IN DECEMBER 1914, German battle cruisers shelled Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby, on the north east coast of England, leaving 230 dead and 500 injured. Early the next year, the capital was attacked by Zeppelins, enormous gas-filled airships, and bomb-laden aeroplanes, which together would kill almost 2,000 Londoners by the end of the war. These raids were in military terms a failure. Civilians weren't frightened into submission and no prized targets were hit. But they signalled an important change in the nature of warfare. Women and children were among the targets and victims of these attacks – the horror of war was no longer restricted to men. This was total war, in which everyone on the home front was in danger and everyone had a vital role to play in achieving victory – especially the women.
When the war began, the predominant image of women in Britain was essentially Victorian. They were widely seen as frail and vulnerable, in need of protection from the harsh realities of the world. The most common job for women was domestic service – there were one and a quarter million domestic servants. Most physically demanding, skilled and professional jobs were generally restricted to men, and women were not considered responsible enough to have the vote. During the pre-war years, the suffragettes had campaigned passionately for a recognition of women's rights, but it was the war itself that provided the greatest impetus for change. With so many men away at the Front, there was a desperate shortage of labour at home.
The greatest need was for women to work in the munitions factories. In 1915, there was a serious lack of arms for the troops, including an acute shell shortage. The government intervened, converting hundreds of factories to supplying munitions and by 1918, several hundred thousand women had been recruited to work in them. But the working conditions were arduous and extremely dangerous. The task of filling the shells with TNT turned hands and faces bright yellow, as a result of which the workers were nicknamed the “canary girls”. Small explosions and fatal accidents were commonplace in munitions work. There were catastrophic explosions at Chilwell in Nottinghamshire, which killed 250, and at Silvertown in London's East End, which cost 300 lives.
The other jobs that women were called upon to do were less dangerous, but often equally demanding. They helped to run the trains and the trams, they kept the country fed by joining the Women's Land Army, new women police maintained law and order on the streets, and women kept the wheels of heavy industry turning. One of the most popular and prestigious wartime jobs was nursing. Nursing had, since the days of Florence Nightingale, been deemed a respectable occupation for a woman, but now thousands more were needed to help nurse the injured back to health. There was an upsurge in women choosing nursing as a career. With the mass of war-wounded soldiers needing urgent treatment, military and general hospitals became so overstretched that nurses, assisted by VADs, often took over the running of the wards.
When the war ended, however, most women had to give up their jobs to the returning soldiers. Most offered little resistance. The conditions had been so harsh that many young women were now looking forward to the pleasure of marriage, and bringing up their children at home. Nevertheless, women had enjoyed a vital moment of freedom and independence. Many new areas of employment had opened up to them, and they had proved that they could do a wide range of jobs as well as, if not better than, the men. The old prejudiced ideas about men and women would never be the same again – as was signalled when women (over thirty) received the vote for the first time in 1918.
The attack on Hartlepool was as sudden as it was unexpected. The idea that German ships could bombard a sleepy coastal town was beyond the comprehension of children. Cora Tucker was ten years old when the shells rained down on the town. Eighty-four years on, she lived only minutes away from where she stood that day, watching as panic-stricken civilians streamed out of the old town.
You heard little bits about the war at the Front, but we thought it was a war that would happen abroad, that it would never touch us. We never dreamt we would be attacked.
My mother was ill in bed when we heard the bangs in the distance, and we thought, “Oh, it's our ships practising”. We didn't realise the war had started. We were looking over the garden wall, and across the Byrne Valley we saw all these people going up the road and out into the country, taking their possessions with them. We didn't know why it was, until it got to nearly tea-time, and we were told the place had been bombed and people had been killed. Of course we were horrified, although we couldn't go anywhere, with my mother ill in bed. We lived away from the main destruction, in Colwyn Road, and right opposite us was Thurmier Street. A lady there was cooking breakfast, and a piece of shrapnel came through the window and killed her. That was fairly close to us. But the main damage was in the old town, nearer to where the shipyards and the aerodrome were.
I was only ten years old and I couldn't understand why the Germans were killing civilians, it didn't make any sense. On the Friday there was another scare. We were on our way to school when we were stopped. “Go back again, the Germans are coming.” Who put that about I don't know, but it was a false alarm. But at the time I had some little pet Bantam hens, I was so scared, I said to my father “If we go away and I leave my little pet Bantams, the Germans will come and eat them”. I was so upset. That Friday, during the scare, my aunt decided she would come round to our house. She had her baby in one hand and the Christmas cake in the other. She met a woman on the way over, and she was carrying candles in one hand and her Christmas cake in the other, and they looked at one another and laughed. The women had all made their lovely Christmas cakes and were saving them from the Germans, if nothing else.
On the Sunday after the bombardment, my father took me up to the old town to see the damage. I couldn't believe it, it was horrifying. All these houses were down, rubble lying everywhere. Later in the war, we went to Wales on holiday, and people didn't believe the attack had happened. Were we sure that it had happened? Hadn't we dreamt it?
For those who lived in the old town, the attack on Hartlepool was devastating. Six-year-old Emma Harrison was still in bed when the enemy shells struck her house. Grabbed out of her bed by a neighbour, she was taken downstairs to find her mother badly injured by shrapnel. At ninety years old, Emma's memory of that day remained remarkably vivid.
My mother was doing the washing when she heard what she thought was someone beating a carpet. She went to the door with my little sister and met a lady who lived opposite who had come out into the street looking for her sister. She said to my mother “Oh my God, the Germans are here.” My mother told the lady “My three bairns are still in bed.” Well, this lady said “Go into my house and see to my mother, and I'll get your children up.” My mum went to see her, but the old lady was ill and was apparently going berserk with the shelling. Mum told me later there was nothing she could do for her. Every minute seemed like an hour for mum, as she left the house to cross the road home again, but when she got to the front door, this shell exploded, shrapnel hitting her in the shoulder.
I had heard what I thought was thunder, after which this neighbour came into my bedroom to get us all out of bed. We were half-asleep, but I remember this lady saying “Come on, come on, you've got to come downstairs with me.” We were literally dragged out of bed. Mum was losing so much blood, she must have felt herself getting faint because she said “I can't stay in here or I'll bleed to death. Come on.” We walked down the street, well, it was just a little cul-de-sac, and as we got to the end of the street there wasn't a sound, everything was dead quiet. Everybody had gone, they'd left the houses, leaving all the doors wide open as they went. Mum told us to keep behind her, and she looked around; I think she was looking to see if there were any Germans. We followed her to my aunt's house where mother told me “Get all the drawers open, and get some shawls out,” because we kids were still in our night things. We wrapped the shawls around us and came out again just in time for mum to see a man go back into a house, so we followed him in to get help.
I think there was a young lad there who was in bed getting over pneumonia. Anyway, he was turfed out of bed and my mother was put in, and the bed was pushed nearer the fire. We were there for a while because there was more or less a crowd outside the house, I guess they'd heard what had happened. I was more excited than anything. I mean, when you are seven years old, you just think “Oh, I won't have to go to school today.” I knew my mam had been hurt, but we were being fussed over, so I don't think I realised the danger we had all been in. At one point I had to push my way through to get to my mam, and people were saying “hey, hey”, as if to say don't push, and I said “It's my mother!”
We kids were put in front of the fire with her, because it was bitterly cold and we were freezing. My mam had lost an awful lot of blood, she had bits of shrapnel all over her body. We were also covered in mum's blood, because I remember these people looking at us to see if we'd been hurt. A long time afterwards, mum told me that as she lay there, she kept going into a faint, and each one was a bit longer than the last, and that was when she was given brandy and hot tea. She said she could feel the glow going right through her body, and mum said that saved her life.
There were no ambulances around, so a man who used to sell fish, door to door, brought his cart round to take my mother to hospital. She was just wrapped in blankets and taken away, and we were taken to my grandmother's, until my dad managed to get home from work.
While mum was in hospital, she was in a bed next to a girl who had worked for a German family, owners of a pork butcher's shop in West Hartlepool. The German men had been interned when war broke out, but after the shelling the rest of the family sent this girl a bunch of flowers and a pork pie. She said to my mother “I don't think I'll eat that pork pie, 'cos they're Germans and they could have put poison in it.” The food in the hospital wasn't very good, so mum told the girl “I'll tell you what. Cut it in half and we'll share it and, if it is poisoned, we'll both die together”. She said it was delicious.
My mum was in hospital for about six months, as beside the injury to her shoulder, they also thought they might have to take her leg off. Even when she came home, she still had a bad scab on her head, but the doctor did not seem worried about it and told her that it would drop off. Well, it did drop off, but it would fester again and that went on for nine months. She went to my granny's and my gran said “Don't you think it should be better by now? Do you think there is anything in it?” Mum said “No, there can't be.” But my gran said “I'll put a bread poultice on.” This was made by laying strips of bread in linen after which boiling water was poured onto the bread and then the linen twisted and slapped onto the wound. It was very painful but it worked. She put the poultice on my mother's head and when she took it off, she looked, and there was a piece of shell. It was the size of a sixpence and it was as shiny as anything.
There was an awful lot of damage to our street. My mother had a picture and there was a piece of shell embedded in it, and there was a chest of drawers and a bookshelf, and a piece of shell had gone through them. All the windows were out, and the chimneys were down, and there were bits of shrapnel in the walls. One piece of glass in the bookcase had a hole through it but the glass hadn't shattered. Dad didn't want to have it mended, you know, to keep it as a souvenir, but mum said “No, if you want to look at any scars, look at me,” because she had plenty. She received eight pounds compensation for the trauma and the damage they'd gone through.
The effect of the bombardment was terrible on the town. There was one woman who lived close to us, and she had lost three of her children, and lost a leg herself, it was blown off. Her name was Dixon, and I saw her after the war walking around on crutches with her one leg. She had another three children after, and she named them all the same as the three she had lost.
I was nine when they brought the Zeppelin down. We'd heard it come over, and so dad got us all out of bed and said “If we have got to be killed, we'll all go together.” We sat round the fire, when all of a sudden there were terrible screams went up, and he said to my mother “My God, I think they've hit something.” Mum said “Don't go out,” but he opened the back kitchen door, and it was all lit up red. He said “They've hit something.” It was the Zeppelin, and he said “Come on, kids, come out and have a look at this.” All us kids went out and there were pieces of this Zeppelin dropping off, and dad said to my mum “Come and have a look at this”. But she said “No, I couldn't, they're somebody's lads aren't they?”
The Zeppelin had come down into the sea close to the rocks, because dad went down to the rock one day and brought a piece of the airship back. My mum told him to get rid of it. “I don't want that in my house, it smells of death.” She had sympathy for the crew. I mean, these lads were just doing their duty, same as our lads were.
Although the outbreak of war provided the catalyst for Mary Jollie to nurse, caring for the sick and wounded had always appealed to her since she was a child. Mary nursed soldiers and civilians throughout the war, but in 1918, she was given charge of a ward containing shellshocked soldiers. For Mary, it was a traumatic but rewarding time, caring for men shattered by their war experiences. She continued nursing throughout her working life, and lived in Glasgow until her death earlier this year, aged 104.
When I was eight years old, I remember visiting an aunt who was unwell with pleurisy. She had the district nurse in, and I remember how flattered I was when she asked me to pass the kettle from the hob, when she wanted a basin of hot water or to make a poultice. I made up my mind then that I was going to be a nurse and never swayed from that thought.
In 1914, my brother came in one day and said “You're always talking about going to be a nurse, well, there's an advertisement in the Labour Exchange window” – people who were interested in nursing should apply for a form to so and so, at a particular hospital. I answered the appeal, and that was the start of my nursing career.
I went for an interview in July and was accepted for training, starting 1st September, which pleased me very much. That day I went to the Matron's office to see about my uniform. I was on duty next morning and people were calling me nurse, which was ridiculous since I'd been a dogsbody the day before.
I had a high opinion of myself, but when I arrived that first morning I was given the lowliest position in the ward – that was taking the night report up to the Matron's office. The office was in a big house where there was a very imposing front door, while at the back there were two small doors. I had delivered the report and was coming down the steps feeling very grand in my uniform, when I saw Matron coming in the distance. She was a very imposing person and I thought she was obviously going to speak to me, so I readied myself and she said “Have you been to my office, nurse?” I said “Yes.” She said “In future when you go to my office, in at the back door, and out at the back door.” I was put firmly in my place!
The ward routine was very strict. The Sister would come onto the ward and look down all her beds, and each bed had to be precisely in line with the others. She would take out of her pocket a handkerchief to measure the distance the beds came out from the wall, and then ensured that all the castors at the bottom of the bed pointed the same way, not higgledey piggledey, one pushed back, one forward. The Sisters were very particular, and a Sister's ward was a Sister's territory. I felt it was all so unnecessary and nothing to do with treatment.
There were so many rules attached to the giving of medicine, too. A nurse did not just lift a bottle and pour it out, there were half-a-dozen specific movements to be gone though. You lifted the bottle so that the label was in the palm of your hand and your forefinger touching the cork. You read the label, shook the bottle and poured out the required dose. The routine had to be gone through. It was the same with bandaging, so many rules. And you had to know them all. I dressed the soldiers' wounds, although as they were convalescent, there was less to do. But there were leg wounds, arm wounds, neck wounds, head wounds, less often back wounds because that would mean they had been running away, wouldn't it? The men were very stoical, and we were very impressed, and it was moving for us as well; some of them were very, very brave. There would be a man having his wound dressed under only a part-anaesthetic and it was very painful, and it was painful for me. You tried hard to control yourself because my suffering was imaginary – what they had suffered was very real. Some of the nurses were very near tears, all the time. I was one of them, but you had a job to do, you couldn't let yourself go and think of your own feelings at all, you were part of a team.
For all the heroism shown by the wounded, now and again we would have malingerers, men who pretended they were more ill than they were. Often the other men spotted them first, and would advise us about something they had seen, but spotting malingers was part of your training, to be observant in every way, and most were easy to detect over a short period. There was a man called Ian, a Company Sergeant Major in the army, who had a history of not being able to keep food down. He would take his dinner like everybody else and then he would vomit it all back again, yet nobody could understand why he didn't lose weight. He was weighed religiously until one day when he was seen by one of the VADs to go up to the hospital fence and receive a parcel of food from his wife, secreting it somewhere about his person. That was how he was getting his food. Well, of course there was an interview with the Surgeon General and he was told to go back to his regiment the next day, and that was the last I heard of him.
The VADs did a lot of very good work in the wards but some of them thought, because they were unpaid and the staff – the Sisters and the nurses – were paid, that we were beneath them and they acted accordingly. We were playing a game of cricket with some of the convalescent soldiers at Grangemouth. I was a staff nurse and was the official scorer for the teams. The game finished early, and they were going to play another when the Sister came to me, a charming lady, and said that one of us would have to go back to the ward. I said I would go back, and as I went in there was a VAD, a very nice girl, older than I was and I said to her “Will you give me the keys and I'll give out the medicines.” She said “Miss Clarke, I'll give the medicines out if you'll go and check the dirty laundry.” I said “No, Miss Brown, I'll give out the medicine and you will go and check the laundry and do you mind doing it now!” That was just one episode, a VAD trying it on, bossing a staff nurse around. But these VADs did very valuable work out in the field, in France, doing work that trained General Nurses never had a chance to do. The military nurses went abroad, with the VADs, while our work was at home. Of course there was a bit of jealousy on our part, too, or resentment in my case, undoubtedly.
In 1918, I was made a Sister to the Notts County War Hospital and appointed to a shellshock ward of forty-five beds. These men were nearly all convalescent and they could go out as much as they liked. Many suffered from nightmares, and I would read about them from the nightly report. A lot of them feared sleeping at night because of the nightmares and some could get quite violent. There was only one orderly at night on each ward, but he had a bell that he could ring to summon help to control the patient, to physically control him so that he did not hurt himself.
Some of the dreams were very terrible and there were tearful moments when the patients woke up, shaking with fear at what they had seen in their mind's eye. Some wanted to get what was troubling them off their chests and were glad to talk to you, although they knew they were upsetting you. Many were not conscious of what they had dreamed, although there was one soldier who would talk about his nightmares. He was afraid of going to sleep – of course it wasn't my business to go into that, it was the medical officer's business, but I couldn't help trying to ease his situation and I said “What did you see?” And he said, “Well, I saw wounded men on the ground and our tanks coming along and just mowing through them.” He said it was very terrible. That was one of the worst ones. It hurt me very much hearing that story, but it had to be, our tanks were going forward and the wounded were in the way.
I did see it as part of my job, sitting talking with them, trying to make them forget, but they couldn't forget. They were all shellshocked to various degrees, many were apparently better and waiting to be boarded out from my ward, but they were finished with the army. Many years afterwards, I was visiting a psychiatric hospital and some men came in carrying milk cans which had obviously been delivered to the Centre. Suddenly, I heard a man call “Oh, Sister Clarke”. I looked up and I saw among these men one called Waterhouse who had been at the War Hospital years before, so I suppose many of these patients of mine landed up in a mental hospital after all.
Many of the shellshocked men weren't any different to any other convalescent soldier. Occasionally a man would have facial tremors, hands trembling. Sometimes they would be asked to help in putting out dinners, and in the middle they would just have a shaking fit that they couldn't control. The tremors would come on quite quickly, with nothing to cause them, nothing that you could link the tremor with. They would just start shaking and not only lost control of their speech but slavering, you know, not being able to control their saliva, and it was a very terrible thing to see. I would call for an orderly and of course the man would be helped back to his bed to rest. Tremors needed to be controlled and I could use drugs at my discretion, but in the meantime I would probably have sent for the Medical Officer. We had no specific training in dealing with shellshocked soldiers; you had to use what you had here – in your head – to deal with problems, it was common sense.
With the rapid expansion of wartime nursing services, thousands of young women were drawn into a profession that few had hitherto considered entering. One such recruit was Norah Claye, a twenty-year-old girl from Macclesfield. While her brother and father were serving at the Front, Norah tended the wounded at a hospital in Leeds, routinely treating horrific injuries. Despite the terrible suffering, Norah adored her job, and continued nursing long after the First World War. Aged 103, she lived quietly with her 99-year-old sister in Cheltenham.
My father was out in the Middle East and my brother was in the Dardanelles, when mother spoke to me one day. “You know, Norah, we had hoped you would be able to stay with us in the home until you got married, but with your father away, you'll have to do something to earn your living. What would you like to do?” I said “What could I do?” I couldn't be a governess which was the only thing I seemed to think you did. I'd no idea about nursing.
I'd taken my first aid and home nursing certificates before the war, and lapped it up. “Well, you've enjoyed the nursing. Wouldn't you like to train as a nurse?” mother said. “Could I?” Inquiries were made and I was taken on at a General Hospital in Leeds in 1915. Beforehand, mother and I had to attend an interview with the Matron of the hospital. We had a delightful time, the Matron gave us tea in her office, and mother made all the arrangements. Later, I was put on a train for Leeds and I quite expected this very nice Matron, who had a 1400-bed hospital to run, to meet me at the station! Luckily I had sufficient nous to take a cab to the hospital.
So there I was, a very unsophisticated little twenty-year-old in Leeds, soon to get my first introduction to wounded soldiers. I was met by the Home Sister who called me Nurse Claye and I thought she was a bit in advance, I was hardly Nurse Claye yet. She took me and showed me how to put my uniform on, introduced me to the other girls.
It was just before Christmas. Two Sisters, about six months senior to me, had rather taken me in hand and were mothering me, telling me what I ought to do and not do, and they said “You'll come and sing carols.” “Oh, yes,” I said, so we went in a little group. One Sister we met asked the first Sister “What do you sing?” – mezzo-soprano – “and you?” mezzo-soprano. Then she turned to me. “And what do you sing?” I'd no idea what mezzo-soprano meant but I wasn't being separated, so I said “Mezzo-soprano”, and so we sang carols in our red cloaks round the wards.
I hadn't felt apprehensive about working at the hospital. There was a little anxiety, not that I'd meet things I couldn't do, but that I might fail to do the things I ought to do. I felt under command and didn't wish to fail. In the event, I loved the job. I liked the discipline and I enjoyed the companionship of the other probationer nurses. I had only had a rather simple education in a private school and I don't think my capacity for learning was really stretched at all, so I loved the lectures we had at hospital.
The work was very hard and the hours were very long. We were called by a bell ringing on the corridors at 6.30am and we went to breakfast at 7am and were on the wards by 7.30am. We were allowed half-an-hour about 10 o'clock to go and get a drink and put clean aprons on ready for the doctors' visits, and we got two further hours off during the day. We came off duty at nine at night, and we were then expected to go to chapel for prayers before going to supper. Lights out at ten. We used to be very tired at night, we'd flop into bed and sleep soundly until the bell in the morning. Some of the nurses thought they worked too hard and lots of them had trouble with their feet, dropped arches, that sort of thing.
We wore a pretty uniform, mauve and white check with a very attractive net cap that fitted on our heads with a tail that hung down the back. It took ages to make up – one a week –so you took great care of it – that it didn't get crumpled up or crushed during the week. Everything was very regulated: we were made to wear low-heeled laced shoes, while our skirts had to be exactly eight inches from the ground. We didn't wear belts but white linen aprons that just fastened at the back with a button. The assistant Matron would cast her eye over you – “Nurse, your apron is not sitting very well” – that sort of comment. She had been in the hospital a very long time, and how we all behaved mattered to her a lot. That said, I found the uniform fascinating. I'd enjoyed the Red Cross uniform but this was what I called a very pretty uniform.
The discipline was very strict. They would have probably five nurses in ascending rank in a ward, one or two probationers like myself, and a Sister. The probationers never scrubbed the floors but you had to keep them tidy, be sure to pick up any bits that fell. The beds had to be immaculate, and even the patients had to be disciplined; they weren't allowed to spread their beds with books or paper. You were expected to be able to report on any patient on the ward at any time. We had two very old Sisters who spent a lot of time in the ward office. They would call you in. “Nurse, who is that coughing in the ward?” And you had to think quickly who she might mean, and if you said, “Well, it's Mr. so and so in bed number so and so”, the Sister would say “Well, you mustn't let him. Give him a drink and see if that will improve it.” She knew what was happening all the time and we were terrified of her. I had a cousin in the RAMC who'd been out in the Middle East. He came to see me at the hospital while he was home, and we had a conversation outside the ward door. But when I got back in – “Nurse, Nurse Claye, who were you talking to?” “My cousin, he's just come back.” “Well, you must not talk to your cousin on duty.” I mean, nothing was hidden from these people.
When the doctors came onto the ward, you were expected to stop what you were doing and stand to attention by a bed. The doctors were treated like gods and would walk around with probably a train of students and a Sister. Nobody was allowed to talk and the patients knew they had to sit up and look intelligent. A nurse would not address a doctor at all. That was part of the discipline. If he asked a question, well, you answered it to the best of your ability.
We treated soldiers who had been very seriously wounded in the trenches. They came in with terribly septic, deep gangrenous wounds and one of my vivid recollections was a man with a gaping wound about fourteen inches long, right down to the bones of his lower leg. In the depth of that wound there were patches of gangrene, and they found that by introducing maggots into the wound, the maggots ate the gangrene and then they could start to heal the leg up. That was a shock for me, to see all these nasty little things crawling about in the man's leg.
We would talk to the soldiers about all sorts of things, about their homes, about what we had done. You know, a lot of young nurses and a lot of soldiers who had been deprived of women's association for a long time, they were anxious to keep you in conversation, although I never experienced any ungentlemanly behaviour. One or two would talk about their experiences in the trenches or make a joke. Anything you did for them, they would be so grateful and would say “This is a lot better than being up to the knees in water and mud.” They were so grateful to be out of that terrible trench warfare. It was such a relief for them to be clean and comfortable and their wounds cared for. Of course occasionally they'd have to lose a limb and we would go with them to the theatre, and if you were on theatre duty you might perhaps see limbs amputated. If I was on the theatre staff, I would help to cover the man with sterile towels, just exposing the leg that was going to be amputated. I can't remember that I was ever what you call deeply affected by the sight of the tissues being divided and the bone either being cut through or disjointed and the limb carried away. It may sound heartless, but it's all part of the training. The real horror was not seeing the blood, rather the thought of the handicap to the man of losing a leg or an arm.
When the man returned to the wards, if he was in my care, then I would do my best to make him comfortable, to make him realise what had happened. When someone has an amputation, it's a long time before they know that the limb has gone. I would try and get him to accept what had happened and tell him how good artificial limbs were. The reaction to the loss depended very much on the particular man. Some were prepared to accept – they were so glad to get rid of a limb that had been painful and difficult to cure. Then there were those who bemoaned the loss. I think a leg was more important to a man than his arms. I tried to put the best side, the fact that he wouldn't get that pain once the stump had settled down, and how the artificial limb would fit comfortably. Gradually, the man would come round to himself again. He usually accepted what had happened, just as he'd accepted the fearful privation of life in the trenches.
We didn't have anything to do with the fitting of the artificial leg, that would happen after they left hospital. When we were able to get them up, we would get them used to their crutches, to get them accustomed to the balance. We would be near to help if necessary, if they looked like falling over. The wards were long, a row of 18 beds on each side, and the men would walk up and down, rather proud I think, of the fact that they'd got through the operation and were amongst their fellows in bed. They would be careful hopping with the one leg, but they very soon got used to the crutches.
Naturally, the nurses knew how bad it had been in the line, the difficulties of getting them out of the trenches down to the Clearing Stations, and the possibility that even then they weren't free from being shelled. One felt sympathetic towards them, and I think a nurse develops a certain amount of what I call motherliness towards them. My brother had been through the Dardanelles, came back to Gaza and was killed by the Turks in 1917. That was a fearful blow to me. His death did rather alter my feeling towards these men. You felt that you wanted to do anything you could to get them well and to make them happy – that you were responsible for their happiness.
Conscious of the fact that she had no brothers to serve at the Front, seventeen-year-old Daisy Collingwood felt compelled to do her bit in the war, working for two years in the blending and reeling rooms of Kynocks Munitions Factory at Shellhaven. Aged 101 years old, Daisy remembered with clarity and no little affection her twelve hour shifts making cordite for the guns. For although war work was always exhausting and often dangerous, she never forgot the sense of responsibility and liberation it gave her, away from the insular and mundane life she had lived at home.
I had no brothers to go to the war and fight for us, so I asked dad if I might go and work on munitions. He said no, but dad was always my favourite so I set about wheedling him round, to let me at least go to the Labour Exchange to see if I could get work on the munitions. Dad admitted afterwards that he only let me go because he never thought I would get taken on. It was the middle of 1915 and I wasn't quite eighteen, the minimum age to work, but they wanted workers so badly I was given a job.
I went to work at Kynocks munitions factory at a place called Shellhaven. There had always been an old munitions factory there making gun cotton but, with the war, the premises had been expanded to make cordite of all different shapes and sizes. The expanded factory was built on the local marshes for safety's sake, each workroom being built up on brick pillars, and reached by means of cinder paths built to a height of six feet above the marshland.
During the week, I slept at a girls' hostel in Corringham, two girls to each cubicle. To get to work, we had a twenty minute walk to the railway, which was built for the workers by the factory. Fifteen minutes, train ride, then another mile to walk to the dressing room. Here we all changed into danger clothes, which consisted of a khaki and scarlet dress, hat and a hooded cloak, and a pair of brown canvas shoes, which were worn only in the workroom. Everybody was searched in the dressing room, to make certain they carried no metal of any kind, or matches.
I loved the job. I'd lived such a sheltered life in the countryside that for me to get up and work with a lot of other people was just heaven. I didn't mind the danger, because I was given responsibility. I started on the night shift, a novelty in itself because I'd never stayed up all night in my life. Each shift was twelve hours long and alternated with a day shift of equal length. You worked one week on nights and then the next on days, so you came off at 6.20am on Sunday morning and began again on the day shift at the same time on Monday, week in, week out. When I finished work on a Sunday morning, a bus used to come down and take us home, in my case to my parents' place at Grays in Essex. I used to have a meal and go to bed and sleep and sleep and sleep. Several times mum and dad tried to get me to leave, but I refused because for the first time I was living my own life.
The cordite was a paste before it was made into pliable strands and then baked. Well, in the reeling room there used to be this stand with nine aluminium reels on it and you just wound the strands of cordite from these reels onto one larger wheel, the strands passing through a brass guide which tested to make sure there wasn't any fault in any of the strands. We were very proud of how fast we could work. Our shift turned out the biggest work load, and we used to leave notes for the other shift coming in, you know “beat that one” sort of thing, all very catty! Working as fast as I could was a source of great pride, and I was always looking for ways to improve my rate of work. I wanted to be the best reeler and I discovered, for example, that if I let the strands of cordite go through my hands instead of the clip, I could feel for a break quicker and so we could work even faster.
The speed I was working at aroused some suspicion because one night, while I was on the machines, the forewoman and two gentlemen came in and walked over to me. They said “Now we're going to put the light out and we're going to ask you to reel. Get your reel set up ready and we're going to ask you to do it just the same as you do every time.” I nearly died. In the dark I could see that the friction of the cordite going through my hand caused a flame to shoot out, three inches long. I just couldn't speak because this had been happening for weeks and weeks and I could have blown the whole building up sky high and everybody in it. I felt terrible and learnt my lesson, although I wasn't punished. They could see I was only trying to do my very best, and they understood that. However, even now, eighty-three years later, it still make me feel a little shaky when I think about what I could have done.
The stove for cooking the cordite was in a big building next to ours. It was like a concert hall, no windows and a flat roof, and the cordite used to be taken in on trolleys and put into the stove and slowly cooked by steam. The work there was quite close to our workroom and one day the stove exploded. It was a terrific explosion, which I can hardly describe, but it was as though the whole world had been shaken. The explosion must have been caused when one of the men was putting a load of raw cordite into the stove. Anyway, a sudden blast of air shot me head first out of the workroom door down the stairs and into the ice-cold gooey mud and slush of the marsh beneath. I faintly remember seeing a body flying through the air, but I didn't know whose it was, of course. There had been a terrible bang followed by two smaller explosions as two of the loaded trolleys which were waiting to go into the stove also blew up. I was lying in the marshes by this time, nearly suffocated, because I didn't realise what had happened for a few minutes. I pulled myself out and began to clear the mud from my eyes and ears, and when I looked up I saw the place was a shambles. It was a very frightening ordeal. The medical team which was based at the old factory came up and shifted all the wounded down on the bogeys to the hospital. I don't know what the casualties were exactly. At least one person was killed near the stove itself and there were a lot of people with cuts, and several suffered minor burns from flying debris. I was soaking wet, from head to foot, and was taken to hospital with fright and one or two bruises, but nothing serious.
I came out in a terrible rash afterwards, scabby sores which lasted a long time, apparently fright does that and I was frightened, I'm not afraid to admit it. Even a slamming door used to set me trembling. The doctor advised me against returning, but my father wouldn't let me go back to the factory anyway after that. I still felt I wanted to do something, though, so I said I was going to join the WAACS. I went down again to the Labour Exchange and was given a ticket to London. I was drafted to the Canadian Convalescent Camp at Epsom where I worked in the cookhouse, cooking potatoes and milk puddings. When I wasn't doing that, I was more or less our officers' batwoman. I used to go everywhere in a car with two lady officers, sitting in the car waiting for them to come back and opening and shutting doors and things like that. It doesn't sound much but it was all so fresh to me, compared to the life that I'd been used to.
We were allowed one late pass a week, and once a month I used to take it to go and see my parents in Essex. I arrived home on one of these visits to find my brother-in-law on leave from France and my family having a little party. My pass meant I would have to leave home at 6pm to get back to camp by 10pm, but I threw caution to the wind and said to mum “I'm not going back yet, I'm going to stay tonight, they can't kill me for it”.
Of course I didn't realise I was a soldier and I'd got to play by soldiers' rules. I went back first thing in the morning, arriving in camp at 8.15am and was promptly put in the guardroom. I stayed there for about three or four hours, all by myself, not a drink, nobody to talk to, and I wondered what the dickens was happening to me. Afterwards I was taken to my room where I was kept for three days until I received what was an Open Court Martial.
Two soldiers came to my room and, walking on either side of me, took me right up the wide main road past all the nissen huts filled with convalescent soldiers, all whistling marching songs. Well, in the end I just couldn't help laughing until I got a poke in the ribs from the chap beside me. I was taken to a table behind which the Camp Commandant and five other officers including our own QMAAC Commandant were sitting taking notes. The word “HALT” boomed out and the charge was read to me, but every time they read out about me breaking my leave, I couldn't help laughing, it was really funny. To me, I hadn't done anything very bad and I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. They kept reading out “And the accused this,” and “the accused that,” but when I was asked if I had anything to say, I stated the facts, saying “I'm not accused of anything – I was home with my parents and I can prove I was”. Well, if I had thrown a brick at the C.O., he couldn't have looked more surprised. Poor man, I don't suppose he had ever been spoken to like that in all his career. He looked absolutely dumbfounded. The sentence was passed and I was confined to camp for 28 days and fined one week's pay.
Looking back on the war years, I can honestly say that I always gave of my best. I couldn't fight, so I was doing the next best thing and because I was a conscientious kind of person, I felt I was making up for the fact that I hadn't got any brothers to go and fight. I felt very proud. And when the news from the Front was bad, I used to go out and work as hard as ever I could. I did put other people in danger once or twice while working on munitions, innocently, and I was sorry when I knew, of course. But I really and truly enjoyed the job, relying on each other, knowing one slip can just be goodbye. I knew the danger I was in, but when you're young, you don't think about that. Looking back now, I think it was the most exciting time of my life, I really felt I was living.