FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
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DAUNTLESS FRANCE
By Edmund Dulac
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
An Account of Britain's Aid to the
French Wounded and Victims of the War
COMPILED FOR THE BRITISH RED CROSS
SOCIETIES AND THE BRITISH COMMITTEE
OF THE FRENCH RED CROSS BY
LAURENCE BINYON
WITH PREFACE BY
HIS EXCELLENCY PAUL CAMBON
FRENCH AMBASSADOR
AND WITH ILLUSTRATIONS V,Y
EDMUND DULAC, A. N. COTTERELL,
MRS. WILFRID DE GLEHN, HERBERT
WARD, and WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
;
DEDICATION
The thousands of the brave, the happy young,
Our loves and lovers, fallen in France, have shrined
That earth for us ; and France's name comes kind
To English lips. But you, her children, sprung
From the old, liberal soil, so rudely wrung,
Out of our own hard pain have we divined
Your harder pain ; hurt body and tortured mind,
Where those polluting claws have torn and clung.
France, dear to men that honour human things,
To have helped or heartened any of these your maimed
And homeless, is itself felicity.
It is to know what suffering man can be ;
How great his heart, when fed from splendid springs ;
What human virtue has made you loved and famed.
PREFACE
BY H.E. THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR
L'auteur de ce livre a passe sa vie dans Petude et l'admira-
tion du beau. En decrivant avec tant de force et de con-
viction ce qu'il y a de plus beau au monde, le devouement
et la bonte, il n'a pas change de sujet. Ce devouement,
c'est celui de ses compatriotes qui, avec la generosite fonciere
de leur race, sont venus offrir leur aide a nos soldats blesses,
aux populations souffrantes de nos territoires envahis.
II suffit de rappeler tout ce qu'ils ont fait pour leur rendre
l'hommage le plus magnifique et le plus merite. Et,
comme le sentiment qui les poussait etait une sympathie
profonde, melee d'une admiration spontanement exprimee,
pour la France et pour le soldat francais au milieu de leurs
epreuves, ce livre est comme un monument eleve a la
gloire des deux nations, et un gage precieux de leur union
fraternelle.
Le budget des ceuvres auxquelles Mr. Laurence Binyon
a si bien rendu justice, en dit long sur la generosite britan-
nique. Mais il ne l'exprime qu'en termes d'argent et
de materiel. Les pages qui suivent nous montrent l'oeuvre
admirable des hommes et des femmes venus de Grande
Bretagne, comme a une sainte croisade, au secours de leurs
freres de France. Les nurses anglaises qui ont, des le
premier jour, offert le secours precieux de leur experience
au service medical francais ; les ambulances automobiles
viii FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
qui, equipees en Angleterre, montees et conduites par des
volontaires anglais, ont suivi nos armees jusque sur la
ligne de feu, par les chemins que balayait l'artillerie, on
il fallait passer de nuit et sans lumiere ; les groupes de
Quakers qui, sans renoncer a leur attitude traditionelle a
l'egard de la guerre, sont venus reconstruire nos villages
detruits, et soigner les femmes et les enfants chasses de
leurs foyers par l'invasion ; les cantines creees sur les
routes ou s'ecoule le flot incessant des combattants et des
blesses ; la quantite des hopitaux fondes, recrutes, entre-
tenus par nos amis de l'Empire britannique, tout cela
forme un tableau auquel l'auteur a su donner la grandeur
qui lui appartient. Nous ne souhaitons qu'une chose,
et elle est facile a realiser : c'est que son livre puisse etre lu
en France comme en Angleterre.
Ce qui donne toute sa valeur a cette description si
vivante, c'est le sentiment dont elle est penetree. C'est
1'amour sincere de la France, que Mr. Laurence Binyon
a voulu parcourir en tous sens, et dont les paysages appa-
raissent, esquisses en lignes evocatrices, a l'arriere-plan de
ces scenes de guerre. C'est 1'amour du peuple de France,
si bien represente par le simple soldat etendu sur son lit
d'hopital. C'est l'admiration de ce que cette France si dure-
ment eprouvee a fait et fait encore pour le salut du monde.
Et il faut mettre en parallele la reconnaissance touchante
de ceux qui, par les bienfaits qu'ils ont recus, ont appris a
connaitre le grand cceur de la nation britannique : telle
cette pauvre vieille paysanne aveugle qui, refugiee a Troyes,
baisait la main de son visiteur anglais en disant : * Ce
sont les Anglais qui nous ont sauve la vie.' Tout ce que
l'auteur a vu et recueilli tend a resserrer entre les deux
PREFACE ix
peuples non seulement la confiance et le respect, mais,
mieux que cela, le lien emouvant de la veritable amitie.
Rien n'est plus precieux, pour l'avenir comme pour le
present. Comme l'auteur lui-meme le dit si bien au dernier
chapitre du livre, ' il faut que l'amitie entre l'Angleterre et la
France soit ferme, loyale et durable ; il faut qu'elle prenne
sa racine dans la realite et qu'elle se noue par la comprehen-
sion autant que par l'estime reciproque ; cela est d'une
importance supreme pour l'avenir de l'Europe.' En y
travaillant comme il a fait, Mr. Laurence Binyon a ajoute
une nouvelle ceuvre d'entente cordiale a celles dont il s'est
fait l'historicn.
PAUL CAMBON.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
This book is a record of all that Britain has done in aid of
the French wounded and other sufferers from the war, as
far as the end of 1917. Not only Red Cross work, but the
work of the English Canteens, and of the various enterprises
undertaken in relief of the devastated regions and the re-
fugees, has been included.
Since it was impossible to mention the names of all whose
work deserved and called for mention, names have been
omitted in the body of the book ; but the appendix contains
a list of every one who has gone to France in this service.
Every effort has been made to make this list complete, and
also to include in the record the work of all the principal
British units doing war-work in France. There can hardly
fail, however, to be omissions ; and, in order that any
subsequent issue may be quite complete, we hope that any
one whose work or name is not recorded will communicate
with us.
It has also been impossible to give a detailed description
of invaluable services rendered by a large number of indi-
vidual men and women who have worked with great devotion
and often under difficult conditions, singly or in small units,
in different parts of France and on the Eastern front. Each
one of these has borne an essential part in the complete
mission, and has earned the gratitude, not only of France,
but of our own country, in carrying her message of sym-
pathy and fellowship to a gallant Ally.
In most cases the British units have the same financial
support from the French Government as the French
xii FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
formations. We offer our grateful acknowledgments as
well to the French Government and its officers as to the
Sister Societies in France, for all their courtesy and sym-
pathetic assistance.
Since the outbreak of war we have enjoyed the keenly
appreciated co-operation of allied and neutral countries ;
and as the author, by the limits set upon his book, has not
been able to include them, we would take this opportunity
of expressing our heartfelt thanks to each and all — to our
countrymen and women throughout the Empire, to our
Allies and to friendly neutrals — for the devoted services
and generous help which have made our work possible.
The Author, also, wishes to thank all those who have
supplied him with the material on which his narrative is
founded.
Lastly, we would record our gratitude to the artists who
have contributed the illustrations.
The British Committee of the P'rench Red Cross
(The London Committee of the French Red Cross and The Anglo-French
Committee of the British Red Cross).
9 Knightsbridge, Londok, S.W.I,
CONTENTS
Dedication ....
Preface by H.E. the French Ambassador
Introductory Note
PAGE
v
PART I.— THE CALL AND THE ANSWER
The Scene Surveyed ......
A Day's Work at the Office of the Comite Britannique
British Nurses in France : The French Flag Nursing Corps
3
18
3*
PART II.— THE RECORD
The Convoys :
The First Year ......
Verdun .......
And After . . . . .
The Hospitals :
Hospital Supply Depots : and the French War Emergency
Fund ....
The Story of the Hospitals
The Day of an Orderly .
The Canteens ....
Relief Work in the Devastated Zones
41
80
97
1 12
123
171
191
213
XIV
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
PART III.— IMPRESSIONS
On the Front in Champagne .
A Canteen in the Forest
Hospitals in and about Paris .
Ruins and Refugees
Lyons and Nevers
In the Vosges .
Some Canteens in the War Zone
Verdun to Chalons
In the Midi
A Maternity Hospital
A Thought for the Future
PART IV
Statistical Index
List ok War Hospital Supply Depots
Alphabetical List op Workers
Addenda ....
VAGE
237
H3
250
260
266
274
281
292
306
312
323
333
337
370
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DAUNTLESS FRANCE .... Frontispiece
By Edmund Dulac.
PACE
INTERIOR OF AN AMBULANCE SECTION'S BILLET
IN FRANCE ...... 48
By A. N. Cotterell.
A POSTE DE SECOURS, NEAR VERDUN . . 88
By A. N. Cotterell
A WOUNDED POILU . . . . . 144
By Janede Glehn {Mrs. Wilfrid de Glehn).
A FRENCH SOLDIER AT AN ENGLISH CANTEEN . 208
By Herbert Ward, Delegate of the British Committee of
the F.R.C.
DEVASTATION (Night at Fresncs) . . .232
By William Rothenstein.
PART I
THE CALL AND THE ANSWER
THE SCENE SURVEYED
Imagine yourself, at any time these three years, transported
to some aerial vantage-point above the regions of Western
Europe.
There beneath you lie the mapped plains of France,
melting northward in the mists of the Channel. Toward
the east, sombre patches mark the rolling forests of the
Ardennes. Like a barrier to the featureless Chalons plain,
rises the long, wooded chine of the Argonne. The shining
of rivers is visible : Marne and Aube and Aisne, Sambre
and Meuse and Moselle. Far off, toward the coast, is the
black country of pits and chimneys : and following the
frontier southward you might discern the hills that defend
Verdun, the swellings of the Vosges, the Rhine in its valley
beyond them, and a distance heaping itself into the snowy
Alps.
Like the disembodied aerial spectator of Mr. Hardy's
Dynasts, you look down on a world at war. Europe is busy
with the same martial ferment, it is scarred with the same
frequency of ravage and misery on its surface as a hundred
odd years ago.
Yet with a difference. Then, the picture might have
seemed that of Napoleon's glittering and voracious armies
preying on more or less passive populations, as they turned
this way and that in their vast ' sheep-worry of Europe.'
But now, if ordinary sight could for a moment be tran-
scended and the divining power of imagination translated
into physical sense, so that what is invisible in men's activity
became visible, you would be aware of a scene of grandeur,
4 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
epical in its significance ; a scene of human effort on a scale
unparalleled since the world began. You would be aware
of whole nations pouring their last energy into a conflict
which exacts something from each man and woman and
child, however removed from the actual battle, and from
millions has exacted everything. It is a challenge that
knocks on every door ; that takes its toll not only of flesh and
blood, and food and money, but of dear illusions, and even
of rooted faiths. It dissolves inveterate customs in a day.
It crumbles old systems and great empires from within.
Far from being passive, these populations — how vastly in-
creased by a century's growth ! — combine in a willed
effort like that of a single wrestler, hardly conceivable
in its prolonged intensity. We need not fable, in the
old Homeric way, the presence of gods of battle, succour-
ing and inspiring mortal man, for you would be aware of
Ideas, terrible and inexorable powers, ranged on either side,
and compelling weak flesh to endure unendurable things.
To the eye there would appear those mapped plains and
undulations of Eastern France ; cities famed in history
since the twilight of the early Middle Ages ; rivers and
intersecting roads ; the mesh of railways and canals. But
you would also become conscious that on road and rail there
was a movement of men and arms directed eastwards,
increasing in density as it approaches a certain irregular
line, like a scar, that can be followed from the sand-dunes
of the Flanders coasts to the pines of the Jura. Groups,
masses, battalions ; cars, lorries, trucks, machines ; it is
like the orderly streaming of ants with their burdens, an
intricate order moving in the one direction ; but always it
ends in that irregular scarred line, where suddenly the men
disappear, and guns — terrible, untiring, impersonal — seem
to usurp their places.
You would remark that these streams of moving figures,
above a certain point, are in uniform that makes a tawny
THE SCENE SURVEYED 5
smudge on the landscape ; below that point it is smudges
of misty blue that tell of moving battalions.
That scarred line, from Yser to Jura, attracts like a
magnet ; it sucks up like a sponge. All Europe, and much
more than Europe, is conscious of it. Not a hamlet by the
Atlantic or the remote Pyrenees — not a village in the
British Isles but has a vision of it ; and far away in the
South Seas and beyond the North Atlantic it is the same.
To it men and women are sending, sending, sending. They
have sent sons and brothers, lovers and husbands. They
have sent arms and munitions. They are sending letters
and little gifts. Those that have nothing send their
thoughts and their fears. Could we use that other vision
of the mind, we might see those thoughts, prayers, curses,
apprehensions, hopes and passionate desires flying in that
one direction like the birds that fill the sky at the time of
their migration. But we should also see, pressing thither,
streams of embodied human energy — passion and calcula-
tion alike translated into active force and absorbed into the
momentum of a single will.
And these animated energies, collected and deepened
in pressure and volume as they approach the battle-front,
pour forward ceaselessly to meet an opposing tide that draws
its strength from the German lands beyond. The two vast
tides clash in a conflict that never ends, that never sleeps ;
that dies down to intervals of seeming quiet, but wakes
again to double and triple fury. And all along that line
the earth is blotched, pounded, pitted, scorched. The
trees are splintered stumps. It is a landscape that is to
the natural green and brown like the face of an idiot among
the healthy and bright-eyed. An insane landscape, smell-
ing of evil. It resounds with all the noises of chaos. By
night it alternates thick gloom with sudden and sinister
illumination. Yet the larks go up in the dawns and sing
above the cannonade.
6 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Here is a whole nation that presses and thrusts against
the obstinate force of another nation. And it might even
seem as if the very soil of France laboured and sacrificed
itself in an identity of cause and purpose, just as the body's
deep instinct is to expel a poisoning evil that has fixed on it.
For it is French soil the Germans hold, and use and abuse
at will.
That confluence and concentration of prodigious effort
has one end : to destroy. It feeds an inconceivable hunger
that is never satisfied ; the hunger of the guns.
Yet look a little longer. You will see another activity
revealed, less strong, less imposing, less vehement, but as
constant, though moving in the opposite direction.
From that scarred line which attracts to itself so enormous
a stream of human effort directed deathwards, there flows
also back another stream of effort directed lifewards.
Sometimes a mere trickle ; but at other times, after the
bombardments and assaults, it swells suddenly like a river
in spate. But no, let us eschew metaphors like these.
They are callous, they blunt our senses, they blur the reality ;
they are too like that talk of * human material ' that the
German High Command affects, with its proud military
science and its bestial contempt of human kind. Enough
of metaphors, though we fly to them for help because our
minds are overwhelmed by the weights of uncalculated
numbers. Let us fix our minds on the truth that of all
these thousands and hundreds of thousands — material
shovelled into the trenches as good ' stopping-stuff,' let
Germans call them if they will — each one is a single soul, a
single body, sensitive to pain as you or I. Each one that
returns from those trenches is a man returning from hell.
A train, badged with the Red Cross, crawls over the
landscape, moving westward. It is a peaceful landscape
THE SCENE SURVEYED 7
on which the twilight has descended ; a great green plain
rising into ridge and woody plateau. The guns of the
French front are still audible at times, but only as a faint
shock upon the ear.
Let us assume the privilege of the aerial spectator, and
descend to closer quarters.
The train comes ever so slowly to a stop at a little station
by the roadside. You can see through the windows French
soldiers in their grey-blue uniform, bandaged about the
head or arm, with their heads leant back on the partitions
or on each other's shoulders, in attitudes of animal weariness
and stupor. A few perhaps, more lightly wounded, will
look out of the window, exchange a word with a comrade,
wonder how far the train has brought them, light and puff
at a cigarette. But all are very weary.
These are the sitting cases. The other half of the train
is closed and dark. But now the orderlies begin to bring
out the couches on their stretchers, and lay them side by side
on the platform. The doctor in charge of the train is there,
directing and giving orders : and to him come, saluting,
those who are to receive the wounded and take them off
to hospital. A row of grey motor ambulances waits outside
the station.
But why are these others in English khaki ? They are
English plainly, by their looks and figures : and here and
there a wounded Frenchman looks up with just a little
curiosity overcoming his vast fatigue as he hears the English
voices.
In a few minutes the train will have crept away into the
dusk, to discharge its burden by degrees at one station after
another. But already the men on the stretchers have been
given a drink, and wrapped in a warm blanket. The English
doctor asks each where his wound is, and rapidly examines
the writing on the label tied to his tunic. A red label
means a severe wound ; a blue label, a less severe wound,
8 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
though often still serious. The slightly wounded have a
white label ; but these come rarely this way.
The ambulances are quickly filled, and they glide
off.
Soon they will be arriving at the hospital, probably a
chateau or lycee or disused convent converted to this use
for the war. Each will be allotted to a ward, and quickly
washed and put to bed by English nurses. The stained
uniform, helmet, boots, and pathetic little belongings of
the soldier are neatly tied up, packed and ticketed ; and
at last he gets to his good sleep, no longer jolted by wheels
beneath him.
For a week, for a month, probably for many weeks or
many months, these Frenchmen will be living under the
care of British surgeons, with British nurses dressing their
wounds, talking to them of their homes and families,
helping their first crippled steps, cheering on their recovery
— in a word, making friends of them.
For we have chanced upon a unit of one of those improvi-
sations of the war, which, from scattered efforts and casual
beginnings, have grown to surprising dimensions. These
hospitals where the British tend the French are scattered
about France ; you will find them in Normandy and Brit-
tany as well as in the departments of the East, in Meuse, and
Oise, and Haute Marne ; on the Mediterranean and in the
central provinces. And besides these British hospitals
there are in numbers of the French hospitals, English,
Scottish, and Irish women working as nurses.
But the hospitals are only one side of this work that
Britain, out of her desire to help, has done in France. It is
quite likely that some of those wounded we have seen in the
Red Cross train were carried from the first-aid post at the
front by English ambulances, driven by English volunteers.
Fully equipped sections of these ambulances serve on the
French front. Each convoy — and there are some sixteen
THE SCENE SURVEYED 9
of them — contains twenty or more motor ambulances, and
each serves a division of the French Army.
And besides the hospitals and the convoys, there are
some fifty canteens scattered up and down the country, at
stations and barracks and rest-camps, where English ladies
serve free refreshments to the tired soldiers on their way
to or from the trenches, and give them entertainments. At
one of these canteens as many as fifteen thousand soldiers
have been served with drink and cigarettes in a single
day.
This activity is relatively only a small part of the vast
ramified work of the French Red Cross ; but what does it
mean ? It means that hundreds of thousands of wounded
French soldiers have passed through friendly British hands
— carried on ambulances, refreshed at canteens, or actually
nursed and doctored. And of these there will be many
thousands who have passed long weeks and months with
English men and women in familiar acquaintance.
In those sad regions, the regions of devastation, you will
find more English people, working for the Society of Friends,
who have helped to build huts for the homeless refugees,
to give them clothing and seeds to sow the land with, and
to persuade them out of their first apathy and despair.
If we emphasise the fact that the great majority of these
workers are volunteers, who in many cases give more than
their time and their services, it is because it is right to point
out that what we have done has been a spontaneous thing,
a gesture of homage and friendship for the France we
admire. In that spirit it was offered ; in that spirit it was
accepted.
During that long time when our new armies were prepar-
ing, and while the French were supporting, along so immense
a front, the whole brunt and burden of the Western War,
how many of us in England were impatient and restless !
What a glorious relief it was to those who could engage
io FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
in this work and feel that in some small way they were
helping heroic France ! It was a privilege and a joy.
When all these workers have returned to their homes in
Britain, they will testify to what they have seen and known.
They will have learnt that Paris is not France, and that
the tourist of other days but rarely came into touch with
the true French nature, with France herself. They will
grow to understand how fine is the texture of human
qualities and human resources which underlie French
history, French art and civilisation, and which have made
the French so great and renowned a people. One and all
of our workers have come to feel an extraordinary respect
and love for the simple Poilu. They have seen him in the
time of his trial and suffering. They will tell how uncom-
plaining he is, how cheerful in hard conditions ; how amen-
able, how innately courteous ; how ready to do all and bear
all for the sake of his own France.
And all those soldiers of France, when they too have
returned to their homes, scattered over every province from
the Channel to the Mediterranean, from the Pyrenees to
Calais Sands, what will they say of the English ?
It is not for us to answer. But at least, when the name
of England is spoken among them, it will not be an abstrac-
tion distilled from newspaper articles that floats before their
minds, vague and alien, but certain human faces which they
remember, certain men and women who worked hard and
did kind things because they liked to do them.
We all remember the earthquake suddenness — for the
general public at all events — of the war's explosion. Every
one felt the terrible urgency of the moment. It seemed as
if in six months, in six weeks even, all might be lost. The
necessity of doing something cried to our hearts night and
day : but what could be done ? Young and fit men could
THE SCENE SURVEYED n
enrol in the great army that England was preparing ; but
what could the others do, the older men and the women ?
Happy then were those who were in any fashion prepared
for the crisis and occasion. There was one great field of
opportunity ; helping the wounded. It was soon foreseen
that the war, though at the outset sanguinely expected to be
over in a few months, would be fought on a scale surpass-
ing history or legend. And the murderous machinery of
modern warfare promised also casualties never paralleled.
It so happened that England, so far less prepared for a
Continental campaign than France, excelled in one respect,
in the provision of trained nurses for the wounded. Since
the days of Florence Nightingale, public opinion had been
brought to regard nursing as a serious and noble profession
requiring an arduous training ; and the number of women
who had taken up this profession was very great. In France,
before the separation of Church and State, nursing was
almost entirely in the hands of the nuns. The nuns left
France, and left a gap which could not be filled up at once.
The profession of nursing, against which a prejudice still
lingered, had only begun to be taken up seriously when war
broke out. The war has changed these conditions ; but
in the early autumn of 1914 France was in great and im-
mediate need, and we in Britain counted ourselves fortunate
that in this way we had means to aid her. We were the
more able to help, because at that time the service of volun-
tary units was not desired by our own military authorities.
Societies of old standing ; societies hastily formed for the
purpose ; individuals, groups of friends, all were urgent
with offers of funds, stores, and personal service.
In July of that year all Britain had been hanging on the
horror of civil war in Ireland ; and for a long time, the
campaign for Women's Suffrage had absorbed the most
feverish energies. In a twinkling Germany transformed
the scene ! The Women Suffragists of Scotland now turned
12 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
their admirable organisation to the war's use, giving hospi-
tals and staffs to France, and also to Serbia ; in Ulster the
North Tyrone Volunteers, having their Medical Corps fully
equipped, placed it at the service of the French. These
were typical examples of the way in which existing material
and trained skill were utilised forthwith. But from ail
sides came the offers of help. All over these islands there
rose, like an immense tide, a volume of goodwill, eager to
serve and to be used. How was this great tide to be guided
through orderly channels so as beneficially to reach the
wounded men whom we longed to succour, and who were
the sole object of these offers ? That is the story we have
to tell.
There are three Red Cross Societies in France : La
Societe de Secours aux Blesses Militaires, the Association
des Dames Francaises, and the Union des Femmes de France.
The last-named alone of these Societies had a committee
in London, a committee already established for a long time
before the war : and this committee during the first months
was eminently useful. But Monsieur Paul Cambon, the
French Ambassador, soon perceived that a special organisa-
tion was necessary to deal with all the offers of help made to
the Embassy and to co-ordinate and expedite the various
units accepted by the French. He therefore called into
being the Comite de Londres or London Committee, now
known as the Comite Britannique or British Committee,
of the French Red Cross. The wife of the Military Attache
became Presidents : H.M. Queen Alexandra graciously
consented to become Patroness of the Comite d'Honneur,
which contains a number of distinguished and influential
names. Monsieur Cambon and the members of the French
Embassy have given the committee their cordial support.
Offices were found at 25 Knightsbridge, afterwards removed
to No. 9. It is to Monsieur Cambon's prescience and the
timely creation, towards the close of 1914, of this committee
THE SCENE SURVEYED 13
that there has been so little overlapping or waste in a work
which, fed from the most diverse sources, was rapidly to
grow to great dimensions.
What did this work consist of ? On one side were the
French needs ; here of a hospital staff, there of a convoy
of motor-ambulances ; medical stores, drugs, dressings,
wanted all the more because the chief manufacturing districts
of France passed with the first invasion into the German
hands. There were hospitals which needed an addition to
their staff of nurses, or support, in poor districts, for beds.
On the other side were the offers of help from Britain : funds,
stores, clothing, cars, surgeons, nurses, ambulance drivers,
orderlies. The essential function of the London Com-
mittee was to utilise the gift or service offered so as best to
satisfy each particular need that arose.
Collection, allocation, and distribution of funds and
material gifts have occupied one department of the com-
mittee exclusively.
To deal with stores is a comparatively simple matter.
But when it is a question of men and women offering their
services in time of war, it becomes complex. Nothing and
no one can be taken for granted. And here the co-operation
of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John
of Jerusalem proved an invaluable help. The Anglo-French
Committee * of these joint societies has worked through-
out in close accord with the Comite de Londres. . It was
important to ensure that only the best workers should go
to France ; and in the scrutiny of credentials and issue of
certificates to British workers, the Anglo-French Committee
has done the greatest service.
At the beginning of the war the regulations affecting the
entry of British subjects into France were not strict. Several
units found their way over to help the French wounded ;
1 Since the end of 1917 united with the Comite de Londres as the Comite
Britannique.
i 4 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
and they performed pioneer work under the most difficult
conditions. But before long it was seen that more stringent
regulations were necessary ; and many a would-be Red Cross
worker, or group of workers, who had contemplated rushing
to the aid of the heroic French wounded, found themselves
held up and unable to proceed till after long delays.
The British Red Cross Society authorised workers to
assist the wounded of our own army, and, under the sanction
of the War Office, investigated their credentials. But when
it was a case of British workers wanting to serve in the French
war zone, there were obvious difficulties. Unless a strict
examination of each person's trustworthiness were made,
it was an opportunity for the most undesirable and danger-
ous people to insinuate themselves among the French
forces.
The British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John,
amalgamated in October 1914, were therefore asked by the
War Office to undertake this task of sifting the credentials
of all British applicants for Red Cross work with the French.
The joint societies agreed. They delegated the work to a
sub-committee, known as the Anglo-French Hospitals
Committee, which was interested in the work of certain
units then being formed for service with the French
wounded, and which we have already mentioned.
Early in 191 5 a certificate began to be issued by this
committee to all would-be workers who had passed its
scrutiny.
The Comite de Londres, always in close touch with the
French Embassy and French War Office, welcomed the
appearance of this Anglo-French certificate, since the
stringent conditions under which it was issued did all that
was possible to exclude any abuse of the Red Cross, and
guaranteed that the services of qualified workers only were
placed at the disposal of the French. The Comite de
Londres worked hand in hand with the Anglo-French Com-
THE SCENE SURVEYED 15
mittee in the selection of British personnel ; and it has
also given facilities for allied and neutral workers, all of
whom pass through the office at 9 Knightsbridge.
It was soon decided that a special uniform was necessary,
and a uniform of khaki, with blue on the collar and cuffs,
was agreed on between the British and French War Offices ;
and men who held the Anglo-French certificate were
authorised to wear it.
And who were these thousands of men and women who
have gone out from these islands to work for the wounded
of France ?
First we must name the surgeons.
These have gone out, mostly as volunteers, to serve for
varying periods. Many have given what would in other
years have been their holidays. They have made sacrifices
both of time and of money, all the more generous when it is
remembered how exacting and heavy were the demands
on them at home.
Then there are the nurses.
Who, that has seen them at work, has not admired their
skill, their resource, their patient deftness ? They have
behind them a hard and splendid training, which ensures
that only enthusiasts for the vocation become fully qualified
nurses. Very few had experience of war, and the wounds
a modern war produces ; therefore their interests were all
the more engaged. But it is not only their own work that
has been invaluable, it is the training they have given to
others less skilled. For under the nurses or sisters work
the V.A.D. probationers.
Truly the V.A.D. 's have become a legend of the war.
In those days that now seem so strangely divided from us,
the days before the war, the British Red Cross Society
occupied itself in forming Voluntary Aid Detachments in
local centres ; these detachments were to help our soldiers
in case of armed invasion by an enemy. The specific aim
16 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
was to fill the gap in the Territorial Medical Service between
the Clearing Hospital and the Base. The object seemed
perhaps remote and academic in those days : but it was
a providential instinct apparently which prompted the
formation of these detachments. The Red Cross Society
itself, as Sir Frederick Treves has reminded us — quartered
in three small rooms in Victoria Street — owned in July
1914 not a single ambulance, * could not provide a single
bed, had not even a storeroom of its own, nor any supplies
at its disposal.' To what a vast organisation has it grown
in three years ! And what wonder-workers have been the
V.A.D.'s !
At first there was in the professional world an appre-
hension that hospitals might be filled with quite untrained
women donning the Red Cross, and that the unfortunate
experiences of the Boer War might be repeated. But during
the five years before the war, the original V.A.D.'s had
worked hard and well, and a number of women had trained
themselves in discipline and drill, had learnt nursing and
sanitation, as well as cooking, and other smaller arts by the
way. There was therefore, when war began, an organisa-
tion ready to absorb the recruits that flocked to it ; there
were a standard and a tradition to maintain.
The V.A.D.'s, however, would be the first to acknowledge
how much they owe to the fully trained nurses under whom
they work. In the hospitals for the French soldiers, the
value of their work has been enhanced by the fact that
practically all of them speak French — many of them ex-
tremely well. Bred in gentle homes, they have shrunk
from no task, however distasteful or repulsive. Yet among
them are girls who, before the war, or at its outset, pro-
tested that nothing would induce them to face the wounds
and horrors of a hospital.
' The V.A.D.'s are undoubtedly the surprise. They are
splendid, and as probationers under trained nurses in a
THE SCENE SURVEYED i 7
ward, nothing that I can say is good enough for them.'
So writes a surgeon in his report.
The ambulance drivers of the British Convoys with the
French are many of them gentleman-volunteers, mostly
over military age, who often give an ambulance car as well
as drive it. They are attached to the French army, receive
the French soldier's rations ; they pass a great part of their
time in dug-outs, and work under fire. Besides these
volunteers there are a certain number of paid drivers.
In the hospitals conditions vary ; some have English
volunteers as chauffeurs or as orderlies. And there are a
number of ladies who work as secretaries, as cooks, and in
various household capacities.
It is ladies also who manage as well as maintain the
canteens, where the hours are often long and the labour
hard.
But let not the reader, because we are here concerned
solely with this British effort, forget for a moment the
immense activities of the three great Societies of the Red
Cross in France, to which this effort was, of course, but
supplementary. The Societies, with the experience of
1870 behind them, had been long prepared for the eventu-
ality of war, and (with branches in every town) could at
once place many thousands of beds at the disposal of the
Service de Sante — though, as we shall see, the scale of the
war and its suddenness, created a pressure beyond antici-
pation or belief. And if France had not the resources in
professional nursing enjoyed by Britain, the French Red
Cross workers, corresponding to our V.A.D.'s, were ready
at the outbreak of war in great numbers, each with several
months of training. They have done a wonderful work.
A DAY'S WORK AT THE OFFICE OF THE
COMITE BRITANNIQUE
How is the reader to be given an at all sufficient notion or
lively picture of the work of the Comite Britannique ?
One normally thinks of a committee as meeting from
time to time round a table, going through an agenda paper,
instructing its secretary and sub-committees, and with the
final, ' Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think that concludes
our business,' from the chairman, dispersing severally to
other interrupted occupations. So, at a distance and in
ignorance, might you vaguely picture the Comite's work,
hearing it casually mentioned. But of course your remote-
ness from the fact would be immense. Had this com-
mittee attempted to do all that is demanded of it by merely
sitting round the table, its session would have been eternal,
and its members long ago turned to stone.
Perhaps if we try to describe the routine of an ordinary
day's work at No. 9 Knightsbridge, it will serve to suggest
something of the range and compass of the committee's
operations.
Let us suppose then that when, at a punctual nine o'clock
in the morning, the purple-scarfed Boy Scout, who with so
polite a firmness guards the door, lets in the arriving
Director-General, we also, privileged with a discreet in-
visibility, are allowed to enter.
We are admitted to a narrow hall, of a business-like bare-
ness, pervaded with the indefinable atmosphere of canvas
bales and packing-cases, even when those very tangible
objects do not obstruct your passage or meet you at full tilt,
in
A DAY'S WORK 19
hoisted above shirt-sleeves on muscular shoulders, as may
happen at any moment.
We mount to the first floor. Facing us is the General
Office : at our left is a door marked ' Inquiries.' We have
many inquiries to make, but no one room will satisfy them ;
so we pass first into the front office, which with its three tall
windows looks out on the trees of the Park. And here,
seating ourselves beside the Director-General, and looking
unabashed over his shoulder, we get a glimpse of his morn-
ing's correspondence. It is comprehensive and formidable.
But first there are some fifty ' Ordres de Mission ' to be
signed.
What is an Ordre de Mission ? It is a form which certi-
fies that so-and-so, in the service of the Red Cross, is due
to leave and has to travel to . The French rail-
ways, early in the war, made the valuable concession to the
Comite de Londres and to the Anglo-French Committee,
of allowing the workers sent out from England to travel
free in France if armed with one of these vouchers. He
or she presents the Ordre de Mission at the Bureau Mili-
taire in the station of departure, and in return receives,
after much filling in of coloured forms and many polite
expressions, an Ordre de Transport which wafts the
traveller, ' with horses and baggage ' or ' without horses and
baggage,' to his destination.
After dealing with these Ordres de Mission, the Director-
General attacks his letters.
Many of these belong to the normal routine of one depart-
ment or another, and are readily answered. To-day, for
instance, a firm writes that a new lorry has just been com-
pleted to order, and asks for a visit of inspection. A car is
waiting at Le Havre for some one to fetch it : can that some
one be sent over ? Another is offered as a gift from York-
shire, if that, too, can be fetched. A spare rim is wanted
for a motor in the Marne district ; tools and spare parts
20 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
for another in the Midi. Timber is wanted by a unit at
Salonika ; a car of a certain type is wanted for purchase in
London ; estimates are submitted by one firm for an X-Ray
car, by another for stoves, by yet another for various hospital
equipment, and so on. Two drivers write to ask about
their passports, their jiches and their carnets. The jicbe is
a paper of identification : but I dare not try to explain
what the carnet is ; it is just a little book that gives a
great deal of trouble. There are gifts to be acknowledged,
some from out-of-the-way parts of the world, and all corners
of the Empire.
But there are also matters of more complexity, demand-
ing careful thought and many-sided consideration. There
are applications for work and offers of service. Men and
women applying for specific posts, or now and again' ready
to go to France in any capacity.' It is a hard and unthank-
ful thing to discourage goodwill, but goodwill alone is
not, unfortunately, sufficient for ' any capacity.' Still, if a
channel can be found for this offered energy, be sure it
will be found.
Besides the units it controls, the Comite acts for groups
and individuals doing special work ; opens funds, keeps
accounts, finds recruits. This involves much correspond-
ence, of course, and there is correspondence too with
committees and societies of kindred objects, and letters
concerned with hospitals which have been taken over by
the Comite Britannique, or which are being started by it.
These last matters, we surmise, are those most apt to
furrow the Director-General's brow ; but he has energy for
all, and to spare. A long day's work is before him, and we
leave him to attack it in detail.
At ten o'clock visitors begin to arrive at the office, and
before long there may be five or six waiting in the ante-
room. Their business is usually the business of getting
out to France. In these days it is quite difficult enough
A DAY'S WORK 21
to leave England at all, without the added difficulty of
reaching a foreign destination. And to go out in a certain
capacity under the Red Cross is to submit to an exhaustive
scrutiny. We all know how necessary this sifting of cre-
dentials is. No good citizen will complain if the Red Cross
is vigilant and scrupulous in selecting persons who are to
be placed in a responsible position, and whose first duty
it is to bear themselves discreetly ; and the Anglo-French
certificate is only granted, it need hardly be said, to those
who can provide quite satisfactory proof of suitability.
None the less, the normal Briton, accustomed to wander
the world through without a question asked, takes but a
gloomy satisfaction in precautions which, though they
establish — superfluously, as he inclines to think — his good
citizenship, make his journey out a sort of obstacle race.
The Comite, however, saves the accepted applicant for
service almost all his trouble. It is when the day for
departure draws near that formalities suddenly thicken and
complicate existence. The passport ; the still more im-
portant visa for the passport ; the certificate ; the fiche ;
the carnet, mysterious and formidable; all these have to
be procured and made out in proper order. Then the
route ; the uncertainty of the steamer's sailing up to the
last moment — all the intricacies of correct travelling in
war time ; — these may well trouble and bewilder the novice
going out for the first time. All hope is then centred on
the Hon. Secretary, whom the waiters in the ante-room,
patiently or impatiently, are now demanding to see and to
be helped by. It is his department which sees to the
various papers being made out in due form. It is he who
resolves your uncertainties as to your features and com-
plexion, when it comes to tabulations for passport purposes,
and decides at a glance that your nose or your mouth is
safely ' moyen? It is he who makes your way smooth at
the Passport Office.
22 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Strange what a difference it makes which side of a door
you are on ! If we are in the ante-room, we share the
impatience of those who have rashly counted on getting
their business done in half an hour. How much more
urgent surely is our mission than those of these others, who
are being dealt with first, merely because they arrived before
us ! And how slow those officials are in the next room !
But in that next room we take quite another view, and
we don't like being harassed with importunate messages,
when work is to be got through which cannot be slurred and
requires precision above all things.
It is some one's unthankful office to interview these
visitors. Now and then there is one who bristles, who
thinks it an indignity to be photographed, or who sees no
need for references in the case of so manifest and proved a
patriot ; who has besides relations, so official, so important !
And occasionally some one who has been working abroad
brings a grievance, -and is fluent with indignant speech.
But these are exceptions on the whole singularly and sur-
prisingly rare. And firm patience and sweet reason smooth
all humours in time.
Another Honorary Secretary has under his eye the dossier
of each of the hundreds of French hospitals which have
applied for stores, clothing, etc., and deals with the corre-
spondence relating to these matters, a correspondence
which reaches ponderous dimensions. These applications
come in daily, and are first submitted to Madame la Presi-
dente du Comite.
If we descend for a moment to the ground floor, we shall
find Madame la Presidents reigning in a room off the hall
passage. It is her knowledge and judgment which guide
the various departments — more than one, as we shall see —
concerned in the hospital requisitions.
This work of supplying the needs of French hospitals is
work that is also done by the French War Emergency Fund ;
A DAY'S WORK 23
but that fund does not concern itself with other than
Military hospitals : any application it receives from a Red
Cross hospital is at once sent on to the Comite Britannique.
The sifting of these requests is far from being the sole
work with which Madame la Presidente charges herself.
She holds all the threads of the Comite's activities. No
one is so intimate with the condition of things in France ;
no one knows better the real needs of the sick and wounded ;
and with her large sympathy with the English people, her
knowledge of the right persons to do the right things on
both sides of the Channel, she has done and continues to
do inestimable service to the cause of the friendship between
the two nations. Without her help and direction it would
have been impossible to guide and apply all the vast good-
will and offered service of the British people to the destina-
tion where the needs of France are most urgent, in the way
that the Comite has been able to do, without waste or
friction. She has not only been the most devoted of workers
but an inspiration to all she works with.
The requisition goes to Madame la Presidente first, who,
if she approves of it, hands it to the Pharmacie and to one
of the Hon. Secretaries to deal with clothing, to buy what
is not in stock, and to give orders to the Packing Department,
to pack ready for export the articles which are in stock.
Next we follow it upstairs to the second floor, to the
Pharmacie. Such and such quantity of drugs is required
for a hospital (say) in Central France. Here an order for
the drugs is written out, when they are not in store ; and
when they are delivered, here they are packed. All war
hospitals, of whatever kind, are supplied. In the year 1916,
three hundred and forty-five Military hospitals were sup-
plied with drugs, and four hundred and seventy-one hospi-
tals belonging to the three Red Cross Societies.
On the wall of this room hangs a map of France. And
into it are stuck flags denoting each a hospital to which
24 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
drugs or clothes, or both, have been sent by the Comite ; a
small flag for a small hospital, a larger flag for a larger
one. It is a tragic map. It opens a door on an horizon
that appals. Who, with even the dullest imagination,
could contemplate it, and see those little flags — thick as
flowers in a June meadow, but of so desolate an import ! —
all over the departments of the country, and in places
clustered in so close a swarm that the region mapped is
altogether hidden ; who could see these and think for a
moment of what they mean — it is a nation silently bleeding
in every member — and not feel a passionate sympathy with
every effort to alleviate all that world of suffering ?
It is not only drugs and dressings and invalid foods that
are asked for and sent out. Here is a knock on the door
that heralds a microscope, ready packed in its box, which
will shortly be doing good service for the Carrel treatment
of wounds, in a sector of the front. Microscopes are
to-day very difficult to get ; all the more will this one be
prized. Sometimes a whole X-Ray outfit will be sent out.
And besides directly medical aid, games, books, note-paper,
are packed and despatched. These things are immensely
appreciated at the actual front. A lieutenant or an
aumonier gets to know that they may be procured for the
men through this channel. He writes to the Comite, and
his request, whether for a football or for picture postcards,
is immediately answered. The * Paquetage du Soldat,'
at 5 Princes Gate, is the Comite's branch for this work —
financed by the Comite and domiciled in the Presidente's
house.
It is in this room, for lack of space, that the Matron, on
three days in the week, interviews every nurse going out.
Next door, and on every floor, are the typists, always
busy. And upstairs are two departments ; concerned, one
with the Accountant, and the other with purchase of stores.
i*.rBut now we must resume the fortunes of the requisition
A DAY'S WORK 25
sheet which arrived this morning. The list of drugs de-
manded has been made out. But there is also a demand
for clothes ; and clothes are the care of a separate depart-
ment. We descend therefore to the basement, where we
find the lady in charge busy in a room lined with cupboards.
The cupboards are full of ' clothing ' — a liberal term,
including blankets, sheets, pillows, towels, napkins, as well
as lengths of flannel, calico, and other material. Much of
this is bought, much given. We see in one of the cup-
boards great heaps of shirts and pyjamas, sent as a gift from
Australia. These are woollen and of admirable quality.
Each type of ' clothing ' is done up in bundles of tens,
for convenience and rapidity of packing. In this work there
are ladies who volunteer their help. It is a work which is
always urgent, for the house contains so little room for
storage that arriving parcels have to be handled with the
least possible delay.
Each set of goods requisitioned by a hospital is sorted out
and got ready, and then sewn up in canvas. We pass to a
small room at the back — flattening ourselves against the wall
as a boy hurries past with a voluminous load of pillows
sticking out in all directions — and there we find the packers
at work. On an average fifty bales a day are packed ; and,
with those that come ready packed, over 1000 packages a
week are sent to France from 9 Knightsbridge.
Mounting again, we find the hall full of bales and cases.
Some of these have come addressed to some particular
hospital in France, and are merely forwarded by the com-
mittee. But then there are many cases of mixed goods,
which are sent in by various hospital supply depots ; these
have to be unpacked, sorted, and stored in the various
departments, to await a speedy despatch. It is the task of
one of the staff to superintend the sorting and addressing
of the bales.
Insinuating ourselves into the General Office once more,
26 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
we find the Director-General interviewing a surgeon who
has returned on leave, and who has some difficulty with the
mesh of formalities apt to entangle the unwary traveller.
He is in the process of being extricated and made happy.
One of the Hon. Secretaries is reassuring a prospec-
tive orderly. But another department, hitherto unvisited,
claims our attention.
The Comite has sent over 500 motor cars of various
types to France. Each car has its dossier here ; and there is
a card index, with a triple entry ; under the maker of the
car, the person who took it out, and the unit to which it is
attached. This, of course, must be kept up to date.
The three members of the staff, who divide the cares of
this department, test the efficiency of prospective drivers
and make all the arrangements for the passage of the car
to France. And perhaps this is as good an opportunity as
any to say something of a branch of the manifold activities
of the Comite which might easily escape attention. This is
work done by cars with English drivers who are not attached
to the convoys working with the French armies on the
Western Front and in the Balkans, or to any of the Anglo-
French hospitals.
In almost every department of France, the Comite has
ambulances or touring cars working, some under their local
delegue, others attached to Red Cross or Military Formations
Sanitaires. The drivers are all volunteers, and many give
their own cars. They convey wounded to and from
stations, and doctors to remote hospitals, and they do all
sorts of transport work, as, for example, in the XVIth and
XVIIth Regions. Perpignan, Albi, Castres, Mende, Mont-
pellier, are some of the centres served. The region is
mostly mountainous. At Prades, patients suffering from
eczema and other skin diseases are taken up to baths in the
mountains, ten kilometres away, and brought back again
in relays. One car does three journeys in the day. At
A DAY'S WORK 27
Rodez there is a small English staff and a well-equipped
operating theatre. At Montpellier two English workers
are engaged on what the French call mecano-therafie. At
Palavas, on the Mediterranean coast, there is a large hospital
devoted to tuberculous cases, with a terrace for sun-baths
facing full south ; and here a great part of the nursing staff
is English. Besides the cars attached to the several
centres, a perfectly-equipped X-Ray car has recently been
sent out for the service of those hospitals which need it.
This car makes a circuit of the region.
At Marseilles, again, an English lady is doing devoted
service, keeping her own car in order, and working ten hours
a day.
It is needless to add that such extensions of the Comite' s
activities — and these examples could be multiplied almost
indefinitely — in addition to all the work of the convoys
and the cars attached to hospitals, mean a vast amount of
correspondence.
Now that all these departments are in full tide of work, we
will take the opportunity of slipping out to No. 3, a few
doors off, where three departments accessory to the work
of the Comite are lodged.
One of these is concerned with Prisoners of War. We
all know what a boon and support, what an actual necessity
very often are the parcels of food, tobacco, etc., sent out
by their friends to prisoners in the enemy countries.
Since March 191 7, control of the despatch from England
of all such parcels to French prisoners of war has been
officially handed over to the Comite Britannique.
Naturally this department is mainly concerned with
prisoners who before the war were domiciled in England,
or who have friends and relations in this country. Such
friends and relations have the choice of either buying, at the
cost of five shillings, one of the standard parcels of food
supplied by the French Red Cross, or of obtaining from the
28 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
department a permit to buy the particular articles they want
to send from one of the shops officially authorised to pack
parcels for prisoners. The amount of food is limited to
sixty pounds in every four weeks. Not more than 8 ounces
of tobacco, and not more than 300 cigarettes, may be sent
each fortnight.
But this department of the Comite does more than act
as an official channel for gifts : it gives itself. And nothing,
I think, is more expressive of the animating spirit of the
Comite than this spontaneous seeking out of the means
to help those unhappy men in the German prison camps.
Many of the French prisoners come from the invaded
regions ; their homes are deserted, or shattered to dust and
fragments ; their wives and children are refugees ; and the
bitterest of their lot is to know that those who would natur-
ally be the helpers and comforters of their sufferings are
more helpless and comfortless than themselves. It is these
especially, with any others who have no friends or kinsfolk
to help them, whom this department tries to find, and to
whom it sends free parcels. Among the friendless ones are
many soldiers of the native African regiments of the French
army. They get to know from comrades of this means of
aid, and write to the Comite, asking for a parcel. Here is
one who writes, half in English, half in French : ' Please, I
am come from Algeries. My country is very far from here.'
I am glad to know that a parcel is on its way to that poor
Algerian in his German prison.
With each parcel is sent a postcard, so that the prisoners
may acknowledge the receipt of it. They are asked to state
if the parcels come regularly and in good condition. Earlier
in the year (191 7) the replies were occasionally disappointing.
One wrote : ' Le contenu etait en bon etat — confisque par
les autorites.' And another : ' En bon etat. Les Alle-
mands ont tout garde. lis appellent cela represailles. On
m'a laisse la boite d'emballage.' But recently conditions
A DAY'S WORK 29
seem greatly to have bettered. Very few of the postcards
now contain complaints. And the warm words of gratitude
that come daily from the prisoners testify to the good work
done.
In each of the camps there is a Prisoners' Committee, and
the department is in touch with the presidents of these
committees, so as to ensure that free parcels are not being
sent to any who are already sufficiently supplied with food
from friends in France.
And what does this work amount to ? Well, we find that
each week the department is sending out about six hundred
parcels, of a total value of £150. Two hundred of these
are paid for by friends, four hundred are sent free by the
Comite. Then there are the parcels sent out, as already
explained, by friends and relatives under the permit system.
These represent a monthly value of £125. And besides
the food, there are also parcels of clothing sent out — especi-
ally warm underclothing and boots, at the rate of about a
hundred a month.
We have now to see the department which deals with the
canteens. Much of this work is new ; fresh canteens are
always being started, and old canteens are continually
being moved from place to place under orders from the
French authorities. This all involves many letters and
telegrams. But the main business of the gentleman who
has this department in his charge is to find ' Canteeners,'
to interview ladies who contemplate going out, to arrange
where they are to go, how they are to reach their destina-
tion, and how the work is to be organised when they have
arrived. We shall have much more to say of the canteens
later on.
The office of the canteens is on the ground floor of
No. 3 ; and the two upper floors are devoted to the
ouvroir. In these workrooms a number of ladies, most of
them members of the French colony in London, make
3 o FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
clothing and bandages for the wounded. Similar work is
being done at branch offices, and great quantities of such
necessaries are always being sent out to the French hos-
pitals, the fruit of these patient labours.
And now we pass to another office at 34 Wilton Place,
where we find a department devoted to France's Day.
You will be surprised perhaps that the celebration of the
Fourteenth of July in Britain, with its collections for the
French Red Cross, should keep a permanent staff engaged
throughout the year. But so it is. And when you have
heard a few details of what it all entails, you will not wonder
any more. For one thing, though the Day is celebrated in
London on the fourteenth of July, the celebrations in the
provinces are held on various dates, even as late, this last
year, in the case of at least one town, as 15 th December.
Then the preparations are on an enormous scale. There
are millions of trays and souvenirs to be manufactured,
packed and sent out. The Mayors of the provincial cities
and towns must be applied to ; centres must be created,
with depots in each centre, and an organised subdivision
of the work in districts : an infinity of correspondence !
The department has a depot in St. James's Street, where the
packing is done : and the packing occupies three or four
months. Few people have any notion of what the word
' million ' really means, even in these days when it comes to
our lips so glibly. A few thousands, actually realised ' in
the flesh,' so to speak, are quite enough for our minds to
deal with ; and when it comes to nine million penny
souvenirs, the two or three million of threepenny, the
million of sixpenny, the two million of more expensive
specimens, it is ' a thing imagination boggles at.' We can
only marvel, and admire the patience and the enterprise
of the devoted worker, who arranges these immensities.
Even so, we have omitted the masses of bills and posters,
which are no mean item of the business.
A DAY'S WORK 31
It is pleasant to learn that all parts of England have vied
with each other in generosity for the sake of the wounded
of France.
On the 15 th of October last, there was a little gathering
at the French Embassy, where Monsieur Cambon, in his
own quiet, cordial, gracious way, acknowledged on behalf
of his country the gifts of the British people. After
enumerating some of the chief contributions and describing
the range and scope of the work done, he continued :
' More than two thousand people are employed by the London
Committee of the Croix Rouge Francaise in France and in England.
They carry out every kind of work in a spirit of absolute disin-
terestedness, so that we cannot thank them otherwise than by telling
them how deeply grateful we are for their help. We cannot do more
here. At the headquarters of the committee, close by here, in
Knightsbridge, more than eighty people are devoting their time to
the service of the Croix Rouge. It is a great organisation. I will
not name any one because I would have to name everybody, and they
are all very retiring and disinterested people, who would feel embar-
rassed by the expression of my thanks. . . .
* Everybody works with truly wonderful dash and enthusiasm.
French and English ladies work side by side, learning to appreciate
one another, working in a true spirit of fraternity. The spectacle
of all this devotion, this disinterestedness, truly inspires one with a
deep regard for human nature. There are pessimists, you know,
who will always abuse human nature. I think they are mistaken.
As soon as there are misfortunes to relieve, men and women alike
realise their duty, and every form of selfishness disappears. . . .'
In the first year of the war, when the business of organising
■ France's Day ' had not yet been handed over to the
Comite de Londres, the net amount collected was £24,115.
In 1916 it was £104,111. In 1917 it was £190,349. 1918
is to do still better !
BRITISH NURSES IN FRANCE. THE FRENCH
FLAG NURSING CORPS
Before describing the growth of the convoys and hospitals
it will be well to give some account of an important society
or association formed after the outbreak of war, which has
aimed at helping France not by fitting out separate units,
controlled from Britain, but by placing workers at the
disposal of the French authorities.
The French Flag Nursing Corps owes its origin to an
Englishwoman, who was educated in France, and who is
known to many as the author of a book on her experiences
of Turkish life. This lady, with whom the writer had a
talk in Paris, told him of the things she had seen in France
during the battles of the Marne ; of the journey to Bor-
deaux — a fifty-five hours' journey — on a train which had
no food on board, and of the severely wounded men to
whose hurts there had been no time to attend.
In the first days of the war, the lady who is well known
as the President of the National Council of Trained Nurses
of Great Britain and Ireland, foreseeing the likelihood of the
need, had offered thoroughly trained English nurses to
various authorities in France ; but at that moment it was
supposed that existing arrangements would suffice, and these
offers were declined. The event overwhelmed all antici-
pations. During the great retreat, and the battles of the
Marne, the Red Cross, like the transport service, and the
municipal authorities everywhere, was put to a fearful
strain.
Without the well-appointed hospital trains which the
32
BRITISH NURSES IN FRANCE 33
needs of the war have since created ; without motor ambul-
ances — carried in jolting carts, or lying in the straw of cattle-
trucks, the lot of the wounded in those days hardly bears
to be imagined.
Here is a little glimpse of what was happening, day and
night — a glimpse of suffering that was but an infinitesimal
fraction of the whole. It is a correspondent of the Daily
Telegraph who writes, and who describes what he saw at a
station fifteen miles from Paris. He was helping French
and American women to give food and drink to the
wounded :
' Towards the end of the train were carriages where no faces ap-
peared at the windows, and on opening the doors one saw some ragged
and helpless victim of the war lying amid straw, crying feebly for
drink, and asking if there at last was the hospital where his sufferings
were to end.
Farther back still were the great cattle wagons which, when opened,
revealed six, eight, or even more men lying helpless in the straw,
sometimes in total darkness, sometimes lighted by one lantern, the
pale rays of which only added to the horrors of the scene ! How can I
describe the condition of these men ?
' In one wagon eight of them were uniting in a chorus of suffering.
We could hear them before we had slid back the great wooden doors,
like voices crying from the tomb. . . . For nearly two days they had
been in this dark and airless cattle-wagon, burned by fever, their
wounds throbbing and stabbing with every movement of the train.
. . . One man had relieved himself of all clothing in the intensity of
his fever, and was tossing about naked in the straw. I wrapped him
up in a blanket and gave him some hot milk. . . .
' All through the night train after train rolled in from the battle-
field. By seven in the morning, when others relieved us, thirteen
trains, containing over three thousand wounded, had passed. Three
thousand at one station in a single night. So it has been going on
day and night for over fourteen days, and these are only the victims
of one section of the battlefield.'
The mostperfectorganisation cannot prevent such tortures;
it can only mitigate them. And for the moment the means
of destruction had far exceeded the means of mitigation.
If an unparalleled strain was put on the transport service,
c
34 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
the hospitals — mostly improvised — which received the
wounded were not less hardly driven.
There was unlimited devotion, immense eagerness to
serve ; but of trained and expert help there was an inevit-
able deficiency. The ladies of Paris staffed the Red Cross
hospitals, and did all they could. It was the same in other
towns. Some of the most devoted nursing work in those
days was done, let it be recorded, by women of the streets.
But the crying need was for skill, training, experience. And
it is told how a Frenchwoman, who knew what nursing
requirements really were, and who had seen a well-appointed
English ambulance train, sat and wept because so many
of her dear countrymen lacked the comforts and the help
they so sorely needed.
It was this condition of things which inspired the English
lady of whom we have already spoken with the idea of the
French Flag Nursing Corps. She went to the head of the
French Army Medical Corps, and proposed to procure for
the French wounded a large number of fully trained British
nurses, to work in French military hospitals for the duration
of the war. The offer was eagerly accepted. Work began
in October 1914. Seven nurses, under the direction of a
sister, went to Rouen, and gave much valued assistance to
the nuns who were nursing in that district. A few months
after, one of the largest hospitals in the Gironde region was
placed at the disposal of the English nurses by the Ministry
of War.
It was an opportunity for testing the value of skilled
nursing in war time : and the testimony of the French
doctors and surgeons, under whom they have worked, shows
what precious metal the test revealed. On their side, the
sisters profited by the chance of becoming acquainted with
French methods, as practised by distinguished surgeons.
Nurses of the Corps were now beginning to go out to
France in a steady stream ; and to cope with the growth
BRITISH NURSES IN FRANCE 35
of the work, the sister who had been in command at Rouen
was appointed Matron-in-Chief of the Corps.
In temporary French hospitals along the firing line, as
well as at many towns in the interior, these nurses are to
be found. They have to contend with daily difficulties,
over and above their hard service; difficulties which in
the early months of the war were aggravated tenfold by
circumstances.
, Picture the English nurse as we know her, trained to an
exacting standard, accomplished in every detail of her pro-
fession, and accustomed to have at her hand all necessary
material and appliances, and to follow a settled routine.
Picture her plunged into a foreign land, among strangers
whose tongue she perhaps understands and speaks but
imperfectly — you may see her snatching a few minutes of
scarce rest to improve her French with grammar and phrase-
book ; picture her in a hospital improvised for the war,
installed in a building designed for quite other uses, full of
makeshift devices, inadequately clean, too probably, from
disuse ; picture her confronted with a desperate pressure
of work, severe cases coming in every day, and confronted
besides with all the difficulties of unaccustomed methods,
and under strange direction. You can imagine that this
was no light undertaking.
A difference of race, a difference of temperament like
that which exists between the French and English, takes
time to understand and allow for. Differences of custom
and of religion also provide subtle opportunities for bruised
feeling. There was also the prejudice against professional
nursing, which has been already mentioned, and which had
to be overcome.
To run an improvised war hospital is not so difficult for
a trained sister when she has the control of it ; but to work-
in such a hospital without independence is a very different
matter. Add to all this the fact that in the first few weeks
36 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
of the war the best-equipped hospitals, with all their store
of chloroform, gauze, and surgical appliances, had been taken
by the Germans in their invading march ; and the enemy's
possession of the chief manufacturing districts made it hard
to replenish those stores with any sufficiency.
Our dear imperfect human nature betrays its weaknesses
in such a situation, but how much more does it show the
good undaunted stuff of which it is made !
If at first there was a tendency to regard British methods
as superfluously scrupulous and thorough — and so per-
versely are we compounded that we do not always enjoy
being done good to, especially if old habits are invaded ;
if there were differences of theory as to the value of fresh
air ; and if English nurses, on their part, made sometimes
too little allowance for conditions of war, and expected
too near a conformity with their accustomed standards ;
this is no cause for wonder. Even war breaks custom
hardly. But what may well cause wonder is that, with so
many occasions of difficulty, things came to run so smoothly
as on the whole they have done. The Sisters won their way
to confidence by the excellence of their work. ' Their
well-directed energy, their self-sacrifice have never wavered,'
wrote a French doctor, and his testimony is but one of many.
A high official wrote : ' The nurses of the French Flag
Nursing Corps are considered by the doctors of our armies
as assistants of the first class, and their presence in France,
in a number the insufficiency of which we regret, is one of
the most touching evidences of the sympathy of the English
nation towards our country.'
Of particular value was the work done by those nurses
in fever hospitals ; for in fever cases the nurse counts for
even more than the doctor ; and here the trained skill of the
English nurse saved many a life.
Since the nurses of this Corps are scattered among so
many different French units, it is impossible to write a
BRITISH NURSES IN FRANCE 37
history of their work, though with a little imagination one
can picture what it has been, and what it has meant. But
we must not omit to mention the two hospital barges which
were staffed by nurses of the Corps, and which transported
the seriously wounded along the canal from Adinkerke to
Bourbourg ; nor the hospitals at Bergues, where the nurses
carried down the wounded into the cellars under the fire
of the German bombardment — hospitals which the Sisters
had so splendidly transformed, and which unhappily, owing
to the bombardments, had to be closed and abandoned.
Early in 191 7 the French Flag Nursing Corps was taken
over from its old committee by the Comite de Londres.
The nurses' salaries are now paid by the Comite instead of,
as formerly, by the French Government.
This may be the fittest place to remind the reader that,
besides all this skilled service by the trained nurses of the
French Flag Nursing Corps, a great amount of work has
been done in French hospitals by English people who have
given their personal services, not only as nurses, but in a
dozen different capacities. These have been people who
had their homes in France, and attached themselves to
some hospital in their own neighbourhood, doing whatever
seemed most needful in that particular place ; or else they
happened to be staying in some particular district when
war broke out, or knew of a hospital which needed help.
PART II
THE RECORD
THE CONVOYS
THE FIRST YEAR
It became known in England in the early months of the
war that more ambulances for the wounded were urgently-
required for the French Army's unprecedented needs.
The Automobile Association learning of this want in
October 19 14, appealed at once to their members to provide
touring cars which might be converted into ambulance
cars. About two hundred and fifty cars were offered to the
committee : and a very large number of members, who
could not provide cars, subscribed between them over
six thousand pounds. Some small proportion of the cars
offered were rejected, as it was difficult to convert them ;
but over two hundred were in the end shipped to France.
The Association's engineering department collected the
cars by road and rail from all parts of the country, converted
them into ambulances, overhauled and equipped them.
The first fifty cars were inspected by the King in the
grounds of Buckingham Palace. As they were completed,
the cars were driven to Southampton, shipped thence to
Havre, and there handed over to the Service de Sante. At
that point unfortunately they disappear from our view, to
run who knows what thousands of miles, carrying their
freight of wounded.
In the case of the convoys, whose story we have now to
tell, we are able to follow the ambulances and know what
work they did, because they were not merely handed over
to the French, but were driven by Englishmen.
41
42 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Particular mention must here be made of the British
Ambulance Committee, an independent body formed
expressly to provide convoys for French wounded, not
behind the lines but on the actual front. It owes its
existence to its present Inspector-General, who in Sep-
tember 1 91 7 went to Bordeaux and made proposals to the
military authorities. It was a hard thing to procure
permission for civilians to serve in the conditions desired ;
it was against all precedent ; but persuasive perseverance
won in the end. The influential Committee formed, with
headquarters at 23A Bruton Street, has obtained splendid
support from its friends and the public, amounting to
more than ^300,000. The first complete British convoys
attached to the French Army on the model of its own
Sections Sanitaires were those of this Committee. Its five
convoys were sent out in the first half of 191 5, and were
numbered 1 to 5 of the Sections Sanitaires Anglaises, their
fine work being immediately recognised. During 1915,
other British volunteer convoys which had sought and
found work with the French in the first months of the
war, on a less official basis, were brought into the sys-
tem thus inaugurated. The units were re-grouped and
organised in sections, as we shall see. In order to tell
things in their sequence, we shall begin with these pioneer
enterprises.
It must be added that most liberal help in the provision
of ambulance cars has come from the fund known as the
Dennis Bayley Fund, now a branch of the British Red Cross
Society and Order of St. John. Through the energy of the
founder of this fund, and of his lieutenant, great industrial
firms — both owners and workers — were canvassed through-
out England, and asked to make a voluntary levy on output
or wages to support the cause of the transport of the
wounded. The great industries of Britain have magnifi-
cently responded to this invitation. Over half a million
THE CONVOYS 43
pounds has been raised almost entirely by these industries,
headed by the coal-owners of Nottinghamshire and Derby-
shire ; and this sum has been devoted to providing convoys
for the British, French, and Italian fronts. Of the convoys
supplied for working with the French, four and a half have
been given to the British Red Cross Society, one convoy
and a motor-cycle section to the British Ambulance Com-
mittee. These convoys are all maintained by the fund,
and it is also undertaking the maintenance of the convoy
known as Section 10, which was organised by the British
Committee of the French Red Cross. We shall see what
severe work the convoys have to do, and what invaluable
support this fund has given. The members of Lloyd's also
gave two convoys to the British Ambulance Committee ;
and the British Farmers' Red Cross Fund gave another to
the British Committee of the French Red Cross.
In the quite early days of the war, in those pregnant and
breathless weeks which followed the battle of the Marne,
ambulances of the British Red Cross were already assisting
the French field hospitals in certain districts.
In September 1914 a detachment was appointed by the
British Red Cross Society to undertake the work of search-
ing for missing and wounded, and also to register graves
of the dead, from Ghent to Amiens. Towards the end of
the month, the Commandant, being at Amiens, was asked
by the French to assist them in evacuating their wounded
from Albert. That town had been suddenly attacked with
great force by the Germans.
The moment was one of the most critical in the war.
It was the moment when the Allied armies had begun their
wide outflanking movement to the West and North. The
frontal assault on those strong positions to which the
Germans had fallen back, on the heights beyond the Aisne,
had, as we all know, quickly subsided into the sullen station-
ary warfare of the trenches. About the middle of Sep-
44 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
tember, the French command resolved on a new stroke.
The line was lengthened on the left, fresh forces were
brought up ; from Compiegne northward, through Roye
and Albert, the extended armies threatened the outflanked
German right. On the 30th of September, and for some
days following, furious battles disputed the possession of
the Albert plateau.
Such was the situation when the aforesaid unit was asked
to help the French at Albert with their wounded. It was
at once decided to form a mobile hospital attached to the
unit. This mobile hospital changed its headquarters from
time to time. During most of October it was at Hesdin,
and from there helped the French field hospitals east of
Doullens, as well as in the Arras region, and in places still
farther north. The mobile unit used, at its fullest working,
sixteen motor ambulances and four staff cars. The way
it worked was this : — Officers in charge of the ambulances
reported to the French officers at their several field hospitals
and aid-posts, and took their orders. The wounded were
then transported to the appointed hospitals and evacuation
points. Drivers and orderlies helped in the stretcher-work.
Severe cases were brought to the mobile hospital and treated
by British doctors. All this was being done close behind
the front, with continuous hard fighting going on ; so it
may be imagined that the pressure was severe, and patients
were evacuated as soon as they were fit to be moved, to
make room for the urgent cases incessantly coming in.
The devoted work of the unit was warmly appreciated,
not only for the i swiftness and comfort ' with which the
wounded were carried, but for the ' spontaneity and warmth'
of the English offers of aid. A French army doctor wrote
to thank the unit's commander for the ' precious help '
it had given. The British ambulances had transported
more than one hundred and fifty wounded to Amiens and to
Doullens in three days. ' By this action,' the doctor wrote,
THE CONVOYS 45
1 you have greatly relieved our own convoys and secured a
very swift and continuous evacuation for the severely
wounded, some of whom, I do not scruple to say, will owe
their recovery to you.' He went on to thank the English
doctors for placing their services at the disposal of their
French confreres, and enabling the overtaxed French
medical staff to snatch a few hours' rest.
The mobile unit continued to work for the French during
the autumn of 1914, and the spring of the following year.
During part of the time it also evacuated a number of
British wounded. It may be remembered that the strategic
movements leading up to, and following, the battle of the
Marne, had resulted in the British Army being, at the end
of September, no longer on the extreme left of the French
line, but almost at its centre. Early in October it was
transferred, by a brilliantly smooth operation, to its old
place on the extreme left ; and the crossing of French and
English lines of communication no longer made confusion
in the rear. The Ypres salient, however, was for a certain
period, from mid-November to the end of January, held by
French troops.
On the 3rd of March 191 5 a section of five motor ambul-
ances went south to Chalons, and worked there till the 6th
of May, carrying French wounded to and from various points.
But the mobile unit ceased working for the French armies
in March, and in May it was disbanded.
Meanwhile the race to the coast — the result of the French
outflanking movement and the answering movement of the
Germans — had been won — how narrowly ! — by the Allies ;
Antwerp had fallen ; the First Battle of Ypres, in which
the British Army, attacked by forces at least four times as
numerous, so magnificently held firm the line to the sea,
had overthrown the German's second plan of campaign
as decisively as the Marne had overthrown their first.
One of the most moving and magnificent episodes of
46 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
the battles for the coast was, as every one knows, the
defence of Dixmude by the French Fusiliers Marins.
With that famous defence, and with that valiant corps
certain Britons are proud to have been associated. The
French Naval Brigade, commanded by Admiral Ron'arch,
arrived in Ghent to reinforce the Belgians, on 8th October.
In that town an English volunteer unit, known as the
Munro Ambulance Corps, had been already for some weeks
at work, busily engaged in bringing in the wounded from
the villages in the neighbourhood, which day by day were
falling into the enemy's hands. Antwerp was burning, and
the Germans were advancing westward, while the Allies
— Belgian, French and British — slowly retreated. The
Fusiliers took up a position at Melle, a little town close to,
and in front of, Ghent. There, in a spirited action they not
only barred the German advance, but even drove the enemy
back a few miles, and by this resistance gave the retiring
Belgian army forty-eight hours' start.
The young Breton sailors, now proving their mettle under
fire for the first time, had been made into an infantry
brigade on an emergency ; they had been re-equipped as
soldiers in haste ; and they had no ambulances for their
wounded. The Commandant (and founder) of the Munro
Ambulance Corps therefore offered its services to the
Fusiliers ; and thus began an association which lasted
through many months of strenuous warfare.
The fight at Melle saved valuable time, but there was no
question of attempting to stand on these positions. Legions
of Germans were coming up on both banks of the Scheldt,
and only retreat could save the Allied forces from being
cut off. The Fusiliers, for the moment under the com-
mand of an English General, retired through Ghent, an
English division covering their retreat and following them
at an interval of two hours.
The members of the Munro Corps shared the trials of this
THE CONVOYS 47
retreat in the autumn rain, driving their cars along congested
roads, where stupefied peasants, with their earthly goods
in bundles on their backs, fleeing from their homes they
knew not whither, and conscious only of the terrible enemy
behind, kept themselves moving alongside the marching
troops. More than once it was intended to stand and fight ;
but the Germans were advancing in overwhelming force ;
and no satisfactory line of defence was found till the Yser
was reached. The line ran from Nieuport through Dix-
mude to Ypres. At Furnes, the little old town of fine
architecture, which before the war was famed for its sacred
pageant and procession in July — a relic of the Middle Ages —
the Munro Corps found its new headquarters. Furnes
is at about an equal distance from Nieuport and from
Dixmude. Through the battle of the Yser and the First
Battle of Ypres, the Corps, which at this time numbered
about twenty cars, worked day and night for French,
English, and Belgians. A great number of ambulances
had been abandoned during the retreat, and the lack of
them was bitterly felt during those weeks of desperate
effort and incessant fighting. The cars of the Corps, half
of which were lent by the British Red Cross Society, did
precious service for the wounded, whose sufferings and
discomforts — as a member of the Corps, who was from
August 191 5 its Commandant, has recorded — were quite
indescribable. Much of the general work from Furnes
was irregular and contingent on the needs of the moment,
but a regular evacuation service was maintained for the
French military hospitals in the town. The Corps devoted
itself more especially to the aid of the Fusiliers Marins
during their epical defence of Dixmude, from 16th October
to loth November, when six thousand French sailors and
a lesser number of Belgian soldiers, without any heavy
guns, without aeroplanes, in fabulous morasses of mud,
under never-ending rain, held up three entire Army Corps
48 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
of Germans fighting their hardest to break through, at this
most vulnerable point, to Dunkirk and Calais. Dixmude
fell, battered to pieces ; but the superb endurance of the
garrison had won its object.
In December, first a battalion, then the entire brigade, of
Fusiliers Marins was sent to Nieuport. They still had no
regimental ambulances ; and Admiral Ron'arch asked the
Munro Corps to undertake once more the evacuation of the
wounded from the dressing stations to the clearing hospitals.
At first this service was carried on by a few cars only, but
later other cars were added, according to need.
At Nieuport the Corps continued to work through 191 5
till November, when the Naval Brigade was reduced to a
battalion. The Corps was asked to continue its work for
the troops which relieved the Brigade. It had worked
with the Fusiliers Marins under a simple agreement or
understanding ; but it was now necessary that matters
should be placed on a more regular and official footing. One
section of six cars passed under the entire control of the
French, and was placed in a barrack within three miles of
the front. There it evacuated wounded from the dressing
stations in Nieuport to the clearing hospitals.
There was another small English convoy which did fine
service during the tremendous days of that autumn. This
was the Millicent Sutherland Ambulance, whose earlier
adventures in Belgium will be found recorded in our story
of the hospitals. The convoy of four ambulances and a
large omnibus for sitting cases (afterwards increased to
eight cars) was taken out by the lady who founded and who
still directs the unit, and landed at Dunkirk on 23rd October.
The cars ran day and night from field hospitals near the
Yser front, bringing back wounded to Dunkirk and Zuyde-
cote, and to the hospital ships, which then sailed to Cher-
bourg. Endless trains of cattle-trucks filled with the
wounded were then arriving at Dunkirk station, where the
DQ ^
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o 5
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THE CONVOYS 49
directress of this unit and her helpers started canteen work
for those most pitiable sufferers. The convoy afterwards
did good work at Malo, near Dunkirk, till late in 191 5, when
the unit transferred its services to the British.
But we must now return to the activities of the British
Red Cross Unit. The original second in command of that
first detachment took control of a unit of motor ambulances
which was attached, early in October 1914, to the Service de
Sante of the Second Army. The unit contained a certain
number of American volunteers.
For the first few months after being attached to the
Second Army — that is, during the autumn and early winter
of 1914 — this unit was busy evacuating wounded from field
hospitals to Compiegne, Montdidier, Amiens, and Doullens.
From Compiegne in the south to Doullens in the north is
roughly sixty miles, Amiens and Montdidier lying at almost
equidistant points between the two, but a little farther
from the front. Doullens was made the headquarters,
but a sub-division of cars was stationed at Montdidier.
The gigantic German effort to break through to the coast
spent itself during the second half of November. For the
rest of the year the fighting was on a smaller scale. With
the coming of the cold weather trenches were deepened
and elaborated, on both sides, with all the devices of the
skilled engineer. But the enemy was never left idle ; there
was incessant sniping, with a big toll of dead and wounded ;
the guns continued their unending duel ; and there was
plenty of work for the ambulances to do. During the last
days of December the pressure became heavy ; more than
once one of the convoys was working for twenty-four hours
on end. The French General wrote to the Commandant
his appreciation of the unit's services.
In May Doullens was taken into the zone of another army.
The unit was ordered to move, but found little doing at its
new headquarters. The serious fighting was north of Arras,
D
50 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
where, beginning on the 9th, a brilliant French offensive
thrust at Lens, and made the bloodiest of fighting about
Souchez, and Carency, and Notre Dame de Lorette.
The call for ambulances was urgent, and a request for
help came to the unit from the Doullens district. With
the consent of the Second Army Command, the ambulances
were sent to help this other part of the line, and came in
for heavy and continuous work both by night and day.
Late in May the unit was again moved. According to
the orders of the General in command, a number of ambul-
ances were now stationed at certain posts close to the
trenches. Each of these dealt with such casualties as
occurred in the neighbourhood of its post. They were
relieved every twenty-four hours. The rest of the convoy,
posted some five kilometres back, was held in readiness for
a summons coming from any part of the line served.
During June the strength of the unit was greatly increased.
At the beginning of the month it had eighteen ambulances,
four touring cars, a motor lorry, and a motor kitchen-car.
By the end of the month these twenty-four cars had been
increased to thirty-three.
In mid-September the unit was found new quarters at
Somme Vesle (having moved several times during the
summer) ; and its strength was further increased to fifty-
three ambulances and five touring cars. The work was now
carried on among villages wrecked and devastated since
the first weeks of the war. Accommodation for the staff
was difficult to find among the shattered cottages and roofless
barns. It became necessary to buy tents. The conditions
were trying, the work heavy. But the French Command
had taken note of the work and the workers ; and on Sep-
tember 20th the Commandant was told that it had been
decided to make his unit responsible for the service of a
whole Army Corps, instead of sharing it, as hitherto, with a
French section.
THE CONVOYS 51
A few days later the unit was moved to Champagne.
It was the eve of the great Champagne attack which
opened on the morning of 25th September, coinciding with
the British attack at Loos in the north. The attack was
timed for 8 a.m. ; and by nine in the evening, all the
ambulances were at their required stations. Fifteen ambul-
ances were distributed among four field hospitals, and
fourteen more were equally divided between two posts
at certain communication trenches. It was important to
find cover from aircraft for the ambulances when they were
parked together : at the same time the camps had to be
close to the track followed by the cars between communi-
cation trench and field hospital, and not near a battery, in
case of its drawing concentrated shell-fire. These condi-
tions were not easy to satisfy.
La Champagne Pouilleuse, that singular region of Eastern
France which retains among the fertile lands surrounding
it something primevally forlorn, is a country of bare rolling
hills and shallow valleys, patched with meagre fir planta-
tions. Such villages as there were had been obliterated in
the war. The patches of fir were useful for screening the
ambulances from aerial observation. But the batteries
assembled for the great attack were posted so closely to-
gether that it was impossible to station the cars far from any
one of them. Bomb-proof shelters were, however, provided.
And, as it turned out, the reply of the German guns to the
French artillery was surprisingly ineffective.
A system of new roads — for of old ones there were hardly
any — as well as of light railways, had been constructed along
the front. The chalky, powdery soil, turned into slippery
mud by the least rain, is in fine weather remarkably dusty.
And this September the weather had been continuously
fine, with bright sun and cool nights for some weeks. But
on the evening of the 24th, when the ambulances took their
appointed positions, heavy rain began to fall. The wind
52 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
had changed to the south-west. Every unit now had its
orders. The roads were thronged with an endless move-
ment of ammunition trains, of revictualling convoys, of
columns of infantry and squadrons of cavalry. The guns
along the whole line kept up a continuous cannonade.
Darkness fell. A little after midnight the bombardment
increased to a terrible intensity. From the masses of troops
behind the front, regiments began to move up along the
communication trenches. With the break of day it became
possible to distinguish the German lines stretching along
the ridge of the opposite downs.
It was a dripping cheerless morning, and the powdery
chalk, now churned into heavy slime, was slippery going for
the feet. But when the artillery ceased, to lengthen range,
and in the sudden astonishing silence the lines of French
infantry — along a front of fifteen miles — sprang out of the
trenches and went forward, it was with a confidence and
momentum that made them irresistible.
A little way back, beside the communication trenches,
the English ambulances, now promoted to serve a whole
Army Corps, were waiting. It was not long before the
wounded began to arrive. The French had taken the enemy
first-line trenches at a blow ; but machine-guns and shells
from the big guns in the rear had grievously thinned the
ranks of their advance. Three ambulances were kept
always waiting at each communication trench ; as soon as
one was filled and left, another came up from the camping
ground and took its place. But before this first day of the
battle was over, the seven cars assigned to each communi-
cation trench proved quite insufficient. At one post the
number was increased to ten, at another to twelve.
With the wounded came also prisoners, unnerved and
stupefied by the bombardment and by hunger ; for the
French guns had cut off their supplies for some days. The
Commandant reported that ' amongst the prisoners taken
THE CONVOYS 53
was the complete staff equipment of a German Field
Hospital,' and among the trophies were devices for pro-
tection from gas and for administering treatment to those
suffering from its effects. And specially to be noted is this.
One of the portable ' gas-projectors ' bore the date 1915.
But an inscription on it recorded that the pattern of this
date superseded the pattern of 191 2, which in its turn
superseded that of 1910. Long ago, in days of peace, the
Germans were brewing their poison-gas.
Imagine now the work before our men, on this day of fine
rain which soaked into the white sticky soil, as the stream
of wounded, some carried on stretchers, others stumbling
along with bandaged head or arm, thickened and grew to a
steady volume. All day they were arriving, and on through
the night ; and the next day and the next night ; and still
there was no rest for the drivers of the cars. Only after
five days and five nights was the pressure relaxed. By then,
the great attack had spent its force ; and though the last
lines of the enemy had been actually breached at one point,
the breach was not wide enough, and the Germans soon
had it blocked by their reserves. During these five days
the British convoy with its wounded covered more than
thirty thousand kilometres. They worked day and night
on roads which, even before the first wounded had begun
to come in, had been so broken up by the incessant heavy
traffic and the pouring rain that they were poached into deep
holes full of water. The traffic never ceased ; the roads
were densely packed with moving cars and wagons ; the
mud grew deeper and more slippery ; no lights were allowed
by night. In such conditions our Red Cross men steered
their cars and drove their wounded night and day. Those
who worked at the two communication trenches were unable
to take off their clothes for nine days. For the battle still
went on, after the manner of the battles of this war, which
have no definite end, but smoulder down into the stationary
54 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
warfare from which they began. But the casualties were
now lighter. On the 8th October a reserve corps of French
ambulances was sent up to help the English section, and
allow them a rest they sorely needed. Now and then a car
had got stuck in the muddy holes ; but neither a car nor
a man had been hit.
There followed a period of a few weeks of local but sharp
attacks by the Germans. The convoy was kept busy,
though its activity was hampered by the continuous bad
weather. In the mud of that desolate country the roads
leading to the advanced posts became impassable. Horse-
carts had to be used to bring the wounded to the farthest
points which the cars could reach ; and even the horses
would sometimes slip and fall into pits of mud from which
they could not be extricated. By 17th November the whole
convoy returned to its base, sending out cars to be posted
as near to the front line as was practicable. But the
Germans were now making formidable attempts to retake
the positions lost in the great battle. These were unsuc-
cessful ; but the fierce fighting caused many casualties.
The conditions of transport for the wounded, owing to the
rain and the mud, were miserable ; it was so far for them
to be carried, or carted, to the roads which were still
practicable for the ambulances. The problem was tackled,
and it was found that by making a long detour it was
possible to get the ambulances up on the hills near the
firing-line and to establish two new posts there. This was
done, and the posts were kept in full activity, with narrow
escapes from shelling by the enemy.
This ends the story of the Anglo-American Convoy, as
originally constituted in October 1914. For in December
a reorganisation of the foreign Sections Sanitaires serving
the French armies was carried out.
The American members of the convoy left, to form a
new, purely American section. The British members
THE CONVOYS 55
remained, and were now to be known as Section Sanitaire
Anglaise 17.
On Christmas Day the unit was reinforced by the advent
of a new convoy. This consisted of twenty ambulances,
four lorries, a kitchen and a touring car. It had been pre-
sented to the British Red Cross by the Derbyshire and
Nottinghamshire Coalowners' Association. This convoy
now became Section 16.
The new section relieved the old convoy at once till
January, when it was withdrawn to reserve.
A lull followed.
On 13th February the two sections were moved to another
district. On the 18th they received orders to stand by,
ready to start for an unknown destination at half an hour's
notice.
Rumours were running along the front. There was in
all ranks an air of tension and excitement ; the sure feeling
of a great blow coming from the other side, but uncer-
tainty where it would strike, and what particular line was
threatened. German aircraft began to cross the front, and
dropped their bombs behind it. They were seeking to
destroy the railways.
The omens were pointing to Verdun.
Well did the English sections acquit themselves in the
unparalleled struggle which was now about to begin on the
hills beyond that famous fortress. But Sections 16 and 17
were not the only English sections to play their part, and
share in the incomparable defence. And before telling
the story of what happened at Verdun, we must go back
to 1914 and see what other units had been formed, and
what work they had been doing.
The activity of the Friends' Ambulance Unit has by
no means been confined to convoy work with the French
56 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
armies. Hospitals at Dunkirk, Ypres, and other places ;
ambulance trains ; hospital ships ; recreation huts at Dun-
kirk ; a preventive campaign against typhoid among the
civilians of Flanders ; relief and sanitary work in the
destitute Flemish villages ; these are some of the various
enterprises which have occupied its overflowing energies.
But here it is with the convoy service for the French
wounded that we are concerned. The unit devoted itself
to this work at a very early stage, and it occupies some two
hundred of its six hundred members in France.
The unit is an unpaid voluntary unit of the Red Cross.
It was formed at the outbreak of the war by members of the
Society of Friends, is supported by Friends, and consists
chiefly of Friends and others closely associated with them.
Every one knows that the Quakers as a religious body have
always held that war is wrong, and the use of force con-
trary to Christian principles. But the monstrous explosion
that rent Europe in August 1914 was instantly seen to be no
ordinary war. Old problems presented themselves in new
aspects. Searching each his heart, and acting each on the
command of conscience, the members of the Society came
to no unanimous conclusion on the question asked with so
much pain and perplexity, whether it was right to partici-
pate in this terrible struggle for the things most dear to
free men, and, if so, in what form or in what degree. Our
story is concerned with that large body of Friends who were
determined to serve their fellow-men in the struggle, though
resolved also not to be combatants.
On 7th September 1914, a camp was opened at Jordans,
in Buckinghamshire, associated with so much of the early
history of the Society ; and here a group of eager young
men began a varied and thorough course of training as
a preparation for the ambulance work with the armies to
which they looked forward.
But it was one thing to determine to serve at the front,
THE CONVOYS 57
it was another to secure the work desired. The Society of
Friends has, naturally, no sort of relation with military
officialdom, and its band of voluntary workers had, apart
from their training in camp, no experience ; they had neither
connections nor influence to help them. But the will found
a way. The pioneers of the unit chose for their motto,
* Search for the work that no one is doing ; take it, and
regularise it later, if you can.' In the first months of the
war there was indeed plenty of such need and opportunity.
It was the sight of thousands of wounded soldiers arriv-
ing at the coast, having received little or no attention be-
yond a field-dressing eight to fourteen days before, and
with pitifully small provision for their housing or transport,
which decided the first emissaries of the unit, sent to France
to prospect for work, that there was no need to seek further.
Here was a gap which was not filled, and which their men
could fill.
A hurried reference to the committee at home which
was responsible for the unit brought the answer to go
ahead.
In less than a week a little company of forty-three men
and eight small ambulances were ready to start. They
assembled at their rendezvous on the south coast on a day
in late October. Some had come by rail, some by road.
Many had had no time to take leave of their families. It
was truly a going-out into the unknown ; for the party did
not know whether work would be given them, or where they
would lodge on landing.
Early next morning, the unit started across the Channel ;
and almost immediately, without sound or warning, were
plunged into the realities of war. Out of the mist, the
shadowy shape of a great ship came into view. She was
slowly sinking. It was the cruiser Hermes, which had just
been torpedoed. All set to work to man the lowered boats,
and for hours were busy saving the lives of the shipwrecked,
58 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
hauling them from the water, pulling them up the steamer's
side, or helping to restore animation. The steamer put
back to land the survivors ; and it was late in the evening
before the unit reached Dunkirk.
It was the most critical time of the obstinate, massed, and
furious attempts of the Germans to break through to the
coast. The French wounded were coming back from the
front in train after train. The congestion was extreme ; and
the railway sheds at Dunkirk were crowded with these poor
sufferers, who lay there till their turn came to be taken
farther back from the fighting-line. Meanwhile, there was
no time to attend to them, or care for their wounds. Here
at once, and on the spot, the Friends, at the end of their
first day's journey, found the work they sought.
The sights, sounds, and stench in those dark sheds were
their initiation, abrupt and horrible enough, into the world
of waste and torment, death and mutilation, in which the
Red Cross moves and has its being. But the members of
the unit, fresh from home, and tired as they were, set to
work with undaunted resolution, in spite of nausea and
fatigue. Night and day they laboured, first continuously,
then in shifts, while night and day fresh wounded arrived,
to be heaped on the floor of the sheds in every phase of
exhaustion, brokenness, delirium.
At last the pressure diminished. In a few weeks the
regular Service de Sante had its disorganised machinery
smoothly working again, and were able to take over the
railway sheds from this unaccredited but so zealous and
eager bands of workers which had suddenly appeared from
nowhere. Much hospital work among the French remained,
however, to be done, and of this the unit shouldered a
considerable share.
This first experience taught the Friends that their cue
was to be above all adaptable and elastic in their methods.
Where a need called, and a gap appeared, there it was their
THE CONVOYS 59
place to be ; and as soon as one urgent job was done, they
must be ready to leave it for another.
The great desire of the unit was to obtain ambulance work
at the front, and for this it was necessary to overcome pre-
judices against non-military volunteers. One of the unit,
to whose vivid report these lines are much indebted, and
who has since served the Red Cross with high distinction
in Italy, wrote : ' At one time I counted that we were
dealing with fifteen military authorities simultaneously ; only
five of whom could really help us, but any one of whom, if
wrongly handled, could have blocked all our chances.'
Tact and perseverance carried the day. After a brief
spell of work at Ypres, cut short for a time by the heavy
shelling and temporary evacuation of the city, the Friends
drove northwards along the front of the French armies,
offering their services as they went.
At the village of Woesten, which was afterwards to be-
come familiar as their parent station, they were warmly
welcomed by a French evacuation hospital. Quarters were
found for them in a school, where they speedily made
themselves at home ; and here the ambulance work of the
unit with the French began in good earnest. The men
were on their mettle, and worked devotedly, driving the
cars under shell-fire, or by night and without lights, along
the broken and pitted roads.
New stations were started, as requests for help came in :
before long there were seven maintained at once. The most
northerly was at Dickebusch. There were reinforcements
from home. The unit doubled its numbers. The village
of its first welcome, Woesten, became a distributing centre.
The work expanded in every direction, as the men became
more experienced ; and during the great battles of Flanders
in the closing weeks of 1914 the small fleet of ambulances
covered more than 20,000 miles.
Towards the turn of the year the fighting gradually sub-
60 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
sided, as the assaulting storms of the enemy attempts to
break through to the coast were baffled and died down.
The unit therefore withdrew its ambulance stations, one
after another, and sought work more urgent.
The good work done had won the confidence of the
French, and definite tasks were soon allotted by the autho-
rities to the unit, which was now officially recognised.
Another English Red Cross unit combined with it, and the
large accession of good cars and drivers, now made over to
the control of the Friends, greatly strengthened its resources.
In March 191 5, cars from scattered groups were collected
into definite convoys, and the Sections Sanitaires Anglaises
Nos. 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 were organised. No. 14 was
staffed entirely by the F.A.U., and some of the other
convoys were under officers belonging to it.
Some of these sections were kept in reserve at the base.
Most, however, were attached to various evacuation hospi-
tals. The work done was cordially appreciated by the
French, who wrote of the promptness, the regularity, and
the unweariable never-faltering zeal of their ' excellents
camarades.'
Towards the middle of April, Section 14, which had
been kept in reserve at the base, received orders to report
next day to the Algerian Division. This division held the
northern part of the Ypres salient, with the Canadians
next them on their right. Their line ran from the Yser
Canal to a point just east of Langemarck. Duly reporting
at Elverdinghe, the section found that it was to be respon-
sible for the transport of the wounded of the entire division.
After the impatience of inaction at the base, this great
responsibility was inspiring. The accustomed routine of
evacuation began. But in a very few days the men were to
be put to a severer trial than any could have imagined.
It was the twenty-second of the month ; a day of pleasant
spring weather, with a hot sun and a light wind blowing
THE CONVOYS 6i
Steadily from the north-east. Evening was approaching,
when, with hardly a moment's warning, fierce bursts of
firing were heard, and the whole line was thrown into an
unexplained confusion. The men of the convoy, working
behind the lines, were met by a wild surge of Turcos and
Zouaves staggering back from the trenches. They were
ghastly to look at ; they were coughing horribly ; they
could neither see nor speak. Numbers of them had dropped
by the roadside and lay there overcome and insensible.
And a strange, sickly, suffocating odour began to come down
the wind, while the sky seemed to take on a greenish tint.
It was the German posion-gas.
Astonishment at the apparition of the slowly advancing
greenish-yellow clouds, seen for the first time in the war on
this pleasant April afternoon, had quickly been lost in the
horror of the fiery fumes invading eyes and throat and
tortured lungs. The Algerian troops had no defence against
the agonising poison. It was as if some devil had been let
loose among them.
The Second Battle of Ypres had begun.
The cars and men of Section 14 were wellnigh over-
whelmed by the streaming mass of the victims of this new
horror. Units were mixed up in an indescribable chaos.
The resources of the convoy were all too insufficient for the
moment. The men worked as they had never worked
before, and for seventy-two hours most of them were to
work without a break.
The French were being rapidly forced back all along the
line from Steenstraate to Langemarck. On their left they
had withdrawn behind the Yser Canal, and the enemy were
pushing across it at more than one point. On their right,
between the French and the Canadians, was a broad gap of
four miles, through which the Germans were advancing.
That the enemy never got right through was owing to the
superb tenacity of the Canadians, who held on somehow,
62 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
letting no troops win their way past them, till before the
night was over the gap was, after a fashion, filled with re-
inforcements. Facing the gap was the chateau in which
Section 14 had its headquarters ; and on this night of terror
and tumultuous confusion the battle rolled back almost
on to the ambulances. Without a pause the cars drove
to and fro, evacuating at utmost speed to the railhead and
then returning, though each time the men knew that their
posts might by now be in the hands of the enemy. Worse
was to come. The gas attack was supported by a heavy
artillery fire, and the railhead was driven farther from the
front by the storm of shells ; the horse-ambulance services,
which had previously brought the wounded from the postes
de secours to the motor ambulances, broke down under the
strain ; and at the request of the French this latter service
was taken over by the English section. Little wonder that,
in spite of continuous and exhausting effort, it was impossible
to cope with the stream of asphyxiated and wounded. But
during the next two days, though the battle went on with
unabated fury, measures were taken to bring up new
resources.
As we have seen, the other sections were working for
evacuation hospitals and on similar service in the district.
The actual disposition of these cars was entirely in the hands
of the Friends' unit ; and all of these that were available
and could be spared were hurriedly summoned to help the
Algerian Division. By the third day nearly forty cars were
working, and enough drivers to form two shifts ; so that
each car could work continuously for twenty-four hours.
An American section also sent some ambulances to help.
By this time therefore the demands of the work could be
met, exacting though they were. The long distance from
the dressing stations to the railhead, and the constant
shelling of the roads, added to the pressure and the risks.
From the French Command came messages of the warmest
THE CONVOYS 63
thanks and appreciation. ' Les voitures automobiles
anglaises ont fait preuve d'un zele, d'un courage et d'un
devouement, auquels on ne saurait assez rendre hommage.'
No other single call of such overwhelming urgency as
this of the Second Battle of Ypres was made on the unit for
a long time. But its resources were taxed to the uttermost
in other directions during this spring of 191 5, as long as the
fierce fighting continued. In no single instance was a call
unfulfilled. Twice within a few days a complete hospital
had to be removed. The organisation of the supply (for
everything, including petrol, had to be brought from the
base at Dunkirk) was at this time a difficult matter ; but
it never failed. At last the German assaults and the counter-
attacks of the Allies subsided, and Section 14 went to a
well-earned rest.
During this lull in the fighting, a reorganisation was
carried out. The British Red Cross withdrew a number of
their cars and all their men ; the remainder of the cars were
placed in Sections 13, 14, 15, and the ' Section Pare'
After work at various towns, Section 14 returned to the
front on the extreme north of the line, at Nieuport, or what
was Nieuport before it was shattered to bits — that little
seaport long deserted by the sea, with the waste of high
sand-dunes on its flanks, which before 1914 seemed of all
places the most peaceful and world-forgotten.
Section 13 had all the work of Dunkirk Station, and the
hospitals fed from it. S.S.A. 15 was occupied with
civilian work.
In the autumn, after a surprise inspection from the Grand
Quartier General, the unit was invited to come in under the
revised scheme for reorganising the non-military convoys
working at the front.
Under this scheme each section was to have twenty
ambulances with attendant lorry, touring, kitchen and work-
shop cars and a motor cycle. Each section was to be
64 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
attached to a division ; it was to form an administrative
unit in itself for the purpose of billeting, drawing rations,
etc. ; it was to have a French lieutenant attached to it, who
would supervise and, with the unit's own Chef de Section
or Commandant, be responsible for efficiency in working
and for the exact execution of orders.
The generosity of the British Red Cross enabled the unit
to accept this offer ; and the sections were reformed on the
prescribed model of the new scheme.
Soon after this, Section 13 was ordered to leave Dunkirk
and to work for the French division holding the line between
the Belgians and the British. To take its place at Dunkirk,
what is called a ' Groupement,' consisting of fifteen cars,
was formed at the request of the French.
Our scene shifts from mud of Flanders and chalk downs
of Champagne to the snowy heights and valleys of the
Vosges.
About the middle of January 191 5, there arrived at
Bruyeres — twenty miles or so behind the trenches-^-an
English convoy, complete and perfectly equipped, sent out
by the British Ambulance Committee. The committee,
as we have seen, was brought into being by an Englishman,
who felt that France, with her vast battle-line, must need
more motor ambulances, and, having ascertained from official
sources that the need was urgent, determined to procure
her help from Britain. After negotiations with the military
authorities in France, and with the Union des Femmes de
France in London, a definite offer was made to form a
British Committee : Monsieur Poincare and Monsieur
Cambon approved ; the committee was formed and set to
work in October. The French Ambassador and the British
Ambassador in Paris became Vice-Presidents. Difficulties
were encountered, as the ambulances were intended for work
THE CONVOYS 65
on the actual front, and the French authorities, conceiving
perhaps that these civilian volunteers were elderly gentlemen
of more leisure than activity, showed a wish to set them on
evacuation work at the base. But objections were overcome,
and before the end of the year two complete convoys,
modelled on the pattern of the French Army Sections Sani-
taires, were ready.
The first convoy, accompanied by the second, disembarked
at Le Havre at the beginning of January 1915. The men
were full of enthusiasm for their adventure, though none of
them knew as yet anything about the work they were eager
to be at, or the conditions they were to work under. Cordi-
ally received everywhere by the French, they arrived at
Troyes, where, to their dismay, they found that the service
allotted them was, after all, to be scattered about on a mild
routine of evacuations. But a visit from the Chief of the
Motor Staff at the Grand Quartier General removed certain
misunderstandings ; and in a day or two the first convoy
was on its way to the southern end of the Vosges. It
counted itself fortunate in falling among a group of staff
officers attached to the Motor Service who were as sym-
pathetic and understanding as it was possible to be.
The second convoy was sent to Commercy, on the St-
Mihiel salient.
The two convoys were to be known as Sections Sanitaires
Anglaises No. 1 and No. 2.
Attention, in England at any rate, has been so much
focused on other parts of the line in the West that the
doings of the French in the Vosges have not been much
described and are not perhaps too clearly remembered.
It will be recalled, however, that at the outset of the war
the French Command decided on an offensive campaign in
Lorraine and Alsace. In the first three weeks of August
there were some brilliant successes, and then came a marked
check. The danger to the armies on the French left, driven
E
66 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
back at Charleroi, prevented any following-up of the success
on the right : and Mulhouse, which had twice welcomed
the advancing French in its streets with extravagant rejoic-
ings, was a second time evacuated. None the less, the gains
achieved were important ; they were kept ; and a substantial
strip of German territory was occupied.
The frontier for a good distance from Mont Donon,
which is nearly opposite Strassburg, follows the crest of
the Vosges southward as far as the Ballon d* Alsace at the
southern end of the range, where the hills drop into the
plain in front of Belfort. In January 191 5, when the first
English convoy arrived in the Vosges, two of the northern
passes over the mountains were in German hands ; but from
the Col du Bonhomme southward not only were the passes
held by the French, but their line was some distance beyond,
and well inside the German frontier. They had advanced
from the Schlucht Pass to the heights above Miinster.
They had descended the Thur valley from the Col de Bus-
sang, and taken the town of Thann. They had established
an advance post on the Hartmannsweilerkopf, a craggy
mountain spur standing in the angle of the junction of the
two rivers, the Thur and the 111. During this month of
January heavy fighting was still going on — the French still
pressing down the valley of the Thur towards Cernay, and
also farther south towards Altkirch and Mulhouse — when
a tremendous snowstorm, lasting ten days or more, stopped
progress on either side.
On its arrival, the first convoy was tried for several days
on evacuation work in column, over rough ground, and up
and down very difficult passes. The weather was wild,
and the snow deep. During a strong but abortive attack
on the Hartmannsweilerkopf, the horse-transport had
proved very inadequate : it was twenty-five miles from the
front to the railhead; and only one complete journey a
day could be made. The cars could, however, do four or
THE CONVOYS 67
five, with far less suffering to the wounded. One half of
the section was sent to the head-waters of the Moselle,
under the Ballon d'Alsace, where it spent a strenuous three
months, while the other half was kept equally busy behind
the lines near the Schlucht Pass, where the Germans at one
time nearly broke through. In this short period the men
of the convoy had gained invaluable experience, and, though
they had had no training in England, soon acquired the co-
hesion of military discipline. They had no accidents on
the road, and never figured in the Orders of the Day for
petty delinquencies.
The snow began to melt in March. The Germans were
concentrating in the Sundgau, the plain in front of the Gap
of Belfort, and the French apprehended an attempt to push
through the Gap. The section was therefore reunited and
sent to Belfort. But the threatened attack did not come off ;
and after a tedious time in the garrison town, the section
was happy to renew its active service. It took part in
two or three attacks at La Fontenelle north of St-Die.
Though the English public has heard so little of the Vosges
fighting, these were big engagements. The work of the
section was severe, and though the summer had come the
rains continued, and the mud in the lower ground was as
difficult for the heavy cars as the ice and snow on the hills
in winter. Early in July the battle at La Fontenelle sub-
sided, and the section retired to its original base to refit.
The French were so well satisfied with the first two
convoys that they asked if more could be supplied. A third
convoy was inspected before starting at Buckingham Palace
by H.M. the King, on the 6th February, and shortly after-
wards arrived in the Vosges, where it became Section 3.
A fourth convoy reached France in June, and proceeded to
the same part of the front.
During 191 5 various changes were made in the organisa-
tion of the Sections Sanitaires. At first the number of cars
68 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
in a convoy was to be twenty-five ; then it was raised to
thirty ; then again reduced to twenty. When this last
change was decided on, the British Ambulance Committee
were able to create a fifth convoy from the surplus of the
others ; this became Section 5, and has always been, like
Section 4, in the Vosges.
Early in September a new Army Order provided that each
section should be attached to a division. Sections 4 and 5,
though attached to divisions, have not been transferred
from the part of the front which they serve, and therefore
have worked with many divisions in turn. Sections 1 and
2, on the other hand, and Section 3, for part of the time,
have been attached to particular divisions whose movements
and fortunes they have followed. This has been the case
with most of the English sections.
It was no light task that was required of the ambulance
drivers on the mountain roads. The Vosges descend
abruptly to the plain on the eastern side, though on the
French or western side the slope is much easier. The
general aspect of the range resembles the mountains of the
Black Forest, which rise opposite to it, some thirty to forty
miles away. Midway across the intervening plain, the Rhine
flows northward from Basle, seen as a remotely shining band
of silver from the heights on either side. The mountains
are mostly covered thick with pines and divided by deep
glens. Winter begins early and lingers late, and heavy
snows are apt to block the roads and choke the upper valleys
with their drifts. In thick snow on a dark night, when the
zigzag roads up on the heights are slippery with ice, and
lights have been switched off because ^Jie road is under fire,
the limits of difficult driving are surely attained.
Spring had passed into summer, and the fighting in the
hills and on the plain went on with little intermission. In
June the village of Metzeral was taken from the Germans,
and our ambulances were kept working at high pressure
THE CONVOYS 69
during the action. For the following month the French
planned a big attack. As we have seen, one of their lines
of advance had been from the Schlucht Pass down the
valley of the Fecht, and they had gained the heights above
Munster. But on the north of the river there was a
mountain-spur, the last of the hills overlooking the plain
of Alsace toward Colmar and the Rhine, which it was
important, if possible, to win. This is the mountain called
the Linge-Kopf, a massive, rocky promontory crested with
pine-woods, which before the autumn were to be razed by
ceaseless shell-fire to a stubble of charred stumps.
The attack began in late July. The nature of the ground
made the operations singularly difficult. For six weeks
the battle continued, furious stroke and counter-stroke
answering each other, and at last died away in September,
with little result but sanguinary losses on both sides.
The sections were attached to divisions of the famous
Chasseurs Alpins. Nearly all the French regiments now
wear the ' horizon-blue ' uniform, but the Chasseurs Alpins
still retain the dark-blue uniform and Scotch bonnet, from
which they have taken their name of Diables Bleus. The
soldiers come from the mountain districts of France, and
are hillmen born and bred; rather short of stature, on
the average, but squarely-built, tough and active. Their
fighting qualities are famed. The English convoys were
proud to be associated with this splendid corps, and the
men of the ambulances were on terms of cordial good fellow-
ship with the soldiers.
Sections 1, 3, and 4 were all called on to serve in this
attack. Section 3 brought the wounded down a steep zig-
zag road, the corners of which were under direct fire from
the Germans, from a large underground poste de secours
high up on a mountain-side. For eighteen days and nights
consecutively the men worked, without taking off their
clothes. The whole convoy was on the road all the time.
jo FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
The roads, worn and broken up by the incessant traffic of
cars and motor lorries and mule transport, and bitten into
by shells, became rough in the extreme. After heavy rain
the mud was nearly knee-deep. Back-axles would break,
or some other serious accident would constantly occur ;
and then the car would have to be towed home. Two
spare cars had to be kept at the base, ready to start at a
moment's notice. Scarcely a night passed without a sum-
mons coming to tow a car which had broken down.
Section I was working a little farther off, to the north.
And their drivers had perhaps even greater difficulties to
encounter ; they had to work over crests of the Vosges by
a road which previously was reckoned incarrossable, and was
extensively shelled. After the worst eighteen days the
convoy was reduced from about forty cars to seven.
Section 4 had twenty-eight cars continually working high
up on the mountains from a collection of huts in the forest
to a little lake. The roads at that time were no better than
mule-tracks, which the cars had often the greatest ado to
climb.
The Germans were continually trying to block the
mountain road by which supplies came up, and by which
Section 3 carried down the wounded, by bursting huge shells
upon it. Once they succeeded in blocking it for a short
time, the seventeen-inch shells smashing up the rocks and
tumbling them in a heap across the road. But even this
did not interfere with our ambulance men's labours. Cars
were sent round which brought the wounded down from
above as far as the barrier. Other cars came up to the
nearer side of it ; and the wounded were quickly carried
round and transferred from one car to the other. At one
of the corners on the zigzag bends, directly under the fire
of the German snipers, one man of Section 3 was killed and
several more were wounded. To prevent repair, the
Germans constantly burst shrapnel over the road. But
THE CONVOYS 71
in spite of everything the wounded were all brought down
safely. And when one remembers how they were formerly
carried, in springless carts, taking thirty hours to do what
a motor ambulance accomplished in two or less, it is easy
to imagine the incalculable value of an efficient service of
automobiles. The protracted anguish of the long ride,
with the constant result of septic poisoning, ended frequently
in the loss of lives which are now saved by speed.
At the time of the block on the road, timely service was
rendered by the motor-cycle side-cars which have been in-
troduced on the Vosges front by the British Ambulance
Committee. A track was somehow cleared for the side-cars,
which were the first vehicles to go through the gap, and
which brought the wounded to the waiting ambulances.
The first of the side-cars was delivered to the section in
May 191 5, and there are now twenty- three of them working
over practically the whole of the Vosges front. The motor
ambulances were a vast improvement on the former methods
of transporting the wounded ; but the ambulances could not
go beyond the roads (such as they were), and serious cases
were carried from the lines to the cars on stretchers by four
men. The journey would be sometimes two or three
miles, requiring eight stretcher-bearers. This method
meant prolonged suffering to the wounded man ; and the
side-cars not only saved suffering, but released soldiers. At
one post they enabled twenty-two out of thirty stretcher-
bearers to be freed for other service. The machines have
heavy tyres, with very low gears, and are able to go easily
over the steepest and roughest of roads. The Alpine Posts
or field hospitals on the Vosges front are now all served by
side-cars. Garages have been made for them in specially
constructed dug-outs. The cars go out to the first-aid
posts, and bring the wounded into the field hospitals, where
the ambulances collect them. Perhaps they have saved
more lives even than the motor ambulances. The work of
72 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
the drivers is hard and dangerous, day and night ; all lights
are forbidden, and to drive across a shell-hole, frequent in
the rough lanes, means a disaster. The side-car section
has served in the attacks on the Reihackerkopf, the Tete des
Faux, the Violu, and other engagements ; four of its members
have received the Croix de Guerre ; and some four thousand
wounded have been carried.
In the autumn of 191 5 Section 1, after a period of resting
and refitting, moved to a quiet sector in the northern
Vosges. The Mayor of Bruyeres presented them on their
departure with an address of regretful farewell. The
relations of the English convoys with the French, civilians
and soldiers alike, were, and continue to be, of the friendliest.
The fact that this part of the front is remote has made the
presence of the English uniforms all the more valuable as
a symbol of the common cause of the Allies. And the men
of the sections have always considered it as not the least
of their functions to cultivate this friendliness. Sections 4
and 5 have been continuously in the Vosges from their first
coming out ; at least one sector has never been served,
since that time, by any but British ambulances, and the
men have become familiar figures of the country-side.
To turn aside for a moment from scenes of pain and blood-
shed, let us take a glimpse at a Christmas festival in the
Vosges at the end of 191 5. In this case it was Section 4,
to the Commandant of which occurred the thought of giving
a party to the children of the town where the section was
quartered. He consulted the Mayor, and arranged to call
up the groups of children from two to seven years of age.
The General of the Division came to hear of the project,
and let it be known that if he were invited he should attend
the party. It appeared, however, that a children's party
after the English fashion did not approve itself altogether
to the children's teachers and parents : they preferred a
concert. So a concert was determined on, and a distribu-
THE CONVOYS 73
tion of toys was to take place half-way through. The
Town Hall was placed at the Commandant's disposal : but
it was not an exhilarating interior : and some one suggested
the theatre of the Casino, which had been closed since the
war began. The theatre was applied for : it proved to be a
chaos. Rain and snow were coming in through the windows,
which had been smashed for months ; the orchestra and
the boxes were filled with straw, where soldiers had been
sleeping, the seats broken and piled up on one another ; on
the stage, the prostrate scenery lay in a dingy heap. But
what could not be done when the General was coming ?
A word to the major of the garrison, and soldiers were soon
putting the theatre ship-shape : in a few days it was ready
for any festivity. The General invited his staff in his
' Orders of the Day.' There was no lack of musical gift
forthcoming : professionals with a Paris fame were serving
in the ranks and delighted to perform. On the first Sunday
after Christmas, then, the theatre, swept, garnished, newly
heated and newly lighted for the occasion, was besieged by
eager crowds. A couple of hundred women and children
were turned away in tears, for every corner was filled, and
the whole house packed to suffocation. The auditorium
was tumultuous with hundreds of children, vividly expect-
ant. Eight volunteers of the section were on duty among
the audience, putting chocolates into every open mouth at
an interval in the concert. A little girl recited some lines
of thanks to the Commandant, who led her on to the stage
and made a speech in French. Then one of the English-
men made his apparition through the prompter's hole as
Father Christmas, and he too addressed the children in
French ; toys and cakes were distributed to the small guests
as they filed past. And the General, among his staff, looked
from the balcony, paternally applauding.
Such improvised festivities — for this is only an example —
have helped perhaps to dissolve the legend of English
74 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
people as tristes, unsocial egoists ; they have left a pleasant
remembrance that will last for years to come. The men
of our sections interest themselves also in the life of the
soldiers in the trenches. They play matches with them
at football, and they help to form the little libraries from
which books may be got to solace the dreary blankness of
days in dug-outs. Friendships have been made that will
not be forgotten on either side.
These happy relations are a solace for the routine of work
which is often monotonous and rarely without hardship.
Sections 4 and 5 have moved about to various parts of the
Vosges, sometimes in comfortable quarters, sometimes in
draughty barns with straw for a bed, or in billets shared by
cattle. The intense cold of the Vosges winter makes duty
at out-stations on the heights a trying time ; and the
gigantic snowdrifts are often hard to get through. Motor-
cyclists have on occasion been marooned for several days
in the snow.
Section 5 was not formed till October 1915, after the
attack on the Linge, and has not come in for any great
engagement ; but it has had plenty of severe and interesting
work, and shared in many minor attacks. At one time it
served the front between Dannemarie and the Swiss frontier,
and evacuated to a distance of thirty-five kilometres from
the lines ; much of the work being done under fire and on
dangerous roads. It has also worked high up on the snows
of the Jura, in the bitterest winter weather, when the
ambulances had to be pulled out of the snowdrifts by oxen.
The front served by Section 5 is all, it is interesting to note,
in the reconquered part of Alsace.
After the winter of 191 5, Section 1 left the Vosges. We
shall meet it again in other parts of the front. Meanwhile
Section 2 arrived at St-Maurice, at the southern end of the
Vosges, in December.
Section 2 had been busy on the St-Mihiel front since its
THE CONVOYS 75
first coming out in January 1915, doing the entire ambulance
work for a whole Army Corps. In May it was reinforced by
additional and more powerful cars, just in time for a German
attack, during which all the cars were kept running for
sixty hours on end. But after this a quieter time ensued,
with occasional actions, and even these died down in the
autumn. The summons to the Vosges, where an attack
was preparing, was therefore hailed with joy. The convoy
left Commercy on 1st December. The General command-
ing the Army Corps sent his band to play to them ; he
himself went round the cars, and shook hands, and thanked
each of the men ; and the convoy went off to the strains of
the Marseillaise and the National Anthem.
Arrived at St-Maurice, the convoy found the winding
road up the pass thronged with ammunition-carts, supply-
transport, and all the preparations for a big action. The
scene of the assault was to be the famous Hartmannsweiler-
kopf, the crags of which had already witnessed such desperate
struggles. The attack began on 22nd December, and till
the end of the year Section 2 was at work as difficult as it
was dangerous, day and night. The roads were extremely
steep, with sudden ' hairpin ' bends ; their surface was
coated with ice and in places under incessant fire. With
irregular food, and snatching what sleep they could under
their cars, the men were a fairly exhausted band by New
Year's Day. After this there was a less arduous spell,
though intermittent fighting still went on. Then, on the
26th of February 1916 came an order to proceed with all
haste possible to Bar-le-Duc. Though the section did not
know it yet, they were bound for Verdun.
In the last month of 1914, a French volunteer Red Cross
convoy, under the command of the Comte de K., was
working at Amiens. This convoy contained two British
y6 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
members. One of them was a Scottish gentleman who had
offered his car and his personal service to the French
Government in November, and had himself taken his car
out. He was afterwards, as we shall see, to take the leading
part in organising a Scottish convoy.
Fighting was going on about La Boisselle ; and the central
poste de secours was in a village on the Somme. The
wounded were brought to that point by stretcher-bearers,
or wheeled on hand-carts, or carried in horse ambulances.
Thence they were conveyed by the motor convoy to a town
in the rear. But tourist cars had to be impressed to carry
loads of wounded, even sometimes surgical cases after
operation. The work of evacuation went on under pressure
for three nights and two days continuously, in weather of
driving sleet-showers and cold rain, till all the hospitals in
the town were overflowing. There was a great scarcity of
ambulances.
These experiences prompted the Scottish member of
the unit, when his first leave came, to get more ambulances
from Scotland. He had already taken charge of an ambul-
ance sent from Glasgow, and now persuaded the Scottish
branch of the British Red Cross to send out three more.
Manned by volunteers, these were soon working hard, both
at Amiens station, where the convoy was attached to the
great evacuation hospital, and occasionally also at the front.
It was the time of the brilliant offensive undertaken by
the French between Arras and Lens, which captured
Carency, Notre Dame de Lorette, and Neuville St-Vaast.
But the extraordinary strength and elaboration of the
German defences made the cost very heavy : and the work
of the ambulances behind the front was correspondingly
severe. Five more ambulances came out from Scotland in
June 1915.
In this month the Comte de K decided to form a
new convoy for work in Flanders, leaving certain cars at
THE CONVOYS 77
Amiens. The Scottish volunteers, with their ambulances,
accepted the invitation to join this new Anglo-French
convoy, and arrived at Dunkirk on the 24th of the month.
On the day before, the town had been heavily bombarded,
and the men of the convoy had to clear their beds at the
hotel of broken glass and fallen fragments. The general
evacuation work of the district was assigned to them, with
headquarters at Bourbourg. Trains arriving from the front
were evacuated, and the wounded distributed among the
hospitals in and about Bourbourg and Dunkirk.
In July all the British cars of the section, known as
Section Sanitaire Croix Rouge 31, were removed to Bergues,
now deserted of practically all its inhabitants. Here they
were attached to a Depot des Eclopes, and collected the
wounded from a wide area. In August, four of the cars were
sent to the neighbourhood of Poperinghe, to work in con-
junction with four of the French cars of the convoy. The
ambulances were now getting considerably worn, though
the mechanical skill of the drivers kept them going. On
one day seven out of the eight cars broke down, but were
all repaired by the morrow.
Towards the end of the year the pioneer of the group,
whose original venture in taking his car out to France had
led to the group being formed, returned to Glasgow to form
a new complete convoy for the French front. His continued
appeals for ambulances had borne fruit : the Scottish
branch of the British Red Cross Society had given its
support ; a large number of cars was available.
The 'Convoi de PEcosse' was offered to the French Army
by the Scottish branch of the British Red Cross, through
the Comite de Londres, and was gladly accepted. The cars
were all supplied by individuals or societies in Scotland.
The drivers were volunteers, either over military age or
exempted men. The ambulances arrived at Versailles on
the 19th January 1916. There they were inspected, passed
78 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
for service, and forthwith became Section 20 of the Sections
Sanitaires Anglaises.
The eight cars of the Anglo-French group still continued
to work in Flanders. Of the development of their work,
as Section 20, we shall have more to say later on.
Meanwhile another complete section had been formed
under the auspices of the Comite de Londres. This be-
came Section 10.
Section 10 was formed in response to an appeal made to
owners of cars to offer their cars and their services as drivers
to France through the London (now the British) Committee
of the French Red Cross. By degrees the unit was gathered
together, and went over to France, where the members
received a course of convoy training at the French Auto-
mobile base.
When ready, the section was sent to Picardy, and attached
to a division. During the drenching rains of the early
winter of 191 5, it was occupied with the ordinary routine
of divisional ambulance transport at the front. The bad
state of the roads caused numberless motor troubles, but
the work was carried on gallantly ; the men were steadily
growing more intimate with all its details and absorbing
the spirit of their mission. They were soon to need all
their resources.
At the beginning of 191 6, Section 10 was moved farther
down the line. It was stationed at Crepy-en-Valois, at
Villers-Cotterets and in the Soissons district.
On 20th February the men of the section were quartered
in a little farmhouse. Warning had reached them to be in
readiness for a long journey eastwards ; and they were now
to start. Sections 16 and 17, of the British Red Cross, had
received a similar warning, as we have told already, two days
before, and started on this same 20th of the month.
Rumours of impending attack by the enemy were in the air,
and there was much speculation as to where he would strike.
THE CONVOYS 79
The general view was that it would be at Verdun. In those
days, as the Commandant of Section 10 has recorded,
Verdun was nothing more to them than the name of one
of the great eastern fortresses like Belfort and Toul. Now
it is a name spoken with a difference, and not lightly. It
has become a legend and a symbol of France, of her bleeding
heart and her victorious soul.
Eastwards the convoy made its way over the snow-covered
country. It passed through Chateau-Thierry and Vitry-
le-Francois, and on through that devastated region, of which
winter intensified the forlornness, to Bar-le-Duc. For two
days it was billeted in out-of-the-way hamlets. At last
came the order to report, the same night, at the headquarters
of the 20th Army Corps. Surmise was now a certainty.
The cars were headed for Verdun.
VERDUN
At midnight of the day on which it received orders to
report at headquarters, Section 10 arrived at a certain
barrack outside Verdun, which had been converted into
a field ambulance. The battle had already begun, and the
wounded were being brought in without ceasing. Long
before dawn on the following morning the men of the
section were up, and forthwith began work which went on
without intermission till the nth of March.
Who does not remember that sudden tension of feeling,
that apprehension of a huge menace, which came on us
all with the news of the first German blows on Verdun,
and which so soon was to hold the breath of Europe and
the world ? To the wide public, this attack by the enemy,
confidently launched in such force and mass, and so plainly
meant to be irresistible, was overpowering in its unexpected-
ness. We had come to think of the Germans as definitely
thrown on the defensive in the West ; and now we were
plunged back into a suspense that recalled something of
what we had felt in the days before the Marne. And in-
deed, whatever might have resulted from the fall of Verdun,
it still remains a marvel that the Germans did not succeed.
By the instructed, of course, this great enterprise of the
enemy's was anticipated. Germany needed a victory ;
she expected a general offensive by the Allies in the summer,
and she hoped, by luring them into premature attacks, to
spoil it ; if possible, she hoped to give France a mortal
blow — at the least, to regain mobility. There were reasons,
too, for choosing Verdun as the place at which to strike.
80
VERDUN 8 1
But into such questions we need not enter. Our business
is to try to see the battle as it appeared to our ambulance
men, working behind the firing-lines.
The fact that France, who had given and suffered and
done so much in stemming the onslaught of the invader
while Britain was gathering together her forces, was now
again summoned to meet so great an ordeal and again to
pour forth the blood of her sons like water, made these
Englishmen all the more determined to do their very utmost
in her service.
Nothing yet had been seen or heard on any front com-
parable to the tempest of shells which was rained by the
German artillery on the plateau beyond Verdun in those
first days of the battle. Ridges, slopes, and hollows were
battered with every kind of explosive, and the guns searched
insistently for the roads, in order to destroy or dislocate
the supply columns. Through this infernal hail the
ambulances of Section 10 had to drive. Gas shells and
lachrymatory shells were plentifully used, and sickening
fumes were added to the nerve-racking roar of the explosions.
By night the cars had to thread their way, always under fire,
through the endless supply columns on the road. The
sky pulsated redly with the glow from burning villages and
from fires in Verdun itself. During the night of February
the 24th snow began to fall ; at dawn the frost was bitter,
and the snow increased. The fighting continued furiously,
and the pressure of the ambulance work never relaxed.
It was not only at the posts that the cars had to collect the
wounded. There were endless calls for them on the way,
as the concentrated bursts of shelling struck among the
moving troops on the roads and wooded slopes. The cars
always brought down more than their full complement ;
they had sitting cases on the footboards, and even on the
wings.
The men of Section 10 were working to Postes de Secours
F
82 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
on the front, beyond Verdun ; and they will not easily
forget the crossing of the bridge over the moat into Fort
Tavannes, nor what they saw in the woods upon the Fleury
road. Fort Tavannes is on a spur just above the road
leading from Verdun north-east to Etain. Next to Fort
Tavannes northward is Fort de Vaux, and beyond that is
Douaumont. It was on the 25th, the day the snow began,
that the famous assault of Douaumont was made, and on
that evening the German Kaiser, who had watched it from
a hill within the enemy lines, telegraphed to Berlin his
boastful message that the key of the last defences of Verdun
had fallen into his hands. This, as we know, magnified the
facts considerably, y£t the moment was extremely critical.
During the four days of battle which opened on Monday,
the 2 1 st, four miles of ground had been lost. At the
opening of the attack the French lines lay far beyond the
ring of forts about Verdun ; they were at a distance from
the city of some eight miles in one direction and nine in
another. Well inside the lines was that plateau of wooded
ridges called the Heights of the Meuse, on which are
the forts of Douaumont and Vaux and Tavannes. The
plateau rises along the right bank of the Meuse, with Verdun
sheltered behind it. On its farther side, facing Germany,
it breaks abruptly down, with wooded ravines at intervals,
to the clayey levels of the Woevre, green with marshes,
gleaming with pools, and in winter deep in mud.
The French lines were out on the Woevre plain on
20th February, but by the 25 th they had been withdrawn
first to the skirts of the hills, and then still farther back
on the plateau itself.
The first attack had been of irresistible momentum, as
it was planned to be. A quite unheard-of number of heavy
guns had been massed in the cover of the woods of the
Woevre. Fresh troops were used for each successive
assault, and each soldier (according to a German war
VERDUN 83
correspondent) had been fortified to face the slaughter in
advance by receiving a daily ration of three and a half pounds
of meat. The mass of troops collected was enormous, and
fourteen railway lines made it easy to bring up more.
The defence had none of these advantages. Besides the
railway from St-Menehould to Verdun, which was exposed
to easy bombardment, there was only a single narrow-
gauge line, from Bar-le-Duc. The French positions had
been prepared with consummate skill by General Sarrail
in the autumn of 1914, but the trenches themselves and the
communications had not been kept in fresh repair during
the intervening period of quiet. The lines were held by
Territorials, Chasseurs, and Colonial troops, in number
only a third of the attacking forces, and during the first
assaults they were reduced to odds of one to ten. They
fought with superb tenacity, and the tactical skill of the
command enabled them to exact an enormous price for
every yard they yielded. But their own losses were severe
enough, as the men of the ambulances working behind the
lines had reason to know. Already the woods in the
plateau were becoming splintered and shattered, and the
roads broken up by shell-fire ; but without ceasing the
cars went to and fro with their loads of wounded. To
Section 10 had fallen the high honour of being the first of
the foreign ambulance sections to be sent to the front
beyond Verdun. They had won the Croix de Guerre as a
convoy, and now each car was entitled to have that cross
painted on it. But on the lines behind the city there was
equally vital service to be done. And we must return to
Sections 16 and 17, which on 21st February had arrived at
Baleycourt, a hamlet some three kilometres south-west of
Verdun on the main road to Clermont-en-Argonne, and at
once began to work from there to Clermont.
But already on the evening of the 21st, all traffic had to be
diverted through a village to the south, so heavy was the
84 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
shelling on the road and so many the holes broken into it.
As for the railway to Clermont, it no longer existed. No
lights could be carried on the cars, so the work of evacuation
was doubly difficult. Next day two French sections were
sent up to help the English sections. The hospital at
Baleycourt was soon filled. The cars then transported the
wounded on to field hospitals at Les Islettes, and other
places in the Argonne. Occasionally they had to run into
Verdun, which was already blazing in many places and was
hit by frequent shells.
The congestion of traffic in the road was now extreme.
The railway to Clermont and St-Menehould being now
rendered useless, all transport came by road. This situa-
tion had been foreseen. Plans in full detail had been
prepared a year before for supplying and doing all transport
service for a large army on the right bank of the Meuse,
independently of the railway, by road and motor lorry ;
and, as we know, this marvellously organised system, work-
ing day and night continuously, was the saving of Verdun.
But with this press of traffic it may be imagined that the
ambulance men found the work of evacuation as slow as it
was difficult. Yet as the German attacks continued, day
after day, with their tremendous violence, the stream of
wounded increased. No sitting cases could be taken on the
cars. All who were not on stretchers had to go on foot as far
as Baleycourt, where they waited for motor lorries returning
empty from Verdun. On each side of the muddy road,
thronged with its unending chain of thundering motor
traffic, the full camions going up to the city, and the empty
ones coming down, these wounded trudged, helping each
other along ; and mixed with them were limping fugitives,
old men, women and children, carrying what they could of
their possessions, and too exhausted to turn and see the
distant flames that from one point or another of the wintry
landscape marked their burning homes. On this forlorn
VERDUN 85
procession of wounded and homeless the heavy snow began
to fall. Two days before, a whole suburb of Verdun had
taken fire and was blazing. Movement on the road con-
tinued to be pitifully slow. The Commanders of the two
English sections arranged with the Baleycourt hospital to
have some large tents rigged up by the roadside. Here they
supplied as many as possible of the wounded with steaming
coffee, while they waited for a conveyance to take them on.
On the afternoon of the 28th February, the Germans
began to shell the railway and road that ran by the hospital.
By midnight the hospital had been entirely evacuated by the
English ambulances, helped by the French, and the patients
had all been carried to Vadelaincourt, another village farther
off. And now welcome assistance arrived. Section 2 (of
the B.A.C.) arrived — summoned from the Vosges — and
joined in the heavy work on hand. Vadelaincourt was in a
state of chaos. The hospital of sixteen hundred beds was
full to the doors ; and the wounded, famished and freezing,
crowded everywhere. The roads were so blocked that it
took sometimes two hours to go a single kilometre. Mean-
while an urgent telephone call from Verdun asked the
English sections to clear eight hundred wounded from some
barracks beyond the city which were being heavily shelled.
Section 16 was sent up ; but late on the 1st March the men,
who had been working day and night continuously for several
days, were so exhausted that the section was given a short
rest ; such men as could be spared from Sections 2 and 17
went up to relieve it and carry on the work. Yet Section 16,
after a few hours' rest, resumed it next morning, and com-
pleted it by evening.
Meanwhile Section 10 was working its hardest along the
road beyond Verdun and up to the advance posts, which
one by one were being withdrawn nearer to the city.
The character of the battle had now changed. On
25th February the Brandenburgers took the fort of Douau-
86 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
mont, or rather its ruins, but the Germans could not
establish themselves on the plateau, and they were driven
back to the edge of it on the 26th by a brilliant counter-
attack. General Petain had arrived on the day before.
Violent and massed attacks continued for a few days longer :
but when the month ended it was plain that the original
German plan of driving in the Verdun bulge by frontal
attack had failed. A new plan was put into operation. This
was to strike at either side of the bulge : and with March
began the battles fought on the right flank for the Fort de
Vaux, and on the left for the hills on the other side of the
Meuse, the Cote de l'Oie and the Mort Homme. Local
attacks of great intensity were made at intervals and at
widely separated points. The work of the English sections
varied therefore between spells of comparatively light service
and spells of exhausting effort.
On nth March Section 10 was relieved and went to rest.
The cars of the section were badly worn and strained. They
had done good service, but the tourist-chassis of the cars
was not really suitable for the rough conditions of the
front. This was reported to the Comite Britannique, and
new cars with truck-chassis were obtained through the
generosity of the British Farmers' Association. The section
was to return to Verdun before the summer was over, after
a spell in the Forest of the Argonne. Meanwhile Section 16
was relieved on 30th March, and went to the base for a
general overhauling of the cars ; while Section 18, which
had arrived in the course of the month, took its place in the
barracks just outside Verdun.
Section 17 continued to transport wounded from the
Tent Hospital de triage at Queue de Malat to Vadelaincourt,
Bar-le-Duc, and other places. The lightly wounded who
had come down on foot went on to Bar-le-Duc in the empty
lorries ; but for men in a state of exhaustion, as they often
were when they came down from the trenches, to travel
VERDUN 87
some thirty miles in the lorries over rough roads without
any food, was to run the risk of utter collapse. Section
17 therefore started a soup-kitchen, which from 6th March
to 3rd April (when it was no longer required) was kept going
night and day. Seventeen thousand bowls of soup were
given out, and the timely refreshment made a great differ-
ence to the wounded and worn-out soldiers — in some cases
perhaps the difference between life and death. The
Minister of the Service de Sante visited the camp during
March, and personally thanked the Section Commander for
this service as well as for all the work the convoy had accom-
plished. The cars, which had all been through the Cham-
pagne battle of the previous September, were now exceed-
ingly worn ; and on 2nd May Section 17 was withdrawn
for lighter work, and then sent back to the base for repairs.
New ambulances were sent out, provided by the Dennis
Bayley Fund.
During April the city of Verdun was again heavily bom-
barded, and Section 18 did fine service in bringing out
under fire the men who were wounded by the bursting
shells. So fierce was the bombardment, and so widespread,
that shells began to fall about the barracks where the convoy
was quartered. The section retired to tents a few miles
farther back ; and two days afterwards the barracks were
hit by big shells causing many deaths. The German lines
on both sides of the Meuse had by now been pushed nearer,
and Verdun and its communications southward were the
more exposed to the fire of long-range guns. But neither
the Mort Homme on the north-west, nor Fort de Vaux on
the north-east, nor the Cote de Poivre between them on
the north, had yielded either to furious local assaults or to
the general assault along the whole front by which, in this
month of April, the Germans hoped to make good at last
the failure of their first surprise attempt of February.
By now among the shattered woods young leaves here and
88 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
there were breaking forth, as if no senseless havoc had been
rained among their stems and branches — as if no infernal
fumes had crept about their roots, as if no tortured men had
moaned and expired beneath them in the darkness, frozen
as they lay.
The French soldiers, conscious that all the world was
watching their struggle, felt that they had proved them-
selves the better men. With the coming of spring and
kinder weather they were more than ever confident that
the enemy should never get through.
But though the gigantic battle had now subsided into a
sullen cannonade, with spasmodic onsets on the German
side, set off by rapid counter-thrusts by the French, and
though the struggle seemed over and victory won, the
Germans had not yet brought themselves to own defeat ;
the lull was not to last ; and a new struggle, as vast and
terrible as the first, began in May, to reach a climax of
intensity in the last days of June.
Section 2 had been moved up from Vadelaincourt on
1 6th April to a station at Queue de Malat, and was kept
exceedingly busy till the 20th of June, during the terrific
fighting of these two months, evacuating the wounded from
the whole sector which it served.
On the left bank of the Meuse, the Mort Homme, Hill 304,
and the wood and village of Cumieres were taken by the
Germans after incredible slaughter, before May was over.
But on this side, the French line, though pushed back,
held firm, and the Germans had gained nothing essential.
On the right bank the enemy advance was more menacing.
Douaumont had been taken by the French in a strong
counter-attack on 22nd May ; but the Germans recaptured
it three days later. Then, thrusting with all their force
and with massed battalions through the woods on the
plateau, they isolated Fort de Vaux. Heroically defended
for five days, the fort fell on 6th June.
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VERDUN 89
More efforts were made, with a prodigious expenditure
of shells and myriads of men. Thiaumont Fort, south of
Douaumont, fell next ; the village of Fleury, in front of
Fort Souville, the last great outwork of Verdun, was taken,
re-taken, taken again. But on the first day of July the
French went forward and regained Thiaumont. It was on
that same morning that the French and the English leapt
from their trenches on the Somme and began their great
attack. The thunder of the guns on the Somme soon had
its reverberating effect on Verdun. Yet heavy fighting
still continued; and Section 18 was so hard pressed with
the work it had to do on the Verdun road, that Section 17,
which had been repairing and refitting in a quiet quarter,
was called up towards the end of June to assist it. Section
16 was also helping. The rain at this time was almost
continuous, and the roads were slippery with mud.
In July, Section 16 relieved Section 17. On the fifth of
this month Section I of the B.A.C. arrived from Luneville.
Its cars were lined uj. in the main street of Dugny ; and in
the cars the men ate and slept for three weeks. They were
serving a Poste de Secours (taking turns with a French
section) near Fort Souville, which had been the scene of
such murderous fighting in June, and about which the
battle still swayed, since the Germans made repeated and
nearly successful attempts to take it. The road was encum-
bered at one place with a heap of dead horses ; at another,
batteries of 75 's fired over the cars ; it was often heavily
shelled by the Germans, and the noise was deafening. Section
2, which had been for three weeks in the Argonne, returned
on the 8th. Their division was on Hill 304 ; the Poste de
Secours was at the foot of the hill, and the road to it, for
some distance under the enemy's direct observation, was
strewn with wreckage of carts, dead mules and horses, and
with rolls of wire which got into the wheels and round the
axles. Most of the cars were hit.
9 o FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
But the tide had turned ; from now onward it was the
French who, bit by bit, advanced, and the Germans who
retired. The months between June and October were a
time of obstinate struggle. And in August, Section 10,
which had also been for a time in the Argonne, returned to
Verdun. Its division was the one which achieved the final
recapture of Thiaumont Farm. Every night it had twelve
cars at Verdun running up to the advanced posts until
daybreak, when began the work of clearing from Verdun —
still heavily shelled — to the different hospitals behind.
The mist over the river between one and two in the morning
was a great trial to the drivers. The section was cited
in Divisional Orders.
On the ioth of this month, Section 2 moved to the
right bank of the Meuse and evacuated from Fort Souville,
and another Poste just below the summit of the hills,
where shells shrieked continuously overhead.
During September Section 16 was moved down the
Meuse, beyond Verdun, and took up the duty of transport-
ing the wounded from Bras and Mont Grignon. Bras is
a ruined village, which lay close to the German lines,
exposed to machine-gun fire. Not a light could be shown,
not a sound must be made, in moving the wounded from
the Poste de Secours. Stretcher-bearers took the wounded
on hand-carts down to the bank of the Meuse Canal at Bras ;
then they were put on barges and towed to Mont Grignon.
The ambulances were stationed in that suburb of Verdun,
and drove them thence to hospital. Section 17 continued
at its post at Esnes, under Hill 304, and its duty was one
of constant danger. The stretch of road from one ruined
village to another was much exposed to shell-fire, and during
the midnight hours, when the supply and ammunition carts
were moving up, the enemy guns were always particularly
punctual and attentive. The road itself was not only
pitted with holes, but encumbered with wreckage of wagons,
VERDUN 91
Among the broken wheels lay dead and putrefying horses.
It was difficult enough to steer the cars among these
obstacles ; but at night the confusion was thrice confounded.
Endless transport columns moved up and down continu-
ously, and among them pack-trains of donkeys, used to
carry material of all sorts right up to the front lines, strayed
across the road, in their wayward fashion ; and all the while
the shells were screaming and exploding in the darkness.
The cars were often struck by flying fragments, but so skil-
fully were they driven that no serious accident befell them.
After three months of trying service, Section 17 was with-
drawn for a rest early in October. At the same time,
Section 2 returned from a rest to Verdun, and took up the
work of evacuating from Mont Grignon, in company with
Section 16.
But in this month of October great preparations were
toward. The French intended an advance in good earnest.
On the first of the month Section 18 returned to Dugny,
behind Verdun, and evacuated the wounded from a Poste
de Secours near Fort Souville. Both the post and the road
to it from Verdun was under constant fire. One car
standing outside the post was struck, and the front part
completely destroyed.
On the 24th a powerful and swift attack was delivered ;
and with little serious loss, so well had the guns done their
work, Douaumont was gloriously retaken.
During the days of this action, Section 16 and Section 2
shared the honour and the danger of serving their division
side by side. It has been told already how the wounded
were evacuated to Bras under close fire, and placed on
barges on the canal below. This duty had only been carried
out at night. But during the attack on Douaumont and
the severe fighting which followed, it was necessary for
Section 16 to carry it on by day as well. The weather was
thick and rainy, the roads narrow and slippery, broken by
92 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
shells and clogged by transport. But every car was kept
on the road (no small tribute to the efficiency of the work-
shop officer) ; and not only did the men perform their
duties as drivers with unflinching courage and endurance,
but some of them found time to re-dress great numbers
of hastily bandaged wounds and to prepare and keep ready
quantities of soup for the exhausted soldiers. Section 2
also did splendid service. Their work was particularly
dangerous ; nearly every car was hit, and one destroyed.
Some of the drivers' lives were only saved by their steel
helmets. The sections received the special thanks of the
General.
With Douaumont recaptured, the French felt increasingly
confident. A new stroke was prepared ; and with a sudden
onset, on 2nd November, Fort de Vaux was taken. The
attack was so well planned that it was irresistible, and was
carried through with but the slightest loss.
For a month and more there were desultory engagements ;
and then in December the heavy guns began their concen-
trated fire, and on the 14th the French advanced once more.
This time the positions assailed were on the Cote de Poivre,
which rises on theright bank of the Meuse,and at Vachereau-
ville, a hamlet below it ; immensely strong positions, held
in great force by the Germans. It was wet and misty
weather ; but the French artillery was directed and con-
trolled with consummate science, and almost before the
enemy were aware that they were being attacked, the
infantry were on them, and prisoners taken by thousands.
Two days before the attack Section 1 arrived from Com-
mercy, and Section 2 returned from another part of the line.
Both served their divisions during the battle with unwearied
devotion. There were many cases of trench feet among the
Moroccans ; for the weather was miserably cold and wet.
Section 1 was split into two detachments, and had specially
exhausting work in consequence. They won the Croix de
VERDUN 93
Guerre for the convoy ; and Section 2 (which had had
four of its men wounded at Verdun) received eight Croix
de Guerre for individual members, and one Medaille
Militaire.
Section 17 also, which had been serving on the north-east
of Verdun through the snow and sleet of November, moved,
just before the attack, to Dugny, crowded at the time with
the troops massing for action, and made shift to lodge in
tents pitched in a sea of mud. The attack was so successful,
and the German artillery reduced to such ineffectiveness,
that the section's work was not so dangerous as had been
expected, and few cars were hit. But the roads and all
the country-side were now (as the Commandant of the
British Red Cross Sections described in his report) in a
lamentable condition. The bombardments of the German
advance in the spring and early summer, and now the
bombardment accompanying the French advance, had
pounded old landmarks out of all recognition. Villages
were now mere sites. Their former inhabitants would not
have known their way upon familiar paths. The green
forests that had crowned the ridges and filled the hollows
of that wide, rolling plateau between the Meuse and the
Woevre, would shed their leaves in autumn and renew them
in spring no more. A few gashed stumps alone stood here
and there on the flayed and pitted surface of the hills. It
was absolute desolation. The bones of the horses of a gun-
team lying beside the wreckage of a gun ; skulls of German
soldiers, fallen in battles of the spring, picked clean by the
birds ; boots, still casing flesh, sticking up from the earth
that had buried a man ; all kinds of pitiable, moulder-
ing wreckage made a region of pestilential ruin. In such
charnel scenes were stationed the Postes de Secours, where
the English ambulance drivers waited for their cars to fill
with wounded, in dug-outs where the rats disputed posses-
sion with them, sometimes * as large as puppies.'
94 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Section 2 left the Verdun suburb where it was stationed
during the last battle, towards the end of December 19 16.
Section 17 moved yet farther to the east of Verdun, and in
the new year, after a brief rest, returned to the front near
St-Mihiel. Section 1 also left Verdun in January 191 7.
Section 18 continued work in the near neighbourhood of
Verdun for some months ; Section 2 also returned there
and served its division till the end of April 191 7. On that
date, Section 18 moved up beyond Verdun to a new Poste de
Secours at the Cote de Froide Terre, one of the heights of
Meuse. At this point the French had again advanced and
taken the German positions. At short intervals Section 17
moved on to new posts on the Heights of the Meuse beyond
Fort Tavannes, and at the end of May had extended their
service to a yet more advanced post at the Vaux Pond, on
a road which till then had been thought too dangerous to be
used. Early in June the service was extended beyond Bras
to a point not much over a thousand yards from the new
German lines, and the wounded were carried straight back
to Verdun and beyond on the ambulances, without being
transferred to barges on the canal, as before.
After a month's rest the section came back to Verdun.
Section 10 was also there. It was early in August. A new
great attack by the French was preparing. And now the
two Commanders of Section 17, English and French, being
intimate with all the roads on the front allotted to their
division, proposed to the General to take the ambulances
up to two posts so far advanced that hitherto no cars had
gone so far, and the wounded had always been carried down
from them by stretcher-bearers. But manifestly if the cars
could get there, the wounded would be brought down
much quicker ; and, though the roads were under more or
less constant fire, permission was given.
On 20th August the attack was launched. The positions
to be stormed were the Mort Homme and Hill 304 on the
VERDUN 95
left bank of the Meuse — heights which had cost so many-
thousands of lives in the preceding summer — and the Talon,
Hill 344, and Beaumont, on the right bank. These posi-
tions were all that were left of the German gains since their
first overwhelming assault in February 1916. They had
been made into fortresses of immense strength. With
their masses of men and guns, they seemed impregnable.
But after eight days of a terrible cannonade from massed
artillery, the French infantry sprang forward. Nothing
could withstand them. On the first day the Mort Homme
fell ; and one after another the impregnable positions were
carried.
Section 10 again distinguished itself during this attack
by its splendid work. On their right, Section 17 kept up
its service for two days and nights continuously to the two
advanced posts on the heights, though gas-shells with their
suffocating fumes as well as shells of every kind were rained
upon the roads. After the first day's advance, Section 17
pushed up to a new post in a quarry which the day before
had been a German First Aid Post. The wounded were
thus saved nearly three miles of stretcher-bearing, and in
honour of the section's enterprise the quarry was named
the Quarry of the English. After the attack the General
sent an officer to thank the section for their services, and to
say how the French rejoiced to have their English comrades
serving with them.
During September, powerful counter-attacks were made
by the Germans on the positions they had lost. Section I
was now once more at Verdun and found the roads, up and
down ravines and over ridges, worse than in any former
experience and more heavily shelled. Beyond Fleury
village, the very site of which was obliterated, even the
stumps of the trees had been shorn from the crests of the
hills. One man was struck by a shell, four others were
gassed (seven more had been wounded already in an accident)
96 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
and the cars suffered severely. It was the hardest and best
work the convoy had ever done.
But all these attacks failed of their object. On the 26th
August 191 7, the French line was substantially restored to
what it was in February 191 6. The wheel had come full
circle. The most tremendous and bloody battle in the
history of nations had been fought : myriads of German lives
had been given, myriads had suffered, and in vain. The
arrogant and eagerly anticipated hopes of a people and a
dynasty were buried in that vast grave of sacrificed nameless
men ; the green forests had been blasted from the hills ;
thousands of widows and orphans wept, and no one heard
them. This was the end.
It was not four years since the Crown Prince, the hero
appointed to victory at Verdun, had confided to Mr.
Gerard's American friend that he meant to have war * just
for the fun of it.'
AND AFTER
So far we have confined our chronicle mainly to the doings
of the sections when called on to serve during important
battles and engagements. But if these are the times which
test every faculty, and exact every ounce of endurance, the
service of the members is equally indispensable in times
when, as the bulletins tell us, there is ' nothing of interest
to report.' On the quietest of fronts men are always being
wounded ; and there is continual evacuation work to be
done to and from hospitals behind the lines.
Whether a section comes in for a frequency of exciting
spells or not, depends on whether it is attached to a
' holding ' or an ' attacking ' division. Hence some of the
English sections have had more, and some less, than their
share of the action and danger which all are keen to face.
But whatever they are called on to do, whether it be the
monotony of routine work or the arduous nerve-strain of
day-and-night exertion during a great battle, they work
with a cheerful will. Just because they are volunteers, they
will take risks that the regular convoys prefer to avoid.
The least interesting kind of work, useful and necessary
as it is, is that of evacuating trains, field hospitals, or
evacuation hospitals at the railhead. There are usually
out-lying hospitals to be served, and this work involves long
runs.
At the front the normal routine is as follows : — Regi-
mental stretcher-bearers carry the wounded from the
trenches, or the places where they have fallen, to the Postes
de Secours. These are placed as close behind the firing-
G
98 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
line as is practicable ; it may be two or three hundred, or
as much as two or three thousand yards. There the. wounds
are roughly dressed. The wounded are then sent on to a
Poste de Triage, where they are sorted out, and, if necessary,
have their hurts re-dressed. The lightly wounded are sent
from the Triage to a Field Dressing Station, whence they
can return to the front as soon as they are well enough :
more severely wounded are sent to the nearest Casualty
Clearing Station ; the very badly hurt are sent to a Field
Dressing Station till well enough to travel farther.
From the Poste de Triage backwards all the work is done
by the Section Sanitaire of the division. And now the
ambulances of the section almost always work the whole way
back from the Poste de Secours. It has been told how at
the time of the first gas attack in the Second Battle of Ypres,
the service of horse ambulances which brought the wounded
from the Poste de Secours broke down ; and a section of
the F.A.U. was among the first to replace the horse ambul-
ances, and the ' brouettes ' or light hand-carts which were
also used, with the far swifter automobiles. The roads
are not always practicable for these ; but the English
sections have shown a fine spirit of enterprise in pushing
up their motor service as near the firing-line as possible, as
during the last of the Verdun battles ; and in the difficult
mountain-paths of the Vosges, by starting a section of
motor cycles.
As the drivers of English sections rank as privates in the
French Army, they receive the regular pay of five sous a
day and army rations, which are supplemented out of mess
funds. Cooking is done in the roomy and well-equipped
caution cuisine or kitchen lorry. The workshop cars are
fitted up with lathes and a variety of machines which enable
them to tackle any kind of repair.
Billets are found in huts, tents, dilapidated cottages, or
ruined farms. Though many of the volunteers are men of
AND AFTER 99
middle age, there has been remarkably little illness among
them. And in spite of a number of casualties, the good
fortune of the sections has often seemed almost miraculous.
More than once or twice a post or billet just vacated has
been blown to pieces ; and the story we have told is testi-
mony to the storms of shell-fire through which they have
worked for days and nights, and survived.
And now let us return to the beginning of the year 1916,
just before the First Battle of Verdun, and see what was
happening on other parts of the front, and what new
developments had taken place among the English convoys.
In the Vosges, though little has been heard in the bulletins
of the fighting, Sections 4 and 5 of the British Ambulance
Committee continued their admirable and difficult work,
on relations of ever firmer friendship with their French
comrades.
During 191 6, various sections were working on the front
in the region of Luneville, of St-Mihiel, in the Argonne, in
Champagne, and on the Somme, as well as at Verdun.
In the extreme north, a number of British convoys were
working for the French. At Nieuport, the ambulances of
the Munro Corps, the story of whose aid to the Fusiliers
Marins during the defence of Dixmude has been told
already, continued their evacuation work. The number of
cars was increased from six to nine, with a motor workshop
and a small lorry. In June 191 7, the British Army took over
the sector, and the corps, after a few weeks' rest — the first
it had had since September 1914 — joined the French forces
stationed between the British and the Belgian armies. It
took part in the actions of the late summer and autumn of
191 7, when the French co-operated with the British in
their great offensive in the north of Western Flanders. One
of its cars was the only ambulance to cross the Yser Canal
during this campaign, and to travel over a great part of the
country so recently held by the enemy.
ioo FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
At the end of October, owing to the loss of old members
and the difficulty of recruiting new ones, it was found neces-
sary to disband the corps. It had had over three years
of active service at the front. Several of the members had
received the Croix de Guerre, and all those working in
France on October 191 7 were again mentioned in despatches.
When the corps left, the Medecin-chef of the army to which
it was attached, wrote to express his regret, his gratitude,
and his esteem.
To the Friends' Ambulance Unit, also, the Flanders plain
had come to seem a second home.
At the end of 191 5, it may be remembered, Section 13
left Dunkirk, and all the work connected with Dunkirk
station, and the hospitals centring on it, devolved on a
groupement of fifteen cars now formed to take its place.
Section 13 was stationed for more than half the year 1916
at Crombeke, a hamlet midway between Ypres and Furnes,
while Section 14 had its headquarters at Coxyde, a village
beyond Furnes, just on the border of that strange region
of the Dunes — high hills and hollows of blowing sand —
which divides the Flemish pastures from the sea. While it
was here, two of its members were unfortunately killed.
But at the end of August, Section 13 departed for the
pleasant woods of Compiegne — a two-days' journey. And
a few months later, Section 14 left their home on the coast
for the first time, and travelled southwards, to shift from
one uncomfortable billet to another in the region of the
Somme, a world of rain and mud.
We shall hear of these sections again. Meanwhile all
that was left of the F.A.U., in its old area, was the groupe-
ment. This continued its work at Dunkirk till September,
when a new full section was created, for which it supplied
the nucleus. The new section is known as Section 19. On
its formation the groupement suffered a temporary shrink-
ing, but after the quiet of the winter months regained its
AND AFTER 101
normal strength. Its work is carried out from four centres,
the most important being an evacuation hospital (sometimes
hit by shells or bombs), where sick and wounded arrive direct
from the front, and where it has cars on duty night and
day. It has been kept very busy, and has nearly rivalled the
records both for distances run and patients carried, of a
full convoy.
From September 1916, when it was formed, to midsummer
1917, Section 19 remained — with an interval at Dunkirk —
working on the coast at Coxyde, where Section 14 had
been before. It is the most northerly sector of the whole
Western Front — a country where floods are apt to invade
the floors of billets, and occasional sandstorms block the
roads and bury the cars in drifts. Such incidents diversify
the monotony of routine. Gas attacks, both by the French
and by the Germans, with heavy shelling, were the chief
events of this period. Towards the end of June this sector
was taken over by the British. Section 19 went into repos
with its division, but returned to the front in early August,
1 91 7, during deluges of rain ; and the successive great
attacks by the British, in which the French co-operated,
gave it plenty of work to do, though spells of quiet inter-
vened. Early in October, its division took part in a forward
thrust in front of the Forest of Houthoulst. The men were
warned overnight to have their cars ready by 3 a.m. As the
cars were parked in a field, it took the greater part of the
night to get them on the road ready for an immediate start.
By seven in the morning the wounded were coming back
to the post. The post would have been moved farther
up after the advance, had the state of the ground made it
possible ; but nothing could have got the cars over the
sloughs and swamps and flooded shell-pits. Numbers of
young German prisoners were requisitioned to help carry
the wounded over this chaos of mud and water, and, famished
though they were, did the work well.
102 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
A little later the section returned to its old quarters and
its old division on the coast. During its first year of
existence it had been only absent from the front for fifteen
weeks.
Besides the groupement of the Friends, there has been
another groupement working in the Dunkirk region. This
is the Groupement Croix Rouge of the Comite Britannique,
the nucleus of which was the British element in the Anglo-
French Convoy, of which an account has been given on
page yy. The groupement was formed at the end of
June 1 91 6 ; it consisted of eight cars, afterwards increased
to eleven, with eleven voluntary British drivers. Till
December of 191 6 it worked in the Boesinghe sector,
between the Belgians and the British, and took the wounded
from the trenches to a hospital at R.ousbrugge, and from
there to base hospitals behind. The men had a hard and
dangerous time during a formidable gas attack by the
Germans in August, but it performed its duties with fine
spirit, was mentioned in despatches, and won the Croix
de Guerre for several of its members. The sector was
taken over by the British, and for a few months, after a
rest, the groupement worked through bitter weather and
frequent air-raids at Dunkirk. Then it went back to the
sector in which Section 19 was working, and when that,
too, was taken over by the British, returned to Rousbrugge.
In August 191 7 the old ambulances (gifts from generous
donors in England and Scotland) were replaced by ten new
G.M.C. cars, a lorry and a workshop car, presented to the
Comite Britannique by the Scottish Coal-owners, the
National Union of Scottish Mine-Workers, and the Scottish
Branch of the British Red Cross. With these cars the
groupement has done admirable service. It helped
Section 19, among other occasions, during the attack we
have just described.
This Groupement Croix Rouge stands in a sort of
AND AFTER 103
parental relation to the Scottish Convoy, Section 20 — also
under the Comite Britannique — which we left at the time
of its first arrival in France at the beginning of 1916. Its
destination was Riquebourg, in the region of Compiegne ;
and within half an hour of its arrival it was working for its
division. Accommodation was scarce ; the room allotted
for eighteen men did not allow of all lying on the floor,
even on stretchers. Some space, however, was found in a
cellar. The ground was deep in snow, and drivers had often
a heavy task to dig their cars out of the snow and mud
in the morning, for they were parked under the trees in the
grounds of the chateau. On 21st February, the day of the
first assault on Verdun, the section was moved to take over
the service of another division. This was the division of
General Marchand, who expressed his pleasure at having
with him a British convoy. Here the front was lively, and
the cars were out night and day, under frequent shell-fire.
The section was complimented on its perfect regularity
in answering calls and on arriving always at the posts in the
minimum time allowed. Towards the end of June, the
section was moved to Western Champagne, and instead
of divisional duty on the front, undertook general Army
Service. For this purpose it was divided up into small
detachments, and did all kinds of evacuation work to and
from a large number of widely scattered places. The cars
were distributed over an area of something like a thousand
square miles. Needless to say, the maintenance of the
ambulances in good trim night and day, and the conveying
of their supplies, etc., demanded careful planning and a
great deal of sustained effort. After seven months of this
service, more arduous than exciting, all the cars were
gathered in under orders to leave. It was near the end
of January 1917, and the severe weather was at its bitterest.
Frost is no friend to motors ; and with the thermometer
some degrees below zero every night, it was impossible,
io4 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
with the most anxious precautions, to prevent radiators
from springing leaks and engine-casings from cracking.
Even warm water poured into protected radiators would
freeze before circulation took effect. After a short rest the
section took over the service of a division at the front, just
at the centre of the scene of the first battle of Champagne in
September 191 5. A detachment was kept in continuous
work at Suippes.
A second battle of Champagne was preparing, and troops
were massing behind the lines.
It was still wintry when, in the first days of April,
Sections 13 and 14 were moved to stations on the front
between Rheims and Suippes. For two months Section 13
had been in the Argonne, and Section 14 at Chalons. A
little earlier, Section 16 had been brought up from near
St-Mihiel to the same front. Section 1 arrived from
Verdun on the 13th of the month. Section 3 was posted
near the Butte de Mesnil. Section 10 was posted near
Section 20, but farther to the east.
On Monday, 16th April, a great offensive was launched
between Soissons and Rheims. On the following morning
the signal for attack was given on the east of Rheims, over
a front of near ten miles, the front which the English
sections were helping to serve.
For a full week the prelude of artillery had been thundering
without intermission, and with a violence that seemed
fantastic. The face of the landscape was pounded out of
shape. Here, as in the battle of September 191 5, was the
same desolate country, with frequent patches of fir, the
same powdery chalk soil, slimy after rain. And on the
Tuesday, when the French infantry sprang from the
trenches and went forward, the morning was raw and
gloomy, with squalls of sleet which turned sometimes to
rain, sometimes to snow. The German lines were in
positions of great natural strength, on a range of hills, the
AND AFTER 105
Moronvillers Heights, which overlooked the ground below,
so that every movement of the French could be plainly seen.
The lines, too, were held in great force. Nevertheless,
they were taken.
The highest national hopes had been built on this attack.
Unfortunately, they were not destined to be fulfilled
except in a very partial degree. But the first onrush was
splendid. From Mt. Cornillet eastward a line of heights
was carried. But on the left, where the enemy were
entrenched in a great wood, strong resistance was met and
the French advance was held up. The troops that had gone
forward on the right had to be brought back to keep the
line.
Of the English sections, perhaps Section 1 3 had the most
dangerous duty to perform. The Poste de Secours, from
which they had to bring down their wounded, was in a
wood, on the left of the line, where the attack was least
successful. The Poste itself was continuously bombarded ;
so was the whole stretch of road down which the cars had
to run ; so was the village to which they brought the
wounded. The stranding of some ( tanks,' near the cross-
roads where the cars waited, attracted the enemy guns' most
earnest attentions. ' It was not unusual in passing up and
down to find sentries, who had been passed an hour earlier,
lying dead at their posts, and the road in places blocked,
with dead convoy horses and some of their drivers.'
The night before the attack, one of Section 13's cars was
hit three times in succession by shells, absolutely smashed
and burnt : almost all the cars were struck by splinters ;
yet no one was killed, though two men were wounded, one
severely. Section 3 had like experiences ; five of its cars
were hit, and the men suffered from the gas fumes.
Section 1 was at first called on to work wherever occasion
demanded, as its division was split up and used as reinforce-
ments. For a day or two the cars were lined up in the middle
io6 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
of the French batteries, and the men had exciting times.
But on 25th April, Section 1 moved a little farther east
(their old quarters being bombarded, and many killed, an
hour or two after they left them), and till the middle of
June they were working up to Postes in the fir-woods in
front of the heights called the High Hill and the Hill
Without a Name. They were fortunate in escaping with-
out casualties, but won coveted distinctions from the
General in command.
Section 16 served a Poste de Secours in a village, as well
as another Poste, much farther advanced, in the woods. It
fell to them to be frequently bombarded with gas-shells ;
but, though one of their men was badly gassed, the poisonous
fumes did not prevent them from going cheerfully to and
fro upon their duty. Section 14 and Section 20 worked
side by side farther to the east on the line of attack. The
General of the division to which Section 14 was attached,
wrote later to congratulate it, and to thank the officers and
men for their ' precieux concours,' the regularity of their
service, their coolness and devotion. ' The wounded
French soldiers are grateful to their English comrades for
having brought them such swift and efficient help.'
No less praise was given to Section 20. They too had
the gas to fight, and were forced to abandon several of their
cars in a cloud of gas during the night and bring them in in
the morning. The long frost broke during these days of
battle ; much rain fell, and the roads were in a state of
dissolution. Nevertheless all the wounded were brought
back safely. The bombardment was at times terrific. The
headquarters of the section was a ruined farm. A six-inch
shell came through the roof of the shed in which their cars
were stalled ; and though it did not explode, it brought
an iron joist tumbling down on the top of one of the cars,
and then crashed through the engine of another car along-
side. Had it burst, many of the men, who were working
AND AFTER 107
in the yard, would have been blown to bits. At the Poste
de Secours the section was less fortunate. Here a wheel
of a waiting car was struck off by a shell, and its driver was
killed. He was a boy of seventeen who had volunteered for
service in our own army, but had been drafted out when his
age was discovered. Not to be baulked in his desire for
action, he joined the Scottish Convoy. He had been with
it only three weeks, yet had already earned the highest
praises. But all the section did their duty with conspicu-
ous bravery, and several of its members won the Croix
de Guerre.
Section 10 was posted a little east of the battle front, but
during the days of the attack they were called on many a
time for special efforts.
About the middle of May the French went forward again,
and captured the whole of the hills which were still in the
hands of the enemy ; and Section 2, which had come up
from Verdun, served its division during the action, winning
Army Corps ' citation ' and Croix de Guerre for four of
its men.
There is much more that might be told in detail about
the doings of the various convoys. But enough has been
described to enable the reader to picture the kind of experi-
ence which is theirs ; the great battles and campaigns in
which they have borne their part ; the trials of mud, rain,
and snow, besides the assiduous attentions of the enemy's
artillery — bursting shells and choking gas — through which
they must keep their cars going and in good trim ; the cares
of sensitive engines ; yet with all this the satisfaction of
doing good service for that splendid Army of France to
which for the time they have the pride of belonging, of
making firm friends with their French comrades, and of
saving many a life by their promptitude, skill, and endurance.
But our tale is not yet complete ; for we have not yet
to8 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
made mention of another convoy of the French Red Cross,
which serves, not in France, but in the Balkans.
In October 1916, the Comite Britannique received a
request for a motor ambulance convoy from the Mission de
Co-Ordination des Sccours aux Armees d'Orient. The
Balkan Convoy was at once planned and soon brought into
being. When complete, it consisted of fifteen ambulances,
a staff touring car and workshop and repair car, manned
by twenty-eight British voluntary drivers and mechanics.
By the New Year, all was ready, some tons of stores included.
During January the convoy was stationed in Surrey, learn-
ing perfection by practice, and at the end of the month was
reviewed in Hyde Park by the French Ambassador.
On 3rd March 191 7 the convoy arrived in Salonika Bay ;
and a few days after the whole unit was in camp outside the
town. On the 12th the start was made for the front. On
the second day Ostrova Lake was reached, and on the third
Banitza. Here the convoy divided. Eight cars went to
Fiorina, the rest to Slivica, close to Monastir. From Slivica,
well up in the firing-line, the wounded were conveyed to
Sakalevo, fifteen miles away ; and from Fiorina to Exisson.
For its good work and speedy transport of the wounded, the
convoy has been warmly thanked by one of the chief medical
officers of the Eastern Army. ' Your section,' he wrote,
' has been not only useful, it has been indispensable.'
Later in the year the convoy was reinforced by more cars,
and by fresh drafts of voluntary drivers.
Among the drivers of the Balkan Convoy was a young
Irishman, who had vainly tried to enter the British Army,
but had been rejected for ill-health, and who died at Salonika.
In his last letter he wrote : —
' The risks, as days go by, seem of smaller and smaller account.
I miss many, very many of the little luxuries of home, but I have
enough and to spare. We are all so prone to put our own selves
AND AFTER 109
before the part — and it isn't a big one — we are playing in stemming
the tide of human suffering that never seems to ebb. . . .
' While in the main we are happy, we never cease to talk of home.
Daily we conjure up what we shall do when that great day of peace
shall dawn, the hours we shall laze in the morning between sheets
of snowy white, the meals we shall have . . . the visits to our old
haunts. There is much to do in the meantime, work which will daily
bring us near to suffering and self-sacrifice, and teach us perhaps some
lessons in unselfishness and bring us nearer to finding our souls. On
the whole there is renewed courage out here, and the hope of
brighter '
The letter ends abruptly, for the writer's hand was cold.
In the words of this young ambulance driver one recognises
the fine essence of the voluntary spirit, by which the work
of the Red Cross is animated and inspired. Disguised it
may be by the grumbling which is our cherished English
prerogative, and rarely expressed in language, it is there ;
and with it goes the readiness to answer all calls, to refuse
no service, whether in the bond or no, to acknowledge no
defeat. ' What I like about you,' said a French officer to
one of our convoy leaders, ' is that you will go anywhere / '
It remains to say something of the convoy work of English
women. The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps (some-
times familiarly known as ' Fanny ' and more affectionately
spoken of than the armed and intimidating ' Dora ') was
originally raised in 1909 and was trained on the lines of
the R.A.M.C. training for stretcher-bearers and orderlies.
All members of the corps are volunteers. Since the out-
break of the war it has done a great amount of varied and
valuable work for the Belgians and the British as well as
for the French, some of it of a pioneer character. From
October 1914 to October 1916 the corps maintained a
hospital for Belgian wounded at Calais. Associated with
this was a Belgian Convoy, with about twenty women
drivers, which has on emergencies worked for the French
wounded. These occasions were rare during the first two
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years, but have been more frequent since 1916. The convoy
has also undertaken the work of collecting the wounded
during the bombardments of Calais from the air and from
the sea. During 1917, especially in the autumn, these were
frequent and severe ; and the promptness and intrepidity
of the drivers have won warm praises and thanks from the
Governor of Calais. In July of 191 7 the Commandant of
the Belgian Convoy made a formal offer of a F.A.N.Y.
Convoy for the French Army. This was accepted, and in
August she was asked to send a convoy of twenty drivers to
Amiens. Drivers were collected, and the convoy set to
work, under a French section, this same month. At
Amiens there was no lack of work, including much night
service. The cars were old and out of condition ; but
the French Commandant of the ' Region,' seeing how
the members of the F.A.N.Y. cared for their cars, pro-
vided new ones. The convoy was settling to its duties
when in September it was ordered to move from Amiens,
and was transferred to Villers-Cotteret, and thence to
Chateau-Thierry. In November another convoy of ten
drivers took up work at Epernay, where it is attached to
the evacuation hospital. Yet another convoy is to work
at Chalons.
An independent unit of women-drivers, known as the
Hackett-Lowther Unit, was founded in August 1917.
These Englishwomen draw soldiers' rations and form a
military unit like the sections whose work we have been
following; and, though they do not work on the actual
front, they do valued service in transporting the wounded
to and from evacuation hospitals and stations on the
railways. They drive by night and by day, wherever they
are sent.
Lastly, over and above the work of the convoys, it should
be realised that there are some three hundred British cars
serving various French hospitals, independently, dispersed
AND AFTER m
all over France. Some details of the type of work done
have been given on pp. 26-27.
If now we resume for a moment that aerial vantage-
point from which we began, we shall seem to see, scattered
here and there along those hundreds of miles of the French
front — from the wind-blown dunes of Flanders to the rocks
and pines of the Vosges, in the defaced valley of the Somme,
the forests of the Argonne, the chalk-downs of Champagne,
the fire-scorched Heights of the Meuse — little companies
of Englishmen with their grey Red Cross cars, driving the
wounded to train and hospital, or going up to the posts
where the guns are flashing and destroying. It is not they
who will magnify their efforts ; they have seen, they know,
what the soldiers of France endure. But they have woven
into that heroic stuff a bright thread of English comradeship.
They know that they also serve.
THE HOSPITALS
HOSPITAL SUPPLY DEp6tS : AND THE FRENCH WAR
EMERGENCY FUND
We propose to describe the hospitals in the order of their
foundation. But before launching on the story of what
has been done for the French soldier by our hospital
workers in France, let us try to complete our survey of
what has been done in Britain ; for supply, as every one
knows, is as important as the firing-line.
In writing of the activities of the Comite Britannique we
noted that, besides sending out supplies on its own account,
it forwards every day consignments of supplies of all kinds
needed by the hospitals — the purely French as well as the
Anglo-French — which have been made or collected in various
parts of the country and are sent through the Comite to
France. Where do these supplies come from ?
All over these islands, very soon after the war began,
voluntary workers banded themselves together to form
Working Parties and Hospital Supply Depots and devoted all
their time, or as much of it as they could spare, to making
things for the comfort of the wounded. During the first
year of the war a great amount of this work was devoted to
the French. In the earlier months, especially, more was
done for the French than for the British, as our new armies
were not yet in the field, and the heroic efforts of France
in beating back the invader and in holding her vast battle-
front, with all the suffering it had cost her, demanded and
received our ardent sympathies. All day in the depots
there were women making sleeveless vests and bandages
112
THE HOSPITALS 113
from French patterns ; and at night numbers of women and
girls, tired with a long office day, would come to spend their
evenings in these labours of love. What more touching
proof, to Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, of the feeling that
France inspired ? In one case at least, that of the Belgravia
Supply Depot, the foundress was enabled to journey to
France and visit many hospitals, in order to find out their
individual needs ; and this depot alone has sent supplies
to over two hundred and fifty hospitals.
With the rapid and huge growth of our own armies,
the ever-augmented number of fresh hospitals, and the
ever mounting totals of sick and wounded, the supply
depots — themselves continually expanding and increasing
in number — became, naturally, more and more absorbed
in the effort of providing for our own troops. But they
have by no means ceased to send consignments to the
French hospitals. In Part IV. of this book will be found a
lists of the depots which have supplied the French, as well
as the British ; and it will be seen that they are spread over
every part of the British Isles.
The Hospital Supply Depots (as also the Work Parties
and Regimental Associations) worked, during the first year
of the war, quite independently of each other. They
worked independently also of the Red Cross Society, which
strictly abstains, according to the Geneva Convention, from
aiding any but the actually wounded soldiers. Hence
much overlapping and a good deal of waste. Therefore in
September 191 5, the Army Council, determined to make
all this voluntary effort as effective as possible, created a
new department, that of the Director-General of Voluntary
Organisations. This department has co-ordinated all this
vast and widespread effort, organising it under officially
recognised County, Borough, and District Associations.
All work is done on requisitions sent out from the central
office of the department. The gifts which are set apart
H
ii 4 F0R DAUNTLESS FRANCE
for French hospitals are usually sent to France either
through the Comite Britannique or through the French War
Emergency Fund. This last is an important society, whose
activities call for a particular description, and to which we
shall come in a moment.
Besides all these voluntary organisations in the British
Isles, there are one or two similar enterprises carried on by
English people in France. Such is the Society ' Pour les
Blesses,' which works in the bastion close by the Porte
Dauphine in Paris, and makes simple surgical appliances not
usually supplied to hospitals, and increasingly difficult to
procure in adequate quantities, for the French wounded.
The war has brought extraordinary ingenuity to bear on
the problems of adjustment and support for broken limbs,
and papier-mache splints are made to suit every case. This
society was formed under the authority of the French
Government, and the Service de Sante supplies workrooms,
lighting, and heating. The workers are chiefly English
ladies, and give their services. The demand for the appli-
ances far exceeds the production ; and it is hoped to
extend and develop the society's activities.
Private enterprise has also undertaken the collection of
gifts and money for the French wounded ; for example,
the ' Anglo-French Aid Depot ' at Dieppe, organised and
managed by an English lady, which since September 1914 has
distributed comforts of all kinds to the various French hos-
pitals in the district. This depot also arranges to meet trains
and help mothers and children who are travelling alone.
And again, there is a fund, promoted and administered
by the wife of the Commandant of the B.R.C.S. convoys
with the French armies, while working in a French hospital
at Montreuil.
At the beginning of 191 6 were started ' Ateliers pour
Fabrication et Fourniture aux Hopitaux de Guerre,' which
have done admirable work. These ateliers have been
THE HOSPITALS 115
organised by a Scottish lady. She opened her first ouvroir
at Mentone, where willing workers were found during the
winter, and at Aix-les-Bains in the summer. Later, a
workshop was started at Nice, and in the winter of 191 7 a
branch was opened at Marseilles solely for the making of
light papier-mache splints (invented by an Englishwoman),
for which the ateliers have been specially noted. Pilous for
the amputated, of a model invented by a Danish surgeon,
are another appliance in which the ateliers have specialised.
This is perhaps the fittest place in which to say a word of
the gifts to the French wounded from the British dominions.
Large supplies have been issued to each of the French
Red Cross Societies by the Canadian Red Cross ; and it
has supplied some three hundred French hospitals direct.
About five thousand cases of supplies are distributed from
these stores every month. The French Government has done
everything in its power to assist ; it has built five large store-
houses for the Canadian Red Cross and placed lorries at its
disposal for distributing supplies, either to the stations of
Paris, or directly to the hospitals. Canada has two hospitals
in France for the French, and has given great gifts in cash. 1
Nowhere in the Empire has the name of France evoked
more fervent feeling than in Australasia. Vast quantities
of stores have been sent to the French hospitals (the cloth-
ing and comforts being noticeably the very best of their
kind), and public collections have been an occasion, not of
perfunctory giving, but of abounding and heart-prompted
generosity. Complete figures are not available ; but the
collections made in Australasia for French War Relief Work
to the end of 191 7 cannot fall far short of £500,000. The
Ligue Franco-Australienne, founded in December 1914, has
given funds and sent a vast amount of clothing for wounded
and active soldiers, rapatries, widows, and orphans.
The New Zealand Hospital for Rapatries and the unit
1 Further details are given in the Addenda.
n6 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
of trained nurses sent by the Australian Red Cross will
both be mentioned later on. But one may add here, in
evidence of the eager efforts of Australasia to help, that
many Australasians rejected for active service have joined
the British Ambulance Convoys.
The South African Hospital at Cannes will be described
in its place ; and South Africa has also contributed gifts of
money.
India and Ceylon, Singapore, Trinidad, Mauritius, New-
foundland, Malta, Gibraltar, all have collected sums and
sent them to the French Red Cross for the relief of France's
wounded.
And now we come to the French War (originally French
Wounded) Emergency Fund.
At 44 Lowndes Square, in London — a house provided
free for the purpose by the landlord — the fund has its
headquarters. The house is no mere office for clerical
business ; it is the scene of strenuous labour, where ladies
who are voluntary workers, unpack, sort, and pack again,
the endless stores destined for hospitals in France. This
is no light occupation. The bales which are to be de-
spatched contain things like boots, deck-chairs, splints,
crutches, games, as well as clothes and gauze and lint and
drugs ; operating-tables have occasionally to be sent, and
now and then an X-Ray apparatus. And to pack neatly
and well in square bales sewn up in sacking is an art requiring
both skill and patience, not to speak of endurance. Also,
after a time, it is not exciting. But here are cheerful
givers of their time and toil, knowing what a joyful welcome
each bale will have at the end of its long journey.
And let us not forget to record the generous act of the
Pantechnicon Company, famous storers of furniture, who
give to the Fund, three days a week, the use of vans and
horses, and also storage free.
THE HOSPITALS 117
In one of the rooms at Lowndes Square you may see a
large map of France marked out into ' regions ' and showing
all those where the fund is active. There are now but
few parts of the country where the military hospitals have
not been served by the fund : its ubiquitous activity is
astonishing.
It should first be explained that the fund concentrates
its energies on the Military Hospitals of France, as dis-
tinguished from the Red Cross Hospitals. Since there are
4307 military hospitals, there is plenty of scope even for
the abounding energies of which the fund is mistress. Yet
up to the end of 191 7 no less than about 3000 of these
were supplied with needed stores, and nearly double that
number of appeals were answered.
In London large purchases of hospital necessaries are
made. Like the stores which come in from the provincial
centres, they are made up into bales and forwarded across
the Channel, direct to the hospitals requiring them.
In Paris, at the Porte Dauphine, close by the entrance
into the Bois de Boulogne, is the fund's Paris entrepot.
The stores are housed in two baraques — clean and roomy
wooden warehouses among a row of others devoted to like
purposes. Here all the various articles sent over from
England are numbered and arranged in their proper places
on the shelves, with an admirable neatness. There have
been occasions when a' sudden crisis made demands too
urgent for London to supply in time, and the Paris ware-
house was then able, by clearing out all its stock in a day and
despatching it, to fulfil the need and superbly vindicate the
title of the fund.
But how is it possible to know what all the military
hospitals in France are in need of ?
Do not imagine a promiscuous plumping of big bales
of what shops call * assorted articles ' — a miscellaneous
selection of things presumed to be of use — on unknown
n8 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
recipients. The method is as simple as it is efficacious.
All that is needed is the constant service of a group of
ladies, giving their whole time and energy to the unpaid
work, and scattered about the provinces of France, with a
supply of motor cars for their use. Need it be said that
these indispensables are forthcoming ?
The ladies in question, chosen for their knowledge of the
French language and French ways, and for other winning
attributes, have each a headquarters in some town at a
central point of the region which they serve. And, driving
cars put at the disposal of the fund, each of these delegates
visits all the hospitals in her region, interviews the Medecin-
chef, the heads of the Pbarmacie, and the Lingerie, and
talks to the nurses ; and she is thus able not only to bring
away a precise list of what each hospital requires, but to form
an independent opinion of its merits as well as its needs.
The lists of requirements thus sent in are submitted to a
special committee at Lowndes Square ; and if the com-
mittee is satisfied that the need is real and urgent, precisely
those things are packed and despatched forthwith.
If you have ever seen the face, or shared the feelings, of a
matron presiding over the unpacking of a Red Cross bale,
which bulges with splendid promise of so badly needed
bandages (let us say), but finally discloses through the
ripped sacking and waterproof paper nothing but pyjamas
after pyjamas (of which the hospital chances to have more
than enough already), you will understand the beautiful
satisfactoriness of the French War Emergency Fund's
method. There is no waste, no overlapping.
And the workers themselves feel, I doubt not, well repaid
for all they give by the knowledge of the reality of the help
and the sincerity of the appreciation with which it is wel-
comed. Let us quote some sentences here and there from
the letters received at Lowndes Square in a single week of
last year, because these will say more than any eloquence.
THE HOSPITALS 119
Note that practically every letter has a word for what one
of them calls the ' emballages si habilement confectionnes.'
From a French Hospital Ship plying between Salonika
and Toulon
' I cannot tell you how grateful I am for such a splendid stock of
clothing, etc. How I longed for such a stock on my last voyage, for
while in dock at Malta we had about four hundred survivors from the
French troopship Santoy brought on board in a drenched and
miserable condition, some of them badly wounded, having been
crushed between the boat and the rafts as the ship was sinking.
Naturally, most of them had lost all they had, so you may imagine
what a comfort dry warm clothing would have been to us. Not
even a comb saved among the officers, and my own had to go the
round ! Many, many thanks to you and the Society for such a
splendid gift.'
From Toulouse
1 All the articles sent proved of the greatest value to our dear
patients ; you have done us an immense service, for our linen left
something to be desired. . . . Our patients thank you for all your
generous gifts — linen, bed-tables, mattresses, blankets, and games.'
From Marseilles
' The drugs are all the more welcome since they are now so costly
in France.'
From another Hospital at Toulouse
1 All has arrived complete and in excellent condition. You can
hardly imagine what a help it will be. Many of the things are out
of our reach, and yet so useful : the rubber articles, the woollen
things, etc'
From St-Remy de Provence
1 If your country had ever to suffer what ours is suffering now,
the hearts of Frenchmen would remember and do more than their
utmost to return their generous and gallant brothers-in-arms all
the kindness they receive from them to-day.'
From VIsle
1 Your superb package has just arrived. . . . We can use every-
thing, even to the wrappings. . . . Thanks, a thousand thanks, to
120 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
have combined the useful and the agreeable in what you have sent.
Our dear sons of France will love the people of Britain, already so
much esteemed, all the more. . . . And we, good Frenchwomen,
share their enthusiasm. The scarcity and dearness of everything
make us appreciate the gift the more keenly. . . .'
From Alais
' Each thing unpacked gave us an extreme pleasure. Much was
lacking here . . . particularly the indoor clothes, for we had nothing
left for our sick and wounded, but old waistcoats and trousers mended
to excess. . . . We shall remember your visit like that of one sent
by God.'
From Cavaillon
1 What was our admiration, our surprise, our joy on undoing the
bales. Nothing has been forgotten.'
From Antibes
* Thanks to your kindness, some of our soldiers are now able gladly
to stretch themselves on a chaise longne in the sun, and others to sit
up more comfortably in bed, to write and play games.'
From Marseilles
' Everything will be most useful, for the long duration of the war
has greatly diminished and worn down our first year's stock.'
From F rives
1 What a solace, what an encouragement, to know that far from us
generous hearts are working devotedly to alleviate the sufferings
of the soldiers of France.'
If you remember that these lines are extracted merely
from some of one week's letters of acknowledgment, you
will have an inkling of the extent and the beneficence of the
work of this society during the three years and more of its
activity.
When the Chairman of the Executive Committee and
the Secretary showed me the various rooms at Lowndes
Square, and when I contemplated the piles of. warm clothing,
THE HOSPITALS 121
the crutches, the sticks, the chairs, the games, the little
comforts, all arranged in order, my mind carried me away
to distant hospitals in France : I saw the arrival, the un-
packing ; the folded empty clothes filled themselves with
comforted limbs ; I saw the pleasure in the eyes of wounded
men getting up for the first time ; I heard the laughter and
jokes of their comrades, the talk between nurses and patients,
as the things from England are shown and discussed and
admired ; the luxurious sinking-back into a new chair, the
trying of a new air-cushion. . . .
And how did this fund come into existence ? It was
an English lady who, with one or two friends first conceived
the project of collecting medical stores and comforts and
sending them to France. Once determined on, friends
rallied to the idea as an effective means of proving this
country's admiration for the French soldier.
This was in October 1914, when, as we have seen, the
tremendous force and rush of the German onslaught on
France had beggared at the outset all anticipations of
hospital needs — just as the estimate of guns and munitions
was also to prove so tragically inadequate.
The seizure of the chief industrial districts of France had
intensified those needs ; and inevitably they were increasing
every day. Even the superb effort made by the French
Government and nation to provide the Service de Sante
with the means to care for the wounded, while all the
national forces were taxed to repulse the enemy's invasion,
proved quite insufficient to equip all the hospitals which
had been hastily created. Indeed that would have needed
years of previous preparation and organisation on a scale
hitherto undreamed of.
Hence the project was of the utmost practical value.
Willing helpers were not wanting. The work grew apace.
London headquarters were found in Lowndes Square. The
French Government granted free entry into the ports and
122 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
free carriage on the railways for the supplies sent over by
the Fund, and provided the warehouses in Paris at the
Porte Dauphine.
With time, the character of the work has somewhat
changed, and at the same time greatly extended. Originally
the fund was intended to meet the great emergency of the
German invasion. No such overpowering emergency has
arisen since ; but the long lines held by the French armies,
the gigantic strain and burden thrown on them during the
two years in which they bore all the brunt of the fighting
on the Western front, the vast number of refugees which
France has on her hands, besides the wounded and sick : all
this has made the help of the French War Emergency
Fund very acceptable to the Military Hospitals, which are
not as a rule supplied by the French Red Cross. The
French Red Cross has some seventeen hundred hospitals
of its own to serve ; and the fund has therefore decided to
devote itself exclusively to the Military Hospitals.
For though these hospitals are equipped with what is
absolutely necessary, and the shortages of 1914 have been
made good, it can readily be imagined that there is endless
scope for supplementing this with wheeled chairs, cushions,
hot-water bottles, extra garments, invalid foods, and other
comforts, of which no hospital probably ever gets quite as
much as it would like.
Among these ' extras ' is a mechanical bed, devised for the
Fund, that can be adapted to various shapes : for carrying
as well as for sitting or reclining.
In the course of rather more than a year some half-million
garments and a quarter of a million bandages were dis-
tributed, among countless other things ; and since then
the amounts have greatly increased.
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS
1914
Visitors to Nice who take the tram or — rarely energetic —
walk to Monte Carlo, along the road which climbs the hills
and curves above the blue bays of the Mediterranean, will
have passed a white building standing a little back from the
road in a steep garden on the wooded face of Mont Boron.
This is the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital. It was Nick
founded in 1906, and intended for such necessitous British
or American visitors to the Riviera as were in need of
hospital treatment.
When war broke out, the number of regular patients
being few, and likely to grow greatly less, it was at once
decided, on the 3rd of August 1914, to offer the hospital
to the French Government for the use of the French
wounded. The offer was gratefully accepted. The matron
and assistant-matron were sent out, with other nurses, as
quickly as possible ; and in a short time the hospital began
to take in sick and wounded from the French armies. Till
November 191 7 this was an Hopital Benevole, but in that
month it was taken over by the French military authorities,
the English staff remaining. This was, of course, an
exceptional case. Practically all the hospitals we are to
speak of were improvised for the needs of the war. And in
these first months it was indeed a case of improvisation.
Each of us, I suppose, in looking back to those early days Namur.
of a now irrevocably altered world, has in his memory some
pictures more distinct than others, or remembers some
moment that brought home to him with peculiar vividness
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124 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
the tremendousness of the events taking place with such
fearful rapidity within what used to be but a few hours'
journey from these shores.
Nothing of those memories comes back to the writer
with a sharper shock than the sight, one August afternoon
when he came out from his work into the streets, of an
orange placard with the legend in great capitals — FALL
OF NAMUR. So much had been staked upon the holding
of that famous fortress. It was the pivot of the Allies'
defending tactics. And it was gone, like a child's sand-
castle in a rising tide ! Could we have been there, we might
have seen a group of English nurses — they were the only
professional nurses in the place — tending the wounded,
French and Belgian soldiers, women and children also, in
a convent building. When they looked from their convent
window, shaken every moment by the shocks of explosion,
they could see columns of infantry and batteries of artillery
clattering past with all the signs of hurry and confused
retreat. A tragic mistake had been made. The huge
German siege guns had been allowed to approach too near
under cover of the summer mists ; and the pounding to
pieces of the forts, from a distance at which the Belgian
guns could not answer, was a mere matter of time. And
no long time either ! Yet, so secure had the defenders
felt themselves, that no plans for an orderly retreat had been
made.
The English nurses remained with their wounded.
This record is not strictly concerned with the hospital
and ambulance work done in Belgium. But at Namur
there were French troops as well as Belgians, and here
therefore our story begins.
It was on the 16th of August that this hospital unit of
eight trained London nurses, with a surgeon from Guy's
— known as the Millicent Sutherland Ambulance — arrived
at Namur. Just six hours after their arrival communications
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 125
were cut. A hospital was installed in the Couvent des
Sceurs de Notre Dame. Beds were prepared for the
wounded in the large school of the convent, and the nuns
undertook the cooking. All the beds were filled on the
first day of the bombardment. Women and children were
wounded by the bursting shells, and these had to be tended
too.
The bombardment lasted three days. Then the Germans
entered the town.
The English nurses were ordered to Maubeuge. But
Maubeuge, when they reached it, was already in German
hands, and there was no work for them to do. They were
given passports to England, but, instead of arriving at
Boulogne, found themselves in Brussels. Here they were
ordered into Germany ; but owing to the good offices of
the American Minister, they succeeded in escaping to
Holland, and thence home. Unfortunately all or nearly
all of their medical and surgical supplies were lost on the
journey.
Meanwhile much was doing, and feverish preparations
were being made in England. During the Great Retreat of
the Allies, when all was in suspense, more than one party of
doctors and nurses was held up either in England or in
French ports. But in the first fortnight of September the
battle of the Marne was fought and won, and a new feeling
was in the air.
Already an English hospital had been opened in the Paris.
Hotel Majestic in Paris, with some hundred beds, and a
highly efficient staff. This was the first fruits of the enter-
prise of an English doctor, who on the eve of England's
declaration of war had decided, should war break out, that
he would devote himself to the organisation of hospitals
for the wounded in France. Early in August he was in
Paris, making plans in consultation with the French Red
Cross, and returning to London got together his first unit,
126 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
finally installed in the Majestic. Those were nightmare
times. Here was a country suddenly called to fight for its
life and to care for its wounded at the same time, when all
ordinary conditions were dislocated, the traffic on the rail-
ways deranged and congested, accommodation of every
kind inadequate to the fearful pressure of the moment, the
resources of the medical service strained beyond all con-
ception. Men would often be nine days in the train before
proper surgical help could be given them. French, English,
Belgian, and German wounded were brought indiscriminately
to the Majestic ; and the head surgeon would frequently
operate on five or six cases during the night after twenty
operations in the day. On one day, the founder of the
hospital came upon nearly two hundred badly wounded
men, lying for the moment with no medical service near.
He brought as many as could be spared from the staff of
the Majestic ; for three days and a half continuously they
worked to save these men ; many they brought at last to
Paris on barges. But by December Paris was fully provided
with hospitals, and it was thought desirable to set to work
elsewhere. The Ma j estic was therefore closed in January 1 9 1 5 .
Returning to England during the second week of
September, the founder of the enterprise collected in a
few days a complete unit and full equipment for a large
surgical hospital, which left London on 29th September,
and was soon installed at Limoges, in the Musee Ceramique.
At the beginning of 191 5 this hospital was taken over by
the Wounded Allies Relief Committee.
While passing through Dieppe with this unit, the doctor
saw that help was urgently needed in that town, and in
answer to his urgent message a unit was brought over
which eventually settled at Yvetot. Later, the same
enterprise established an English hospital at Nevers. But
these hospitals will be dealt with in their turn. Meanwhile
let us return to Paris.
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 127
By the 12th of that September month, two complete Paris.
hospital units, entirely composed of women, had left for
France. They were under the charge of two eminent
women surgeons. Part of the sumptuous Claridge's Hotel
in the Avenue des Champs-Elysees was transformed into a
hospital, the ground floor making lofty wards, full of air
and sun.
The wounded, brought from as near the front as the
motor ambulances were allowed to go, arrived often in a
terrible condition. Tetanus and gangrene had appeared.
On one day one of the women surgeons operated for seven
hours at a stretch.
It is pleasing to record what a daily eye-witness said at
the time :
' What the doctors won't tell you is their own admirable skill and
devotion. The most awful and impossible-looking work is done by
them as simply and quietly as if they were taking tea. There is
something sublime to me in seeing such women, who will not even
admit that they are doing anything out of the common. Everything
is in order and ready to hand, and they go about their duties, just as
if they were merely keeping house.'
This is the testimony of a Frenchman, a wealthy stock-
broker, who kept the door of the hospital-hotel. He had
put his cashiers and clerks to sweep and scrub the floors ;
but all on full pay.
Chiefly owing to the difficulty of finding fuel during the
winter, the hospital was given up in January 191 5, and the
surgeons returned to take charge of the great Military
Hospital in Endell Street, where none but women are on
duty. On the 26th of September a hospital was opened by Church
the Church Army in Normandy. The building, a school in t Army Wak
the Rue de Bayeux, was lent by the municipal authorities. Caen
It contained a hundred beds. All the staff were British.
The hospital was fully equipped with the most modern
appliances and instruments ; it had an X-Ray installation,
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and was entirely independent of outside help. Practically
all the cases sent to the Church Army War Hospital were
very serious surgical cases, and such patients naturally had
to be kept for long periods. In April 1916, the hospital
was closed down.
Many of the hospitals we are concerned in are installed
in French chateaux.
An American lady, who owns a chateau at Longueil-
Annel, north of Compiegne, in the department of the Oise,
converted it into a small hospital at the beginning of the
war. The German invasion swept through, and for a short
time it was evacuated, but reopened on 27th September.
A staff of doctors, nurses, and orderlies was procured through
the British Red Cross Society ; and an ouvroir was opened
in rooms lent by the Hotel Crillon, where stores and cloth-
ing are kept and distributed to convalescent soldiers, many
of whom come from the invaded districts and lack for every-
thing. In the early days the Annel Hospital was also able
to help others in the neighbourhood.
Another chateau, which was converted to hospital use
early in this September, was the old Chateau of St-Malo
in Brittany. At St-Malo there is, of course, an English
colony. And in the days after the Marne, when trainloads
of the wounded were arriving in all the western towns,
several members of the colony offered their services and aided
in looking after the wants of the wounded. Over six hundred
arrived on 17th September, and the hospitals were over-
flowing. At this juncture an offer arrived from a Red Cross
Hospital at Bournemouth to send over a staff of trained
nurses and doctors. An arrangement to install these in the
Hotel Franklin, which had just been turned into a hospital,
fell through; but when the party landed from the boat
on the evening of 22nd September, they found that part
of the old Chateau of St-Malo had been placed at their
disposal.
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 129
The chateau is a mediaeval fortress with great stone ram-
parts, donjon towers and walls of formidable thickness ;
and the barracks within were not the most promising of
buildings. There was no gas, no electricity, and water was
laid on only on the ground floor. A regiment had only
just left the barracks ; the rooms were dirty ; only three of
them had been whitewashed and made ready for patients.
But all set to work with a will, and soon had the place
transformed.
All that the rooms contained of furniture was four tables
and a few benches : so there was a busy day's buying of
basins and pails, of kettles and brooms, and all the various
utensils required in a hospital ; while big bales of sheets
and shirts, and lint and gauze, brought over from Bourne-
mouth, were hastily unpacked, just in time for the arrival
of the first wounded.
The English resident who has taken a chief part in estab-
lishing and maintaining the hospital at St-Malo had
guaranteed, with a friend, the necessary sum for installing
electric light and laying on a supply of water on every floor.
But these things could not be accomplished in a day. In
the meantime, dressings after nightfall had to be done by
candle-light, and the water brought up from the kitchen
to the wards and to the operating theatre on the second floor.
Mistakes sometimes occurred, and a nurse would find herself
pouring out cider for the surgeon to wash in. The rats of
the old castle also came out to inspect the English invaders
of their ancient home.
These are small details, but they help one perhaps to
picture better the kind of difficulties that had to be overcome
in most of the improvised hospitals of which we have to
speak. Those who went out in those early days and took
part in the vigorous transformations will never forget their
effort and their victory over a hundred obstacles. What an
elation the sense of serving a great cause gave to the toil,
1
1 3 o FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
and what a new world of romance, if also of tragedy, they
seemed to have entered !
After a few months' hard work in the chateau — cases of
tetanus at that time were frequent, and the anti-tetanus
serum was only to be procured with the greatest difficulty
and at high cost — the hospital was required to move its
quarters. The chateau was to be used once more as a
barracks ; and the hospital was transferred to the Hotel des
Greves in St-Malo.
Another English hospital for the French had been estab-
lished in St-Malo since 14th October. It was organised
by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and originated in
the following way.
About the middle of September, a French Medecin-Major
called on an English Colonel, a resident of St-Malo. The
Medecin-Major had been ordered to organise hospitals at
St-Malo ; but he had no instruments, drugs, dressings,
etc., he was even without cotton- wool. Having heard that
the Colonel was crossing to England, he asked him to procure
and bring over whatever he could in the way of instruments
and stores. During the last week of September, the
Colonel returned from England with the stores which he
had purchased, and not only with these, but with an offer
from the late head of the Order of St. John to staff a hospital
at St-Malo. The day after his return, the Colonel and his
wife, with the Medecin-Major, inspected a girls' school
called Moka — a building requisitioned by the French
Government — and it was at once passed as suitable for a
hospital.
Early in October the representative of the Order of St.
John arrived, and it was arranged with the French autho-
rities that the Hotel Bristol at Parame, close to St-Malo,
should also be made into a hospital. On the 20th of the
month, Moka having been put in order, the hospital staff
arrived from England. The same day the first wounded
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 131
arrived, and thenceforward the hospital was nearly always
full.
The Moka was now known as Hopital Complementaire
No. 62, the Bristol as Hopital Complementaire No. 94.
The Moka building was in itself excellently adapted for a
hospital ; the rooms were airy and well-lighted. Unfortu-
nately the drainage system of St-Malo was being relaid at the
time when war broke out, and the hotel had not been con-
nected up either with the sewers or with the water. These
conditions did not make for health. There were cases of
typhoid and diphtheria ; wounds refused to heal ; the staff
got bad throats ; and in January 191 5, the doctor in charge
procured permission to transfer the hospital to the Hotel
Bristol at Parame.
The Bristol had been also converted into a hospital by
the Order of St. John, and was opened a few days after the
Moka. It was used for medical cases only till January
191 5, when the original staff were recalled, and the Moka
staff took their place.
It was no light job to move between eighty and a hundred
patients in a single ambulance, as well as all the instruments,
appliances, beds and bedding, stores and all the belongings
of the staff, from the one hospital to the other ; but it was
done without any patient being out of bed for more than
half an hour or missing a hot meal. This motor ambulance
was the only one in the town, and was used freely by all
the hospitals of St-Malo.
The Bristol Hotel, built on a rock above the sea-waves,
had modern conveniences, a bath and hot water supply, and
balconies facing the sea. There were 210 beds, most of
which were always full. But the numbers became less,
and the cases less serious, as the pressure of the first over-
whelming urgency relaxed and the French Service de Sante
got things into smoother going. It was therefore decided
in April by the Order of St. John that the staff should be
132 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
recalled. The hospital was handed over to the French.
The instruments, bandages, etc., and also the X-Ray appara-
tus were handed over to them at the same time. There was
only one other X-Ray installation in the town, with its
twenty hospitals ; so this was an appreciated boon.
Attached to these hospitals was a bacteriological
laboratory, which was intended to serve not only the two
St. John's hospitals, but the entire district. The doctor
in charge of this laboratory was, in February, appointed
official bacteriologist to the ioth Military Region ; St-
Malo, Dinan, and Dinard being the centres of distribution.
The laboratory did excellent work, especially in combating
the spread of cerebro-spinal meningitis.
The Rennes In connection with these hospitals, it should be recorded
that a unit of seven surgeons and fifty nurses arrived at
St-Malo from England on ist November 1914, on the
understanding that their services were needed by the
Service de Sante at Rennes. Those members of this
* Rennes Unit ' who remained in Brittany were distributed
among various French hospitals in the district, some of
which had English doctors or nurses from other sources.
At the Hotel des Tcrrasses, Dinard (Hopital Complemen-
taire No. 52) ; the Hotel d'Angleterre and Hotel Longchamp
at St-Lunaire (Hopital Complementaire No. 46) ; at a
convent at Treguier on the north coast (Hopital Comple-
mentaire No. 74) ; at Lannion (Hopital Temporaire
No. 20) ; and again at Dinard (' Canadian Hospital '), there
were English workers forming part of the staff.
Fort A party of surgeons, nurses, and others, all voluntary
Mahon. workers, went out in October 19 14, and under the Union
des Femmes de France opened a hospital of 107 beds at
Fort Mahon in the department of the Somme. Coming
under the control of the British Committee of the French
Red Cross, this unit was enlarged by the addition, a few
months later, by way of an annexe, of an evacuation hospital
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS ift
of thirty beds at Chateau de Boismont le Comte. A further
addition to the formation was a Field Ambulance Corps of
four ambulances. This unit worked on the Arras-Bethune
front.
In this same October, the Millicent Sutherland Ambulance, Dunkirk.
whose adventures in Belgium have already been recorded,
resumed its activity. The lady who founded and directed
the unit took over to Dunkirk a small convoy which did good
work, already described in the chapter on the Convoys.
But if the ambulances were needed, there was equal need Malo-les
in this Dunkirk region of a hospital. At the request of the Bains.
French, a hospital of ninety beds for ' Grands Blesses ' was
started at Malo-les-Bains, a little bathing-place near
Dunkirk. The convoy also had its headquarters here. But
in June 191 5, repeated bombardments of Dunkirk made the
place too dangerous, and the hospital was removed to
tents at Bourbourg, a small town twelve miles to the south.
In the autumn a return was made to Malo, but new dis-
positions of the armies had been made ; the unit was asked
to transfer its services to the British, and it has worked
for the British Army at Calais ever since. The Directress
had won the Medaille des Epidemies.
Another hospital of forty beds was established at Malo-
les-Bains, in the Villa Belle Plage, by another English lady
in November ; and this was closed altogether in May 191 5,
again owing to the bombardments of Dunkirk.
Meanwhile, at Dieppe a hospital had been founded by an Dieppe and
English doctor and his friends, in the circumstances described Yvetot.
on p. 126, in the buildings of the Hotel de 1' Alliance.
The first patients were received on 10th October. But
the accommodation was far too limited for the needs of the
hour. The Commandant of the Third Division at Rouen
offered the use of part of a large seminary building at Yvetot,
on the main line between Rouen and Le Havre, the remainder
of which was already occupied by a French Red Cross
134 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
hospital ; and the offer was accepted. The building was
admirably adapted to its new uses. The dormitories
formed spacious wards for the patients ; the teachers'
rooms, all on one corridor, housed the staff. A pavilion
in the centre of the grounds made excellent offices for the
administration. But the building had been disused for
some years ; it was in bad repair ; and, as at St-Malo, it was
necessary, besides cleaning and adapting the rooms, to
provide heating, baths, and proper sanitary arrangements.
Water, gas, and electric light were laid on throughout the
hospital. All this meant large expense, and owing to lack
of labour the alterations took some time to carry out.
Early in January 1915 the first ward was completed and
the first wounded received. Two hundred and sixty-five
beds were finally installed, and space left for fifty more. The
original hospital at Dieppe was still maintained for a time.
Veules-les- A Convalescent Home was also established at the same
Roses. time at Veules-les-Roses, a little place by the sea, twenty
miles away, of which some few English people have pleasant
holiday memories before the war.
To handle and control the financial and administrative
side of the work, it was decided to form a committee, and
out of this committee there arose a Benevolent Society
which took the name of the Allies Hospital Benevolent
Society, registered on 8th March 1915.
A particular feature of the Yvetot Hospital is the number
of beds maintained by the heads and employees of large
business firms in England, through small subscriptions.
American help, in this as in other hospitals, has also been
a strong support, and for several months Americans formed
about a third of the staff. In August 191 5 this contingent
left to take up the work of a hospital at St-Valery-en-Caux.
Chateau du A hospital, which was discontinued in the earlier part of
Touhla- 191 5, was started in the first week of November 1914 by
a lady well known for her hospital services iu the Balkan War.
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 13$
She was taken prisoner in Belgium with her husband in the
first days of the war, and, having narrowly escaped being
put to death by the Germans, organised a hospital for the
Belgians at Antwerp. When that city was bombarded,
the wounded were rescued, though the hospital material
had perforce to be abandoned. She then brought her unit
back to London, and shortly after established a hospital
near Cherbourg, in the Chateau de Tourlaville.
Here again there was infinitely much to do before the
building could be made ready for hospital use. The
chateau was rebuilt in the time of Henri iv. With its old
stone walls partly clothed in ivy, and projecting towers,
square or octagonal, reflected in a lake and surrounded by
trees, it has a peaceful beauty of aspect, though the history
of its past is written in violent deeds and bloodshed. But
it was built in an age which preferred dark staircases to
spacious windows ; and at the utmost it could only house
seventy-five beds. Such a building is not ideal for a
hospital. At the same time, from talks with French soldiers,
one may gather that some at least of them get a certain
pleasure from being nursed in an old chateau. It amuses
their minds perhaps to be in a place that has a savour of
history and romance about it ; there is a mental background,
however vague, which is a kind of repose and satisfaction to
wandering thoughts and fancies, and which is certainly
lacking to the finest of modern hospitals. But this, no doubt,
is deplorable heresy.
With the exception of the treasurer and some of the
chauffeurs, all of the staff at Tourlaville were women.
And, as we shall see in the case of the Scottish Women's
Hospital at Royaumont, there was at first a good deal of
misgiving among the French, who doubted whether women
surgeons were really capable of a serious operation. How-
ever, a distinguished surgeon of the district came to visit
the hospital ; witnessed an operation, and recorded his
136 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
emphatic opinion that at Tourlaville ' les chirurgiennes sont
de valeur egale aux chirurgiens les meilleurs.'
In the garden of the chateau a large marquee was set up
with a boarded floor and with stoves to heat it. This was
used as a recreation tent for convalescents. Bought with
subscriptions from workers on a ranch in British Columbia,
it was later to go to Serbia, and is now in the hands of the
enemy. For in February 191 5 the Directrice herself decided
to go to Serbia, where there was a lamentable scarcity both
of doctors and nurses. Typhus was raging there. One
third of the Serbian doctors had died, either killed in the
firing-line, or carried off by the epidemic. And less and
less wounded were coming to Tourlaville. They came to
Cherbourg by sea, and the sea passage was dangerous.
The hospital continued under other direction for a short
time ; but the number of wounded continued to decrease,
and the hospital was closed at the end of March 191 5.
Edinburgh And now we return to Dunkirk, whence the wounded were
and Border transported by sea to Cherbourg, some, inevitably, dying
Malo-les- on tne way. The race for Calais and the coast, after the
Bains. victory of the Marne, had brought the war suddenly into
this region. The pressure was as overwhelming as it was
unexpected ; it was almost impossible to cope with the
numbers of wounded during those tremendous struggles on
the Yser, and the days of the first battle of Ypres. Some
English efforts to help have been recorded ; and now a
Scottish lady, hearing of the urgent need, organised an
ambulance with an English staff, and opened it at Malo-
les-Bains in a villa on the sea lent by its French owner.
An X-Ray installation, much needed, was brought out with
the unit. The hospital was opened on 20th November, and
until 1st June its seventy-five beds were practically always
full. After the first gas attack in April on the Ypres salient,
the wounded arrived in such numbers that they were laid
on mattresses in the floors and vestibules, every bed being
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 137
occupied. The hospital escaped damage in the bombard-
ment of Dunkirk ; but on June 1st it was closed for the time
being, as no more wounded were arriving, and finally re-
moved in November. Its work, however, had been so much
appreciated that the foundress was asked to transfer it to
Paris, which was done at the end. of 1915, and we shall
describe its further activities in their place.
Before the end of 19 14 both sides had settled down to
the trench warfare, which was to continue so long. Con-
ditions being now more or less stationary, it was possible
to deal with Red Cross problems more deliberately, to
reorganise much that had necessarily been in a fluid state
while the armies were in movement, and to ensure a more
methodical working.
As yet, however, the hospitals near the front were com-
paratively few. Consequently the wounded, even the
seriously wounded, were being evacuated to hospitals which
were often at great distances from the front, in the south,
the south-west, and the west. We shall see how this
condition of things gradually changed, and how the change
affected some of our hospitals. A case in point is the history
of the next unit of which we have to give an account.
This is the Ulster Volunteer Hospital. Pau, after-
The outbreak of war on the Continent found a section wards
of the Ulster Volunteers, the North Tyrone section, with
medical staff and equipment for two thousand men, all in
readiness for the contingency of war in Ireland. How could
this staff be used ? An offer was made in the first instance
to the British War Office — as was done in some other cases —
but it came to nothing ; and a proposal was then made to
the French authorities through a Bordeaux lady. An in-
vitation came speedily, asking the unit to go to Pau. The
party sailed from Liverpool in October, reached Pau on the
1 2th, and found that the Villa Beaupre had been placed at
their disposal. There were fifty beds : all too few, as it
i 3 8 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
happened, for the ample staff sent out. But no sooner was
the Prefet made aware of this superabundance of skilled
energy than he asked to borrow from it for a hospital in the
neighbourhood. Two orderlies and two probationers were
lent to this French hospital, under two Sisters : one of
these Sisters has been there ever since, and is reported to
have done invaluable work.
At this time, as we have said, the wounded were coming
as far south as Pau direct from near the front ; even from
places as far away as Dixmude. But gradually the hospi-
tals nearer the front were reopened, and bad cases kept
there till they were better able to support the long journey
south. At the Villa Beaupre the number of beds had been
increased to sixty, and later to eighty ; but by the beginning
of 1916 serious cases were becoming fewer and fewer, and
the patients were practically all either in an early stage of
convalescence, or men with slight wounds from the Cham-
pagne front. But light work is not to the mind of doctors
and nurses. They crave for arduous days and nights ; they
hunger for difficulties and desperate cases ; they want to be
used to the last of their strength and experience ; not to
fulfil a prescribed duty only, but to give all they can, and
all they know.
In February the first crash of the tremendous German
assaults on Verdun was echoing over Europe. And in the
spring of 1916, the hospitals in the central regions of France
were busy indeed. It was decided that the Ulster Volun-
teers should move to Lyons, but it was not till the end of
April that the hospital was closed at Pau. The unit reached
Lyons on the 2nd May, but much had to be changed and
improvised in the building put at their disposal, and it was
not till the beginning of June that patients began to be
received. The building was a technical school, owned by a
society, the ' Travail de la Femme et de la Jeune Fille ' ;
and it accommodates a hundred beds. It is not in Lyons
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 139
itself, but in an outlying suburb on the south of the
city.
December 1914 was a month which saw the establishment
of several more hospitals, some of which are of special
interest. Already, in November, a hospital staff, with
three motor ambulances, was on its way to France from
South Africa, and during the winter was being installed in
a large hotel at Cannes ; but as it was not actually ready for
work till February, we will reserve our account of it for the
moment.
Three hospitals which were opened in this December Treport.
have since been closed. The Hopital Anglo-Francais at
Le Treport, on the coast between Dieppe and the mouth
of the Somme, was founded by an English lady, and was
housed in a golf hotel. It was opened on the first day of
the month. The wounded came direct from the fighting
line at Arras, Souchez, Neuville St-Vaast, and Notre Dame
de Lorette — places now so familiar on our lips, since our
own men have fought and fallen there. When our troops
took over the line, the hospital was closed for French
wounded on 10th June 1916, but it was reopened in July as
a British Red Cross Hospital for British officers ; as such
it is still working.
Another hospital was established by an English lady in Fecamp.
the Casino at Fecamp. It was called Hopital Anglais du
Casino, and opened on 6th December ; the people of the
town warmly welcomed the English staff. This was dis-
continued on 14th June 1916, when the French sent no
more wounded in that direction.
At Nevers, in the very centre of France, was started a Nevers.
hospital which has been already mentioned in conjunction
with two others, one in the Hotel Majestic, Paris, and the
other at Limoges. The Nevers hospital is on the outskirts
of the town, with open fields about it : it was housed
in some quite modern buildings which were erected as
140 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
offices for the P.L.M. Railway Company. From the start,
in December 1914, until its close in the autumn of 1917,
the hospital was filled with patients. The number of beds,
originally no, was afterwards increased to 170. There
being no accommodation for nurses in the hospital itself,
they were lodged in neighbouring chalets.
It was in December 1914 also that a hospital known as
the Anglo-Ethiopian Hospital was opened at Frevent in
the Pas-de-Calais. His Majesty's Charge d'Affaires in
Abyssinia had offered a hospital to the French Government
in September ; it had been accepted ; and, after some con-
siderable difficulties in finding a suitable building and get-
ting together the necessary staff and equipment had been
overcome, it was installed in a hospice belonging to the
town of Frevent, and began to receive patients. For some
four months, while constant fighting was going on in the
Arras region, the hospital's sixty-seven beds were occupied
mostly by men with severe wounds, many of whom could
not have travelled farther. But in the following April all
privately conducted hospitals were moved from the zone
in which Frevent lies, to be replaced by military ambulances ;
and the Anglo-Ethiopian Hospital was transferred to St-
Valery-sur-Somme, where the Casino had been allotted to
it. Here also the cases were often serious, and the many
patients remained for long periods. The wounded were
fetched from Abbeville in the English cars attached to the
hospital. In October 191 5 the hospital was handed over
as it stood, together with a sum of money to pay for the
heating of the Casino during the winter, and for the mainten-
ance of a French staff, to the Service de Sante. The head
of the staff had obtained permission to take out a nursing
unit to staff a French military hospital in the island of
Tenedos, and left St-Valery on this new mission. The unit
worked at Tenedos till the French left the island, when it
was lent for an indefinite period to the Royal Naval Division,
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 141
and worked partly at Tencdos, partly at Mudros and at
Imbros.
It is to be recorded that the Anglo-Ethiopian Hospital
was helped by a contribution from an Imperial Prince of
Abyssinia in the shape of a gift of cattle, which were sold
for a good sum.
Just before Christmas another hospital was opened in the Glamorgan
Pas-de-Calais, at Berck-Plage, by the Glamorgan and AND MoN -
Monmouthshire Hospital Committee. Berck had just hoshtaT"
been taken over as a hospital centre for one of the French
armies, and a number of military hospitals were being im-
provised in the Casino, the hotels, and other large buildings
that were available. The Flotel de Russie was obtained for
the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire Hospital — now known
officially as Hopital Auxiliaire Anglais, Annexe No. 44 —
through the efforts of the lady who acted throughout as
Directrice. It accommodated one hundred beds. There
were no motor ambulances in Berck, except those belonging
to this British hospital ; and on its staff therefore fell the
work of bringing the wounded away from the station, and
distributing them among the various hospitals in the town.
Not till May 191 5 was there set on foot a system of regular
convoys bringing the wounded down from the front by road.
Most of the cases at the hospital were cases of severe wounds,
involving a long stay. By July 191 5 it had become apparent
that the French Medical Service in Berck was thoroughly
well established, and further assistance was not needed.
The hospital was therefore closed, and the whole of its
excellent equipment and stores of clothing was made over
to the French military authorities.
From the same month of December dates the opening Royaumokt.
of the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont.
The fateful 4th of August found the Women Suffragists
of Scotland with a powerful organisation : and their first
thought was how best to use its means to help the sufferers
142 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
from the war. It was decided to staff and equip hospitals
for foreign service, the prime mover being the late Dr. Elsie
Inglis. A committee was formed, and an appeal issued ;
and money flowed in from all classes in the country.
It was through the good offices of the Presidente of the
Comite Britannique that the Cistercian Abbey of Royau-
mont was placed at the disposal of the Scottish Women's
Hospitals Committee. It is on the skirts of the forest of
Carnelle, in the valley of the Oise ; seven miles from the
railway at Chantilly, and twelve from Creil, the junction on
the line from Calais to Paris. After sheltering for cen-
turies more than one religious order in turn, the Abbey
buildings had been put to industrial uses. But for ten
years it had been abandoned, disused ; and the immense
rooms were littered with hay, timber, stone fragments from
the destroyed church, and all manner of odds and ends and
rubbish. All this had to be cleared away by the Scottish
Women, with no male hands to help them, before the task
of cleaning could be begun. They were then confronted
by the absence of water, light, and heat. But nothing could
daunt their intrepid spirits. Electric light, heating, sani-
tary arrangements were all rapidly installed, though there
is no considerable town in the neighbourhood. The outfit
and stores from Edinburgh arrived by railway at the distant
station, and had to be transported by the chauffeuses
to the Abbey, and there carried up flights of stairs
to the floors for which the sets of bales were destined.
With a fever of enthusiastic energy the whole staff — doctors,
nurses, and orderlies — joined in the giant task of cleaning
and preparing the vast collection of buildings. At last all
was ready and in the nicest of order.
But where were the wounded ?
We have seen already that there was a certain doubt
existing in the French mind as to the competence of women
surgeons and doctors. Could the wounded be trusted into
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 143
their hands ? The eager staff waited ; but their newly
arranged wards, the pride of their hearts, remained empty.
At last a remonstrance addressed to the authorities evoked
an inspection. Certificates of qualification were demanded ;
they were at once produced. The wards had been arranged
on the upper floor. This was not approved : it was
decided that the lower floor was the proper floor for them.
More days of toil ! But the labour was cheerfully sur-
mounted, and the new wards made as perfect as the old.
Still the wounded delayed. At last six arrived, but they
were sick, not wounded. And then came the change. The
French discovered very soon the quality of the work of the
Scottish Women. Curiosity was provoked ; visits were
made by doctors in high places ; admiration was spontane-
ous and cordial. It was not long before the French autho-
rities were asking that the original eighty beds should be
increased to two hundred. Later the number became three
hundred, and finally four hundred. If there had been
diffidence at first, it was amply made up for by the warmth
of recognition when it was seen how admirably these women
of Scotland could administrate, organise, operate and nurse.
Recently the Medaille des Epidemies has been conferred on
thirty members of the staff ; and in September 1916 the
President of the Republic himself journeyed to Royaumont
to inspect the hospital and express his appreciation. One
of the Royaumont wards has been equipped by Canada.
A few months after the opening of the hospital, the work Troyes.
done at Royaumont was so greatly esteemed that an invita-
tion came to the committee from the French military
authorities to establish another hospital at Troyes, the
ancient capital of Champagne, on the Eastern Railway. The
offer was accepted with pride, and no pains were spared to
make this second hospital as perfect as was possible.
Not in Troyes itself, but about a mile from the town, the
staff were housed in the Chateau de Chanteloup, which has
144 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
old gardens and spacious grounds about it. The hospital
itself was in tents. It was one of the first attempts to
nurse the French wounded under canvas.
The unit was known as the Girton and Newnham Unit,
since members of those famous women's colleges at Cam-
bridge had contributed so large a sum towards its equip-
ment. It was under the direction of Mrs. Harley, sister
of Lord French, who had already worked at Royaumont.
But the unit had only been at work some months when
an order arrived from the French War Office to evacuate
the hospital and proceed at once to Salonika with the French
Expeditionary Force. The order was promptly obeyed.
From Salonika the unit moved up-country to Guegvueli.
But the Bulgarians and Germans were then advancing with
formidable swiftness ; and it was decided to retire to
Salonika. There the hospital was extended to three hundred
beds.
Here falls to be recorded the noble death of Mrs. Harley.
She had given devoted service ; she was to give her life also.
In June 191 5 she returned to England. In July of the
following year she took charge of a flying column of motor
ambulances attached to the Serbian Army in Macedonia.
They were in camp at Ostrovo, and fetched the wounded
from the front to the Scottish Women's Hospital at that
place. This work among the mountains was dangerous and
difficult, and Mrs. Harley's unit won especial praise both for
its skill and its endurance. She was decorated by General
Sarrail with the Croix de Guerre.
In December 1916 Mrs. Harley undertook the establish-
ment and charge of an independent soup-kitchen and relief
system for the civilian refugees at Monastir. On 7th March
191 7, while seated at a window, she was wounded in the head
by a shell which burst in the street, for the Bulgarians and
Germans were bombarding the open town. She died almost
immediately in the hospital to which she was taken.
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THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 145
1915
In the first month of 191 5, two more hospitals were
opened : one at Compiegne, and one at Arc-en-Barrois,
while a third, already existing, at Limoges, was taken over
into new control and enlarged.
Arc-en-Barrois — the Barrois is the old name of that Arc-en-
district of Eastern France of which Bar-le-Duc is the centre Barrois -
— is a large village or little town lying in a pleasant valley
among the rolling uplands and vast forests of the Haute
Marne. It is about forty miles from the firing-line.
The Hopital Temporaire at Arc is under the direction
of a Worcestershire lady who had originally intended to take
out a small party to nurse in a French hospital ; but so
many good workers joined the group that it soon grew into
a complete unit of the St. John's Ambulance Association.
The staff was approved by the Anglo-French Committee
and the unit accepted by the French Government. The
Due de Penthievre had offered his chateau at Arc to the
Ministere de la Guerre, and here the hospital was finally
installed.
The large rooms of the chateau made excellent wards on
two floors : but there is no hot water laid on, no gas or
electricity, no system of heating, and the same difficulties
had to be overcome as in similar cases already described.
All sorts of hospital furniture, such as the little tables which
the patients like to have by their beds to keep their belong-
ings on, as well as cupboards, fracture-beds, splints, etc.,
were made by amateur carpenters among the orderlies (all,
in this case, English volunteers). An out-of-door ward,
with a penthouse against the southern wall of the chateau,
was also made, for the medicine of fresh air has been used
as much as possible.
The chateau looks on a park, with streams running through
K
146 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
it. No hospital is more fortunate in its surroundings ; a
matter of great moment for the wellbeing of the convales-
cent.
This hospital has no beds. Shortly after it was opened,
more room was required, and a Hospice standing on higher
ground, on the outskirts of the little town, was taken over
for the use of patients who were recovering, or who did not
need an operation. This brought the total up to 180.
The Hospital of Arc served for a long time the Third
Army, the army of the Argonne, where hard fighting was
pretty continuous during 191 5, while the Crown Prince
was vainly endeavouring to break through and join up with
the armies on his left. During the following year it was
kept extremely busy by the tremendous battles of Verdun.
The entire staff at Arc-en-Barrois is English, with the
exception of the French Administrateur and French
' Vaguemestre ' ; but local workers have given useful help.
Chateau ^ et nearer t0 tne front than Arc, and in fact only six or
Rimberlieu, seven kilometres from the French front trenches, is another
Compiegne. chateau, the Chateau Rimberlieu, some miles north of
Compiegne, in which an Anglo-French hospital was installed
by an English lady. Here again are spacious grounds and
shady trees. The hospital contains some eighty beds ; but
in the spring of 191 6, at the suggestion of the French
authorities, an annexe was added — a large hut or baraque
connected by a covered way with the main building, and
containing another thirty beds, besides rooms for baths and
for the dressing of wounds. At the Chateau Rimberlieu
the staff was at the outset entirely British, but gradually
changes have come about, and more recently the French
element has predominated.
Limoges. The hospital at Limoges, which was started in October
1914, as related on p. 126, was in this January taken over
by the Wounded Allies Relief Committee. This society,
formed at the beginning of the war, began by giving help
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 147
to the Belgian wounded ; it went on to aid both French and
British hospitals in France with supplies and funds ; and
now, with the opening of the year 191 5, it took over the
hospital installed in the Musee Ceramique at Limoges,
which was no longer able to maintain itself for lack of
funds. At the same time as the transfer, the number
of beds was increased from 150 to 225.
In the next month, February, the Wounded Allies Relief Lyons.
Committee were invited to take over a hospital at Dieppe
which was in the same case. This, the parent of the
Yvetot Hospital (p. 133), has already been described. It
was decided to take over this hospital also. But as the
hotel which housed it — the Hotel de PAlliance — could
accommodate but sixty beds, and the expenses were high,
it was eventually resolved to remove it to a larger building.
The ampler quarters desired were found at Lyons, in the
Lycee de St-Rambert ; this is a big school-building on a
wooded spur of the hills overlooking the Saone, with good
air and a magnificent view. The removal was made in
February of 1916.
This hospital has three hundred beds, and has also
sheltered eighty homeless Serbian children. It lies on the
other side of the city from the Ulster Hospital, already
described, which also came to Lyons after being started
elsewhere.
It has been mentioned that during this first winter a Cannes.
hospital unit from South Africa arrived in France, and was
gradually installed at Cannes in the Hotel Beau-Rivage.
It had been organised in the first month of the war by
members of the Societe Franchise du Cap, and placed under
the command of a distinguished South African French
doctor, Lieutenant-Colonel in the S.A.M.C. The original
accommodation in the hotel was for 150 patients, but the
committee has since been asked to double the number. In
February 1915 the hospital began active work.
148 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
How different were conditions here from those of the
hospitals improvised in old chateaux, lacking every modern
appliance ! The Hotel Beau-Rivage, built round a quad-
rangle roofed over from a central hall, is beautifully venti-
lated ; its rooms and passages are commodious ; above
all, it enjoys the sea and the sun. From the sea it is
separated only by its own garden, and it faces full south.
The rays of the sun are used to help the surgeon, and with
marvellous effect.
Besides the hotel, a large villa and garden adjoining it,
placed at the disposal of the ambulance, has been maintained
by the committee, and has housed numbers of officers, both
French and Serbian, who, though discharged from hospital,
were not sufficiently recovered to return to duty.
The admirably complete equipment of this hospital has
enabled it to do considerable services not only for the
wounded, but for the civil patients in Cannes. The
laboratory and the X-Ray installation serve all the hospitals
in the town.
Later on the ambulance put out an offshoot. This is a
sanatorium, housed in the Villa Felicie, a villa with delight-
ful gardens on the slope of the hills above Cannes. The
villa was lent for the purpose by its English owners. Here
are treated cases of early or threatened consumption ; men
suffering from chest and lung trouble which, if treated in
an ordinary hospital, would develop into some form of
tuberculosis.
A number of more hospitals in different parts of France
were started in this spring of 1 91 5 . The first of these, known
as the Hopital Wemyss, was personally superintended by
the lady who founded it, and the Chateau du Fayel, a magni-
ficent house, was lent for the purpose by the French Duchess
who owns it. There were many difficulties in the way of
equipment and transport, but these were overcome, with
the help of the French authorities, and work began in
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 149
February. An offer had been made to maintain the hospital
for a period of six months at least. It received wounded
from Compiegne from February to October 191 5, when,
owing to the high expenditure involved, the Directrice
reluctantly closed it.
On the 15th of February a hospital was opened at Neuilly.
Neuilly-sur-Seine by an English committee. Accommoda-
tion was found in a villa in the Boulevard Victor-Hugo,
with an annexe connected with the house by a covered way,
and a wooden pavilion in the garden. The villa had been
a private sanatorium, so that it was well suited for its
purpose. The number of beds, at first forty, were raised
in March to fifty, and in August to seventy-five. The
medical and nursing staff were British, with the exception
of an American surgeon and a Swiss V.A.D. The English
doctors were homoeopathic physicians who gave their
services as their home practice permitted. The cases
treated were chiefly surgical. Some well-known Paris
surgeons helped by consultations. The hospital was
closed in March 191 6, as the proprietor of the building
required it for the resumption of his sanatorium, and also
the calls on doctors at home made it increasingly difficult
for them to give their time to France.
In the same month a fully equipped hospital of fifty beds Paris-Plage.
was presented to the French by the English lady who
became its Directrice and by an English gentleman ; and
this was accepted as an annexe (Annexe Tangye) to the
French Hopital Militaire No. 35, at Paris-Plage, and in-
stalled in an hotel with sunny balconies. The nurses are
English, the Directrice being Infirmiere Major ; the
surgeons French. The cases treated have all been surgical ;
the nursing staff has won high appreciation from the French ;
and the relations between the French and English staff
have been those of cordial understanding and good-
will.
150
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
At the beginning of March a hospital was opened at
Dunkirk, which differs from the other hospitals of our
record in being devoted not only to French but to British
wounded. This is the Queen Alexandra Hospital, and is
the most important of the hospitals set on foot and managed
by the Friends' Ambulance Unit, whose convoy work has
already been described.
The hospital is installed in wooden sheds, white-plastered,
with garden plots about them. In the grounds are tents
for infectious cases. The hospital has grown considerably,
since it was first started. It now has two hundred beds,
eighty for French soldiers, a like number for British soldiers,
and forty for British sailors. The beds required by the
French were originally under forty in number, but in the
autumn of 191 5 were increased to eighty. Structural
alterations and additions were also made ; equipment and
fittings improved. Among other necessaries, a spacious
dug-out was provided for use in case of air-raids ; and, as
we know, Dunkirk is liable to these attentions pretty
constantly. In October 191 5 the staff was augmented by
a number of V.A.D. nurses. A dental surgeon has been
given a room in the hospital, and is kept uncommonly busy.
A strange medley of races is to be found in this hospital
of the Friends. Strolling about the grounds may be seen
British sailors in their navy blue, and soldiers in khaki side
by side with French infantrymen and Algerians and Fusiliers
Marins with their red pompon on their caps, and not only
these but Chinese and Egyptians and negroes from the West
Indies. It is a hospital of good understanding and good
fellowship.
Our next hospital has a special character, since it was
planned for the exclusive service of the seriously wounded,
' Us blesses qui peuvent mourir,' and it was placed directly
under the Service de Sante on the understanding that only
fully trained nurses should be employed. It was therefore
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 151
named the Urgency Cases Hospital for France. The pro-
ject was that of the lady well known as Hon. Secretary of
the National Union of Trained Nurses.
The unit left London on nth March 1915, and arrived
at Bar-le-Duc on the 13th. A wing of the Hopital Central
in the town had been allotted to it. The first wounded
arrived on the 23rd.
It was the only British unit in the Meuse, and attracted
many visitors from the neighbourhood. Since it was soon
recognised that it was not practicable for the unit to be
placed in the first line, where really urgent cases were dealt
with, the heads of the staff consulted together, and decided
to specialise in some particular branch of surgery. The
treatment of fractures was therefore chosen.
Six months were spent at Bar-le-Duc, where the hospital
treated the wounded from the Argonne, and got all too well
acquainted with the horrors of ' gas gangrene.' During
the month of July, a formidable assault of the Germans in
the Argonne forest nearly penetrated the line. The ambu-
lances at the front could not cope with the incoming stream
of wounded, and the hospital at Bar-le-Duc rendered a
real service by fetching wounded from Les Islettes and
St-Menehould, and filling its wards to overflowing.
But a still more strenuous time was in store for the unit.
In August 191 5 the wing of the Hopital Central which it
occupied had to be taken over by the French ; and a removal
was made to Revigny, rather nearer the front. An empty
chateau, called ' Faux Miroir,' was placed at the unit's dis-
posal. It had proved its name, for it was the headquarters
of the Crown Prince at the moment when the sanguine
onrush of the Germans was turned into retreat.
The house, which stands in a park near the much-battered
village of Revigny, would contain, it was found, the staff,
but not the patients. For these, huts had to be built in
the grounds. Water-pipes had to be laid on, the electric
152 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
cable relaid, paths cut, drains cleaned. Yet in a fortnight
of glorious effort all was ready. The number of beds was
about one hundred, soon increased to one hundred and
twenty.
Troubles with water-supply and electric currents, and,
when the winter came, with leaking roofs and burst pipes,
did not interfere with the work. And then in February
came the great onslaught on Verdun.
On the morning of 13th February came an order to clear
the hospital of wounded as quickly as possible. The order
was carried out, only a few serious cases being retained.
The great attack had not yet begun, but many signs of it
had been seen and noted. On the 21st a fleet of aeroplanes
twice bombarded Revigny, already so wrecked in the days
of the retreat from the Marne. But it was not the buildings
that was their target; it was the railway. They were driven
off by gun-fire, having failed in their object. The same
night another attempt was made to cut the line of com-
munication to Verdun ; this time by a Zeppelin. Members
of the staff at Faux Miroir, who had already had the excite-
ment of watching the attack and retreat of the aeroplanes,
had gone up the hill after dark, to see what could be seen ;
the presage of events was in the air. Returning, they saw
two long beams of light shoot out from earth to sky, then a
third. And suddenly out of the darkness, trapped in the
luminous beams, appeared a Zeppelin. In a moment guns
began. The airship, distinct to the watchers below,
started to crumple up towards one end ; it sagged, then
burst into flames, and plunged downwards slowly, trailing
fire behind it. The Zeppelin was destroyed. And the
two guns and the searchlights which had been its doom had
been brought to Revigny that very day ! A thrilling pre-
lude this to the next six months of breathless work, while
the gigantic attacks on Verdun hammered in vain at the
fortress and the wounded arrived without ceasing. This
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 153
was a happy time for the Faux Miroir staff ; they were
doing what they had come out to do. In July 1917 the
hospital was handed over as it stood to the Comite Bri-
tannique of the French Red Cross, under whom it is still
working.
No such excitements as those just recorded could be HSpital
expected for the next unit on our record, Hopital Auxiliaire de l « e
de l'Entente Cordiale No. 222. For Mentone is far from tente
the thunder of the guns, and lies out of reach of the enemy's Cordiale
aircraft ; and though the Mediterranean is infested with mentone.
U-boats, no spasm of shelling from an emerging submarine
has disturbed its basking bay.
At the beginning of 191 5, a former English resident of
Mentone and his wife went to Mentone with the generous
intention of starting a hospital there for the French wounded,
but finding that the municipality of the town had expressed
a desire to open a hospital for British officers and soldiers,
in appreciation for all that English visitors had done for the
place, they joined in an offer made to the British authorities.
This came to nothing. An offer was then made to the
Association des Dames Franchises, one of the three great
Red Cross Societies, and in the result it was arranged that
a hospital of four hundred beds should be installed in the
building of the Hotel Imperial, which was requisitioned by
the French Government. This building was taken over for
the purpose by the military Service de Sante free of rent,
though with responsibility for dilapidations.
The hospital was opened under the auspices of the
Association des Dames Franchises at the beginning of April.
The original English donors paid for the whole outlay and
maintenance of the hospital till mid-July, when an English
Committee, formed for the purpose, began to support the
work financially and undertook to collect subscriptions in
England. The donors acted as Administrateur and Direc-
trice respectively till, after a year of uninterrupted work,
*54
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
hospital
Gare
Maritime,
Cherbourg.
they felt obliged to retire. From April 191 6 the English
Committee took charge of the hospital.
This hospital, like the South African Hospital at Cannes,
which has already been described, enjoys all the advantages
and amenities of a modern hotel ; but it is on a still larger
scale, and being of more recent construction than the Hotel
Beau-Rivage, is still more luxurious in its arrangements.
It goes without saying that there are lifts, electric lighting,
central heating, bathrooms on every floor. Nothing, too,
has been spared to perfect its equipment, so that the
hospital has become the surgical centre for the Mentone
district. It possesses an admirable pharmacy ; a micro-
bacteriological laboratory ; a dark room for laryngology ;
a laundry with mechanical apparatus for washing and
drying. On the ground floor is a room for aseptic opera-
tions which communicates with the sterilising room ; and
this in turn communicates with the radiography room,
splendidly equipped by an Irish donor.
The hotel fronts full south. It stands at a certain ele-
vation, with gardens sloping down to the sea, which it over-
looks. As at Cannes, wonderful cures have been made by
the help of the strong sun.
On the 20th of April a hospital was opened in the Gare
Maritime, Cherbourg. The waiting-room for boat passen-
gers, and rooms adjoining, were lent by the Cherbourg
Chamber of Commerce ; they accommodated sixty beds ;
and as the hospital is built out over the water, it could not
have healthier air or more restorative surroundings. The
Directress and nurses were English : the surgeons were also
English, but an American surgeon was in charge for some
months, and French doctors helped. For a short time in
1916 a Belgian Army officer was in charge. In 1916 the
hospital was transferred to the Cherbourg Committee of
the French Red Cross, the Director of which had done all
in his power to help the hospital while it was maintained
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 155
and managed by the English. The whole of the installa-
tion was handed over to that committee.
In May a hospital of thirty-five beds was opened at Ceret, C£ret.
in the Pyrenees Orientates, by an English lady, who was lent
the house of a friend for the purpose. The delightful
country and climate made it especially suitable for con-
valescents, and it was used mainly for wounded who were
sent on from other hospitals in the Montpellier district ;
from places like Perpignan and Amalie-les-Bains. The
hospital, known as Hopital Benevole No. 62 bis (Fondation
Allhusen No. 1), did excellent service till it was closed on
the 1st of February 1917. Meanwhile, the lady who had
called it into being had started another hospital at Mar-
touret, of which we will speak in its place.
On the 1st of May a hospital was opened at Gezaincourt, Gezain-
close to Doullens, just on the borders of the departments COURT -
of Pas-de-Calais and Somme, and only about ten miles from
the trenches. The building was a chateau, in a pleasant
park, lent by its owner. It was supported by voluntary
contributions from Ireland, and was known as the Hopital
Irlandais. Owing to its closeness to the front line, the cases
received were of the worst and most dangerous wounds. It
was closed in March 1916, owing to the British taking over
the part of the line it served.
Many had hoped since the battle of the Marne that, with
the advent of the summer, the Germans might be driven
back from their strong positions in France and Flanders.
And in May the coming of Italy into the war on the side of
the Allies strengthened these hopes. Looking back, we
are perhaps inclined to forget how sanguine we were, and
how continually our eager expectations have been postponed.
I think that few of those who founded the English hospitals
we are describing had any anticipation that the war would
last so long as it has. And when one considers the endless
drain in ever new directions on the resources of English
156 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
generosity, and the burden laid on those responsible for the
continued maintenance — and in many cases the expansion —
of these improvised hospitals, all the greater will be our
appreciation of the fine tenacity which has been shown, and
the splendid support which has been given by the people
of Britain. This is a testimony to the strength of the feeling
for France in this country. It was no transient enthusiasm.
July 14th, the day of France's national festival, the day
of the taking of the Bastille, was celebrated in London
and the provinces, and collections made on behalf of the
French Red Cross. A great sum was raised, to be surpassed
in 1 91 6, and again nearly doubled in the following year.
But of France's Day and its collections we have already
given some account.
Hopital The next hospital to be described has a special interest
Chirurgical because, unlike the others, it is a field hospital. In July
No 1. I 9 I 5 lt was established at the little town of Rousbrugge in
Belgium, and was attached to the French Army on that
part of the front. The Englishwoman to whom the scheme
was originally due had crossed to Dunkirk in February, the
day the submarine blockade was declared by the Germans —
and offered help to the French in their typhoid hospitals,
which were at the time in need. She took with her two
English nurses, and the three being drafted into different
hospitals in the locality, she was able to help not only by
actual nursing, but by providing hospital requisites and
fittings. But the desirability of a field hospital, near the
lines, which should be perfectly equipped, and so able to
perform the most difficult operations without the delay of
sending the wounded back to the base, presented itself more
and more urgently. And before many months were over
this idea reached its practical embodiment at Rousbrugge.
The lady who had originated the scheme provided the
huts, which were made on the spot, and the fittings,
beds (about 160 in number), furniture, and surgical
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 157
requisites, a large proportion of which were sent from
England ; she also provided the nursing staff, of which she
was Directress. English subscribers liberally helped with
gifts. The hospital was made over to the French Army,
which supplied food, medical service, and medicines.
From the outset the hospital has admirably fulfilled the
functions it was intended to perform. It has moved two
or three times ; on one occasion because it was severely
bombed, when a nurse and several patients were injured.
During the Somme campaign new work was taken up at
Bray-sur-Somme. The Field Hospital in Belgium continued
its work, under the charge of an American nurse, since
awarded the Medaille des fipidemies, while the Directress
went to the Somme, and was installed with a staff of French
nurses in a huge field hospital of four thousand beds.
When the offensive in Champagne was started in April -
1 91 7, she undertook similar and, if possible, even more
arduous work in that region, winning for her intrepid
services the Medaille des Epidemies, the Croix de Guerre
(avec palme), and the Legion d'Honneur. Latterly the
field hospital in Belgium has been enlarged to eight hundred
beds. The latest Directress of this hospital has also won
the Croix de Guerre.
The Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont was Hopital de
already a witness to the endurance of that ancient tie be- L 'E COSSE -
tween France and Scotland. And in this September a
new link was added in Paris itself, by the formation of the
Hopital de l'Ecosse in the Rue de la Chaise. This was
already before the war a well-known nursing home of high
repute, the clinique of a distinguished French doctor.
But in this September it took the name of the Hopital de
l'Ecosse, as it was now to be supported by funds from
Scotland. After being financed for a time from Canada,
it was taken over by the Scottish branch of the British
Red Cross Society.
158 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Ris-Orangis. The same month of September saw the opening of a
hospital not far from Paris, at Ris-Orangis, in the Seine et
Oise Department, founded in the previous July by two
English donors. The building offered to the founders by
the French Government was a disused college of the Marist
Fathers. As it had not been occupied for ten years, and
had no modern conveniences, a drastic overhauling of the
whole building was required. Every room was painted
afresh, and fitted with hot-water radiators. Electric light,
gas, and water were laid on. Not only this, but baths,
wash-basins, and sinks had all to be provided, and an entirely
new system of sanitation installed. All this was done with
magnificent thoroughness, and in a very short space of time
the hospital was ready for the arrival of the first patients.
The hospital is fortunate in being surrounded by a park
of forty acres. But ten years of disuse and neglect had pro-
duced a wild profusion of weeds and undergrowth, and paths
which were choked with tangle, roads which had become
obliterated, had to be found and cleared. When this work
had been done, gravel paths and concrete terraces were
revealed, most useful for the patient who is in need of sun
and air. The Gate-House, which had fallen into ruin, was
repaired and put in order ; and it now houses the male staff
of the hospital — sixty and more in number.
The Hopital Militaire V.R. y6, as the unit at Ris-Orangis
is formally called, is distinguished by the special excellence
and completeness of its technical equipment. The X-Ray
department, fitted out in the minutest detail, and the
bacteriological laboratory have been able to further and
facilitate the work of the surgeons to an exceptional degree,
and to collect a mass of valuable data. The hospital has
also been noted for the development, under a famous New
York surgeon, who has given his voluntary services, of the
system of suspensory treatment for fractures, widely adopted
during the war. Instead of being put in plaster, the limb
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 159
is suspended by an arrangement of pulleys and weights.
This not only gives comfort to the patient, allowing him to
move about in bed, and greatly reducing the pain, but
enables the dressings to be done much more easily and with
less risk of injury, since the limb is approachable from every
direction. Moreover, the neighbouring joints are not
immobilised, and as soon as the bone joins, the patient
can often use his limb at once.
Recognising the high efficiency of the hospital, with its
wonderful completeness of outfit, the French Service de
Sante has made it the surgical and radiographical centre for
a circuit of six military hospitals in the neighbourhood.
The motor section, which consists of a fleet of fourteen
cars, collects and evacuates the wounded not only for this
circuit of six hospitals, as well as for Ris-Orangis itself, but
for six other hospitals in addition. The wounded arrive
by train at Villeneuve St-Georges, a railway junction some
miles away, where a canteen has been established, and the
men supplied with hot or cooling drinks on arrival. Here
the English staff allots the wounded men to the various
hospitals in the district of which Ris-Orangis is the centre ;
the worst cases are reserved for Ris-Orangis itself.
A few days after this one-time college of the Marist
Fathers began to receive its first wounded, a hospital was
opened at the Chateau St-Rome, far away in the south-
west of France, in the neighbourhood of Toulouse.
Chateau St-Rome is the home of the Presidente of the Chateau
Comite Britannique and her husband. It stands in its St-Rome.
park in the broad airy valley of the Garonne, within sight of
the distant Pyrenees. At the opening of the war it was
placed by its owners at the disposal of the Government for
use as a hospital, but at that time the Government did not
avail itself of the offer. In the summer of 1915, how-
ever, a request was made for the use of the chateau ;
and the hospital opened on 2nd October. It has three
160 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
hundred beds, distributed among buildings surrounding the
chateau.
Hopital Complementaire No. 54 (St-Rome's official title)
is peculiar in this, that it is the only Hopital Complementaire
run, at the direct request of the Service de Sante, by an
entirely British staff of doctors and nurses. The Service
de Sante finances the unit, but it has had great help from
England, especially from the Comite Britannique.
When it first opened, St-Rome received convoys of
wounded from the front.; later on, they came from the
interior. In December of 1916 it was chosen to be a
special hospital for wounded suffering from chronic osteitis.
Compound fractures failing to heal result in this condition,
and such cases are particularly difficult and prolonged ; but
they have been treated at St-Rome with great success.
St-Cloud. In November a hospital of five hundred beds was opened
at St-Cloud in wooden buildings provided by the French.
It is the Canadian General Hospital No. 8, and is staffed
by the C.A.M.C.
1916-1917
Edinburgh On New Year's Day 1 91 6, the Edinburgh and Border
and Border Hospital, originally at Malo-les-Bains, by Dunkirk, was
Hospital . . .
reopened at Paris in the Bois de Boulogne. A restaurant
in a leafy part of the Bois was transformed in a fortnight.
Sanitary arrangements were put in at heavy cost. With
its pleasant surroundings, the Pavilion Royal makes an
admirable hospital for the seriously wounded cases, for which
it is reserved. There are eight fully trained English nurses,
and four V.A.D.'s. The surgeons are French ; and the
hospital is under the direction of the Service de Sante.
Michelham In September of this year the Michelham Hospital,
Hospital. lodged in the Astoria Hotel, Paris, was reorganised, and since
that date has had French patients and a mostly British staff.
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 161
During the first year of the war this hospital took in British
wounded, and had a mixed French and English staff. For
the second year it had French patients and a Japanese staff.
French ladies help. There are 183 beds in this hospital.
In July a hospital at Troyes was taken over from the Troyes.
French by the Canadian A.M.C., and became No. 6 General
Canadian Hospital. It has 1400 beds for French wounded.
Two new hospitals opened during 1916 were both small
hospitals for particular kinds of convalescent cases.
The first is the one already referred to, which was estab- Martouret.
lished at Martouret by the same lady who had started the
hospital at Ceret in the previous year. It is officially
named Etablissement de 1' Assistance aux Convalescents
Militaires Frangais (Fondation Allhusen No. 2).
Martouret is an old bathing establishment close to the
little town of Die in the Dauphine Alps. It stands by itself
on a hill fifteen hundred feet up, in a beautiful country. The
hospital was opened at the end of May ; and because of the
properties of the resinous baths it was asked to specialise
in nerve cases and cases of rheumatism. Recently con-
valescent cases of malaria, so frequent among the soldiers
from Salonika, have also been admitted. There are forty-
five beds. The hospital is under the administration of the
Lyons Region; and the wounded come from centres like
Valence, Lyons, Grenoble, Aix-les-Bains, and Chambery.
The second hospital was officially opened on 19th Novem- Sana-
ber, at Carqueiranne, in the Department of Var. This has torium
, . , . «. 1 - 1 1-1 l Beau-soleil
the special interest of having been built expressly as a carque-
sanatorium by the well-known Anglo-Swedish lady who iranne.
founded and directs it. Her particular object was to do
something for those soldiers whom long exposure, the wet
cold of the trenches, and the hardships of winter campaign-
ing, or the after-effects of chest and throat wounds, have
predisposed to tuberculosis, or in whom some lung trouble
has been set up which without special treatment will
\6i FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
develop into that disease. There was, and is, a very real
need for sanatoria of this kind, where timely and suitable
treatment saves the sufferers' lives. The Sanatorium
Beau-soleil is a white building, long and low, standing on a
pine-grown hill beside the Mediterranean. It is sheltered
from cold winds, takes all the sun, and has the scent of
herbs and flowers about it. It has room for thirty patients.
The land and means for building were provided out of a
fund left to the foundress for this purpose by an English-
woman who had married a French nobleman ; but valuable
help in carrying out and supporting the scheme was given
by the Comite Britannique and by private subscribers in
England. The patients are chosen by the Assistance aux
Convalescents Militaires, a society attached to the French
War Office, which has co-operated in the scheme from the
first. The appreciation of the Government was shown
by its sending a Minister to open the sanatorium at a
function brilliant with notable persons.
In December the Argyll-Robertson Maison de Con-
valescence was opened in a villa at Dinan in Brittany,
with thirty beds.
In January 191 7 a French hospital at Port-a-Binson, in
the Marne Department, Hopital Auxiliaire No. 76, was
taken over by the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps.
Some account of this Corps has been given in the story of
the convoys. After the closing of the hospital maintained
by the Corps at Calais for Belgian wounded in October 1916,
an urgent request was made by the French for the F.A.N.Y.
to take over the hospital at Port-a-Binson. The building,
a priory, was inspected, and an agreement was made. The
F.A.N.Y. was to supply nurses, chauffeurs, cars, and one
hundred beds, with bedding, material and stores. Rations,
light, and heating were to be provided by the Societe de
Secours aux Blesses Militaires. On 14th January 1917, a
telegram arrived at Calais, asking for the cars and staff to
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 163
start at once. In two or three hours three cars had begun
their three-hundred-mile journey in the midst of a snow-
storm ; and others followed the next day. There were some
breakdowns and consequent stoppages in lonely places in
the snow. But in a few days all had arrived at Binson.
Here there was much cleaning to be done ; and the hospi-
tal was not formally opened till March, when the wards
appeared not only clean, but dainty and attractive to the
eye. The grounds are ample, and the place looks out on a
fine prospect, with southern sun. Two French doctors
divided the surgical work. Two refugee nuns looked after
the linen room, and other nuns at a farmhouse did the wash-
ing. Apart from these and the orderlies the staff was all
English. As the result of inspections and reports, the
hospital was appointed to be a Triage (sorting) centre for
the whole army in that district.
In January 191 8, the F.A.N.Y. was asked to hand over the
hospital to the Societe de Secours aux Blesses Militaires.
Lastly we have to record the opening, in the first days of Etrembieres.
October 1917, of the Hopital Neo-Zelandais at Etrem-
bieres, Haute Savoie.
This is a hospital for rapatries ; that is, refugees from the
invaded and devastated regions of France, who, after being
detained in Germany, are returned to their own country
through Switzerland. We shall have more to say about the
rapatries when we come to speak of the relief work for refugees
undertaken by the Society of Friends. That Society has a
convalescent home at Samoens in the same neighbourhood.
The hospital at Etrembieres was built in 1877 as a school
for girls, and stands in a beautiful park at the foot of a
mountain called the Saleve. It is about three miles from
Geneva, and just within French territory. The New Zealand
Government has generously endowed the hospital, and it
is managed by the British Committee of the French Red
Cross,
1 64 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
The building was found to adapt itself fairly well to use
as a hospital, providing eight large wards and two or three
small ones, with accommodation for three hundred to three
hundred and fifty patients. The staff, both doctors and
nurses, is entirely British. Every variety of disease and
injury can be treated here, as there is an operating theatre,
sterilising room, dental and electrical departments, etc.
Two trains, one in the morning, and the other in the
evening, arrive at £vian on the frontier bringing the ra-
patries — eight hundred to a thousand of them at a time.
They have lost home, possessions, everything. Now they
are on the soil of France, they have the friendliness of their
own tongue in their ears ; but they are still homeless and
still among strangers in a land that to them is strange. They
are still exiles from their own villages and familiar country-
side, which they see in memory scorched with fires and
pounded with shells ; which they know are still in the hands
of a merciless invader ; and which, when at last they are
permitted to go home, they will find defaced and pillaged
or mere ash and blackened ruin. No wonder that when
they emerge from the train at Evian they look round them
on the Savoy mountains with dazed eyes.
The healthy among them are sent on by train and dis-
tributed over France. The sick are examined on their
arrival by doctors, who detain them for a night or two, and
then draft them into various hospitals in the neighbourhood,
of which the Neo-Zelandais is the largest.
The rapatries are absolutely homeless. Families there-
fore cannot be separated. If one of a family is sick and goes
to hospital, the rest must go as well. For adults a lodging
is found in the neighbouring village. The children are put
in a villa which stands in the grounds of the hospital.
There they are taught and trained in household manage-
ment, by a little band of nuns.
This concludes the list of the Anglo-French hospitals ;
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 165
that is, hospitals for French wounded staffed and controlled
from Britain or the British Dominions. As the reader may
remember, however, much work has been done in purely-
French hospitals by groups and individuals. The work
of the Rennes Unit, mentioned on p. 132, is an instance.
Nearly all this work has been nursing ; but surgeons also
have gone out from this country and given their services.
For example, at the hospital of Lamothe (Hopital 115 bis,
Villeneuve-sur-Lot) in the Department of Lot et Garonne,
British surgeons have been working. In the autumn of
1 914 an urgent appeal was made by the British Committee
of the French Red Cross for British surgeons to help in the
work of this hospital centre. Ever since, a service has been
assured by one or more surgeons, who work not only in the
hospital, but in the surrounding district, and have indeed
acted as consulting surgeons to the seventeen other hospitals
of this ' region.' This voluntary service has been warmly
appreciated by the French.
Of the labours of the nurses, it is, of course, impossible
to give any detailed account, dispersed as they have been
in so many quarters. But a brief description of the fortunes
of one of these small English units may be given, as fairly
typical experience.
The unit in question attached itself to a military hospital
at Foix, officially named Hopital Temporaire No. 1 (Ariege).
It was a large hospital of over five hundred beds. The
expedition was something of a venture.
' It was in December 1914,' writes one of these ladies, the unit's
leader, ' that we started for Foix, knowing nothing but that a French
doctor had said that he would be glad to have us, and that Foix
was the kind of place no one else would want to go to.
' Our arrival must still be remembered — narrow climbing streets,
dark half Spanish houses, crowding peasants who whispered in
amazement, " Les Ingles ! " and then the huge gloomy hospital,
packed with wounded, comfortless, dingy, dreary beyond all words.
Green and chocolate paint, still wet after twenty years, floors dark
1 66 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
with dirt, walls streaked with damp, dust in all the corners, and in
the untidy, sunless wards those rows of silent men staring dully at
the ceiling. One felt one would do anything in the world to change
the look on their faces. But there were only five of us ; we had no
equipment (all the cleaning materials for my eighty-five beds were
one chipped enamel basin and the bottom of a pair of soldier's
trousers), and the one friendly doctor was called away a few days after
our arrival. The rest of the staff eyed us with suspicion ; all that
we did was " tres etrange" and when we wanted to give a rubber hot
water bottle to a patient instead of a stone one, the infirmier de visite
had first to consult the doctor. . . . The tables and trays had to
be scraped with a knife and the men spoke of the last time they had
been washed as one speaks of " last Christmas " or " a little before
Easter." It was not any one's fault exactly ; the country was very
poor and very remote, the Service de Sante had been overwhelmed by
the great September rush, and staff was lacking or inexperienced ;
but courage often failed us, there seemed such walls of suspicion and
misunderstanding to break down. Only the men cheered us on.
They gave us immediately blind confidence and unfailing respect.
The hopeless look went out of their faces, and they cared to live
because we cared so dreadfully that they should not die. They were
very amused at us of course, and spent their time guessing what
form of energy we would next display ; but when even the orderlies
became enthusiastic and the Medecin-chef found that our wards were
the best disciplined and the men the happiest, he accepted us as part
of the hospital, and whenever Inspectors or Generals came, we were
hurriedly rounded up and proudly presented to them as " son equipe
anglaise."
' It was a great satisfaction when he asked whether more helpers
would not be able to come, and soon our number had increased to
fourteen, all voluntary, with nothing but war experience, but very
keen, very adaptable, very happy to work for France. After a time
other hospitals in the XVII. Region hinted that they too would like
" les dames anglaises," and the Directeur du Service de Sante asked
me to visit any of their hospitals which I thought might be in need of
nurses, as parts of the region were very poor, and there was little
local help to be obtained.
' Soon Pamier's three hospitals (420 beds in all) had a small band of
nurses, and in Saint-Gaudens (300 beds) one solitary Englishwoman
worked miracles of energy and skill. In 191 5, Saint- Rome (300 beds)
was entirely staffed by English doctors and nurses, and the French
authorities themselves flew a Union Jack over their own military
building side by side with the French flag.
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 167
* Later on Salies-du-Salat (100 beds for surgical tuberculosis)
asked also for an English staff, which has been a great success.
1 Through the unfailing generosity of British and American
Committees, chiefly perhaps through the Comite Britannique, we
were able to do much for the comfort of the men and to help in the
saving of their lives. What had begun as a most humble and private
venture developed into quite an important undertaking, and it says
much for the tact and discretion of the English nurses that the
Service de Sante should have welcomed them so eagerly into their
own hospitals. In this lies the interest of the work, for I think we
were the first to work only for the Service de Sante and not for the
Croix Rouge. It was rather a difficult position sometimes, because
there was never any " precedent " for the things we did ; we must
have broken all their rules a hundred times over, and we could never
remember that administrations must not be hurried ! but all the
same, much courteous patience on their part and great goodwill
on ours resulted in the most pleasant relations, and an appreciation
which I hope was mutual. I know that on our side we could never be
sufficiently grateful for the kindness shown to us, and for the honour
of being allowed to serve the Army of France.'
The hospital at Salies-du-Salat, mentioned in this account,
is in the Haute Garonne. When the English nurses first
went there in November 1916, there were no nurses, and
only Annamese orderlies speaking no French. A few months
after the arrival of our nurses, the Medecin-chef put up a
notice announcing that, owing to the improved discipline,
longer leave and other privileges would be given. The small
staff has done splendid work in face of much to dishearten,
for the hospital is exclusively for cases of surgical tubercu-
losis, and the patients are all fairly far gone in the disease.
Another hospital for surgical tuberculosis is at Palavas,
on the Mediterranean shores, near Montpellier ; and here,
too, is a staff of English V.A.D. nurses and a matron. The
original party went out in the early summer of 191 6. The
Delegue of the British Committee of the French Red Cross
in that region of France saw how great was the need of the
hospital, which eagerly accepted the services of the English
nurses.
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Lastly, it must be mentioned that Australia, which has
shown so spontaneous and generous a sympathy for France,
has provided, through the Australian Branch of the British
Red Cross Society, a unit of twenty fully trained nurses —
and none are more skilled or highly trained — for work in the
French hospitals. Through the Comite Britannique these
nurses have been allocated in small units to hospitals all
over France. These nurses of British race scattered among
the French hospitals had a double mission. It has been
theirs not only to nurse the sick and wounded soldiers ; but
they have also helped the new-born effort of France to raise
the standard of the nursing profession, and win for it the
public esteem which it enjoys in England.
As a pendant to the work of the hospitals, we may end
with a word on the vans equipped for special work — radio-
graphy, dentistry, bacteriology — which have been sent out
by the Comite Britannique.
Thirteen specially-constructed automobiles, equipped for
X-Ray work, have been sent out. In the field hospitals
close to the front it is impossible to have a fixed apparatus ;
but if the X-Rays can be used on the spot, it will often save
both precious time and still more precious lives. There-
fore this mobile service, arranged for by the Comite Bri-
tannique and the Headquarters Staif, has been of a value
hard to overestimate. This work at the front is done by
military operators.
The Dental Ambulances have also signally proved their
worth. Two of these were sent out in the summer of 191 6.
They are solidly built vans of imposing size, seven feet broad,
and weighing some four and a half tons. The design and
fittings were the fruit of much careful thought, but only
actual experience of French roads could test them thoroughly
for the purpose in view, and in practice it was found that a
THE STORY OF THE HOSPITALS 169
few details had to be modified. On their side, the French
— then in process of completing similar cars — adopted
certain devices from these English ambulances, such as
luggage nets, sleeping hammocks, water-tank and tent ;
while some ingenious French contrivances gave useful hints
to the English. It was a case of mutual help. The French
Service de Sante had had an experimental dental van at the
front for some months, and were then about to send out a
fleet of them.
Trouble with teeth — often acute — is, of course, very
common in every large army. The medical officers have
not the necessary instruments for treating the sufferers,
who cannot, on the other hand, be spared the time to go
back to the base hospital. The trouble continues ; the
men cannot chew their food, and in consequence fall sick.
There are also men whose artificial teeth get broken, and
who are then helpless. This means a vast amount of pain
and waste, which need not be with an adequate service of
dental ambulances. The French have recognised that a
mobile service is really a necessity, and have equipped and
sent out a number of dental cars. As we have said, these
were being completed, after successful experiment, with a
car at the front, when the two English cars sent out through
the Comite Britannique arrived in Paris. Each of the
English cars has for crew or staff two dental surgeons and
a mechanic. They left England at the beginning of July
1916 (just in time to meet the first batch of German prisoners
from the Somme embarking on the other side), and after a
rather protracted delay in Paris, received orders to start for
an unknown destination. This proved to be somewhere
on the Flanders front. They were attached to an Army
Corps, and Dunkirk was appointed their headquarters.
Operations were at last begun at a little ancient town some
distance away from Dunkirk. Fifty patients were treated
the first day. Extractions were performed in the tent,
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called by the soldiers ' la salle des bourreaux,' and fillings
in the car itself. It was the beginning of a campaign for
which thousands of aching soldiers have been grateful.
The difficulty of having the necessary apparatus in field
hospitals close to the front, presents itself again with
regard to bacteriological work. A laboratory for this work
is indispensable to a completely equipped base hospital
to-day ; but the lack of this precious adjunct in the front
line and clearing hospitals often leads to a faulty diagnosis.
A mobile laboratory is the only solution ; and this the
British Committee have had made and equipped in London,
and sent to France on a motor-lorry chassis, in the summer
of 1 91 7. It was designed by a French Army bacteriologist,
collaborating with one of the committee's own workers in
France. A generous subscriber supplied the internal
equipment, by which cases can be diagnosed and lives
saved by instant inoculation or despatch to a special hos-
pital. Arrived on the scene, the van expands, by sections
neatly stowed, into a good-sized room, with windows,
electric light, incubators, stoves, and all the hundred
appliances for carrying out every kind of test. The French
Medical Service had no funds voted for such experimental
work, though an Army surgeon had the idea and the genius
for working it out. Once again, the Red Cross could step
in and prove its value.
We have pictured a day's routine in the office of the
Comite Britannique in London. Let us now give a glimpse
of the work-a-day life in an Anglo-French Hospital in France.
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY
A hospital orderly fills a humble office. He is the un-
skilled labourer of the little world he moves in. He is at
everybody's beck and call. There are no pedantic limita-
tions to his duties : their variety is infinite. All odd jobs
are his. If he starts to perform some part of his daily
routine, it is ten to one that a Sister will waylay him with a
request that cannot be put aside, and that diverging on his
errand he will meet the Matron on the stairs with some yet
more urgent commission, and that before he is half-way
through with this the imperious call of the Medecin-chef
will summon him to ' chuck that,' and demand his instant
services elsewhere. He does not complain ; on the con-
trary, he is inclined to become rather vain of being after all
so indispensable a person.
Modest though his functions are, he has opportunities
for observation. And perhaps on that account it may be
worth while to try to picture for the reader a typical day
in the life of an orderly. If the following lines are written
in the first person, let it be understood that it is any orderly
who speaks.
But first it must be explained that the particular hospital
in which our orderly describes his day has its own special
organisation. In many of the hospitals with which this
book is concerned — I think in most of them — the duties
of the orderly are performed by French soldiers. But at
the Chateau of A the orderlies are all English volun-
teers. At home in England they are engaged in various
blameless and elegant occupations — build houses and
171
172 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
churches, paint pictures, write books, adorn perhaps the
Civil Service ; but here they come to bed-rock matters and
explore fundamental things. Our orderly, however, shall
speak for himself. The year is 191 6, the month is June.
It is close on nine o'clock in the morning, and I am
sweeping the steps of the chateau that lead down into the
park. The sun is already hot, and reflects a glare from the
white stone.
There is no particular necessity to sweep the steps, but
it is odd what pleasure one can take in this simple ritual,
and it fills a few moments between breakfast and the real
labours of the day. On each side of the wide stairs is a
rose tree, one red and one yellow. Other sweepers of steps
may belong to a different school ; but I always allow a few
of the scattered petals — they are single roses — to remain
on the swept surface.
Beyond a broad stretch of gravel — there is nothing in the
way of a garden to intervene — the grass begins, and as far
as the eye can see the level park spreads its verdure, narrow-
ing in the hazy distance where a ridge of hill curves to enclose
it in steep woods. Single trees, and clumps, are dotted over
the green ; and here and there little wooden bridges mark
the course of shallow trout-streams.
Quite close, and nearly opposite the steps, is a great tulip
tree ; and round its stem a shelter has been constructed —
an umbrella-shaped roof, under which are a quantity of
chaises Ungues for the wounded. Two are lounging there
already, in pyjamas. One has a book, the other is coiled
up asleep.
At my left again, there is another shelter, a penthouse of
wood built against the wall of the chateau. Pine boughs
have been laid on the felt-covered roof of it, to mitigate the
heat of the sun. Here are half a dozen beds, a little out-
door ward for patients whom the fresh air will help to
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY 173
recovery. From the steps, as I sweep, I can look down into
the shelter, and I bid good-morning to my friends there,
and ask what night they have had. It is not my turn, but
one of my comrade's, to attend on the wounded of the Abri.
Otherwise it would have been mine to bring them their
coffee at seven and help the Sister with the breakfast and
other after-breakfast duties. And I am glad, because I am
still rather sleepy. It was four in the morning before I
got to bed.
Yesterday afternoon the telephone bell rang. We were
expecting a convoy, and it was no surprise to hear the voice
from the station at B announcing that the train would
arrive at our station, farther down the line, at eleven-thirty.
Being familiar with these announcements, we are doubtful
about that eleven-thirty. But the train must be met at
that hour, though we may have to wait till morning at the
station. I am one of those told off to go with the ambulances.
Eighteen blesses are expected : four ambulances, and a
touring car. We hope that two will be able to sit up in
the car, otherwise — or if more than eighteen arrive — it will
mean a second journey.
Sixteen stretchers must be got ready, and four blankets
for each man. The French stretchers — lighter than English
ones — have the canvas at one end raised to support the
head, so a pillow is not required.
At eleven the cars are purring in the courtyard. Silence
and sleep have descended on the hospital, where only the
night nurses move in the shaded light. The stretchers are
thrust in, and we start in procession. I sit beside the driver,
who in normal life lectures at Cairo to the studious youth
of Egypt, but here alternates the functions of chauffeur
and assistant radiographer. We glide through the silent
village and climb a long ascent. The head-lamps illuminate
the ghostly green of endless ash-trees bordering the road ;
then the shuttered houses of a sleeping hamlet. The air
i 7 4 F0R DAUNTLESS FRANCE
strikes cold as we race along the upland. At last in the
distance one sees the signal lights of the station. There
is a level-crossing to be passed, and a drowsy porter slowly
opens the gates as the waiting cars throb in line. A curve
brings us to the station. The ambulances are backed on
to it, the hoods thrown open, the stretchers and blankets
got out.
We bring the stretchers into the station and pile them
on the platform, for they will be taken on by the train in
exchange for those on which the wounded arrive. There
is an hour or more to wait. The hot milk and the water-
bottles are kept warm at the stove in the little waiting-
room. Some of us stretch ourselves on the platform
benches, others sit on the platform edge and smoke. At
last the train approaches in the darkness, glides almost im-
perceptibly into the station, and stops. Infirmiers hoist
out the wounded allotted to us. As they deposit them on
the platform on their stretchers, we carry them off to the
waiting-room as fast as we can. In a few minutes each has
had his hot drink or lemonade, has been inspected by the
doctor, and has been lifted into the ambulance. The drinks
are administered by the wife of our radiographer, who, like
her husband, is an accomplished artist, but for the time
being looks after the clothes and linen.
Two large lanterns set on the ground outside the main
door of the chateau make a fantastic light in the courtyard
as the cars, one after one, draw up silently opposite the door.
The lantern-rays illuminate the lower branches of the lime-
trees by the courtyard wall, and cast a monstrous shadow
from the cars on the dim foliage above. The hoods are
thrown back, and we draw out, carefully and gently, the
wounded on their stretchers, and lay them down in the
porch. The doctor allots each to his ward, and we carry
them up as rapidly as possible. In each hushed ward the
Sister stands ready to receive them. A few heads are turned
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY 175
in curiosity to see the new inmates. But most are sound
asleep. It is a relief to feel that at last their journey is over,
and the agonising jolts of the road are behind them.
The vivid night scene is recollected like a dream, now
that the June sun is radiant over the peaceful park. The
cool shade of leafy trees over the stream is welcome as I
dip my straw besom in the golden-tinted water. Returning,
I hear a voice calling a name in friendly but peremptory
tones. It is a nurse at a window in one of the lower wards
summoning a patient from the park for the dressing of his
wound. He comes, unwillingly, cherishing his bandaged
arm.
And now our real work begins. Nine o'clock is the hour
for the first operation. Two of my comrades have already
brought the patient down the stairs, and are pushing him
supine on a trolley along the passage to the theatre.
There they will don a white robe and assist the surgeons
and Sister.
Opposite the theatre is the X-Ray room, and each of the
new arrivals has to pass the X-Rays this morning. We get
our list of the men, in the order in which they are to be
taken ; take stretchers, and set to work. While one man
is in the dark-room, which hums and splutters with sparks,
as the radiographers prepare their magical apparatus,
another waits on his stretcher in the passage — for there is
no time to lose if we are to finish by noon — and we, the two
bearers, give him a cigarette and talk.
Forty-eight hours ago, perhaps, or less, this man was
lying out on the churned and shattered slopes of the Mort
Homme or Cote 304. Some will have lain many hours,
even a whole day or more, before they could be picked up.
I marvel at their fortitude and elasticity. After a brief
sleep and a meal they are amazingly revived, though nearly
all are seriously wounded.
The men we are getting now are mostly Territorials,
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between thirty and forty in age, who have been flung into the
furnace of Verdun. And splendidly have they quitted them-
selves. These solid, sunburnt, quiet men — no light weight
on a stretcher — seem to belong to the very core of the nation
which so indomitably and tenaciously is holding the gate of
France against the colossal blows of the German armies.
They are taciturn, with gentle voices ; but they will stand
to the last for ' all they have and are,' they will flinch from
no suffering or calamity to save their beloved country. It
is for them mere matter of course. Yet they hate the war.
Some show a mild curiosity and interest at finding them-
selves in an English hospital ; most take it all for granted.
One tells me he comes from the Doubs, another from the
Indre; another, tall and heavy, is a farmer from Normandy;
another is from the far south and grows fruit ; he tells me
he would like to get in touch with the English market, and
wonders if I could help him. And so on. Different types,
with widely different speech. The patois requires some
patience to understand sometimes, and the French is often
cheeringly ungrammatical to a foreign ear. The majority
are cultivateurs, with a passion for their native soil inbred
in blood and bone.
As each man comes out from the X-Ray examination, he
is shifted from the table to the stretcher, and two bearers
carry him back to his bed, while the other two bearers take
up the man who is waiting, and he in his turn is shifted from
the stretcher to the table on which he lies to be examined.
We go to and from the wards, where the nurses are busy
with the daily dressings of the wounds. Sometimes we
meet a little procession returning from an operation with
the patient still insensible or just emerging into conscious-
ness, or else carrying off the next to be operated on, clutch-
ing the jiche which records his name and wound, amid the
parting jokes and encouragements of his comrades.
The operating-table is universally known as le billard.
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY 177
The other day this little colloquy was heard, as a man was
going to his seventh operation. ' Quoi ? encore pour le
billard ? ' ' Mais, tu sais que je suis un abonne ! ' And
the victim went off with a smile and a waving hand. But
now and then there is one who has a horror of the chloro-
form, as if there were some sinister magic in it.
Almost all, as soon as they are under the anaesthetic, go
back to the battlefield ; and you will hear sometimes the
yell of the charge : ' Courage, les gars ! En avant, la
baionette ! ' and the soldiers, hearing the cry ring out
through the window, will listen with a kind of fascination.
' That 's just how it is when we attack,' they will say.
The morning passes quickly. While we wait by our
stretchers in the passage, we have an appearance of idleness,
which is irresistible to Sisters who look out from their wards
for some one to do one of the score of little errands in their
repertory. Sometimes, when the X-rays promise a pro-
longed search for ' foreign bodies,' I yield to the blandishing
request :
' Would you mind going down to the carpenters' shop ?
I want . . .' or, ' Would you go and fetch the Medecin-
chef ? ' or, ' Could you get some one to mend my Primus
stove ? It is always going out.' But if I do yield, and run
down to the carpenters, for instance, the shout of ' Orderly '
will inevitably echo down the corridor, and I fly back to my
post, leaving an unwelcomed and not too coherent message
behind me.
The carpenters are orderlies too. They work under-
ground in a stone cellar lighted by gratings which look out
on the courtyard. And very necessary functionaries they
are in the hospital's economy. For the chateau, stripped
of its own furniture, is a bare interior, and there are a
hundred things which have to be made on the spot — tables,
cupboards, shelves, special splints, fracture-beds, etc.
Fortunately we are abundantly supplied with wood from
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178 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
the saw-mill up the river. There have been dynasties in
the carpenters' shop. Little tables and other creations —
works of faith and enthusiasm — of the first and second
dynasties are still extant, though bow-legged and apt to
resolve into their elements if not tenderly handled. But
now we have become imposingly proficient. A year ago
I, myself, the completest of amateurs, would spend my spare
time constructing little tables for the bedside of the wounded.
They were my pride and delight. They stood square.
They held things. But now, I can but gaze with awe on
the beautifully jointed constructions which our head car-
penter (he illustrates books in private life) makes with such
care and cunning — singular erections, destined to suspend
by cords and pulleys the broken limbs of patients, the
latest method of treating fractures.
Twelve o'clock. It is the hour for dinner. We have
hurried our last case to bed, and assemble in the great stone
kitchen in the basement, where the chef, a French soldier,
presides over the steaming dishes.
For each salle there is a dish of meat and another of
vegetables ; and these we carry upstairs to their destination,
where the portions are served out by the Sisters. The meat
is usually a stew of beef. Occasionally it is wild boar,
when one of them has been shot in the forest ; or venison,
when a chevreuil has been killed. (One night one of our
cars coming down the hill ran full tilt into a deer that had
chosen to go to sleep in the middle of the lonely road.)
But it is not every patient who has a stomach for strong
meats. Some have appetites that must be coaxed ; and
for these there are eggs, chicken, rabbit, sweetbreads, or
fresh trout from the river. These special dishes we come
back for, and hurry with them to the waiting Sisters. There
is much coming and going up and down the dark stairway
to the kitchen. The wine has already been distributed.
This is a task that falls for a period to each orderly in turn.
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY 179
He reigns in the cellar, a dark and humid place, where by
the light of a tallow candle stump he fills each morning
the prescribed number of bottles, apportioning exactly a
certain quantity to each of the wards, different in each case,
as the number of beds varies. When a cask is finished, he
heaves a new one to its settle and broaches it ; and when
the hospital is full, this happens pretty often. The wine
when given out is mixed with water, to the disgust of the
soldiers, who are all firmly persuaded that le vin donne de la
force, and that water is a dangerous drink.
It generally happens that there are some patients who
cannot feed themselves. There is one lying in the window,
a bearded man who is flat on his back with his right arm
stretched out at right angles in a splint. And in another
ward is a boy who has lost an eye since he came in, and
both whose hands are full of wounds and tied up. He put
up his hands to save his face when the shell burst. (He is
one of a family of thirteen, very poor, and worked on a canal
boat in the region of Dunkirk.) If there is time, we take
a turn with the nurses, who have all they can do to serve
the full wards, in feeding poor fellows like these. They
contrive to make some amusement out of their helplessness.
But in a few minutes it is time to fetch the sweets. And
when these are despatched, there are the empty dishes,
plates, etc., to be carried down in big baskets.
Those of the wounded who can move about help in dis-
tributing the food, and wash up the glasses after the meal.
There is a brown Arab boy, in a fez and loose scarlet jacket,
who moves about in a silent, smiling way ; he is very deft
with his one free hand.
Now it is time to dispose of the pails of slops and dress-
ings, which means several journeys up and down stairs.
And then, with the few inevitable odd jobs that arise, the
morning's work is done. But going down to wash for
dinner I notice that something has happened in the hall
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below the front staircase. It is no longer empty, but
crowded with huge bales and packages. More work for
orderlies ! But appetite calls first. Dinner is somewhat
indefinite in its beginning and end, as there is always work
to keep some of us late or to call them away early. The
Directrice of the hospital sits at one end of the long table,
the Medecin-chef at the other. Post has arrived in the
morning, and the last news from England is discussed,
along with the trivial affairs that amuse our small com-
munity. Sugar has become excessively scarce — otherwise
food is plentiful enough — and the sweet-toothed among us
are driven to secrete little caches of precious lumps in odd
nooks and corners, which of course are considered legitimate
booty by raiding rivals ; scenes of triumph and conster-
nation ensue. But sometimes we are on our best behaviour,
when generals or high officers on a tour of inspection, with
crimson velvet breeches and khaki tunics, deign to be our
guests, and compliments ripple across the table.
The meal over, the question of ' carrying out ' arises.
If it is fine, we carry out into the garden as many of the
wounded as want, or are allowed, to go. A few have been
already carried out this morning, in the intervals of other
work. The weather is not too settled ; will it rain this
afternoon ? Having decided that it will not, we sort our-
selves in pairs ; each pair takes a stretcher, and we attack
the different salles in turn.
It is surprising what a difference sun and air and the
change from the sameness of the ward to a large and living
horizon works on the men, though some, in their languor
and exhaustion, are at first unwilling to be moved. Here,
in one of the upper wards, is a youth with pallid face, whom
the nurses can hardly persuade to touch his food, and who
shrinks from the slightest movement. With his dreamy
eyes and dark close-curling hair and little beard, he has the
least military appearance in the world. Yet 1 find he has
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY
181
not only the Croix de Guerre but the Medaille Militaire —
corresponding to our Victoria Cross — and has done deeds of
signal gallantry. But I am no longer surprised, for such
cases are frequent, and one gets more and more experience
of the splendid unexpectedness of human nature. This
romantic-looking youth, who in a week will have regained his
colour and his appetite out of doors, tells me how he and
his comrades were sent to learn bomb-throwing with the
British Third Army. In this art our proficiency in games
enables us for once to be teachers. But that, after all, is
but a small return for what the French have taught us in
artillery.
If just a few are reluctant to go, most of the men are
impatient to be out, and lively reproaches assail us from
this bed or that when anything has delayed our coming.
They become expert in throwing themselves from bed to
stretcher, having found ways of their own of transferring
their wounded limbs without injury. But certain cases have
to be moved ever so gingerly, with the most elaborate pre-
cautions and many groans. There are four or five who
cannot be moved to a stretcher, and these have to be carried
down on their beds. There are no lifts in the chateau,
needless to say ; and to carry a loaded bed downstairs,
keeping it level all the time, is not the lightest of jobs, but
with four bearers it is accomplished quite quickly.
For those who have been perhaps six or seven months in
the ward the ' first day out ' is a long-looked-for occasion,
a memorable date. One seems to feel with them the wonder
of delicious sunshine and rustling leaves, and the life-giving
sweetness of the air.
With all the speed we can, we come and go, till we have
some thirty laid at ease on chaises Ungues under the tulip-
tree, or in a smaller group under an apple-tree near the
stream. As many more perhaps can walk, and are now
lying on the grass, or under more distant trees, or strolling
1 82 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
by the little river. Now and then a group will play at
bowls on the gravel. It will be the fashion for a week or
two, but enthusiasm for games is apt to flicker out. One
day we got up a match between the different wards ; only
couches — those who could not walk — being admitted to
compete. The occasion of the match was this. There
was a certain patient, whom we will call No. 43, who lay
in his bed for months and made no progress, in great measure
because he refused all effort towards recovery and englobed
himself in a mental and corporeal apathy. He was a young
man, but without an attribute of youth. He was a soldier,
but no one ever looked less like one. Pallid, with fixed,
expressionless brown eyes, he remained in a sort of jellied
vacancy. Sometimes his parents would visit him ; and it
was a sight at once pitiable and absurd to see this short,
stout, sable-attired pair hovering with fish-like, tearful eyes
over their cherished offspring. No. 43 was the despair of
the doctors. These were on the point of trying if an appli-
cation of electricity might succeed in shaking him from the
glue of passivity in which he seemed fixed and imbedded for
ever, when some one hit on the notion of the match of bowls.
The champions were carried out on their stretchers, and
from their supine position flung the bowls forward. And
No. 43, invigorated by a sort of resentment at being roused
into activity, won the match. We crowned him with
laurels. He was seen to smile. One of our comrades,
noted for his joyous and irreverent badinage, rallied him
on the festive revelries and boisterous escapades which he
felt sure had marked his roseate youth. No. 43 resumed
his ox-like solemnity of visage, and replied in a sentence of
finished prose : ' Monsieur, j'ai assiste a des reunions de
toutes sortes ; et je me suis toujours contenu entre les
limites les plus correctes.'
But 43 was altogether an exception among the wounded.
Who so ready with a merry word about their sufferings,
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY 183
who so prompt with a cordial and engaging smile, who so
grateful for the least attention, as these soldiers of France ?
And what elasticity they have, both of mind and body S
They do not want to be helped too much when first regain-
ing the use of their limbs ; they are eager to help themselves.
They are often even too eager at the first trial of their
crutches, and hop about with reckless agility. Then comes
a day when the crutches are discarded. They are still very
weak ; but one of us walks behind with a firm grip of the
jacket or pyjamas between the shoulders in case of a tumble ;
and they descend the stairs with increasing confidence,
turning round with a triumphant smile to say : ' J'ai fait
du progres, n'est-ce-pas ? '
There are three men whom we have carried out who are
liable to haemorrhage at any instant. The outing is excel-
lent for them, but they cause us anxious moments. We
have laid them nearer to the chateau than the rest, and a
watchful eye is kept on them, for if the alarm is called they
must be carried to the operating theatre with lightning
speed. At present, however, they seem to be perfectly
at ease, and we hope for the best.
Now is the time for a pleasant lounge and chat with the
wounded, some of whom are now old friends. But there
are those packing-cases in the hall, crying out to be opened.
A swift ripping up of the canvas discloses the contents of
the bales. There are bandages, gauze, lint — all sorts of
hospital stores — shirts, socks, slippers, etc., sent out by
the Comite Britannique from Knightsbridge. Long awaited
private parcels too, for the staff, are eagerly pounced on and
carried off ; and other big packages from the country
town where our shopping and provisioning are done. We
have a busy time carrying one load to the top of the house,
superintended by the Matron, another to the pharmacy,
another to the epicerie. I realise, as never before, the
weight of jam.
1 84 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
The, last load is disposed of, and a broom restores what
our genial Vaguemestre and secretary, whose phrasing is as
elegant as his handwriting, calls le peristyle, to a presentable
cleanness of aspect.
It is from here that, when there has been a death, the
little funeral procession starts to the church close by. I
forbear to describe the grief of widow or parents summoned
perhaps from some distant department of France. Many,
both men and women, assemble to honour him who has
died, and follow him to his grave in the cemetery on the
outskirts of the village. It is the duty of two of us to follow,
too, and under the tall trees on the hillside where the
soldier is laid to rest, to represent the homage of England
to the fallen son of France.
Three o'clock ! I remember that ten men are being
evacuated to-day, and that it falls to me to fit them out
with such clothes and shoes as they may be in need of.
Having a list of these men in my pocket, I proceed to collect
them. When all have been assembled, I take them down
in turn to a part of the spacious cellars where the clothing
is stored. Each of the soldiers has already received the
things taken from him when he came in, since disinfected and
repaired ; but one wants new trousers, another a jacket,
a third a cap, and nearly all want boots. I fit them as best
I can. Some take the first thing that comes, easily content.
Others insist on trying one thing after another, and would
reject them all if a further choice were possible. But what
we have must serve. As it happens, all the smaller sized boots
have been taken already ; the new stock has not arrived ;
none but gigantic sizes are left ; and all the men's feet
are unnaturally small. I assure them that with some paper
stuffed in the toes they will be admirably fitted. They shuffle
about, make comical or dubious grimaces, but finally depart
in a general good humour, all more or less pleased with the
haphazard smartness of their variegated new get-up.
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY 185
A few minutes' stroll among the wounded in the park,
and we may snatch an interval for tea in company with
Sisters and nurses. During the warm weather we have
tea under a great horse-chestnut in a garden between the
church tower and the river ; a sunny, secluded spot.
Returning to the chateau, I meet some one on a bicycle,
who hails me as he alights at the entrance. It is Gaston —
one of last year's blesses, returned to pay us a visit. After
many months in the hospital — how well I remember his
weight on a stretcher — he had to lose his foot. But here
he is, strong, tall, and upright, riding a bicycle ! He has an
artificial foot (American) and his limp is barely noticeable.
It is delightful to see him again ; and he is soon surrounded
by old friends of the staff, as his arrival is noised about,
eager with questions and hand-grasps.
But I am hastily summoned by a nurse on an errand from
one of the upper wards. A young Arab, she tells me, who
has just had his arm put in plaster, is trying to tear off
his bandage and needs controlling. I find him, scarcely
emerged from the effects of the anaesthetic, making resentful
movements like a puzzled animal and every other moment
laying out his throat for a blank roar. His mouth opens
wide for a perceptible interval before the roar comes, and
his eyes are frightened and angry. But one of my comrades
is already in charge of him, and I am not really wanted.
To-morrow the boy will be smiling and human again.
In the same ward are two amputes — middle-aged men —
whom I can never pass without a twist of the heart. One
has lost an arm, the other a leg. Their sad patience never
gives way. Yesterday I stole a rose for each of them, and
I see the red bloom and the white still beside their beds,
stuck in water. Their smile of thanks haunts me and hurts.
It will soon be time for carrying-in, and I go down to the
wounded under the tulip-tree and sit among them. We
exchange cigarettes and chat. They have all been greatly
1 86 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
moved and impressed by the death of Kitchener. Vaguely
they have felt the strength and stature of the man who
raised our armies from the soil ; and his passing from the
world into the silence of those stormy waters at sunset in
the far North has a legendary and mysterious grandeur
for them. Moreover, he was a friend of France. But we
talk of many things. They tell stories of the trenches at
Verdun, blasted away by the infernal cannonade ; of the
smell of ether as the drugged Boches advanced and fell and
came on again ; fumes that hung over the heaps of dead.
And we talk of our homes. But some have homes no longer.
Here is a man from a village beyond Lille. He has a wife
and children there, but knows nothing of what has become
of them, only that they are in the power of the Boche.
And here in the hospital he has had to lose a leg. But he
speaks with a surprising gentleness. War is all very well,
he tells me, for soldiers who can fight ; but this making
war on women and children, vraiment, ce n 'est pas bien.
Next him is a lad of twenty, who has been telephoniste
at a grand hotel in Paris. He has bad wounds ; it will be
a year or more, I think, before he has ended with hospitals,
and his fighting days are over. He has the most winning
of smiles, and he talks to me of London, where he has spent
a week or two, and which he has a great desire to revisit.
And truly I hope to see him there. Another who knows
England, and indeed speaks admirable English, is coming
towards us over the grass. He has several wounds, but
comparatively slight ones, and is handsome, with aquiline
dark features. He comes from Evreux in Normandy,
and the wool trade takes him to England for long visits.
He is happy to have come to an English hospital. But, for
the most part, these soldiers are as ignorant of our country
as the men of our army, before the war's experience, were of
France. They find that Englishwomen are merrier than
Frenchwomen ; but I don't know that this surprised them.
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY 187
I doubt if they had any prejudices on the subject. The
other day I found a whole group who believed that India
was a part, or a continuation, of Turkey. And perhaps if
one could see into their minds, their ideas of England and
the English would be found to be equally fabulous. But
they ask many questions, always a little puzzled at first
that we should come here of our own accord to work for
France, when there was no compulsion to do so. They are
quick to note character, and the human comedy in our little
community does not escape them. On the other side of
the tree is a sallow Corsican, who worked in the engine-room
of a tramp steamer. We talk of the wonders of New York,
where he means to live when the war is over. But he is
a complainer, this Corsican, though he can talk pleasantly
enough — he likes to use his Italian — and he is not a favourite
in the ward. Next him is a soft-voiced, bright-eyed youth,
who works in a grocery in Limoges ; and there is a vine-
grower from the Rhone Valley, and a long-faced silent
Norman ; and not far off is a man with clear brown eyes and
a short moustache who, to my surprise, turned out to be a
cure from Dijon. In a little separate group is D , a
sergeant and old soldier, who has about him the air of
tradition, as if he were truly a descendant of the Grande
Armee of a hundred years ago. I greatly enjoy his com-
pany ; he is a man of no flow of speech, though he comes
from the Midi ; but he is so genuine a man, so fine of
feeling, reserved as he is, so loyal, to use a word the French
are fond of, so frank and cordial in his simplicity, that one
feels it good to be with him. I found him once discussing
art and letters — an unusual thing among the blesses — with
a little black-haired, heavy-moustached soldier, who, in
other times, is a dealer in curios and pictures in Paris. He,
too, is a man of excellent heart and intelligence, though I
was a little disconcerted when our talk happened on the
theatre and Shakespeare. D — ■ — had not heard of Shake-
1 88 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
speare, and my other friend, a little scandalised, proceeded
to explain that he was the ' Victor Hugo de l'Angleterre '
— and the famous author of Quo V adis?
Germans of a similar walk in life would, I doubt not,
possess more instruction. But how often will you find a
German middle-class family priding themselves on having
read Goethe and Shakespeare and Kant, but apparently
quite unaffected by the culture they have passed through
their minds and still essentially boorish, still capable of a
yet greater pride in the capacity for drinking twelve glasses
of beer between meals ! These Frenchmen, even the
illiterate peasant, have always natural dignity and grace of
speech.
And now I hear my name called by a Breton lad, bright-
eyed and round-headed, with short black hair and a little
black moustache, white teeth, and a roguish laugh. He has
just waked up from a nap, and insists that I shall take a walk
with him in the park after supper. Already the stretchers
are being brought out, and I join with the others in carry-
ing the soldiers indoors. We get this done at a great
speed, and soon there are only a few loiterers left who
need no help. The haemorrhages have refrained from
haemorrhaging, and all is well.
At six o'clock we muster again in the kitchen to carry up
the supper for the wounded — usually soup, bread followed
by big slices of cream cheese, and an oily salad.
After supper the evacues — the men who got their new
clothes and big boots in the afternoon — are to go up to the
Hospice, the other hospital on the hill at the farther end of
the village. The hoot of the car is heard as it comes round
from the garage ; the men are collected and squeeze into
the ambulance ; we dash up the street, and in two minutes
are at the gates of the Hospice, where there are many old
acquaintances among the wounded to greet us. The men
pre allotted to their wards, and then we dash back with'the
THE DAY OF AN ORDERLY 189
car ; for there are a couple of stretcher-cases also to be
fetched. These are lifted in, and on arrival at the Hospice
must be carried up to their beds.
At last I flatter myself that work is over for the day, and
pass through the chateau for a stroll in the cool air of the
park. But on my way I am seized by the Matron. There
is a French bedstead to be got up from the cellar for an
isolation case in the turret-room. Two of us depart on
the errand. French bedsteads are not like ours. They
fold up in the middle. They have sharp edges everywhere
and crab-like propensities to pinch. They fold and un-
fold when you least expect it, and catch your flesh unawares.
And what they catch they grip. Carrying one of these
vindictive machines up three flights of stairs is a journey
of pain. The bedstead kicks and pinches at every step.
But at last it is got up into the room, and set up on its four
feet, and a mattress thrown on it to keep it from further
convulsions. We heave a sigh of joy, and leave a grateful
Sister.
Now surely we have half an hour's peace before our
own supper. I find Sebastien, my Breton friend, under the
tulip-tree, full of reproaches because I am so late for the
promised stroll. And we are just starting when a shout
from some one calls me back. What can it be ? A haemor-
rhage ? I start to run at the thought. Blessed relief ! It
is only fourteen casks of wine which have arrived, and some
one is wanted to roll them into the cellar. In the court-
yard I find two high carts, each with a pair of horses har-
nessed tandem, and each loaded with barrels. How are
the barrels to be got off the carts ? Everything points to
a stretcher ; and finding an old stout English stretcher, I
slant it from the cart-tail to the ground. The barrels come
rolling down with a little counter-pressure to ease their
descent ; and before long the whole fourteen are rolled
into place.
190 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
There is still time for a little ramble ; and I saunter with
Sebastien along the little river, where every now and then
a trout rises and flops in the cool stillness of the twilight.
Sebastien has lost a hand ; but, as he tells me, ' J J ai toujours
de la chance ' : it might have been the right hand, and it is
the left. Also, he had always hoped, if he were wounded, for
two things : first to be taken to a chateau, and second, to
be in an English hospital. Et me void / He is a good
soldier, but he does not like the war at all. He tells me all
about his home at Quimper and his boyhood. He wants to
come to England. I have been trying to teach him a
little English, but the words he learns to pronounce with
difficulty become more and more unrecognisable each time
he repeats them. It is true, our pronunciation is formid-
able enough for a French tongue ; and he is also rather
lazy. His education is inconsiderable ; but his manners
are perfect in their natural ease and grace.
Having set down these common tasks which make up the
orderly's day, I feel half-ashamed at proffering so trivial a
record, when the real work of the hospital, the work of the
doctors and nurses, who have not only hard labours to per-
form with their trained skill, but endless anxious responsi-
bilities, is the story that ought to be told. Alas, I have not
the knowledge for the telling of it ; I have only boundless
honour and admiration for them and their wonderful work.
We orderlies have glimpses only of what that work means,
what lives it saves, what suffering it alleviates. We see
rather the human side ; yet that is my excuse for these
pages, since I hope they may reflect something of the
qualities of the Poilu whom we love, as we have learnt to
know him in his hour of trial and suffering ; gentle in
speech, courteous in bearing, constant in fortitude, fervent
in the faith of his country's cause.
THE CANTEENS
With the account of the Convoys and the Hospitals we
conclude our record of the Red Cross work done by the
British for the French wounded.
But there are other ways in which we have been able to
help the French soldier.
Quite early in the war an organisation for providing
canteens for the refreshment of the sick and tired soldiers
was set on foot in Paris by a patriotic Frenchman.
It was called * L'QEuvre de la Goutte de Cafe.' It was
on a small scale, on account of the limited funds available ;
but the first canteens which it started were so greatly ap-
preciated and so obviously needed that the founder of the
CEuvre and his wife, whose hearts were very much in the
work, looked about for means to extend it.
One day the Presidente of the Comite Britannique
received a letter asking if funds from England could be made
available for establishing more canteens. Madame la Pre-
sidente had a great desire to further this work, if possible.
And it occurred to her that the application might be turned
to an even greater and more beneficent opportunity than
had been originally contemplated. For every day the
Comite was being approached by Englishwomen who
wanted to serve France in some way, yet had no specific
training or qualification. Here was at once an outlet for
their enterprise and enthusiasm, and a golden occasion for
furthering the friendship of the two countries. The ap-
plication of the CEuvre de la Goutte de Cafe had been for
191
i 9 2 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
funds ; but how infinitely better to provide not only funds
but personal service ! How much more it would mean to
the French soldier if he could see and grasp hands with
these Englishwomen whose love for France prompted them
to go out and do hard work for the comfort and refreshment
of the Poilu, than if he were merely told that certain funds
had been contributed by English people !
So it came to be arranged by mutual consent that the
Comite Britannique should undertake the setting-up of
additional canteens, and should provide their personnel.
Any one who has visited France during the war will have
been forced at every turn to realise the great difference
that the habit of military service makes to a nation. Every
boy in France knows that, except in special circumstances,
a period of service with the colours lies before him, and
that for the best part of his life he will be liable to service.
Every mother knows that her son is bound to pass through
these years of training, and in case of war, is bound to fight.
It is all part of the national life ; it is all taken for granted.
