Rolling Stones – "Sister Morphine" (1971)

Here I lie in my hospital bed 

Tell me, Sister Morphine

When are you coming round again? 

In the previous 2 or 3 lines, I told you about visiting the In De Vrede café in Vleteren, Belgium, to taste what many beer writers call “the world’s best beer” – the Westvleteren 12 quadrupel ale brewed by the monks of the Saint-Sixtus abbey.

Dozinghem Military Cemetery

After tasting a Westvleteren 12, I took a walk to the nearby Dozinghem Military Cemetery, the final resting place of 3000-plus British Commonwealth soldiers who died in Belgium in World War I.

The Dozinghem cemetery was built on the site of a British field hospital – or “casualty clearing station.”  Outside the cemetery was a marker commemorating Helen Fairchild, a nurse who served at that casualty clearing station:

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Helen Fairchild was a 32-year-old American who volunteered to serve as a U. S. Army nurse shortly after her country entered the war in April 1917.

She was sent to Dozinghem in anticipation of the British offensive that was launched in that part of Belgium in July 1917.  

That campaign, which lasted until November, later became known as the battle of Passchendaele.  It resulted in roughly a quarter of a million British casualties and a quarter of a million German casualties.  

American nurses

Conditions at the Dozinghem field hospital are described by one source as “extreme,” and I’m guessing that is quite an understatement.  (Helen was one of only 64 nurses assigned to staff the 2000-bed facility.)  

Dozinghem was bombed by the Germans on August 17, and some of those bombs contained mustard gas – which was used by the Germans for the first time at Passchendaele.

Here’s an excerpt from one account of what things were like at Dozinghem on that night and subsequent nights:

The first hard experience[for the nurses] came when an exceedingly large convoy of patients, overwhelmed by mustard gas, and the picture of intense suffering, poured in on them in great numbers . . . 600 in less than 48 hours, and it was repeated for many a night.

Nurses wearing gas masks

By Christmas of that year, Helen was unable to eat without vomiting.  An x-ray revealed that she had a large gastric ulcer obstructing the pylorus, which connects the stomach to the small intestine.  She seemed to be doing well after surgery was performed to remove the blockage, but became jaundiced a few days later and died shortly thereafter.

Helen’s ulcer was likely caused or at least made worse by her exposure to mustard gas.  It is believed that she gave her gas mask to a wounded soldier the night of the bombing.

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The official history of the hospital where Helen Fairchild served contains this description of her funeral:

A gloom and sadness was felt throughout the camp, she being the first nurse who had died at the hospital.  She was given a military funeral, a most solemn and impressive ceremony.  Representatives from all the military organizations in the area and all nurses who could be spared were present, and floral emblems were sent by all the organizations in the hospital area.  The English nurses from Canadian Stationary Hospital No. 3, where Miss Fairchild was cared for, lined the grave with evergreens. . . . After all military honors, the “Last Post” was sounded.

(“Last Post” is a bugle call used at British military funerals.  It is the British equivalent of “Taps.”)

Here are two photos taken at the funeral service:

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Morphine was used to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers in the American Civil War, World War I and World War II.  It was highly effective, but could also be highly addictive.

Click here to listen to the Rolling Stones’ recording of “Sister Morphine,” which was released on their Sticky Fingers album in 1971.  The song had previously been recorded by Marianne Faithful, who had co-written it with Mick Jagger – her boyfriend at the time – and Keith Richards.

Faithfull and Jagger in 1966

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: