The Diary

Three months since the last entry - where on earth has that time gone? I've bee working fairly hard, and with the addition of Christmas have found that I had to give something a miss - hence, no Blog. So, an update.
In September I finished the transcription of the official war diary of the Matron-in-Chief, France and Flanders, the original document being held at The National Archives in class WO95. Many unit war diaries run to a couple of hundred pages at the most, but this is a truly massive document, with more than 3,600 pages and over a million words; perhaps it can be more easily understood as the length of about 13 average length novels joined back to back. There are not many official documents which outline the day-to-day life of nurses in France during the Great War, and this certainly seemed a great opportunity to make available information about the workings of the nursing services during the period. Publication in book form rapidly became a non-option; unless it was stripped and edited within an inch of its life, it would remain an unwieldy beast, and such an editing process would veer completely away from my original intention of making even the 'boring bits' available to all, leaving just its skeleton behind.

So I decided to put it online on my Scarletfinders website (link on the right-hand menu) and began the process of turning my Word document into web pages. Unfortunately this isn't a simple job of cutting and pasting from one into the other, but I've managed to work at a steady rate and am currently working on June 1917, so nearly three years down and a couple more to go. From the beginning of 1917 the content of the diary expands massively, so three years of the diary isn't even half the work, and it means a great deal more to come, but on the whole I'm happy with the way it's going. I've already received quite a few emails from people who are finding it interesting/helpful, and I hope it will become a useful resource for all sorts of different reasons. But if I am a bit quiet here, it's just a sign that I'm usefully occupied elsewhere!

Etaples and Camiers

Here are three photos from the aforementioned trip - I did warn that they are not the most exciting ever taken! The top one is taken looking straight across the site of 24 General Hospital, Etaples from Avenue du Blanc Pavé - this was where Vera Brittain worked as a VAD during her time in France.
The middle one is 20 General Hospital, Camiers, now a piece of waste land, but the scene of a lot of hard work and suffering 90 years ago.
The bottom photo is taken from the footbridge over Dannes Camiers Station, showing the old sidings running alongside the road which bordered 8 Canadian Stationary Hospital, and Nos.4 and 20 General Hospitals.

Etaples - the hospitals today

I've just returned from a few days in France, where two friends and I walked the area around Etaples, Camiers and Le Touquet. We had some 1917/1919 maps of the area, showing the positions of all the hospitals, and by overlaying modern maps we had a look at the ground today. Our first stop was the museum in Etaples, where they have a room showing the town during the Great War. On one wall is a really excellent map, showing not only the positions of the hospitals, but also every hut, cookhouse, laundry and latrine! It was prepared by the Royal Engineers in 1917, but it's not one I've come across at The National Archives, and it will definitely be worth another search to try and uncover it. A great pity it wasn't possible to remove it from the museum wall, but I think they might have noticed!

Many of the sites are now covered with modern housing, and the rest either forested, scrubland, or building plots, but the layout of the roads is almost identical, so it's at least possible to say 'No.46 Stationary Hospital was here', or 'No.51 Officers' Hospital was there...'
Camiers, three or four miles north of Etaples is rather different, as it has not been subject to the same amount of building, and the old sidings running in at the side of the station, parallel to the site of the hospitals, are still there, and standing on the station bridge it's possible to let your imagination flow backwards to a time when it was filled with ambulance trains, stretchers and casualties. It was certainly an unusual few days which produced an odd assortment of photos - suburban roads, houses, dense forest and piles of builder's spoil, but well worth it for someone who wears two anoraks at a time.
One warning though - if you intend to visit Etaples, please make sure you enjoy fish. The restaurants are good - some are very good - and they are very proud of their fishing history, and their fish, and their fish market, and their fish restaurants, and the fish starters, and the fish main courses...

Up and Running

After a couple of weekend's work, I've now added quite a few new pages to the Scarletfinders website - a whole range of accounts of the Nursing Services written in July 1919 by the Matron-in-Chief with the British Expeditionary Force, Maud McCarthy. They are all unpublished documents held at The National Archives, and as Crown Copyright items can be freely reproduced as long as their source is acknowledged. I'm still contemplating the best way to deal with the Matron-in-Chief's official war diary, as its size makes it a massive beast to get under control. I shall probably put a small extract up soon as a trial, and to see if it helps clear my brain about how to proceed.

To see the new content, go to the Scarletfinders site, and follow the links for 'Great War Accounts'.

Scarletfinders

On the Horizon

Over the last three or four years I've spent a lot of time transcribing original, unpublished documents relating to the nursing services during the Great War, which are held at The National Archives, Kew. Most of these documents were originally stored at the War Office, and transferred to TNA over the past twenty years; since then the majority have never been looked at [except by me]. A year ago I decided to undertake a massive project by transcribing the official war diary of the Matron-in-Chief with the British Expeditionary Force during the war, Maud McCarthy, which runs to well over three thousand pages, and almost a million words. It took over my life for twelve months, and knowing what a treasure house it is, I intended to edit and publish as much of the content as I could fit between two covers. I really wanted to show what the basics of life were like for the women who served in France and Flanders - not the blood and bandages bits necessarily - but the ordinary comings and goings, and minutiae of their day to day existence. However, as I started to edit, and cut large chunks out, I realised that because of the size of the complete work, too much would end up on the cutting room floor, and I wouldn't achieve what I set out to do.

So I've recently taken the decision to publish many of these documents, including the diary, on the web, and am just in the process of trying to work out what form they will take, and how to get them into readable shape. Because they are Crown Copyright documents, I'm free to do with them what I wish [more or less], as long as I don't use any actual images of them, and I acknowledge their source in full. Besides the diary, there are many accounts of the various nursing services during the Great War, including all the overseas nursing services who worked alongside the British. In addition, I've recently acquired copies of many WW2 personal accounts, written by members of QAIMNS and the Territorial Army Nursing Service, and one document giving the locations of all British General Hospitals at home and abroad between 1939-46. I'm not sure how long it will be before the first bit appears online, but hopefully not too long - in view of both the length and depth of the work, it will be a long, ongoing process, but I feel very excited at the thought that the documents will be available for all to read, learn from, and enjoy.

A 'V.A.D.' at the Base (Part Two)

A long gap since Part One, caused by seeing too much of the inside of hospitals [on behalf of my aged mother], but here are the remaining paragraphs at last.

A 'V.A.D.' at the Base
by K. M. Barrow

On the other hand, in spite of all the pain and heartbreaking tragedy, the humorous side of life is never far away in hospital. One recalls the dummy – carefully charted and hideously masked – which was tucked into bed for the benefit of the V.A.D. and orderly when they came on night duty, and the stifled laughter under the bedclothes in adjoining beds. One recalls, too, the great occasions when some Royal or notable person came to visit the wards. Then we spent ourselves in table decorations, emptied the market of flowers, or ransacked the woods and meadows for willow or catkins, ox-eyed daisies or giant kingcups. Incidentally, we made the boys’ lives a burden to them by our meticulous care in smoothing out sheets, tucking in corners, and repairing the slightest disorder occasioned by every movement on their part, till the occasion was over. Sometimes the expected visitor did not turn up, and when another rumour of a projected visit was brought into the ward by a V.A.D., she was hardly surprised to find that her announcement was greeted on all sides by the somewhat blasphemous chorus of “Tell me the old, old story.” It was a curious coincidence, too, that on one occasion when the Queen was going the round of one of the wards in France – which was crowded with men fresh from the trenches – Her Majesty should have happened upon a patient standing stiffly to attention, and when sympathetically inquiring how he received his wound, was doubtless slightly surprised at the brisk reply, “Kicked by an ‘orse, mum.” On another occasion, when a visit from Sir Douglas Haig was momentarily expected, an intrepid Australian, concluding that there was time to spare, and greatly pleased to find that there was no competition, had placed a tin plate containing an egg to fry on the newly polished stove, which shone with inky radiance – the combined effort of orderly and patients. The decoration caught the eagle eye of sister, who demanded its instant removal, and while the discomfited cook seized his plate, the announcement, “Duggie’s here” was whispered; in his agitation the Australian turned the contents on to the polished surface. As the gallant Commander-in-Chief entered the ward he was confronted with a strong smell of cooking “gang agley,” and a stifling thick blue smoke rising like incense from the top of the stove. These Royal visits were much enjoyed by the men, and in the case of an Irish lad were the cause of much boastful comment as to the ease of manner with which he intended to greet the Royal visitor. These usually began with, “Sister, I shall just say to her” – and so on; but when the gracious and kindly lady did in fact stop to greet the boy, he was frozen stiff with shyness and terror; the flow of conversation with which he had intended to greet Her Majesty was conspicuous by its absence.

One of the things which struck one most was the eager championship of Tommy towards any patient of different nationality to himself. The black man was an especial pet and was treated by the boys as something between a spoilt baby and a pet dog. Sweets and cakes were showered upon him, and his simplest remarks were greeted with appreciative and indulgent laughter. Though “Darkie” was occasionally asked whether he had “been robbing the hen-roost lately,” or mildly ragged, he knew perfectly well that, had he got into trouble, the ward would have been solid in his defence. I have seen the men rush to get bread and jam for an immense, and I must own unattractive coloured man who would shout lustily for the latter, and would clear out a tin of “plum and apple” at a sitting – if he could get it. On one occasion, in Malta, when a valuable watch was lost, there was a regular chorus in defence of “Jose,” the little Maltese who scrubbed the verandah.
"It wouldn't be our old Jose, sister," they declared with conviction; although later this particular Jose proved, alas, far from being above suspicion. Even the foe came in for this kindly feeling in hospital when he was down and sick. I have heard a V.A.D. tell how she found a little group laying an unfamiliar game of cards with the quondam enemy.
"You see, sister," they explained, "we're playing it the German way, because of Fritz. Poor old Fritz".

Christmas is a delightful time in hospital, and though it was always specially gay in France for nurses, V.A.D.’s and patients alike, it was perhaps eastward on the other side of the Mediterranean, where gifts were not so numerous, and where Blighty was so far away, that the men looked forward to it most. It would be hard to forget the sound of the Christmas carols in the crystal beauty of the winter night in Malta, as a party of amateur performers, with swinging lanterns, went round from block to block of the great hospital buildings, while the patients hung over the verandahs or lay still and quiet listening in their beds. It would besides be difficult to forget how, as sisters and nurses went as quietly as possible from bed to bed during the night hanging the Christmas stockings over each, one head after another popped up like children, when they fancied no one was looking, to examine their little dole of presents – men who would, perhaps, never see another Christmas, and who had just been through the most awful experiences that man ever suffered.

It is, perhaps, the very simplicity and childishness of the British Tommy when he is sick and helpless, that has held so many V.A.D.’s to their posts in days gone by. Everyone who has been in hospital has noticed how even the middle-aged man seems to return to first principles in his last hours, and how the mother’s name was on his lips far more often than was either the wife or children’s name.
“Married, nurse?” said an Irishman, “Faith, and I’ve never met a woman yet who could be as much to me as my old mother!” And he was only one of countless others to whom “my old mother” represented Blighty, hope, and happiness all rolled into one. One saw this on night duty more especially, and it is of night duty in France, more than of any other time, that one thinks when one recalls old memories. Outside it was black as pitch, and the wind howled in the telegraph wires like the witches on Walpurgis Night, with perhaps the added sound of a bomb or the fall of shrapnel on the roof. Suddenly, through the war of sea and tempest, one caught the sharp piercing sound of a whistle, and after that the tramp of feet and the first soft thud of a stretcher being lowered to the ground gently for a moment. It was then that sisters, nurses and patients came into closer relation; it was then that the V.A.D. had wider scope in her work, and greater opportunities for learning and acting. Those on night duty were practically isolated from their fellows and thrown entirely on each other for companionship; and very pleasant was the morning walk and the morning bathe in summer, before bed claimed its sometimes unwilling victim, and the bright day was shut out and turned into night.

What we, perhaps, treasure most of all, now those times are over, are the autograph books which contain the signatures, artistic efforts, original or copied verses, which the patients supplied as souvenirs. These were more popular in the East than in France, and in one of the wards in Malta, an old volume of the Girl’s Own Paper, dating back to the “eighties,” provided the inspiration for many efforts. The picture of big men with a world of experience behind them, artlessly and laboriously copying pictures of apple-blossom and sparrows, or of an unattractive child with the legend, “Daddy’s blue-eyed boy” inscribed below it, represented a study in contrasts which was frankly touching. These were, however, real artists, and real poets who blossomed into eulogies of hospital and staff, or straightforward comments on their own experiences. Here is a sample which, as far as I know, is original:-

"There's a little place out East called Salonique,
Where they're sending British Tommies every week,
When you view it from the sea
It's a fine sight, all agree,
And you think you'll have a spree,
At Salonique!"

"When you're dumped upon the quay at Salonique,
And the smell that meets you there seems to speak,
You begin to feel quite glum,
And to wish you hadn't come,
For there's every kind of hum
At Salonique."

Another effor, which every V.A.D. will appreciate, began:
"The Red Cross Sister so demure,
On any chaps would work a cure,"
and ended up wittily and eminently satisfactorily from our point of view:
"To part from you will be a loss,
For you were never Red or Cross."

A 'V.A.D.' at the Base

This is another extract from 'Reminiscent Sketches,' and as it's quite long I've divided it into two parts - reading long accounts right through on the screen might result in the loss of the will to live! It's actually written not by a VAD, but by a trained member of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, so perhaps not quite a 'horse's mouth' memoir, but interesting for its small detail not found elsewhere.

A "V.A.D." AT THE BASE
K. M. Barrow

“Keep the large things large and the small things small,” is a fine American motto which the V.A.D. abroad might well have adopted as her own. No matter what type of home she had left behind, every girl in the great military hospitals or elsewhere was living under strange, and at first, bewildering conditions. She was up against new problems and experiencing new sensations; she was confronted with new barriers and restrictions; but she was enlarging her horizon and expanding her outlook. Like Alice, it was as though she had stepped through the looking-glass into a new world. In spite of the pictures which it breaks the heart to remember; in spite of the little jars and frets and anxieties which seemed Gargantuan at the time; every V.A.D. all the world over could honestly write against the record of those days the words “very happy." Life in a military hospital is a school within a school. Inside the big school of experience there is a type of school life which is not unlike that life which we lived in our “teens” with its friendships, its “shop,” its frenzied activities, and its recreations.

On the long white road which stretches from the slippery quay-side at Boulogne to the little distant villages clustered around tiny churches; fringed on one side of the road with ugly grey hospital huts or tents set in pleasant gardens, and on the other side with the chalk cliffs and great sparkling blue roadway to “Blighty,” we all lived much the same life. We all knew what it was to wait with beating hearts to hear our fate in the prim hotel sitting-room, with its faint smell of dust and roasted coffee-bean; then to be carried by the great lumbering ambulance – in the silver summer dusk or the bitter winter cold – into the unknown. We knew what it was to struggle with our flimsy camp furniture in the little wooden hut for two, or the narrow confines of a dark tent; and to wake to our first hurried breakfast surrounded by strange faces, with very much the sensation of a swimmer who has forgotten his stroke. The old mess hut or tent has very pleasant recollections for most of us. Breakfast was too hurried a meal to permit of much conversation except for the early arrivals, who toasted or burnt their bread at the stove, according to the position which they secured. So it was with nine o’clock “tea and biscuits” breathlessly snatched perhaps when convoys were rolling in; but at lunch all the plans for afternoon or evening “times off” were discussed, and arrangements made for eagerly anticipated “half-days.” The most pleasant meal of all was, perhaps, the “first dinner” when those who were free for the evening might wear out-door uniform and hats, instead of the regulation caps and aprons.

Sunday was marked by two domestic features, namely, boiled eggs for breakfast, and afternoon tea in the sitting-room when we all ate French patisserie and home-made cakes like hungry school boys; and when even those on night duty sometimes made a belated appearance. It was by no means an infrequent occurrence up on the cliff, when a mess tent was used in place of a hut, for the whole to collapse when the wind blew “unco’rudely,” and to be found in the morning in a crumpled ruin like a collapsed pack of cards. On summer “half-days” we scoured the countryside for flowers for the wards, drank coffee and ate omelets in the old farm houses, or enjoyed tea and ices at the Club or in the cheerful French shops with their tempting confectionery, unless food restrictions happened to be acute at the time. Thousands of tired or convalescent V.A.D.’s will think more than gratefully of peaceful days in the lovely woods at Hardelot or in the Villa at Cannes; when expeditions were planned and everything that was possible done to give mind and body a real rest and a chance of recuperation.

In France, when convoy after convoy poured in, and when one piteous wreck after another, whose bandages were stiff with mud and blood, had been deposited on a clean white bed; the extent of a V.A.D.’s work was bound to be decided far more by the measure of her capacity than by rule of seniority, or red tape. Matron and sisters soon discovered those whose skill, quickness and level-headedness, justified trust. In every new venture there are few who have not to walk for a space some time or other in the Valley of Humiliation, the military hospitals in France were a magnificent school, not only for actual nursing, but for self-control and nerve. Naturally, there were some sisters more trusting, more patient, and more ready to teach than others. Though there could not fail to be occasional jealousies and occasional bitterness among the V.A.D.'s, a strong esprit de corps, and a strong sense of discipline prevailed. In all hospitals everyone was quite ready to undertake the smallest task as well as tasks of a more responsible nature. Let no one imagine that even the humble care of lockers is a task in the nature of “sitting in the sun.” To satisfy the Sister-in-Charge, and at the same time to deal faithfully with the daily dole of cigarettes and matches – cherished like gold-dust – the photographs, the little brown pay-book, the melting toffee, the mouth organ, the presents from home, and above all, the cause of the fractured limb or the bandaged head, which was wrapped in a fold of newspaper to be dispatched to mother or wife, is no light task. “Did you see a little bit of shrapnel, nurse, when you were tidying out my locker?” asked a worried gunner to a newly-arrived V.A.D., and she realized, with a pang of remorse, that the tiny morsel of lead which she had swept away with broken ends of matches and cigarette stumps, was the most sacred item among “Jock’s” possessions.

Of the patients’ kindness and keen sense of gratitude, of their readiness to help in the wards, their goodness and unselfishness to each other, of their pluck and grit, and their cheerful assurance that they were “in the pink,” “not too bad,” or “fine,” even when the Angel of Death was standing close at hand, one need not speak. Had one had time to think, or the right to indulge one’s own feelings, the pathos of some of those scenes might have been unbearable. Pictures of a pale lad, singing “Annie Laurie” right through in a quavering voice, in his efforts to distract his mind from his sufferings during an agonizing dressing; of a “jaw-case” on the D.I. list with his poor mouth smeared with the crumbs of a home-made plum cake sent by his wife, which he had tried unavailingly or surreptitiously to eat; of a dying gardener with his face irradiated with joy when Sister handed him a flower, pass before one to be succeeded by another and again another, each unforgettable in its turn.