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Title: Women of the war
Author: Barbara McLaren
Release date: November 10, 2023 [eBook #72085]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: George H. Doran Company, 1918
Credits: Fiona Holmes and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN OF THE WAR ***
Transcriber’s Note
Illustration of 'Miss Lena Ashwell' moved from p89 to p79 to correct position.
Illustration of 'The days last load of timber' moved from page 31 to 30
[Illustration]
WOMEN OF THE WAR
BY
BARBARA McLAREN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
THE RIGHT HON. H. H. ASQUITH, M.P.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
INTRODUCTION
I have read this volume with an interest which I feel confident will
be widely shared by the English-speaking public. Its simple and
unexaggerated account of the varied fields of work which have enlisted,
during the last three years, the energies and efforts of women of our
race, forms a unique chapter in the annals of war.
Looked at as a whole, these narratives are as good evidence as could
be found of the depth and universality of the appeal which the war
has made to our women, not only for sympathy but for service. For the
first time it has taught us as a nation to realise how large and how
decisive is the part that can be played in a world-wide contest by
those who are prevented from taking a place in the actual fighting
line. There is no question here of any form of compulsion. The services
and sacrifices which are described in these pages were given and
suffered spontaneously by volunteers. That they should have been on
such a scale, covering such wide and diverse activities, and shared
in by women of every class and of so many types of special or general
capacity, is a speaking tribute, not only to the quickened sense of
national duty, but to the commanding and irresistible authority of a
great cause.
Hardly less remarkable is the testimony which this book affords to the
versatility, one might say the inventiveness, displayed in the share
which women have contributed to the general stock of patriotic effort.
They have done and are doing things which, before the war, most of us
would have said were both foreign to their nature and beyond their
physical capacity. It would be invidious to discriminate, but anyone
turning over these pages will find abundant illustrations. Nor can it
be doubted that these experiences and achievements will, when the war
is over, have a permanent effect upon both the statesman’s and the
economist’s conception of the powers and functions of women in the
reconstructed world.
But I must leave the book to speak for itself and teach its own
lessons. It does not profess to be an exhaustive account of women’s
work in the war. It is content with the more modest task of selecting
and describing some typical cases. I know the scrupulous care with
which it has been prepared, and I heartily commend it, not only as a
trustworthy and uncoloured delineation of actual fact, but as a message
of stimulus and inspiration to us all.
H. H. ASQUITH.
PREFACE
These accounts of the work of some British women during the war have
been collected, not with any attempt at even outlining the scope of
women’s achievement, but simply as pictures, showing the influence
which women in varied spheres have exercised in the course of the
war. Some of those whose records follow are women who, by force of
character and personality, would always have stood apart, even in the
limited opportunities of peace time. Others are taken rather as types
of workers, representing many hundreds who are serving the country in
similar ways. The selection has seemed at times invidious; but it is
easy to realise that when the numbers of workers are so immense in each
of the fields of activity mentioned in the book, no complete record of
individual effort can be attempted.
The object in writing of the experiences of particular workers is to
present a more vivid story than a merely general description could
convey. True understanding of our women’s war work can come only from
personal experience or through the power of a keen imagination. Those
who have no other opportunities can appreciate that work by visualising
the measure of endurance, patience, determination, and unflinching
courage demanded for the successful performance of the tasks which
women have undertaken. If any of these chapters succeed in creating a
living atmosphere in which readers picture themselves working under
similar conditions in similar fields of labour, the primary object of
the book will have been fulfilled. Much will be written hereafter on
every form of women’s service touched on in these little accounts. They
claim only to be windows through which may be seen that wide vista
which has for its foreground the fulfilment of the great tasks of the
war, and for its background a limitless horizon of potential effort.
B. McL.
CONTENTS
I. DR. GARRETT ANDERSON, C.B.E., AND DR. FLORA MURRAY, C.B.E. PAGE The
first women doctors to manage a Military Hospital under the War Office.
This hospital is entirely staffed by women 13
II. LADY PAGET, G.B.E.
Lady Paget took a hospital unit to Serbia when the typhus epidemic was
raging there. She remained at Uskub with her staff after the invasion
of Serbia, continuing her work during enemy occupation 17
III. MISS LILIAN BARKER, C.B.E., AND MISS MABEL COTTERELL
Two outstanding Welfare Workers under the Ministry of Munitions. Miss
Barker is Lady Superintendent at Woolwich, and Miss Cotterell at Gretna
21
IV. MISS C. E. MATHESON AND THE VILLAGE LAND WORKERS
Miss Matheson has been working on the land for over two years, and has
specialised in work with live stock 26
V. DR. ELSIE INGLIS
The founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Dr. Inglis has worked in
Serbia, where she was taken prisoner. She is now serving in Rumania 31
VI. MISS SPROT, THE MISSES PLAYFAIR, AND LADY BADEN-POWELL
Outstanding workers in the Y.M.C.A. Canteens in France. Lady
Baden-Powell has started Boy Scout and Girl Guide Canteens 36
VII. MISS AGNES BORTHWICK
Miss Borthwick is Works Manager in a big filling factory under the
Ministry of Munitions. She is the first woman to hold this position in
a Government factory 41
VIII. MRS. ST. CLAIR STOBART
Mrs. Stobart was with hospital units in Brussels, Antwerp, Cherbourg,
and finally in Serbia, where, attached to the Serbian army with a field
ambulance column, she accompanied the army in its heroic retreat 44
IX. MISS E. G. BATHER AND MISS DOROTHY RAVENSCROFT
Two workers in charge of Remount Depôts for the War Office 49
X. MISS EDITH STONEY AND DR. FLORENCE STONEY
Two X-ray specialists. Miss Stoney is working X-rays in a hospital in
Salonika; Dr. Stoney is in a military hospital in London 53
XI. THE BARONESS DE T’SERCLAES AND MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM
These ladies have worked in Belgium since the beginning of the war, and
are the only women allowed by the Belgian military authorities to be in
the firing line 59
XII. LADY MARY HAMILTON AND MISS DRUMMOND
Typical workers engaged on skilled processes in munition factories. 62
XIII. MRS. FURSE, G.B.E., R.R.C., AND LADY PERROTT, R.R.C.
Mrs. Furse’s successful administration of the Women’s Voluntary Aid
Detachments has been an important factor in the organisation of their
invaluable work. Lady Perrott’s work, both before and during the war,
has added greatly to the numbers and the efficiency of the Voluntary
Aid Detachments 67
XIV. COMMANDANT DAMER DAWSON AND MRS. CARDEN
Commandant Damer Dawson has organised the Women Police. Mrs. Carden has
helped to organise Women Patrols 74
XV. MISS LENA ASHWELL, O.B.E.
Miss Ashwell originated the Concert Parties at the front which have had
such a stimulating influence. For over two years she has organised,
developed, and financed the scheme on an ever-increasing scale 79
XVI. MISS VIOLETTA THURSTAN
Since August, 1914, Miss Thurstan has been nursing in Belgium and in
Russia, where she was wounded in the trenches. She is now Matron at a
great Belgian hospital 85
XVII. H.R.H. PRINCESS BEATRICE, THE HON. LADY LAWLEY, G.B.E., AND THE
COUNTESS OF GOSFORD
Workers in the various organisations of hospital supplies and comforts
90
XVIII. MISS EDITH HOLDEN, R.R.C.
The Matron of a great base hospital 98
XIX. MRS. GASKELL, C.B.E., AND THE HON. MRS. ANSTRUTHER
The organisers of the War Library and the Camps Library, which supply
books to the Army and to the sick and wounded 103
XX. MISS LILIAN RUSSELL AND MISS ALICE BROWN
Workers for the Y.M.C.A. in France, who are managing hostels for the
relations of the wounded 110
XXI. MISS DOROTHY MATHEWS AND MISS URSULA WINSER
Miss Mathews is a typical agricultural worker, engaged in ploughing and
heavy land work. Miss Winser drives an agricultural tractor 114
XXII. MISS EVELYN LYNE AND MISS MADGE GREG
Two representative Voluntary Aid Detachment workers who have done
canteen and rest-station work in France 118
XXIII. MRS. LEACH
The head of the organisation of Army women-cooks 122
XXIV. MRS. GRAHAM JONES
A representative V.A.D. worker who has specialised in motor work. She
went to France in charge of the first Women’s Motor Ambulance Unit
under the British Red Cross Society 125
XXV. MISS GERTRUDE SHAW
Miss Shaw has specialised in the housing and canteen organisation for
the Ministry of Munitions, and is now Chief Inspectress of Hostels and
Canteens 129
XXVI. MRS. HARLEY
Mrs. Harley worked for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals from the outbreak
of war, and was killed by a shell at Monastir in March, 1917, while
tending Serbian refugees 132
XXVII. MISS ETHEL ROLFE AND THE WOMEN ACETYLENE WELDERS
Women engaged on a skilled process largely used in aeroplane
construction 136
XXVIII. LADY LUGARD
Lady Lugard helped to organise the War Refugees Committee for the
reception and allocation of Belgian refugees 141
XXIX. MISS CHRISTOBEL ELLIS
The head of the branch of the Women’s Legion which organises women
motor-drivers for the Army 148
XXX. MADAME BRUNOT AND MISS MARION MOLE
These ladies lived in Cambrai under German rule for over two years, and
did splendid work for wounded and prisoners 151
XXXI. SOME ARMY NURSES
Typical examples of nurses in various forms of hospital service 155
WOMEN OF THE WAR
[Illustration:
IN THE PATHOLOGY LABORATORY AT THE ENDELL STREET MILITARY HOSPITAL,
LONDON
_Alfieri_
_To face page 13_ ]
WOMEN OF THE WAR
I
DR. GARRETT ANDERSON, C.B.E., AND DR. FLORA MURRAY, C.B.E.
Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray have contributed one of the
finest pages to the annals of women’s work during the war, and by their
success have greatly advanced the position of women in the medical
world.
Dr. Garrett Anderson was already a well-known surgeon, and Dr. Flora
Murray equally well known as a physician, in pre-war days, the former
having qualified in 1897, and the latter in 1903. Dr. Garrett Anderson
is a daughter of Mrs. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, M.D., the first
British medical woman.
During the month after the war broke out, Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr.
Flora Murray together organised a Voluntary Women’s Hospital Unit,
staffed by medical women, and offered their services to the French Red
Cross. They established a hospital of 100 beds in Paris, at Claridge’s
Hotel, Champs Elysées, and it is notable that this was the first of the
voluntary hospitals in Paris to start work in September, 1914. Both
British and French wounded were received and treated.
It was not long before the excellent work of these two doctors
attracted very special attention, with the result that they were
approached by the War Office, and asked to organise a hospital at
Wimereux near Boulogne, attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps. This
invitation was a considerable triumph, for it was the first time that
medical women were officially singled out by the British Government and
given equal responsibility with medical men.
The Army medical authorities were quick to realise how wisely their
trust had been bestowed, and, in February, 1915, Dr. Garrett Anderson
and Dr. Flora Murray were asked to take up work on a larger scale, and
to undertake the entire management of the Endell Street Hospital, a
large military hospital in London.
During its two years of work for the sick and wounded, no military
hospital has succeeded in establishing a finer record. To see it is a
wonderful experience. The hospital consists of 17 wards, with 578 beds,
and is entirely staffed by women--surgeons, doctors, pathologists,
oculists, dental surgeons, anæsthetists, dispensers, nurses, orderlies.
The only men are the patients.
Sir Alfred Keogh, the Director-General of the Army Medical Service,
said, when speaking of it: “The hospital is in every respect a military
hospital, differing in no way from any other military hospital in the
country. Major operations comparable to those in any other institution
are performed, and there is no limitation whatever, either medical or
surgical, to the functions which the staff of the hospital undertakes.
Particularly excellent work has been done in the pathological
departments. A special feature of the surgery of the hospital has been
the adoption there of a new method of treating wounds, introduced by
Professor Rutherford Morison.”
This treatment consists of the use of a bismuth-iodoform-paraffin paste
for cases of septic wounds and fractures. Writing of the treatment, Dr.
Garrett Anderson says: “In every case fœtor has disappeared, sepsis has
subsided, and union of bone has taken place with astonishing rapidity,
while the condition of the patient has benefited greatly from being
spared painful daily dressings.”
Set in the very centre of London, and surrounded by tall buildings,
with the buzz and whirl of London traffic all about it, a visitor would
be inclined at first to think the hospital a sad and gloomy place. But
that impression soon passes, for in the wards, bright with colour,
in the recreation room and library, but most of all in the faces of
the soldier patients, happiness and contentment are the prevailing
elements. An atmosphere is as hard to describe as it is easy to
recognise, but the atmosphere of the Women’s Hospital breathes rest and
quiet, and the mutual confidence between patients and doctors which is
so invaluable an asset in successful treatment.
Here, then, for the first time, it has been proved beyond all dispute,
both to the medical profession and to the world outside, that women
doctors and surgeons can equal the success of men in all branches of
their calling, and not only with the ailments of women and children.
The work that these women have proved themselves able to accomplish and
to continue without sign of strain during three years of war ought at
last to secure the recognition that it deserves. Dr. Garrett Anderson
and Dr. Flora Murray will feel that they have worked successfully,
not only for their patients, but for medical women in general, if, as
a result of their demonstration, the doors of the medical schools are
thrown open to women. That the majority of medical women working for
their country to-day have been forced to gain their knowledge and skill
in the schools of the enemy is surely one of the conditions which the
war will sweep away for ever.
[Illustration:
LADY PAGET, G.B.E.
_Hugh Cecil_
_To face page 17_ ]
II
LADY PAGET, G.B.E.
As a monument to human endurance and courage there can be no more
wonderful record than that of Lady Paget’s Hospital Unit in Serbia.
The whole unit, several members of which were Americans, worked with a
devotion and a loyalty unsurpassed during the war, but in Lady Paget
they had a born leader, and a woman of indomitable heroism. At all the
crucial moments, of which there were many, Lady Paget’s wisdom, tact,
foresight, and rapidity of decision saved the situation and enabled her
hospital to render inestimable work to stricken Serbia.
Lady Paget, as wife of a former British Minister to Serbia, already
possessed a wide experience of Balkan hospital work, having worked
through the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913.
In November, 1914, Lady Paget’s Hospital Unit reached Uskub. This
was one of the most critical phases for Serbia in the whole war.
The Austrian invasion was at its height, and the Serbian armies,
their ammunition exhausted, were being driven helplessly through the
country before the enemy guns. Uskub was one of the main hospital
bases, though the conditions there were of the roughest as regards
sanitation and hospital equipment. As soon as Lady Paget’s hospital
could be hurriedly installed it was filled to overflowing with wounded
Serbian soldiers, and for three months the work was incessant. When
the surgical work began to slacken, the great typhus epidemic swept
over the country. The Serbians had no means of meeting it, and Lady
Paget, with two doctors and two nurses, by super-human labours prepared
a great Typhus Colony at Uskub, Lady Paget herself undertaking the
hardest menial work of scrubbing and cooking, and sparing herself no
risk in washing and caring for the infected patients. By the labours
of this gallant staff of five, and some Austrian prisoners working
under them as orderlies, huge barracks were converted into hospital
buildings and filled with hundreds of typhus-stricken soldiers within
little over a week. Then Lady Paget herself caught the deadly fever,
and for many days her life was despaired of. She was so much beloved
throughout Serbia that her danger was felt as a national disaster, and
the children of peasants in far-away places, where she was known only
by name, were taught to pray for her daily, while in the synagogues a
special day was set apart for prayers for her recovery.
In the spring, before Lady Paget was fully restored to health, she
returned to England to prepare for further work, and in July, 1915,
she again went to Serbia. She returned to her previous headquarters at
Uskub and reorganised her staff, and during August and September the
hospital was continuously full.
About the middle of October the storm of invasion again broke over the
unhappy little country, and, while the German and Austrian armies swept
down from the north, the Bulgarians poured in from the east. It was
at this point that Lady Paget had one of her most momentous decisions
to make. The Serbian population was flying before the oncoming tide
of the enemy armies--“one of the greatest tragedies in history,” Lady
Paget wrote; “a nation was shattered, crushed, and driven forth into
the wilderness to die of cold and hunger.” But, refusing to desert
her Serbian patients, and in the hope of being able to save her large
hospital stores for the help of the refugees, Lady Paget, with her
staff, gallantly decided, in spite of strong opposition, to remain at
Uskub and face the enemy. Describing this critical decision, a friend
wrote of her: “Lady Paget’s will was the only fixed point that night in
the universal land-slide around her. By setting her single will against
the stampede, she turned back the flood of panic that was hurrying the
wretched inhabitants of the town away to certain destruction; for the
next day in Uskub, when it became known that the British Mission was
staying to look after the wounded, it went far to reassure the people,
and hundreds who would otherwise have gone to their death in the icy
mountains of Albania remained in the shelter of their homes.”
With the coming of the Bulgarians on October 22nd began a long and
difficult period. Until the middle of February, 1916, the Hospital
Unit remained at Uskub, prisoners in the enemy’s hands. But, owing
to Lady Paget’s tact and resource, they were able to carry on work
of inestimable value, not only in nursing many hundred wounded, both
Serbian, Bulgarian, and Austrian, but also in feeding and clothing
thousands of Serbian refugees. Through the worst weeks of winter,
between three and four thousand were fed and clothed daily, and from
first to last over 70,000 were relieved entirely from Lady Paget’s
stores. It is a remarkable tribute to her personality that the enemy,
though not too plentifully equipped themselves, should yet have allowed
her to retain possession of this large quantity of stores, trusting as
they did to her scrupulous sense of fairness and straight-dealing.
By February, 1916, Lady Paget and her workers had done all in their
power for Serbia. By this time the refugees had been either interned or
sent to their homes, the hospital had been evacuated of patients, the
staff was worn out with hard work, and the stores were exhausted. After
difficult negotiations Lady Paget obtained permission to leave and was
able to return with her unit to England.
This is the third war in which she has given herself unsparingly to
help the Serbians, and she has become an object of worship to this
desolate people. To mark the national gratitude, King Peter has
bestowed upon her the first class of the Order of St. Sava, an honour
that had never before been given to an uncrowned woman.
[Illustration: MISS LILIAN BARKER, C.B.E.,
MISS MABEL COTTERELL
_To face page 21_ ]
III
MISS LILIAN BARKER, C.B.E., AND MISS MABEL COTTERELL
The first element in the great development of munition work during
the war, which has drawn women in tens of thousands into the service
of their country, has certainly been the all-powerful motive of
patriotism. But second to this, the practical success of the work has
been made possible largely through the recognition and development of
welfare work. What we understand nowadays by “welfare” does not consist
merely in the provision of canteens and other amenities for workers.
It means the study of human nature, the introduction of the humanising
element into work. Experience has proved that there is nothing in the
world so calculated to get the best out of human nature as the human
touch. Welfare work, undertaken sporadically in this country since the
beginning of the nineteenth century, has been gradually introduced
in our factories by the more enlightened employers, but the advent
of women in such great numbers to munition works has set the seal of
official approval on the system.
The result of this work cannot be better illustrated than by the
example of what has been accomplished by two of the most successful
welfare workers.
Miss Lilian Barker, the Lady Superintendent at the Royal Arsenal at
Woolwich, supervises the women operators employed there with the good
humour and sagacity of an ideal statesman. When Miss Barker took up
her work at Woolwich in December, 1915, there were 400 women and girls
employed at the Arsenal. To-day there are over 25,000, every one of
whom has been personally engaged by this “superwoman” of Woolwich.
Round Miss Barker’s office there gathers a constant throng of workers,
and it is one of her tasks, with the assistants whom she has trained,
to straighten out their difficulties, to inquire into their grievances,
and to act if need be as mediator with their superior officers. She
advises all who come to her for help as to their health, their meals,
their recreation, and the hundred and one details which the domestic
guardian of a huge works can set to rights by understanding, patience,
and tact. It is hard to give an adequate impression of the wonderful
atmosphere which Miss Barker has created at Woolwich, but a visitor
privileged to go round the shops in her company cannot fail to be
deeply struck, not only by her influence with the workers, but by the
general sense of contentment and health. As one approaches a shop, one
hears the girls singing at their work--a sure sign of happiness. When
Miss Barker enters, their faces light up, gay greetings pass, and one
feels instinctively the confidence and mutual trust with which she has
inspired her great family.
Miss Barker makes frequent tours round the women’s shops (it is said to
take a week to go over the whole Arsenal), and all the time she is on
the watch for possible improvements--perhaps the better ventilation of
a factory, or some needed alteration in a cloakroom--stopping ever and
again for a word with a girl on some matter relating to her well-being.
It is rare to see a sickly face, even among the workers in the danger
zone, and visitors are struck by the high proportion of good looks,
even of beauty. The workers are drawn from every grade of society, but
the democracy of the overall and cap levels all distinctions.
Recently much trouble was experienced by the Arsenal management owing
to bad timekeeping in the shops. Able to earn considerable sums of
money by working only three or four days weekly, the girls were apt
to stay away for the rest of the week. Miss Barker was approached and
asked to take over the responsibility for the timekeeping, never before
part of her work, and the results were astonishing. “If you leave 200
fuse-rings incomplete,” she would say, in making personal appeals to
small groups of girls, “they delay 200 fuses. 200 fuses delay 200
shells from being sent out to the front. Think what 200 shells might
mean to Tommy in a tight corner!” Miss Barker knows the wisdom of
instilling into each worker the sense of her personal responsibility,
and under her inspiration the timekeeping difficulty is no longer an
acute problem.
Miss Mabel Cotterell is another welfare worker who has accomplished a
stupendous task. Little more than a year ago the first buildings of the
greatest Filling Factory in the country began to rise from a desolate
bog on the borders of England and Scotland. During the year a town has
grown to house the thousands of women employees who came to work in
answer to the national appeal for their help. Miss Cotterell engaged
and took to Gretna the first fifty fisher-girls from the Aberdeen
coast. “I had one assistant in those days,” Miss Cotterell recalls,
“and we met the new-comers at the countryside station and took them
over the fields to the hostel and the bungalow which had been furnished
for their use. It was well they came first in the summer days, for
there were then no proper roads, no lights, no shops, no halls or
clubrooms, while at the factory the canteens were not ready for use.
However, it was warm and sunny, and there were flowers and the birds
sang. The girls carried sandwich lunches with them, had a good meat
meal on returning to the hostel, and a pleasant country walk in the
evening.”
