Many beautiful girls of the most delicate breeding have gone to the
front to nurse the wounded--to see the worst horrors of this most
horrible of wars.
It must not be assumed that they have merely gone to the base hospitals
to attend to the wounded soldiers brought to them from the front and
carried to them through the dangerous area. Some at least have gone
right to the trenches into the midst of the inferno of bullets and
shells and poisonous gases, where the air is filled with the groans of
the dying and the stench of the unburied dead and where the very soil
trembles from the force of the new and devilish explosives that reduce
humanity to a pulp.
The sights that these delicately reared girls must witness can only be
hinted at. Many strong men have turned sick at the same experience,
and even veteran soldiers are only able to endure their surroundings
by smoking the strongest kind of tobacco. How the spoiled darlings of
society will come through their terrible experience must be one of the
most interesting problems of the war.
One of the most strikingly beautiful girls at the front is Miss Gladys
Nelson, daughter of Sir William and Lady Nelson, who have a house noted
for its art treasures in Hill Street, Mayfair, the most aristocratic
quarter of London.
Sir William Nelson is a great railroad magnate, having large
enterprises of this character in the colonies and other parts of the
world. He is probably one of the wealthiest men in the United Kingdom.
He has two sons in the army, and four daughters married to army
officers. His only unmarried daughter, Miss Gladys, determined that she
would not do less for her country than any of her family.
Miss Nelson is the purest and most refined type of English beauty.
She is tall, lithe and athletic, with beautiful golden hair and a
very delicate, fair complexion. This exquisite daughter of millions
is actually running a motor ambulance from the trenches in the North
of France to the base hospital. She helps to carry the poor wounded
soldiers in her car back of the firing line and then drives them to
the base hospital. She has been repeatedly under fire and runs the
risk of being killed almost daily. She was within the firing zone when
the Germans first began their use of poisonous gases, and it was only
because she had a full load of wounded in her car that she moved to the
rear before the deadly fumes reached her.
All the risks of death and injury, however, would seem to be less of
an ordeal to a woman of sensitive nerves than the sights she must
constantly witness. The bodies of dead and wounded have been turned
black, green and yellow, so that they become in many instances a
caricature of humanity.
Then so furious is the fighting and so difficult the work of attending
to the wounded that the dead have often been left unburied for days.
The wounded are often terribly mangled and sometimes left to lie in the
dirt for hours or even days before the ambulances can find them. Before
they can be relieved at all their clothes and boots may have to be cut
from them, and in this process very often large masses of flesh come
away with the garments. These and other services are rendered by the
women ambulance workers.
The exquisite Miss Gladys Nelson has been doing her share in this
terrible work, and, according to last accounts, doing it very
creditably. Will she come through the ordeal a stronger and nobler
character or will she break down under it?
One of the bravest English nurses is Miss Muriel Thompson, of the First
Aid Yeomanry Corps. She belongs to a well-known English family. She is
a pretty girl of robust physique. She has been right up to the trenches
in one of the worst centres of carnage in the whole field of war. Many
badly wounded Belgians, who had no hope of medical attention from
their own forces, were carried by Miss Thompson from the firing line.
King Albert of Belgium presented to her on the battlefield a medal for
bravery.
The beautiful Marchioness of Drogheda, a young matron of the highest
aristocracy, is nursing the wounded in a houseboat on the Yser River,
in Belgium, where some of the most terrible fighting of the whole
war has occurred. This is the spot where the Germans put forth their
greatest force in the West last October to break down the allied lines
and reach the English Channel.
The Germans in their advance either killed the Belgian inhabitants or
at least drove them out and destroyed their homes. The allies in their
anxiety to stop the Germans flooded the country and destroyed hundreds
more Belgian homes. The world has never seen a more pitiful and
death-strewn waste than this once very populous and prosperous region.
The Marchioness of Drogheda and some other English women are laboring
among the wounded and starving on the Yser, within sound of the guns to
relieve some little part of the unspeakable misery.
Two of the most noted beauties of the British aristocracy are in
training to act as war nurses. One of them is Lady Diana Manners,
daughter of the Duke of Rutland and sister of the former Lady Marjorie
Manners, whose heart affairs have been of so much interest to the world.
Lady Diana is one of the most charming, dainty and sprightly girls in
the liveliest set of fashionable society. To think of such a girl amid
the blood, dirt and horrors of trench warfare gives one the greatest
shock of all. It has not yet been decided where Lady Diana will take up
her duties in the war area, but her friends say that her spirit is so
great that she will go to the most dangerous places that any woman has
yet ventured to.
Another beautiful girl of equal social prominence who has been training
as a war nurse is Miss Monica Grenfell, daughter of Lord Desborough,
one of the most noted sportsmen in England.
In the earlier stages of the war considerable adverse comment was
excited by the numbers of society women who forced themselves through
their influence with high officials into the fighting area, where they
were not fitted to be of help and were often a serious hindrance.
This evil has now been nearly eliminated. With a growing sense of the
awful seriousness of the war the most frivolous of society women have
become subdued. Under the direction of such masterful men as General
Kitchener and General Joffre the army officers and other officials have
refused to allow any women, however highly connected, who were actuated
merely by curiosity, to proceed to the front.
Only women qualified to nurse and belonging to a recognized war nursing
organization are now allowed to go near the fighting area.
At one time criticism was excited by the sight of Lady Dorothy
Fielding, the twenty-year-old daughter of the Earl of Denbigh, standing
among a group of admiring French and Belgian officers at the front. It
was assumed that a girl of such an age and such training could only be
a hindrance among the fighting men, and it was even hinted that she was
addicted to flirting.
Whatever she may have been at first, the young Lady Dorothy has now
changed all opinions of her and become a real heroine. With training
and experience now lasting for months she has become a most valuable
as well as courageous nurse in rescuing and caring for the wounded.
Naturally a strong girl and accustomed to athletic sports, she has
shown herself peculiarly fitted for this kind of work.
Many ladies of rank interested in the wounded have lately shown their
good sense by not trying to go to the fighting area. The handsome and
skittish Duchess of Westminster, who excited some attention at first by
bustling around among the soldiers in France has now gone to Serbia,
where there is the greatest need of Good Samaritans. The hospital
founded by her at Le Touquet, near Paris, has done good work.
The condition of Serbia is such that any women who ventures there must
see the extremes of human misery. The whole country has been turned
into a charnel house by the invading Austrians, followed by the still
more terrible typhus fever. Men, women and children are dying of
disease without being able to find a bed to lie on or a roof to cover
them.
One report stated that young Lady Paget had died while nursing typhus
patients in Serbia. Her mother is the well-known American Lady Paget,
wife of General Sir Arthur Paget, and the daughter is married to a
distant cousin, named Sir Richard Paget, British Minister to Serbia.
Later news came that young Lady Paget had not died of the fever, but
she is passing through scenes of horror that have not been known in
Europe for three centuries.