The Dead Nurses' Society

     The men and women who died on military service during the First World War are invariably  the group who attract the most publicity, most column space in newspapers and by far the most mentions on the web. Maybe that's understandable, not only because of the emotions that death during wartime arouses in people, but also because they are so much easier to research. Their names are on war memorials nationwide and the majority of those names are listed on the database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. With a couple of clicks it's possible to find relatives or local men and women who died while serving their country between 1914 and 1921. Their names truly 'Liveth for Evermore'.

     However, most of those who served their country didn't die but returned home again to take up employment, to marry and to prosper, or possibly to suffer from the effects of war throughout their lives, blighting their happiness. The majority of women were employed on the Home Front and although their work might have been demanding and stressful it rarely put them in immediate danger, though I must exclude munition workers here who often worked under dangerous conditions and who history has chosen to sideline more than any other group of women. The figures I'm using as examples are just a rough estimate but hopefully serve to make a point.

     Between 22,000 and 24,000 trained nurses served with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, it's Reserve and the Territorial Force Nursing Service. The lack of service records in the public domain makes an exact figure impossible to estimate. The number of untrained nurses - members of Voluntary Aid Detachments -  is even more difficult to work out. They included not only VADs who performed nursing duties but also General Service VADs who from 1917 worked as drivers, orderlies, waitresses, clerks, typists, and store-women in military hospitals. Then there were the members of War Hospital Supply Depots whose work involved the sewing of garments, the preparation of dressings and packing of stores and comforts for distribution both at home and abroad. Together the Red Cross workers are likely to have totalled well in excess of 100,000.  If you include nurses working in the military wards of civil hospitals the total figure for nursing staff engaged in caring for military personnel during wartime is likely to have totalled more than 150,000. In addition to these it's believed that nearly a million women were working in engineering and munitions.

     Of this multitude of women workers, only a tiny percentage died during wartime, less than 1% of the total - and of those, very few deaths actually resulted from war service. Most died due to illness or disease that would have proved fatal in any conditions, such as influenza, pneumonia, diabetes, gastric ulcers and cancers of many types. Dead women are now 'celebrated' on websites such as Facebook where many pages are dedicated to women who served during the First World War.  But far from remembering them all, these pages are frequently crammed with information solely on those who died and resulting in bland, throwaway comments such as 'RIP,' and of course, 'We will remember them.' No, I don't think you will - another couple of days and you'll have trouble remembering what you ate yesterday and certainly not the names or causes of death of women whose pictures you briefly looked at. Photos of headstones on Twitter may tell us a woman died, but say nothing about the work she did and what her life was like.

Victory Parade, London, July 1919.  They lived!  They lived!

     Why, why, why can't we celebrate what nurses DID during the war without this mawkish tendency to concentrate almost exclusively on the tiny percentage who died?  After all, they're all dead now, and  deserve the same respect and remembrance. Make nurses famous for their deeds, their endeavour and their dedication, not just famous for dying.

Ministering Angels - A History of Nursing from the Crimea to the Blitz

     A new edition of Stella Bingham's 1979 book 'Ministering Angels' has just been released by Dean Street Press in e-book format.  It covers the history of nursing from its early beginnings through to the 1970s and brings together most of the important advances within the British nursing profession during that time. It's an informative and well-written account ranging over four major wars, and presents the facts clearly and in depth without relying on a mass of over-sentimentalised or dramatic quotes. The nursing services of the First World War are in fashion at present and this book places them in the context of what came before and after, thus giving a fuller and more rounded view. Although it lacks the photographs which appear in the original, this e-book version is a welcome addition and makes it easily available to a new and modern audience.

Cover of original 1979 edition

Ministering Angels, Stella Bingham

Dean Street Press, May 2015

ISBN: 978 1 910570 13 5
For Kindle, Kobo, Nook, iPad and GooglePlay

*****

After the Crimson Field

7 General Hospital, Malassises, Imperial War Museum

     According to the Economist there have been more than 25,000 books and scholarly articles written about the United Kingdom's part in  the Great War since 1918. I can't vouch for the figure, but it seems perfectly plausible to me. Most relate to the soldiers' story, to strategy and tactics, to organisation and administration and every detail of life in various armies during the conflict. If you need to know how a soldier enlisted, what he was paid, how he was transported, fed, equipped; how he washed and relaxed and 'went over the top' there's plenty of choice on where to find the answer, in official records, books, film, TV and increasingly on the web. If official accounts become a bit dry they can be supplemented by thousands of surviving first-hand accounts and memoirs. There must currently be hundreds of historians and researchers of the Great War who would have no difficulty at all in instantly giving chapter and verse on all aspects of a soldiers' life.

     This is far from the situation in relation to any area of women's service. A relatively tiny number of books have been published on nursing during the Great War and the majority of those are personal accounts in which the facts cannot always be verified or substantiated. In recent years female academics have tried to close the gap a little but however well-researched, the results are often unappealing to the general public and inaccessible due to the high cover prices set for the academic market. These books also appear to turn their back entirely on giving the same grass-roots information about the fine detail of nurses' service which can be so easily found in similar books relating men within a military setting. The result is that to the question 'Can you recommend a good book about nurses' the answer will invariably settle first around Lyn Macdonald's 'Roses of No Man's Land,' Vera Brittain's 'Testament of Youth' and occasionally something else that probably doesn't even relate to a British nurse's experience of war. It seems almost impossible to find the answer to same questions of organisation and administration relating to women's service that are so clearly defined for men.

     The fine detail of military nurses' service during the Great War is largely lost - it's a yawning gap waiting to be filled. In some respects you could fill it with anything and few people would be any the wiser. There would be few opponents to a statement that nurses earned £20 a year, or £50 a year or £200 a year because it's information that's hidden and difficult to find. There would be few opponents to comments that Great War nurses could marry, or maybe couldn't marry, or if they could marry they had to leave - or perhaps they were allowed to stay? And did VADs actually spend their time outside washing bandages or collecting sticks in the woods? Who is there who knows? So when the BBC decided to commission 'The Crimson Field' they had a gap to fill and unfortunately it was a gap that to the viewing public was an 'unknown.' They had the freedom to fill it with whatever they felt was suitable regardless of whether it was historically correct. And by 'historically correct' I don't mean the tiny things like fine details of uniform and kit, but the basic knowledge of what life was like for nurses and doctors and how hospitals worked in France at that time. What's missing from the programme is any deeper understanding of the nurses and hospitals - their foundations are missing and experience and integrity have been removed.

     To those who say 'it's only drama' I'd reply that it's historical drama and has been heralded by the BBC as an important part of their Great War Centenary programming. Because of that it has a duty to be as historically accurate as possible. To those who say that it's no different to believing that 'Holby City' is an accurate portrayal or that crime drama fails to reflect modern policing, I insist that there is an enormous difference. Hospital life and police procedure today are part of our current knowledge. If we watch modern hospital drama we have experience to judge it by, either our own or that of our friends and family. We can dismiss what is unbelievable because we have the personal knowledge of what it's really like. In 'The Crimson Field' the BBC have produced a programme that has filled an existing gap in history that is outside people's experience and they have filled that gap with stories that could not and would not have happened.

     Because of the high regard in which the BBC is held, the programme has made itself historically correct and has set a model for the future. It has given a representation of nurses, doctors and hospitals that will now be followed, honoured and repeated for decades. Mention of the programme is already being used to give credence to many serious centenary projects and books in order to boost visitors or sales regardless of whether it has any relevance or validity.  In my opinion it has set the serious research of nursing in the Great War back to a point where there may be no hope of ever resurrecting it - why bother in the future when it can be wiped out at a stroke and with such ease?

The Intelligence Officer

This is part of an account written by Sister Catherine Black while working at a Casualty Clearing Station in 1916. Born in Ireland and trained at The London Hospital, Whitechapel, she was later the private nurse to King George V until his death in 1936.

Catherine Black - 'Blackie'

*****

     The German wounded had exactly the same treatment as our own, except that they were not allowed to speak to one another, and we were always ordered to place them in beds as far apart as possible. I can only remember one departure from this rule, and that was at a C.C.S. just behind the lines. A German prisoner, an officer of high rank, was brought in slightly wounded, and given a bed in the corner of my ward. On the day following his admission the British medical officer in charge of the station sent for me and told me that he had some instructions of the utmost importance for me. A patient, who would appear to be a German officer, would be brought to my ward later that day and I was for once to reverse all previous orders and put him in the bed next to the prisoner. He would in reality be an officer from the British Intelligence Department seeking certain valuable information, but I must be most careful to keep up the illusion. Although he would not, of course, be wounded, I must nurse him in the usual way and allow him every opportunity for getting acquainted with the German in the next bed. The Sister on night duty was to be given the same instructions as I. No one else in the station was to know anything, for the entire success of the plan depended on its secrecy.

     Late that afternoon another convoy came in and among them was a German officer.  His uniform was torn and covered with mud, and when he was carried in by two ambulance men he seemed so obviously ill and in great pain that I thought at first sight he could not possibly be the one for whose arrival I was prepared. Then he gave me the signal that I had been told to look for, and I ordered the stretcher-bearers to put him into the empty bed next to the German prisoner who had been admitted the day before.  Then began an elaborate game of make-believe. Never on any stage have I seen such an actor as that Intelligence Officer! His part was carried out to perfection. Not only did he completely deceive the German next to him as to his credentials, but he even hoodwinked the nurses and orderlies into believing him a badly wounded man. The Night Sister and I backed him up for all we were worth. At the proper times we put screens round his bed, carefully dressed and re-bandgaged his imaginary wounds to the most realistic exclamations of pain and protests in broken English. When he appeared to be suffering very much we carried out the pretence of giving him injections. Every day the whole performance of nursing him was carried out with scrupulous care, the only difference between him and the other patients being that no orderlies were allowed to attend him; Sister and I did everything for him ourselves. To avoid creating suspicion, we carried out exactly the same procedure in the case of the bona fide German officer. Very soon there were whispered conversations between the two beds, but we took good care to be out of earshot when that happened.

     On the fourth day the German officer was transferred to a prison camp, and our mysterious patient was 'evacuated.' We never knew his destination, but a week or two later I received unofficial information that the plan had been a great success. Somehow or other I linked this up with the news that our troops had taken an important German position.

King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse, Catherine Black, published by Hurst and Blackett, London, 1939