Perhaps, I have seen more suffering than most people … I see them by the hundred passing before me in an endless train all day. I can make none of them feel really better. I feed them and they pass on.
One reviews one’s life as one departs. Always I shall remember Furnes as a place of wet streets and long dark evenings with gales blowing and as a place where I have always been alone.