The Red Book of Heroes | Page 8

Nightingale had very little chance of learning
any surgery, so she felt that she could not do better than pass some time
in Paris with the nursing sisterhood of St. Vincent de Paul, which had
been established about two hundred years earlier. Here, too, she went
with the sisters on their rounds, both in the hospitals and in the homes
of the poor, and learnt how best to help the people without turning them
into beggars. Every part of the work interested her, but the long months
of hard labour and food which was often scanty and always different
from what she had hitherto had, began to tell on her. She fell ill, and in
her turn had to be looked after by the sisters, and no doubt in many
ways she learned more of sick nursing when she was a patient than she
did when she was a nurse.
* * * * *
It was quite clear that it would be necessary for her to have a good rest
before she grew strong again, and so she went back to Embley, and
afterwards to Lea, and tried to forget that there was any such thing as

sickness. But it is not easy for people who are known to be able and
willing to have peace anywhere, and soon letters came pouring in to
Miss Nightingale begging for her help in all sorts of ways. As far as she
could she undertook it all, and often performed the most troublesome of
all tasks, that of setting right the mistakes of others. In the end her
health broke down again, but not till she had finished what she had set
herself to do.
* * * * *
It was in March 1854 that war broke out between England, France, and
Turkey on the one side, and Russia on the other. The battle-ground was
to be the little peninsula of the Crimea, and soon the Black Sea was
crowded with ships carrying eager soldiers, many of them young and
quite ignorant of the hardships that lay before them.
At first all seemed going well; the victory of the Alma was won on
September 20, 1854, and that of Balaclava on October 25, the
anniversary of Agincourt. But while the hearts of all men were still
throbbing at the splendid madness of the charge when, owing to a
mistaken order, the Light Brigade rode out to take the Russian guns and
were mown down by hundreds, the rain began to fall in torrents and a
winter of unusual coldness was upon them. Nights as well as days were
passed in the trenches that had been dug before the strong fortress of
Sebastopol, which the allies were besieging, and the suffering of our
English soldiers was far greater than it need have been, owing to the
wickedness of many of the contractors who had undertaken to supply
the army with boots and stores, and did not hesitate to get these so
cheap and bad as to be quite useless, while the rest of the money set
aside for the purpose was put into their pockets. The doctors gave
themselves no rest, but there were not half enough of them, while of
nurses there were none. The men did what they could for one another,
but they had their own work to attend to, and besides, try as they would
it was impossible for them to fill the place of a trained and skilful
woman. So they, as well as their dying comrades lying patiently on the
sodden earth, looked longingly at the big white caps of the French
sisters, who for their part would gladly have given help and comfort

had not the wounded of their own nation taken all their time. One or
two of the English officers had been followed to the Crimea by their
wives, and these ladies cooked for and tended the sick men who were
placed in rows along the passages of the barracks, but even lint for
bandages was lacking to them, and after the Alma they wrote letters to
their friends in England entreating that no time might be lost in sending
out proper aid.
These letters were backed by a strong appeal from the war
correspondent of the Times, Dr. W. H. Russell, and from the day that
his plain account of the privations and horrors of the suffering army
appeared in the paper, the War Office was besieged by women begging
to be sent to the Crimea by the first ship. The minister, Mr. Sidney
Herbert, did not refuse their offers; though they were without
experience and full of excitement, he saw that most of them were
deeply in earnest and under a capable head might be put to a good use.
But where was