They took their casings and hurried off under the trees to fill them before dark. The suggestion spread, and soon the swamp was alive with nurses preparing for a comfortable night’s sleep.

Their mess hall was a long tent in the center of the camp. They ate by lantern light. The food was all from cans, and cold, but the nurses were too hungry that night to be critical.

“Say, this is going to be real fun,” said Mabel, as they made their way back to their tents by G.I. flashlights.

Though it was spring the swampy air had a penetrating chill, which, however, did not discourage the mosquitoes at all.

“When we used to go camping we drove away the pests with a big campfire,” said Nancy, thinking sadly of the good times she had had with her dad, Tommy and their friends at their swamp shack.

“No fires here,” said Ida. “I heard Lieutenant Hauser say we must live just as if we were in range of enemy fire.”

Each tent had one lantern that hung from the center pole. Under it Nancy nailed a puny mirror, which had to serve all of them in turn. They transformed canned goods packing boxes into chairs. Their individual toilet articles had to be fished out from their musette bags every time they were used.

As neither Mabel nor Tini had ever been camping, they had their initiation that night in sleeping under mosquito nets.

“Gosh, feels like a prison in here!” exclaimed Mabel.

“A prison you’ll be glad to stay in,” Nancy informed her, “when you hear how those mosquitoes sing outside it.”

Long before day, however, each of the nurses was rolled in a blanket under her net and the discouraged pests had returned to their swamp muck.

The Nurses Washed Their Clothes in the River

In the days that followed the nurses discovered what it meant to do all their bathing and clothes washing in the shallows along the river shore. With only a compass to guide them, they learned to cut their way through the dense undergrowth of the river swamp. More than one rattler had to be killed in the process. But many others they left alone, as they had been given careful instructions about poisonous snakes and insects in various parts of the world. They crossed streams and lagoons in high boots, and several times ate from their 

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