Looking Backwards - a Note by the Matron

September 1916

As we go to press we have well entered the third year of the war. When one looks back it seems hardly possible that this can be so, although I suppose we have all crowded into the last two years more than we have ever done before. Looking round the wards which have been built all around us, and seem to have grown up with us, we wonder when it will stop growing.

We started the 3rd London General with 520 beds crammed together in those first days in every available room and corner of the buildings. Then by degrees, after days and nights of ceaseless hammering, the first long corridor appeared - which is now called the Old Huts - and the surplus beds were drafted into it. Then we thought we had a big hospital. Now we have 1,637 beds equipped and the majority of them occupied, and we are contemplating extending up to 1,800. With the second extension was added another 520 beds; this meant extra kitchen accommodation and stores. These all seemed to spring up like mushrooms, and as soon as they were finished the equipment was put in, and in a very short time we had A, B, C, and D corridors in the New Extension occupied, and working well.

Looking back over the work of two years, it has been hard and unceasing, but I think we all feel that, in spite of this, it has not been altogether unhappy. The wonderful cheerfulness of the men when they must be suffering, the brightness of the wards, and the general air of contentment through the Hospital, makes one feel that the years have been well spent. Many changes have occurred, and faces that were very familiar have gone - some for a time, some for ever. Convoy after convoy arrive night and day, and the well-known characters about the place disappear one by one. Still we go on with 'the daily round, the common task,' living from day to day and hoping - sometimes almost against hope - that one day there may be a silver lining to the cloud.

One of my special friends has just had his hospital birthday, and he is as cheerful today as he always has been, and I think sets us all an example. Our Gazette, too, has just had its first birthday, and I look forward to it with real pleasure each month and wish it every success in its second year. Many of the Staff have been here all the time. The Nursing Staff, in common with others, have taken the rough with the smooth all the way through. Many have been the dark days when wards had to be moved, surgeons changed, and staff nurses put on night duty, but in spite of all these hardships there is a bright side, although we don't always see it.
In the beginning of the third year of the Hospital, we all, I think, feel more hopeful, and who knows, before long we may be able to
'Pack up our troubles in our old kit bags and
Smile, smile, smile.'

I wonder!

EDITH HOLDEN