To-day there are 64 hostels and 30 bungalows at Gretna, and Miss
Cotterell has an army of assistants, clerks, matrons, and factory
supervisors. The former wilderness is now inhabited by a well-housed
community, organised in all details with a thoroughness and practical
care which speak volumes for the genius of its moving spirit.
When the workers came to inhabit the convenient and attractive homes
prepared for them, they found that equally enlightened plans had been
formulated for their welfare. Miss Cotterell has kept careful watch
of the leisure hours of those under her charge, and she has seen that
every opportunity for rest, recreation, and improvement is open to
them, and facilities for reading, writing, playing games, and attending
classes. Periodic entertainments are given--sometimes by the “Gretna
Ramblers,” a troupe of munition girls who have been trained in singing,
dancing, and recitation.
The added responsibility of having the girls entirely resident, as at
Gretna, entails serious problems. The whole work of catering, and the
domestic arrangements of the hostels fall on the Welfare Department.
Another of its duties is to file the record of every girl in the
factory; and the procedure for discharges, leave of absence, transfers,
or sick leave, all passes through this Department--a considerable task
when, at the rate at which the factory is increasing, as many as 200
new girls arrive in one day. Inevitably, difficulties of administration
are not unknown, even in a model community. There has been occasional
shortage of furniture, dampness of new houses, or girl workers
unaccustomed to discipline who decline to obey orders. But difficulties
seem to vanish under Miss Cotterell’s experienced touch. Her wise
administration is already responsible for a marked improvement, not
only in health and physique, which good food, clean housing, and
regular employment have brought to the workers. Her influence is also
noticeable in a greater regard for truth, honesty, and duty.
This outcome of women’s munition work will mean much in the future
developments of their industrial life. Women like Miss Barker and Miss
Cotterell, in attempting a great achievement, have accomplished an
immeasurable one.
IV
MISS C. E. MATHESON AND THE VILLAGE LAND WORKERS
Early in 1915, when recruiting for the Army was beginning to draw men
away from agriculture as from all other work, a first effort was made
to substitute women for men on the land. Although she knew nothing of
agriculture, or the management of live stock, and was unaccustomed to
hard manual work, Miss Matheson determined to offer herself as one of
the pioneers. Before the war she was known in a very different sphere,
for as a promising authoress of the younger school she had already
attracted wide popularity. On volunteering, Miss Matheson was sent for
a four weeks’ agricultural training course to a Farm Institute to learn
to milk; to make butter; to harness and drive a team; to clean, dress,
and prepare land; to plant and hoe; to clean stables and cow-houses; to
feed cattle; to disregard backaches, weariness and blistered hands; and
to live a new, hard life.
[Illustration:
MISS C. E. MATHESON AT THE PRINCE OF WALES’ STOCK FARM IN CORNWALL
_Wynferd Swinburne_
_To face page 27_ ]
After this breaking in, she went to a Wiltshire dairy-farmer who
possessed forty to fifty cows in milk. He was prejudiced against women
workers, and Miss Matheson’s first day was not a happy one. Writing of
it afterwards, she said: “I arrived on a Saturday. On Sunday morning I
assisted with the milking, and found I was expected to milk at least
eight or ten animals. My four weeks’ training had simply taught me
_how_--there had been little time for practising new accomplishments.
Consequently my employer told me he would not require me after the
end of the week. This announcement was a shock, and exceedingly
discouraging. However, I toiled through that week, and at the end of it
was asked to stay. Soon I was milking from eight to fifteen cows twice
a day; had full charge of the churns and pails, took the milk to the
station to meet the London train, looked after the poultry and helped
on the land--harvesting, threshing, spreading manure, etc.”
Of course, such work meant rising at five, and by the time Miss
Matheson returned from her evening drive to the station it was nearly
seven, but the station drive was, she said, a pleasurable duty, “for
the sight of the London train reminded me that I still lived in the
world.”
Miss Matheson spent seven months on the Wiltshire farm, and the farmer
on her departure paid her the compliment of engaging three girls to
assist him. She then went to the Prince of Wales’s farm on the Duchy of
Cornwall estate, where she is still working.
This farm specialises in stock-breeding, and the herd is a large and
valuable one. With cows to milk, calves to rear, bulls to groom and
exercise, food to prepare, bedding to change, the work is perpetual,
for there are only three workers to tend the animals, and people
in charge of stock must work seven days a week. During the winter
the cattle claim all the time and attention, but in the summer
Miss Matheson manages to help on the land in addition. When autumn
came, Miss Matheson’s employers at the Duchy farm began to wonder
if she would be able to stand the winter work, but she hastened
unhesitatingly to reassure them. The work certainly needs pluck and
endurance, both physical and mental. The handling of bulls, for
instance, demands no small amount of nerve. “I have had one or two
adventures with the bulls,” wrote Miss Matheson to a friend, “and
though I must confess I tremble at times, I manage to hold my own. Of
course, I could get help if I asked for it, but I do dislike asking.
It gives one such an only-a-girl sort of feeling, and then again I am
always afraid to let anyone know that sometimes I am afraid.”
It is unnecessary to state the reasons which bring an educated woman
voluntarily to take up such a hard and exacting life, not merely for
a few weeks of summer, but month after month. Only a deeply-rooted
motive can be the impelling force, and there can be no finer form of
patriotism than the unsensational performance of these strenuous tasks,
far from the glamour and excitement of direct contact with the war. Not
only in the fruits of her own labour, but by the force of her example,
as one of the pioneers along a new road for women, Miss Matheson is
performing as fine a war service as any Englishwoman to-day.
Just as the educated women have made an inspiring response to the
call of the country in taking up agricultural work, so also have the
women of the villages. In many country districts they have always been
accustomed to work on the land, but to-day thousands who never worked
before have come forward to give the most concrete proof of their
patriotism. They are rightly proud to be entitled to wear the green
Government armlet, given for 30 days’ work or 240 hours.
[Illustration:
WOMEN AS WOODCUTTERS
_To face page 29_ ]
The most recent development of women’s land work is their employment
on timber-felling and bark-stripping; and though this is a completely
new industry for women, and has not so far been taken up on a general
scale, the results of the first experiments are full of promise. Timber
work has been started in Devonshire under the energetic auspices of
Miss Calmady Hamlyn, the inspecting officer for the Western District of
England under the Board of Agriculture. An expert woodman instructor,
after watching some of the novices at work, pronounced that in barking
these women already excel men, and in tree-felling they will certainly
equal them.
Many of the village women whose husbands are serving have wisely taken
up land work as being the best antidote to worry. From Devonshire
comes the story of a soldier ordered to the front, who gave his wife
the parting counsel: “My dear, you go up and work on that old field
to-morrow; it will help you more than anything.” Mrs. Hockin went,
and worked indomitably at any job in all weathers, and is proud that
she can earn a man’s day-wage at piece-work. “Why I am a war worker
is because I felt it was my duty to do my bit,” Mrs. Hockin writes.
“I am a married woman with three children. My husband has joined the
Army, and I have done my best to help my country. As I live in the
country, there is nothing for me to do but to work on the land, which
I have done for nearly two years.... I have worked on the farm doing
various kinds of work, such as weeding corn, hoeing turnips, spreading
manure over the fields, turning up ground, picking in apples, wheeling
away coke, helping in the harvest-fields, both hay and corn, and, by
what our employers have told our instructor, we have given them every
satisfaction.” Mrs. Hockin has recently taken up the new timber-felling
work, and is now leader of a gang of woodwomen. Though she is new to
the work, Mrs. Hockin is able to fell trees at the rate of thirty in
half a day, and she states that she does not find the work unduly
fatiguing, though “a bit windy.”
An agricultural demonstration by women, held recently in Surrey under
the auspices of the Board of Agriculture, provided striking examples
of the excellence of women’s agricultural work. A hundred and twenty
women took part, the majority of whom have started the work since the
war. They entered for competitions in ploughing, harrowing, milking,
management of calves and horses, hoeing corn, hand weeding, etc. In
spite of the difficulties occasioned by bad weather, and having to work
with strange animals under unfamiliar conditions, the women succeeded
in making a deep impression on the farmers who came to watch their
efforts. The sensation of the afternoon was caused in the milking
competition, when the first prize was won by Miss M. Soutar, aged 10½,
who obtained a total of ninety-five points out of a possible hundred.
Experimental demonstrations of this kind will do much to solve one
of the greatest difficulties in the employment of women, namely, the
conversion of the farmers; but most of those who have given the women a
chance have not had cause to regret it.
When the farmers recognise the motive behind the women’s work, and are
willing not only to employ them but to treat them generously, it is
certain that both farmers and women, working together under the same
influence of patriotism, are bound to achieve results of which both may
be proud.
[Illustration:
THE DAY’S LAST LOAD OF TIMBER
_Alfieri_
_To face page 30_]
V
DR. ELSIE INGLIS
To Miss Inglis, M.B., C.M., belongs the honour of originating the
Scottish Women’s Hospitals, one of the noblest efforts achieved by
women in the war. As a medical woman, Dr. Inglis, who qualified in
1892, has specialised in surgery, and for many years she has held
the posts of surgeon and gynæcologist to the Edinburgh Hospital and
Dispensary for Women and Children, and lecturer to the School of
Medicine in Edinburgh.
At the outbreak of war Dr. Inglis felt that the medical services of
women should be organised for the country, and she originated the idea
of forming the Scottish Women’s Hospital Units for war service, staffed
entirely by women. The idea was carried out through the organisation
of the Scottish Federation of Women Suffrage Societies. In the early
months the War Office, though since converted, refused to accept
women’s hospitals, so Dr. Inglis and her committee offered their
services to the Allies. Their record of work is truly wonderful, and
presents an outstanding example of women’s industry and administrative
ability. Hospitals have been established and maintained in France,
Serbia, Corsica, Salonika, Rumania, and Russia, and the work has been
entirely supported by the funds which the organisation has raised,
mainly through the branches of the National Union of Women Suffrage
Societies throughout Great Britain.
Dr. Inglis has been throughout the leading spirit, and has displayed
extraordinary initiative. After spending the first months of the war in
starting the work at headquarters, she went to Serbia in 1915 to act
as Commissioner to the Scottish Women’s Hospitals established there.
One unit on its way to Serbia was detained for a few weeks in Malta for
service with the British wounded at a moment of medical shortage, and
Lord Methuen, the Military Governor, wrote a glowing appreciation of
their work. “They leave here,” he wrote, “blessed by myself, surgeons,
nurses, and patients alike, having proved themselves most capable
and untiring workers.” In Serbia the Scottish women were confronted
with all the hardships and difficulties experienced by workers in
that unfortunate country. Undaunted, however, they established their
hospitals, heroically overcoming the problems of sanitation and
supplies which beset them on all sides. The hospital at Kragujevatz,
over which Dr. Inglis had personal charge, was described by the
military authorities as a picture of cleanliness, order, and comfort.
When the time of the Serbian retreat came, the five hospitals in charge
of the Scottish women fell back towards Albania. At Krushevatz Dr.
Inglis decided to remain with her staff to care for the Serbian wounded
during the enemy occupation. Another unit under Dr. Alice Hutchinson
also stayed, and was taken prisoner; while the remaining staffs
accompanied the retreating armies across the mountains.
[Illustration:
DR. ELSIE INGLIS
_Bassano_
_To face page 33_]
“These months at Krushevatz were a strange mixture of sorrow and
happiness,” Dr. Inglis wrote afterwards. “There was a curious
exhilaration in working for those grateful, patient men ... yet
the unhappiness in the Serbian houses and the physical wretchedness
of those cold, hungry prisoners lay always like a dead weight on our
spirits.”
By February, 1916, the hospital was emptied and the staff sent as
prisoners to Vienna. After enduring many discomforts, they were
eventually released through the good offices of the American Embassy,
and enabled to return to England, where their friends had heard no word
of them during four months. When the veil was at last lifted, it showed
Dr. Inglis coming out of all the stress and suffering the first woman
to wear the decoration of the White Eagle, given to her by the Serbian
Government in recognition of her services. Other members of her unit
received the Order of St. Sava. “The Serbian nation,” said the Crown
Prince, “will never forget what these women have done.”
But not content with such services to Serbia, and with her courage
still undaunted, Dr. Inglis again set out in September, 1916, at the
head of a fresh unit, for service with the Serbian army fighting in
South Russia. The unit, numbering seventy-six women, comprised a
staff of women doctors, an X-ray operator, a dispenser, seventeen
fully-trained nurses, sixteen orderlies, besides cooks and laundresses.
The accompanying transport column, under the Hon. Mrs. Haverfield,
consisted of eight ambulances, two kitchen cars, a repair car, four
lorries, and three touring cars, with a large staff of women chauffeurs
and cooks. The unit landed at Archangel and travelled across Russia
to Odessa, where the workers met with a rousing reception. They then
proceeded to join the Serbian division to which they were attached,
in the Dobrudja, and another splendid chapter of Scottish Women’s
Hospital work was opened. A base hospital was started at Medjidia in
Rumania, with a field station nearer to the front; but after about
a fortnight’s work the inevitable evacuation was ordered before the
Bulgarian advance, and the unit retreated with the army. Of this first
hospital in Rumania Dr. Inglis writes: “The day after the unit arrived
at Medjidia, where the whole seventy-five were obliged to camp in one
big room, wounded began to pour in and ambulances to ply between there
and the firing line. There were no roads, just tracks across endless
plains.” Of the field station Dr. Inglis says: “The destination was a
place smoking from shells, and filled with a sense of destruction and
desolation impossible to describe. The Scottish women set up a camp
near by, and were attached to the Serbian Field Hospital. Aeroplanes
bombed them daily, and on one occasion the ambulance suffered a heavy
bombardment. When the orders came to move, the transport went through
five appalling days of labour, which can be understood only by people
who have done cross-country tracks in roadless countries ... the scenes
were indescribable--of confusion, terror, misery; of blocks of carts,
troops, pigs, women, children, lame horses, and exhausted animals of
all sorts. The refugees were throwing out things to lighten their
carts, and the Scottish women got out and picked them up to use for
their own kitchen.”
Dr. Inglis and the hospital party, on evacuating Medjidia, managed
to secure what is known as a “sanitary train”--a long train of horse
waggons, very different from an ambulance train, and they had to do
their best for the crowd of wounded on board. Eventually Dr. Inglis
reached Braila, where she was able to render valuable help to a large
number of Rumanian wounded, who were very short of medical assistance.
Some members of the unit have since returned to England, but Dr. Inglis
is still in Rumania. She is temporarily working for the Russian army,
pending the re-formation of the Serbian divisions, to which she will
return.
The General in command of the Russian Red Cross on the Rumanian front
(Prince Dolgouroukoff) has conferred the medal of St. George on all the
members of the unit now at Reni who have worked under fire.
“Wherever the odds against the Allies seem overwhelming, there one may
be nearly sure of finding a unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals
working for the wounded,” writes an admirer of their work. “You do not
find them in the well-equipped hospitals surrounded by every modern
appliance, with crowds of men orderlies to carry out the heavy work,
but rather in back-blocks of the war, as one may say, fighting a
desperate battle of their own against dirt, disease, and wounds, and
winning back precious lives of men whose language is in many cases
unknown to them.”
Dr. Elsie Inglis has that magnetic personality which can command
efficiency, even with inadequate equipment and in hopeless environment.
The inspiring work of this great woman doctor makes her indeed a worthy
leader for those wonderful Scottish women, who are putting their
whole soul into the work they have undertaken, without any thought of
recompense, without vainglory, and without any other motive than the
desire to help and heal.
VI
MISS HARRIET SPROT, THE MISSES PLAYFAIR, AND LADY BADEN-POWELL
The Young Men’s Christian Association commenced work in the camps in
France as soon as war began. For many years it had been accustomed
to provide huts in the summer camps at home, but since the war the
organisation has increased to such an extent that it now covers a vast
field of enterprise. The Y.M.C.A. huts and those of the Church Army
have proved the salvation of the men, who, when off duty, had nowhere
to go, while in the camps the canteens provide an opportunity for
them to buy small necessaries, tobacco, or any supplementary food in
addition to their Army rations. The work of the ladies in the Y.M.C.A.
huts in France is largely responsible for their great success. This
work is arranged by a Committee under Princess Helena Victoria, with
the Countess of Bessborough as hon. secretary, and it is owing to their
insight and skilful organisation that it has been so successfully
managed.
[Illustration:
MISS AUDREY PLAYFAIR MISS LILIAS PLAYFAIR
_To face page 37_]
The workers, whose service is entirely voluntary, sign on for four
months, pay all their own expenses--travelling, board, lodging,
etc.,--and provide their uniform--dark grey coats and skirts with blue
facings. Many of them have been living in France for over two years,
in the simplest accommodation, devoid of all luxury, and devoting
themselves entirely to the work. The best illustration of what they are
doing can be taken from the experiences of a few typical workers.
Miss Harriet Sprot manages a district which has its headquarters in
a base town under the shadow of a great cathedral. Describing the
average day of her workers, Miss Sprot says that their mornings till
twelve o’clock are spent in preparation of the canteen counters, so
that the quickest possible distribution of refreshments and other
small purchases may be made to the soldiers in the short hours fixed
by the camp authorities which they may spend at the hut. No money is
taken over the counter--tickets have to be bought. “It is usual for
the queue of men waiting to buy tickets to extend the whole length of
the room. On a busy night it even stretches into the billiard-room and
curls back half way up the main hut.” Old Y.M.C.A. _habitués_ know the
arrangements so well that no time is wasted, but Miss Sprot reports
that it takes double the time to serve a newly arrived draft, to whom
the French money and its purchasing power are sources of bewilderment.
The heaviest part of the work is always at night, but the men are
unanimously said to be so good-natured, patient, and orderly that,
however dense the crowd, they all get served in time. When the hut
closes, the workers may be justified in feeling that valuable work has
been accomplished and the night’s rest well earned.
In every hut there is a small library counter where postcards are
sold, notepaper is given out, books or games are lent, and games of
billiards are arranged, a bell being rung every twenty minutes to
mark the close of each game. Miss Sprot writes: “To sit down here is
considered a rest, but one can have a busy time.... Private A. brings
his watch and hopes it will not be too much trouble to get it mended
for him. You take down his name, and hope the watch will not get mixed
up with some half-dozen others passing through your hands, and that you
will be able to get it back in time from the watchmaker before Private
A. goes up the line. He himself has apparently no misgivings; indeed,
the implicit faith of himself and his fellows in one’s unworthy self is
something quite touching. Many questions are asked and answered. I have
been consulted on religious matters and listened to innumerable family
histories. The first move in a confidential talk comes when Tommy pulls
out his pay-book and spreads before you the photos of his relatives. To
most of us the hour spent each evening at this little counter is one to
look forward to.”
Another worker is Miss Lilias Playfair, who, with a group of other
ladies, went to a base town in France in February, 1915. A canteen had
been started in the only available place, a very small, inconvenient
room; but, even so, Miss Playfair reports that it was “packed every
evening, and most of the day.” Gradually the proper huts were built
in the outlying camps and in the town, and there are now over ten
huts, and two cinemas in this district, which Miss Playfair and her
sister, Miss Audrey Playfair, manage in alternate spells. Describing
her work, Miss Playfair says: “Besides serving at the canteens and
helping with the arranging and ordering of food, we do most of
the entertainments. I have organised a small orchestra which plays
at different huts, and last year we had a most successful Pierrot
troupe.... We hope shortly to produce a ‘revue,’ and two or three
short plays. French classes are held regularly, and the men are keen
to learn. It is hard work, as our hours are long, but it is very
interesting, and the men are so appreciative and say that they do not
know how they could endure things without the Y.M.C.A.”
[Illustration:
LADY BADEN-POWELL
_Russell_
_To face page 39_ ]
How much the Tommies themselves appreciate the presence of the Y.M.C.A.
ladies may be seen in the following extract, written by a Tommy,
describing what he calls a “heaven-sent organisation”: “When I entered
the hut I was greeted with that glad smile of welcome which I shall
always associate with the Y.M.C.A. by real English ladies--the first I
had seen for over seven months, except the nurses, of course. I only
wish to God that I could adequately describe my feelings, and I know
mine were the same as thousands of my brothers-in-arms. It seemed to
me that, amidst all the awful turmoil and din, with the horrors of the
retreat and the first battle for Ypres imperishably photographed on
my memory, I had found a haven of rest.” Volumes could be written by
the lady workers on the mingled humour and pathos in their interviews
with the men. In a letter to a friend at home a worker says: “All the
time out here life is so full of humour, if only one had the gift of
describing it. At one moment one is doing something for a very correct
General, and at the next one is in a hut having tea with a soldier,
ex-greengrocer, quite charming, but the unmistakable type! Everyone who
interests the greengrocer has to sign their names in his Bible. Then
one takes an Australian out shopping, and he tips one two francs for
one’s trouble!”
Quite apart from their ministrations to the men’s material
needs, the influence of the Y.M.C.A. ladies in France has been
invaluable--cheering, encouraging, and helping the men in countless
ways in their brief hours of leisure, and relieving by their presence
the endless monotony of their life of discipline.
Among the interesting features of the Y.M.C.A. work are the Scout Huts
started by Lady Baden-Powell at two of the bases. The ladies who work
in them are mostly Scout-masters and wear the Scout uniform, old Boy
Scouts amongst the troops being their most keenly appreciative patrons.
Lady Baden-Powell went to France in October, 1915, to organise the work
when the huts were built, and she worked for some months in the first
two huts. In June, 1916, a Girl Guide Hut was built from funds earned
by Girl Guides who, forbidden by their rules from collecting money,
each did a day’s work for the fund. Lady Baden-Powell is putting her
energies into developing the Girl Guide movement on the same scale as
the Boy Scouts. Realising the responsibilities of citizenship which the
opportunities of the war have brought to the women of the country, the
advantages are manifest of a voluntary training for girls, on the lines
which have been so successful with boys, and the Girl Guide movement is
a step to this end.
[Illustration:
MISS AGNES BORTHWICK
_To face page 41_ ]
VII
MISS AGNES BORTHWICK
No woman’s work has more directly furthered the prosecution of the war
than that of Miss Agnes Borthwick, who within one year has risen to
the unique position--for a woman--of works manager in a great Munition
Factory.
When Miss Borthwick sees the trains laden with ammunition steaming out
of the factory straight for Southampton, she must feel with justifiable
pride that she and her 4000 girls are working for the country as
vitally as the soldiers, who will fire the unceasing stream of shells
which the girls are sending to them day by day.
