First Impressions of Night Duty

Winter 1915-1916

By a Girl Orderly

My first and most lasting impression was the Dark; an awful and overwhelming darkness, pierced at rare intervals by distant, faintly-gleaming lights, which swayed in the breeze, but always kept their distance. It was my luck to have the nurse from my ward called away, and for what seemed like endless ages I sat alone in the one small oasis of light in a ward that appeared to be of interminable length surrounded by an unknown number of equally unknown patients. Suppose anything happened; haemorrhage - fits - and it really did sound as though the man snoring on my left would choke that very next minute! What were those hosts of unattached, unaccounted-for sounds; stealthy footsteps that came so far, and stopped - where? Sighs, groans, and thuds that might mean nothing or anything! The 'silent night' seemed a thing of imagination only ... And in the midst of these ridiculous, but at the moment very real, horrors, Salvation appeared in the form of the orderly officer - to whom I am eternally grateful for effectually breaking the spell.

One more impression is the immensity of the distance 'from one given spot to another.' On that memorable night I went with a message to Night Sister's office - 'just down the corridor and round to the left' - and by the time I'd got 'just down the corridor' I hardly knew which was left or right! I gingerly turned the corner and wandered on for about another couple of miles down what felt like a tube tunnel - on and ever onward towards a faint ray of light ... which marked the beginning of another corridor! Having walked for hours - more or less - I was finally fortunate enough to meet one of that rare and elusive species, a male orderly, who nobly showed me my destination and set me on my homeward way.

These, of course, are only very first impressions. Having since developed the eyes of a cat and an instinctive feeling of ' 'ware mat!' in my feet - night duty is really great. but I should like to know if the day orderlies strew the corridors with bath-chairs, trolleys, and stretchers especially for my benefit!