Read The Nightingale Shore Murder Online
Authors: Rosemary Cook
There were other risks for the Queen's Nurses in their war work. During their travels to their posts, some of them experienced capture and imprisonment; and several wrote to the QN magazine about being on ships that were torpedoed. Meirion Evans and her companions survived such an event in 1917:
âOur ship was torpedoed at 10am and sank in an hour. The nursing staff (66 of us) were the first to be lowered into the life boats, and were in our boat for three hours when we were picked up by an ally's destroyer. The last hour was dreadful as the boat was full of water and we had to stand up and cling to one another or anything we could get hold of. The sea was so rough by this time that the waves were coming right over our heads at times, and two or three nurses were washed away, but a splendid sailor boy rescued them. They said the boat would have floated forever, but I am afraid in another half hour we should have been done up. We were at last landed and stayed in convents, the people were very good to us.'
As well as the work in military hospitals, Queen's Nurses also ventured out into the community to help local people suffering after bombardments. Ethel Ubsdell was a QN with the Friends' Expedition, Chalons-sur-Marne, who wrote about her visit to a shelled village:
âHearing that a certain village had been severely bombarded I started off in the car to see if help was required. We called on the Mayor of the place who told us that a certain woman was expecting her baby and gave us directions where should find her. We arrived at the place and found one wall of a house. I went in to investigate but could see nothing. I went a little further and found a sort of scullery place with a hole in the ground. Hearing a moan I went out to the Chauffeur and asked him to come and help me (the Chauffeur I may add was only a young medical student). We advanced to the hole and found a sort of rope ladder. The Chauffeur went into this and I followed, feeling very brave!
We alighted in a black hole and fell over some children, three of them, ranging from 5 years of age down to 2 years. Hearing another moan from a corner we went and found the poor mother lying on straw, having given birth to a child about an hour previously. Both the poor mother and the children were covered with vermin, and the only garment the mother had on was a chemise. The Chauffeur took off his shirt and we wrapped the new born baby in it, while I took off one of my undergarments and wrapped it round the poor woman. All the food these unfortunate creatures had to eat was a little bread. We quickly attended to the mother and carried the whole family up to the car, and conveyed them off to the hospital. I am thankful to say that the mother and infant are doing well, and the children are none the worse for their experience. The husband of the poor woman we found had been taken prisoner of war.'
It was not just the demands of nursing, midwifery and the hospital arrangements that interested the Queen's Nurses, however. Some of them enjoyed the adventure and novelty of being abroad, and were determined to experience their war to the full. W. Wells was a QN who worked in one of the Urgency Cases hospitals in France. She wrote back gleefully:
âLast Monday I was on duty and had run up to the house for something and I heard guns, but of course thought nothing of it, but as I came from the house I saw a doctor running from the woods and pointing upwards and there was a German aeroplane being shot at, and then followed seven more flying overhead and we think one was hit. The sky was full of puffs of smoke. Then all was quiet til the afternoon fifteen more flew over. We all of us ran out into the open each time with telescopes, etc, we were very excited and not a bit frightened. Now there is a notice that in the event of future air raids all except those on duty are to go into the cellar.
Well, it was my half-day off, and in the evening we went out for a little walk to look at the starshells falling which can be seen miles away and then we came in. Then just before nine someone called out, âHere's something to see!' and we all trooped out again and saw a Zeppelin coming towards us like a silver cigar and lit up with searchlights. The guns fired and suddenly she tries to rise but was hit behind â then again in the middle, and a puff of smoke went up, followed by a burst of flame and she slowly sank, dropping a trail of fire all the way.
How we cheered and cried âVive la France!' Then we rushed in and put on our coats and tore off to see it, for we knew it must be somewhere near R_____, and running and walking we arrived there and found we had another mile to go over a brook and a ploughed field. The Zeppelin had burnt out, but the bodies were still burning and we saw them.
We got souvenirs of the âZep', bits of aluminium etc. It was surrounded by a sea of mud into which we sank and had to be dragged out; it pulled our shoes off and one or two of the sisters had to tie theirs on and throw them away afterwards.
Then we turned home again and came across a ghastly sight, a dead German, who had evidently tried to save himself by jumping out. The field was pitted with huge bomb holes caused when they threw out the bombs before they fell...
We found our two motors waiting in R_______, which we were very thankful for, and when we got home we had tea and biscuits, etc. Next morning Matron drove down and several of the nurses took snapshots. Oh! It was a day never to be forgotten. I do think I am lucky to be here.'
Some of the QNs' letters were evidently a bit too high-spirited and informative, as she ends this letter plaintively:
âI would like to tell you a lot more, but I can't, for the wretched censor has been here and he says for some time we have been giving far too much information and our letters have had to be held up, and I'm perfectly certain that I am on the âblack list', for I have written a good deal that I shouldn't, quite innocently, in fact many of us have. I can't tell you anything much now about the hospital or anything else. Spies put two and two together, and the country round here is infested with them.'
Back in England, the Queen's Nurses' magazine was raising spirits by publishing some humorous stories about the war. In October 1916, it published a list of questions which, according to a note on the ward door, visitors to the East Leeds War Hospital were requested
not
to ask the patients:
âAre you wounded?
Did it hurt?
Which hurt most â going in or coming out?
How did you know you were wounded?
Did the shell hit you?
Did you see any Germans?
Do you want to go back?
How many did you kill?'
But overall, the mood of the magazine was both sombre and resolute, aiming to encourage and support those nurses who were engaged on work relating to the war, at home and in Europe. The editor wrote in the same issue:
âIt used to be said that war did not concern women. There never was a grain of truth in it, and now we have learnt how deeply and terribly it does concern us.'
Florence could not wait to get into the War either. After leaving the Queen's Institute briefly to take her sister Urith abroad for treatment, Florence rejoined in August 1914, the month in which Britain declared war on Germany. In October, at the age of 49, she went to work under the French Red Cross at Fort Mahon. By chance, Ethel Bedford Fenwick, the other former pupil of Middlethorpe Hall to become well known in nursing, was on the British Committee of the French Red Cross that approved her appointment.
Florence's war service took place in casualty clearing stations and hospitals, and on ambulance trains. Unlike Mabel, she never wrote back to the Institute about it, but her wartime activities are recorded in the Institute's records, and the records of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Reserve, which she joined in 1915.
The opening campaigns of the Great War, in 1914, led to the first experience of trench warfare and some of the most famous and horrific battles of the conflict. In October, the month that Florence arrived in France, the Belgians were forced to abandon Antwerp, and the Germans took Ghent, Lille, Bruges and Ostend in âthe Race to the Sea.' The first battle of Ypres was fought from October into November, and, towards the end of the year, the famous Christmas truce took place in the trenches. April 1915 saw the second battle of Ypres, and the first use of chlorine gas as a weapon of war by the Germans: mustard gas came later, at Ypres in July 1917. By September, the British were also using gas in the Third Battle of Artois.
Chillingly, in October 1915, Florence's last month with the French Red Cross, another British nurse, Edith Cavell, was executed by a German firing squad in Brussels. Edith Cavell was almost exactly the same age as Florence, and, though she had never trained as a Queen's Nurse, she had also been connected with the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses. Cavell had taken a post as a nurse for the Manchester and Salford Sick Poor and Private Nursing Institution, which was affiliated to the Institute, when she came back to England after a break from nursing. When the matron of the Institution fell ill, Cavell took on the role. She wrote to her old Matron at The London Hospital, Eva Luckes, to say:
âI feel it rather a heavy responsibility as I know so little of the âQueen's' work or the etiquette of this branch of the work but I feel I must try to fill the days to the best of my ability.'
In this she evidently succeeded, as she left with a grant of £10 from the Good Service Fund in recognition of her work.
Cavell's destination, when she left Manchester, was Brussels, where she set up and directed the Berkendael school of nursing. The school became a Red Cross hospital when Brussels came under German control, and Cavell used her post there to help around 200 allied soldiers to escape to Holland. She was arrested, sentenced by a German military court, and executed by firing squad on 12
th
October.
Local newspapers in Manchester reported the execution, and the connection to their own community:
âThere appears to be no doubt that Miss Edith Cavell, the heroic nurse, who has been infamously executed at Brussels by the Germans, was at one time Matron of the Bradford Nursing Home, Manchester. Those with whom she came into contact were much impressed by her work ⦠she left to undertake nursing work in Belgium with the good wishes of the Committee who had the highest opinion of her methods and abilities.'
They also reported the special memorial service held in Manchester Cathedral on 29 October, timed to coincide with the national memorial service taking place at St Paul's Cathedral in London. Ideas for permanent memorials to Cavell were debated by the City, Cathedral and Institution staff, and resulted in several streets named after her, as well as the setting up of rest homes for nurses in England and several other countries.
Florence's service from October 1915 onwards continued through the Queen Alexander's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. As the war progressed, the injuries that she and other nurses in the field hospitals had to treat were far outside their usual areas of expertise. It is hard to imagine how the Queen's Nurses, accustomed to the cradle-to-grave mix of infectious diseases, minor accidents and ailments they nursed on their rounds in Britain, coped with the overwhelming numbers of gassed, blasted and bayoneted young men who were now their patients. The âWar Notes' from the Harvard Graduates Magazine of September 1915 give some idea of the way casualties were handled, and the injuries they suffered, in just one hospital in Paris:
â[The wounded soldier is] at once evacuated to a first-line ambulance just beyond artillery fire; here he is again studied, his bandage changed and he may be operated on if necessary, but if his condition warrants it he is at once evacuated to the railway and shipped south on a âsanitary train'. On such trains the wounded reach Paris and the great distributing centres, and are at once divided among the local hospitals. From the station they reach the hospitals by motor ambulance.
It seems complex, but we often got patients in the hospital in Paris within 12 to 14 hours after they have been hit, even when coming from Arras or the line farther north toward Ypres. On arrival in the hospital patients are at once seen by the receiving officer, who, in our service, was one of the residents, and by him sent either to the ward direct, to have a bath first, or to the operating room, as each single case demanded... Of the 383 cases on which we have full records 318 received actual wounds by missiles â as follows:
Rifle ball â 128
Shrapnel ball â 31
Shell fragment â 133
Shell fragment and rifle ball â 5
Shell fragment and shrapnel â 1
Doubtful â 5
Bomb fragments â 9
Hand grenade â 3
Barbed wire â 1
Mine explosion â 1
Revolver ball â 1
Of the 65 cases in which no actual wounds were produced by missiles, a large number were due to falls, chiefly from horses or into trenches, and to men being thrown down by a mine or large shell or bomb explosion nearby. Also there were a few simple surgical conditions, such as appendicitis and hernia, demanding surgical treatment. Many of the cases presented more than one wound, there being 670 instances of medical or surgical conditions in 383 cases. A glance at the following table shows a rough estimate of the location of wounds, but, of course, it must be kept in mind that this is not a true measure of the proportion of wounds received in battle, for most of the head and abdominal injuries are fatal at the front, and never reach the great base hospitals:
Skull fractures â 20
Spinal cord injuries â 7
Superficial wounds, head and face â 10
Fractures, upper and lower jaw â 63
Diseases and injuries of the abdomen â 13
Injuries of the pelvis â 4
Peripheral nerve lesions â 39
Joint lesions without fracture â 13
Fractures of extremities (13 required amputation) â 140.'
Florence adapted quickly to this work, nursing with great skill and dedication. After her death, a letter to the London newspapers soliciting donations to a memorial fund highlighted her particular affinity for work with the most vulnerable and marginalised of her patients (and reflected the colonial attitudes of the day to men of different races):
âShe took work from which many a white woman instinctively shrinks, that of tending coloured patients. But very calmly and courageously, setting a superb example to the younger nurses with her, she took charge of hundreds of the most gravely wounded of the French African troops, Turdos, Sanegalese [sic] and the rest.'
A doctor who had worked with her in France confirms this in his own tribute:
âThe death of Miss Florence Nightingale Shore under such tragic circumstances will be deplored by everyone, but more especially by the doctors and nurses with whom she worked in France during the early months of the great war, when she was attached to the French Red Cross Hospital serving the 10th French Army at Fort Mahon, Somme. Among a devoted band of workers, Miss Shore proved herself to be one of the best nurses, always calm, helpful and self-sacrificing. She cheerfully took her share of the many privations, and always tried to make the best of difficult circumstances. She had a splendid influence over the younger nurses. The patients in her special ward were French African troops, Zouaves, Turcos, Arabs and Sengalese. The âWhite Queen', as they called her, endeared herself to them by her constant care and kindness.
As one of the doctors who worked with her in France from October, 1914, onwards, it is to me a sad privilege to pay this small tribute to the memory of one of the most unselfish and self-sacrificing women I have ever met.'
There is an intriguing reference to a nurse who might have been Florence Shore in the account by Kathleen Burke of her visits to Red Cross hospitals in France. She too noted the large number of Algerian and Senegalese soldiers who had been wounded fighting for France; and she described the work of one particular Sister who was noted for her kindness to them:
âThe Senegalais and Algerians are really great children, especially when they are wounded. I have seen convalescent Senegalais and Algerians in Paris spend hours in the Champs Elysees watching the entertainment at the open-air marionette theatre. The antics of the dolls kept them amused.
They are admitted to the enclosure free, and there is no longer any room for the children who frequented the show in happier days. These latter form a disconsolate circle on the outside, whilst the younger ones, who do not suffer from colour prejudice, scramble on to the knees of the black soldiers.
The sister in charge was a true daughter of the âLady of the Lamp.' Provided they are really ill, she sympathises with all the grumblers, but scolds them if they have reached the convalescent stage. She carries a small book in which she enters imaginary good points to those who have the tables by their beds tidy, and she pinned an invisible medal on the chest of a convalescent who was helping to carry trays of food to his comrades. She is indeed a General, saving men for France.
Not a man escaped her attention, and as we passed through the tents she gave to each of her âchers enfants' â black or white â a cheering smile or a kindly word. She did, however, while talking to us omit to salute a Senegalais. Before she passed out of the tent he commenced to call after her, “Toi pas gentille aujourd'hui â moi battre toi.” (“You are not good to me today â me beat you.”) This, it appears, is his little joke â he will never beat anyone again, since he lost both arms when his trench was blown up by a land mine.'
Alongside the serious wounds and grinding hospital work of the war, Burke's account also provides a cheering snapshot of the provision of more pedestrian healthcare cobbled together for the troops by the Red Cross:
âIt was at Triancourt that I first saw in operation the motor cars that had been sent out fitted with bath tubs for the troops, and also a very fine car fitted up by the London Committee of the French Red Cross as a moving dental hospital.
I regret to add that a âpoilu' nearby disrespectfully referred to it as “another of the horrors of war”, adding that in times of peace there was some kind of personal liberty, whereas now “a man could not have toothache without being forced to have it ended, and that there was no possibility of escaping a dentist who hunted you down by motor”.'
Florence was in touch with her family by letter throughout her time in France. Early in 1915, she wrote to Caroline Shore, her sister-in-law in India, describing her work, and asking â
Do you know anyone who will help us along â we are badly in need of funds to carry on and we should be glad of gifts â of socks, pyjamas and dressings.'
Caroline passed on the request to her aunt and uncle, saying
âPerhaps Uncle Joe will drop a line to the right person and ask them to send to Florence's hospital.'
Florence made a huge impact on the French Red Cross during her single year with them. Five years later, the British Committee of the French Red Cross would send a floral tribute to her funeral, and Mabel Rogers received letters âof sorrow and regret' from the Matron-in-Chief, the State Matron-in-Chief in France, the French Red Cross, doctors, matrons, sisters, nurses, VADs (members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment) and orderlies who served with her in France.
After her year with the French Red Cross, Florence returned to England in 1915 â just too late to see her sister Urith before she died. Urith had been working in a camp at Woking, as part of the âEmergency Corps'. Caroline Shore wrote that her younger sister-in-law
â⦠had been working among the soldiers in a great camp ⦠and I am afraid in her eagerness and energy the work has been too much for her. She seemed so very happy in her work and had reached the very pinnacle of her desire â to be at work among and for Lord K's new army â dispensing warm clothes and comforts to them and looking after their welfare in a great camp at Woking ⦠when the cable came to say she was dangerously ill with meningitis at Woking Cottage Hospital â and shortly after a second cable came saying she had died that night. Poor Florence came back from France but was too late.'
Caroline describes Urith in her letters as Offley's favourite sister, and describes how deeply her husband felt his sister's loss.
âUrith was a beautiful pianist' Caroline recalls, âand was clever and accomplished and an excellent linguist. She was one of those very reserved very proud English natures, that it is so difficult to know and understand. Very very sensitive, and she adored and admired Offley extravagantly. She was very petite and with a marvellous quantity of brown hair, and there was always a sense of brilliance â real brilliance in this delicate little woman. Ugly â and yet not really ugly â more plain â but always with an alert eager expression that was very charming. I was very attached to her â and she to me â and yet I never felt I understood her â and I should have liked to so much.'