Miss Borthwick’s rise to her present position of responsibility has
been rapid, even judged by the standards of war promotion. She is of
Scottish birth. A woman of high educational attainments, she took an
honours M.A. degree in English at Glasgow University in 1912, and
subsequently held a research scholarship at Bryn Mawr College, U.S.A.
Miss Borthwick spent two years studying in America, and from Bryn Mawr
went to Whittier Hall, University of Columbia, New York, and Barnard
Hall, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. She also did some research
work in Harvard Library.
At the outbreak of war Miss Borthwick returned to England, and in
November, 1915, when the newly formed Ministry of Munitions appealed
for women workers, she volunteered, and went to Woolwich for a course
of training in both the theoretical and practical work of shell and
cartridge filling. At the end of five weeks she obtained a first-grade
or “excellent” certificate.
In January, 1916, Miss Borthwick was sent to Georgetown-by-Paisley,
where a new filling factory was in course of construction. Here she
began work with only 24 girls. At first she and her workers scrubbed
the shops, cleaned the newly built blocks of buildings, and unloaded
the trucks of empty shells, which arrived at the factory ready to
be filled with explosives. By the end of January the shops were
sufficiently prepared for the real work to begin, and 200 girls were
taken on and instructed in filling. After that the factory grew
rapidly. Every week from 30 to 50 girls were engaged, who started work
in the new blocks, which were taken over from the builders as fast as
they were finished. Two months later Miss Borthwick was promoted from
forewoman to assistant works manager, and in May, on the promotion
of the works manager, she took his place. By the end of 1916 the 24
original workers had increased to 4000 girls, and when an inspector
came round to inquire into the question of labour dilution he was
unable to eliminate a single man, for the only men employed in the
factory were a few engineers and mechanical experts.
Not only do the girls do all the filling of 18-pounder shells and
cartridges of all sizes, but they also do the packing of the filled
shells, and the trollying to the railway. The medical and nursing
staff, the police patrol, the fire patrol, and the canteen workers are
all women. Work never ceases night and day. The girls work in shifts of
eight and three-quarter hours.
There are now 130 shops, and the factory covers such a large acreage
that its boundary is about five miles round. Above everything else, it
must not be forgotten that the _entire_ work of this factory is what
is called “danger work.” Although every possible precaution is taken
for the safety and health of the workers, in all handling of powerful
explosives the element of danger must be present.
Miss Borthwick is only twenty-seven. She is a fresh-looking girl with
a very quiet manner, suggesting a reserve of resolution and courage
eminently necessary in her work. On her shoulders rests the heavy
responsibility for the successful working of the factory, and she
has helped to develop it in an incredibly short time from a few huts
to the throbbing hive of industry which it is to-day. Owing to her
efficiency, and because she has never failed to make good whatever she
has undertaken, she has earned this great opportunity of service to the
country. She talks of her work as calmly and naturally as if there were
nothing remarkable about it. Yet she made this admission while on a
recent three days’ leave: “Until I came away from the factory, I hadn’t
realised how heavy and how unending the responsibility is.”
VIII
MRS. ST. CLAIR STOBART
No woman has seen the war at closer quarters and in more varied fields
of action than Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, and no one has worked harder to
help the sick and wounded--on the field, in besieged fortresses, at
base hospitals, and in the stricken villages of a ravaged and invaded
country. Everywhere she has sought and found her opportunity to bear
her part in the actual campaign--a part such as no woman has ever taken
before.
The outbreak of war found Mrs. Stobart already trained, for she had
gained her experience with the Women’s Convoy Corps, which she founded,
and which did such successful work in the Balkan War in 1912-1913.
Early in August, 1914, therefore, she was entrusted with the leadership
of an ambulance unit, under the organisation of the St. John Ambulance
Association, and proceeded at once to Brussels. Before a hospital could
be established, the Germans had entered the city, and Mrs. Stobart
escaped with difficulty, after having been actually a prisoner in
German hands, and condemned to be shot as a spy.
[Illustration:
MRS. ST. CLAIR STOBART
_To face page 44_ ]
Nothing daunted by her first experience, Mrs. Stobart then established
a hospital in Antwerp. After three weeks of fine work the town was
besieged, and the bombardment began. The hospital was in the direct
line of fire of one of the enemy’s objectives, the ammunition depôt,
but under a storm of shell-fire Mrs. Stobart and her unit rescued
their wounded, and were themselves the last to leave the burning city,
crossing the bridge of boats just before it was blown up.
After the fall of Antwerp Mrs. Stobart accepted an invitation from the
French Red Cross to establish a hospital at Cherbourg.
At first the work was very heavy and the numbers of wounded enormous,
but once it was started, Mrs. Stobart was able to leave the smoothly
working hospital in good hands, and to answer the call to help Serbia,
then in such dire need. Accordingly, after spending some time in making
her preparations, she travelled to Serbia in April, 1915, with a fresh
unit.
On arrival Mrs. Stobart began by establishing a camp hospital, entirely
consisting of tents, at Kragujevatz.
It was the first experiment of this kind which had been tried, but the
advantages of healthy outdoor conditions, as opposed to the alternative
of insanitary buildings, were soon proved, for the hospital, which had
been requested by the Serbian medical authorities to undertake surgical
work, entirely escaped the scourge of typhus. Unfortunately, this
was not so with regard to typhoid, from which several members of the
staff died in June, 1915, including the well-known author, Mrs. Percy
Dearmer, who, though far from strong, had offered her services to the
unit, and had already done fine work.
During the first three months the hospital undertook both civil and
military cases, and Mrs. Stobart organised a further invaluable and
successful scheme in establishing roadside tent dispensaries in seven
or eight remote villages. Altogether, within a few weeks, 22,000
civilians received surgical and medical assistance.
At the end of September, 1915, came a signal proof of the confidence
which Mrs. Stobart had inspired in Serbia. The army was preparing its
fresh resistance to the second invasion, and the Bulgarians were on
the eve of declaring war. Mrs. Stobart was approached by the Serbian
military authorities and asked to mobilise a portion of her unit as
a flying field hospital. She was appointed commander, with the rank
of major in the Serbian army (the first time in history that such an
appointment has been given to a woman), and the unit, which was called
the First Serbian-English Field Hospital, was attached to the Schumadia
division.
After making arrangements for the continuation of the work of the
Kragujevatz hospital, Mrs. Stobart chose for the ambulance column a
dozen of her English women doctors and nurses, motor ambulance drivers,
a cook, orderlies, interpreters, and about sixty Serbian soldiers.
On October 1 the column started for the Bulgarian front, travelling
by train, through Nish, to Pirot. But, after a few days of trekking
in that direction, the column was ordered to move north with the
division to within a few miles of Belgrade on the Danube front, to
face the stronger enemy, the Germans and the Austrians. On October 14
the hospital camp was pitched within sound of the guns, and the first
batches of wounded were received. But the stand of the Serbian army
was destined to be a short one. Two days later, orders came to move
southwards, and the first stage began of the great retreat, which was
to continue steadily for three months.
The life of the members of the field hospital during the retreat was
indeed a strange one, for ever on the march, stopping for a few hours
to pitch a camp and attend to the wounded brought to them from the
battlefields close at hand, evacuating them by motor ambulance to the
nearest railway or hospital, and then marching on again. Throughout
the retreat Mrs. Stobart rode at the head of her column night and
day, selecting every inch of their road, struggling for a place for
them in the endless procession of the straggling host that beset the
mud-soddened roads and slippery mountain paths, obtaining food for them
and their horses with infinite difficulty in the deserted villages
through which the column passed. Forced to snatch odd hours of sleep
when and where they could, always fully dressed, and prepared for the
orders to march at any moment, they often narrowly escaped capture. The
sound of the enemy guns was ever in their ears, the invading armies
always at their heels. Mrs. Stobart truly proved herself a leader in
fact as well as in name, for no trained commander of troops could have
shown a higher courage or faced emergencies with a more decided energy
than this Englishwoman.
It was a cruel day for the hospital column when, at the end of a
terrible forced march, during which Mrs. Stobart was eighty-one hours
in the saddle, the motor ambulance and the hospital equipment had at
last to be destroyed and abandoned at the foot of the Montenegrin
mountains, through which Mrs. Stobart then led her skeleton column on
foot. The horrors of the retreat increased every day, but the only
way to safety had to be faced, though it lay over trackless mountains
8000 feet high, through snow, ice, unbroken forests, and bridgeless
rivers. It was then mid-winter. Men and animals died by the roadside
in hundreds from starvation and exposure. Writing of the retreat
afterwards, Mrs. Stobart said: “Continued cold, exhaustion from forced
marches, and increasing lack of food made the track a shambles ... men
by the hundred lay dead, dead from cold and hunger, by the roadside,
and no one could stop to bury them. But worse still, men lay dying by
the roadside, dying from cold and hunger, and no one could stay to tend
them. The whole scene was a combination of mental and physical misery,
difficult to describe in words. No one knows, nor ever will know
accurately, how many people perished, but it is believed that not less
than 10,000 human beings lie sepulchred in those mountains.”
At last, on December 20, Mrs. Stobart had the triumph of leading her
weary but courageous column into Scutari in Albania, without the loss
of a single one of its members--the only commander who succeeded in
bringing a column intact through the retreat.
The chief officer of the Serbian medical staff expressed true
sentiments when he wrote to Mrs. Stobart: “You have made everybody
believe that a woman can overcome and endure all the war difficulties
... you can be sure, esteemed Madam, that you have won the sympathies
of the whole of Serbia.”
[Illustration:
MISS DOROTHY RAVENSCROFT
_To face page 49_ ]
IX
MISS E. G. BATHER AND MISS DOROTHY RAVENSCROFT
Miss Bather is one of the women whose sporting experiences in pre-war
days have been turned to valuable account in the service of her
country. Her knowledge of horses, gained in the enjoyment of hunting,
has enabled her to undertake the serious and arduous work of running a
Remount Depôt for the War Office under Mr. Cecil Aldin, M.F.H.
Many girls who have hunted, or had their own horses, might think that
they could easily do remount work; but it is not merely a case of being
able to ride well, the riding is only the lightest part of the duties:
it is a matter of settling down to a life of real hard work, requiring
strength, courage, infinite patience and firmness. That Miss Bather
has been able to organise a depôt successfully, and carry on the work
entirely with the help of girl workers for over two years, is a tribute
to any woman which can only be realised if the exact scope of the work
is understood.
The functions of workers at remount depôts are to receive horses and
mules which are sent to them, and to make them fit for active service.
The animals arrive mostly in rough condition--the horses being of all
types, from the heavy draught-horse to the colonel’s charger. An
expert has said: “To be able to do this work, a girl must love her
horse for himself; but that is not everything--she must be practical,
capable, strong, self-denying, and brave.”
The horses are usually sent to the depôt in mixed batches of thirty
or more, dirty in their coats, perhaps thin and out of condition, and
often lame or suffering from various ailments.
“It requires quite a lot of pluck in the first instance,” writes Miss
Bather, “to unload from the railway trucks, saddle up, and mount those
horses that look as if they had been ridden lately, and ride them, each
rider leading another horse, to their destination some five miles away.”
The grooming of the horses is hard work and requires considerable
strength, even when the horse is quiet; with wild and difficult horses
it is necessary to hobble and muzzle them before grooming is possible.
They are often deceptively quiet at first, and it may take a few days
of bitter experience before the kickers and biters are discovered!
Besides the daily grooming, which has to be performed for each horse
like a child’s toilet, there is the clipping and singeing. After the
grooming comes the work of keeping the stables, which must be cleaned
out and disinfected daily; while the harness and “tackle” have to be
cleaned and polished. There is also the care of the horses in sickness
and convalescence, which requires particular skill and knowledge.
[Illustration:
(1) MISS BATHER AND HER “LADS” EXERCISING HORSES
(2) SOME OF THE STABLE “HANDS”
_Alfieri_
_To face page 51_]
With regard to the exercising, Miss Bather writes: “This is fraught
with difficulties and anxieties, especially with a new lot of horses.
To set the pace someone responsible has to lead the string with the
quiet horses that will face the traffic; but though all army horses are
supposed to be broken in, I have known our string resemble a Wild West
Show!”
An eyewitness described an occasion when she happened to meet Miss
Bather’s “lads” out for exercising. One of the horses had taken
fright, and, breaking loose, had become entangled in barbed wire near
the road. The onlooker states that the girls behaved with the utmost
coolness, extricating the struggling horse with courage and skill, and
successfully preventing a stampede among the other horses.
During the first year of her work about 500 horses passed through Miss
Bather’s depôt, and in June, 1917, she completed her second year of
work.
Miss Dorothy Ravenscroft is another lady who has been doing similar
work for the War Office.
She is responsible for a remount depôt at Chester, where, with the help
of twelve girl assistants, forty horses at a time are prepared for
active service. The horses here are mostly officers’ cobs and chargers,
and, as at the other depôts, the girl workers do the entire work of the
stables, as well as the exercising, grooming, and feeding of the horses.
The post of superintendent of a Remount Depôt is one of considerable
responsibility, for the success of a depôt depends largely upon the
personality of the responsible head. Her life is necessarily one of
continual anxiety, not only for the horses, but for her girl workers,
who need to be chosen carefully; the work is far too great a strain
physically and mentally for girls under twenty. Writing to a friend
recently, a superintendent said with truth: “One’s nerves need to
be made of iron; I am wondering how much longer mine will stand the
strain.”
This is a question that women must be asking themselves in almost every
branch of war work to-day, for all work just now is at high pressure.
But the women at home are inspired with the same spirit as the men in
the trenches, and are equally prepared to go on until they drop.
[Illustration:
DR. FLORENCE STONEY MISS EDITH STONEY
_To face page 53_]
X
MISS EDITH STONEY AND DR. FLORENCE STONEY
Miss Edith Stoney and her sister, Dr. Florence Stoney, are specialists
in X-ray work, and in this vitally important branch of surgery they
have both rendered fine service throughout the war.
Dr. Stoney was head of the electrical department in the New Hospital
for Women, London. Early in the war she went to Antwerp in Mrs. St.
Clair Stobart’s unit as head of the medical staff and in charge of the
X-ray department. After the fall of Antwerp, when the hospital staff
made their escape in London motor-buses only twenty minutes before the
bridge of boats was blown up, the unit was re-established in a hospital
at Cherbourg under the French Croix Rouge. The X-ray work was of course
invaluable, and in giving an account of it Dr. Stoney wrote:
“Most of our cases were septic fractures, for nearly all were septic
by the time they reached us, four to eight days generally after being
wounded, and most of the fractures were badly comminuted as well. The
X-rays were much in request to show the exact condition of the part and
the position of the fragments. In all cases the pieces of the shell had
to be accurately located, and were then as a rule easily extracted.”
With constant practice it became possible for Dr. Stoney to tell by
X-rays which were the dead pieces of bone in a comminuted fracture,
for observation showed that they threw a denser shadow than living
bone. “One piece of dead bone three inches long was diagnosed first by
X-rays,” Dr. Stoney reports, “and the early removal of these pieces
greatly hastens recovery.”
When the hospital was inspected by the consulting surgeon for the
district, his first inclination was to regard a hospital staffed by
women as hardly worthy of inspection; but after going through the wards
he wrote:
“L’hôpital de Tourlaville est très bien organisé, les malades sont très
bien soignés, et les chirurgiennes sont de valeur égale aux chirurgiens
les meilleurs.”
When the British army took over the northern part of the line in
France, hospital arrangements were altered. The need for the Cherbourg
hospital was over, as all British movable cases were taken to England;
and therefore in the spring of 1915 the hospital was closed. Dr. Stoney
returned to England, and offered her services to the War Office, and
in April, 1915, she was asked to take over the X-ray department in the
Fulham Military Hospital, a hospital of over 1000 beds, where she is
still working.
Dr. Stoney took up this work about a fortnight before the opening of
the Endell Street Hospital under Dr. Garrett Anderson; she is therefore
the first woman doctor to work under the War Office in England. Dr.
Stoney not only undertakes the photographic branch of the X-ray work,
but she diagnoses and reports on the cases from the photographs.
Another branch of her work is to use X-rays actually during operations
for those surgeons who prefer to operate in this way. She also started
a small department for X-ray treatment, which has proved beneficial in
certain nerve and goitre cases.
Dr. Stoney recently reported that considerably over 5000 cases had
passed through her hands since she came to this hospital. She has a
staff of V.A.D. assistants, two of whom she has trained in the work
sufficiently to enable them to take over X-ray installations. One is
now working in Rumania, and the other in London. Dr. Stoney’s splendid
work has completely overcome any prejudice which may have attached to
her as a woman when she first took up her post. Although she is the
only woman doctor in the hospital, she works on an equal footing with
the men, except that she holds no military rank.
Miss Edith Stoney is a woman of great university distinction, having
been wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge. She was an
Associate of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Lecturer in Physics to
the London University. Astronomy is another subject on which she has
lectured, and while at Newnham College she had charge of the telescope.
She has also done valuable original work in relation to searchlights.
At the beginning of the war Miss Stoney joined the committee of the
Women’s Imperial Service League, and helped in the organisation of the
hospital unit with which her sister went to Antwerp, fitting up the
portable X-ray apparatus, which was subsequently of such great service.
After the transfer of the hospital to Cherbourg she continued to assist
in the organisation of its supplies. Her real war work, however, may
be said to have begun when she retired from her work as Lecturer in
Physics in the spring of 1915 and joined the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.
Miss Stoney first took up work at the tent hospital at Troyes, where
she put up and ran the X-ray department, giving invaluable assistance
to the surgeons by the accurate localisation of foreign bodies in
wounds. The head surgeon, Dr. Louise M’Ilroy, stated that she never
failed to find a projectile searched for. This was indeed a tribute to
the accurate localisation in the X-ray department. Another valuable
branch of Miss Stoney’s work was the taking of stereoscopic skiagrams.
Miss Stoney took one of the very early skiagrams of gas bubbles in the
tissues, due to gas gangrene, a development which has since come into
great prominence.
In the autumn of 1915 Miss Stoney accompanied the hospital unit from
Troyes when it was ordered to Serbia by the French authorities. Before
leaving for Serbia she had the foresight to equip herself in Paris with
a portable engine, as she was determined that her department should
be efficient. On the committee refusing to sanction the expense, she
bought it herself. Miss Stoney’s action was soon justified, for when
the hospital was installed at Gevgheli in Serbia there was no electric
supply. Thanks to her engine, not only was this the only British
hospital able to work X-rays, but incidentally, as a by-product of
the X-ray department, Miss Stoney lighted the entire hospital with
electricity. The need of much electric light in the dark winter days
meant hard work for Miss Stoney, and the following extract from a
letter conjures up a picture of work in no easy conditions:
“The electric light was needed in the pharmacy until the doctors had
finished, and it was often late before I could stop the little engine
and pack it up warm for the night.... When I creaked up the ladders in
stockinged feet to the loft where fifty-four of us slept, there could
be no thought of washing, with ice already in the jug; it was often an
inch and a half thick by morning. Instead of undressing, one piled on
every scrap of extra clothes one had, and put one’s waterproof under
the mattress to stop the draught up through it.”
When the French retreated from Gevgheli, a site was found for the
hospital just outside Salonika, on a bit of ill-drained, marshy ground.
There again the engine proved invaluable. From January, 1916, onwards
Miss Stoney has run the X-ray department, doing, besides her own work,
many radiograms for British and French doctors from other hospitals,
who referred their cases to her for examination.
At Salonika Miss Stoney again lit the hospital with electric light. For
several months she was obliged to attend to the engine entirely alone,
owing to the illness of the only mechanic. She further set up treatment
by high frequency for the patients, and radiant heat baths with
vibratory massage. Having previously studied the Zander treatment, Miss
Stoney was able to instal an apparatus, which, though she describes
it as rough, was very successful in treating stiff joints requiring
movement. She also used ionisation for healing wounds with beneficial
results.
In all these ways Miss Stoney has been able to bring her knowledge
of physics to the service of the wounded. She has been a pioneer in
her work in this physical department which she has originated and
developed at Salonika. “It is easy to work X-rays,” she writes, “when
someone else has installed them; but in a moving hospital, in difficult
circumstances, physics is a help in getting the apparatus up and
working well. We put in order the X-ray outfits of two British hospital
ships calling at Salonika. The doctors and mechanics on board had not
just the needed physics, but could work the apparatus perfectly well
when it was installed.”
The Serbian Government has decorated Miss Stoney with the Order of
St. Sava in recognition of her services. But the reward of her fine
work lies in the gratitude of the scores of her patients who owe their
renewed health largely to her indomitable energy, and the wonderful
ingenuity and resource with which in conditions of abnormal difficulty
she has brought so many projects to a successful and practical issue.
Writing of her work lately, Miss Stoney says: “There is always sadness,
but there is endless variety and interest in the life, and one trusts
that the great privilege of easing a drop in the vast ocean of pain, so
bravely borne, may have been ours.”
[Illustration:
BARONESS DE T’SERCLAES AND MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM
_Chandler_
_To face page 59_]
XI
THE BARONESS DE T’SERCLAES AND MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM
Of all the splendid stories of the war there is none that catches
the imagination more than that of the work of Baroness de T’Serclaes
(Mrs. Knocker, as she was in the early days of the war) and Miss Mairi
Chisholm. It is an unparalleled achievement that these two young women
should have been living actually up in the firing line ever since the
beginning of the war, tending and caring for the Belgian soldiers,
dressing and nursing the wounded, and helping the men in the trenches
by taking food and hot drinks to them day by day even at the very
outposts.
Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm (who was then only eighteen) first went
to Belgium in September, 1914, as members of Dr. Munro’s Ambulance
Corps, and started ambulance work in Ghent and Furnes. From the first
their skill and courage were put to the highest test, and it would be
hard to imagine greater bravery and devotion than they showed, for
instance, in the fierce fighting at Dixmude in October, 1914. Mrs.
Knocker, who is an expert motor-driver, drove an ambulance car to and
fro on the road between Dixmude and Furnes under such heavy shell
fire that men broke down and were unable to continue driving under
the strain of the terrible ordeal. On one occasion the ambulance was
required to take some German prisoners as passengers, and, with no
other guard but Miss Chisholm, Mrs. Knocker drove her convoy along the
shell-torn road. “I think it was the proudest moment of my life,” she
wrote in her diary.
But the work for which their names will live began in November, 1914,
when the two severed their connection with the Ambulance Corps and
started to work together in a little cellar in the ruined village of
Pervyse. Mrs. Knocker was led to take this step by her conviction,
shared by the Belgian doctors, of the necessity of establishing an
advanced dressing-post where the severely wounded men might have time
to recover from shock before enduring the jolting journey to hospital,
which had already proved fatal to many.
Thus it was that these women--the eldest little more than a girl--took
up their work. Through all these long months up to the present day
they have been living the lives of the soldiers themselves--their
quarters for the most part a tiny cellar, again and again under shell
fire, sometimes suffering fierce bombardments, not taking off their
clothes literally for weeks on end, eating anything they could get,
and enduring the trials of cold, dirt, exhaustion, and danger with
a gaiety and a courage which have been at once an inspiration and a
source of astonishment to those who have been privileged to see them
at Pervyse. When the cellar was demolished they moved to another
tumble-down cottage, only to be shelled out twice more. But wherever
they established themselves it became “home” to the soldiers--their
presence bringing a ray of comfort and brightness into the stern
routine of life in the trenches. When in March, 1915, a decree was
passed by the commanders of the Allied armies in Paris forbidding the
presence of any women in the firing line, at the request of the Belgian
authorities an exception was made for these two, mentioned by name, who
were then officially attached to the Third Division of the Belgian army
in the field.
No honour in the war has been better earned than the decoration which
King Albert bestowed on each of them, when he appointed them Chevaliers
of the Order of Leopold. As if to crown their wonderful story, romance
came to one of them in the midst of that shot-torn village. The young
widow, Mrs. Knocker, recently became the wife of a Belgian officer,
Baron Harold de T’Serclaes.
XII
LADY MARY HAMILTON, MISS STELLA DRUMMOND, AND THE SKILLED WOMEN
MUNITION WORKERS
It is admitted on all sides that the output of munitions achieved
by Great Britain since the spring of 1915 has been little less than
miraculous, and this result is all the more astonishing when it is
recalled that at least 25 per cent. of the men who were engaged in
the chemical and engineering trades at the outbreak of hostilities
have joined the Army. It was thus essential not only to fill the
gaps, but also to augment the supply of available labour, in answer
to the increased demand. The women of the Empire at once responded
to the appeal for their help. A new and unsuspected reservoir of
labour was thus discovered, without which, in the words of Mr. F. G.
Kellaway, M.P. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Munitions),
“the Germans would by now have won the war.” The extent of the help
rendered by women may perhaps be best realised by the fact that
there are over 700,000 women engaged in munition work, employed on
processes which cover practically the whole engineering and chemical
trades. Under the general term “munition work” are included varied
forms of work, both skilled and unskilled, undertaken by women,
from the heavy manual labour of loading and unloading trucks of
ammunition, to the most intricate and delicate of engineering and
electrical operations. To mention only a few of these highly skilled
operations, women are building a great part of one of the best
high-speed engines in the country, each woman setting her own tools,
work which requires considerable technical skill. In the construction
of chassis for heavy army lorries and in marine-engine building women
are undertaking more and more responsible work. In the delicate work
of constructing aero-engines they are turning on centre lathes to a
half of a thousandth of an inch. Women are boring and rifling the
barrel of the service rifle: they undertake the hydraulic riveting of
boilers: they work the electric overhead travelling cranes for moving
the enormous boilers of our men-of-war: they are employed extensively
on turbine work. “So wide is the scope of women’s capabilities,” Mr.
Kellaway stated recently, “that a prominent engineer has expressed
his conviction that, given two more years of war, he would undertake
to build a battleship from keel to aerial in all its complex detail,
entirely by women’s labour.” And again: “To watch young girls hard at
work for twelve hours a day, working on shells, lubricating bullets,
handling cordite, making, inspecting, and gauging fuses, examining
work where the thousandth part of an inch is a vital matter running
their machines deftly and easily, and spending their days in the danger
buildings among explosives with as little fuss as if they were knitting
socks, brings a realisation of that which lies behind the list of
operations on which women are engaged to-day.”
Women’s skill on complicated processes has been acquired with a
rapidity which has caused astonishment to experts. Before the war an
apprenticeship of five or six years was considered necessary amongst
Trades Unions for gaining mastery of some of the processes which
women have learnt in a few months or even weeks. In measuring their
achievement, however, it must never be forgotten what a debt is owed to
British organised labour, which surrendered up in the hour of national
crisis many of the legal rights and privileges established only after
years of effort and controversy.
The women munition workers of to-day have come from all ranks of
society, from every corner of the Empire, many of them entirely
unaccustomed to industrial life or manual work, and many unacquainted
even with life in England. An incident in one munitions works may
be recalled as typical of the rest. Working side by side recently
on the machines in a certain factory were a soldier’s wife from
a city tenement, a vigorous daughter of the Empire from a lonely
Rhodesian farm, a graduate from Girton, and a scion of one of the old
aristocratic families of England. War has indeed proved a powerful
solvent of social barriers, and one of the distinctive features of
factory life in munition areas is the excellent leadership of the
educated women who have entered the works. Typical of this class of
munition workers are Lady Mary Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of
Abercorn, and Miss Stella Drummond, daughter of General Drummond. These
two friends, girls in years but soldiers in spirit, determined in the
early stages of the war to serve their country by making munitions.
Accordingly they applied for work as ordinary “hands” in a munition
factory, and for some six months were employed on repetition work in a
shell factory. Lady Mary Hamilton has stated that she and Miss Drummond
mastered the processes on which they were engaged in a few weeks, but
admitted that a victory over the prejudices of the factory employees,
inclined to resent the introduction of “swells,” was a lengthier task.
Soon the skill of the two friends attracted the attention of those in
authority, and they were selected for training in more advanced work.
They were admitted into the factory school for skilled work, and after
five weeks of this training they proceeded to the Government school
at Brixton, London. There they followed a nine weeks’ course in such
advanced work as tool-making and tool-setting--tasks which would not
have been considered possible for women workers in pre-war days.
After successfully completing their training, Lady Mary Hamilton and
Miss Drummond were allocated to a factory, where they were eventually
placed in charge of eight machines each--Wells Turret Capstan lathes.
They were then entirely responsible for the output of their machines,
which involved responsibility for the workers employed on them. In this
“shop” both boys and girls were employed, and the new charge-hands
or tool-setters had to “make good” with the mixed staff. They were
entirely successful, not only in the setting of the five or six
requisite tools in each machine and in the making and grinding of their
own tools, but in producing an output which was accurate to within a
200th part of a millimetre. So popular were they as leaders of their
staff, that when Lady Mary Hamilton recently resigned her post before
her marriage, and Miss Drummond’s services were transferred to welfare
supervision under the Ministry of Munitions, the regret expressed by
the employees showed that they were losing comrades as well as officers.
There are also countless instances of uneducated women who have found
themselves equal to technical work of considerable responsibility.
For example, in one factory a woman driver works a 900-h.p. Willans
plant. She starts the engine herself if required, watches the voltmeter
and regulates the governor accordingly, wipes the commutators and
regulates the brushes. This woman was formerly a kitchen-maid, and had
no technical experience whatever. Another working woman recently lost
the first finger and thumb of her left hand, owing to a loaded gaigne
jamming in the press. After an absence of six weeks she returned to
work, and is to-day back on the same work and getting an even greater
output than before. Public recognition is due to the great army of
women munition workers for their courage and endurance, both in the
way in which they are facing the dangers incidental to some of their
occupations and the monotony entailed in the regular performance of
others.
[Illustration:
LADY PERROTT
_Swaine_
_To face page 67_]
XIII
MRS. FURSE, G.B.E., R.R.C., LADY PERROTT, R.R.C., AND THE VOLUNTARY AID
DETACHMENT
Throughout the war the services of the Joint Societies of the British
Red Cross and the Order of St. John have covered a vast area of work
for the sick and wounded.
One of the most vital branches of the work has been that of the great
army of untrained or part-trained women, who have been supplementing
the limited number of trained nurses in the hospitals at home and
abroad. Sir Alfred Keogh, the Director General of the Army Medical
Service, has explained the scope of their work when describing the
organisation of the Territorial Army nursing system. He says: “It
was necessary to arrange for the dilution of the nursing services by
women who had received some special training, though of elementary
character, to afford assistance to the more highly trained nurses. This
had been foreseen, for at the time of the formation of the Territorial
Army, the training of the civil population to this extent was taken in
hand, and voluntary detachments of women in possession of elementary
certificates, but receiving continuous training, were formed in the
country. Thus at the outbreak of war there were some 60,000 women in
England who had received this training.”
For a long period of years the St. John Ambulance Association, under
the ancient order of St. John of Jerusalem, had already controlled a
large organisation of ambulance and nursing divisions, and may claim
to have originated the teaching of first aid, which has now become the
basis of all Voluntary Aid Detachment training. When the scheme was
started, detachments were formed throughout the country, in answer
to Queen Alexandra’s appeal, by the British Red Cross Society, the
great new organisation inaugurated by King Edward VII. in July, 1905,
and also by the Order of St. John. Many of the old-established St.
John Nursing Divisions enrolled at once as Voluntary Aid Detachments,
their composition being similar. Shortly after the outbreak of war,
the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John decided to
amalgamate their organisation and finances for the period of the war.
The administration of the Voluntary Aid Detachments throughout the
country is largely local. Each county has its own system under the
central offices in London, and the work of the women, from the county
presidents to the humblest workers, has been one of the proudest
records of the war. Some Voluntary Aid Detachments have been mobilised
in their entirety for service in the auxiliary military hospitals, many
of which have been almost entirely staffed and financed by individual
detachments. Others are posting their members separately for hospital
work elsewhere.
The work of the V.A.D. members besides nursing, includes cooking,
storekeeping, and secretarial work, which are classed under the
heading of General Service. This is the branch of work for which Mrs.
Charles W. Furse, as Commandant-in-Chief of the V.A.Ds. of the Joint
Societies, is now responsible. The posting of the V.A.D. nurses to
hospitals at home and abroad also goes through her hands. Widow of the
well-known painter, and daughter of John Addington Symonds, Mrs. Furse
was for several years before the war one of the most interested and
prominent of V.A.D. workers. When Sir Alfred Keogh’s scheme for the
organisation of voluntary Red Cross workers came into being in 1909,
Mrs. Furse was one of the first women to enrol. In 1912 she became
Commandant of the first Paddington Detachment, London 128. During
the next two years she encouraged enterprise among the members by
organising classes in cooking, laundry, and hygiene, in addition to the
study of first aid and home nursing. By this time Mrs. Furse had become
a member of several committees dealing with Red Cross and V.A.D. work,
and was already recognised as an authority on these subjects. On the
outbreak of war her services were at once commandeered by the British
Red Cross Society.
For the first months of war Mrs. Furse undertook the management of the
Enquiry Department at Devonshire House, which became the headquarters
of the V.A.D. In September, 1914, she submitted a scheme to the War
Office for V.A.D. rest stations on the lines of communication. In
October she was ordered to go to France with sufficient members from
her own detachment to start this work, which has been much extended,
and has met a great need.
In January, 1915, Mrs. Furse was recalled from France, where the
rest-station work was now established, to form a department for the
co-ordination of V.A.D. work, and to organise a continual supply of
probationers for the military and other hospitals. A selection board
was formed at Devonshire House to deal with all applications of V.A.Ds.
for service at home or abroad. Mrs. Furse’s duties also involve
periodical inspections in France, where the work has been splendidly
carried on by Miss Rachel Crowdy, the Principal Commandant in France.
After one of her recent tours of inspection, Mrs. Furse reported: “The
work of the V.A.D. members in France is a credit to the women of the
Empire. Wherever I went I found the same anxiety to keep up the very
high standard of work and behaviour set by the organisation.... No job
is too small for the V.A.D. members, and they good-humouredly fill
any gap which appears. The rules and regulations are very strict, and
there is but little entertainment. The work is under war conditions,
and the members try to show that they can wait till the end of the war
for their play-time. Undoubtedly the V.A.D. organisation is proving
that women can be trusted in the zone of the armies, and that they have
realised the meaning of discipline and appreciate the necessity of
discretion.”
Many girls who went to France early in the war as practically untrained
workers now hold splendid records of service in hospital, and have
risen to positions of considerable responsibility. In measuring the
scope of what they have accomplished, it must not be forgotten that
V.A.D. members are drawn from very varied social positions, a large
proportion being women accustomed to lives of luxury and ease, to
whom the hard and often unattractive work has been a new and difficult
experience.
Mrs. Furse’s great foresight into future needs during the earlier
stages of the war, the untiring energy and patience with which she
prepared for the time when these needs should be recognised, and, above
all, her immense personal influence, have proved her to be one of the
real leaders whom the war has brought to light. It is largely through
her fine personal example of the spirit in which all work should be
done that the V.A.Ds. have won for themselves such a good name for
keenness and discipline.
Lady Perrott, the Lady Superintendent-in-Chief of the St. John
Ambulance Brigade, is another outstanding woman amongst the small
number of workers who had the foresight to prepare themselves and
others in peace time for what then seemed the improbable chance of
war. One of the most active pioneers of V.A.D. work, Lady Perrott for
five years before the outbreak of war worked under the War Office for
V.A.D. development and improvement. In 1910 she was appointed Lady
Commandant-in-Chief of the St. John V.A.Ds. By constantly holding
meetings and inspections of detachments all through the country, she
helped to standardise the training, and made herself acquainted with
every detail of the work. Lady Perrott further performed a splendid
service when she induced some of the principal hospitals, both in
London and in the provinces, to give facilities for instruction to
V.A.D. members. This experience in civil hospitals proved of immense
value when war started. In 1913 Lady Perrott organised a conference on
V.A.D. work, which was held at St. John’s Gate and attended by large
numbers of St. John V.A.D. officers from all over the country. The
effect of this conference was to arouse widespread enthusiasm for the
work. Her own personal and detailed knowledge of the detachments stood
Lady Perrott in good stead in the stress of the early days of war.
When the call came from the War Office for V.A.D. members to serve in
military hospitals, the whole organisation for selecting and posting
the St. John members was in her hands, and she carried out this work
with marked success. She also went to France from time to time to
inspect. From the beginning Lady Perrott toiled early and late at St.
John’s Gate, and by her great powers of organisation, as well as by
her personal influence and untiring zeal, she was able to initiate and
carry out an enormous amount of work. Apart from all she has done for
the V.A.D., Lady Perrott holds a fine record of achievement. To mention
only one of her other activities, it was through her instrumentality
that the Board of Matrons was appointed at St. John’s Gate for the
selection of fully-trained nurses, one hundred of whom were sent out
to Brussels in the first three weeks of the war by the Order of St.
John. Lady Perrott has also been largely associated with the St. John
Ambulance Brigade Hospital, one of the finest hut hospitals in France,
for which she has collected a large sum of money, besides organising a
special depôt for its supply of stores and comforts.
Lady Oliver is another untiring worker to whose keenness and energy
much of the success of the V.A.D. activities is due. As staff officer
to Lady Perrott before the war, she was responsible for a large part
of the detailed work. Since the formation of the Joint Department, Lady
Oliver has worked with Mrs. Furse at Devonshire House. Lady Perrott,
Lady Oliver, and Mrs. Furse have all been decorated by the King with
the Royal Red Cross, and are also members of the Order of St. John,
Lady Perrott and Lady Oliver being Ladies of Justice, and Mrs. Furse a
Lady of Grace.
XIV
COMMANDANT DAMER DAWSON, MRS. CARDEN, AND THE WOMEN POLICE AND PATROLS
The employment of women for police service, in vogue for some years on
the Continent and in the United States of America, has been developed
in this country only by the outbreak of the war. Women in uniform are
so frequent nowadays that the passer-by scarcely spares a glance for a
hard “bowler” kind of hat, plain blue clothes, and a blue armlet with
white letters on it. The wearers of this uniform seem to be peculiarly
unobtrusive people, anxious to avoid, rather than to attract,
attention. For all that, among the innumerable women who are taking on
the new work which the times have entailed, the women police are by no
means the least valuable, brave, and steadfast.
[Illustration:
CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT M. S. ALLEN INSPECTOR GOLDINGHAM COMMANDANT
DAMER DAWSON
_Barratt_
_To face page 75_ ]
The names of three pioneers are impressed on the memory of those
who have watched the development of this movement in Great Britain:
Commandant Damer Dawson, Superintendent M. S. Allen, and Inspector
Goldingham. It is largely through their tireless efforts that the Women
Police Service, the association that they originated, has now at its
command one of the finest bodies of women in the country. The influx
of the Belgian refugees in August, 1914, became the starting-point
of the movement. While aiding forlorn exiles lost in London byways in
the small hours of the night, it was borne in upon Miss Damer Dawson
how much work in the streets could be done by an organised band of
trained women, armed with authority. The idea took root in her mind
and grew with her work. She was soon joined by Miss M. S. Allen and
Miss Goldingham, and from that period the Women Police Service may
be said to have originated. These pioneers obtained the necessary
training and soon set to work in the organisation of a voluntary
corps. Recruits flocked in, undertook necessary training in drill,
practical and theoretical instruction, and soon obtained positions
as officially appointed policewomen. In this capacity they undertake
such work as patrolling the streets, attendance at police courts,
domiciliary visiting, the supervision of music-halls, cinemas, and
public dancing-halls, and the inspection of common lodging-houses.
The need for their services grew steadily. In the summer of 1916 it
was found necessary to obtain further control and supervision of the
women employees in munition factories, and Sir Edward Henry, the Chief
Commissioner of Police, recommended that the Ministry of Munitions
should apply to the Women Police Service for a supply of trained
women. This request has now created an extensive development, and a
new department of the Women Police Service is at present working at
high pressure under the Ministry of Munitions. Recruits are streaming
in, and are receiving a special training, on completion of which
they are drafted to the munition factories. There they undertake
multifarious duties, including checking the entry of women into
the factory; examining passports; searching for such contraband as
matches, cigarettes, and alcohol; dealing with complaints of petty
offences; assisting the magistrate at the police court; and patrolling
the neighbourhood of the factory with a view to the protection of the
women employees. In the case of misunderstandings amongst the women
employees, the services of the women police have been remarkable, and
there are many recorded instances where they have averted strikes in
the munition factories, and thus saved the nation from ill effects on
output.
In many such ways the women police have proved themselves a valuable
national asset. When the war is over, Commandant Damer Dawson and
her colleagues will doubtless find that the service they helped to
introduce as an emergency measure has become a recognised institution
of a new social order.
A further service, that of Women’s Patrols for the protection of girls
in the streets, has originated with the problems connected with the
war. Reports from various quarters having reached the National Union of
Women Workers as to the dangers caused by the presence of numbers of
young girls in the neighbourhood of military camps, it was resolved to
organise a body of women of mature age and experience to aid the police
in maintaining order. Here again the names of three outstanding women
are associated with this work: Mrs. Carden, the hon. secretary to the
movement; Mrs. Creighton, widow of the late Bishop of London; and Lady
Codrington, chairman of the London Committee of Women’s Patrols. To
these pioneers the work owes its initiation and development. A scheme
was formulated, welcomed at once by the Home Secretary and the Chief
Commissioner of Police, and by November 1914 the Women’s Patrols were
in working order. Branches were quickly established throughout the
United Kingdom and Ireland, and there are now over 2000 women working
in this connection in different parts of the country. In its initial
stages the work was entirely voluntary; but since its efficiency has
been established and noted by the authorities, women’s patrols have
been appointed in various districts and paid at the same rate as men
constables.
The main duty of the patrols is to enter into kindly relationship with
girls loitering in vicinities where soldiers congregate. Their mission
is not to the vicious, or to the “fallen,” but to the thoughtless
girls, led astray mainly through their excitement at the unaccustomed
presence of so many soldiers and by patriotic emotions of admiration
and gratitude to the nation’s young defenders. The women on patrol aim
at getting into touch with such girls and helping them to a healthy
employment of their leisure hours. In numerous cases the Patrol
Committee have organised clubs in the neighbourhood of the military
quarters, these meeting-places being either for girls alone, or “mixed
clubs,” where the soldiers may bring their girl friends. In the latter
case, most careful vigilance and supervision from the patrols are
required and given, and success is in most instances attained. This
work has been warmly welcomed both by the military authorities and the
police, and it is impossible to estimate the unhappiness and suffering
that have been prevented by this provision of healthy recreation in a
moral danger zone.
Reports both from the Metropolitan area (where over 400 patrols are now
working) and from provincial towns give some measure of the success of
the movement. It is significant that during the Irish disturbances of
1916 the Women’s Patrols were enabled to pursue their customary tasks,
being “passed through” both by the Revolutionary party and by the
soldiers.
XV
MISS LENA ASHWELL, O.B.E.
Miss Lena Ashwell’s work in starting and arranging concerts at the
front has probably given more delight to a greater number of people
than the efforts of any other individual woman in the war. The entire
scheme was her own, and it is through her untiring efforts and her
personal energy that the work has been carried on and extended in a way
that is little short of marvellous.
[Illustration:
MISS LENA ASHWELL, O.B.E.
_Hoppé_
_To face page 79_ ]
It was in February, 1915, that Miss Ashwell was asked by the Ladies’
Auxiliary Committee of the Y.M.C.A. to send a concert party to France,
and with the goodwill and co-operation of that Committee the work was
launched on its successful course. The first party was an experiment in
every way, but its reception left no doubt as to the feelings of the
soldier audiences. The love of music is enhanced by the alternating
monotony and danger of life at the front, and is as fundamental in
human beings as the craving for beauty. This instinct is seen, for
instance, in the soldiers’ touching desire to make gardens wherever
they are quartered, and however unpromising the conditions. From Miss
Ashwell’s tentative effort there has grown up a great organisation, in
response to the ever-increasing request from every base, from every
camp, from every hospital, and even from the firing-lines, for more
and more concerts. In little more than two years over 5000 concerts
have been given in France alone, apart from what has been done in
Malta, in Egypt, and in the ships of the Adriatic Fleet. The audiences
have been known to number as many as 5000 men, and thus hundreds of
thousands are reached every month, and millions during the year.
What are called “permanent” concert parties have been established at
five of the bases in France. Each party stays for about six weeks,
giving on an average three concerts a day. In the afternoons they
usually perform in the hospitals. In the evenings they motor sometimes
twenty-five or thirty miles to outlying camps and stations, performing
in tents, huts, barns, sheds, railway sidings, or even by the roadside,
to all sorts and conditions of men in all branches of the Army.
