The Nurse Who Watches Over Dreaming Soldiers in "Night Duty"

Eva Dobell

Stanzas 1-3 of "Night Duty" by Eva Dobell

The pain and laughter of the day are done
So strangely hushed and still the long ward seems,
Only the Sister’s candle softly beams.
Clear from the church near by the clock strikes ’one’;
And all are wrapt away in secret sleep and dreams.

Here one cries sudden on a sobbing breath,
Gripped in the clutch of some incarnate fear:
What terror through the darkness draweth near?
What memory of carnage and of death?
What vanished scenes of dread to his closed eyes appear?

And one laughs out with an exultant joy.
An athlete he — Maybe his young limbs strain
In some remembered game, and not in vain
To win his side the goal — Poor crippled boy,
Who in the waking world will never run again.

Eva Dobell was born in 1876 and was the daughter of a wine merchant. Dobell joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) as a nurse. Women who volunteered as nurses with the Voluntary Aid Detachment served wounded and sick soldiers in both field hospitals and other medical facilities.

WWI V.A.D. poster

In the poem “Night Duty,” Eva Dobell describes the experience of a V.A.D. nurse on night duty. Through the depiction of sleeping soldiers who she watches over, Dobell shows the brutal aftermath of the war. Though the soldiers are no longer in battle they are still faced with the effects of their time in the trenches. Dobell describes what she witnesses but also guesses what these men could be experiencing in their dreams. The poem captures the difficulty of witnessing what the war has taken from the soldiers. Dobell describes a man who “cries sudden on a sobbing breath,” in his sleep. Sleep is meant to be peaceful, but Dobell knows that, for some of the men, even in sleep there is no respite.

A nurse caring for wounded soldiers in 1918.

In stark contrast to the sobbing man who is “gripped in the clutch of some incarnate fear,” Dobell depicts a boy who “laughs out with exultant joy” as he sleeps. While the image of this particular soldier should leave the reader reassured that some of the men are not destroyed by the war, Dobell taints the image of the joyful boy when she writes “poor crippled boy, / Who in the waking world will never run again.” In these lines, Dobell reveals the painful truth. Though the man may have found peace for one small moment, he will have to live the rest of his life entirely changed by the war.

Throughout her poem, Dobell provides shocking contrasts. The first line of the poem says “the pain and laughter of the day are done.” The words “pain” and “laughter” sound wrong together. It is odd that joy coexists with suffering, yet in this hospital it does. Dobell uses contrasting words and images to show the wide range of emotions that these men experience in the aftermath of battle. Dobell provides further contrasts in the waking and sleeping hours in the infirmary. The soldiers “bandied talk and jest from bed to bed,” while awake but in sleep “they lie here deep withdrawn, remote and strange.” As Dobell shows in the men she focuses on, these men suffer from the war, but they are also just men who find relief in the laughter they are able to find.

 Happiness and suffering are constantly contrasted throughout the poem. I think Dobell uses these contrasts to show how strange it is that these emotions can coexist. Despite the horrors they have faced and will continue to face, many of these soldiers – whether through sleeping or waking hours – are able to find small pieces of joy.

For more information on Eva Dobell:

https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/eva-dobell/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Dobell