Canadian Adventurers and Explorers Bundle. John Wilson

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      Phyl and friends on the trail, ca 1916–18.

      “All set. I could do with a cup of tea; I’ve been swept off my feet today. If it hasn’t been one thing, it’s been another. I never thought I would be filling in for the supply clerk when I accepted this posting.”

      “I know how you feel, Phyl. I’ve just been assigned two new patients in addition to my regulars.”

      “How do you keep up, Nina? So many patients and you only have one pair of hands. Surely your fingers must feel like they’re falling off by the end of your shift.”

      “It’s not so much my fingers, Phyl. Massage requires a tremendous amount of lifting and moving patients’ limbs, or what’s left of them in some cases. It’s my arms – and my back – that really ache after a busy day. But, oh, nursing is good work and so necessary. These soldier boys have done so much for us. And now it’s up to us to do what we can to help them back. For you and me, and all of us working here, it’s the least we can do.”

      “I know,” sighed Phyl. “I wanted so desperately to go overseas myself, but things just didn’t work out.” She pushed the cart up against the hall wall and hugged her friend with a big squeeze around the shoulders.

      “Let’s get that cup of tea. Maybe there will be biscuits left, but we had better hurry or those greedy-gusses will have eaten them and left not a nibble for us.”

      In the staff room, ten women sat in chairs in a circle, each holding a mug. They were nursing sisters and also administrative workers like Phyl, who worked in the orderly room as a stenographer.

      “Well, you two – we had almost given up on you. Thought perhaps your watches needed winding.”

      “Phyl and I got to talking,” Nina explained. “But thoughts of tea and your company were never far from our minds!”

      Everyone laughed. It was so important to keep a sense of humour. Working at New Westminster’s Royal Columbian Hospital, the nursing sisters like Nina and even the administration staff like Phyl, saw – unshielded – the after-effects of trench warfare on the human body. The military annex of the hospital was dedicated to veteran rehabilitation. Here, the shattered bodies of Vancouver’s soldiers recuperated from grave injuries, illness, and psychological traumas inflicted by war. Many of the men had answered the call to arms in 1914 and headed overseas in October of that year as members of the 31,000-strong Canadian Expeditionary Force. Still others volunteered later; they left the West Coast and travelled via railway to Quebec City, then by troop ship across the Atlantic Ocean to Britain and the battlefields of France.

      It was mid 1918 and the Great War was in its final months. In total, 55,750 British Columbians volunteered to fight. Some 6,225 never returned. Those that did return suffered greatly – from loss of limbs, loss of mobility or eyesight, the effects of privation and of poor nutrition, and exposure to mustard gas, the chemical weapon unleashed in the trenches on the Allied forces by the German army. Every man came home with memories and nightmares of unspeakable horror.

      The hospital staff saw the veterans as they were, not putting on brave faces for their families, not masking the anguish as they tried to shut off the visions in their heads. The images of corpses rotting in the mud, of comrades crying out in pain and the relentless explosions of the guns and artillery were psychological horrors not easily treated by medicine. Rehabilitation of both body and soul was slow.

      Phyl had a lot to offer. Her first aid and nurse’s aide certificates did not allow her to work directly with the patients, but gave her an understanding of hospital procedure. After completing her schooling, she trained as a stenographer, learned shorthand so she could record dictation and then transcribe the shorthand into typewritten text. Her typing was excellent. She had no difficulty getting office work, but she preferred a hospital setting and had worked at Shaughnessy Military Hospital before coming to Royal Columbian.