[Illustration:
A MUSICAL ENTENTE BEHIND THE LINES
_To face page 81_ ]
The request for the concert parties to go up to the trenches and
firing-lines soon followed, and this fresh branch of work was
undertaken. Only men are allowed to go in the firing-line parties, and
the Y.M.C.A. cars convey them on these tours. Concerts have frequently
been given under shell fire--sometimes to an audience fully armed and
liable to be ordered into the trenches at any moment. Some of the most
successful concerts are those for men just leaving the trenches after
days of fighting, and here perhaps the music has had its most wonderful
effect. It seems to act like magic on the exhausted men, strained
almost beyond endurance by the ordeals they have had to face. The spell
of horror is broken and their minds are turned away from all they have
suffered to thoughts of beauty and happiness. The existence of
the firing-line concert parties is in itself a proof of how much the
military authorities appreciate the concerts and their effects. They
have been quick to realise that the British Army can stand anything
better than being bored. The keenness with which the concerts are
anticipated, the touching patience of the men, who will wait for hours
in bitter wind and rain--they would rather miss their principal meal
than miss a performance,--the discussion for weeks afterwards, all
prove how much the music means to them.
At the outset Miss Ashwell determined that the concerts should be up
to a high standard. The programmes are varied as much as possible.
Classical music, selections from operas, glees, trios, and concertos,
the old ballads and folk-songs, are all given, as well as popular
rag-times and modern chorus songs. A “concert party” generally consists
of a soprano, contralto, bass, tenor, violinist or ’cellist, pianist
and accompanist, and often a ventriloquist, conjurer or reciter. “The
entertainment given is a mixture of a ballad concert, a recital, and a
children’s party,” writes a member of one audience.
Sometimes plays are arranged, and in the autumn of 1916 Miss Ashwell
herself took out a small dramatic company and acted in _Macbeth_, _The
School for Scandal_, and some short modern plays. Writing of these
performances, Miss Ashwell says: “We gave _The School for Scandal_
in a wood, with half our audience on the grass, the other half
dangerously overcrowding the branches of the nearest trees. _Macbeth_
was given in a great hangar, with Army blankets for the walls of the
banqueting-hall, and a sugar-box for the throne. _Macbeth_ was an
enormous success. Its reception was wonderful. We gave it to vast
audiences; they listened breathlessly in absolute silence, and then
cheered and cheered and cheered.... There were never such audiences in
the world before--so keen, so appreciative, so grateful.”
Nothing can be more touching than the appreciation of the concerts in
hospital. Here again the spell of the music seems to relax the strain
on the men’s nerves, and the badly wounded and even dying soldiers
beg to hear it, and find comfort in the midst of their suffering. The
following is an extract from a letter written by a nurse: “The concert
party gave a concert in the orderly room here, and afterwards those
kind people came into each ward and sang softly with no accompaniment
to the men who were well enough to listen, and the little Canadian
story-teller told stories to each man in turn as he was having his
dressings done. The result was that instead of being a suffering mass
of humanity, the men were happy and amused through the whole of the
time that is usually so awful.”
Concerts are also given for the medical service and the nurses, for
whom these occasional evenings are the only relaxation in a life of
strict discipline and unending work.
In January, 1916, in response to urgent requests, arrangements were
made to extend the work to Malta, and in October, 1916, to Egypt;
and, as in France, the success has been wonderful. Lord Methuen, the
Governor of Malta, wrote to Miss Ashwell recently: “I cannot tell you
the value that your concert parties have been to Malta. They have kept
the men in hospital cheerful, and I am sure that a great deal of the
excellent discipline that has been maintained here is owing to the
interest the men have taken in attending your performances.”
From Egypt comes another appreciation from General Dobell, who writes:
“The Lena Ashwell concert party has given concerts at all posts where
it was in any way possible to allow them to go, and the fact that
the ordinary rules were waived and special permission granted them
to travel where no civilian in any circumstances had previously been
allowed to go will make it clear to you how high a value we attach to
their entertainments.” A touching account was recently given of an
incident at a concert in the Sinai Desert. Some soldiers in a camp
ten miles away, unable to obtain leave, were so much disappointed
that they induced the Royal Engineers to lay some telephones wires,
by which means these men in the distant camp were able to listen to
the concert. Innumerable letters and testimonies to the success of
her work have reached Miss Ashwell from all ranks and all branches
of the Army--generals, commanding officers, doctors, chaplains of
all denominations unite in saying that the concert parties are
accomplishing work of real military value. Countless have been the
letters of appreciation from the soldiers themselves. In spite of its
rapid and enormous increase, Miss Ashwell has continued to organise
the work in a personal and vital way. Not only has she frequently been
abroad giving performances herself, but she has personally engaged
all the artistes for the parties and has supervised their complicated
travelling arrangements. Moreover, she has raised the entire funds
to maintain the scheme by addressing meetings and by making known
the work, which has thus been carried on entirely by voluntary
contributions.
Miss Ashwell has her thanks in the delight of the thousands who have
been cheered and helped by the efforts of the organisation which she
has truly made her own. The great message that the music has brought to
the soldiers is well expressed by a medical officer who wrote to her
recently:
“You do help us by heartening the men up and sending them back to the
firing-line happy, and with the feeling that those at home do care, are
with them and are trying to help.”
[Illustration:
MISS VIOLETTA THURSTAN
_To face page 85_ ]
XVI
MISS VIOLETTA THURSTAN
Miss Violetta Thurstan has had a career as varied and adventurous as
any nurse during the war, and she has certainly used to full advantage
the great opportunities which have come to her.
Trained at the London Hospital, Miss Thurstan was fully qualified to
take up responsible work when war broke out, and in August, 1914, she
was sent to Brussels in charge of a contingent of nurses from the St.
John Ambulance Association. Arriving just before the capture of the
city, she witnessed the historical entry into Brussels of the German
army. Some days later, when the German authorities asked for volunteers
to nurse at a little town called Marcelline, near Charleroi, Miss
Thurstan offered to go, and took two nurses with her, leaving the
remainder of her contingent in Brussels hospitals.
At Marcelline Miss Thurstan was in charge of a hospital under the
German military command, where she nursed Belgian, French, and German
wounded for some weeks under very trying conditions, aggravated by the
brutality of the German system of discipline even as regards her own
wounded. After a period of work, Miss Thurstan was granted leave of
absence from the Marcelline hospital in order to look after the nurses
she had left in and near Brussels. She had some exciting adventures,
particularly when trying to find a nurse in an outlying village, where
she actually got into the German lines and became involved in an
outpost action. By this time the Germans had decided that no English
nurses were to be allowed to continue nursing in Belgium; so instead
of returning, as she had expected, to the hospital at Marcelline,
Miss Thurstan was obliged to spend some weeks of painful and anxious
suspense waiting in Brussels, not knowing what fate was in store for
her nurses and herself. Finally, together with about one hundred other
nurses from different contingents, and some medical men, she was taken
by train through Germany to the Danish frontier. During the journey
the nurses were subjected to constant insult and humiliation. At
Copenhagen, however, these unpleasant experiences were made up for by a
cordial reception.
Miss Thurstan was about to return to England when she heard of
the great need for trained nurses in Russia, and, after obtaining
permission from England to offer her services to the Russian Red Cross,
she travelled on from Copenhagen to Petrograd. Miss Thurstan started
work at once. After nursing for a time in base hospitals and learning
some Russian, she joined a flying ambulance column of motor cars, which
moved from place to place at the front. One of the base hospitals in
which she was quartered was at Warsaw, where, in spite of the great
difference between Russian and English hospital methods, Miss Thurstan
managed to adapt herself to the conditions. She was then sent on to
Lodz, where she had many adventures in the bombardment. Some idea of
the work may be gathered from the fact that in the Russian retreat
from Lodz over 18,000 wounded were evacuated in four days, during which
time the nurses worked practically without rest and under terrible
conditions.
Miss Thurstan’s life with the workers of the motor ambulance unit was
remarkable. They were always on the move, and only just behind the
front trenches, using any available building as a hospital. At one
place they worked in a theatre attached to a hunting-box belonging to
the ex-Tsar, and of the work there Miss Thurstan wrote: “The scenery
had never been taken down after the last dramatic performance, and
wounded men lay everywhere between the wings and drop-scenes. The
auditorium was packed so closely that you could hardly get between the
men as they lay on the floor.” At another dressing station, established
near the trenches, 750 patients passed through the hands of the small
unit in little over twenty-four hours.
Miss Thurstan was shortly afterwards wounded when attending to soldiers
in the trenches; and as pleurisy developed later she had to give up
work for a time and come home to England. Before leaving Russia she was
awarded the medal of St. George “for courage and devotion.”
In 1915 Miss Thurstan returned to Russia on work of a different
character--to assist in organising the hospital units which were being
sent from England to work among the refugees. For three months she
travelled all through the country, inspecting the arrangements which
had been made in Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, Kazan, Nijni, and the remote
districts to cope with the bewildering influx of over five million
dazed and terrified people who fled from their homes before the great
German advance into Russia. As a result of Miss Thurstan’s inquiries
and the information which she was able to obtain, several units with
doctors, nurses, and supplies were sent out to Russia, and have done
fine work for the refugees. Help for these unfortunate victims of war
was badly needed, for their numbers were so overwhelming and their
condition so appalling, that, in spite of the noble effort made by
the Russian authorities to cope with such an immense problem, many
difficulties connected with the welfare of the refugees continued
to arise. Writing of them, Miss Thurstan said: “Verily the English
language lacks words to express the suffering that these people
underwent, and nothing that we can imagine could be worse than the
reality.”
On returning to England Miss Thurstan was engaged for a time in
organising and secretarial work for the National Union of Trained
Nurses. She was then asked to accept the post of Matron at the Hôpital
de l’Océan at La Panne in Belgium, where she is still on duty. This
hospital has over 1000 beds occupied by patients of Belgian, French,
English, German, and even Russian nationality. It is established five
miles from the front, so the work is far more acute than is usual in a
base hospital, the severest cases being dealt with straight from the
trenches.
Miss Thurstan presides over a staff of Belgian and English sisters and
V.A.Ds. under Belgian doctors.
Such, then, has been Miss Thurstan’s war service--as fine a record of
achievement in the cause of suffering humanity as any woman can show.
Not the least wonderful fact about her is that Miss Thurstan is very
frail, and has always been delicate. Only her spirit and pluck have
carried her through and enabled her to do the hardest work under the
roughest of conditions.
Writing of her, a friend says: “There is no doubt that Violetta
Thurstan is a woman with a touch of genius and with, as well, a great
devotion to work--not an every-day combination. She has determination
and courage in an unusual degree, and is gifted with imagination and a
deep sense of beauty--nevertheless, she can drudge.” Miss Thurstan was
recently decorated by the King, in recognition of her devoted services.
XVII
H.R.H. PRINCESS BEATRICE, THE HON. LADY LAWLEY. G.B.E., AND THE
COUNTESS OF GOSFORD
Women’s share has indeed been magnificent in the work of equipping
the hospitals with bandages, garments, stores, and comforts of all
descriptions. In the first week of war it is no exaggeration to say
that there was hardly a woman in the kingdom who was not making
something for the sick and wounded. But organisation stepped in at once
to direct and systematise their efforts, and the main work has been
carried on under the auspices of Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild, and the
Joint Societies of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John.
Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild was inaugurated the day after war was
declared, and, in response to an appeal by Her Majesty the Queen to
the women of England, consignments of garments and comforts soon began
to flow in. The headquarters of the Guild were established at Friary
Court, St. James’s Palace, under the direction of the Hon. Lady Lawley,
who has acted as honorary organising secretary throughout. In the rooms
of the old Palace, which formerly glittered with all the splendour of
the King’s State levées, mountains of garments and hospital necessaries
were soon piled up. The organisation has developed until now it
stretches round the world, and the stream of supplies has continued
with an ever-increasing volume. In the United Kingdom 470 branches have
been formed since the work of the Guild was initiated. From overseas
the response to Her Majesty’s appeal has been even more remarkable.
Seventy branches and many sub-branches have been established even
in the remotest corners of the earth, and the work which they have
done, and the number of garments which they have sent in to Friary
Court, have been no less even than the vast quantities which have been
supplied by the workers in the United Kingdom. The number of garments
received at headquarters is now approaching five and a half millions,
of which over five and a quarter millions have been despatched. A
record was established when, in one specially busy week, a quarter of
a million garments were sent off. These figures do not include the
enormous consignments received at and despatched from many of the
branches working on independent lines.
Hospitals at home and abroad, convalescent homes, British military
and medical units in Europe, Africa, and Mesopotamia, the Navy, the
Allied forces, the Belgian refugees, the Prisoners of War, are some of
the recipients of gifts from this great distributing centre at Friary
Court, for the sympathies of the Guild are as catholic as its friends
and supporters are widespread.
Daily reports of the work are submitted to Her Majesty the Queen, who
has thus kept in close touch with all the details of the organisation.
Lady Lawley and a large staff of voluntary workers have laboured
unsparingly throughout, and are responsible in a great measure for
the ready help which has been granted on so many sides. The following
extract from a letter from a high authority in France is a typical
tribute: “In this past fortnight the demand has been unprecedented, and
I have been able to meet every requirement. I can never be grateful
enough to the Guild.... I don’t think any of us can ever thank the work
parties half enough for their very useful help.”
The largest surgical branch of Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild is at the
Central War Hospital Supply Depôt, where truly inspiring work is being
done in the making of hospital requirements. The depôt was founded in
April, 1915, by Miss Ethel M’Caul, R.R.C., who originated and developed
the system of work. When at the end of that year Miss M’Caul resigned,
H.R.H. Princess Beatrice graciously undertook to carry on the work of
the depôt, and appointed Mrs. E. H. Gibson as her general manager.
The workers attached to this depôt number 3500, and their service is
entirely voluntary. There is no obligation to work for any stated
time, but each worker is free to come for as long and as often as
possible. Though the majority are part-time workers, there is a
nucleus of “steady plodders” who come all day and every day. With
woman’s infallible instinct of dressing for her part, an optional
but universally adopted uniform is worn in the depôt--a white linen
overall and a flowing white coif, which give the workrooms a charming
and picturesque aspect. Each worker pays a subscription of 1s. a week,
which, besides covering the house expenses of the depôt, makes a
considerable contribution towards the cost of materials and packing.
Apart from this maintenance fund, money for the work has been entirely
provided by voluntary gifts.
[Illustration:
THE STERILIZING ROOM AT THE CENTRAL WAR HOSPITAL SUPPLY DEPÔT
_To face page 94_ ]
This Central Depôt has been the parent of a great organisation,
which has spread throughout the country till now 220 branches have
been established in the United Kingdom. Thus the work has grown and
extended till there is hardly a town of importance where the host
of women who have too many home ties to give themselves entirely to
war work may yet devote whatever time they can to making hospital
requisites under skilled instruction. The Central Depôt issues patterns
to its branches, and only work up to a high standard is passed for
the hospitals. Marvels of ingenuity have been evolved in the way of
bandages; the modern bandage is constructed with a view to making
dressings as easy and painless as possible, and it can be put on with
the minimum of movement for the patient. Sterilisation of dressings
is a great feature, and all sterilised goods are carefully packed in
paper, afterwards hermetically sealed in waterproof cases actually in
the sterilising room, thus rendering them ready for immediate use on
being unpacked. Visitors cannot help being struck by the professional
aspect of the work, whether they are looking at the complicated and
beautifully sewn bandages, the well-made garments, or the perfectly
packed parcels. Though the workers are volunteers, there is none of
that amateur aspect which is apt to be associated with voluntary work.
Altogether many hundred hospitals have been supplied, most of which are
in receipt of regular consignments. The branch depôts are encouraged
to send their products to local hospitals, but they also forward a
certain amount to the Central Depôt. The output from this depôt last
year reached over three million articles, such as bandages, surgical
dressings, splints, clothing, and slippers.
Such a successful and invaluable organisation is one of which all the
women concerned may be justly proud. The practical assistance of H.R.H.
Princess Beatrice, which entails her almost daily presence at the
depôt, and actual work in the bandage department, has added greatly to
the satisfactory results. The general manager has given silent proof
of her own capacity in the achievements of the entire organisation;
such work can only be carried on if it is managed with infinite tact,
foresight, and energy.
At Mulberry Walk, Chelsea, another depôt is doing particularly helpful
work. The special feature of this branch is the department for light
splints and supports, made in papier-mâché, to fit exactly the casts
of individual patients’ limbs, taken by the workers. Some of these
women are sculptresses, whose experience in their own profession has
accustomed them to the handling of plaster for the casts and the
subsequent modelling of the splints. The lightness and perfect fit of
these splints make them of the greatest comfort to the wearers, and
their beneficial effect has been remarkable.
Under the Joint Societies of the British Red Cross and the Order of
St. John another great organisation has been established which has its
headquarters at the Central Workrooms at Burlington House, where work
is carried on under the presidency of the Countess of Gosford. The
organisation is divided into four main branches, which include the work
carried on actually at the Central Workrooms, the work of the branch
depôts and working parties, the home workers, and the department for
supplying patterns.
At the Central Workrooms nearly a thousand voluntary workers have been
enrolled, who have produced a total of over 350,000 articles, which
include a large proportion of bandages, besides hospital garments. In
addition to this, a large number of garments and bandages have been
made and supplied as patterns to the working parties; the pattern
department has also issued thousands of paper patterns, books, and
directions.
Asked to register at the Central Workrooms, and so to form a part of
this great national organisation, these working parties, which number
over 2000, have established a truly wonderful record. It is impossible
to give even an approximate idea of the total of the vast supplies of
hospital necessaries which they have produced, but recent returns from
only 975 of the working parties over a period of about eighteen months
show the astonishing output of nearly five and a half millions of
articles for hospital use. Such figures show that women of the country,
to whom more conspicuous service has been denied, have indeed achieved
miracles of devoted industry. In recognition of their work, the Central
Workrooms issues special certificates, and also distributes Government
badges, on application by the responsible heads, to members of these
working parties who have produced a specified output, and there are
to-day close on 40,000 workers who may be justified in showing with
pride these tributes of recognition. The scope of these registered
working parties is world-wide, and stretches from Portugal to the West
Indies, from Sierra Leone to California, from New Zealand to Panama.
Other contributors to the supplies of the Central Workrooms are
the registered home workers, who have produced a great output of
needlework, besides innumerable contributions for hospital use of
games, books, stationery, musical instruments, etc. Lady Gosford is
controlling a department of which she and her helpers may well feel
proud, and it is largely owing to the fine stimulus from headquarters
that the total records have been so satisfactory.
In a great department in the British Red Cross Society’s buildings,
weekly deliveries of all the work made and collected by the Central
Workrooms are received, together with countless other gifts of hospital
comforts from all over the world. Here the miscellaneous collection
is sorted and despatched according to the requests from the hospitals
by a voluntary staff who have been working under Lady Sophie Scott
for nearly three years. The goods are packed and sent not only to the
hospitals in Britain and in France, but to all the remoter theatres of
war--Malta, Egypt, Salonika, Mesopotamia, Palestine. Besides sending to
British hospitals, large gifts have been made to the sick and wounded
of the Allies.
At a similar depôt for the receiving and despatch of hospital equipment
and comforts, another devoted group of workers under Lady Jekyll has
worked at this labour of love since the earliest days of the war, near
the ancient buildings of St. John’s Gate. Here the St. John workers
of the country send their contributions, and goods of all sorts are
despatched to hospitals at home and abroad. The neat shelves and
cupboards contain everything that the sick soldiers may want, from
warm bed-jackets and sleeping-suits to tooth-brushes and soap, while
extras such as writing materials and games are frequently among the
gifts. The Red Cross and St. John Depôts each supply a separate group
of hospitals, and it is indeed a proud achievement that they have been
able throughout the war to keep pace with requirements on such an
enormous scale.
If the complete history ever comes to be written of the work of women
with their needles during the war, it will reveal an astounding record
of patient, loyal, skilful achievement, and an output of which the
figures can only be described as phenomenal.
XVIII
MISS EDITH HOLDEN, R.R.C.
“I wonder if patients entering the receiving-hall of this hospital
realise how much they owe to the Lady of the Lamp, whose statue
has been lent us for the war?” Colonel Bruce Porter, in command of
the Third London General Hospital, Territorial Forces, wrote the
above recently in an appreciation of Florence Nightingale and the
great sisterhood of nurses which she founded. From the original 125
nurses--the total under her control by the end of the Crimean War--has
sprung the wonderful organisation which is nobly carrying on the
noblest of all woman’s work.
[Illustration:
MISS EDITH HOLDEN, R.R.C.
_Vandyk_
_To face page 98_ ]
To see one of our great military hospitals to-day is indeed an
inspiring sight. To walk through the bright, airy wards, to glance
into the spotless theatres, to watch the preparation of appetising
meals in the big kitchens, and to examine some of the modern scientific
developments, induce a sense of deep interest, in which emotions of
pity and sympathy are overwhelmed in the predominant atmosphere of
thankfulness and hope. But it is not till a visitor has been privileged
to enter Matron’s office and to be shown, in the beautifully kept
ledgers, the system of organisation, that a true understanding can be
reached of how it is that the work of this great hospital seems to run
so smoothly, and with none of the restlessness and bustle which are
associated with undertakings on a large scale.
Miss Edith Holden has been Matron of the Third London General Hospital
since August, 1914. One of the biggest military hospitals in the
country, it contains over 2000 beds, of which 550 are for officers. It
is certainly the largest collection of beds controlled by one matron,
for in other of the larger military hospitals the patients are in
different buildings, each containing several hundred beds, and having
its own matron, though all under one commanding officer. The original
building was the Royal Victoria Patriotic School for Soldiers’ Orphans,
but as the hospital has increased a town of wooden huts has sprung up
around the central stone edifice. Miss Holden had had considerable
hospital experience in peace time, having been matron at the Richmond
Hospital, Dublin, and assistant matron at Chelsea Infirmary. To her
skill and power of organisation much of the success of the hospital is
due. She presides over a staff of women numbering 520, which includes
fully trained nurses, V.A.D. probationers, women orderlies, clerks,
cooks, and scrubbers; and if she had no other duties, the control of
this department alone would be a fair day’s work. The standard of
nursing expected at the base hospitals in England is considerably
higher than abroad, where the patient often feels he is merely resting
on his way home. “Bed-sores are not always avoidable abroad,” writes
a well-known Army doctor, “but they must never occur in a hospital in
England.” The shortage of trained nurses makes the maintenance of this
high standard no easy matter. “We have only two-fifths of the number
of trained nurses laid down in the establishment as authorised by the
War Office Schedule before the war,” Miss Holden stated recently, and
even this nucleus is liable to be drawn upon for foreign service. This
involves considerable strain on the Matron and her assistants.
There remains as supplementary staff the great band of untrained V.A.D.
workers, from amongst whom the more experienced probationers are
constantly transferred abroad. Miss Holden was one of the first matrons
to welcome V.A.D. helpers at the beginning of the war, and the care
which she has bestowed on rendering them efficient and skilful nurses
has been one of the most helpful factors in the smooth working of the
hospital.
Another of Miss Holden’s multifarious duties is the responsibility of
catering for the officer patients and the women’s staff. The management
of this branch of the work demands brains as well as imagination. While
the soldiers must receive the dainty diet which sick men need, food
supplies must be closely watched, wastage avoided, and expenditure
controlled. The happy and human atmosphere of the hospital speaks
volumes for the personality of those in authority. Every aspect gives
evidence of deep thought, sympathy, and understanding for the welfare
of the sick soldiers. The spirit of progress is felt on all sides.
To give only one instance: several of the masseurs in attendance are
soldiers blinded in the war, who have been trained for this work,
“and,” says the commanding officer, “after the war no one must employ
any other masseurs but blind soldiers.” A wonderful new branch of work
is the facial department. Lieut. Derwent-Wood by the use of metal
plates has achieved miracles of restoration for those most unhappy of
all maimed soldiers who suffer from apparently hopeless disfiguring
facial wounds. He uses his skill as a sculptor to model these masks for
cases in which surgery cannot restore the missing part.
Yet a further and very human branch of the Matron’s special, though
unofficial, activities is the care of the relatives who are sent
for by the medical officers to see the dangerously ill cases. These
unfortunate people arrive, many from remote parts of the country, never
having been in London before; and the Matron has made it her duty to
find accommodation near the hospital to which they can be sent.
The story of the Matron’s day is an endless chronicle: ceaseless care
for the critical cases under her charge, a hundred daily problems to be
solved in organisation of personnel, stores, equipment, not forgetting
entertainments, which form a great feature. Besides coping with the
daily round, she must always maintain an open mind for fresh ideas and
arrangements and new experiments in nursing. Above all, she must keep
the serenity, rapidity of decision, firmness, and sense of humour which
are essential in her responsible office. Miss Holden manages to combine
these qualities--she is a woman who must be obeyed without question,
but who may yet be approached by the humblest worker in the hospital
with the certainty of finding sympathy and justice.
Work in a base hospital is perhaps the most unselfish of all hospital
work to-day. There is none of the excitement and constant change of
the work nearer to the front; day by day the routine of the wards
goes on, unceasing in its calls on body and mind, unending in its
responsibility, demanding and receiving in its fulfilment the best
that women know how to give.
Colonel Bruce Porter paid his women workers a well-earned compliment
when he reported recently: “Since the early days of the war the
standard of nursing and care of the wards has been maintained by means
of the loyalty of the reduced staff to their chiefs, and the whole
of the women here have been and are magnificent. To keep this big
crowd of women workers at their best could only be done by a woman of
exceptional ability, and I am fortunate in having that type of woman as
my matron.”
[Illustration:
MRS. GASKELL, C.B.E.
_To face page 103_ ]
XIX
MRS. GASKELL, C.B.E., AND THE HON. MRS. ANSTRUTHER
The supply of literature to our soldiers has been an undertaking of
gigantic proportions. It was a woman who in the first few days of war
had the insight and imagination to realise the part that books would
play in the soldiers’ lives, and the organisations for their supply
which have grown up to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand have
been carried on almost entirely by women workers. The collection and
distribution of books to the troops is now undertaken mainly by four
organisations. The Camps Library works under the War Office to supply
the troops quartered both at home and in every theatre of war abroad.
The War Library of the Joint Societies of the British Red Cross and the
Order of St. John supplies the sick and wounded soldiers in hospitals,
hospital trains, and hospital ships. The Chamber of Commerce supplies
the Grand Fleet, and the British and Foreign Sailors’ Society sends to
the merchant ships and smaller ships.
The need for books in hospitals speaks for itself, while for our
fighting men reading is often the only form of recreation. In the
various theatres of war abroad they are entirely dependent for reading
matter on what may be sent to them from home. The need for light
literature and fiction is endless, to turn their thoughts from the
horror or the monotony of war.
The ways in which the books are obtained are many and varied. After
some months of war, the question of keeping up the supply for
distribution by the libraries became a momentous one. At first the
newspaper appeals brought in many thousands of volumes, financial
contributions for buying books were sent, and generous gifts were
received from publishers. But these supplies could not continue
indefinitely on a sufficiently large scale. A wonderful solution to the
problem came in August, 1915.
The Postmaster-General (Mr. Herbert Samuel) was struck, on visiting
some of the camps and on seeing the men in the trenches, by the great
value to them of the books already sent out. It occurred to him that
the post-offices of the country might be used to become collecting
depôts for the Libraries, and in consultation with Colonel Sir Edward
Ward and the Hon. Mrs. Anstruther a scheme was evolved by which anyone
could hand a book or magazine, unwrapped and unaddressed, over the
counter of any post-office in the kingdom for the benefit of our
soldiers. The collections thus made are divided in agreed proportions
between the four societies already mentioned.
The War Library started work quickly. In the first week of the war,
Mrs. Gaskell, her brother, Mr. Beresford Melville, and a small group
of friends, made an appeal in the newspapers for literature for the
sick and wounded. This was the first of all the great war appeals. The
response was so rapid and so overwhelming that, even in the large house
lent by Lady Battersea for the accommodation of the books, problems of
space and of methods of distribution at once arose. But a satisfactory
system was quickly evolved, and with the assistance of Dr. Hagberg
Wright, librarian of the London Library, it has developed into an
organisation of clockwork perfection.
Started entirely as a private undertaking, the War Library reached
such proportions that by November, 1915, it was considered advisable
to affiliate it to the Joint Societies of the British Red Cross and
the Order of St. John, thus ensuring financial support and official
facilities of distribution. The work, however, has been carried on
throughout by Mrs. Gaskell and a voluntary staff of women helpers,
whose duties include the unpacking and sorting of the books; the
cleaning and mending of soiled and torn copies; the selection of books
by a careful system which ensures that each package shall contain a
choice of books and magazines to suit varied types of readers; and the
packing, addressing, and despatch to the hospitals. Under the present
arrangements 1810 hospitals are supplied in England and a fortnightly
consignment of books is sent to 272 hospitals in France, besides the
cross-Channel hospital service and hospital ships for the Colonies
and foreign service. Hospitals in East Africa, Bombay, Mesopotamia,
Egypt, Salonika, and Malta receive every month thousands of books and
magazines, the continuous supply travelling smoothly to its destination
of ambulance, casualty clearing station, or base hospital. Under the
post-office scheme, several thousand books, papers, and magazines are
received weekly, but in addition many gifts of books are sent direct to
the War Library. There is also a large department of the War Library
for the purchase of new books to mix with those given. A touching and
remarkably successful feature, a suggestion of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, is
a thin scrap-book for men who are very ill, made by devoted helpers
amongst the public, in answer to a special appeal. A small department
for games and puzzles has also been started in response to urgent
requests from the hospitals.
Efforts are always made by the workers at the War Library to meet the
individual needs of special cases brought to their notice, and this
personal touch with patients in hospital is of infinite value. Men with
long months of life in bed before them have been enabled, by means
of the books thus provided, to study for particular professions and
trades. “It is our special boast,” says Mrs. Gaskell, “that no request
for literature has ever been refused by the War Library, even to
selecting and packing 20,000 books in twenty-four hours, or again such
a request as we had from no less than three Colonial hospitals, who
asked for the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ in forty volumes!”
The effects of the work of the War Library are so far-reaching as to be
incalculable. It is safe to say that no small group of women, such as
Mrs. Gaskell and her helpers, can have done more throughout the war to
cheer the lonely and depressed, to amuse and interest the weary, and
to turn the minds of men in pain to fresh channels which help them to
forget their suffering.
The work of the Camps Library was started in October, 1914, and now
consists of the colossal task of providing a systematic and regular
supply of literature to the whole of the British Army. No application
is necessary--a box or bale, varying in quantity according to the
number of men, is sent out automatically about once every month or six
weeks to every unit--however small--in every theatre of war. The scheme
was originated by Colonel Sir Edward Ward, when making arrangements
for the reception of the Overseas troops on Salisbury Plain. He then
saw how necessary it was for the men to have books and magazines, and
he asked the Hon. Mrs. Anstruther to assist him in forming libraries
for the use of the men in their leisure hours, to relieve the monotony
of the long evenings in isolated camps. From this comparatively small
beginning the present system has grown up, and now every commanding
officer can form a lending library of bound books for the use of his
men, in every camp or regimental institute at home or abroad. These
libraries of bound books are in addition to the bales of general
literature which go out from the Camps Library to all units serving
with the British Expeditionary Force, the Mediterranean Expeditionary
Force, and the Indian Expeditionary Force. Each box or bale contains
the greatest possible variety of literature, from a classic or standard
novel to the most highly coloured penny novelette. Magazines and
picture papers are always included--in fact, there is in each box
sufficient variety to suit all tastes. Books and magazines are passed
from unit to unit--till they literally fall to pieces, for the life of
a book under war conditions cannot be a long one,--and the request for
“more” is loud and persistent.
Besides these automatic consignments, special applications may be made
by the chaplains of all denominations attached to the armies in every
theatre of war, who then receive for distribution fortnightly boxes in
England or France, or monthly bales on the remoter fronts. The Camps
Library also supplies light literature to those soldiers whose need is
greater than any others’--the prisoners of war; and large libraries
have been formed at most of the prisoners’ camps in Germany. Prisoners’
literature is further supplied under the Board of Education, which has
started a special department for sending them books on educational and
technical subjects, and prisoners’ individual requests are dealt with
there.
When it is realised that since the beginning of the war over 9,000,000
publications have been handled at the Camps Library, some idea of the
scope of the work may be gained. It speaks worlds for Mrs. Anstruther’s
powers that she has been able to establish a smooth-running
organisation on such a gigantic scale, but she and her helpers are
more than rewarded for their efforts in the realisation of how much
their work has meant to the soldiers. Appreciation and thanks pour in
from all parts of the world. The reception of the books can be best
described in a soldier’s own words: “It was a very wet day, and most of
the men were lying or sitting about with nothing to do. When I said I
had a box of books to lend, they were round me in a moment like a lot
of hounds at a worry, and in less than no time each had got a book--at
least, as far as they would go round. Those who hadn’t been quick
enough were trying to get the lucky ones to read aloud. It would have
done you good to see how the men enjoy getting the books.... Can we
have more, as many more as you can spare?” Another officer writes: “My
battery has been in action since the beginning of November, 1914, and I
can honestly say that no enterprise, public or private, has helped us
more to keep the men amused and contented than the books sent by the
Camps Library.” Letters such as these are eloquent testimony to workers
whose labour has accomplished such a fine achievement.
XX
MISS LILIAN RUSSELL AND MISS ALICE BROWN
Miss Lilian Russell and Miss Alice Brown are amongst the ladies who
are working in one of the branches of the Y.M.C.A. work in France--the
hostels for the relatives of the wounded. The medical officers in the
various hospitals in France are empowered to telegraph to the parents,
wife, or sweetheart of any soldier whose condition they consider
critical. At the request of the military authorities, the Y.M.C.A.
undertook nearly two years ago the work of meeting, housing, and caring
for the relations during their stay. The sight of their own people has
undoubtedly saved the lives of many patients by reviving their desire
to live, even in cases which the doctors had thought to be hopeless.
Many women are giving themselves with the utmost devotion to the work
of managing these hostels. The following accounts are given as typical
workers’ experiences.
Miss Alice Brown and her sister, Mrs. Ballantyne, have been in charge
of a hostel for many months, and no more poignant human experience
can be imagined. At the end of ten months over 1200 people had stayed
with them, though there is accommodation for only about twenty people
at a time. Miss Brown and Mrs. Ballantyne look after their visitors
entirely during their stay, and with two or three voluntary helpers
they keep the house and cook for a household which sometimes numbers
fifty. Writing of her life at the hostel, Miss Brown says: “We have all
our meals with our visitors, and family prayers after breakfast bring
a quaint and cosmopolitan household together. They come from all parts
of Great Britain and Ireland. There are also wives who have followed
their husbands from Canada to England, and brothers of New Zealand and
Australian boys who have been sent straight down from the line. They
stay with us as long as the O.C. at the hospital thinks necessary. The
patients are not usually told that their relations are coming until
they are actually on the spot, and then great are the joys of meeting.”
Sometimes visitors have stayed with Miss Brown at the hostel for many
weeks, and on one occasion a baby was born there, whose mother had come
out to see her badly wounded husband.
From time to time there come the tragedies of the relations who arrive
too late, and then it is that the ladies of the hostels can comfort
and befriend these poor stricken people, go with them to the military
funeral, and help them to return to England. Indeed it is mostly sad
work, for the relatives are sent for only in the very dangerous cases,
and sometimes they stay on through weeks of anguish and suspense;
but Miss Brown strives to keep up an atmosphere of cheerfulness and
courage, following the wonderful examples from the hospital wards, and
there is an unwritten law in the hostel that no one must break down.
As an illustration, Miss Brown once described an occasion when she
found a girl sobbing bitterly in the hostel sitting-room. On asking
what was the matter, she was told that the girl’s brother was to have
his foot amputated. “Oh, that’s nothing,” said Miss Brown, and was
astonished afterwards, when she had comforted her visitor, at what must
have seemed heartlessness on her part; but the loss of a foot is indeed
nothing as compared with many cases.
Miss Russell’s work is somewhat different in character, for the hostel
which she manages is at one of the chief bases, and is the clearing
station at which all the relatives coming to France arrive. From this
base they are then posted on to the various hospitals, some having to
be sent eighty miles by motor. The work here is very strenuous, for
it means perpetual comings and goings, and there are always twenty
to thirty relatives resident at this hostel, besides those who pass
through. The workers can never, at any hour of the day or night,
feel safe from fresh arrivals, for whom food and accommodation have
to be provided pending the uncertain departures of boats and trains.
Miss Russell reports that in most cases the relatives are touchingly
grateful. A welcome for all who come is never lacking, but the work of
hostel helpers is exhausting, physically and mentally, and relentless
in its demands on their sympathy. One of Miss Russell’s privileges is
a permit giving her the entry into all the hospitals, so that she is
able to keep in touch with some of the soldiers after their people
have returned, if they are, as she says, “homesick, and in need of
a little extra spoiling.” In a letter to a friend she writes: “The
opportunities this bit of one’s work gives are inestimable, and the
example of the patient, faithful work the sisters do is the greatest
help and comfort. Everything, I think, pales before their glory--second
only to that of the soldiers in courage, sacrifice and devotion. As
to the men themselves, I can’t write of what they almost all are--how
self-forgetful, modest and unselfish down to the very gates of death.”
To those who wait in the shadow of suspense and anxiety which hangs
over so many English homes, it is indeed a consolation to know that, if
their soldier should be lying in danger, his own people will be able
to go to him. This privilege is available for rich and poor alike, the
Government being responsible for the cost of their journey and visit,
however long the relations may stay.
XXI
MISS DOROTHY MATHEWS AND MISS URSULA WINSER
At a great women’s meeting held recently in London, Mr. Prothero, the
Minister for Agriculture, used the following words:
“I do not pretend that work on the land is attractive to many women.
It is hard work--fatiguing, backaching, monotonous, dirty work in
all sorts of weather. It is poorly paid, the accommodation is rough,
and those who undertake it have to face physical discomforts. In all
respects it is comparable to the work your men-folk are doing in the
trenches at the front. It is not a case of ‘lilac sunbonnets.’ There is
no romance in it: it is prose.”
But in spite of all the difficulties which agricultural work presents
for women, they are taking it up in ever-increasing numbers, in view of
the country’s necessity. The success of women in agriculture is largely
due to a splendid organisation, the Women’s National Land Service
Corps, formed privately, but now working in close co-operation with the
Government departments. This corps first advertised the necessity for
the employment of women on the land, and initiated opportunities for
their training on a large scale.
[Illustration:
WOMEN ON THE LAND: (1) MOTOR THRASHING MACHINE: (2) MISS MATHEWS WITH A
CULTIVATOR
_Alfieri_
_To face page 115_ ]
Miss Dorothy Mathews and Miss Margaret Hughes are two typical
workers, educated women used to comfortable surroundings, who have
come forward to fill the places of the men who have gone to fight.
Miss Mathews and Miss Hughes are engaged in the heaviest forms of
agricultural work, which, however, they report to be quite within the
power of women. The healthy outdoor life and the work itself naturally
tend to increase strength, “and,” said Miss Mathews recently, “we are
astonished at the ease with which we do things that seemed almost
impossible some months ago.”
The usual farm day starts with milking, and when this is done the
serious work begins, varying according to the season of the year.
The field work is of course the heaviest, but Miss Mathews and Miss
Hughes each takes out her own team of horses for ploughing and
harrowing, and as they are working in a very hilly part of the country,
in Herefordshire, this is exceptionally hard. Writing to a friend
recently, Miss Hughes said: “On our first morning at the farm we were
put straight on to ploughing a field up on the hills, with a glorious
view across the Wye Valley and right on to the Malvern Hills. Happily,
we managed quite well, though we were in a ‘blue funk,’ having only our
one month of training-college experience to go on. We went on ploughing
practically every day, and our last piece of work before the frost set
in was to help plough up an eight-acre piece that had been under grass
for eleven years--it was a business!”
As well as ploughing and sowing the fields, these girls do manure
carting and spreading, grinding, and root-pulling. They also groom the
horses, mix the food, feed the stock, and clean out the cowsheds and
stables. Describing another branch of her work recently, Miss Mathews
wrote: “During the severe weather we had a strenuous time thrashing.
All hands were requisitioned, and the engine was kept going from
7.30 a.m. till 6 p.m., with only an hour’s break for lunch. This, of
course, meant very hard days and long hours, not to mention the dust.
Miss Hughes and I were put on to pitching from the rick, and mighty
strenuous work it is. It was amusing to discover that we had the most
tiring job; naturally there wasn’t a rush for it by those who knew.”
In addition to their farm work, Miss Mathews and Miss Hughes do their
own cooking and housework; therefore they are really doing a man’s work
outside, but without the prepared meal and the immediate rest that most
men can look forward to after work.
Another branch of agriculture which women are beginning to take up with
success is work with heavy motor tractors.
Miss Ursula Winser and Miss Mollie Jameson are good examples of
women who do this sort of work. These girls have been driving a
tractor-plough in Shropshire. They volunteered for the work at a time
when the local farmers were in despair at their inability to use the
only tractor in the district, the last available driver having been
called up for military service. The girls had had some experience of
motors, Miss Winser having been “chauffeur and odd man” when working
as a V.A.D. in a hospital at the beginning of the war. She was not
accustomed, however, to a type of car of which the starting-handle
alone weighs many pounds. Moreover, in order to be taken along a road
from one field to another, a tractor requires to have the “spuds” taken
off the wheels. These are strips of steel, put on with two bolts and
nuts each, and there are twelve spuds on each wheel, usually thickly
covered with mud and oil, so their removal is no drawing-room job. But
Miss Winser and her friend were not to be daunted. In spite of their
lack of experience, and further hampered by a large audience, which
assembled, in a spirit inclined to mockery, to watch their efforts
during their first days of work, they ploughed on in the most literal
sense, conquering their difficulties and gradually acquiring mastery
over the tractor. Miss Winser and Miss Jameson take the work of driving
the tractor and managing the plough by turns, the former being very hot
and the latter very cold work. They have now worked the tractor for
some months, taking it over considerable distances to farms all through
the district. They are able to plough from four to five acres of land
in a day, and have recently started training some of the local girls in
this work.
XXII
MISS EVELYN LYNE AND MISS MADGE GREG
In addition to their great hospital work, the Joint Societies of the
British Red Cross and the Order of St. John have established many of
what may be called the additional links in the long hospital chain
which stretches with such perfect organisation from the spot where the
soldier is wounded on the battlefield to the point where he is able to
return with renewed strength to duty. The accounts which follow of the
experiences of two workers illustrate the similar lives of many other
“V.A.Ds.”
[Illustration:
MISS EVELYN LYNE MISS MADGE GREG
_To face page 119_ ]
Miss Evelyn Lyne went to France in October, 1914, as cook in the first
Voluntary Aid Detachment to be sent abroad. The detachment was to start
a rest station at one of the base railway stations for feeding and
re-dressing the wounded as they came through in the hospital trains
from the front. A series of railway luggage-vans drawn up on a siding
had to serve as the headquarters of the detachment, which Miss Lyne
described as follows: “We had very hard work and great fun scrubbing
and disinfecting the vans; they looked beautiful when finished, and
were equipped as a kitchen, dispensary, dressing station, store-room
and common room respectively. No one would believe what a charming
kitchen a railway truck made. Besides the kitchen we had a very long
fire burning between old railway lines arranged at the right distance
to support the huge pots for making cocoa, six pots at a time, so that
we could have enough for 300 boiling at once. We worked day and night
at the rest station in twelve-hour shifts, and, being a humble cook, it
was my lot to stand for hours over the fire stirring cocoa, sometimes
in the pouring rain, and with smoke belching into my eyes.” As a rule
the rest-station workers were given only an hour’s warning of the
arrival of a hospital train, and then had to prepare food for from 300
to 800 wounded men. When the trains came in, the workers would take
their cauldrons of cocoa or soup and baskets of food on handcarts to
the carriages. “No words can ever express how splendid the wounded men
were,” wrote Miss Lyne: “one never heard a complaint, and we were so
thankful to be able to do just that little for them.”
Later Miss Lyne was sent to cook for between eighty and ninety nurses
at their billet in an old château at one of the hospital bases. This
was hard work indeed, for she was the only cook, and had eight meals
a day to serve. The nurses were on Army rations, so a whole sheep or
the quarter of a bullock would be left at the door daily, and Miss
Lyne soon became an expert butcher! When later she had to return to
England she wrote: “I shall always look back on those days in France as
the happiest time of my life.” She is now working as an inspector of
hostels under the Ministry of Munitions.
Miss Madge Greg has been doing rest-station work since January,
1915, and has been quartered at various stations on the lines of
communication. Starting a new station entails hard work, and the
workers need to show resource and quickness, and the ability to adapt
their arrangements on the instant to existing conditions, however
inconvenient and uncomfortable they may be. Railway trucks or a goods
shed have had to be transformed in a few hours into a spotlessly clean
dressing station, where men could be brought from the improvised
ambulance trains to have their wounds re-dressed.