But with us in England how different it was ! Only a
minute fraction of those now fighting ever dreamed for a
moment of being a soldier. The vast majority had no
interest in military matters whatever. Our millions of
volunteers, when they enlisted, undertook something that
was absolutely novel, and was a complete break with all
their habits, interests, and traditions. It was like going out
into an unknown country ; an immense, life-absorbing adven-
ture. And the rest of our population, that saw sons, brothers,
husbands, and lovers go out into this terrible new world
for the sake of their country's cause, how eagerly it followed
them with its love and admiration ; how it resolved to do
everything possible for their comfort and support when they
were not actually fighting in the -misery of the trenches ; how
it lavished generosity on the wounded ! Organisations like
the Y.M.C.A., and the Church Army devoted energies
THE CANTEENS 193
to building recreation huts and starting canteens for the
soldiers behind the lines in France or at camps in England ;
and money poured in from the public for these purposes.
There are no such great organisations in France. There,
the soldier takes his service as a matter of course, and the
public takes it also as a matter of course. The men are
doing what they have always been expected to do, in case
of war arising ; and the whole nation shares alike. The
French soldier rubs along with little enough ; his wants
are easily satisfied, at least he puts up with what he gets,
and is not given to complaining. His pay is five sous a
day ; and that is five times as much as he was given at the
beginning of the war. And he has very little — scarcely any
— of all that extra, non-official provision for his comfort
that has been made for our soldiers.
But this war is unparalleled alike in its intensity and
protraction. Men can face hardship and physical misery,
and daily danger of death and wounds, with comparative
cheerfulness, if the end be in sight ; if they know that
misery, hardship, and danger are only for a certain term.
But to endure for years without coming nearer to an end
is a terrible exaction on the hardiest nerves. And when
the pressure is lightened for a moment ; when the men are
resting, or travelling wearily to and fro from the lines ;
then is the time — the empty time — when they need to be
refreshed and entertained, to have their thoughts diverted,
above all to recover the touch of something human, some-
thing apart from the nations' rivalry of destruction. The
canteens and the recreation huts are little islands of refuge
in the ocean of waste and loss and monotonous hardship.
More and more as the war drags on their value is appreciated.
It was therefore a prescient patriotism which inspired
L'CEuvre de la Goutte de Cafe. And we in Britain may
well be glad that we have been able to help and so con-
siderably to extend work of such living, tonic influence.
i 9 4 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
ii
The canteens fall into four classes : those at Railway
Stations, those at Foyers de Cantonnement, those at
Depots des Eclopes, and those at Depots d'Isoles. These
terms need some explanation.
A Depot des Eclopes is a military depot where tired but
not wounded soldiers are sent for a few weeks' rest. The
canteens attached to these may be asked to do some light
cooking, or cooking of invalid dishes, for the worse cases in
the sick ward.
A Depot d'Isoles is a military depot for men who are
passing through on their way to be re-drafted to their
regiment or re-equipped. They stay for one or two days ;
sometimes less, very rarely more.
A Foyer is a recreation-room where the men can sit and
read, smoke, play games, and write letters.
Foyers are attached to rest camps to which an armee au
repos is sent for a rest of more or less duration, the men being
billeted in the villages chosen for their cantonments.
These various posts are started by the English * can-
teeners ' wherever possible.
Gramophones are an essential part of the equipment of a
canteen. In many canteens the Dames Anglaises have set
up a cinema, which is especially enjoyed during the long
evenings of the winter months. Whenever it can be done,
concerts and entertainments are got up.
At the canteens, refreshments such as coffee, soup,
cocoa, biscuits, jam, sweets, and other dainties are served
out. Except at the Depots des Eclopes there is no cooking
of dishes. English cigarettes and tobacco are also dis-
tributed. Many of the French soldiers prefer them to
what they get in France.
In all the canteens organised through the Comite
Britannique everything is given free. In those worked by
THE CANTEENS 195
other societies, under the auspices of the Comitc, a nominal
charge is made.
The Comite sends out under-linen, socks, mufflers, gloves,
handkerchiefs, etc., to be given to the soldiers when needed.
A lady writes from one canteen, acknowledging a parcel of
socks, that ' we often have to attend to sore feet, and we
are glad of socks to give the men to change. We do quite
a number of dressings in a small way, and we keep a good
supply of dressings and all kinds of remedies for various
ailments.'
The fact that things are given free, and that English
ladies have come out of their own accord to do this hard
work for the French, are two things that have greatly touched
the Poilus. At first, indeed, their surprise at things so
unexpected inclined them almost to think that some design
upon them was intended. But if any such misgivings were
entertained they soon vanished.
It was in February 191 5 that the first of the Comite's
canteens was started, at Hazebrouck railway station. 1 It was
under an engagement to feed no English, but there were
Belgians as well as French among those who frequented it.
' We started on 2nd February,' wrote the lady in charge in her first
report, ' and up to last night, 24th February, we have fed 11,007
wounded, reinforcements and refugees. We have given them
coffee, chocolate, milk, soup, bread, cigarettes, and papers. We
find chocolate the most popular drink, and so make most of that.
We make all the drinks strong and as nutritious as possible, the
chocolate always having milk and sugar. We have the plain milk or
tea for the fever cases, and milk for the refugee babies. ... I have
built a hut in the stationmaster's garden for my canteen, and during
the morning there are always five or six French soldiers in having
their breakfast. ... I have two soldiers working for me, and they do
all the heavy lifting and carrying ; and two more come when the
trains come in. We all enjoy the work and are very enthusiastic.'
This canteen was soon afterwards transferred to Doullens.
1 The work of an independent Society, the Women's Emergency Canteens,
which started in the' war zone in January 1915, is described further on, p. 211.
196 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
In this same spring four more canteens were started.
One was attached to a Depot d'Isoles at Le Bourget, in the
suburbs of Paris.
It was opened in March. About the same time, a canteen
was opened in a Depot des Eclopes at Le Courneuve on the
northern outskirts of Paris. Another at Creil was started
in the railway station ; a third at Crezancy for Eclopes, and
a fourth at Doullens station, transferred from Hazebrouck.
This last was closed in the spring of 1917.
In June, two canteens for Eclopes were opened ; one
at Drancy, in the northern outskirts of Paris, the other at
Lure in the Haute Saone department, afterwards transferred
to Remiremont in the Vosges. In August, three more can-
teens for Eclopes : at Le Treport, Hesdin (closed in April
1916), and Puys (closed in June 1 9 1 7) . In September a
canteen for Eclopes was started at Doullens, afterwards
transferred to Poix ; in October, one at Vaivre, afterwards
transferred to Hericourt.
In November a canteen for Isoles was opened at St-Dizier
in the Haute Marne ; and one for Eclopes at Montataire,
on the Oise, afterwards transferred to Villers-Cotterets,
near Soissons.
December brought the second Christmas of the war, and
the English workers in France made a point of celebrating
it after the English fashion. We get a glimpse of how
Christmas was kept at a canteen for Isoles from a letter
written home from St-Dizier, on December 27th : —
' We had a very nice day and evening on the 25th. Two hundred
soldiers turned up, and when they saw the canteen all lit up they
nearly went mad. We had two Christmas trees given us, and a man
in the town had them all lit with electric light in coloured globes.
Another shop lent us the little glistening things to put on, and we
made paper flowers, so it looked very pretty, but we tried putting
the small presents on the night before, and naturally during the
night they were all stolen, so decided to only make the tree look nice
THE CANTEENS 197
and hand the presents round after supper. Only Miss W 's
parcels had arrived (mine have not turned up yet), so we had not
really enough to go round and had to wait a bit till some of the
men had to leave. We had sixteen tables lent us, also chairs, and,
with white paper put on instead of tablecloths, they looked very
clean. Madame B and her sister-in-law helped us, and we each
took so many tables. Their menu was the following :
Hot soup.
Cold ham.
Hot roast beef and haricot beans-
Bread and jam.
Red wine (a gift).
Coffee.
Cigars and cigarettes (gifts from Commandant de R. and
Capt. B.).
* After the feast we had songs and recitations and the gramophone
(which Miss W bought in Paris ; it goes all day long and they
adore ' Tipperary.')
* They then made speeches ; most embarrassing. We were called
up under the platform, and had the most charming things said to us.
Also passionate love songs sung with much feeling right into our
faces. We also had a book on the table and asked for their names.
I enclose a few of the remarks written. I do not know if you can
read them. The Arabs wrote their names back to front, and kept
licking the pen, and instead of writing any remark put rows of
X X X X. . . .
' I felt fearfully happy that we had given so much joy to the poor
French soldiers. They so love being waited on ; or any little atten-
tion we show them they make much of. The town folk were awfully
kind in giving us presents for the tree, and other money. Altogether
we had three hundred francs given us to spend for them.'
And how Christmas puddings were made and eaten —
a great adventure for the Poilus — is told by the Directrice
of another canteen : —
' The Medecin-chef has been persuaded to let us give plum-
pudding a Vanglaise on Christmas Day to the men on the petit
regime, and one evening towards the middle of December found us
feverishly searching for the ingredients. Most of them we succeeded
in getting through the infirmier who?did the f daily [commissions,
but treacle (which with sundry other unexpected items was enjoined
198 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
in the old family recipe which we were following) was another matter.
Our grocer was not only unable to produce it, but was astonished at
being asked for it. " You may find it at a druggist's," she said
doubtfully. However, we found it at last at another grocer's, where
it is known as " golden," and the weights and scales required we
were able to borrow from an umbrella shop. (This does not neces-
sarily imply that in A. umbrellas are sold by weight, but all these
preliminaries were a little suggestive of " Alice in Wonderland.")
' Then came the great day of chopping and stoning and mincing
and mixing, and every one at hand was called in to stir the mysterious
mass. None of our friends, it seemed, had ever eaten English plum-
pudding, but one boy maintained that he knew what it was like.
It was " something fried in oil," and he added loyally that his mother
knew how to make it. Various little basins were filled for friends
who were not likely to be with us on Christmas Day, and the remainder
we tied upin a cloth so as to secure the orthodox globular form depicted
on Christmas cards. Early in the morning they were put on to boil,
but alas ! in the course of the afternoon a catastrophe occurred
which became painfully apparent when the puddings were taken up.
The pudding had stuck to the bottom of the big marmite in which it
was cooking, a hole had been burnt in the cloth, and through the hole
the precious contents were oozing into the water. A considerable
amount escaped, but it was not wasted, since a thrifty kitchen orderly
put it into the soup. In the course of the struggle that ensued a
chink was heard, and lo ! a half-franc piece stood revealed, one of the
exciting little objects which had been put in to give an added eclat
to the pudding. " Mais, Mademoiselle, c'est vous qui serez riche,"
exclaimed J., highly pleased ; but we conscientiously restored the
little coin through the hole whence it had issued before enveloping
all in a fresh cloth, and not till that was done did the stone for
poverty reveal itself.
* In spite of all these vicissitudes the pudding made a brave show
on Christmas Day, drenched in flaming brandy and crowned with a
spray of holly. The guests were warned to investigate their helpings
carefully, and not swallow such indigestible morsels as coins and
rings, and the bachelor's button fell to a married man, to the great
satisfaction of all the rest. Every crumb was finished, and presently
we were waited upon by a deputation who made a very pretty speech
of thanks.
* But what, we wondered, of the little puddings which had gone to
the trenches ? Had their recipients managed to boil them, or eaten
them coldfand stodgy, yet not without a kindly thought of the
canteen whence they came ? '
THE CANTEENS 199
1 916 was to see a great expansion of the work of the
canteens. In a good many cases, as will be seen, they were
transferred to other posts, according to the need of the
moment and the movement of the armies.
In January six canteens were opened. Two of these —
one a station canteen, the other for Eclopes — were at Meaux.
A station canteen was started at Crepy; a canteen for Eclopes
at Quartier Songis, a military 'establishment in Troyes. A
second canteen at Le Bourget was started this month, and
in February a third was added, at the military exchange
station connecting the Nord, Est, Lyons, and ceinture lines.
Two canteens for Eclopes were started in February, one at
Abbeville (closed in June 191 7), the other at St-Amand-sur-
Fion, afterwards transferred to Beauvoir.
In March a canteen for Eclopes was opened at Domremy,
the birthplace of Joan of Arc. It was transferred later to
Neuf chateau. In April two - canteens for Eclopes were
opened : at Dainville, also transferred later to Neufchateau ;
and at Rambervillers in the Vosges.
In May, four canteens were added to those in Depdts
des Eclopes. These were at Vertus, Bar-sur-Aube, St- Just,
and Vendeuvre. The last was closed in January 191 7.
In June a canteen for Isoles was opened at Arc-les-
Gray.
In July two station canteens were started : one at Troyes,
the other at Revigny, near Bar-le-Duc. A canteen for
Eclopes was opened at Poix.
In August three canteens for Eclopes began work : at
Conty, at Neufchateau, and at Beauvoir.
In September, canteens for Eclopes were opened at Amiens
(closed October 191 7), Grandvillers (transferred later to
La Ferte Milon), and Thury-en-Valois. A Foyer was
opened at Triaucourt, another at Villers-Cotterets, and a
station canteen was started at the same time at the latter
place.
2oo FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
A canteen for Isoles was started at Besancon in October,
transferred later to Arc-les-Gray.
In December a canteen for Eclopes was opened at Remire-
mont, in the Vosges.
In January 191 7 a station canteen was started at Bussang,
and one in March at Survilliers.
A canteen for Eclopes was opened in April at Toul ; three
more in May, at La Ferte Milon, Mesgrigny, and Vertus.
In May also a Foyer was opened at Epernay, and a station
canteen at Orry-la-Ville. A station canteen was added at
Epernay a little later.
In June a canteen for Eclopes was opened at Allonne,
afterwards transferred to Vasseny ; and another at Herme,
afterwards transferred to Mery-sur-Seine. In the same
month a Foyer, as well as a canteen for Eclopes, was opened
at Ay : both of these were transferred later, one to Avenay,
the other to Braine. A canteen for Isoles was also started
at Connantre.
In July a station canteen was opened at Jessains ; a can-
teen for Eclopes at Antilly, another at Beugneux, and a
Foyer at Avenay.
In August a station canteen was opened at Braine,
and another at Oulchy-Breny. A Foyer was opened at
Vasseny.
In September a canteen for Eclopes was started at Mery-
sur-Seine, transferred later to Fere-en-Tardenois.
In October a Foyer was opened at Jubecourt, and
station canteens at Corcieux, Mourmelon-le-Petit, and
Wesserling.
In November six Foyers were opened : at Bucy-le-long,
Bouvancourt, Courcelles, Fere-en-Tardenois, Pommiers,
and Vitry-le-Francois.
At the moment of writing (December 191 7) Foyers are in
process of formation at the following places : Champigneul,
Provins, St-Amand, St-Lumier.
THE CANTEENS 201
in
Reference to the map will show that these canteens are
almost all distributed on lines radiating from Paris to the
front. As will be seen from the foregoing list, they have
been steadily increasing in number, in response to an ever-
growing demand.
At first there was a certain hesitation on the part of some
of the military authorities, due to anxiety lest the canteens
should lead to relaxation of discipline. But no such result
has followed, while the temper of the soldiers, war-weary
as they are, has been fortified by the thought and care
bestowed on them : it has put new courage into their
hearts.
To show how the officers in command appreciate what
the canteens do for their men, here is a letter from the
Commandant d'Etapes at R. written on the 9th of July
1917 :—
* Madame, — II y a un an a pareille date, dans une minuscule et
tr£s inconfortable baraque vous versiez votre premiere tasse de cafe
aux permissionnaires de passage a R. Depuis une Cantine agrandie
et par vos soins decoree avec un gout parfait, des flots de cafe, de
the, de chocolat, de bouillon, des cigarettes par centaines de mille,
des cadeaux de toute sorte ont 6t6 distribues aux " poilus " de
Verdun.
' Je ne puis laisser passer cette date du 9 juillet, sans vous en
temoigner toute ma gratitude.
* Depuis un an, de jour comme de nuit, vous etes sur la breche
apportant a nos soldats un r£confort de tous les instants ; et cette
tache si penible vous l'avez accomplie avec un devouement, avec un
art si parfait, que votre ceuvre eminemment utile en point de vue
materiel est devenue une ceuvre de haute port£e morale.
' La Cantine Anglaise de R., c'est la Cantine de l'Armee de Verdun.
Pour ceux qui " montent " c'est la qu'ils respirent les dernieres
effluves d'une sympathie si chaude qu'elle galvanise les coeurs les
plus angoisses ; pour ceux qui " descendent " couverts encore des
boues de la tranchee, brises des emotions de la lutte, c'est le premier
sourire au seuil d'une vie que beaucoup ne comptaient plus revoir.
202 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
' Aussi je n'h£site pas a le proclamer bien haut, vous Stes la pro-
vidence de l'armee de Verdun.
* Veuillez agr£er, Madame, avec l'assurance de mon respectueux
devouement, 1' expression de ma bien vive reconnaissance.
(Signature) Commandant B.,
Commandant d'Etapes de R.'
And to show how the soldiers keep up cordial relations
with their English friends of the canteen, let me quote some
sentences from a letter addressed to one of them by a Zouave
who, after being at the Depot, had been wounded and lost
a finger, and then sent to work as a miner. As he had had
three years of the trenches, he was not ill-content. He
begins : ' Ma chere Maman,' and after telling of his wound
and his work, goes on (I retain grammar and spelling) : —
' Je tiend a vous mettre en memoir que je suis le Zouaves en cas
ou vous ne seriez plus qui je suis, et aujourd'hui j'ai recue votre colis
de cigarettes qui me fait un grand plaisir, je vous assure que voila
un moment qu'il voyage ce colis, mais tous est encore intacte. Je
vous dirais que je n'est encore pas de nouvelles de mais Pauvre
Parents reste" a Lens. Je crois ma chere Maman que cette fois je
suis Orphelin, me voila complement seul sur terre, ces pourquoi
j'exprime l'exprestion en vous appelant Maman, je crois que cela ne
vous d£rangeras pas.' . . .
Again a Directrice reports : * All our relations with the men were of
the most delightful character. Their gratitude was most touching,
and the many letters we still receive show that " out of sight is not
out of mind " with them. Their extreme gratitude often made one
feel quite humble that the very little we could do was magnified into
such a big thing in their eyes.'
And now, what does the actual work of the Dames
Anglaises consist of ?
Those who have had the pleasure of reading Mrs. Dixon's
book — The Canteeners, published in 1917 — will have gained
a vivid impression of daily life in canteens at Troyes, at
Hericourt in the Vosges, and at the busy military station
in the dingy Paris suburb of Le Bourget. But even those
who have read Mrs. Dixon's little volume may like to hear
THE CANTEENS 203
something further of this work of their countrywomen ;
and we will add here brief accounts given by the workers
themselves of a day at a canteen at a Depot d'Isoles, a day
at a canteen in a Depot des Eclopes, and a day at a Foyer in
a rest camp : —
At a Cantine cPIsolh
* About 8.30 one of us arrives at the canteen. Tables and chairs
outside washed and dusted over. Games put out and the inkstands
and writing things. Tisane made in the large marmite, which holds
about 500 cups. This lasts two days as a rule — and is warmed up the
second day, as they like it hot. It is extremely simple to make, being
only " bois de reglisse " tied in a muslin bag and put into a large urn of
boiling water and a few handfuls of mint or camomile, in another small
piece of muslin, put in to flavour it. The men stand outside the hut,
and they help themselves as they like. About 10.30 the other ladies
arrive and then we make the coffee, the water for which is already
boiling, and fires kept up by our own orderly, who also washes out the
hut for us and fetches water and lights all the fires before we come.
He also cleans the chimneys three times a week, which is most necessary
to make them burn.
* The coffee is ready by 11.30 and distributed at the window of
the canteen, two of us usually pouring out, one giving a sheet of
paper and an envelope to every one who wishes for it, and on
Wednesdays and Sundays they get a cigarette each also.
* This is the chief feature of the day, and gives great pleasure, as the
dejeuner is at 11, and the hot coffee after it is much appreciated.
We generally have our own combined tea and luncheon about 2.20,
and tidy up the hut, as it is a very dirty and smoky place.
At 1.30 we take a small jug of milk food to the infirmaries who care
for it, especially the men who cannot eat solid food, generally Benger's
food, or creme d'orge, and one can take them any little present*or
comforts also ; slippers are very useful, and we have had a gift of
25 pairs from the Belgravia War Work Rooms.
' There are four infirmaries, generally full, but as a rule no serious
cases or wounds are sent there, only minor illnesses and wounds* frost-
bitten feet, sprains, etc.
* At 2.30 we have another distribution of cocoa (which is called
chocolate), and this too is generally liked.
1 About every other day there is a departure for the front of 10 to
50 men, and they generally let us know, when we give them a few
cigarettes (3 to 5) and a small souvenir — a small looking-glass is a very
204 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
favourite one, and also pencils, writing-cases, which can be got at
home for 5$d. now, and they also greatly like cards of London (6 for a
id. at Straker's, 3 or 4 series of them.) The gramophone is a great
pleasure, and we think of leaving it here. There are some good
records. English songs are not much use, we find, but good French
songs or opera selections, flute or cornet solos, etc., are very suitable
and give much pleasure ; they like them very much in the infirmaries
too, and it is often borrowed for an hour or so. One very favourite
amusement is zigzag puzzles — of which one cannot have too many.
Also cards ; and we have introduced " Halma," also " Spoof," with
good effect. A small board with indiarubber rings and darts to
throw at a cardboard target ; bumble-puppy, played with old lawn-
tennis racquets, now mostly broken, etc., are all popular. We have
also attempted Clock Golf. They love talking too — of their wives
and families — as they are not allowed to go out at all, and their
families, even if quite near, only allowed to come for an hour in the
afternoon ; they feel like prisoners. Sometimes one can do messages
and commissions for them, getting a watch repaired, buying some-
thing or other — and many little odds and ends. We were able to
let one man's wife know where he was, to their pleasure, as they are
not allowed to mention the name of the place in writing. They
seem quite to look upon us as friends, and certainly the canteen helps
to brighten them and make what would be a very dreary time of
convalescence and repose into a bright and cheery one, and we get
many letters and postcards from them when they leave, thanking
us for what we have done.
' At 5 o'clock they have soup, and the day is over. We therefore
catch the 5 o'clock train back to Paris — in a quarter of an hour.
This makes an excellent starting point.'
At a Cantine des Eclopes
' It is 9 a.m., and the first lady on duty arrives. She hopes (and
is not usually disappointed, as the orderly is a very efficient one) to
find the big marmite coming to the boil on its rechaud. The said
orderly, who claims descent from St. Louis, has probably been there
since 6.30 a.m. cleaning up, carrying the water for the day and
lighting the fires. There are two rechauds and two stoves in the
small canteen kitchen, although usually the rechaud and the large
stove are sufficient. On this stove is another marmite, only smaller,
in which the morning's bouillon and puree are cooking. Bouillon
and puree de legumes, which seem essentially French fare, are^very
simple in their making. Any available vegetables (and when are
THE CANTEENS 205
masses of vegetables not available in France, even in war-time,
though at war-prices — particularly where English purses are con-
cerned f) — carrots, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, etc., are all sliced up
and boiled in the big pot. The vegetables are then fished out from
the " bouillon," and passed through a cullender until, as a delightful
squash and mixed with some white sauce, they are served out in
portions to those men in the infirmary who are on special diet, and
to the edentes, the dentist's patients whose toothless condition is
supposed to render them unable to eat the barrack ration, but who
we strongly suspect often manage to consume the two !
' A liberal allowance of sugar and the bags of coffee having now
been put into the big marmite and a few odd jobs done, such as
arranging flowers round the statuette of Joan of Arc and putting out
illustrated papers and puzzles (the men love "Jig-Saws," and the
" Road to Serbia " and " French Football " are always wearing out
owing to constant use and vigorous shakings) on the trestle table
in front of the canteen, where benches are also provided, we are
ready for the chief business of the day — the serving out of the coffee.
The stream of customers begins about 10.30, when the bugle sounds
the first " Soupe " — the dejeuner a la jourchette of the ficlopes —
these are the men sent into the barracks for minor ailments.
' The first to come are orderlies from the infirmary and the
edentes to fetch the bouillon and puree, and any still more special
diets that they may have been ordered by the Medecin-chef, such as
e gg s » or a portion of beef-steak, or puree of macaroni, which is often
given in place of the puree of legumes.
' There are messengers with pails and armed with " bons " signed
by the sergeant of each batiment, to say how many are to have coffee
sent to them. These " bons " are always rather mysterious ; for all
the men in these barracks except those in the infirmary are supposed
to be walking cases, but many, sometimes to the number of fifty or
sixty in a batiment, seem to prefer their morning coffee taken to
them, and this number has an amusing way of increasing if the day
happens to be wet.
'After the pails are disposed of, our regular customers arrive,
those who having finished their meal like to stroll round to the
canteen and have a little chat over their morning cup, or " quart "
of coffee. These " quarts " (quarter of a litre measure) are typically
French, a tin cup which every soldier carries in his pocket, or hidden
somewhere about his uniform, and one cannot help thinking what an
immense saving of labour it would make in the strenuous " washing
up " in some of our English canteens, if our men did the same !
But perhaps the British Tommy would hardly appreciate the one
206 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
tin cup to serve all purposes when he is not actually in the trenches ;
and certainly these quarts show few signs of any washing between
the various drinks — red wine, coffee, tea, lemonade, cocoa — which
are poured into them.
' It is now about 11.30, and the three lady workers, for the other
two have now arrived, sit down to a hurried lunch before the next
stream, which has " soupe," somewhat later commences. These are
the " Petits Blesses," and form a long procession, as their batiments
send no pails. These barracks were intended for Eclopes only, but
during the big offensive in Champagne this spring and summer, half
of them were given over to the " Petits Blesses," and very glad we
were to take them on among our customers. They are a wonderfully
cheery, patient, and amusing crowd, and very ready to talk and
recount their experiences ; but at this hour there is little time
except to say " bon jour," and to hear if there is any special
news, for by now the morning papers have arrived, and if the
English have made any especially brilliant bit of advance, they are
here to be the first to tell us. It takes two workers all their
time, one pouring out through the canteen window, and the other
filling the pipes from the big marmite behind, to get the stream
passed along.
' When that is over a jug of coffee is taken down to the Ambulance
Infirmary for those who are too wounded to walk, and also picture
papers, books, puzzles, and writing paper — for the French Poilu is a
great scribe and his wife too ; a man will often say how anxious he
is if he has not had a letter from home for three days !
' From 1 to 2.30 there is rather a pause, as the men are having
their afternoon rest, and the early worker goes home while the other
two write French letters and make up packets of cigarettes for the men
who have gone back to the trenches. This keeping in touch with our
old customers is one of the delightful parts of canteen work, and the
men write such charming letters. The French Poilu is much less
reserved than our English Tommy ; he does not try to hide his
feelings, and loves to talk about his wife and children or his fiancee,
and to tell of the doings of his regiment. It is not that our Tommies
are less patriotic in their attitude towards the war, but that the
Frenchman does not mind expressing what he feels, particularly
in his letters.
' Many of the men give us their addresses when they leave, and
some who have no relations ask us to become a Marraine (God-
mother) for the war, as they do appreciate having some one to write
to and who will write to them.
' But to return to the daily routine of the Cantine. During the
THE CANTEENS 207
afternoon lemonade is served out, or, if it should be cold, tea or
coffee, which the men are very fond of. Unless it is wet, the gramo-
phone is brought out, and the men sit on the benches in front of the
canteen, smoking (for cigarettes are handed round) and looking at the
papers. They are very fond of the gramophone, and sing the French
songs, especially those from well-known operas, best of all — often
though they will ask for English songs, " Tipperary " or " Rule
Britannia," though one always has a suspicion that this is due to
French politeness and out of compliment to us. They have a great
admiration for the English soldiers, and will always tell us with
great pride if they have been beside any of our troops, and if they
have made friends with them or exchanged presents. The English
hospitals, too, seem to amaze and delight them. The nursing, the
splendid food, the jam, the luxuriousness of it all, impresses them
very much. Several had been in English hospitals at Havre or along
the coast, and one man, who had been at the Scottish Women's
Hospital at Royaumont, was very full of the happy time he had spent
there. At 5 p.m. more bouillon and puree and special diets are sent
out to the infirmary, and at 6 p.m. the canteen closes.
* There are certain variations in the work. One afternoon a week
we give a gramophone concert in the Ambulance Infirmary, also
serving " dessert," stewed fruit and custard, to those who are not
able to come to the canteen. These " Smoking Concerts " are very
popular.
' Two days a week " partants " leave ; those men returning to the
front, and this forms quite a little ceremony. We are warned of the
number beforehand, and then when the men are fully equipped in
their new uniforms, with all their paraphernalia (including always
a large loaf of bread and one or two tins of Singe (bully beef) strapped
on their backs, they come to the canteen to say " Au Revoir."
They always insist on this form of good-bye, though they can only
return by being ill or wounded ! Each man carries away some
packets of cigarettes, a slab of chocolate, writing-paper, a very
gaudy red handkerchief " made in Birmingham," which they seem
to prize greatly, and a " porte-bonheur," a little medal of the Virgin
or one of the Saints.
' Sunday is a great morning in the barracks, the authorities pro-
viding an extra good " soupe," often adding asparagus or some luxury
that may be plentiful, and each man gets three cigarettes from us
when he comes for his coffee. To arrange this fairly and to prevent
overlapping, we devised a system of counters which much amuses the
men. On Saturday the two bureaux, those of the Eclopes and the
Ambulance, obtain from us the number of counters they require
208 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
and distribute them, and on Sunday morning each man returns his
counter to the canteen and gets his three cigarettes.
' About once a month and on special fete-days we present cigarettes
to the Guard and also to the Chasseurs, the large body of men who
are employed in looking after the sick and wounded horses, for the
outer ring of the barracks contains stabling for hundreds of horses
sent down from the front to be cured or otherwise disposed of.
' The distribution of cigarettes amounts to about twelve thousand
a month, and is the largest item of the canteen expenses, as in our
barracks the authorities allow us to " toucher " the coffee and
sugar.
' Once a week the authorities provide a concert in the barracks,
which, if fine, is held out of doors. These concerts are often very
good indeed, though the artistes are nearly all from among the men
themselves, but in a Republican Conscript Army there are naturally
all sorts and conditions of men and of talent.
' A description of the canteen would be incomplete without
mention of the Arabs and Senegalese — for we have many of these.
The Algerian Arabs are generally very delightful and appreciative,
and very happy when one can talk to them about their own country.
They seem rather in banishment, as, when their " Permission "
comes, they are not allowed to go home, possibly owing to the
dangers of the crossing and also to the time it would take out of the
eight days allowed, but are sent to some place in France, which
though no doubt very pleasant is hardly the same as their beloved
Algeria.
' They especially appreciate our coffee, as most of them keep
strictly to their religion and never drink the wine which is served out
in the barrack rations. On the whole, though, they seem fairly
content, as they mix happily with the other men, and generally speak
French fairly well. Coming, too, from a warlike race, they do not
seem to dislike their job, and love to tell of the fighting in which they
have taken part — their description of how the Arab fights, taking no
prisoners, being sometimes a little too graphic.
' The most pathetic men are the Senegalese, as they understand very
little French and seem to be like little children, drawn into a vortex
which they do not understand. Like children though, they are
made happy by very small things — they love sweets, and it is amusing
to see a huge Senegalese beaming with joy over a handful of
peppermints (their chief favourites) or an extra allowance of
sugar in the pail of coffee that he has been sent to fetch for his
batiment ! . . .'
A French Soldier at an English Canteen
Bv Herbert Ward
THE CANTEENS 209
At a Foyer du Soldat
' It is nine o'clock and we are opening for the day. Already there
waits a crowd of shivering Poilus very eager for the hot coffee which
is ready in a huge " marmite," which will be filled again and again
before the end of the day. A bowl of coffee and a crust of bread
content the abstemious Frenchman, and he soon goes off to the
duties of the morning, or, if au repos, settles down to his news-
paper or a game of draughts or chess. In come some " passage "
men in full marching kit, who demand bouillon, and are glad to lay
aside their heavy packs and sit down and rest while it is being
prepared. The next arrivals are half a dozen Moroccans, brown-
faced and turbaned ; sometimes we have Senegalese with jet-black
skin and dazzling white teeth, or sallow Mongolians from Cochin ;
or perhaps a party of Breton " permissionnaires," with an hour or two
to wait between trains, comes in to while away the time with a game
of cards or " jacquet." And presently every one is at the windows
to watch a battalion swinging down the street on its way to the
trenches — a symphony of soft dull blue in the wintry sunshine, from
helmet to puttees — all that " bleu horizon " which will presently
melt into the blue mists lying in the forest glades, and so be lost to
sight. Very gay and cheery they are, from the band which leads
to the humble field-kitchens which bring up the rear, but we notice
some wistful glances directed to the Foyer windows. But they may
not stop ; we can only wave our hands and wish them " bonne
chance," and on they go, while we return to the interrupted coffee-
making and the other duties of a busy morning.
* At noon we close the large room for a couple of hours, so that it
may be swept and aired in readiness for the afternoon, and one
worker remains to make chocolate for the evening, while the others
go off to lunch. From one to two there is an English lesson, at which
six or seven pupils of varying degrees of proficiency present them-
selves. They are very keen to learn, and enjoy the lessons as much,
we hope, as their teachers, in spite of the difficulties of the terrible
English " th " and the vagaries of our pronunciation, so trying to
the logical French mind.
* Before we are ready for it, two o'clock has struck and the business
of the afternoon begins. The room is fuller now than in the morning ;
more coffee is asked for, and between four and five, when hot and
thirsty footballers come in and demand tea — often in very good
English — you might almost fancy yourself in a Y.M.C.A. hut. But
O
210 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
there is no sale of tickets here — no payment of any kind, for every-
thing is given free. We are under the auspices of the British
Committee of the French Red Cross, and, as is the rule in all their
canteens, nothing may be charged for. The French private soldier's
pay is still only 2-jd. a day, unless he is actually in the trenches, and,
though some have means of their own, others, men from the fays
envabiy are terribly poor.
' From five o'clock onwards the room grows fuller and fuller,
and by the time every one has come back from "la soupe" (the
evening meal) every table is occupied, many games are going on, and
a hefty pianist is playing rag-time on the long-suffering piano, to a
circle of admiring friends.
1 The red chechias of a little party of Zouaves strike a bright note
of colour at a table near the counter. One of the quartette is rather
excited, and remarks " Madame, je vous aime," to the lady who has
just handed him a bowl of coffee. His friends, scandalised, explain,
" II a trop bu," which, alas, is pretty obvious. But drunkenness is
very rare, and we hardly ever have to turn out an obstreperous client.
It is very difficult to enforce a rule which forbids our guests to stand
on benches, chairs, and tables, for when the music begins — and there
is generally more or less of a concert going on between 6.30 and 8 —
there simply is not standing room on the floor. But the inevitable
crowding and jostling is taken in good part, and anything like
quarrelling is unknown.
The music is, naturally, of varying quality. Sometimes we have
a singer or violinist who is known in the concert-rooms of Paris or
Nice ; sometimes the performer is a shy boy who forgets his words
and is not very sure of the tune, but always the audience listens with
enjoyment ; faces are turned expectantly towards the piano, and
the demand for coffee slackens for a while.
' At a quarter to eight, it is time to begin the giving out of choco-
late — a beverage which is very, very popular.
' Bowls are filled and emptied, washed and refilled again and again,
till perhaps two hundred have been given out, and a warning whistle
from the corporal in charge tells us that it is time to close. Some of
our friends leave " wi' deefficulty," but we have to be firm, for the
cafes in the town are obliged to shut at eight, and rules are rules.
A good deal of clearing up has to be done, and chocolate provided
for the excellent helpers who have worked hard for us all the evening ;
but*all is finished by 8.30 ; our good friend the corporal unbolts the
big door — carefully barred to prevent the re-entering of strayed
revellers — and sees us out with a cheery " a demain."
* There is little to mark the days — except the cigarettes which
THE CANTEENS 211
are given on Sundays and Thursdays — the excitement when a new
division arrives, the lamentations when our best friends bid us good-
bye and go back to the line.
' Sunday is perhaps our busiest day, for that afternoon we have
visitors from all the neighbouring villages. Four hundred bowls
of coffee between two o'clock and " Soupe " is no unusual amount to
give, and the housekeeper has anxious moments, wondering whether
enough coffee has been made, and if the sugar will hold out. We
often use twenty pounds a day of the latter, and it is only to be had
once in four days from the military authorities — needless to say, it is
useless to ask for it at the shops.
' Then there are days of bitter black frost, when there is no water
or gas available, and we have to keep our friends waiting while the
pipes are being laboriously thawed ; wintry days when snow from
two or three hundred pairs of feet covers the floor with slush ; and
mild days when we gasp for air, and are thankful when a newly-
broken window admits a welcome " courant d'air."
' If space permitted, and I were not afraid of wearying you, there
are other things that I should like to tell you of — the " Arts and
Crafts " Exhibition at Christmas, which evoked, besides the metal
work in which the Poilu is proficient, sketches in oil and water-colour,
embroidery (done in the trenches), poetry of no mean order, and
musical compositions — of the welcome given to our countrymen
when one day some English artillery passed through the town, and
" Tipperary," which is regarded as " l'hymne anglaise," equally with
" God Save the King," was called for and sung with acclamation.
And I should like to quote from some of the letters which reach us,
from camp and trench and dug-out, where amid hardships and
danger and death men think gratefully of the peace and comfort of
the Foyer. In graceful French or the quaintest of halting English,
all are alike in their gratitude and affectionate appreciation of
English friendship and goodwill. . . .'
Ever since January 191 5 an independent society, the
Women's Emergency Canteens, has maintained canteens
and recreation-rooms at Compiegne and in various villages
in that district, doing the most admirable work. A big
barn will be taken for a foyer, and its bare interior trans-
formed with the help of pictures, flags, and flowers. Across
the farmyard will be the canteen, all spotless, where the
steaming coffee is dispensed; while the English women-
212 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
workers live in some small, deserted cottage near by — cold
and uncomfortable, sometimes even dangerous, quarters.
A portable cinematograph is part of the outfit of these
canteens, and is a never-failing solace. The society has
motor ambulances also, and conveys the sick and wounded
from barge to hospital. But perhaps the best known part
of its work is the canteens which it maintains in Paris.
These are at the Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon.
The former of these was opened in April 191 5. It is in
the basement of the station, and is open night and day.
At six in the morning there are often two hundred men at
breakfast. There is a hot dinner in the middle of the day,
and on an average well over a thousand meals are served
daily. Socks and shirts are provided, also writing-paper.
There are beds for about sixty men, and recently a large
dormitory has been added. The canteen at the Gare de
Lyon is on a smaller scale. These canteens, where a small
charge is made, are visited not only by the French, but by
the British and all Allied soldiers.
A more recent independent enterprise is the Hackett-
Lowther Unit, whose convoy service has been mentioned
in the chapters on the convoys. Founded in August 191 7,
this unit is attached to certain sectors of the French front,
and started its first canteen, recreation-room, and theatre
in a big wooden hut not far from St-Quentin, in a village
destroyed by the Germans on their retreat. The regiments
supply performers for the concerts and entertainments
given at the canteen, and there is no lack of distinguished
talent ; many of the performers are famous in the theatres
of Paris. From three hundred and fifty to five hundred
soldiers come every night from their damp and gloomy
billets to the glow and animation, the cheering warmth and
the music of the canteen.
RELIEF WORK IN THE DEVASTATED ZONES
This chapter will chiefly be concerned with the labours of
the Society of Friends.
During and after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, there
were several members of that society in England, who went
out to do what they could for the civilian victims of the war.
One or two of these recorded their experiences, which are
of poignant interest to-day.
Following this example, members of the society formed,
at the beginning of the present war, a War Victims Relief
Committee. The activities of this body are quite distinct
from that of the Friends' Ambulance Unit, the other
Quaker organisation, of whose ambulance work we have
already given some description. This Relief Committee
has centres in Holland (for Belgian refugees), and in Russia,
as well as in France ; and also supplies workers for the
Serbian Relief Committee. In each country there is
a ' Field Committee ' at headquarters, and local sub-
committees at various places, directing the work in the
several districts. Here, of course, it is of France only that
we are to speak.
In the early autumn of 1914, the Relief Committee began
its work in France. Its Field Committee sits in Paris.
The area allotted by the Government for its labours was
in the Departments of the Marne and the Meuse, a stretch
of about sixty miles of country between Esternay and
Bar-le-Duc. In the first month or two it had some thirty
odd workers busy in the district ; but by the following
autumn these had been increased by about a hundred.
sis
2i 4 F0R DAUNTLESS FRANCE
The expenditure has been between nineteen and twenty
thousand pounds a year.
The work done falls into four main categories — build-
ing ; medical ; distribution of clothing, furniture, etc. ;
and agriculture.
But above and beyond any material benefit, it was the
aim of this committee, and of those who worked for it, to
bring human sympathy, love, and consideration to the
innocent sufferers stricken by the immense calamity of war.
They were inspired by the motives which founded the
Society of Friends ; and as true Friends they have been
recognised by those they laboured to help and reassure.
While the efforts of the French nation in their supreme
struggle were inevitably concentrated on the army defending
their country's existence, and on the wounded, there
seemed a special call to help the wives and children of the
soldiers. And how vast a field of labour was opened up !
Already after the battles of the Marne there were large
tracts of Eastern France laid in ruins, and the inhabitants,
either refugees or clinging in tenacious attachment to old
homes, herded in the most miserable of shelters. A yet
greater tract was, and still is, under German occupation.
There the able-bodied men, husbands, fathers, and sons,
had gone at once to their regiments ; they are fighting or
have been killed. Of the rest of the population, thousands
are prisoners in Germany, thousands more are homeless.
Those who have read La Ville Envahie know what kind of
lot is theirs who stayed at home in the industrial towns of
the north-east, subjected to a daily persecution as gross
as it is mean and stupid, and inhumanly cut off from all
communication, not only with their own kin and friends,
but all the outer world. What a world of separation and
heart-breaking on both sides of the barrier ! How many
families suddenly and horribly divided, ignorant whether
those dearest to them are alive or dead, or where they are !
RELIEF WORK IN DEVASTATED ZONES 215
A number of French societies have dedicated themselves
to the task of relieving this great welter of human misery ;
and with some of them the Friends' Committee have worked
in close co-operation. In the beginning, the society was
attached to the Association des Infirmiere Visiteuses de
France. It was placed under the direct control of
the Service de Sante and accredited by the Service
de Sante to the Prefets of the Departments of Marne
and Meuse. The Prefets gave the society a cordial
welcome, and have expressed their gratitude in touching
terms.
Any one who has seen the devastation wrought in the
battles of the first autumn of the war, and through the
deliberate burnings of villages carried out by the Germans,
can imagine the utter prostration of mind in the homeless
peasantry, used to their habitual peaceful toil, and in a
day or a night violently thrown out of all that was the
world to them into an unrecognised chaos and terrifying
desolation. Without resources, knowing none but their
neighbours and companions in ruin, they were stupefied
by the shock ; they did not know how to carry on an
existence that held no future.
It was to combat this apathy of hopelessness, to reassure
this despair, to revive the energy of life and will to work,
that the Friends first addressed their efforts in the November
of 1914.
The first thing to be done was to build huts and shelters
for the homeless people who still remained in the devastated
regions, miserably collected in cellars and outhouses. By
that time great numbers of refugees had been sent down
south and west into the interior ; but thousands remained,
either because they would not leave their old homes and
the neighbourhood where their men were fighting, or
because they had families of small children, or because of
the congestion of the railways. Setting to work in their
216 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
allotted district, the party of English helpers began to build
wooden huts on a uniform plan. In time four hundred of
these, with twenty-seven stables, were distributed among
twenty-five villages, and accommodated thirteen hundred
people. Thirty-six brick-and-timber houses accommodated
ninety-six persons. The houses were built among the
ruins of Sermaize, a little watering-place, in which the
destruction has been signally complete. The material for
these erections was supplied by the Departments concerned.
With the building went an improved sanitation ; a vital
matter, as may be imagined, where everything was reduced
to chaos, and none of the destitute inhabitants was capable
of the physical and moral effort of attempting to restore the
shattered mechanism of existence. The magnitude of the
task might well have paralysed even the happy, strong, and
healthy.
The next things to be provided were beds, bedding,
furniture, kitchen utensils, and clothing. Beds and furni-
ture were given to all whose houses had been burnt. But
here a difficulty presented itself. The local records had all
perished. Families had been separated, or had been lost ;
it was hard to identify them when found. In these circum-
stances, the only course was to decide each case on its merits.
The cost of beds and furniture was shared by the Depart-
ment and the Friends, or the French Societe du Bon Gite,
and they were distributed by the committee.
By such prompt and effective measures the winter of 1 91 4
was got through in supportable conditions.
With the spring of 191 5 came the necessity of tilling and
sowing the land. The able-bodied were all absent with the
armies ; those that were left had no heart to begin. But
the presence of cheerful people ready to lend a hand, to give
their companionship and sympathy, was persuasion that
could not in the end be resisted. Seeds were given, and
farming tools ; stables and barns were rebuilt ; threshing-
RELIEF WORK IN DEVASTATED ZONES 217
machines were moved about the district, with skilled men
to work them.
A great change has come over this ruined region, since
the lire and ravage of the war swept over it. Earth has given
her flowers ; and, fortified and stimulated by help from
willing workers, the forlorn sinistres, as the burnt-out
inhabitants are called, have made their improvised colonies
among the mournful ruins into something resembling a
home, and in their little houses and gardens have taken up
once more the threads of a changed existence.
Earth has given her flowers ; she has also given her
weeds. And with the extreme scarcity of labour these have
thriven and multiplied apace. It will take years to root
them out from the vantage they have gained. In spite of
heroic effort the condition of the land goes backward. That
is, alas, inevitable !
The continuance of the war has not lessened the im-
portance of this agricultural relief. The farmers have con-
tinued to receive help in the summer by the loan of imple-
ments and machines, in some cases worked by Friends. In
the winter threshing is done on an increasingly large scale :
in many villages the whole crop has been threshed by the
English workers. A motor-tractor has been of great service
in the Sermaize district, ploughing for the small farmers.
Machines have been repaired in villages where the
blacksmiths had been mobilised. Chickens and rabbits
have been given away ; and the distribution of seeds, on an
even larger scale, has been extremely successful.
On the other hand, the distribution of clothing in the
Marne district has now ceased, except for newly returned
families.
By comparison with those who have remained on the soil,
the lot of the emigres or refugees has become, as the war
persists, far more to be pitied.
The two urgent problems are those of employment and
218 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
of housing. Few of the refugees are able-bodied men :
these can count on getting work. For the others employ-
ment is difficult to obtain, and at the best is apt to be inter-
mittent and insecure. In the country women can find work
on the farms for part of the year, and occasionally wash and
cook for passing troops : in the towns they get tailoring and
washing to do, and in some places munition-making. But
when they are old and ailing, or kept at home by a mother's
duties to small children, life is hard indeed. The Govern-
ment allowance, with the cost of everything continually
rising, is not sufficient without some earnings to supple-
ment it ; and the families who are prevented by their circum-
stances from supplementing the allowance suffer seriously
from inadequate nourishment. As a measure of relief
potatoes have been sold at cheap rates to refugees in villages
where the crop has been poor or the supply precarious, since
potatoes and bread are the staple food, and if these fail the
conditions of the village is disastrous.
The situation is made worse by the difficulties of housing.
It is hard to find lodgings in the towns, where exorbitant
prices are charged for wretched quarters, and the refugees
are crowded into slum tenements with disastrous results
upon their health. At Troyes, for instance, where the
Friends have a centre, there are some seven thousand re-
fugees and quite inadequate accommodation. In Paris
there are, or were, a hundred thousand. The committee
has done its utmost with the funds available to better the
lot of these refugees by schemes for providing them with
employment, and also for housing them, as far as this is
possible.
As part of the schemes for providing employment, sewing
and embroidery classes have been set on foot at Bar-le-Duc,
Chalons, and around Sermaize and Vitry. At Troyes,
pillows and quilts are made, and sewing-machines lent or
given.
RELIEF WORK IN DEVASTATED ZONES 219
Materials are supplied by the Friends. This has proved
an excellent solace and distraction from the benumbing
weight of grief. The women and girls thus employed speak
of the scheme with real gratitude, and there is great eager-
ness to join in it. A mother told how she had heard her
daughters, as they sat over their new-found occupation,
singing for the first time since the war began. And a child
of seven confided gravely : ' Pour les emigres, vous savez,
c'est desolant, mais avec la broderie, on s'ennuiera moins.'
At Bar-le-Duc, where early in 1916 the refugees came
streaming in from Verdun and its neighbourhood, there is
a work-room where eighty women and girls are employed ;
and for over a hundred more, occupation has been found
in various kinds of needlework, and in the fine white em-
broidery which many of them practised before the war.
There is also a ' Linen Chest Club,' which has been an
extraordinary success. A refugee family pays fr. 1.50,
and provides a packing-case. They receive three or four
sheets, four pillow-cases, six towels, and a blanket, and are
encouraged to embroider their initials on the linen. A
carpenter adds clasps and hinges to the case, which thus
becomes a small family linen-chest for the future. Nearly
seven hundred families have been so provided.
The problem of housing is immense. Such part of it
as the Friends' Committee has been able to deal with has
been met in the main by a scheme for building portable
houses.
