sold, notepaper is given out, books or games are lent, and games of
billiards are arranged, a bell being rung every twenty minutes to
mark the close of each game. Miss Sprot writes: “To sit down here is
considered a rest, but one can have a busy time.... Private A. brings
his watch and hopes it will not be too much trouble to get it mended
for him. You take down his name, and hope the watch will not get mixed
up with some half-dozen others passing through your hands, and that you
will be able to get it back in time from the watchmaker before Private
A. goes up the line. He himself has apparently no misgivings; indeed,
the implicit faith of himself and his fellows in one’s unworthy self is
something quite touching. Many questions are asked and answered. I have
been consulted on religious matters and listened to innumerable family
histories. The first move in a confidential talk comes when Tommy pulls
out his pay-book and spreads before you the photos of his relatives. To
most of us the hour spent each evening at this little counter is one to
look forward to.”
Another worker is Miss Lilias Playfair, who, with a group of other
ladies, went to a base town in France in February, 1915. A canteen had
been started in the only available place, a very small, inconvenient
room; but, even so, Miss Playfair reports that it was “packed every
evening, and most of the day.” Gradually the proper huts were built
in the outlying camps and in the town, and there are now over ten
huts, and two cinemas in this district, which Miss Playfair and her
sister, Miss Audrey Playfair, manage in alternate spells. Describing
her work, Miss Playfair says: “Besides serving at the canteens and
helping with the arranging and ordering of food, we do most of
the entertainments. I have organised a small orchestra which plays
at different huts, and last year we had a most successful Pierrot
troupe.... We hope shortly to produce a ‘revue,’ and two or three
short plays. French classes are held regularly, and the men are keen
to learn. It is hard work, as our hours are long, but it is very
interesting, and the men are so appreciative and say that they do not
know how they could endure things without the Y.M.C.A.”
[Illustration:
LADY BADEN-POWELL
_Russell_
_To face page 39_ ]
How much the Tommies themselves appreciate the presence of the Y.M.C.A.
ladies may be seen in the following extract, written by a Tommy,
describing what he calls a “heaven-sent organisation”: “When I entered
the hut I was greeted with that glad smile of welcome which I shall
always associate with the Y.M.C.A. by real English ladies--the first I
had seen for over seven months, except the nurses, of course. I only
wish to God that I could adequately describe my feelings, and I know
mine were the same as thousands of my brothers-in-arms. It seemed to
me that, amidst all the awful turmoil and din, with the horrors of the
retreat and the first battle for Ypres imperishably photographed on
my memory, I had found a haven of rest.” Volumes could be written by
the lady workers on the mingled humour and pathos in their interviews
with the men. In a letter to a friend at home a worker says: “All the
time out here life is so full of humour, if only one had the gift of
describing it. At one moment one is doing something for a very correct
General, and at the next one is in a hut having tea with a soldier,
ex-greengrocer, quite charming, but the unmistakable type! Everyone who
interests the greengrocer has to sign their names in his Bible. Then
one takes an Australian out shopping, and he tips one two francs for
one’s trouble!”
Quite apart from their ministrations to the men’s material
needs, the influence of the Y.M.C.A. ladies in France has been
invaluable--cheering, encouraging, and helping the men in countless
ways in their brief hours of leisure, and relieving by their presence
the endless monotony of their life of discipline.
Among the interesting features of the Y.M.C.A. work are the Scout Huts
started by Lady Baden-Powell at two of the bases. The ladies who work
in them are mostly Scout-masters and wear the Scout uniform, old Boy
Scouts amongst the troops being their most keenly appreciative patrons.
Lady Baden-Powell went to France in October, 1915, to organise the work
when the huts were built, and she worked for some months in the first
two huts. In June, 1916, a Girl Guide Hut was built from funds earned
by Girl Guides who, forbidden by their rules from collecting money,
each did a day’s work for the fund. Lady Baden-Powell is putting her
energies into developing the Girl Guide movement on the same scale as
the Boy Scouts. Realising the responsibilities of citizenship which the
opportunities of the war have brought to the women of the country, the
advantages are manifest of a voluntary training for girls, on the lines
which have been so successful with boys, and the Girl Guide movement is
a step to this end.
[Illustration:
MISS AGNES BORTHWICK
_To face page 41_ ]
VII
MISS AGNES BORTHWICK
No woman’s work has more directly furthered the prosecution of the war
than that of Miss Agnes Borthwick, who within one year has risen to
the unique position--for a woman--of works manager in a great Munition
Factory.
When Miss Borthwick sees the trains laden with ammunition steaming out
of the factory straight for Southampton, she must feel with justifiable
pride that she and her 4000 girls are working for the country as
vitally as the soldiers, who will fire the unceasing stream of shells
which the girls are sending to them day by day.
Miss Borthwick’s rise to her present position of responsibility has
been rapid, even judged by the standards of war promotion. She is of
Scottish birth. A woman of high educational attainments, she took an
honours M.A. degree in English at Glasgow University in 1912, and
subsequently held a research scholarship at Bryn Mawr College, U.S.A.
Miss Borthwick spent two years studying in America, and from Bryn Mawr
went to Whittier Hall, University of Columbia, New York, and Barnard
Hall, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. She also did some research
work in Harvard Library.
At the outbreak of war Miss Borthwick returned to England, and in
November, 1915, when the newly formed Ministry of Munitions appealed
for women workers, she volunteered, and went to Woolwich for a course
of training in both the theoretical and practical work of shell and
cartridge filling. At the end of five weeks she obtained a first-grade
or “excellent” certificate.
In January, 1916, Miss Borthwick was sent to Georgetown-by-Paisley,
where a new filling factory was in course of construction. Here she
began work with only 24 girls. At first she and her workers scrubbed
the shops, cleaned the newly built blocks of buildings, and unloaded
the trucks of empty shells, which arrived at the factory ready to
be filled with explosives. By the end of January the shops were
sufficiently prepared for the real work to begin, and 200 girls were
taken on and instructed in filling. After that the factory grew
rapidly. Every week from 30 to 50 girls were engaged, who started work
in the new blocks, which were taken over from the builders as fast as
they were finished. Two months later Miss Borthwick was promoted from
forewoman to assistant works manager, and in May, on the promotion
of the works manager, she took his place. By the end of 1916 the 24
original workers had increased to 4000 girls, and when an inspector
came round to inquire into the question of labour dilution he was
unable to eliminate a single man, for the only men employed in the
factory were a few engineers and mechanical experts.
Not only do the girls do all the filling of 18-pounder shells and
cartridges of all sizes, but they also do the packing of the filled
shells, and the trollying to the railway. The medical and nursing
staff, the police patrol, the fire patrol, and the canteen workers are
all women. Work never ceases night and day. The girls work in shifts of
eight and three-quarter hours.
There are now 130 shops, and the factory covers such a large acreage
that its boundary is about five miles round. Above everything else, it
must not be forgotten that the _entire_ work of this factory is what
is called “danger work.” Although every possible precaution is taken
for the safety and health of the workers, in all handling of powerful
explosives the element of danger must be present.
Miss Borthwick is only twenty-seven. She is a fresh-looking girl with
a very quiet manner, suggesting a reserve of resolution and courage
eminently necessary in her work. On her shoulders rests the heavy
responsibility for the successful working of the factory, and she
has helped to develop it in an incredibly short time from a few huts
to the throbbing hive of industry which it is to-day. Owing to her
efficiency, and because she has never failed to make good whatever she
has undertaken, she has earned this great opportunity of service to the
country. She talks of her work as calmly and naturally as if there were
nothing remarkable about it. Yet she made this admission while on a
recent three days’ leave: “Until I came away from the factory, I hadn’t
realised how heavy and how unending the responsibility is.”
VIII
MRS. ST. CLAIR STOBART
No woman has seen the war at closer quarters and in more varied fields
of action than Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, and no one has worked harder to
help the sick and wounded--on the field, in besieged fortresses, at
base hospitals, and in the stricken villages of a ravaged and invaded
country. Everywhere she has sought and found her opportunity to bear
her part in the actual campaign--a part such as no woman has ever taken
before.
The outbreak of war found Mrs. Stobart already trained, for she had
gained her experience with the Women’s Convoy Corps, which she founded,
and which did such successful work in the Balkan War in 1912-1913.
