1916 Letters |

Letter from Celia Duffin to Adam Duffin, 9 December 1915

Pubic Records Office Northern Ireland

image 2 of 3

This item is editable! Sign in or register to track your edits, watch pages, etc.

I am rather sick at being put on night duty
<lb/>again, especially as I had to change my
<lb/>rooms and move into a night house where I
<lb/>don't know any of the nurses. Fortunately
<lb/>my stable companion, a Miss <unclear>Gosse</unclear>, is a very
<lb/>nice girl who has travelled about the
<lb/>world a lot.
This ward is full of Australians and New
<lb/>Zealanders, nice big men, but much more
<lb/>free and easy than the British tommy,
<lb/>some of them have lived in the wild all
<lb/>their lives, and they are all looking for-
<lb/>ward to seeing snow for the first time.
<lb/>They make <add>me</add> laugh sometimes, They have such queer
<lb/>expressions and ways of putting things; one
<lb/>has just asked me to "put the block of
<lb/>wood in that hole", meaning that he
<lb/>wanted the door shut. "Dinkum" is a
<lb/>great expression with them all, meaning
<lb/>"yes, really". Two of them here are
<lb/>maoris and can talk to each other in
<lb/>some unknown tongue. I have awful<pb/>
trouble in getting them up in the mornings, as
<lb/>they must be dressed and their beds made
<lb/>when the day nurses come on, unless they
<lb/>are bed patients. They try all sorts of tricks,
<lb/>and pretend the doctor has ordered them
<lb/>back to bed. To-night when I came on duty,
<lb/>one of them would creep out of bed and
<lb/>switch all the lights out, so that I had to grope
<lb/>my way up the ward in the dark, and when
<lb/>I got back to my seat again, out they all
<lb/>went again.
I am having my night off on Friday, so
<lb/>I expect I shall go to Epsom and spend
<lb/>the night there.
Have you been playing any golf lately? not
<lb/>if the weather is anything like what we have
<lb/>here, it has been raining a lot.
What do you think of the war news, it all
<lb/>sounds rather depressing at present, but I
<lb/>suppose we will struggle through in time.
<lb/>The hospital is always warned when
<lb/>zeppelins are expected, but they never seem<pb/>

| | | |

Letter from Celia Duffin to Adam Duffin, 9 December 1915

Pubic Records Office Northern Ireland

Notes: