Dr Hilda Clark, an obstetrician, suffragist and Quaker, had become increasingly involved with researching ill-health in the working-class population when the war started. The following month, supported by the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, her friend Edith Pye, a midwife, went to Paris to offer assistance to the French authorities after the Battle of the Marne left devastation in the countryside. Refugees were fleeing from Rheims; mothers and children were stranded and helpless and there was no medical aid for their suffering after all the doctors had been mobilised to join the French army.
In November 1914 a team of three doctors, eleven trained nurses, one medical student, two chemists, one sanitary inspector and fourteen male chauffeurs and orderlies, arrived in France. Some remained in Paris and the others went to Châlons-sur-Marne, 15km behind the fighting lines. Mr Edmund Harvey, MP, was in charge of the party and Dr Hilda Clark was responsible for the medical organisation. Edith Pye immediately started to establish an emergency maternity hospital in a wing of a workhouse which stood on the extreme edge of the town. She wrote later:
Built in separate blocks, of an ugliness almost unbelievable, like match-boxes set up on edge, within, the wards were light and lofty, ventilation good and adaptation seemed possible. The one offered to us had been the epileptic block, and so the ten-feet windows were caged in with wire netting, but they opened inward, and only to the discontented occasionally suggested a prison.
The Director of the Asile (corresponding to the Master of an English workhouse) received us all with great kindness, and if he was surprised, and perhaps displeased at the invasion of a dozen men and women curiously dressed, speaking an unknown language (and very few spoke any other), with curious ways and customs, he never showed it, but only grieved for the displacement of his epileptic women, who with tears made up their little bundles and were driven off elsewhere …
Downstairs there was a dining-room, cubicles for the nursing staff, and dormitories for the families of the women patients. Upstairs there was a ward of twelve beds and twelve cots for mothers and babies. A labour ward was partitioned off. There was also a waiting and convalescent ward of twelve beds, an isolation room, a dispensary, and a small kitchen. The sanitary arrangements were primitive and hot water had to be boiled on stoves. The ‘least incapable of the female imbeciles’ of the workhouse provided the domestic staff.
Over the following months pregnant women arrived in their hundreds to the maternity hospital. These included unmarried mothers, young wives expecting a first baby and older women already with a family. One was ‘accompanied by eight children and a silent, black-bearded, horny-handed husband belonging to a sturdy farming class’.
The nursing staff at the hospital rarely had to call on medical help. If this was needed, and Dr Clark was at one of the other two hospitals she set up, a French army doctor was found on the station where train loads of troops were constantly arriving and departing.
Once the maternity hospital at Châlons was running smoothly Dr Hilda Clark started to plan the building of a small cottage hospital at Sermaise les Bains, and opened a home in a Château near Bettancourt, for refugee children from Reims.
January 1915
We really want the cottage hospital very badly, and I hope to put it in hand now, just one block here, and then try to get a château for a convalescent home.
There is very heavy firing up this way again. We mostly expect the Germans any day. At night the horizon is very gay with exploding shells and searchlights. Another taube came very near a few days ago, and we have discovered that very fine big guns have now been mounted close to us for defence against aircraft.
February 1915
I must try to see the Prefect of the Meuse this week, and also get a car permit to go further north than we were able to go today. Most of these villages are entirely destroyed or at any rate more than half; we chatted to people in about half a dozen, and were interested to find a rather different type. They were not at all oncoming at first, so I do not think they will be spongers. They had a poor physique but they said the general health was very good. Sommeille is one of the worst. It stands on the brow of a hill with a glorious view – a population of about 370, and at first we could not find a home standing – just the church which was little damaged, and we found two or three houses down the hill. There were very few people about and they seemed hopelessly depressed and apathetic. It is very sad to see these poor things for whom nothing has yet been done.
Châlons, March 1915
This week we have been out to Nancy to find out if we ought to prepare to work there and decided it would not be necessary for the present, and we have asked for ten more women and thirty more men, and hope to get the work in the Meuse started in a fortnight.
The women are already working there as the distribution of garden seeds is very urgent, and I mean to spend next week there to help. We feel that if we have enough men to get this whole district done in 2–3 months, we shall be ready at a time when one trusts it will be possible to extend further north.
There is no doubt we have got the district of the greatest distress to work in, and one where French help is least available.
In Meurthe and Moselle and Nancy people are able to do a great deal. It is a modern, well-organised town – a brave and energetic people; the Germans have not been in it, and they have organised help for the refugees from the beginning, and though they have been slow in putting up shelters on account of the scarcity of workmen, they are getting it done by degrees.
I came back here this morning by train and go to Fère Champenoise for Sunday to settle about the little hospital which we are to put up at Sermaise. There is a pleasant countess here this afternoon who is having a stolen interview with her son in the Army. We invite these people to come and see us and then they can see their sons in peace in our sitting-room. They send us clothes and subscriptions.
Châlons is much quieter than it was and troops are pouring away. I don’t know where to. There is little firing going on.
The energies of the party are just now being concentrated on garden seeds – kitchen garden – which we find tremendously appreciated and do much to cheer and help people.
One gets more and more overwhelmed by the horror of the war. The very success of these little efforts to help the material losses makes the awful suffering that everyone is going through from the loss of their menfolk more emphasised.
Sermaise les Bains, March 1915
I write sitting on the doorstep of the little wooden house which has been erected in the field beside the wood at La Source, watching a great red sun go down while the birds sing all around one and the continual background of cannon rumble heavily as usual. Today has been perfect, spring rushing on, and the birds singing as if possessed. It was exquisite this morning. I could look down the field through the open door of my room to a soft blue mist entangled in the poplars below.
Today we have had a sad journey, to explore the neighbouring part of the Meuse. There is a district there where the line of battle turned northwards in a line parallel to, and west of that joining Bar-le-Duc to Verdun, where the fighting was tremendous, and where savage destruction of villages occurred – first much destruction by bombardment and then the Germans set fire to them as they retreated.
At Sermaise we now have a little cottage hospital with two wards and a verandah. Administration is rather difficult there but we can manage any urgent case.
April 1915
I am now trying to organise a convalescent home in this château, that has been lent to us, between Sermaise and Bettancourt. We think that we shall be able to fit it with Reims, Châlons and Bar-le-Duc patients. The difficulty is to know beforehand whether the patients who ought to come will be willing to!
I spend a weary time talking and trying to be nice to people. I never see anything of the refugees themselves. It is rather harassing and one can never be the least put out or moody except in the most private moments which results in great depression sometimes when by oneself. We are all a little too intense.
Châlons, April 1915
It is the essential spiritual difficulties – the standing up for peace in the midst of the machinery of war, while owing our lives and our scope for work to those who are fighting, the strain of work in the midst of intense personal sorrow and anxiety, of wondering whether it would be better to enlist, of a hundred doubts – it is all this that is at the bottom of difficulties which on the surface appear to be superficial practical ones that someone is to blame for …
Paris, April 1915
The Prefect told us that the F.150,000 which was voted for us by the Conseil General the other day, is definitely for the wooden huts – for the wood, and if we choose, for furniture. It is to be entirely in our hands and may possibly be actually paid over to us. He was quite emphatic that it was not to be handed over to the Paris ladies who have offered to furnish the huts, and we soon realised that an unfortunate mistake had been made by them and that they were counting on this to carry out their promise! There is not enough money to do more than pay for the wood of the huts and some of the fixtures that can be included, and we are getting rather anxious whether we shall really get the rent which Mme de G. so glibly promised. Thinking that all this furniture was being provided we have undertaken to use the money voted by the Committee for it, to provide 400 beds for the sinistres (burnt out families) of Sermaise and have used this offer as a lever to get the Prefecture to give the other 400 beds which were necessary in order that a grant of one bed might be made to each burned out family. This will cost us £1,000 and the Prefecture a similar amount.
Reims, May 1915
We have arranged with the Civil Hospital at Reims to take any women and children (except infectious diseases) that are willing to be sent away from danger of further shells.
There are less than 30,000 people left in the town now out of 120,000 and the whole place is shattered and shuttered – like a city of the dead. Still there is a surprising amount of life here and there – newspaper boys, a few voitures de place, flowers and fruit, a few shops open – some good ones, and prices hardly raised.
We keep very busy at Châlons, but are better staffed now. Getting the Reims children for evacuation is a big job. We have had thirty this week, sending twenty-four to Paris today and six to Sermaise and Bettancourt. There will be four more car loads today, tomorrow and Friday, bringing ten each time. They have to be fitted out in clothes, medically examined and allocated to different places.
How stifled by lies and hatred one feels, especially in all the news from England. Here one could easily forget the most trying parts – one lives so much in the present, and the psychology of our lives and those around us seems more simple. I sometimes wonder if we shall have rather a shock when the weather changes. It is still glorious and the country is ablaze with flowers, sometimes, alas, the result of land being uncultivated. The colours are as splendid as in the Alps, and the sweeping lines and queer broad check patterns of the rolling hills are just wonderful, and give one a new and living idea of post-impressionism.
I have been motoring steadily day after day – sometimes in other cars but generally driving myself in the Belsize – rarely less than 40 miles a day and often more.
July 1915
If one did not feel so entirely remote from the earth it would make one very homesick. I sometimes wonder if one will ever really feel anything at all or always be numb. The saving mercy I find in the companionship of such splendid people as we have working here …
Pat Waddell, who was training to become a professional violinist, joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) before the war and continued her training until she was called up in February 1915. She was sent to the Lamarck Hospital, a convent school, opposite Notre Dame Cathedral in Calais, which had been commandeered by the Belgians. The first contingent of the FANY had arrived there four months previously.
There were three wards for the wounded in the main hospital and in another building across the yard typhoid patients were nursed.
Pat Waddell had expected to be an ambulance driver but as there was a shortage of nursing staff she was sent to work in the wards. The storeroom, full of ‘tins of biscuits and pots of jam’, was her haven where she practised on her violin.
A few weeks after her arrival Pat Waddell and three other girls set off in an ambulance to deliver stores to advanced dressing-stations. They spent part of the day avoiding shells during a bombardment and then reported to the Belgian headquarters at Ramscapelle where they sorted out stores, including socks and mufflers, to take to Belgian soldiers in trenches on the Yser. They had to wait until it was dark before they set off.
When all was ready, we were given our final instructions – we were to keep together till we had passed through the village; the doctor would meet us and with a guide conduct us to the trenches; we were to proceed one after the other at twenty-pace intervals, no word was to be spoken, and should a Very light show up, we were to drop flat.
Off we set and my heart was pounding pretty hard. It was nerve-racking work once we were beyond the village, straining our eyes through the darkness to follow the figure ahead. Occasionally a sentry appeared from apparently nowhere. A whispered word and on we went. I cannot say how far we walked, it seemed miles. Suddenly a light flared in the sky, illuminating the surrounding country in an eerie glare. It did not take me many seconds to drop flat! Luckily it was pavé, but I would have welcomed mud rather than stand silhouetted within sight of the German trenches on that shell-riddled road.
At last we saw a long black line running at right angles and the guide in front motioned me to stop while he went on ahead. I had time to look round and examine the place as well as I could and also to put down my bundle of woollies which had become extremely heavy. These trenches were built against a railway bank, the railway lines having been long since destroyed or torn up, and just beyond ran the famous Yser and the inundations which the Belgians had brought about by breaking the canal banks, thus helping to stem the German advance.
A touch on the shoulder, and we clambered into the trench along a slippery plank. The men looked very surprised to see us. I crawled into one of their dug-outs, little larger than a rabbit-hutch, on my hands and knees, the door being very low. The two occupants had a small brazier burning; straw was on the floor. The sight of a new pair of socks cheered them tremendously.
We pushed on as it was getting late. I shall never forget that trench. It was the second line, the first line consisting of ‘listening posts’ somewhere in that watery waste beyond, where the men wore waders reaching well above their knees. We squelched along a narrow strip of plank with the trenches on one side and a sort of cesspool on the other – sanitary arrangements seemed non-existent, no wonder they got typhoid – and I prayed that I would not slip.
Farther on we could walk upright without our heads showing above the parapet, which was a relief as it was extremely tiring to walk for long in a stooping position. Through an observation hole we looked out across the inundations to where the famous ‘Ferme Violette’, which had changed hands so often and was at present German, could plainly be seen. Dark objects sticking up in the water were pointed out to us. They, the sergeant cheerfully observed, holding his nose meanwhile, were ‘sales Boches’ [filthy Germans]. The stench was not pleasant.
We hurried on to a bigger dug-out and helped the doctor with several blessés injured that afternoon, and later we helped remove them to the village and thence to a field-hospital. Just then, the 75s which we had seen earlier began bombarding. The row was deafening – first a terrific bang, then a swishing through the air with a sound like a sob, then a plop at the other end as it exploded – somewhere. At first, as with all new-comers in the firing line, we ducked our heads as the shells went over, to a roar of delight from the men, but in time we gave that up. During this bombardment, we went on distributing our woollies along the line; I thought my head would split, the noise was so great. I asked one of the officers, during a pause, why the Germans were not replying, to which he answered that we had just got the range of one of their positions by ’phone, and as these guns we were employing had just been brought up, the Boche would not waste any shells until he thought he had our range.
Presently we came to the officer’s dug-out, and, incredibly, he had small windows with lace curtains! They were the size of pocket-handkerchiefs, still, the fact remains, they were curtains. He showed us two bits of a shell that had burst overhead the day before and made the roof collapse, but since then the damage had been remedied by a stout beam. He was a merry little man with twinkling eyes and very proud of his little house.
Our things began to give out and we were not at the end of the line by any means. It was heart-breaking to hear one man say, ‘Une paire de chausettes, mees, je vous en prie; il y a trois mois depuis que j’en ai eues’ (‘A pair of socks, miss, I beseech you; it’s three months since I had any’). I gave him my scarf which he put on immediately, cheerfully, accepting the substitute. ‘Ah-ha!’ he cried to his friends, ‘it’s still warm. This will bring me luck. A thousand thanks, mademoiselle.’
There was no reason for us to go any farther, so we bade them good night, trying not to see the rows of hands stretching out beyond. If the knitters could have seen how much their work was appreciated, they would have been rewarded. We passed the word along that more would be forthcoming another night and their turn would come.
One by one we crawled out of the trenches on to the road and began the perilous journey homewards with the blessés, knowing that at any moment Very lights might go up. As we were resting, the captain of the battery joined us, and in the semi-darkness I saw that he was offering me a bunch of snowdrops! It certainly was an odd moment to receive a bouquet, but I tucked them into my tunic and treasured them for days afterwards – snowdrops that in spite of war had flowered in the garden of some cottage long since destroyed.
Arrived once more at headquarters, we were pressed to a petit verre of some very hot and raw liqueur, but nevertheless very warming and very good. We had got terribly cold in the trenches. Taking leave of our kind hosts, we set off for the hospital.
It was now about 1.30am and we were stopped no less than seventeen times on our way back. As it was my job – ‘me with my French’ – to lean out and whisper into the sentry’s ear, I was rather tired by the time I had passed the seventeenth ‘Gustave’.
The blessés were taken to a Casualty Clearing Station, and the Mors [ambulance], rid of its wounded load, sped through the night back to Lamarck …
During the six months Eleonora Pemberton and the No. 1 British Red Cross VAD Unit worked at the Gare Centrale, Boulogne they gave food to almost 80,000 sick and wounded soldiers and some 2,000 men were treated in the dispensary; 40,000 magazines and papers were distributed to patients. The member who drove the unit’s ambulance took 1,677 cases to hospitals and hospital ships. Early in 1915 the unit opened a club with a lending library for nursing sisters and a small branch feeding station at Hesdigneul Junction which fed 6,000 men between February and April 1915. On behalf of the Army and British Red Cross Post Offices the members of the unit also traced the owners of many hundreds of misdirected letters and parcels.
At the end of February 1915 Eleonora Pemberton and five other VADs were sent to form a small rest station at Gournay-en-Bray for sick and injured men of the convalescent horse Depot. In May 1915 she was transferred to set up a dressing-station and canteen at Abbeville railway station. She continued to write letters home.
15 May 1915
No. 5 Stationary Hospital
L. of C. BEF
The place as we took it over consisted merely of a large piece of platform in the goods station roughly screened off with tent canvas hung by cords and all sagging and dirty and disreputable looking. Inside there were six benches and one long, old and dirty tressle table. Outside there were three Sawyer boilers for hot water and near by on the platform was a little cabine with windows on three sides and a door which locked. This was our entire nucleus and foundation and I don’t mind telling you that, coming from Gournay where we had made everything so nice and complete, my heart rather sank at the prospect of dealing successfully with such scant material.
That is a fortnight ago and today my dressing-station (oh, the excruciating pride and joy of that personal pronoun!!!) is really rather a picture.
The very first thing to be done was to get the canvas stretched on to battens top and bottom, with a wooden outline for the doorways: then the canvas had to be thoroughly washed down on both sides. We have four orderlies and they did this, and helped with the wood work. (Pause, while I am called away to prescribe for a man with bad toothache). One of our party, Miss Barber, is a great carpenter and we have to thank her to a very large extent for the transformation in our abode.
Once the canvas was stretched it looked a different place; then we proceeded to matchboard in the space between the cabine and the wall – about 6ftx10ft, and this makes us a store and place to put our own things in during the day.
The store now has a cupboard of 4 shelves and a canvas curtain in front of which are tinned milk, jam, soup, matches, tobacco, tea, etc., a set of lockers also with a canvas curtain for our personal belongings, and a thing to hang coats on, and it is a picture of neatness, small though it is. All the cupboards, shelves, and lockers are made out of packing cases, and you have no idea what an ornamental thing a packing case can be when it is thoroughly scrubbed and provided with shelves, doors, hinges and a padlock! (The man with the toothache has just come beaming to say that the iodine has done the trick; but he must have the tooth out tomorrow as it is thoroughly rotten.)
The Surgery looks awfully nice. We covered the long table with white oilcloth, and it has arrayed upon it enamel and tin bowls (all turned upside down because of the smuts), a brown earthenware jar with a cover, labelled ‘Swabs’, four large square biscuit tins, all polished up and labelled respectively Bandages, Wool, Boric Lint, White Gauze, and in the centre is a tray with a methylated spirit lamp and bowl and saucepan (small) for fomentations and sterilising instruments; safety pins, strapping and matches and a fomentation wringer etc. At one end is a bowl of prepared iodine swabs, and at the other cyanide gauze in carbolic, which are the two chief lotions we use. Under the table are pails for dirty dressings and slops. One of our orderlies is by trade a sign painter and with the aid of a little red paint he has worked wonders, and everything is labelled in large letters. The little table is supplied with requisites for the doctors to wash their hands; the others are for us to work at. I have the one in the middle of the long side and on it I have set out everything I am likely to require for dressings, including my instruments and torch. Our work is nearly all at night.
In our large enclosure which we call the ‘Surgery’ we have now six cupboards of different sizes, and as soon as we can get hold of more cases we are going to make still more. Having got our Store, my next craving was for some place where we could with decency muddle! The surgery is too big to do odd jobs in; also it must not be made untidy and the store is too small, though we all four had tea there very happily several times. There was however a large corner between the surgery and the boilers and this seemed to ask to be enclosed and made into a ward-scullery.
The canvas all along one side of the surgery which was against the wall seemed superfluous, so down it came, and with a certain amount of planning and shifting and contriving, it made the two remaining walls of the scullery and then we were very happy. We are right inside the goods shed so are under cover, which is a good thing.
My patients sit on the bench to the left of the table and as one is finished another moves up.
Greg, the other nursing member, works at the table by the scullery door and the MOs work at the big table and the one in the corner, or anywhere they feel inclined.
We are going to have proper tressles for a stretcher as soon as the REs have time to make them, but until then we have piled up ration boxes to act as supports. Anything really does, the only point is to raise the stretcher, as it is both back-breaking and not over clean, kneeling about on the floor.
We work here directly under No. 5 Stationary Hospital, which is an RAMC one. Major Meadows the CO and all the staff have been most awfully kind to us, have helped us in every possible way. They come down when a train comes in, but otherwise leave us entirely alone (except for friendly visits), and I am left an absolutely free hand to make what preparations I think best; and indent for what dressings, lotions, etc. I think we ought to have in stock. There is a glorious independence about it which really seems quite strange after six months ‘in the ranks’ so to speak.
The actual procedure is as follows: when any kind of ‘improvised’ train of wounded is announced the RTO sends us round a notice, sometimes stating the number on board, and sometimes not. We then proceed to make cocoa which means opening about 16 tins of that and 42 of condensed milk, as 1 tin of cocoa is supposed to do 64 men. Then just before the train is due Greg and I uncover everything in the Surgery, prepare the lotions and set the Primus going on a bench between the cupboards with a dixie of boiling water on it.
The first night, which was 1 May, a Sister came down with the Medical Officer, but the next time Major Meadows asked whether we could do without her, and since then only the MOs have come, usually 2 or 3, or sometimes even 4 of them.
As soon as the train is actually in the Voie Sanitaire, which is a siding kept for French and English trains of wounded, the feeding parties set out. They consist of the other two members, Barber and Saunders, who start at opposite ends of the train, each with an orderly to collect mugs, and one to fetch cocoa, which they do in enamelled pails. We almost always have to borrow one more orderly, either from the BRC or No. 5 as we have to leave one at the boilers to keep the fires up and deal out the cocoa. Sometimes we are asked to issue Army rations – a loaf of bread to each carriage and a tin of bully beef, or 3 tins of jam, and then one boy does this entirely, and they have to work with 3 at the train and not 4.
Meanwhile we are not idle, as any men whose dressings are through, or who want them renewing, are sent to the Surgery. One of the MOs always meets the train MO, and consults with him. We do not have anything to do with the regular Ambulance Trains, as they are fully equipped both for feeding and dressing on board, but the improvised trains consist merely of ordinary carriages with men sitting up, or lying on the floor, and in the racks, and anywhere else, and as they are not corridored, no dressing can be done on board.
We had a really turbid time from Sunday evening till Wednesday, and I am thankful it has slacked for the last two days, as we could not have gone on much longer at that pressure.
On Saturday night Greg had a wire to say that her brother was in hospital in Boulogne, wounded, so as an Ambulance was going in on Sunday from No. 3 BRC Hospital I arranged for her to go in for the day; this reduced us to 3.
It was nearly 6 and as the two others were very anxious to go to church, and there had been no word of a train, I let them go, and also sent an orderly for their rations, leaving just one on duty (the other two form the night shift, and were asleep in their tent). Of course just after they had all departed word came that a train of 1,000 was to be expected at eight o’clock!
For a moment I was as near a panic as I ever have been as it takes a good long time to get everything ready, even with all of us on, and now there was only Hodgson and myself. Panic was, however, the last thing to help one, so we just set to and worked. I telephoned up to No. 3 for the loan of three orderlies as Greg was still away, and lived in hopes that Barber and Saunders would soon return. They did in due course but none of us got any dinner that night – there was no time. Luckily all went well, and there were about 50 dressings to be done by two MOs and myself.
When all was over Greg turned up, and just as we were finishing Miss Macarthy the Army Matron-in-Chief stalked in. We had been expecting an inspection by her, but not at midnight, and I do hope she didn’t think the place always looked like that. You know what a room looks like after a party, and you can perhaps imagine a little of what it looks like after a rush of dressings – not beautiful.
She came to ask us to look after 3 Army Sisters whom she was expecting to arrive during the night. We were not really intending to do night duty, but as the motto of the VADs is never to say no to anything, and as we also wished to stand well in her eyes, I did not let this on, but said we would certainly look after them, and thought with a sigh of my comfortable bed! Greg not having been working all day was quite fresh, and said she would stay too, so the others went off to bed, and I also lay down for an hour in the cabine. It was really very lucky we did stay up, as word came that another train was expected about 4.45am, so we turned again to preparing cocoa, and at 4 had to go and rouse the others, poor things. (I really think it is worse to go to bed and be dragged out than not to go at all!)
Soon Captain Hughson (a very nice MO From No. 5) and Mr Gordon who is attached to the RE who are building sidings here, arrived, and then we had a time and a half. They simply poured in, and from time to time we looked despairingly round, and wondered how on earth we were going to get through. We ran out of wool and bandages, and almost all the dressings, and had to send post haste up to the hospital for more and yet more. It took us till nearly 8 to get through, even with the help of three RAMC nursing orderlies, and (towards the end when the feeding was finished) of our own orderly Clough and Barber and Saunders who in reality know very little and really only listen. There were some awfully heavy cases too, and Captain Hughson reckoned that we did about 200, and this was working full steam ahead the whole time.
When we first started I thought we should simply wait on the MOs, but I soon found that we should never get through at that rate, nor was it what they expected, so now I just go ahead with whatever I can, and if there is something doubtful I call one of them. Nearly always one simply puts on a fresh dressing of whatever they had before and it is the freshness and coolness instead of the stiffness which comes from clotted blood, which relieves.
Well, by the time we had cleaned up and had breakfast it was 9.30am and I was quite ready for bed, so I went off till 12.30 when Greg and Saunders went. Barber having had some sleep in the night, stayed on till tea time, and hardly had she gone when the notice of another train came. It was however not to arrive till 8pm, but was said to be followed by others at intervals of 3 hours during the night!
This time Mr Gordon, Mr Douglas and Mr Wilson from No. 5 came down, and an Army Sister, who was waiting for a train to go up to a Clearing Hospital, was sent round by the RTO to see whether she could help. It was rather funny having her there, as of course she was our superior in every way, and yet it was our show, and we had to tell her where everything was, and how everything was done!
Again it was a big train, and heavy dressings – very – about 150. Afterwards we all had tea, including the RTO and an engineer officer (there are swarms of them about). The next train was expected about 2am and Captain Hughson came down instead of Mr Douglas, but it didn’t come, and didn’t come, and finally Barber and I who were in the scullery came into the surgery, and found Mr Gordon huddled up asleep on the reserve dressings hamper; Captain Hughson asleep on a form, and at the other end Greg and Saunders asleep on stretchers! So we did likewise in the scullery. The train never came at all, and about 6am we set to work to do the morning cleaning, and I had to think out schemes for providing everybody with some rest and sleep and yet have enough on duty.
Mercifully I arranged for Barber and Saunders to go to bed till lunch time as, about 10am, when Greg and I had got everything looking spick and span, who should stroll in but General Wodehouse and his ADC. He expressed great pleasure, and said the place was a totally different one from when he last saw it. Just then the RTO sent round to say that an empty supply train with 150 wounded on board was expected in half an hour, and as the Voies Sanitaires were both occupied with French ambulance trains, it would come in right the other side of the station. Nothing could have been more unfortunate, as General Wodehouse was there to see our success or failure, and as we had never yet had to carry the cocoa right over there I quite thought it would be the latter, especially as there were only two boys on. To add to everything they said it was too far for any wounded to come, and the dressings must be done on the train. Greg had run a nail into her foot, and was limping, so I handed over the dressing part to her, and took over the cocoa (as neither of the feeding members were on). Luckily it all went very easily, as the trucks were all provided with their own mugs and the cocoa simply had to be poured out.
The train consisted of cattle trucks, but awfully well fitted up: there were ten men in each, each on a straw palliase with blankets. Each truck had an orderly and a table, mugs, water and all necessary arrangements. By this time Captain Hughson and Mr Gordon had started doing dressings, and Greg worked with the former while I accompanied the latter. I did not attempt to do any on my own, as it was, as you may well imagine, fearfully difficult and inconvenient, and I thought it would probably go quicker if I just helped him and handed him things. Before this train was finished another 200 cases came in, and then shunted on to the same line. This time the RTO had sent over for Barber and Saunders so they were able to do the feeding entirely. Also Captain Hughson said it was utterly impossible to do everything on the train, and all the men who could must come to the Surgery whither two Red X Sisters from No. 3 had also been summoned. He therefore with the Sisters and Greg carried on there, while Mr Gordon and I took on the cases that were too bad to leave the train, or could not walk.
It was a wonderful sight that morning: the whole station seemed to be given up to soldiers and wounded and people carrying food and dressings and stretchers. The two French trains had Turcos and Algerians and all sorts on board, and there were altogether hundreds swarming over the station. It reminded me of that first rush at Boulogne.
It also made me realise what a tremendous lot I had learnt since that time. Those were the first wounds I had seen, and they filled me with horror, though I never felt in the least degree bad. I felt, however, very uncertain of handling them, whereas now I feel quite different, and far more sure of myself …
Olive Dent went on courses in hygiene and psychology and worked with the St John’s Ambulance before the war. She served as a VAD in the same hospital for ‘twenty strenuous and crowded months’ between September 1915 and May 1917.
The first day’s duty in a camp hospital is a perplexing, nonplussing affair. Primarily, I wasn’t certain where I was. For a bird’s eye view of the camp would have revealed a forest of marquees and a webbing of tent-ropes. The marquees sometimes clustered so close that the ropes of two roofs on the adjoining side were not pegged to the ground, but were tied overhead, the one to the other, so supporting each other and saving space. Between such dual marquees was a tarpaulin passage, usually spoken of as a tunnel.
Each row of marquees was known as a ‘line’ and named as a letter in the alphabet. Thus ‘A’ line consisted of eight or nine tents, known as A1, A2, A3, and so on. All these marquees were exactly alike, and as we nurses passed from one to the other several times in the morning, it was at first a little difficult to know whether one was in A1, A3, or A5.
The early morning’s work consisted of making twenty beds, dusting twenty-four lockers, taking twenty-four temperatures, and tidying the wards. Then came a snack lunch, and a change of apron followed by the giving of the necessary medicines, a couple of inhalations, the applying of two or three fomentations, a small eusol dressing, the dispensing of one or two doses of castor oil, and the cleaning of a linen cupboard.
Then came the boys’ dinner, for which most of the up-patients went to the (marquee) dining-hall, leaving only two boys sitting at the ward table. In the afternoon, more medicines were to be given, the washing of patients was to be done and the beds made. At five o’clock came tea and off-duty.
The newcomer to a camp hospital finds matters very different to what she has been accustomed in England; no hot water, no taps, no sinks, no fires, no gas-stoves. She probably finds the syringe has no suction, that all the cradles are in use, and there is none for the boy with bad trench feet, that there are only six wash-bowls for the washing of 140 patients, and that there is nothing but a testing stand and a small syringe with which to help the medical officer through a dozen typhoid inoculations.
‘Pinching’ is always quite an accepted condition of affairs. Meeting an orderly carrying some planks of wood on his shoulders the other morning, I said in somewhat slip-shod fashion, ‘And what are you making yourself, Smith?’ ‘As usual, sister, I’m making myself a thief,’ came the unhesitating reply. All the consolation the late owner of any article may receive is the overworked tag, ‘You’re unlucky, mate. You shouldn’t have joined.’
The nursing quarters of most of the camp hospitals in France consist of a wooden hut for the mess-and-sitting-room – by the way, it is almost solely the one and very rarely the other – a shed of some kind for the cook’s kitchen, and bell tents, marquees, Alwyn huts, Armstrong huts, and wooden huts for the housing of the staff.
In the early days, some of our nursing sisters had improvised bedrooms from the loose boxes which were near us, in virtue of our being on a racecourse. Later, when tents and huts materialised at a quicker rate, these were left for the accommodation of the batmen. Bell tents and marquees were always very popular, being absolutely delightful in summer and very cosy in winter with the aid of stoves.
It was wonderful how pretty and comfortable bunks and bell tents could be made. All the furniture was of the packing-box variety. Chests of ‘drawers’ were built from small boxes on the cumulative principle and by the system of dovetailing. Then a chintz curtain was hung in front. Another chintz curtain served as a wardrobe. Indeed, chintz like charity covered a multitude of sins, the greatest of these being untidiness.
Most ambitious dressing-tables and writing-tables were evolved by standing a sugar-box on end, knocking out the lower side, and nailing on top at the back a small narrow box. These made a brave show stained with permanganate of potash, or, later, when this got rare, with solignum. A camp-bed, too, is easily convertible into a ‘Chesterfield’, flanked at either end with one’s pillows pushed into pretty cushioncovers. An admirable ‘Saxon stool’, too, most of us possessed, fashioned from three sides of a box and stained.
A ‘canvas existence’ is great fun. It has its pros and its cons, but the pros are so delightful as to outweigh the cons, especially when these latter are made light of with true active service philosophy. The dog walks into the bell-tent in the middle of the night and rudely awakes one by vigorously licking one’s face, and exhibiting other unseemly symptoms of canine affection. The bantam proclaims about 3am that he is roosting on the foot of one’s bed, by violently crowing in a piercing falsetto an unappreciated solo, from which he refuses to desist even though he has hurled at him a damp sponge, a rolled-up knot of a handkerchief, a comb, an orange, and many a ‘Shoo, Christopher, shoo, you little wretch!’
Field mice scuttle across the doors on early morning travels as we dress, insects always and perpetually hold high revel, earwigs are discovered holding a confab in the folds of one’s apron, while one nurse is found asleep with a lighted candle in her tent. No, she isn’t ill, only left on the light to scare the rats.
It is not quite so delightful, however, to be awakened in the wee, small hours by the rain pattering on one’s face, to be obliged to get up hurriedly, scramble into slippers and raincoat, and go out sleepily and stammeringly into the darkness to fumble and fasten down tent ropes and tent flaps, which latter have been well turned back because the evening was originally so warm.
Leaves, spiders and wood bugs in one’s wash and bath water are frequent occurrences, while overnight the acacia leaves flutter upon one’s face and hair with persistent babes-in-the-wood effort. Towards creeping things one grows to an amazing tolerance, indeed, to a live-and-let-live nonchalance, a mild interest which would have astounded one in pre-war days.
Three of us – all VADs – ran the home and mess, which at the time consisted of between sixty and seventy nurses. We were helped by batmen, all PB men, who cleaned the huts and tents, swept and washed floors, attended to our supply of drinking, cooking and washing water – taps and sinks were unknown luxuries – mended fires, washed dishes, cleaned and cooked vegetables, cut up and cooked meats, and generally did the heavier work.
We planned the menus, laid the tables, carved, served out the different meals, cooked certain dishes, did the shopping, dusted, had the management of the home quarters, e.g. preparing rooms for newcomers, tending indisposed sisters, and were generally responsible for the hundred and one little trifles necessary to the smooth running of affairs.
Our mess kitchen is an example of the utilisation of existing buildings. It consists of two, open-fronted, loose boxes formerly used for horses. One acts as larder, while in the other are accommodated a stove, table, and a boiler for hot water. The boilers are busy night and day not merely boiling water, but also acting as porridge pots, stock pots, soup pans and pudding pans. The kitchen is the scene of much crowded activity, for here thousands of meals are cooked per day, hundreds of men supplied with porridge and tea for breakfast, a certain number of eggs cooked and rashers of bacon fried, several hundreds of pints of soup made for dinner, meat and fresh vegetables prepared and cooked, milk or suet or bread pudding cooked for some hundreds of men, a great quantity of ‘milk-rice’ boiled for the ‘milk-diet’ patients, a certain number of minced and boiled chicken diets supplied, a certain number of custard puddings made, probably a number of fish diets prepared, and several pints of beef tea made. In the afternoon barley water, more cooked fish, cooked eggs, and some hundreds of pints of tea will be supplied, while in the evening a similar quantity of cocoa will be in demand. Meantime, preparations for the next morning’s breakfast and dinner will be proceeding apace, while emergency meals for convoy patients – stews, soups, tea or cocoa – may be required at very short notice.
The responsibility for securing supplies rests with the quartermaster. His is the task of ensuring the presence of great quantities of tins of milk, tins of jam, chests of tea, boxes of sugar, bags of rice and cereals, thousands of loaves of bread, tins of beef and vegetables, baskets of fresh vegetables, rounds and joints of fresh meat, gallons of fresh milk, stones of fresh fruit, boxes of dried fruits, tins of butter, crates of fresh eggs, and a whole host of other things.
Camp housekeeping in France quickly proved itself to be quite an arithmetical affair. Thus if one decided on making scones, immediately there was a little mental arithmetic to be done in ratios and substitutions, with the home quantity as a basis. For example, if half a pound of flour makes sixteen scones, how many are required for sixty people – with camp appetites – a quantity which must then be calculated in demi-kilos, those being the weights we had in the kitchen. Then the quantity of butter, sugar, cream of tartar, etc., must be calculated. Similar arithmetical tussles were necessary before making, say, a custard, and sending for the milk.
Bully beef made excellent curry, good shepherd’s pie and most appetising rissoles, particularly when served with tomato sauce made active-service style from a tin of tomatoes, heated, sieved, and thickened with a little flour. Ration biscuits, otherwise irreverently known as dog biscuits, only required considerate treatment to be responsible for quite agreeable puddings and porridge …
I dreaded the very thought of night duty with its tense anxieties, its straining vigilance, its many sorrows. The weather is a very important factor during night duty in a camp hospital. We have had nights when wind and rain have raged and lashed, when our hurricanes have blown out directly we have lifted the tent flaps to go out, when we have been splashed to the knees with mud, when even our elastic-strapped sou’westers have blown off, when the rain has stung our cheeks like whipcord. The normal outfit of a night nurse on winter duty consists of woollen garments piled on cocoon-like under her dress, a jersey over the dress and under the apron or overall, another jersey above the apron, a greatcoat, two pairs of stockings, service boots or gum boots with a pair of woolly soles, a sou’wester, mittens or gloves (perhaps both) and a scarf.
My introduction to active service night nursing was a small hut under the same roof as the theatre, a few of the more anxious cases being brought there for special watching.
Poor boys, almost every patient in addition to other wounds and injuries, had had a leg amputated, and I used to go round from one to another in the dimly-lighted ward with an electric torch, and flash on the light to see that each stump was correct and there was no sign of haemorrhage.
With regard to work on ‘the lines’, so far from being dull, one is kept ceaselessly busy, for, in addition to dressings, many four-hourly foments, four-hourly charts, periodical stimulants and feeds – the latter including jaw-cases where the mouth must be syringed and washed and the india-rubber tube attached to the feeding-cup cleaned and boiled – there comes the unending, infinitely pathetic call of ‘Sister, sister, may I have …’: a drink, my pillows moved, my heel rubbed, now my toe, my splint moved, my bandage tightened, my bandage slackened, the tent or the window closed – or opened – a blanket off, a blanket on, a hot water bag, a drink of water, of lemonade, of hot milk, of hot tea, now a cold drink, sister, to cool my mouth, a crease taken out of the under-sheet, the air-pillow altered, my hands and face washed, my lips rubbed with ointment, my fan, that fly killed, a match, a cigarette lighted, another drink, some grapes, my apple peeled, a cushion under my arm, under my back, a pad of cotton-wool under my heel, knee, arm, a bed sock put on, the bed-clothes tucked in, I feel sick, I can’t go to sleep …
Naturally, we have had nights never-to-be-forgotten, nights of aching anxiety and grim, gruesome tragedy, nights that have seared themselves into our brain for as long a time as we shall possess human knowledge and human understanding, nights when we have shared and suffered with delirious patients the stench, the choking thirst, the sound of groans – all the devilish horror and racking torture of living again the eternal age with its waiting, waiting, waiting in No Man’s Land, nights when a dying man on whom morphia has had no effect has persistently cackled ragtime while another – one of the very, very few who have realised they are in the Valley of the Shadow – reiterated again and again, ‘I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying.’ …
Dorothy Brook was at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth when Germany and Austria declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914. Immediately the opera house was closed and all cars in the town were commandeered. Everyone rushed to get out of Bayreuth and Dorothy Brook and her Austrian friends managed to catch an already overcrowded train. Most of the stations they passed were packed with troops ordered to the front. Although her friends were very pro-British and she stayed at their home, she had no means of communication with her family for over nine weeks until the US consul in Vienna got in touch with the mayor of her home town. As she had neither passport nor identification papers, Dorothy Brook had to visit the police station each day and life became increasingly difficult for her. Towards the end of November 1914 she was told she must leave as she was the only enemy subject in the district. She had to go over the frontier to Dresden, where she had been at school for two years, and had learnt to speak German fluently. After getting papers from the US consul signed at the police headquarters she embarked on a ‘nightmare journey’ via Magdeburg and Hanover. At one station British wives of men interned in Ruhleben Camp were put into her compartment. She reached home on 25 November.
She enrolled with her local VAD and worked in a small hospital for a few weeks before responding to an urgent appeal from the British Red Cross for VAD volunteers to serve in France. She arrived at the huge camp hospital of marquees and bell tents at Camiers in October 1915.
The Sisters’ Mess was a small marquee with two long scrubbed wooden tables and wooden forms. Outside this were four grim-looking Sawyer stoves with their long black chimneys. All our food was cooked on these and all water for tea and hot drinks boiled on them. We had 126 Sisters and Staff Nurses and VADs. Staff Nurses and VADs went on duty 7.30am and the Sisters at 8. The night staff had their breakfast at 9. Porridge was cooked for breakfast on the Sawyer boilers and now and again we had eggs – boiled in a large net – or kedgeree boiled rice with tinned fish mixed with it. Corned beef and pickles for lunch and onion stew in the evening. Water was very scarce. There were no sluices and we had no running water in the wards so orderlies had to fetch it from the workhouse or doctors’ or sisters’ messes. All water was chlorinated and our tea and coffee had a weird taste – especially if the water had also got the onion flavour after the stew. We used to say if it looks like tea and tastes like coffee, it is cocoa! We were often too tired or too hungry to care, but there was always a jolly atmosphere in the mess for we were all in the same boat. We loved our work.
Our bell tents were not exactly spacious with 2 camp beds, 2 trunks, 2 lockers – folding washstands and chair, and tent pole serving as wardrobe with the outdoor and indoor uniforms of 2 VADs hanging from hooks strapped to the top of the pole. A small metal mirror dangled from a string.
Mice were a nuisance. They found anything edible and would gnaw through boxes to get it. One of the VADs was leaving to get married and had bought some lovely nighties at Paris Plage for her trousseau. Unfortunately there must have been a piece of chocolate biscuit in her locker before she put in the boxes containing her undies. In order to get at the eatables the mice had gnawed through boxes and the VAD was horrified when she took out her nighties, now very well ventilated, to show her pals.
Rats, too, were a menace. As our unit had recently been erected a lot of digging had had to be done – and the rats ‘quarters’ disturbed and they were very hungry. One orderly came on duty one morning with the skin off the end of his nose. He had been very fast asleep wearing a woollen Balaclava to keep his head warm and a rat had had a nibble! At intervals village men would be asked to bring their dogs, duck boards lifted and rats killed one marquee at a time.
On night duty there would be a VAD and an orderly in one marquee – in the next there would be a Sister, a VAD and an orderly and in the next just a VAD and orderly, so that the Sister could easily be called to either ward if required. Night duty seemed weird at first. The Tommies snoring or having nightmares and ‘going over the top’ and the rats scurrying down from one end to the other. If the patients couldn’t sleep the only help we could give them was 2 aspirins and some evaporated milk and hot water heated on a Beatrice stove, but it worked quite often. Later in the war Glaxo appeared and the men preferred that.
When the big battles were raging we frequently had sudden orders to clear the wards of as many patients as possible to make room for a big convoy from the front. A Doctor would go round each ward marking the charts of the men. ‘A’ was for helpless stretcher cases – ‘B’ for sitting cases – ‘C’ for walking cases. The remainder went to convalescent camp. The nurses on night duty had to dress the ‘A’ cases in warm clothes – long socks and wrap army blankets over them. It was such a joy to see the happy faces of men marked for ‘good old Blighty’. We gave them hot drinks before they were taken to the ambulance by the stretcher-bearers and then they were driven to the hospital train at the siding en route for the hospital ship. When they had all gone we had to start immediately getting beds ready for new arrivals. Usually we put a blanket on the top – for many of the new patients were in a very dirty state after being in the muddy trenches and not having their boots off for many days. Before a convoy we nurses were given long calico overalls – with high collars and short sleeves slotted with tape so that they could be drawn up tightly and prevent the nasty ‘grey backs’ (lice) from crawling underneath. The overalls tied at the back. When we took off the cotton wool from dressings we used swabs with carbolic to kill the insects.
The trouble with marquees is that they are dark, no light coming in from outside and in the early days we had only storm lamps. We had only enough time to get off the worst dirt before the doctor came to examine the patients and put on fresh dressings. Then we put blankets over patients and left the dog-tired men to have a much needed sleep, and cleaning up was continued in the morning. The men used to say they felt in heaven to be clean and in a bed after the mud and dangers of the trenches. That made our hard work so very worthwhile.
It got around that there was gas and we looked down the very long camp road. The ambulances were bringing the very bad cases up the road. Some of them just about made it and that was all, but the ones who could walk but couldn’t see were sent in front of one man with sight and he took six with him, with their hands on his shoulders. The road was filled with these men.
All VADs had to do a spell in the Mess. Two had volunteered to be the regular cooks as they couldn’t stand ward work. Others did 6 weeks as kitchen helpers or waitresses. One evening Matron told me that I was to be head cook from the next morning and my friend was to be my assistant. When I told her I couldn’t cook she said, ‘Nurse, there is no such word as can’t’. One of the regular VAD cooks had measles and the other was due to go on leave next day. I had to go to her tent to get instructions about quantities, etc. The Sawyer stoves were used only for water.
By now there was a long hut which was divided into a small sitting room, the long mess room and kitchen. The kitchen stove had a half flat top and the chimney was very smoky. Often I had five clean aprons in a day. I had to be on duty at 6am in order to get first breakfast at 7. The porridge was made in a huge brown glazed bread crock and it was really hard work stirring such a quantity and preventing it burning. The rations for the day arrived about 9.30. A huge lump of frozen stiff meat was dumped on the wooden table and I had to cut it as well as possible for the evening stew. At the end I felt as though I had frostbite. Sugar was strictly rationed. Everyone had a small labelled box (often a tobacco tin) and each morning 2 teaspoonfuls were put into each and that was all we had to last the day. Sometimes we had plain boiled puddings – rolled in long pieces of lint – and boiled in the Sawyer boilers. We were allowed plum and apple jam (the Tommies called it ‘poggy’) with these and we really enjoyed them.
Although some distance away we could hear the noise of the guns and at one time when the Germans were advancing the noise got louder each day. Then one day in December the Colonel gave the order that the wards should be evacuated except the very serious cases and most of the equipment packed and stacked ready to be moved at short notice. When this was done we just waited – not allowed far out of the camp …
There were very few trained Belgian nurses at the outbreak of the war, and the British Red Cross sent a number of trained nurses and some VADs to the Belgian hospital at La Panne, a seaside resort and fishing village. Dr Depage was the senior physician. He was a well-known Brussels doctor before the war – a skilled surgeon and an exceptional organiser. Elsie Fenwick, a forty-two-year-old married woman, arrived at the hospital as a probationer in February 1915. At this time in La Panne the Court of the King and Queen of the Belgians lived in six small villas, and the British Mission had established its headquarters. Elsie Fenwick moved in social circles at home – her father was a banker, her brother and her husband were Etonians – and she was the lady of a fine manor house in Rutland. She therefore knew members of the Royal Family and many senior diplomats and officers who were stationed or passed through the British Mission, and in their company, she enjoyed a lively social life. This acted as a necessary panacea to the tough nursing conditions and suffering she witnessed daily.
Wednesday, 17 February
At last we arrived at La Panne, a fair-sized town about the size of Buckingham, crammed full of Belgian and French soldiers. We drove up to the Hospital, a large good hotel, covered everywhere with Red Cross. I was terrified pretending to be a nurse and felt such a humbug, but anyhow the Matron [Miss Winch] knows we aren’t so that’s something. Anyhow we were ushered into her offices and she was quite charming and showed us over the Hospital – nice big clean passages, but of course only small rooms with about two patients in each – which makes it hard work to nurse.
Then she took us over to the villa we are to live in, about five minutes’ walk and tucked away in the sand dunes, with some refugees from Ypres to look after us – a shoemaker, his wife and two tiny children, and we were shown our rooms, all four together and then we tidied up and went to lunch at the Hospital. What an awful moment it was, about forty nurses all having a look at us, but anyhow we had a good meal and then went and undid our packing. It was funny to think we’re only 7 miles from the firing line and we had boy scouts and a carpenter to arrange our room and hang up things as we wanted, and altogether everybody was very nice and except for masses of soldiers everywhere and three mitrailleuses placed outside our villa and the sounds of guns booming in the distance, which is too thrilling, one would think one was at just an ordinary French seaside place with lovely sands and sand dunes.
Thursday, 18 February
A lovely day, but cold, and we were up early and very punctual to eat our breakfast and then Aline [Aline Cholmeley] went on to the Second floor and I went on to the Third floor, and felt very bewildered not knowing where anything was kept, any names of the sisters or numbers or wounds of the men. Anyhow I worked hard at housemaid’s work and helping everyone and the men all seemed very nice, poor fellows, some are so bad. One poor fellow had his leg cut off high up after awful haemorrhages and another with an arm off.
It’s lovely looking out of the hospital over the sands, seeing hundreds of soldiers drilling and the horses being exercised and the gun carriages washed in the sea.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 23, 24 and 25 February
Went to the British Mission to find out how to get parcels out here as not a thing ever arrives and all the good things I have ordered from Fortnum and Mason have never arrived.
Found Prince Alexander of Teck and the Duke of Sutherland there. What they are working at I am not quite sure.
Friday, 26 February
Woke up to a lovely, frosty, calm day which turned out anything but calm as the German aeroplanes were round and over us at intervals all day.
A poor woman was brought into our ward and had her head trepanned and I was with her all the evening. Also a child of ten was killed and two women.
A lot of wounded were brought in last night, about forty. There has been a lot of fighting near Nieuport – 6 miles off here.
Saturday, 27 February
I am now happy in a ward with Sister Ashford and we run it all to ourselves. She is so nice, and I like it.
We’ve got a poor little nun who was wounded by a shell while she was walking alone in the convent garden at Furnes. It cut her arm clean off by her shoulder and broke the other, which is quite useless to her and so poor little thing she has to be fed and everything, and thirty shrapnel wounds on her body, and she is so good.
We’ve got nine soldiers, two women and a little girl to look after. I am no more treated like a bit of dirt.
Wednesday, 10 March
A nice day and we had our second half-day since we’ve been here, and we were glad of it. We spent most of it tidying up and then we went to tea at the Mission with the Duke of Sutherland, Prince Alexander of Teck and Mr Johnnie Baird, and a nice sailor (Shoppee) [Lieutenant Denys Charles Gerald Shoppee, Royal Navy]. We had a jolly good tea and tried to find out what news they’d got, but they were very British Missionish and didn’t tell us much, except that the English are coming this way and Nieuport is being violently bombarded with the big guns. The nearest German trenches are 6 miles off, so when they want to turn their attention on us, they very easily can!
We walked off with an oil stove much to our delight, as we have been icy the last few nights and even two blankets, a sleeping bag, a dressing gown and flannel pyjamas didn’t keep me warm.
Friday, 19 March
Madame de Glos (a dear little Russian lady who helps in the Hospital in the afternoons), took Aline and I to see Sarah Wilson at Maxine Elliott’s barge [Maxine Elliott was a well-known American actress]. Just a flat black ugly thing with the American flag flying, but inside too nice. Miss Elliott has done the whole thing, fitted it up with gas, water and stoves and it was perfectly lovely getting warm by a real coal stove again. The barge consisted of a very nice sitting room, dining room, cabins, kitchen in one – a huge store room for all the clothes and food they give away – masses of clothes, sacks of flour, potatoes and onions and they feed the unfortunate refugees for miles around. They’ve got a family of five living in a cart and another nine living in a greenhouse.
Monday, 22 March
Our floor had such a hard day’s work we didn’t get off all day from eight until 8.30 as the ‘trepanned’ woman and another man on our floor have got Scarlet Fever, so the whole ward of fifty beds had to be evacuated and disinfected during the day.
Wednesday, Thursday, 24, 25 March
Both fairly quiet days, no fresh cases of Scarlet Fever, but some wounded civilians came in from Pervyse which the Germans were shelling. A whole family – the father died on the way, the mother died on the operating table – they never gave her chloroform, cut off her hair, left her waiting over half an hour, then searched for the bullet without anything. They left a baby of three weeks old with its foot blown away.
Prince Alexander and Major Baird came to see me and asked us to dine. I absolutely refuse to turn out when I am tired for anyone.
Friday, 26 March
Aline and I went to lunch at the British Mission, quite amusing as Prince Alexander thawed and we fairly teased them for being pompous and telling us nothing and being so important! Major Baird, Prince Alexander, the Duke of Sutherland, Captain Tyrrell, Mr Shoppee and another man were there: they live in great comfort – an excellent cook, two refugees to mend their clothes and six menservants!
Prince Alexander, Major Baird and the Duke of Sutherland took us for a walk on the beach, much to my disgust as I had my best shoes on!
More civilians brought into the Hospital as they are shelling Furnes again, one was a woman who is going to have a baby in a month.
Sunday, 4 April. Easter Day
We had a charming service in the salon, a parson from Dunkirk and all the English nurses and British Mission were there. The Matron had made such a pretty altar, out of tables and boxes with a white sheet over it and lots of white flowers in green vases and a cross with yellow flowers.
Sunday, 11 April
Worked hard all the morning at dressings, etc., and then about lunch time poor Colonel Bridges [Head of the British Mission with the Belgian Army in Flanders] was brought in wounded by a shell at Nieuport this morning. He was brought to our floor and after having sworn never to nurse an officer I knew, I was promptly told to take his clothes off and put on his pyjamas! Anyhow I did it, but won’t have anything more to do with him as I think he’d hate it too. Very bad luck, a shell burst close to him and Mr Shoppee and it caught him in the cheek and on his shoulder.
Monday, 12 April
In the afternoon Maxine Elliott came and gave lovely clothes to all the refugees on our floor. Awfully kind of her. She told me she hasn’t had one word of thanks for all the work she has done from the Queen or anyone. I don’t think there is much gratitude left in this country.
Wednesday, 14 April
Four new patients in our Annexe. One nice young boy with all his knee-cap shot through and most of it away and he is so patient. They bombarded Furnes all the morning and most of the afternoon. I watched it from the hospital. Great puffs of smoke in the air and one just wondered who and how many were killed.
Thursday, 15 April
Sister Ashford and I had a patient sent up with the most awful smashed leg I have ever seen, all pulp from knee to ankle and gas gangrene as well. We had to put the leg in a peroxide bath. It was hard work and we did get hot and tired.
Saturday, 17 April
We lunched at the ‘Mish’ – Colonel Fairholme was there, he is Military Attaché to the Belgians and I knew him in Marienbad. The war has made him no thinner! Prince Alexander, Captain Bridges, Major Baird and his brother were there – had plovers’ eggs and a jolly good lunch and then went back to duty.
Then the King [King Albert of Belgium] came and decorated one of my men in the Annexe. No fuss, he just came with one ADC and pinned it on and said a few words.
Then all the English came to see Colonel Bridges who is nearly all right now. The Duchess of Sutherland [qv], Captain FitzGerald and Diana Wyndham and Major Tyrrell all came, one after another, and each I had to take round my Annexe and they were all very nice. I took Prince Alexander round too. I think my patients are rather surprised at the very ordinary nurse’s friends!!
Friday, 23 April [Second Battle of Ypres]
So cold, windy and sand-storms – beastly.
As soon as I got on duty we began receiving wounded and all day long it went on. Then rumours things were going badly for us, that the French had retreated and we had to fall back to help them and the losses were awful.
Saturday, 24 April
All night long and all day the guns were at it the whole time. Wild rumours all day and wounded coming in. Our Annexe is full up. A poor man came in early and nearly died on the stretcher in his room, but Dr Jansen tied him up with a tourniquet and sent him down to the theatre and he returned minus an arm. It was so sad in the evening when I was washing him, he asked me if I wasn’t going to wash his left hand. I simply couldn’t tell him.
Wednesday, 28 April
So busy, no time to think. We’ve got a man with a bullet in his brain and he lies all day unconscious and they are leaving him to see what happens. Another had his leg cut off at the hip joint today. I had to hold him. They cut him just as if he was a joint of meat. Dr Depage is a butcher, but he did it as well as possible. Another with a bullet in his neck. It’s all awful, and they call us civilised.
Thursday, 29 April
Still terribly busy as the wounded keep on coming in and so many shot through the head.
Friday, 30 April
Awfully busy in hospital and I’m afraid our poor man is going to die with his leg off and he is so very brave.
Saturday, 1 May
Our poor man with the leg off seemed better, but in the afternoon he collapsed and died soon after we went home at night. I’m so sorry, he was such a brave fellow and so keen to live.
Sunday, 2 May
Much colder and still very busy as the wounded still keep on coming in and we’ve got two men with bullets in their heads – both alive but one has hardly spoken and the other speaks, but his left side is paralysed, so in the evening he was taken to the theatre and I had to go with him. The operation was too big and while digging in his brain they cut the artery and he just died on the table. It was horrible and while I was with him poor Sister Ashford had the other head case die with her upstairs, and so it was all very depressing.
In the evening, when it was calm we saw two taubes come over. They’d been to Dunkirk. Wild rumours of how we are cut off from Dunkirk and supplies will be difficult to get. They killed forty in Dunkirk the other night and destroyed a lot of houses.
Thursday, 6 May
We can’t do anything against these beastly gasses. We’ve lost Hill 60 and they say we shall lose Ypres in another week.
Saturday, 8 May
Everybody rather wondering whether we shall be bombarded or not.
Nothing but depressing news all day. A report at lunch that the Lusitania had been sunk as the Germans said they were going to. She went down with 1,600 souls on her off Queenstown at 2.30 yesterday afternoon. Then a good cruiser of ours the Myra was sunk 10 miles up this coast last night by a mine, but the crew is interned in Holland. All disgusting and depressing.
Monday, 10 May
A lovely day, but found wounded had been received all night and I went up as quickly as possible to find we’d got three new ones. One awfully bad, shot through the neck, his head nearly off. It was awful and thank goodness he died in about an hour. The other two aren’t bad.
We spent the morning sending off six wounded from our Annexe, hardly fit to go some weren’t, but we must have room for all the wounded coming in.
Tuesday, 11 May
A very busy day and two of our head cases died and the beds were hardly made before they filled again and all was forgotten. It’s very horrible. They keep on coming in and so now we’ve got fifty-five beds full and only Sisters Allan, Ashford, Harrison, Wallace and myself. It’s real hard work and none of us sat down all day, except for meals. It’s the same on all the floors and everybody is dead tired.
Wednesday, 12 May
A man, Leopold, came to our Annexe today shot through the body and Dr Jansen sent him up from the operating room as sure to die! But we worked hard with huile camphre, caffeine and salines, until I’m sick at the sight of them, but he’s doing all right.
An officer was brought up, shot through his eye, the whole of the side of his face gone, his shoulder out, his arm broken and a wound on his leg. He died, thank goodness. Another with both legs broken and amputated – he died too. We had two bad haemorrhages in the evening, but going on all right. We’ve got a room of three with gas gangrene. One had his leg off and I’m afraid the others will too.
Friday, 14 May
Poor Madame Depage was drowned in the Lusitania having gone over to America to collect money and nurses. Such a tragedy and poor old Dr Depage had gone to meet her and now is coming back tomorrow, with her body.
Tuesday, 18 May
Leopold is getting on, but we’ve got a gas gangrene case the worst that’s been in the hospital and not died immediately. They operated on him today, it was horrible, but necessary to save his life, and he is such a fine young fellow and suffers awfully. There is very little chance for him.
Wednesday, 19 May
Twenty-five American nurses and ten doctors have arrived and so I hope now we shall have more duty off.
Thursday, 20 May
A glorious hot summer day, the first we’ve really had. We had a terrible day of it as Madame Depage’s funeral took place. First we had to walk 2 miles to the Church and go through a service for an hour. Poor Dr Depage and the boys looked too awful and the Queen came looking neat and housemaid-like in black, and her lady-in-waiting in black with white boots! Lots of Generals and soldiers there and it was all very sad. We all went in our indoor uniform and veils and made a sort of guard of honour, about fifty of us and we had to carry all the wreaths and walk back in lines of six, all the way to this villa, as she was going to be buried on the dune just behind. It is a solitary spot right on the top of a sand dune and the idea is she is to be moved to Brussels later. The wreaths were lovely, but it was awfully hard work carrying them for at least half an hour and I was dead tired and so we all were.
Then back on duty directly afterwards and an hour off later.
Our wounded are very bad and our two show cases of the hospital Leopold and the gas gangrene, are both worse and never gave us a minute’s peace. Poor gas gangrene had to be moved from our Annexe as he kept the others awake and he was so miserable and so was I.
Friday, 21 May
A lovely day and we started off with the most sad thing as all of us that had carried wreaths had to go to Dr Depage’s villa and he made a little speech thanking us. He broke down and it was so sad.
Poor gas gangrene was much worse and I went to see him, though he wasn’t any more my patient, so nearly got myself disliked! But I didn’t care and he was taken down to have the dressing done and they found his leg so bad, they settled to cut it off. Poor man he was practically dead and he died under chloroform. He was such a fine grenadier and I was more miserable at losing him than anyone – he died so hard.
Leopold was better and so we had a much easier day.
In May, Elsie Fenwick went home on leave. She returned to find that Sister Ashford, with whom she had worked in harmony for nearly five months, was leaving to take up another post. The hospital was still very busy coping with a constant intake of casualties.
Friday, 25 June
A terrible scandal and excitement in the hospital as a nurse on our floor was assaulted in the night!! She was in a villa close to ours and alone in a room. A soldier climbed up the balcony, got in, knocked her down because she screamed, and tried to gag her. Luckily the nurses next door heard and got into the room. He hid under the bed and was caught! The poor nurse is the ugliest in the hospital, and is suffering from terrible shock! I think the man will get several years as he is going to be tried by court martial. What dangers we go through, and Aline and I have lived for weeks in a night villa all alone, not even a caretaker living in it.
Tuesday, 29 June
A very sad day, as Miss Winch [the Matron] went off and it all seems so blank without her. Half an hour before she left the Queen sent for her, and of course we were delighted and thought she was going to get something nice. I was disgusted when she came back with a signed photo of the Queen, unframed – when she’s given all her wits and body to work for these Belgians for seven months and done wonders – ungrateful people – and all for nothing.
Friday, 9 July
A lovely day and not much to do, until this afternoon when another abdominal case was brought up, awfully bad. Sister Campbell and I worked at him hard all the evening and got him a tiny bit better.
Saturday, 10 July
Our man no better and I hardly was off all day, trying to save him, but I’m afraid it’s a hopeless case as gas gangrene has started.
In the afternoon an English officer, Captain Knight, was brought up to the corridor with an awful wound in the hip. He was in charge of an anti-aircraft gun at Nieuport and a shell burst close to him.
Prince Alexander and Major Baird came to see us and asked us to dine tonight, and it’s the best thing to get hospital horrors out of one’s head, so off we went. Prince Alexander, Major Baird, General Bridges and the head officer Commander Halahan of the big gun at Nieuport [in command of the Naval Heavy Batteries attached to the Belgian Army] and the Duchess of Sutherland motored over from her hospital between Dunkirk and Calais – it’s in a ploughed field, only tents, but she lives in a house herself.
Sunday, 11 July
A beastly day of horrors. First of all my nice man who I’ve worked so hard for died, the whole time begging me to keep the Germans off – too sad – then our English Officer has got such bad gangrene he can’t do any good.
Monday, 12 July
Our poor Captain Knight died on the operating table, the only chance was to amputate his leg and he died under it, too sad.
Tuesday, 13 July
A nice cool day, which was lucky, as all the English nurses had to go to Captain Knight’s funeral and walk to Adinkerk, 3 miles on cobble stones. The Service was in the salon and the coffin in the middle draped with a Union Jack and his Khaki coat on the top, lovely wreaths all round from the Belgians and English. The English Chaplain from the Dunkirk Aero ground did it, and it was very nice, and then we marched in procession to Adinkirk – all his regiment, the anti-aircraft corps from Nieuport, and the coffin on a gun carriage. He was buried with all the other soldiers that have died in hospital – rows and rows and rows of tiny black crosses with just the name – and some not even that.
Then Maxine Elliott was very kind and sent her car for us, and we took the Matron, Miss Hughes, and Faber to tea on her barge, and they were quite delighted.
Thursday, 15 July
A nice day and nothing doing and so Aline and I had our half day off, and Maxine Elliott was awfully kind and came and picked us up in her motor.
We went to Steenkirk where Mrs Knocker [qv] and Miss Chisholm [qv] live in a wooden hut, such a place!! So dirty; unfortunately they were not in, but we went in to the camp. I’ve never seen anything so untidy and they’d got several soldier servants too. Their idea is to look after about five blessés, ones that aren’t bad enough to go away, but they were packed into a tiny room. Her bedroom was tiny, with both beds unmade and not even a looking-glass, but I hear they have a very good time as they are attached to the Belgian Army. As they’ve been there for months I should have thought they could have got it nicer.
We came back by Furnes, which is a bit more knocked about than when we were there last. We saw Lady Dorothie Feilding, rather a pretty little thing, and she had on a skirt!! She lives in Furnes, with no other woman, so they say!!
We went back to tea at the barge and just home in time for dinner.
Saturday, 31 July
Just before lunch an English aviator called Captain Liddell was brought in with a bad smashed leg. I saw the observer with him, Mr Peck, such a bounder, but they did a wonderful plucky thing and had a marvellous escape. They were flying over Bruges and a German aeroplane had got above them, and so they couldn’t see it and they shot him in the leg. He lost consciousness and the aeroplane made a nose dive for about 1,000 feet, which apparently pulled him together enough to make him realise the danger. He worked the leg lever with his hand and looped the loop downwards. The observer told him he saw a flying ground, and he made for it and arrived at Furnes, landed safely, did up his own leg in splints and then was brought on here. He is very bad, but they hope he’ll be all right.
Thursday, 5 August
I received in the worst case we’ve had in yet. I went to the operating theatre and found his legs smashed to bits by an ‘aubu’ and they had to cut them both off as high up as possible. He had the stuff injected into the spine and no chloroform, but he suffered a good deal and called the whole time for his mother, and it was heart-rending, and then to take that shapeless bundle up on the stretcher. Only a little boy of 19, the only child, and his parents with the Germans.
Friday, 6 August
The poor little boy, Alfred, was going on well, but it was too pitiful all day long asking me what was the matter with his legs and why they hurt him so much and when he’d be able to go back to his regiment. We must leave him to find it out for himself, poor boy. Another awful evening in the operating theatre when his legs were dressed. He yelled with the pain and I don’t know how he bears it.
Sunday, 8 August
A lovely day and I sat on the sands all the morning and it was delicious. In the afternoon I had to go down to the theatre for an awful case, shot by shrapnel through the thighs and abdomen and Dr Deparge operated for two hours and then the poor man was brought up most awfully bad. He lived from about 6 till 9 at night and I never wish to have a more ghastly three hours, dying all the time, and fighting.
The poor little boy with the amputations is going on well and is so good and brave.
Thursday, 12 August
I was talking to Prince Alexander and Major Baird and up came Sister Campbell to say there was an awful abdominal case in the theatre and I was to go down. I stood in the heat down there for 2½ hours while Dr Antoine did the most awful operation. He was shot through and through. He never had a chance and died on the table. I was tired and never got home till after 9 and went to bed thoroughly sick with life and the war.
Friday, 13 August
A lovely day, but I hated everything and felt thoroughly depressed and wished I was home.
I’m afraid Captain Liddell’s leg is doing badly and will have to be cut off after all, but we still hope not.
Saturday, 14 August
In the afternoon, a German aeroplane dropped four bombs in the town and wounded two soldiers, killed one, and killed a mother and two dear little girls. They were all brought into the hospital and died. One poor little girl had both her legs off and it was too pitiful to see the doctor carrying her in his arms in her little white frock drenched with blood and rushing her to the theatre.
Monday, 16 August
My little double amputation is a little sweet and so good and brave.
Poor Captain Liddell is not doing well.
Tuesday, 17 August
Poor Captain Liddell is much worse and they settled to have his leg off tomorrow morning. It’s too sad, after a fortnight’s pain for nothing.
In the afternoon Prince Alexander came up to say he’d been given a VC. It’s splendid, but it was very sad going to congratulate him, knowing that his leg was doomed and he didn’t know it. One felt such a humbug, but he was so happy.
Thursday, 19 August
A sad day as Captain Liddell had his leg off. It’s the only thing that may save him, but he is very bad – poison all over his body, and there is not much chance for his life.
Friday, 20 August
Captain Liddell very bad.
Saturday, 21 August
Captain Liddell so bad that the Mission wired for his mother. I do hope he will live, he’s such a nice young fellow … [Captain Liddell died on 31 August.]
In 1907, Edith Cavell, a forty-two-year-old trained nurse, was asked by the distinguished Belgian surgeon, Dr Antoine Depage, to become matron of Belgium’s first teaching hospital for nurses in Brussels. He saw the need for qualified nurses to replace nuns, who until then had been responsible for the care of the sick. The clinique, l’Ecole Belge d’Infirmières Diplômées, in the Rue de la Culture, consisted of four adjoining residential houses and opened in October 1907. Five years later, Dr Depage, spoke at the International Congress of Nurses in Cologne and told them that the Belgian school of nursing had been a great success. ‘It now provides the nurses for three hospitals, three private nursing homes, twenty-four communal schools and thirteen kindergartens in Brussels’. In addition to training young women to become nurses, the hospital had its own nursing staff and patients.
When war was declared, Edith Cavell was at home in Norfolk but returned to Brussels immediately. She sent the Dutch and German nurses home and as the clinique became a Red Cross Hospital, she told the remaining staff that the first duty of a nurse was to care for the wounded irrespective of their nationality.
The Germans marched into Brussels on 20 August 1914. A few English nurses were sent home but Edith Cavell remained with some members of her staff, including two French-speaking Sisters, Elisabeth Wilkins and Millicent White.
On 1 November 1914 Herman Capiau, a member of the Belgian resistance, brought two British soldiers, Colonel Dudley Boger and Sergeant Frederick Meachin, to the clinique. They had been wounded during the Battle of Mons. Edith Cavell agreed to shelter them and many more hunted men who found their way to the clinique over the next nine months. By this time at the Château of Bellignies, a few kilometres from Mons, Princess Marie de Cröy was nursing wounded German and British soldiers. Very soon an underground movement was established by the Princess and her brother, the Prince de Cröy. Other members of the group, organised by Philippe Baucq, an architect, guided the disguised soldiers to safety across the Dutch frontier. The password used by the members of the resistance was ‘Yorc’ (Cröy backwards).
After the Germans had taken over Brussels, Edith Cavell’s letters home were wisely restrained. Only eighteen of these written to her family between August 1914 and June 1915 have survived. However, she wrote a diary between April and May 1915 and hid it in a cushion. It was not discovered for over thirty years.
27 April: This month during which I have been unable to keep a diary has been full of interest and anxiety. Yesterday a letter from M. Cap [Herman Capiau], who has gone to G [Germany] voluntarily to inspect at Essen! With some other B [Belgian] engineers. The letter came through a young Frenchman who with 7 others had come from N. France to escape and hopes to get over the D [Dutch] frontier in a day or two. The frontier has been absolutely impassable the last few days. G [Germany] and H [Holland] have been on the verge of war over the sinking of the Catwyk [a Dutch ship carrying a cargo of grain which was torpedoed near Flushing on 14 April]. The Dutch refused to allow anyone to cross and had massed their troops and laid mines all along from Maastricht to Antwerp, a sentinel on the D [Dutch] side was posted every 15 metres and all the young men who had left to try and cross were stuck or came back – 5 of ours were heard of at Herrenthall yesterday morning and the guide left to bring them back. Last night great numbers of G [German] wounded passed thro’ the city; the Gare de Schaerbeck was cleared of the public to let them thro’ – all the Dutch newspapers were burned at the G. du Midi. None from France or Eng. Have come through for some days. The Gs post a victory on the Yser – but rumour ascribes it to the B and E [Belgian and English] armies aided by the Hindous …
Fr [Monsieur Fromage – Philippe Baucq’s nom de guerre] brought me word from the town authorities that the house is watched and several attempts I think have been made to catch me in default – several suspicious persons have been to ask for help to leave the country either in the form of money, lodging or guides. People have been taken in this way several times. Today a doctor was had up because a guide who was caught carried a letter on him for post in Holland; he also had one for me, but as yet I have heard nothing of this. A young girl of 22 Cte [Comtesse] d’Ursel is condemned to one year’s fortress in G. She has been allowed to return for a week first, perhaps with the idea of allowing her to escape and then making her family pay a heavy fine. Charles [Charles Vanderlinden, an escape route guide] is here with plans which he has tried to use, but was obliged to return; he tries again in a day or two, acting as friend to four young Belgians. People are wonderfully generous with their loyal help – I went to a new house and there secured the services of a man who comes to take our guests [allied soldiers] of Café Oviers to safe houses where they can abide till it is time for departure. A little widow with a big house gives shelter to some and does all the work without a servant, waiting on and cooking for them with the best courage and good will in the world.
One of our guides Nom de guerre V. Gilles helped greatly in an ambulance at Mons at the beginning of the war. Miss Hosier [sister-in-law of Winston Churchill] was there, she spoke French like a Parisienne – and made friends of the common people – eventually she decided to send Gilles to London with letters to bring back money …
Baroness de Cromburgghe came to tea last Friday. She and N. Cambridge [Sister Kathleen Cambridge, a member of the Belgian Red Cross] told many things of interest concerning the battle of Mons and the 10 wounded they received in the Baroness’s house – one of the 2 Gs told them that 9 officers of his regiment were killed, ‘but not with Eng. Bullets’. …
31 April 1915, Friday: Glorious and warm e. wind … 2 guides left this morning – Charles Vanderlinden with 3 FX and 2 BE … last 2 paying 60 francs each. This boy of 23 is one of a family of 9 sons, all strong and fighters. 3 are colonial volunteers and 1 is in the reg. Army, 2 little ones are dying to pass the frontier and enlist. Charles says he will take them if it becomes easier. This fellow is a fine type – about 5ft 6 or 7, slightly made but very strong and muscular. He amused himself when small with boxing a great sack of sand or corn which swung forward and butted him in the face if he failed to hit it in the right place. He afterwards got some lessons in boxing and obliged me with a description of the right way to catch a man’s head under the arm and ‘crack’ his neck or to give him a back-handed blow and destroy the trachea or larynx. He is also a poacher in time of peace and sets lassoes in rows so that hares racing to their feeding grounds are bound to be caught in one of them. He and 3 friends will catch from 20 to 30 in 2 or 3 days. The gamekeeper’s dogs they hang to a tree when they get a chance. He is nearly always sober but when on the drink will be drunk for 10 days on the stretch. He and his brothers, men equally strong and pugilistic, would fight at times, but when they entered a cafe together no one would dare say a word to any of them. He has one blind eye smashed in a fight with a boxer.
He has travelled far oftener on foot than otherwise and has many trades to which he can turn his hand. He is extremely intelligent and has a good memory. He has ideas of justice and straight dealing and is very anxious to repay any money given him. He boasts in the most open manner and enjoys to talk of himself and his prowess. Withal he is, at least here, a gentleman and well-behaved in the house and gives us no trouble, also his conversation is clean and quite pleasing. He has crossed the line once and taken his news and been back for more, which he has started again to deliver. He is very scornful over the young men with no pluck and has a grand contempt for the Gs. He is a repoussé [one unfit for military service] – unwillingly, on account of his eye, he can swim and walk great distances, and knows how to pass a leisure day sound asleep on our garden grass. He wears grey corduroys, a rough tweed jacket, and a grey muffler, a cap, shoes which he exchanges for sabots when necessary in the country. He wears his trousers tied in at the ankle and under the tie places his letters – or ours. He will be caught one day and if so will be shot, but he will make a first class bid for life and freedom …
On Monday night over 8,000 blessés were brought into Brussels all Gs M. Victor tells me. He is a tradesman of 60 or thereabouts with a pale and puffy face, bald-headed, fat and short. He has a benevolent smile and spends his days in going from place to place to look after our guests. He too holds the Gs in complete contempt and does his best for the patrie.
Edith Cavell kept her underground activities from her nursing staff so they could not be incriminated, but by June 1915 the net was closing. Although she also eliminated all possible evidence the clinique was searched by the German authorities after a Belgian ‘collaborator’ passed through. The next day the Château of Bellignies was also under suspicion. Five days later, after two members of the escape route team were captured, Edith Cavell was arrested. By then she had assisted in the escape of many hundreds of allied soldiers. She was taken on 5 August to the Kommandantur and on 7 August to a cell in the prison of St Gilles. On 14 September she wrote to her nurses.
Your delightful letter gave me great pleasure, and your lovely flowers have made my cell gay, the roses are still fresh, but the chrysanthemums did not like prison any more than I do – hence they did not live very long.
I am happy to know that you are working well, that you are devoted to your patients and that you are happy in your services. It is necessary that you should study well, for some of you must shortly sit for your examinations and I want you very much to succeed. The year’s course will commence shortly, try to profit from it, and be punctual at lectures so that your professor need not be kept waiting.
In everything one can learn new lessons of life, and if you were in my place you would realise how precious liberty is, and would certainly undertake never to abuse it.
To be a good nurse one must have lots of patience – here one learns to have that quality, I assure you.
It appears that the new school is advancing – I hope to see it again one of these days, as well as all of you.
Au revoir, be really good.
Your devoted Matron, E. Cavell.
Some members of the resistance organisation escaped arrest, but on 7 October 1915, after ten weeks in prison, Edith Cavell and thirty-four others accused of sheltering or assisting the escape of allied soldiers, went on trial in the senate chamber. The list included Princess Marie de Cröy, Herman Capiau, and Philippe Baucq. After four days of cross examinations the sentences were read out. Herman Capiau was sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour. Princess Marie de Cröy to ten years’ imprisonment. Comtesse Jeanne de Belleville, a French woman; Mlle Louise Thuliez, a schoolmistress from Lille; Louis Severin, a chemist; Philippe Baucq and Edith Cavell were all sentenced to death.
On 11 October, the evening before her execution, the English chaplain, the Reverend Stirling Gahan, visited Edith Cavell in her cell. She told him that her trial had been fairly conducted and that she was not surprised at her sentence. Her ten weeks’ imprisonment had been like ‘a solemn fast from all earthly distractions and diversions’. ‘I have no fear nor shrinking’, she said.
I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me … This I would say, standing as I do in view of God and Eternity. I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
Stirling Gahan later wrote:
There was no moveable table in the cell but we sat upon the edge of the bed with the one chair between us. This served as our Communion table, and I placed the vessels with the bread and wine upon it. Then we partook of the Lord’s Supper together …
One of Edith Cavell’s last letters was to her staff.
My dear Nurses,
This is a sad moment for me as I write to say good-bye. It reminds me that on 17 September I had been running the School for eight years.
I was so happy to be called to help in the organisation of the work which our Committee had just founded. On 1 October 1907 there were only four young pupils, whereas now you are many – fifty or sixty in all I believe, including those who have gained their certificates and are about to leave the School.
I have often told you about those early days and the difficulties we met with, even down to the choice of words for your on-duty hours and your off-duty hours.
For Belgium, everything about the profession was new. Gradually one service after the other was set up; nurses for private needs, school nurses, the St Gilles Hospital. We have staffed Dr Depage’s Institute, the Sanatorium at Buysingen, Dr Mayer’s clinic, and now many are called (as perhaps you will be later) to tend the brave men wounded in war. If our work has diminished during the last year, it is because of the sad time we are passing through; when better days come our work will grow again and recover all its power to do good.
If I have spoken to you of the past, this is because it is a good thing sometimes to stop and look back along the path we have travelled to take stock of our progress and the mistakes we have made. You will have more patients in your fine house, and you will have everything necessary for their comfort and your own.
To my sorrow I have not always been able to talk to you each privately. You know that I had my share of burdens. But I hope that you will not forget our evening chats.
I told you that devotion would bring you true happiness and the thought that, before God and in your own eyes, you have done your duty well and with a good heart, will sustain you in trouble and face to face with death. There are two or three of you who will recall the little talks we had together. Do not forget them. As I had already gone so far along life’s road, I was perhaps able to see more clearly than you, and show you the straight path.
One word more. Never speak evil. May I tell you, who love your country with all my heart, that this has been the great fault here. During these last eight years I have seen so many sorrows which could have been avoided or lessened if a little word had not been breathed here and there, perhaps without evil intention, and thus destroyed the happiness or even the life of someone. Nurses all need to think of this, and to cultivate a loyalty and team spirit among themselves.
If any of you has a grievance against me, I beg you to forgive me; I have perhaps been unjust sometimes, but I have loved you much more than you think.
I send my good wishes for the happiness of all my girls, as much for those who have left the School as for those who are still there.
Thank you for the kindness you have always shown me.
Your Matron,
Edith Cavell