Early in August, 1914, therefore, she was entrusted with the leadership
of an ambulance unit, under the organisation of the St. John Ambulance
Association, and proceeded at once to Brussels. Before a hospital could
be established, the Germans had entered the city, and Mrs. Stobart
escaped with difficulty, after having been actually a prisoner in
German hands, and condemned to be shot as a spy.
[Illustration:
MRS. ST. CLAIR STOBART
_To face page 44_ ]
Nothing daunted by her first experience, Mrs. Stobart then established
a hospital in Antwerp. After three weeks of fine work the town was
besieged, and the bombardment began. The hospital was in the direct
line of fire of one of the enemy’s objectives, the ammunition depôt,
but under a storm of shell-fire Mrs. Stobart and her unit rescued
their wounded, and were themselves the last to leave the burning city,
crossing the bridge of boats just before it was blown up.
After the fall of Antwerp Mrs. Stobart accepted an invitation from the
French Red Cross to establish a hospital at Cherbourg.
At first the work was very heavy and the numbers of wounded enormous,
but once it was started, Mrs. Stobart was able to leave the smoothly
working hospital in good hands, and to answer the call to help Serbia,
then in such dire need. Accordingly, after spending some time in making
her preparations, she travelled to Serbia in April, 1915, with a fresh
unit.
On arrival Mrs. Stobart began by establishing a camp hospital, entirely
consisting of tents, at Kragujevatz.
It was the first experiment of this kind which had been tried, but the
advantages of healthy outdoor conditions, as opposed to the alternative
of insanitary buildings, were soon proved, for the hospital, which had
been requested by the Serbian medical authorities to undertake surgical
work, entirely escaped the scourge of typhus. Unfortunately, this
was not so with regard to typhoid, from which several members of the
staff died in June, 1915, including the well-known author, Mrs. Percy
Dearmer, who, though far from strong, had offered her services to the
unit, and had already done fine work.
During the first three months the hospital undertook both civil and
military cases, and Mrs. Stobart organised a further invaluable and
successful scheme in establishing roadside tent dispensaries in seven
or eight remote villages. Altogether, within a few weeks, 22,000
civilians received surgical and medical assistance.
At the end of September, 1915, came a signal proof of the confidence
which Mrs. Stobart had inspired in Serbia. The army was preparing its
fresh resistance to the second invasion, and the Bulgarians were on
the eve of declaring war. Mrs. Stobart was approached by the Serbian
military authorities and asked to mobilise a portion of her unit as
a flying field hospital. She was appointed commander, with the rank
of major in the Serbian army (the first time in history that such an
appointment has been given to a woman), and the unit, which was called
the First Serbian-English Field Hospital, was attached to the Schumadia
division.
After making arrangements for the continuation of the work of the
Kragujevatz hospital, Mrs. Stobart chose for the ambulance column a
dozen of her English women doctors and nurses, motor ambulance drivers,
a cook, orderlies, interpreters, and about sixty Serbian soldiers.
On October 1 the column started for the Bulgarian front, travelling
by train, through Nish, to Pirot. But, after a few days of trekking
in that direction, the column was ordered to move north with the
division to within a few miles of Belgrade on the Danube front, to
face the stronger enemy, the Germans and the Austrians. On October 14
the hospital camp was pitched within sound of the guns, and the first
batches of wounded were received. But the stand of the Serbian army
was destined to be a short one. Two days later, orders came to move
southwards, and the first stage began of the great retreat, which was
to continue steadily for three months.
The life of the members of the field hospital during the retreat was
indeed a strange one, for ever on the march, stopping for a few hours
to pitch a camp and attend to the wounded brought to them from the
battlefields close at hand, evacuating them by motor ambulance to the
nearest railway or hospital, and then marching on again. Throughout
the retreat Mrs. Stobart rode at the head of her column night and
day, selecting every inch of their road, struggling for a place for
them in the endless procession of the straggling host that beset the
mud-soddened roads and slippery mountain paths, obtaining food for them
and their horses with infinite difficulty in the deserted villages
through which the column passed. Forced to snatch odd hours of sleep
when and where they could, always fully dressed, and prepared for the
orders to march at any moment, they often narrowly escaped capture. The
sound of the enemy guns was ever in their ears, the invading armies
always at their heels. Mrs. Stobart truly proved herself a leader in
fact as well as in name, for no trained commander of troops could have
shown a higher courage or faced emergencies with a more decided energy
than this Englishwoman.
It was a cruel day for the hospital column when, at the end of a
terrible forced march, during which Mrs. Stobart was eighty-one hours
in the saddle, the motor ambulance and the hospital equipment had at
last to be destroyed and abandoned at the foot of the Montenegrin
mountains, through which Mrs. Stobart then led her skeleton column on
foot. The horrors of the retreat increased every day, but the only
way to safety had to be faced, though it lay over trackless mountains
8000 feet high, through snow, ice, unbroken forests, and bridgeless
rivers. It was then mid-winter. Men and animals died by the roadside
in hundreds from starvation and exposure. Writing of the retreat
afterwards, Mrs. Stobart said: “Continued cold, exhaustion from forced
marches, and increasing lack of food made the track a shambles ... men
by the hundred lay dead, dead from cold and hunger, by the roadside,
and no one could stop to bury them. But worse still, men lay dying by
the roadside, dying from cold and hunger, and no one could stay to tend
them. The whole scene was a combination of mental and physical misery,
difficult to describe in words. No one knows, nor ever will know
accurately, how many people perished, but it is believed that not less
than 10,000 human beings lie sepulchred in those mountains.”
At last, on December 20, Mrs. Stobart had the triumph of leading her
weary but courageous column into Scutari in Albania, without the loss
of a single one of its members--the only commander who succeeded in
bringing a column intact through the retreat.
The chief officer of the Serbian medical staff expressed true
sentiments when he wrote to Mrs. Stobart: “You have made everybody
believe that a woman can overcome and endure all the war difficulties
... you can be sure, esteemed Madam, that you have won the sympathies
of the whole of Serbia.”
[Illustration:
MISS DOROTHY RAVENSCROFT
_To face page 49_ ]
IX
MISS E. G. BATHER AND MISS DOROTHY RAVENSCROFT
Miss Bather is one of the women whose sporting experiences in pre-war
days have been turned to valuable account in the service of her
country. Her knowledge of horses, gained in the enjoyment of hunting,
has enabled her to undertake the serious and arduous work of running a
Remount Depôt for the War Office under Mr. Cecil Aldin, M.F.H.
Many girls who have hunted, or had their own horses, might think that
they could easily do remount work; but it is not merely a case of being
able to ride well, the riding is only the lightest part of the duties:
it is a matter of settling down to a life of real hard work, requiring
strength, courage, infinite patience and firmness. That Miss Bather
has been able to organise a depôt successfully, and carry on the work
entirely with the help of girl workers for over two years, is a tribute
to any woman which can only be realised if the exact scope of the work
is understood.
The functions of workers at remount depôts are to receive horses and
mules which are sent to them, and to make them fit for active service.
The animals arrive mostly in rough condition--the horses being of all
types, from the heavy draught-horse to the colonel’s charger. An
expert has said: “To be able to do this work, a girl must love her
horse for himself; but that is not everything--she must be practical,
capable, strong, self-denying, and brave.”
The horses are usually sent to the depôt in mixed batches of thirty
or more, dirty in their coats, perhaps thin and out of condition, and
often lame or suffering from various ailments.
“It requires quite a lot of pluck in the first instance,” writes Miss
Bather, “to unload from the railway trucks, saddle up, and mount those
horses that look as if they had been ridden lately, and ride them, each
rider leading another horse, to their destination some five miles away.”
The grooming of the horses is hard work and requires considerable
strength, even when the horse is quiet; with wild and difficult horses
it is necessary to hobble and muzzle them before grooming is possible.
They are often deceptively quiet at first, and it may take a few days
of bitter experience before the kickers and biters are discovered!
Besides the daily grooming, which has to be performed for each horse
like a child’s toilet, there is the clipping and singeing. After the
grooming comes the work of keeping the stables, which must be cleaned
out and disinfected daily; while the harness and “tackle” have to be
cleaned and polished. There is also the care of the horses in sickness
and convalescence, which requires particular skill and knowledge.
[Illustration:
(1) MISS BATHER AND HER “LADS” EXERCISING HORSES
(2) SOME OF THE STABLE “HANDS”
_Alfieri_
_To face page 51_]
With regard to the exercising, Miss Bather writes: “This is fraught
with difficulties and anxieties, especially with a new lot of horses.
To set the pace someone responsible has to lead the string with the
quiet horses that will face the traffic; but though all army horses are
supposed to be broken in, I have known our string resemble a Wild West
Show!”
An eyewitness described an occasion when she happened to meet Miss
Bather’s “lads” out for exercising. One of the horses had taken
fright, and, breaking loose, had become entangled in barbed wire near
the road. The onlooker states that the girls behaved with the utmost
coolness, extricating the struggling horse with courage and skill, and
successfully preventing a stampede among the other horses.
During the first year of her work about 500 horses passed through Miss
Bather’s depôt, and in June, 1917, she completed her second year of
work.
Miss Dorothy Ravenscroft is another lady who has been doing similar
work for the War Office.
She is responsible for a remount depôt at Chester, where, with the help
of twelve girl assistants, forty horses at a time are prepared for
active service. The horses here are mostly officers’ cobs and chargers,
and, as at the other depôts, the girl workers do the entire work of the
stables, as well as the exercising, grooming, and feeding of the horses.
The post of superintendent of a Remount Depôt is one of considerable
responsibility, for the success of a depôt depends largely upon the
personality of the responsible head. Her life is necessarily one of
continual anxiety, not only for the horses, but for her girl workers,
who need to be chosen carefully; the work is far too great a strain
physically and mentally for girls under twenty. Writing to a friend
recently, a superintendent said with truth: “One’s nerves need to
be made of iron; I am wondering how much longer mine will stand the
strain.”
This is a question that women must be asking themselves in almost every
branch of war work to-day, for all work just now is at high pressure.
But the women at home are inspired with the same spirit as the men in
the trenches, and are equally prepared to go on until they drop.
[Illustration:
DR. FLORENCE STONEY MISS EDITH STONEY
_To face page 53_]
X
MISS EDITH STONEY AND DR. FLORENCE STONEY
Miss Edith Stoney and her sister, Dr. Florence Stoney, are specialists
in X-ray work, and in this vitally important branch of surgery they
have both rendered fine service throughout the war.
Dr. Stoney was head of the electrical department in the New Hospital
for Women, London. Early in the war she went to Antwerp in Mrs. St.
Clair Stobart’s unit as head of the medical staff and in charge of the
X-ray department. After the fall of Antwerp, when the hospital staff
made their escape in London motor-buses only twenty minutes before the
bridge of boats was blown up, the unit was re-established in a hospital
at Cherbourg under the French Croix Rouge. The X-ray work was of course
invaluable, and in giving an account of it Dr. Stoney wrote:
“Most of our cases were septic fractures, for nearly all were septic
by the time they reached us, four to eight days generally after being
wounded, and most of the fractures were badly comminuted as well. The
X-rays were much in request to show the exact condition of the part and
the position of the fragments. In all cases the pieces of the shell had
to be accurately located, and were then as a rule easily extracted.”
With constant practice it became possible for Dr. Stoney to tell by
X-rays which were the dead pieces of bone in a comminuted fracture,
for observation showed that they threw a denser shadow than living
bone. “One piece of dead bone three inches long was diagnosed first by
X-rays,” Dr. Stoney reports, “and the early removal of these pieces
greatly hastens recovery.”
When the hospital was inspected by the consulting surgeon for the
district, his first inclination was to regard a hospital staffed by
women as hardly worthy of inspection; but after going through the wards
he wrote:
“L’hôpital de Tourlaville est très bien organisé, les malades sont très
bien soignés, et les chirurgiennes sont de valeur égale aux chirurgiens
les meilleurs.”
When the British army took over the northern part of the line in
France, hospital arrangements were altered. The need for the Cherbourg
hospital was over, as all British movable cases were taken to England;
and therefore in the spring of 1915 the hospital was closed. Dr. Stoney
returned to England, and offered her services to the War Office, and
in April, 1915, she was asked to take over the X-ray department in the
Fulham Military Hospital, a hospital of over 1000 beds, where she is
still working.