On one occasion the unit with which Miss Greg was working received a
message that unexpected special trains were on their way, and could not
be drawn up at the existing rest station. Within an hour the workers
managed to get their stores and apparatus moved round to another part
of the line. “And,” writes Miss Greg, “by 7 a.m. we had everything in
readiness within the new dressing station, and ten boilers of hot cocoa
out near the trains. There followed days and nights of continuous hard
work, and more trains than ever before--this was our experience of the
battle of Loos.”
With time the rest stations were housed in proper huts, and also, as
the number of fully-equipped hospital trains increased, the need for
dressings was no longer so urgent. A later development has been an
arrangement for small wards at some of the rest stations, where bad
cases could be brought from the trains and 48-hour cases from among the
local troops could be treated.
In many ways rest-station duty is very trying, for the work is
necessarily so unevenly divided. Times of rush come after the heavy
fighting, when there is no respite by day or night. But workers like
Miss Greg and her companions never spare themselves fatigue or effort.
The only thing that matters is that no ambulance train should find them
unprepared, no wound should suffer for want of fresh dressing, no cold,
tired soldier should be disappointed of his hot drink. The rushes are
followed by long periods when there is hardly enough work to fill the
day, and the girls become conscious of the grim, draughty surroundings
of the railway station, which form the entire horizon of their life.
They have, however, found many other little ways of service, such
as undertaking all the laundry arrangements for the sisters nursing
permanently on the ambulance trains, starting a lending library, and
doing “little things” for the soldiers on the leave trains. It is just
in the doing of these “little things” that Red Cross workers, amongst
whom Miss Greg and Miss Lyne are typical, are performing such valuable
service. There is little excitement and no limelight in a life such as
they lead, and it entails hard work at any hour of the day or night,
whenever they may happen to be called upon. But their reward lies in
the moments of cheer and brightness which they have been able to bring
to so many thousands of suffering men, in that never-ending procession
of pain ebbing away from the battlefields. Their kind ministrations
have changed a dreary wait in a cold, dull station into an episode that
soldiers who have passed through will remember with thankfulness--a
moment of respite, bringing new courage, warmth, and comfort when all
were sorely needed.
XXIII
MRS. LEACH
In the summer of 1915 the Women’s Legion, a war organisation started
by Lady Londonderry, represented to the War Office that the services
of women might be used in cooking for the troops. Various obvious
advantages were connected with the suggestion. There was only a
limited and insufficient number of men trained as Army cooks, and the
introduction of women to do work which naturally falls within their
sphere would thus release men for tasks which they alone are suited to
undertake. It must also be a considerable gain to any troops to have
their cooking managed by highly trained women able to devote their
whole time to the work, rather than by men to whom this was only one of
other military duties. As a result of these representations, permission
was obtained in August, 1915, for one hundred cooks to start work as an
experiment in certain of the military convalescent camps.
Almost from the first the work at the camp where the largest number of
women was employed was carried on under the personal management of Mrs.
Leach, who has been identified throughout with the movement. She is now
in control of the great organisation of women cooks for the Army which
has grown out of this tentative beginning.
[Illustration:
MRS. LEACH
_To face page 122_ ]
After a six months’ trial the success of the experiment was assured,
and not only had vast savings of food been made, but these were
combined with marked improvement in the standard of camp cookery.
As a result of this initial success, by February, 1916, the Women’s
Legion was asked to extend its work, and in the course of the year that
followed the number of women employed in military cooking rose from the
original hundred to over 7000. When it is realised that the cooking for
1000 men has to be done by a staff of only thirteen or fourteen women,
including, besides actual cooks, kitchen helpers and waitresses, it
will be readily admitted that their work is of an arduous nature. A
difficulty might have been expected in finding a sufficient number of
suitable women to respond to the ever-increasing demand. On the only
occasion, however, when an advertisement was published asking for the
services of 1000 women to undertake this hard and not particularly
well-paid work, no less than 28,000 applications were received. This
fact alone is a remarkable testimony to the patriotic way in which
women have come forward during the war to offer to their country the
services for which their particular training has fitted them.
The rapid development of this great organisation owes much to the
powers of judgment, tact, and management displayed by Mrs. Leach, for
even in war conditions it is always hard to introduce innovations
without friction. Mrs. Leach has been helped in her work by her
sister, Mrs. Long, who has been responsible for much of the detailed
administrative organisation. A large part of the office work, taking
up of references and arrangements of posting, has been carried out by
Mrs. Long, who has also supervised the issue of uniforms. Mrs. Leach
has been personally responsible throughout for the engagement of most
of the cooks, and for their distribution. She inspects the cooking
staffs from time to time, and all decisions for promotion go through
her hands. A cook joining a camp staff in a subordinate position may
rapidly rise to a post of head cook, one of considerable responsibility
in these days. For, not only is the economical use of the country’s
food supplies a matter of national urgency, but the good or bad feeding
of the individual soldier is admitted by all authorities to have a
strongly marked effect on his fighting power and efficiency.
The satisfactory reports on the women cooks from officers’ and men’s
messes throughout the country prove how well the work has been done.
But the clearest tribute of success came when in February, 1917, this
branch of the Women’s Legion, which had worked hitherto as a private
organisation in co-operation with the War Office, became incorporated
actually in the Army as part of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. The
value of Mrs. Leach’s work was fully recognised, and she was asked
to continue the management of the department under the new system.
She is the first, however, to ascribe the real success of the work
to the _esprit de corps_, the loyalty, and the patriotism of the
women themselves, who have shown their capacity to carry on women’s
most time-honoured household duty under unexpected and increasingly
important conditions.
[Illustration:
MRS. GRAHAM JONES
_Bassano_
_To face page 125_ ]
XXIV
MRS. GRAHAM JONES
The work of Mrs. Graham Jones, in charge of a Women’s V.A.D. Motor
Ambulance unit in France, is remarkable in that this unit was the
first of its kind, and as a result of this successful experiment the
employment of women as motor ambulance drivers for the British Army
has been widely extended. Undoubtedly this success was mainly due to
Mrs. Graham Jones herself, and her good organisation and control of
the contingent. Her record is typical of thousands of English girls of
education and refinement who have come forward and given their services
for work hitherto considered men’s work, living hard lives under the
strict Army discipline enforced for all workers in France.
In April, 1916, the British Red Cross Society organised this motor
unit to take over the entire work of a big base hospital in Northern
France. Mrs. Graham Jones, who was given the command, had had over six
years’ experience of motor driving, and had already driven an ambulance
during the early part of the war. Working under her were thirteen girl
drivers. The unit was attached to a hospital of 1300 beds, twenty miles
away from the port to and from which the patients had to be conveyed.
The ambulance cars were big and powerful, and the girls had entire
charge of them, not only for driving but for cleaning and all except
heavy repairs. Mrs. Graham Jones, writing of the work, says: “It
included the unloading of hospital trains at our station, the transport
of patients to the hospital ships, to convalescent camps, or to the
base headquarters for return to duty; the conveyance of mails and
stores, personnel, etc. It was always full of interest, but required at
the same time careful driving and a steady, reliable head. The roads
through the various camps were so new and so narrow, and the obstacles
one met on them so varied in the way of teams of mules, Army lorries,
marching platoons, or steam rollers, that there could be no relaxation
of concentration.”
When the heavy fighting on the Somme began, the hospital increased its
accommodation, and the demand on motor transport was so continuous that
the drivers were obliged to work in shifts of eight hours on and four
hours off, to enable the work to be carried on night and day. During
the rush the girls were driving as much as one hundred and thirty miles
a day, but the care of the cars was never neglected, and it was the
duty of the off-going driver always to leave her car ready for the road.
A V.A.D. officer inspecting the unit reported as follows: “At 5.30 a.m.
we were awakened by an orderly reporting that a train would be in the
local station in five minutes. In ten minutes the members were pouring
out of the house to fetch their cars from the garage, and were at the
station before unloading had begun. They drove very carefully, and we
heard nothing but praise of them on all sides.”
It needs little imagination to realise the demands such work makes both
on mind and body; for a girl must have her full share of self-control
and nerve to be able to drive a load of wounded men across twenty
miles of difficult road at night as well as by day, when she knows
what an error in driving might mean to them, and that the slightest
want of care on her part might cause them unnecessary suffering. After
the patients are safely deposited comes the hard work of cleaning and
keeping the cars in order--a vital necessity for motor ambulances, for
wounded men must not run the risk of delays on the road.
In January, 1917, Mrs. Graham Jones was mentioned in despatches for
her devoted service and the success with which she had run her unit
during many months. Not the least important of the principles which
she instilled into her fellow-workers was strict and unquestioning
obedience to Army discipline. She quickly realised that, in order to
be of real help, one must fit into one’s place in the great machine.
It is because women have learnt during the war how important this
question of discipline is, that they are being employed for the first
time, and in ever-growing numbers, on active service. Nurses who,
throughout their training, have always worked under strict rules adapt
themselves naturally to war conditions, but for women who have never
been accustomed to a disciplined life unquestioning obedience is far
harder. Writing of women’s service in France, Mrs. Graham Jones says:
“It is not that women would be afraid of danger: it is that after one
has worked on active service for some time one feels so much that one
wants to do work only where the work is wanted, one just wants to help
in ever so small a way just where the help is needed, and in no case
where extra trouble or responsibility is thrown on those in authority.”
This is surely the essence of helpfulness, and this is the spirit in
which Mrs. Graham Jones and many others like her are working for their
country to-day.
[Illustration:
A MOTOR AMBULANCE DRIVER
_To face page 128_ ]
XXV
MISS GERTRUDE SHAW
When in the spring of 1915 the cry for “shells and more shells” was
answered by an almost miraculous development of munition factories, it
was hardly contemplated what an immense share women would be able to
take in the production of the output. It soon became apparent, however,
that the national reserve of labour lay with them. In their tens of
thousands women answered the appeal; in many cases leaving their homes
to settle in munition areas where population was already congested,
or where housing accommodation was on the smallest scale. To maintain
the efficiency of these new industrial workers, it was clear that
steps must be taken to secure suitable provision for food and shelter.
The problem, indeed, soon became acute in some centres, and wide
experiments for the protection of the women workers were made. That the
results have been so good is due to the exertion of certain individual
women of forceful character and of organising genius, and of these Miss
Gertrude Shaw is an outstanding figure.
Trained from the outset of her life for the teaching profession, Miss
Shaw rose to a headmistress-ship of a higher-grade girl’s school
at Leeds, and proceeded in 1913 to fill the post of responsible
mistress at the Women’s Institute, Woolwich. Besides her literary
and scientific qualifications, Miss Shaw had specialised in several
domestic subjects, including laundry and cookery; she had also obtained
the Royal Sanitary Institute’s certificates as school nurse and health
visitor. She was thus fully equipped for the task when the sudden war
demand arose at Woolwich for the safeguarding of the health of women
munition workers.
The first necessity was the provision of adequate meals in the vicinity
of the works. This demand was at once met by voluntary effort, and it
was under the leadership of Lady Henry Grosvenor that Miss Shaw entered
the service of the Y.M.C.A. as superior of canteens. She was thus “in
at the birth” of the first canteen for girl munition workers at the
Arsenal, and subsequently became responsible for the staff, catering,
and equipment of four mess-rooms.
The success of these canteens soon led to Miss Shaw’s appointment to
a wider sphere as lady superintendent of the newly erected Government
colony at Coventry. This scheme embraces the housing and feeding of
some 6000 girls and women, drawn from every part of the United Kingdom.
A group of hostels has been built, each housing 100 girls, and each
is under the direction of a competent matron. As lady superintendent
Miss Shaw undertook the task of selection of all the matrons and
their assistants, of the canteen managers and their subordinates; in
all, a staff of some 300 persons. It must be recalled that in the
organisation of the colony there was no precedent from which to take
example, so each problem had to be met and solved as it arose. Miss
Shaw’s experience and tact has stood her in good stead, and it may be
stated without qualification that the colony has been an unexampled
success. There have inevitably been difficulties as to the housing of
girls from such different localities and varied stations in life that
their habits, manners, speech at first presented awkward barriers; but
the girls have been met in a spirit of confidence to which they could
not fail to respond. Any religious problems have been entirely overcome
by the careful selection of resident workers who represent the various
denominations.
The canteen attached to the colony, where the girls from all the
hostels take their meals, is a further triumph of far-sighted
organisation. Lady cooks have been put in charge and labour-saving
appliances introduced. It is no uncommon occurrence in the canteen to
serve 2500 hungry workers with a hot meal within seven minutes of the
sounding of the factory “buzzer” for the cessation of work.
In addition to this huge task, Miss Shaw has initiated many schemes
for the recreation and education of her boarders. Classes in hospital
work, fire drill, singing, dancing, and gymnastic exercises have been
started, and are now most popular; occasional fancy-dress balls are
encouraged, and games are taught. The result of these efforts is seen
in the spirit of happiness pervading the colony and in the efficiency
of the women workers in this group of factories, which surpasses the
dreams of an optimist.
Miss Shaw, however, could not be spared to watch the results of her
labour in Coventry, for, when she had established the colony in working
order, her organising capacity was requisitioned for a still larger
task. She is now inspecting and advising on canteens and hostels for
the Ministry of Munitions all over the United Kingdom.
XXVI
MRS. HARLEY
Mrs. Harley, sister of Field-Marshal Viscount French, commenced her
nursing service at the beginning of the war, and was still carrying on
fine work for the sick and suffering when she met her death in their
cause on March 7, 1917. The shell which burst near Monastir has robbed
the world of a noble and heroic lady.
In 1914 Mrs. Harley went to France as administrator of the first unit
sent out by the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. She proceeded to establish
a wonderful hospital in the historical Abbaye de Royaumont--“one of
the most beautiful haunts of ancient peace in the world.” Under the
direction of Dr. Frances Ivens, this hospital to-day is one of the
finest and most complete in France, an important feature being the
possession of a perfect X-ray installation, specially chosen by Madame
Curie.
The work of the first Scottish unit was so successful that the French
Government soon asked for a second, and Mrs. Harley took over the
administration, and went to Troyes to start a hospital there in May,
1915. This hospital was known as the “Girton and Newnham Unit,” the
past and present students of those colleges having raised a large sum
towards the equipment. The first hospital under canvas to be used by
the French, it received General Joffre’s sanction as a French military
hospital.
[Illustration:
MRS. HARLEY
_Bassano_
_To face page 132_ ]
When later in the year the French Expeditionary Force was sent to
Salonika, the military authorities requested that this unit of Scottish
women should go with the expedition, and Mrs. Harley again accompanied
them as administrator. On arrival they were despatched to Gevgheli in
Serbia, but had to retire in the Serbian retreat. They then established
a hospital at Salonika, which is still open.
In July, 1916, Mrs. Harley came to England to take over a flying
column of motor ambulances for service in the Salonika district. She
returned to Serbia accompanied by Dr. Agnes Bennett, who was in charge
of the American unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, equipped with
funds subscribed by supporters in America as a result of Miss Kathleen
Burke’s appeal. Mrs. Harley’s column consisted of a number of light
ambulance lorries and two field kitchens. Its object was to facilitate
the more speedy transport of wounded Serbians, whose sufferings were
greatly increased by the shortage of motor ambulances. The column was
sent to work near the Macedonian front, quite close to the firing-line.
Writing home, Mrs. Harley said: “Now to tell you of our first venture.
A few days ago a British officer, just down from the front, came to
tell me that the wounded Serbs were in great need of nourishment when
they were carried down from the field, and asking if I would take up
my motor kitchen and start a canteen for them. In a few hours all
was arranged, and the next morning I started off.... We are fairly
near the front and in hearing of the guns. It is sad seeing the poor
men struggle in, and it is good to be able to give them some help.”
A little later, Dr. Bennett of the American unit wrote: “We are now
engaged on very difficult work here, getting all the most serious
cases direct from the dressing station; these we bring into hospital
ourselves with the aid of Mrs. Harley’s flying column. This is very
difficult and often very dangerous work, owing to the bad roads and
heavy hill-climbing. Our women chauffeurs have done splendid service,
and Mrs. Harley’s have been equally helpful. We have had a hard day,
and many of the wounded are still lying out on the hillside awaiting
transport, which is very scarce.” It must have been a strange enough
sight in the midst of the lonely, barren mountain country, and along
the rough, precipitous roads, to come upon a van of the Scottish
Women’s Hospitals driven by a sunburnt girl of the unit bringing her
load of Serbian wounded, collected with danger and difficulty, down to
the safety of the hospital.
In January, 1917, Mrs. Harley turned her energies to helping the
population of Serbian civilian refugees at Monastir, who were in dire
need of food and medical assistance. She also established an orphanage
at Monastir, where she collected more than eighty children, and looked
after them at her own expense. It was when engaged on her errand of
mercy that Mrs. Harley met her death. She was wounded in the head by
a shell splinter, during one of the periodical Bulgarian bombardments
of Monastir--an open town--at the moment when she was actually
distributing food to starving Serbians in front of her house.
The touching scenes at Mrs. Harley’s funeral are evidence of the esteem
and gratitude with which she was regarded in Serbia. She was buried at
Salonika with full military honours, and her coffin, covered with the
Union Jack, was followed by a great concourse, which included a large
proportion of Serbians. In the funeral oration pronounced over her
grave, the Serbian Minister of the Interior said: “Noble daughter of a
great nation, though not a sister of ours by birth, still dear to us as
a true sister, your tender soul is followed and ever will be followed
by our fervent prayers, and by the everlasting gratitude of the Serbian
nation. Thanks and glory be to you.” That her spirit and courage live
on is manifest in the declaration by one of her two daughters, both
engaged in hospital work in Serbia, that after her mother’s funeral it
was her intention to return to Monastir to carry on Mrs. Harley’s work.
As a recognition of her services to the French, Mrs. Harley was
decorated by General Sarrail with the “Croix de Guerre with palm
leaves”--one of the highest of French decorations.
XXVII
MISS ETHEL ROLFE AND THE WOMEN ACETYLENE WELDERS
In the autumn of 1915 the organisers of the Women’s Service Bureau,
anxious to assist women who applied to them for help and advice in
obtaining posts under the newly constituted Ministry of Munitions,
immediately sought openings in which educated women with a natural
bent towards machinery and mechanical work could receive instruction
in a skilled process. After consideration, it was decided to arrange a
training in the process of oxy-acetylene welding, a work which seemed
to combine various advantages. It was a skilled process comparatively
new in England, and one which women had hitherto had no opportunity
of learning, and should they be successful in taking up the work,
there would be plenty of scope for them, as the process was being
increasingly used in aeroplane manufacture. For this reason there was
a good chance of its being continued after the war, and not proving a
blind alley like so much present-day work. Accordingly, a small school
was established under an able and experienced metal-worker, Miss F. C.
Woodward.
The process taught is almost entirely used in aeroplane construction,
namely, the welding of sockets and joints, struts, levers, and the
parts of the frame-work.
[Illustration:
ACETYLENE WELDERS
_To face page 137_ ]
Even before the war there had been a shortage of trained welders, and,
with the enormous increase in aeroplane work and the enlistment of so
many skilled mechanics, the demand for such workers was enormously
increased.
The school was opened in September, 1915, and by December the first
girls were sufficiently trained to take posts in a factory, the
controller of which had been interested in the project, and had helped
the school at its start in setting up the necessary plant. The pioneer
women welders have been followed by a steady stream; and such has
been the success of the training that no welder has any difficulty in
obtaining employment as soon as she leaves the school. From this small
training centre alone over 150 welders have already passed into various
works.
The process is generally recognised as the speediest and most effective
way of securing a perfect weld without any deleterious effect upon the
metal, and consists in employing the flame produced by the combustion,
in a suitable blow-pipe, of oxygen and acetylene. The temperature
of the flame at the apex is about 6300 degrees Fahrenheit, and it
is by this means that the metals to be welded together are brought
to a suitable heat. The worker’s eyes have to be protected from the
powerful light by special goggles, and they also have to wear caps
over their hair, and leather aprons. The work is fascinating, even
to the onlooker, and absorbing to anyone with craftsman’s instincts.
It involves considerable responsibility, and the welder needs to be
conscientious and careful in the extreme, as upon the efficiency of her
work, if used for aircraft construction, depends the stability of the
machine and, consequently, the life of the airman.
The women welders have not established their position without
difficulty, faced as they were from the start with the fact that men
engaged on precisely the same work, with no greater output, were yet
receiving considerably higher wages. By first banding themselves
together in a Trade Union, and by bringing the question up for
arbitration as to whether their work was skilled or unskilled--the
decision being given in their favour,--the women welders have achieved
equal recognition with men, and that without having recourse to strikes
and dislocation of national work in war-time.
A typical worker among the learners of this new craft for women is
Miss Ethel Rolfe. One of the first women to enter the school, after
a short course of training she took a post in an aircraft factory,
where she was the only woman welder. She worked with one man welder,
and sometimes when work was slack, owing to the supply of parts being
hung up, she did brazing, which she learnt from the men with whom she
worked. She also did fitting, rather than stand idle; and as much
overtime was being worked, she could help on all three processes when
occasion required.
In December, 1916, after a good deal of practical experience, Miss
Rolfe accepted a post in a Government department. In this capacity she
visited aeroplane works all over the country, spending from three to
ten days in the shops, studying the work done by women, and that done
by men which women might take over. She reported to her department on
the detailed organisation of women’s work, on the methods of training,
and the possibility of further dilution of men’s work in each firm by
the employment of more female labour. To do this she had to inquire
into technical processes, machines, and workshop arrangements. She
specially urged the increased employment of women in fitting and
sheet-metal work, wood-work, and welding, and in some cases on the
erection of aeroplanes and the installation of the engine.
After continuing this work for some months, she was promoted and
transferred to the Production Department. She now inspects aeroplane
firms and reports to her department with a view to an ever-increasing
output, chiefly obtainable by greater efficiency in the labour of
women, improved arrangements in the shops and in the methods of
teaching and supervision. This unique opportunity of studying the
types of machines and methods of construction, coupled with the help
of resident inspecting engineers, has given her an amount of technical
knowledge which, with her personal experience of factory conditions,
has helped her in the work of selecting suitable operations for female
labour.
Before the war, Miss Rolfe had no previous mechanical or scientific
training; she had always regretted the lack of opportunity which women
found in the industrial world, and especially in engineering trades.
Another pupil of the welding school, Miss Margaret Godsall, who became
charge-hand at an aircraft factory, has recently died from inflammatory
rheumatism. She contracted this illness as a result of staying on at
the factory during a rush of urgent work, though she was suffering
from influenza. This is a pathetic example of the keenness and the
self-sacrifice with which girls are throwing themselves into their
tasks, and their service to the country will always be remembered as
one of the finest records of the war.
