Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 170, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1918 — MRS. S. L. JORDAN HEARS FROM HER DAUGHTER [ARTICLE]

MRS. S. L. JORDAN HEARS FROM HER DAUGHTER

Military Hospital, No. 5, Paris, France, June 29, 1918. Dear Mother: • ,•, .. Thursday night I recei Y e . d envelop with your letter and Chede s, dated June 1, and last night 1 ceived two more and m reading them, it was like being at the book and reading forwards, mats Sven letters in B ail and I presume that is all of them. As to the postage, I have had a lot of letters from the ’ states with three cent stamps, and those addressed t° the American Red Cross m addition to the 4 llat de la Concorde, come for three cents and the others they tax me four cents extra. Homer’s last three I had to pay extra postage. Your letters certainly contained a lot of news. I suppose Homer will be coming over soon. He will have many surprises over here, and 1 hop he gets to see both England and France, and go through it safely. I might as well tell you the Boche are raising particular h—again. We have had three nightly raids in succession again. Eleven killed and fourteen wounded night before last. We saw one of the planes going over our heads .when we were headed for the Abri. Some of the girls of the unit I came over with are back from Beauvais, where they were bombed -till they had to leave. One corner of the hospital was blown off when one of them was on duty, but no one was hurt, although glass was thrown all over the beds. They had German, French and American patients in tne hospital where they were. One girl had a German Major, and 9he asked him if he didn’t think the U. S. would be a great factor against them and he replied, “They cannot get over in time to save the situation for the A1 In S ’our issues of the New York Herald, they quote from dead Germans’ dairies and one of them was something like this, “The Americans are amatuer soldiers, but they have a certain ferocity in their fighting and seem to have poor judgment about retreating.” , The first of the week I drew twelve new cases. All were cases with gas burns and eye treatments. It is great work to do things for these boys. They are so appreciative and they can’t say enough about what it means to them to get into a place where there are American women, who can understand them. There are the Y. M. women workers? Red Cross entertainers, but they like the nurses best. I am feeling fine today, but when we have the raids it knocks a few extra hours of sleep that I ought to have# Last night I did not go to bed until 12:30, and was lucky enough to sleep till six instead of five as 1 usually awaken. I get up at 6:30 to the dot and the common comes out at seven, and we have breakfast out here. While I was at Marseilles it was almost impossbile to live on the allowance and this month we had a reduction on Pension rate so I have come out a little ahead# My tent has sixteen boys in it now. All go to meals except two. Nearly all have eye irritations from gas encounters. There is not much nursing and with a little ward housekeeping. The big game is keeping them entertained when they are indoors. The Y. M. and other workers give little entertainments at the pavilion a few rods away from my tent every few days. This is a village of big tents and a lot ~of--people around all the time. There are forty nurses and aides and a hundred boys doing various duties, wards, grounds, kitchen, etc. I have no idea how many doctors there are at this place. Just now there is an epidemic of dyphtheria going the rounds and we ail have had cultures made for our throats. I wont know for a while the results. If you miss hearing from me next week it will be because I am quarantined. You have asked about my letters not being censored and I think I have written the facts. If I were an army nurse or a military nurse, my mail would have to go through a censor, but lam working directly under the Red Cross as an Emergency Military Red Cross nurse and at present it is impossible to have, help enough to censor the Red Cross mail. , , It takes a month for your mail. Your June 1 mail came the 28 and that is as good as it ever does. This week has been as uneventful as one could expect in a war zone. A bunch of us nurses went to the movies the other night and the last picture ended rather suddenly and the Marsaillaise (not anthem struck ( up and we went out to find the siren screaming us deaf and we were a mile from home or Camp Eleyses, and we did some humping to get back and under cover before the barrage began. . ... . I doubt if Chede will get any ( foreign service by not coming before Homer did. They have made a fool ruling about nurses coming, who have brothers in the service. I think she should not have signed for home service and insisted on foreign service. She will be stuck in an old camp for the duration of the war. All the girls realize that to come independently as Emergency nurses we will have a wider experience. You have all mentioned about packages with an order from here. It will do no good for they will move nothing for three months even if signed by the commanding officer over here.. , Well, this is long enough letter and I will .not seal it until tomorrow. Sunday 6:30. No raids last night. On account of diptheria go prepared for tests and stay quarantined tonight. May be tied up for a week As ever, NETTIE B.