[Illustration:
LADY LUGARD
_Russell_
_To face page 141_ ]
XXVIII
LADY LUGARD AND THE WAR REFUGEES COMMITTEE
In her work for the great population of Belgian refugees, who came
over to England in the first months of war, Lady Lugard has helped to
carry out one of the highest missions to suffering humanity. Quick to
grasp the significance of the German advance through Belgium, Lady
Lugard, in the first week of war, turned her thoughts to the plight of
the unfortunate women and children driven from their ruined homes with
nothing left to them save life itself. Where were they to go, and what
was to become of them? Obviously England offered the only safe refuge.
Lady Lugard knew of the complete and detailed arrangements which had
been worked out during the summer of 1914 for the reception of refugees
from Ulster, in the event of the anticipation of civil war being
realised. Understanding the importance of rapid action and the value of
a good organisation, Lady Lugard asked the help of the Ulster leaders,
who willingly placed their machinery at the disposal of workers in
such a worthy cause. After enlisting the support of Cardinal Bourne
and the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, and having obtained
the consent and advice both of the Foreign Office and of the Belgian
authorities, Lady Lugard, with the help of Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton,
formed a committee. But there was little time for deliberation or
arrangement before she and her helpers were rushed into action. Warned
on one day that a shipload of possibly a thousand refugees might be
with them on the next, they had immediately to arrange offices, raise
funds, and prepare accommodation. Mr. Norrie-Miller, the manager of the
General Accident Fire and Life Assurance Corporation, placed offices
at the committee’s disposal free of charge, and secured the nucleus
of a clerical staff. The organisation decided to be known as the War
Refugees Committee. Its non-political and non-sectarian character
was marked by the fact that Lord Hugh Cecil became chairman and Lord
Gladstone treasurer, while the Roman Catholic and Jewish Churches were
represented among its members. Lady Lugard and Mrs. Lyttelton at once
proceeded to issue an appeal through the newspapers. The response was
overwhelming. All England was burning with admiration and pride at the
great part which Belgium was playing. Throughout the country, from
homes humble and great, rich and poor, money and offers of help flowed
in on such a scale that, even with the best endeavours, it took many
days before they could be acknowledged and classified. Eagerness to
help the victims whose suffering was part of the price Belgium had to
pay in her fight for honour was England’s tribute of admiration.
The next question was the momentous one of temporary accommodation for
the refugees on arrival. With the assistance of an ever-increasing
group of willing volunteer workers, the War Refugees Committee soon
arranged for beds and food to be prepared in the buildings placed at
their disposal. These were hastily improvised as hostels, with the help
of generous loans of linen and crockery. If the accommodation at first
was sketchy, there were at least beds and food for all who came, and
eager sympathy and welcome.
They needed all the help and comfort which could be given to them,
these dazed and terrified people, with the haunted look of horror on
their faces. They had endured experiences which our civilisation could
have ascribed only to a bygone age, and which we little thought could
pollute the earth again.
During the next weeks the stream of refugees flowed into London in ever
greater numbers. The work of the War Refugees Committee soon classified
itself automatically into departments. The clerical department had to
cope with correspondence which, within a fortnight, had mounted to many
thousands of letters a day containing money contributions and placing
accommodation for 100,000 people at the disposal of the committee.
Refugees had to be received on arrival and temporarily housed. The
question then arose of their allocation to more permanent quarters
and of arranging that offers of hospitality from all over the country
should be responded to by suitable allotment of refugees. From the
first it was found advisable to decentralise as much as possible and to
allow the local committees formed throughout the country to make most
of the detailed arrangements for allocation. These committees numbered
before long between two and three thousand. Questions of transport and
clothing were in the hands of other rapidly organised departments.
Every day the number of refugees increased, and members of the
committee worked almost without rest day and night. In the first week
of September a Government invitation was published offering refuge in
England to the Belgian civilian population. The magnitude of the task
thus became beyond the management of a group of private individuals,
and the committee was relieved of a certain amount of anxiety by the
provision of refuges on a big scale in London at Government expense.
Though the work was now extended and receiving Government assistance,
it was to the War Refugees Committee, which about this time was placed
by mutual consent under the general direction of Lord Gladstone, that
the authorities turned to carry on the great task. The committee has
continued to work throughout in close co-operation with the Government
Departments, particularly the Local Government Board. Large buildings,
such as the Alexandra Palace and the Earl’s Court Exhibition Buildings,
were taken over and prepared for the reception of the refugees, serving
as clearing-houses whence they could be sent on to the provinces,
where arrangements for hospitality were made both by local communities
and by private individuals. The staff of voluntary helpers in London
soon reached 500, who threw themselves with undaunted energy and
devotion into the task which Lady Lugard herself has described as “the
consolation of a nation by a nation.”
In all her personal intercourse with the Belgian refugees, especially
of the working class, Lady Lugard has said that what struck her most
was their pathetic fortitude and the way in which in their hour of
desperate need they clung to their religion. Chapels and oratories were
rapidly established wherever Belgians were received, and the Roman
Catholic Church and community worked unremittingly to comfort and
console them. “I don’t know how many thousand rosaries I distributed
in those days,” said Lady Lugard afterwards; “wherever I went the
Belgians seemed to clamour for them above everything.” It should also
be mentioned that the Jewish community in London took a very active
part in helping their co-religionists among the refugees.
From September till Christmas, 1914, the flow of refugees
continued--the fall of Antwerp in October bringing a tremendous rush
of work amid surging crowds. On one day in October the number of
refugees handled by the Committee amounted to 6621. By February, 1915,
their arrival in anything like large numbers had practically ceased;
but other problems sprang up. It became obvious that the war was to
last longer than the few months which optimists of the early days
prophesied. It was therefore decided, after considerable hesitation,
that it was better, both in their own interests and in those of
the community at large, that the Belgians, who had lived almost
entirely as guests, should be allowed to work and to become gradually
self-supporting.
In the two years which have elapsed, the working-class people who
formed the bulk of the refugees, while giving still some occasion for
pre-occupation and expense to their own and to the British Governments,
have become practically absorbed. In the ever-increasing demand for
labour, the Belgians, who are known to be among the best craftsmen and
labourers in Europe, have found a ready market for their work.
There has remained the comparatively small number of refugees of a
different class, unaccustomed to earn their own living, but rendered
destitute as the poorest artisans by the devastation of their country.
The great initial work accomplished, Lady Lugard and the many others
who had by this time become absorbed in the work of consolation turned
to making suitable provision for this group, which included families
of high social position, artists and professionals in many spheres of
work, men and women suddenly snatched from circumstances of prosperity
and ease and confronted with the problems of bare existence. To assist
these unfortunate people Lady Lugard organised a small hospitality
committee. She and her helpers proceeded to arrange a system in London,
and similar arrangements have been evolved on private initiative in
the great centres in the provinces. In London large houses were placed
one by one at the committee’s disposal, and social groups of Belgian
families were established in them. In these hostels, family life is
as far as possible reproduced, questions of education, health, and
clothing receive special care and attention, and the attempt has been
made to classify the houses in such a way as to bring friends and
potential friends into the same circles. The results have been most
satisfactory. The domestic management is undertaken in each house by
a competent manager, sometimes Belgian, sometimes English, appointed
by Lady Lugard’s committee. Many of the managers are lady volunteers,
who give the whole of their time to the promotion of happiness and
comfort in what one of the guests has described as “ces petits coins
de Belgique.” The one rule of the committee is to try and make the
Belgians happy. If their lives are necessarily restricted and limited
by circumstances, these Belgian guests are at any rate living in quiet
resting-places, recovering, it is hoped, from the shock of their
experiences, educating their children, and meanwhile possessing their
souls in patience till the day of their country’s liberation.
The numbers in which the Belgian population took refuge in England
from first to last have been so great, and the rush in the beginning
so bewildering, that it would have been impossible to carry out a work
of necessity hastily improvised without mistakes and difficulties.
Lady Lugard is the first to admit how far the schemes fell short of
the perfection which she had hoped to achieve. But when the story
of this flight of a nation is told, history will remember, not the
misunderstandings, the mistakes in detail, or the want of foresight,
which seem inevitable in all human undertakings, but the way in which
the English people opened their arms in welcome to the Belgians,
and their desire to comfort and to heal. To Lady Lugard personally
must be ascribed full recognition for a truly great service. By her
promptitude, her imagination and her unsparing gifts of energy and
devotion she stands out amongst the throng of splendid volunteers in
the service of Belgium.
XXIX
MISS CHRISTOBEL ELLIS
Since the early days of the war, the aspect of our streets has
undergone many changes; but there is no more certain sign of the times
than the sight of women in khaki uniforms and military badges driving
Army motors and lorries. Though these enterprising women excited
surprise some months ago, they are fast becoming as numerous as men
drivers.
The women drivers of the Army are under the management of a department
of the Women’s Legion, and form a part of the Women’s Auxiliary Army
Corps. At the head of the motor branch is Miss Christobel Ellis, who
has in her hands the development of a great new scope of activity
and usefulness for women workers. Miss Ellis, already an experienced
motorist, offered her services to the French Red Cross in September,
1914, and for some months she drove for them, and also for the British
Red Cross Society, in France. During the days of the battle of the
Marne and the heavy fighting near Paris, the shortage of ambulances and
drivers was so great that Miss Ellis sometimes drove for twenty hours
at a stretch. At the end of 1914 she went to Serbia, where she managed
the commissariat, storekeeping, and military returns for a group of
five Red Cross hospitals for over a year, till the final torrent of
invasion swept over that unhappy country.
[Illustration:
MISS CHRISTOBEL ELLIS
_To face page 148_ ]
On Miss Ellis’s return to England she found that the demand for trained
motor-drivers and mechanics was fast outpacing the supply. Her own
successful experience of motor work under the roughest conditions had
taught her how well the services of women might be used to supplement
men, especially in England, with the advantages of good roads and help
in difficulties usually to be had close at hand. Miss Ellis discussed
her ideas with Lady Londonderry, who had organised the Women’s Legion
for war service, and as a result of their representations they were
given permission to supply twenty women drivers as an experiment, to
take up work under the War Office in May, 1916.
The great value of women’s employment in motor work lies in the fact
that the men whom they are releasing are precisely the most valuable
class of workers--namely, trained mechanics, of whom there is an all
too limited supply, which can only be augmented by the slow process
of training others. Much of the work which the women drivers are
undertaking is work upon which highly skilled men were wasted; driving
cars, for instance, for staff officers involves many empty hours simply
spent in waiting. The women’s reception by the men whose work they
are taking over has been generous in the extreme. No trouble has been
spared to help the girls in every possible way, and to assist them to
maintain the high standard of Army efficiency.
The girl drivers work long hours, for they have to be on duty by 8 a.m.
and often do not put their cars away till late at night; but they stand
the strain of the life wonderfully well, and in spite of the bitter
cold of last winter there were few who dropped from the ranks.
It cannot, of course, be maintained that the women’s mechanical
knowledge equals that of some of the men they are replacing, but
the standard of care of their engines and cars increases with their
experience, and their capacity and skill in driving are undoubted.
Besides motor-driving there are other branches of women’s
work under the same department. There are corps of women
despatch-riders--motor-bicyclists whose services are proving most
valuable. Women are also taking over the charge of Army mechanical
stores. This is responsible work which requires great accuracy, for if
incorrect supplies are handed out, endless delay may be caused to the
convoys. In the delicate and intricate work of assembling aeroplane
engines, women also working under this department are proving more and
more efficient. The numbers of women employed in this dilution of men’s
labour will soon reach many thousands, and the way in which they have
succeeded in overcoming considerable prejudice against their employment
in the Army is in itself testimony to their efficiency.
To Miss Ellis belongs the recognition due to a woman who has been able
to give personal proof of women’s capacity in a comparatively new
field.
XXX
MADAME BRUNOT AND MISS MARION MOLE
The experiences of Madame Brunot and her sister, Miss Mole, who lived
at Cambrai for over two years under German rule, provide an example of
patient and unselfish work, carried on in the most trying circumstances
with splendid courage and devotion. Madame Brunot is of English birth,
married to a Frenchman resident in Cambrai. On the outbreak of war
she telegraphed to her sister, Miss Mole, to come and help her in an
ambulance station which she was establishing in her house, affiliated
to the Union des Femmes de France. Miss Mole left for Cambrai at once,
arriving on August 13, 1914. There followed a few days of suspense
during which the French and English armies were retreating day by day
nearer to Paris, and then, on August 26, the German army poured through
Cambrai. A battle raged in the streets in front of Madame Brunot’s
house and in the trenches behind her garden. Beds for twenty-two had
been prepared, but in a very short time fifty wounded were picked
up and laid on mattresses provided by people of the quarter. While
Miss Mole was tending the wounded whom the French and German soldiers
dragged inside their gates, Madame Brunot went out under fire with her
man-servant to rescue a French soldier who had been overlooked. The
first dressings were done at once, but not until late at night was even
a German doctor available. The next day the worst cases were sent to
the civil hospital for operation, and then returned to the ambulance
station to be cared for. During the following days and nights work was
incessant, but after a fortnight all the wounded were transported as
prisoners to Germany and the ambulance station practically closed. Miss
Mole then went to one of the big hospitals in the town and was allowed
to work for a time in the English wards, where she described the men as
being “in an incredible state of neglect.” She was afterwards asked to
take over the case of an Irish officer said to be dying of tetanus. By
courageously begging some serum from the German authorities, in spite
of a hostile reception, and then by her devoted nursing, she won the
officer back to life, and was able to set him on the road to health
before he was transported to Germany for internment. Madame Brunot,
meanwhile, had been doing all she could for the English wounded in the
hospitals, visiting them constantly with gifts of fruit, eggs, milk,
and puddings, and all the time doing her utmost to be allowed to reopen
her ambulance station. In October, 1914, the German permission was
obtained. Madame Brunot and Miss Mole were therefore able to continue
their nursing till the Germans again closed the ambulance station in
March, 1915. During these months the work was terribly hard, for the
staff was shorthanded and the patients were practically helpless,
being mostly cases of paralysis or men with amputated limbs. Miss Mole
narrowly escaped losing her arm from blood-poisoning, contracted while
dressing a very septic case. It was only after several operations and
six months of painful and anxious treatment that Miss Mole recovered
the use of her arm. After the closing of the ambulance station for the
second time, the sisters did all they could for the English and French
prisoners in Cambrai, arranging to send them food, gifts, and messages
by every means they could devise.
Early in 1916 they took up this work for the prisoners in a more
organised way, working under the Mairie of the town, and using their
house as a depôt for garments and food. “Being very short of money,”
wrote Miss Mole, “I also gave lessons in English, by which means I was
able to buy bread. This meant self-denial on the part of the people who
sold it to me, as we were all on bread rations. Food was very scarce,
and without the American _ravitaillement_ we should certainly have
starved.”
As time went on life grew increasingly difficult, and the German
_régime_ became daily more severe. Many of their friends were arrested,
some evacuated from their houses, and others sent as hostages to
Germany. In November, 1916, Madame Brunot and Miss Mole were turned out
of their house, and were thankful to take refuge in a tiny dwelling
half shattered by aeroplane bombs. At last, all hope of further service
being gone, they applied to join a train of refugees, and were allowed
to leave Cambrai in December, 1916.
No women could have worked harder than these sisters during more than
two years for the wounded, the prisoners, the desolate and poor of the
forlorn city--cooking, sewing, giving without thought for themselves,
uttering no complaints, forgetting their own need in the bitter need
around them. A terrible journey home, preceded by the inevitable
internment in Germany, might have seemed the finishing stroke; but,
undaunted by all they have seen and suffered, the sisters have gathered
their courage to build up life afresh, and to restore something of all
that was so suddenly crushed for them and for thousands more, in the
world-wide disaster of the war.
XXXI
SOME ARMY NURSES
The noble host of Army nurses contains few names which are known to
the general public; but for those who scan the _Gazette_ with care
there stand out women whose deeds swell the ever-lengthening list of
heroines, not only by shining acts of gallantry but by month after
month of patient, devoted work. The wonderful Army Medical organisation
has covered a vast field, and the endeavour has been throughout the war
that in any place, in any region, where sick and wounded soldiers are
likely to be congregated, there should always be a supply of nurses to
minister to them. Soldiers removed from the battlefield are handed over
from the ambulances directly to nurses, and are never from that time
onwards, whether in trains, ships, or hospitals, at home, in France,
or in the remotest of the battle zones, away from the care of trained
nurses.
The short accounts of work which follow have been received from typical
nurses, who, following the traditions of their service, specially ask
to remain anonymous.
The first type of hospital nearest to the battlefield where nurses are
allowed to work is the casualty clearing station. An idea of the work
can be gained from a sentence in a nurse’s letter home: “Fights in the
air are very common, but we are so busy we rarely have time to look.”
The casualty clearing stations have frequently been under bombardment,
and bomb-dropping from aeroplanes is so usual an occurrence as to be
hardly worth mentioning. Among the many reports of nurses under shell
fire is that of a staff nurse who, “although knocked down by the
explosion of a shell, resumed her work until all the patients were
evacuated.” Another nursing sister was present in the operating theatre
when it was wrecked by the explosion of a 15-inch shell, which wounded
her. In spite of her wound she remained at work for five hours, and
displayed great courage in continuing to attend to patients.
The following is a description by a nurse of the casualty clearing
station work: “We were usually very full of patients--at one time
convoys every other day, besides a constant stream in small numbers.
Eighty-eight patients passed through the ward I was in in one day,
leaving us fifty at night. If the fifty beds were full, the stretchers
were placed on trestles until sometimes it was most difficult to move.
We had a very good system with the new cases. Perhaps fifty would come
in at once. They were got into bed, undressed, washed, and fed. The
medical officer went round and looked at all the wounds. If he decided
they were to be evacuated, red labels were placed on the bed-rail
if they were to go by train lying, blue labels if they were to go
sitting, and white labels if they must go by barge. Those for immediate
operation had one with ‘Theatre’ written on, pinned on the outer
blanket, so that we could tell at a glance what to do for each.”
Another nurse writes: “When I think of these boys being carried in
wounded, ay, wounded almost beyond all recognition, but smiling bravely
to the last, it makes one feel proud to be British. As our Padre said,
we did God’s own work up there.”
The nurses on the hospital trains have a fine record of service. Though
less monotonous than the life in a stationary hospital, it is a curious
existence to be living permanently in a train, continually travelling
to and fro on one stretch of line, nursing in cramped quarters and
under particularly tiring conditions. Three nurses recently received
the Military Medal “for conspicuous bravery under fire, on No. 27
Ambulance Train.” The train was carrying a full load of nearly five
hundred sick and wounded away by night from a town in the vicinity of
the Somme front, when an aeroplane attack began. Five bombs fell in
the immediate neighbourhood of the train. The windows were smashed and
the lights went out. The train gave a heave which threw some of the
patients out of their cots. One of the sisters is reported to have
called out to the men in her coach: “Now, be quiet and good, boys, till
I light a lamp.” This she managed to do, and the men declared that her
hand never trembled. The commanding officer reports that “the sisters
went about their work coolly, collectively, and cheerfully, and that
by their magnificent conduct they not only allayed alarm among the
helpless patients and those suffering from shell shock, but caused both
patients and personnel to play up to the standard which they set.”
Wonderful work, too, has been done by the nurses in the hospital ships
in conditions of ever-increasing danger. “We landed 1300 wounded
yesterday morning,” writes a hospital ship sister on the cross-Channel
service. “It was a wonderful experience ... nearly nine hundred were on
the decks and steerage with broken arms, etc. All the eighty-four in my
ward were stretcher cases.... The work was terrific.” There is now an
all too long list of nurses who have suffered shipwreck at the hands
of the enemy, while some have lost their lives. When a great ship was
recently torpedoed in the Mediterranean the nurses had a narrow escape.
One of them has described her experience in the open boat as follows:
“Our safety lay in keeping as far from the ship as possible, heavy seas
making the pull to land out of the question. The huge swell increased
the fear for the safety of our boat, as we were sitting waist-deep
in water. Baling was of no use; the harder we baled, the quicker we
filled. A cry from the back of the boat caused all eyes to turn in time
to see the ship first list to port side, then turn and take a long,
straight dip beneath the waves. The sea was wilder and rougher than
ever, and three gigantic waves in succession completely swamped our
small boat, and all that was left to us now was to cling to the ropes
in the boat and to each other.” Eventually, however, the nurses were
rescued just in time by a destroyer. Such experiences are no longer
rare adventures--they are the hourly anticipation of all workers who
serve in hospital ships, since the Germans have ceased to regard the
badge of the Red Cross as a sacred and inviolable symbol.
A description is given elsewhere in this book of work in a typical base
hospital. If comparisons are possible, perhaps the most unselfish of
all hospital work is that which falls to the lot of those sisters and
nurses whose duty is the care of the sick and wounded German prisoners.
To have to expend their energy and devotion on Germans is unwelcome
work for any Englishwomen to-day, but the spirit in which these nurses
accept their difficult task is well illustrated by the following
account from a sister who is in charge of a ward of German prisoners in
a great military hospital in London. She says: “The German prisoner of
war in hospital in England comes on the whole as a pleasant surprise,
though a nurse gets an unpleasant shock when she is detailed for duty
amongst the prisoners. For several months I have been in charge of a
large number of wounded Germans, and I find them on the whole quite
good patients. At first their cleanliness and habits are not all that
can be desired, neither do they bear pain well. But they give very
little trouble, and are extremely grateful for what is done for them.
They are very observant, and make themselves quite useful as soon as
they are able to get about. They are of great assistance to the nurses
in carrying round screens, wheeling dressing-trollies, etc. Perhaps
the most striking thing about them is the almost womanly care which,
without exception, they give to a comrade more sick than themselves. As
patients much may be said in their favour, and the work amongst them is
a wonderful experience.” No better proof could be given of how the true
nurse’s instinct dominates her entire work; her care for her patients,
and, above all, her appreciation of their good qualities, overcoming
her natural and instinctive prejudice.
To the nurses of the war, it will be admitted by all, belongs the crown
of women’s war service. Their ranks contain many heroines whose names
and deeds will never be chronicled; but their selfless devotion, their
courage, their unquestioning acceptance of any risk, and their willing
sacrifice of personal comfort, health, even life itself, will stand for
all time in the proudest memorials of these tragic years.
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