At Dole, in the Jura, there is a construction camp where
these houses are made in sections. This work has greatly
increased during the past year, and machinery has been
installed which has made a far larger and more rapid pro-
duction possible. A similar camp and workshops have
also recently been opened at Ornans, near Besancon. The
portable houses were intended for use in destroyed villages
which an advance of the Allies would liberate from German
220 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
occupation ; and in the meantime it was proposed to house
in them refugees who were living in wretched conditions in
towns like Troyes, Chalons, and Paris. The advance in
Picardy in the spring of 191 7 brought a request for these
houses from the Minister of the Interior ; and a number
already finished and destined for other districts were sent
to the newly liberated region. Later on, others were sub-
stituted for them.
Here may be noted a contrast between the district de-
vastated by the Marne battles and that which the Germans
occupied and retreated from last year. Battle and burning
had indeed left widespread damage and destruction in the
wake of the German retreat in 1914 ; but in the area of the
Somme and the Aisne, where the Friends are now working,
the havoc has been far more uniformly systematic. A
hundred and fifty villages have been destroyed in that area,
a few by shell-fire, most by deliberate destruction. Often
it is found that every house, and even the church, has been
blown up by dynamite. In this devastated region, the
Friends are engaged on a large scheme of rebuilding, and,
where the damage is not irretrievable, of repairing.
The opening up of new areas by the advance of the
Allied Armies has made urgent claims on some of the hous-
ing material, which was first to have been used for refugees
in the interior. None the less, energetic efforts have been
made to procure the refugees better house-room ; at Troyes,
for instance, where the crowding is so serious a problem.
These efforts are furthered by a system of buying furniture
and selling it to the emigres under cost price. The pay-
ments are made in the form of monthly hire. This system
works well, and answers a very real need. For instance, it
was found that one family of four had paid since the begin-
ning of the war some 600 francs in rent for a tiny furnished
attic. They had paid all this, yet owned nothing in the end.
Had there been at the beginning such a system as the
RELIEF WORK IN DEVASTATED ZONES 221
Friends had established, they could have rented an un-
furnished room, and, buying furniture by instalments, they
would have owned enough to start life again with, on their
return to their homes.
Be it recorded to the honour of these poor and exiled
French people that the sales to them of furniture and
other goods have hardly resulted in any bad debts. They
often pay the whole sum with astonishing rapidity.
But of all the problems now confronting those who set
out to relieve the victims of the war, the greatest has come
to be that of ill-health and disease. At first it was naked
want and homeless misery that seemed the greatest evils.
But with the gradual alteration of material condition, the
more subtle and less visible effects of the great catastrophe
begin to come to the surface. First, exposure and privation,
then unhealthy housing, crowding together, and under-
feeding have done their work ; and the reaction of mind
upon body, the passionate grief, the prolonged strain and
isolation, the hope so long deferred, the gnawing anxieties
of providing for the day's wants, have all combined to sap
an enfeebled vitality. Now, in the fourth year of the war,
the spread of disease, especially of tuberculosis, has become
a terrible thing.
And this leads us to give some account of the medical
side of the work of the Friends' Committee.
To go back to the beginning. When the pioneers of their
expedition reached France in November 1914, a centre for
medical work was started at Chalons-sur-Marne. The
town itself had suffered little, for the Germans had only
occupied it for nine days ; but all around was the devastated
district, filled with homeless folk who for one reason or
another could not leave their villages. When the Friends
made their offer of help to the Prefet of the Marne, his
first thought was for the coming generation, and for the
mothers expecting children ; and he arranged for a maternity
222 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
hospital in Chalons, to be installed in a block of buildings
used as a home for old people of the Department who could
not maintain themselves. The hospital is small, but it
has done, and is doing, admirable work ; it was badly needed
and has been most keenly appreciated. More than five
hundred babies have been born there ; there has been only
one maternal death, and the infant mortality has been less
than five per cent. The hospital has done much to succour
the poor population of Rheims. As an administrator of the
civil hospitals of that city wrote : —
' You have been real " Friends," you have opened your doors wide
to our orphans, our sick, our little children, whom you have come in
person to fetch from the Martyr-City. Scorning danger, you have
hastened in the thick of violent bombardment to take mothers on the
point of their delivery into the refuge of your " Maternity," lavished
on them all your care. Receive our eternal gratitude.'
And indeed in the April of last year, this work of rescue
from bombarded Rheims was work of no small danger as
well as arduous in an extreme degree. In that month the
little hospital housed for differing periods 334 refugees
from Rheims and its neighbourhood, of ages from two
months to eighty years. The city was then being syste-
matically bombarded ; and for three weeks the strain of
this heavy work of evacuation on emergency went on. In
two days four cars covered a distance of twelve hundred
miles.
Mothers and children have often been living for a long
period in cellars ; a kind of existence that impoverishes the
blood and sometimes brings about an almost total disinclina-
tion for food, besides predisposing the body to disease.
Rest, fresh air, and proper nourishment do wonders by
degrees to these sad cave-dwellers.
For convalescents, the Friends established a hospital
at Sermaize and a home at Bettancourt. The Sermaize
hospital consists of wooden huts with balconies, accom-
RELIEF WORK IN DEVASTATED ZONES 223
modating twenty to twenty-five patients. It is chiefly-
used as a convalescent home for delicate children of the
neighbourhood ; but during 191 6 the addition of a couple
of wards has made it possible to admit a certain number of
women patients. Attending to out-patients also is a very
important part of the work of the Sermaize Hospital. At
Bettancourt, a chateau has been lent by a French lady,
which serves as a home for children who are suffering from
the ill effects of overcrowding and malnutrition. The
children stay for several months as a rule, sometimes longer,
and forty or fifty are housed there at a time. Both here
and at Sermaize the improvement in the health of the
children, save in very few cases, has been remarkable.
Another convalescent home was established by the
Friends at Samoens in Haute Savoie. During the winter
of 1915-16 nearly a hundred thousand persons returned to
France through Switzerland. These rapatries were families
from the occupied districts who had been detained in
Germany. They passed through Annemasse, where the
invasion of these homeless folk created a great need for
' rest houses.' The French committees who were working
for the rapatries urgently asked the Friends to help ; and
with the assistance of the Comite de Secours National they
took the Hotel Bellevue and its annexe at Samoens, near
Annemasse. The hotel faces south, it is 2200 feet above
the sea in a sun-bathed valley among the snowy mountains.
Just as the home was ready, however, the stream of rapatries
stopped ; and it was at once decided to use it for delicate
women and children, specially chosen from among the
refugees crowded in Paris slums. They quickly recover
their health in the magnificent air, sleeping out on the
balconies, with good food and watchful nursing. There are
classes in English and embroidery, and drill for the children.
Early in December 19 j 6 the streams of rapatries began to
flow in again from Switzerland, at the rate of a thousand a
224 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
day. They were sent on to join their relatives ; but some
of the sick and most suffering were taken in at Samoens to
rest and recover. During the past year a second convalescent
home has been opened at Entremont in Haute Savoie as
an overflow from Samoens ; but this hotel is not heated,
and closes in October.
Lastly must be mentioned the labours of the district
nurse at Troyes, for which the Mayor has expressed his
gratitude, and those of the medical superintendent and
district visitors among the refugees in Paris, who point out
the dangers of overcrowding and conduct a vigilant campaign
against its evils and the ever-threatening tuberculosis.
The work of the Friends in France has been, and is being,
greatly augmented and extended through the coming of
the United States into the war. American members of
the society have already joined them in considerable
numbers, principally men who are helping in the building
and agricultural work. Any one who has had even a glimpse
of the overwhelming and unlimited opportunities for
aiding the patient, suffering legions of victims of the war
in France will wish them from his heart a strong continuance
and increase of support in their activities. For they come
as men to men, and as women to women ; they bring pity,
but also respect ; and in rebuilding homes they never forget
that the main thing is to rebuild human dignity in those to
whom an inhuman enemy has left nothing.
We have seen that the rapatries are cared for not only
at the Friends' hospitals in Haute Savoie, but also since
the autumn of 191 7 in the large hospital at litrembieres,
endowed by New Zealand and managed by the Comite
Britannique, which was described in its place.
Here may also be mentioned the work of a Scottish lady,
who, backed by a committee in Glasgow, has carried out
relief work in Flanders with devoted courage and perse-
verance ; she has rescued hundreds of children from
RELIEF WORK IN DEVASTATED ZONES 225
bombarded villages, both French and Flemish, and a great
many of those she has placed in Switzerland, to be there
housed and educated. She has also done much for homeless
French and Flemish refugees, and for her noble service
has received the Croix de Guerre.
In March 191 7 a spasm of peculiar disgust ran through
the civilised world. The Germans, retreating under the
pressure of the Allies, carried out a rapid retreat from
Bapaume and Peronne ; and they left in the country thus
' freed ' the most characteristic marks of their occupation.
To wholesale thieving and burning ; to the dynamiting,
cottage by cottage, of every village ; to the pulling down
even of the just-ruined walls ; to defacements, as fatuous
as filthy, of things unvalued save for old feeling and associa-
tion's sake — children's toys and dolls, photographs of absent
ones in humble households ; to such bestial usage of a peace-
ful and prosperous country-side, we had grown by degrees
accustomed. It was what we looked for. But our ad-
vancing soldiers met a sight, that wintry March, for which
they were not prepared. It was the sight of the fruit-trees
deliberately sawn through above the roots, and lying prone,
or, where there was not time to finish, deeply gashed all
round.
Schadenfreude, * joy in another's misfortune,' is a word
peculiar to the German language, though common in
German conversation. This ingenious crime, to which the
murdered fruit-trees witnessed, seemed to have in it the
leering triumph of the German Schadenfreude at its most
triumphant.
A fruit-tree is one of earth's most beautiful things, with
its apparition of pure blossom in the spring, and its clusters
of ripe-coloured fruit in the later season ; it has given,
perhaps, of its abundance to one generation in the past,
p
226 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
and will give to others hereafter. To kill was in itself a
pleasure ; but to murder defenceless and cherished beauty ;
to blast at once the present and the future ; to rob unborn
children as well as the helpless living ; this, well thought
out and relished in all its distant consequences, was a
malignancy voluptuous to the baulked and retreating
invader. ' France was never to rise again.'
To the rest of the world, unschooled in the philosophy
of the German War Book, the act seemed strangely hideous.
Like some other doings of this race, it seemed a spurting
up of some aboriginal cruelty out of times before man was
human, carried out as with the cold ritual of savage religions,
yet guided by the trained will to hurt of military science.
Everywhere in the world where men till the kindly earth
and live by its produce, this massacre of the fruit-trees was
felt as a deep injury. It gave a new spur to the desire to help
the inhabitants of those regions, and the suffering land
itself. But long before this, at the beginning of the war,
that desire had been strong among the farmers in England,
and had found expression in action. When the Germans
marched into France in August 19 14, the peasantry were
all busy with the harvest. But the crops were to be de-
stroyed, the barns burnt, the machinery smashed, the
population ruined.
To help in relieving all this distress, and re-establishing
the farmers on their holdings, was a wish widespread and
earnest among the farmers of this country.
The Royal Agricultural Society had in 1870 collected
considerable sums for providing the farmers of France
with seed corn in districts laid waste by the Germans.
And now once more in 191 5, the Society interpreted the
feeling of the farmers of England by establishing a fund
and a committee. The Agricultural Relief of Allies Com-
mittee found an opportunity of work immediately after
the battle of the Marne, when a broad belt of land was
RELIEF WORK IN DEVASTATED ZONES 227
recovered by the French. First, it sent a large consignment
of agricultural machines and implements to replace those
destroyed by the Germans. Then in the early summer of
191 5 a considerable number of live stock was sent out ; and
later, seed wheat, seed oats, barley, and potatoes were
supplied and distributed on the committee's behalf by the
French Government, in the Department of the Marne, and
also, in 1916, in the Verdun region.
Similar help in kind has been offered by English farmers
through the committee, as each advance of the Allies has
recovered territory from the enemy. Live poultry and
rabbits have been given, as well as further gifts of seed.
And close on ten thousand young fruit-trees, specially
chosen for suitability to the soil and climate of the ruined
districts, have been sent out to repair some of that malicious
injury.
The farmers of the British Dominions have shown a
growing practical interest in the fund — Canada especially.
Representatives of agriculture in Canada, Australia, South
Africa, and New Zealand have visited themselves the de-
vastated districts, and have started campaigns in their own
country on behalf of the French farmers.
The Royal Horticultural Society has also taken up the
problem of reconstruction in the devastated districts ;
and the committee which it appointed has raised a large
fund for the purpose, part of which is in course of distri-
bution in France, while part is being reserved for use after
the war.
Nor has the Comite Britannique neglected this problem,
among its many spheres of operation ; it has sent consign-
ments of fruit-trees, and gives its aid in the plans for
restocking and replanting.
In all this work the British Army on the spot has taken
a vigorous hand, with keenly appreciated results. The
French Academy of Agriculture has testified to the ' mag-
228 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
nificent efforts of officers and men in the region conquered
by their valour,' and has recorded how deeply touched the
agriculturists of France have been, as well by the gifts of
British agriculturists and their fraternal sympathy, as by the
restoring achievements and devoted labours of the British
soldiers.
Finally, a word must be said on the scheme set on foot
by the Comite Britannique for establishing a farm colony
in France, where soldiers threatened with tuberculosis may
be treated. We have seen how terrible a problem is this
of the spread of that malignant disease, and how vital it is
for the future that it should be stayed. The proposed
Farm Colony is to accommodate some 500 patients, and
in its installation the results of the most modern discoveries
will be embodied. Towards this scheme the British
Farmers' Red Cross Fund, whose gift of a convoy has been
noted in its place, has made the generous grant of ^75,000.
Towards helping the general work of reconstruction, the
Comite Britannique has opened a fund, to be employed
when the hour is ripe. Its inspectors and commissioners
continually collect information, with this design in view,
so that field and orchard may be in due time reclaimed
and new foundations laid upon the wreckage of the war.
The Comite has also special funds for helping the various
agencies in France which are labouring to mend the human
waste ; to train the maimed and the blinded, and to find
them productive work.
PART III
IMPRESSIONS
ON THE FRONT IN CHAMPAGNE
It was what they call at the front a quiet day : a lull
between two battles. The sky was overcast and dull. It
was bad weather for observation, and no enemy ' sausages '
overlooked the battle-ground ; otherwise there would have
been shells dropping all about the track by which we came.
The seared earth, patched here and there with splintered
little pine-woods, rose opposite into a chain of bare hills.
Each summit has a name, familiar in the story of the war for
the obstinate battles waged upon its slopes, and not yet
ended. I remembered the names from newspaper reports,
and while reading had pictured them in my mind, quite
different, as usually happens, from the reality. Each of
these grey hills has run with blood. Only a few weeks
before, the ground I looked on was in possession of the
enemy and had been wrested from him by storm.
The landscape was, so to say, extinct. It had lost all its
native life. The ground seemed inert, like the body of a
dead creature under the claws of a fierce beast that shakes it
now and then. It had convulsions of movement, not its
own. Flashes shot out of the blank desolation. Shocks
of sound thudded at one's ears. Shells rushed over,
and after what seemed a long while burst in the distance.
At intervals the short bark of field-guns diversified the noise.
Black puffs and white puffs hung in the air above that forlorn
range. But it was a quite desultory bombardment on
either side. There seemed a kind of giant boredom about it,
as of lions roaring in captivity. Men, as men, appeared no
longer to exist. A vast and horrible impersonality per-
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232 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
vaded this world, to which Dante's imagination might well
have delighted to condemn the fussy and the self-important.
Each shot, doubtless, was intended to hit something ; but
to a spectator without any inner knowledge there was an
air of insanity, of unmotived persistence, of pure waste,
about the whole grey scene, with its intermittent violence
of sound.
Here was the ultimate tide-mark, the breaking surf, of
those oceanic forces and activities which are moving so
many nations to their depths. Statesmen in parliaments
and on platforms, exhorting, explaining, defying ; financiers
with their myriads of clerks, spinning vast webs of figures ;
huge factories multiplying themselves everywhere, humming
with machines, swarming with busy-fingered men and
women ; furnaces melting torrents of metal ; the invisible
energies everywhere ; secret fervours of sacrifice ; the glow
of pure ideals, sustaining the hearts in tired bodies ; pas-
sionate ambitions and corroding jealousies ; rivers of
hatred and resentment ; the drill-sergeant on a thousand
parade-grounds, ranks of boys moving at his bellow ; girls
eagerly learning the trades of their brothers ; armies
training, millions of young men disciplining their bodies
to perfection of suppleness and hardness ; women nursing
and comforting the wreckage night and day ; the very land
tilled with a passion of anxious industry — all those vast and
various populations at wrestle with Time, under the
exaction of a single purpose, all that indescribable expendi-
ture of spirit and flesh, ended here.
The mocking disparity seemed to shriek of futility and
unreason. And so superior souls, dwelling above the
battle, may moralise the world's situation. But the greater
portent, greater than this seeming nightmare of abandon-
ment to murder and madness, is this. Here is a war, waged
by men who hate war ; and yet they are persisting to the
end. The warriors of old who fought because they
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ON THE FRONT IN CHAMPAGNE 233
delighted in fighting, would never have endured what
these men endure. Their spirit would have deserted them
long ago.
Suddenly I experienced a sort of humiliation at coming
on this scene as a spectator. The faint beginning of an
intuition flashed through me of what the days and nights
actually are to the soldier in the trenches. Miserable to
an animal, what can this existence be to men accustomed
to intelligent productive activity ? Mud, wet, cold, dis-
comfort, sameness, utter fatigue, vivid moments of danger,
hideous hurts, torturing pain ; the unendingness, the
captivity, the single horizon — shrinking flesh and sensitive
mind could never endure such prolongation of suffering,
such paralysis of monotony, were they not sustained by the
Idea which, dimly or clearly, assures them that this sound
and fury, this idiot's tale, signified something.
The glory of man was never so great as in this war from
which ' glory ' has been banished. His spirit towers out
of all the insane havoc and confusion, it is strong above
death and destruction. It looks before and after ; it sees
what it desires ; and for the sake of what belongs to its
peace it shrinks from no extremity of pain.
Beyond that seared range of hills was all the opposed
power of Germany, invisible but felt like an oppression.
The enemy, too, suffers and endures ; and him too an
Idea sustains. Deep in the German mind is still throned
that image, magnified as a shape in mist, of the blond
Northern Hero, the conqueror and, by conquest, the bene-
factor, of inferior, softer, or degenerate peoples ; the
predestined inheritor of the world and its glory. It is
true that in the plain light of day the heroic shape of dreams
appears, for all his Wagnerian gestures and speeches, a
grotesquely different figure ; a book-keeping marauder, a
bagman turned executioner, a shabby casuist over the victims
of his careful murders, wordily plaintive when his deeds
234 F0R DAUNTLESS FRANCE
recoil upon him, if also resolute, scientific, resourceful, and
armed with an indomitable will. But the Idea has intoxi-
cated a people by nature preferring their own conceptions
to experience ; and it is still stronger than themselves.
Those who sit above the battle and those who would appeal
to moral forces make a vast error, when they argue as if
it were merely a case of primitive violence let loose. It is
one moral force against another. Our reason is the enemy's
unreason. What to us is the world's desire and hope
is to them a contemptible dream. It is a creed we fight
against — a creed acted out with a logical thoroughness and
passion such as few religions in history have inspired.
A cheerful voice was saying at my ear : ' I suppose we
had better not pass in front of this battery, as it is just going
to fire.'
A warning arm shot up from the gun-pits. The car
swerved abruptly from the rough track, and turned at right
angles over a narrow bridge of poles and turf which spanned
the trench.
We were now safely behind the battery ; and as we
passed, the 75 's, under their roof of boughs, began to
fire. One had a glimpse of their recoil and lunge, a
movement which had something animal-like in its lithe
swiftness. That famous weapon, which has no imposing
size, but which is such a marvel of precision and rapidity,
has become a symbol for the French, just as it seems to
typify their qualities. More than one soldier has said
to me that the Marne was the victory of the Soixante-
Quinze ; and the enthusiasm for the personality of the
gun (so to speak) is universal in the population. I could
understand it.
A little farther on we crossed the trench again by another
narrow bridge, just wide enough for the car.
1 Not too easy to find on a dark night without lamps ! '
ON THE FRONT IN CHAMPAGNE 235
' But how do you do it at all ? '
* Oh, one gets an instinct/
I could only marvel. But my companion, the second in
command of Section 1 of the S.S.A., one of the British
Ambulance Committee's Convoys, nonchalantly guided his
car over the roughest ground, and had evidently long ceased
to wonder at his own skill.
We got out of the car at a ragged pine-wood, to visit one
of the advanced posts. The ground was strewn with old
cartridge-cases, rusty iron, and other suchlike debris of
the recent battle ; accentuating somehow the desolateness
of the landscape and the day.
One of the section was at the post, with his car waiting.
He greeted us with a gesture of disappointment : ' Nothing
doing ! '
The gunners alone seemed busy, and the ambulances
had no work for the moment.
At the other post we had some talk with the French
soldiers. One of them, a sergeant, went out with us a little
way, and pointed out the opposite crests by name, and the
salient features of the ground, and what had been the old
German lines over which the French had advanced a month
before. And listening to this sergeant with his face of
fine intelligence, and his lucid exposition, one began to
remember, under all the horror and unnatural boredom, the
intellectual vigilance that a vast organised effort demands
for its comprehension ; the subtle co-ordination of detail,
where to the mere spectator everything seems an intricate
confusion ; above all, one caught something of that fusing
glow of faith in France, that most human yet almost divine
determination to go on to the end in a cause that possesses
body and spirit alike.
This sergeant was an abbe.
At the poste de secours they showed us with great pride
a just-completed system of pipes from which hot water
236 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
could be had in a few minutes. We passed through the
dressing station, with its double exit, contrived in case of
blocking by a shell. One or two soldiers with fresh slight
wounds were waiting, or being bandaged. We stumbled
and slipped about the trenches on the chalky slime : and
I could faintly imagine, if this was the effect of one day's
rain, of what abominable mire the Champagne soil was
capable after weeks of continuous downpour. Up those
slippery slopes, in full exposure to the enemy fire, the French
had swept forward in wild showers of sleet last month. It
was on roads of such slime, broken into great pits, that our
English convoys worked day and night, without lamps,
among the crowded and interminable traffic of the transport,
during both the great battles of Champagne.
A CANTEEN IN THE FOREST
For a moment one might have thought it a mist of blue-
bells among the beeches.
Gliding down the road in a sunny silence through the
green forest, the car turned to the right up an incline, and
we found ourselves among the trucks and grassy sidings of
a little railway station. Then the patches of misty blue
among the trees — for the whole place was a clearing in great
woods — explained themselves. It was the uniform of
Poilus, lying at ease in the shade. Passing some sheds,
we were met by the sight of a great crowd of blue-uniformed
soldiers, many hundreds of them sitting, standing, or lying
down, and grouped thickest about the shed opposite to
which the car drew up.
There was a great opening in the side of the shed, and
there, pouring out coffee for the men gathered in front, and
chatting pleasantly with them, was an Englishwoman, the
Directrice of the canteen. As it happened, it was a lady
whom I knew. The last time I had talked with her was on
the stage of a London theatre. Now, in white uniform, she
was dispensing coffee and lemonade and cigarettes to the
French soldiers, as she had been doing for many months
past, at more than one canteen. With a warm greeting,
she called her husband (he happens to be a famous actor),
who was filling great jugs of coffee from big boilers inside
the shed, and with a hail of surprise he emerged and shook
hands.
It was the first of our canteens that I had seen.
The delegate of the Comite Britannique, who supervises
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the organisation of the Cantines des Dames Anglaises at
the headquarters in the Boulevard Magenta, and makes
smooth the relations between the English workers and the
French authorities, had driven me out to Orry-la-Ville (the
village which gives its name to the railway station) in his
car. And while he discussed details and supplies, I took
in the scene around me.
A continuous stream of soldiers passed in front of the
canteen, and the lady serving them had not a moment's rest
from her talk. She poured out coffee and lemonade without
ceasing, and at the same time chatted with the men as they
came up. They smiled their greetings, often adding a
compliment or a joke ; and sometimes a group lingered
while they drank their coffee, and talked about the war or
about themselves.
I imagined to myself the labour of perpetually pouring out
cups of coffee for hours together, and felt sympathetic
aches in the muscles of my arm. This is no light work that
these English ladies are doing ; and if you remember that,
whatever the fatigue, it is a point of honour to be always
interested, cheerful, smiling, you will admire them as
whole-heartedly as I do.
' How many men do you serve with refreshments, as a
rule ? ' I asked.
' About twelve hundred an hour.'
I looked round in the sunshine, and essayed a rough con-
jecture of the numbers of the soldiers gathered about in the
clearing ; but I soon gave it up, too much interested in the
men themselves.
The most of my acquaintance with the Poilu had been in
hospital. When I thought of him, there came before me
the picture of a figure in pyjamas and slippers, or with odd-
ments of uniform : gentle-mannered, sometimes rather
grim-looking, but oftener bright-eyed, and quick with a
charming smile, even in the midst of pain ; with nothing
A CANTEEN IN THE FOREST 239
about him to suggest drills and parade-grounds ; a very
human person, with a good deal of the child in his nature.
Here were the same types, but healthy, active : fair-
haired men from Picardy, blue-eyed swarthy Bretons ;
long, silent Normans ; quick-witted, voluble ' Parigots ' ;
here and there an Arab ; olive-complexioned men from the
Midi ; smooth-cheeked lads and ruddy, bearded Territorials ;
all in blue, except for the occasional mustard khaki of the
Colonial troops, with their dull blue helmets on their heads
— lighter and better shaped than the English ' tin hat,'
though possibly less protective — all burnt with the sun,
and gathered in knots that dissolved into strolling move-
ment and collected again, as they passed to and from the
canteen or stretched themselves on the ground, or stood
and talked, or sat and smoked in silence.
The fresh green of the beeches lit up by contrast the
moving blue of the uniforms and the brown glow of the
faces.
I wanted to question the Directrice about her experiences,
but would not interrupt that beneficent labour of libation,
and could only exchange a word or two with her on her work.
She was enthusiastic about the soldiers. She had got to
know many of them well ; they had told her their histories,
and what poignant tales these were !
It is only by talking with the French soldiers that an
Englishman can realise what the war is to France — especi-
ally what it means to be invaded. Not only to wake every
morning with the consciousness that the enemy is there,
in your own country — a consciousness of insult and pol-
lution — but it may be to have had no news of your wife,
your parents, and children, only to know that they are in
the power of the Germans.
What wonder that sometimes a passing cloud of depres-
sion descends on these soldiers, who have been fighting so
long ? It is in the times of waiting that they are most liable
240 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
to such fits ; and therefore the work of the canteens is of
inestimable value. It is not only refreshments, it is still
more the friendly talk, the games, impromptu entertain-
ments, and tunes such as the soldiers delight in from the
handy gramophone. Their spirits easily react. I was told
of a wonderful singer, a Poilu himself, I believe, who had
sung his comrades into heart again with his songs, and had
spoken also and fired them with his own passionate faith.
But just now they were in great distress at the canteen.
The gramophone had broken down. Was it possible to
get it mended in Paris, or to hire a new one ?
While the wounds of the gramophone were being dis-
cussed, I turned to the soldiers. One had a dog with him,
a small terrier of some sort. I asked if he was taking it to
the trenches. ' Oh yes, that 's his home. He has done
his two years in the trenches.'
* Quite a veteran. How old is he ? '
* Ah, who knows ? We found him in the trench, when we
occupied it first. We kill the Boches, and he kills the rats.'
' And where are you fighting now ? '
' St-Quentin. Next to the English.'
The other men had come up, and we were naturally
curious to hear what the French soldier thought of his
English comrade.
A tall, straight-standing corporal, bronzed, with grave,
level eyes, gave us some details of what was actually going
on about St-Quentin ; and he spoke of the English soldiers.
He praised them quietly, but heartily, with professional
appreciation. We praised the French in our turn, and the
unique qualities which have made their armies famous.
' But you are more dogged than we are — you took Vimy
Ridge.'
' Yes, we took Vimy Ridge, it is true, but after all '
* We failed.'
One could not deny that Vimy had been stormed by the
A CANTEEN IN THE FOREST 241
Canadians and British ; but we wanted to express our
conviction that no soldiers in the world surpass the French.
And, at any rate, we could dwell on all that our new armies
had learnt from the armies of France.
Certainly, since the Somme battles began, there is a new
feeling about the English in France. For a long time there
was a certain bewilderment. There was so much talk of
Britain's millions of soldiers, and so little appeared to be
attempted by them. It was hard, in a country habituated
to military service, to understand that these new armies
needed time to get ready for actual fighting. But now it is
different, and appreciation of our soldiers is generously
given.
The Directrice at Orry has presided over canteens in more
than one part of France, and she and her husband have had
rich opportunities for making friends with the Poilus, for
one of the canteens was at a Depot des Eclopes or Rest
Depot, where the soldiers are not, as at the railway stations,
birds of brief passage, but stay for a number of days. They
cold me of the Poilus' first impressions of the Tommy.
So false can legendary tradition be that he was expected to
be gloomy and self-absorbed. But then that marvel of
cheerfulness, resource, and good nature appeared and
dissolved this shadowy myth in his own warm reality.
' Why, they would share their last biscuit with us ! ' But
how rash were the English ! What impossible things they
would do ! And how chic their dying — with a laugh on
their lips ! '
It was time to be going. There was a crowd now near
the canteen, where the Directrice still poured coffee with
the smiling patience of a Naiad in an old print pouring from
her never-exhausted urn. Shouts and laughter came from
the crowd, and as they parted for a moment one could see
that they were absorbed in a game. Merely throwing little
rings on to pegs in a small board hung on the shed ; but
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what matters the apparatus or the object ? A game is a
game ; and there is no medicine like a game for tired and
fretted minds, for thoughts that drive in grooves of memory
and pain.
I had noticed a little earlier a soldier who had diverted
his thoughts in another way, and, though a magistrate might
not have decided him to be drunk, he was overflowing in his
gestures and expressions. Such things, I was told, were
very infrequent. But what struck me was not this, but the
action of his comrade, who was endeavouring to calm him
by appealing to his courtesy. He was not to show himself
thus before the English lady who had come to wait upon
their wants. And his appeal succeeded.
HOSPITALS IN AND ABOUT PARIS
We had come that morning from Royaumont. People, I
suppose, used to visit Royaumont in peace time, as they go
to see Tintern in England, and Jumieges in Normandy, and
Villers-la-Ville in Belgium, and beautiful ruins of old abbeys
anywhere. But now they visit Royaumont not because it is
a ruined abbey, but because it is the one hospital for the
wounded in France entirely managed and staffed by women.
On an earlier page I have described this great enterprise of
the Scottish women, and have said something of the diffi-
culties they so gallantly defeated in taking over and adapting
to use the old buildings which St-Louis saw rise in their
first grandeur — the Abbey was founded by his mother,
Blanche of Castille — and the stones of which he had helped
to lay in their places with his own hands.
The Abbey Church is now a ruin, or hardly even that, so
little is left of it. The great pillars of the nave are sawn
away close to the turf which now floors the aisles, all open
to the sky. But the cloisters, and the rest of the vast
monastic buildings, restored in parts, remain. And there
are streams and fishponds and fruit-trees. There is a sense
of old and large abundance in the surroundings, the heritage
of peaceful centuries. One has distant green glimpses of the
forests beyond.
On this May morning, when the cherry was in clouds of
white bloom, the impression was one of singular peace and
beauty. And at once on entering the abbey one receives
a sensation of airy cleanness and of order. To know what
condition the buildings had been in three years ago, and to
244 F0R DAUNTLESS FRANCE
see them now, was to marvel at the wonders that energetic
feminine hands had wrought.
On an upper floor we were received by the distinguished
woman-surgeon who is the Medecin-chef, and taken over
the hospital. All is spacious and on a stately scale. The
old refectory, where St-Louis used to minister to the monks
and taste their wine, is now a ward that holds a hundred
beds. All the wards are roomy and pleasant. But what
lingers most vividly in the memory is the cloisters. They
enclose a rose-garden, in the centre of which is a fountain.
And roofing the cloisters is a broad terrace, running round
the square of them and overlooking the garden. Beds can
be moved out of the wards on to this terrace ; and numbers
of the wounded were there, lying or sitting in the sun ;
others basked in the garden below.
Convalescents strolled about the grounds. A boat had
been provided for them, and a merry party were pushing
off into the stream. Some were angling in the lake. Few
Frenchmen are not enthusiastic fishermen ; and to be
allowed to practise their gentle sport is a precious solace
in the long weariness of getting well. Infinite tedium
succeeding to cruel suffering ! And yet these French
soldiers, with their fine elasticity of mind and body, their
capacity of being interested and amused by small things of
the passing hour, bear it all with quiet fortitude, and have
a ready smile.
At Royaumont I was struck with the order and discipline
that prevailed. The very fact that there are no men in
authority over them appeals to the chivalry of the French
nature. It is all the more a point of honour to impose a
duty on themselves. One had a sense of happy co-operation
between the patients and the staff.
And for the staff, and the work they have done, what can
one say sufficient ? The women of Scotland have cause to
be proud of these their representatives, who surely will
HOSPITALS IN AND ABOUT PARIS 245
leave a fragrant memory behind them in Royaumont. For
it is not only the wounded, but the inhabitants of the
hamlets round about, deprived of medical aid by the
war's necessities, to whom they minister. The sick
and hurt of the neighbourhood, under sanction of the
French authorities, get care and comfort from the Scottish
nurses.
The staff is large, and needs to be so, in so vast a place.
Besides the doctors and sisters and nurses, there are those
who look after the clothing of the soldiers. A big job, this !
The clothes of the new arrivals must be sorted, the linen
washed, everything numbered and entered in a card-index ;
and then there is the mending. As in most of these
hospitals, French workers from the neighbourhood help.
At Royaumont they undertake the mending of the linen ;
but the mending of the uniforms is done by the Scottish
women, who take a special pride in the cleanness and good
repair of the soldiers' equipment when it is handed back to
them on their evacuation. They bear testimony to the
French soldier's cleanliness and to the wonderful excel-
lence of his linen. ' What needlewomen the French wives
and sisters must be ! ' writes one of the ladies in charge of
the Vetement. This lady, in the early days, used to carry
up the sacks of clothing to the fifth-storey attics on her back.
But another member of the staff devised a block-pulley, by
which they are now hauled up — an immense lightening of
labour. Other instances of inventive resource met us as
we went over the hospital. In an upper room, devoted to
massage and the exercising of stiffened limbs — mecano-
therapie as the doctors call it — I noticed a dwarf harmonium
and a sewing-machine. I asked what they were for ; and
was told that they had been found in the abbey building
and impressed into the hospital service. For exercising
arms and feet both these instruments were discovered to be
as admirable as the most costly and up-to-date apparatus.
246 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
But everywhere the eye for details, the care for comely
neatness, were apparent.
If any male doubt the capacity of women to organise,
administrate, and create a cheerful order, let him go to
Royaumont.
But Royaumont, as has been told already, is not the only
witness to the ancient tie of friendship between France and
Scotland.
I went one afternoon in Paris to seek out the Hopital de
l'Ecosse. The Rue de la Chaise is a retired street, a little
off the Boulevard Raspail on the left bank of the Seine ; and
there, in an old mansion with a courtyard and high gateway
on the street — which before the war was the nursing-home
of a well-known Paris doctor, now the hospital's director —
I found the hospital. The Doctor, for whom I asked, was
out, but was expected shortly. I was invited to wait in the
garden, and, passing through the spacious courtyard, was
led through the building to the back. Here, to my surprise,
was a large garden, like the fragment of a park ; and so
sequestered was it by the high walls on either side and the
great old trees within it, that, as I sat and watched the
white clouds over the leafy chestnuts, Paris, which was
around me, with its noise and traffic, seemed remote and
unreal.
Wounded officers and soldiers were lying or sitting on the
terrace in front of the tall windows of the ground floor ward
or under the trees, and strolled or limped among the
shrubberies beyond the lawn. Nurses came with smiling
looks, and talked to them as they passed in or out. Some
had little knots of friends or relatives about them. A
singular peacefulness was in the air.
A hospital in the midst of a great city is not what one
would choose to come to, if one were wounded ; yet here,
with the scents of early summer all about, and so much
HOSPITALS IN AND ABOUT PARIS 247
delightful foliage, it seemed as if it would be hard to find
a more reposeful haven.
It was a pleasant place to sit and muse in. But it is ill
thinking in war time, and in a hospital. One must be
doing, or the thought of all the maimed youth and the dead
rises to choke one with pity and anger at the unpardonable
madness of it all.
The director had been delayed. I waited till I could
wait no longer. And then, at last, just as I was leaving, he
arrived and met me in the gateway. I had chosen the after-
noon as the best time for visiting, when the surgeons are
more at leisure. But the Doctor would not hear of my
seeing over the hospital at such a time. No, it must be
seen en pleine activite — that is, in the morning ; and a
morning was to be fixed for my visit.
So, a week or two later — for several long though hurried
journeys were to intervene — I again presented myself at the
Rue de la Chaise, and the Doctor, with genial pride, intro-
duced me to the full activity of the hospital.
Almost the first thing I remarked was the wonderful
absence of those familiar medical odours which one associates
with hospital wards. The Doctor was gratified ; it was a
point on which he felicitated himself and his staff. And
next I was struck by the stateliness and beautiful propor-
tions of the rooms. The house is in the grand style of the old
regime. It belonged at one time to Pauline Bonaparte — the
beautiful sister of Napoleon ; and portraits of that period
still hang on the tall panels in one of the rooms, over the
beds of the wounded. The largest ward is in what was the
old chapel of the building, a great, vaulted place with long
rows of beds on either side, endowed by gifts from Scotland.
Running along the garden terrace, with French windows
opening on it, is a group of sunny wards, opening into each
other. The outlook on the garden, and the sunshine, made
these particularly pleasant ; and the patients evidently
248 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
found them so. The nurses I met were some of them
French, others Scottish and Irish ; the doctors and surgeons
are French — men with famous names and distinguished
masters in their profession. All the equipment seemed
of the most modern and complete. We found many of the
wounded busily occupied in making little baskets and orna-
ments and toys. Some of them had become highly skilful
in this dainty manufacture ; and when I left, the director
pressed on my acceptance some charming specimens of their
work. And in a glass of the delicious wine of Anjou, the
Doctor's own country, we drank to the mutual affection and
friendship of France and Britain. Indeed, this hospital
has been a centre for the expansion of the Cordial Under-
standing. The Doctor has neglected no opportunity to
secure speakers and lecturers to celebrate fitting occasions
by interpreting the ideals and the efforts of the two nations
to each other. Actors and actresses from the Comedie
Francaise have recited versions of English poems ; and the
band of the English Guards has played in the courtyard
for the pleasure of the wounded.
Before leaving, I was shown a sort of annexe to the
hospital, where Belgian soldiers passing through Paris
can obtain a rest and a meal.
On another morning I was taken out of Paris to the
hospital at Ris-Orangis. We left Paris by the Porte de
Versailles, and drove along the straight stone-paved roads,
where the tall poplars had in a day or two sprung into such
exquisitely tinted leaves. We admired the golden flush of
the foliage, while we execrated the pave.
Ris-Orangis lies south-west of Paris, at a distance of about
twenty kilometres.
As we approached the village, the blossom of orchards and
the rising woods behind made an attractive prospect. And
when we had arrived at the College, which a thorough
HOSPITALS IN AND ABOUT PARIS 249
renovation has turned into so fine a hospital, we found the
surroundings even pleasanter than they promised. The
park, with its woods and banks, its slopes of sward and
winding walks, has a richness of varied views and abundance
of sunny and sheltered places, admirable for convalescence.
And the hospital itself has been fitted out with magnificent
completeness. The X-Ray apparatus is one of the finest in
France. The hospital is famous, too, for the suspensory
treatment of fractures which has been practised there with
so much success. The building, with its wide and airy
corridors — and narrow passages, such as are often found in
improvised hospitals, are no joy to stretcher-bearers — has
proved well adapted to its purpose ; but both it and the
park had fallen into neglect, and were only brought into
this present spotless order by much labour and at great
expense. We lunched with the staff. There was only one
lament — that they were not receiving as many wounded
as they wanted. And, indeed, it seemed a pity that these
beautiful spacious wards should not be always occupied as
long as there were wounded coming from the front, and that
such lavish equipment and such resources of skill and care
should not be utilised to the full.
The garage is a very important part of the establishment
at Ris-Orangis, as the cars work for a whole circuit of
hospitals in the neighbourhood. We visited the garage and
inspected the cars before leaving. On the way I saw some
brown tents of an unusual pattern in the grounds. They
were, I was told, American Army tents, which are used for
patients needing open-air treatment ; and they were said
to have served this purpose signally well.
RUINS AND REFUGEES
I do not know which impresses the mind more in travelling
about Eastern France — the violence and thoroughness of
the destruction in the ruined villages, or the way in which
the land has been kept under cultivation. In places where
there seems to be no population left, you will find the vast
fields tilled and the crops growing. It is true the tillage
is nothing like what it was in times of peace ; a practised
eye will mark the pathetic difference ; crops are invaded by
all sorts of insolent weeds ; but the effort is there, the
undefeated effort. Sometimes you may see an old man,
bent but active, or a couple of old women, burnt by the
sun, labouring slowly and without pause in an else solitary
landscape, of which they seem to have become a part.
Truly there is a homely heroism in this stubborn persistence
of the French peasant — though the shells are falling in his
field, he keeps his plough to the furrow — which is strangely
moving. The kindly earth has never failed him or his
fathers, and it will not fail him now. He is a figure of mute
faith, stronger than the violence of kings or than the
cannonade of armies.
Precisely a hundred years before the war began, in the
early days of August 1814, an English traveller wrote from
Troyes in Champagne :
' We came 120 miles in four days ; the last two days we passed over
the country that was the seat of war. I cannot describe to you the
frightful desolation of the scene ; village after village entirely ruined
and burned, the white ruins towering in innumerable forms of
destruction among the beautiful trees. The inhabitants were
260
RUINS AND REFUGEES 251
famished ; families once independent now beg their bread in this
wretched country ; no provisions, no accommodation, filth, misery,
and famine everywhere.'
The English traveller was Shelley ; the description occurs
in that amazing letter to the wife whom he had just deserted,
in which he invites her to join him and Mary Godwin in
Switzerland. Harriet, we may guess, was far from being
interested in such descriptions. But for any one who
travels through the desolated regions of France to-day,
that passage comes with a curiously vivid reality. A hundred
years, and the land which had long recovered its old
bounteous tranquillity, as if nothing had ever shaken it,
is again defaced and spoiled ; and this time with far mightier
engines of ruin, and with a yet more pitiless extortion from
its inhabitants. Only those who have seen it can realise
a tithe of what it means — and of what we in England have
been spared. The Germans also !
In a little bare upper room of an ancient house in Troyes
I visited a grey-haired couple, refugees from a village in the
region beyond Chalons. The old woman was blind. She
sat in her chair, felt for my hand, and took it and kissed it,
' because I was English.' ' Ah, yes ! ' said the old man,
1 it is true ; the English have saved our lives.' And he told
me, and his wife corroborated him with a word and a nod
from time to time, how they were overtaken by the war
and driven homeless along the roads till at last they came to
be housed and cared for by the Society of Friends. They
lived in a valley, in a quiet village. They knew what war
was, for they had lived through 1870. But for all that, though
they knew that the Germans were again invading their
country, and were very near, the villagers remained in their
homes ; they refused to believe that any harm would come
to them. ' But this is no war,' said the old man. It was
something one could not have believed in. Suddenly, in
the sunshine, crash out of nowhere came a shell, and the
252 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
church steeple toppled into ruin. The terrified inhabitants
took to their cellars. ' I told them they would not be
harmed,' said the old man. ' But I did not know what kind
of a war this was.'
They heard in their cellars the smashing of roofs and
windows ; then came the tramp of soldiers and shouted
orders ; the enemy was in the street. The villagers were
summoned up ; and then — if a man did not salute, if he
failed to answer at once, if he did not say just what they
wanted him to say, at a nod from an officer he was put against
the wall and shot in a trice. ' No, no, this is no war, not
as men used to make war.'
Yet this was a village where the Germans had been by
comparison mild. Multiply the villages by hundreds ;
call up the country-side in England round your home, or
the country you know and love best ; number over the
hamlets and farms with their familiar names and kind
associations ; picture them all blackened and broken in
pieces, and the old people in the cottages driven out in
miserable troops along strange roads to beggary among
strangers, shot dead on any provocation or dying in ditches
from hunger and weakness ; and you will begin to under-
stand. But only begin. For the extent of the desolation
passes the power of description. The mind would become
blunted by the monotony of havoc, horror, and misery,
before a fraction of the tale were told. If a human heart
were capable of comprehending a thousandth part of the
suffering and waste of the war in its reality — that is, as it
comprehends its own griefs — it would burst with pity,
shame, and indignation.
The Germans have carried out with a simple faith the
precepts of their War Book, the precepts reiterated by all
their venerated teachers of the science of war. Civilian
inhabitants must be intimidated and made to suffer by every
possible means and with no least atom of weak mercy.
RUINS AND REFUGEES 253.
Thus they will create a moral atmosphere in the invaded
nation which will cause it speedily to sue for peace.
The logic seems faultless ; it has been dutifully acted
out, with the most scrupulous correctness and precision —
very often against all natural inclination — with a thorough-
ness which is echt deutsch ; yet the conclusion does not come
as it should. Nothing enrages the German mind like a
syllogism gone wrong. The syllogism must be right,
because it is the product of German thought ; something
eke must bear the blame. And in the full-blown savagery
of destruction to which certain places in France bear
immortal witness, the rage of exasperated intellect in the
command has combined with bestial instinct in the soldiery
to do things no one would have believed that men would
do to men. But the greatness of man lives in a world
beyond logic. It endures beyond calculation, and prevails
over all that the cruelty of reason can contrive.
It was in the pleasant valley of the Mortagne, a little river
that runs northwards to the Meuse, as we drove towards
Nancy, that we came into the region of the devastations.
A barn at the corner of the road, tumbled into a shapeless
heap ; then a hamlet, shattered and deserted, with pitiful
remnants of its old quiet felicity ; gaping walls burnt purple,
loop-holed and bespattered with bullet-marks ; such sights
were soon so frequent that the eyes passed over them, only
noting when the relic of a family, still clinging to the last
of home, stared up from a doorstep, and a dog barked in
the solitude of the street. But all around was the green,
sweet country ; and everywhere, this miraculous May, the
abounding blossom was radiant on the fruit-trees.
The black ruins and the white blossom haunted one's
mind ; my thoughts were full of the young who were dead,
fallen in their faith and cause, and lying now in how many
thousands of graves under the earth of their own country,
that spread before me in the spring sunshine. It seemed
254 F0R DAUNTLESS FRANCE
to my fancy that they had risen again in that triumphant
blossom, to reassure the world.
We were entering the district over which were fought
momentous battles in August and September 1914. The
German armies, making their great effort to break through
the French line between Toul and Epinal, were here held
and stopped. Had the invaders succeeded, they might well
have achieved their aim of enveloping the main French
forces from the south, as it was the aim of other German
armies to envelop them on the north ; hence the vital
import of the struggle. To and fro, from town to town,
and village to village, the obstinate conflict was fought, till
at the decisive moment the enemy was driven back.
It is the bitter necessity of the defenders of an invaded
country to join with the enemy in maiming what is their
own. The difference is that the one side does all it can to
spare, the other does all it can to destroy. French shells,
as well as German, have played some part in making these
poor ruins. But the most significant desolation of this
region is by no means the work of mere fighting.
My companion said to me : ' We are approaching
Gerbeviller.'
The name struck on my mind with a sense of shadowy
horror. I remembered the story of Gerbeviller.
Soon we were in the main street of what was once so
pleasant a small town, set upon the banks of three branching
streams, and passed slowly between the rows of ruins.
The place was bombarded by the Germans, and afterwards
by the French ; but what we saw was no random wreckage,
it was the relics of a scientific and complete destruction.
Here was the bridge over the Mortagne, flowing in the clear
sunshine beside this strange dead human silence, the bridge
on which the remnant of the little body of defenders — sixty
or seventy strong — held out behind a barricade against the
overwhelming odds of Bavarians. As far as can be ascer-
RUINS AND REFUGEES 255
tained, most of these got away during the night, but a
few, separated from the rest, could only escape by killing a
German sentry in their way. The sentry's body was found
in the morning by the German's ; they insisted that he
had been killed by the inhabitants, and for a punishment set
fire to the whole place, house by house, with the pastilles
carried with them for such purposes, and ' executed ' a
number of the old and helpless inhabitants with hideous
indignities. The remnant of the population was entirely
homeless, when the French drove the retreating Germans
out of the town. The Prefet of the Department of
Meurthe-et-Moselle visited Gerbeviller while the ruins were
still smoking, and blackened skeletons still lay among the
charred ruins ; and on his second visit he took with him
an English correspondent, Mr. Gerald Campbell, who has
given an account of what happened, and of what he saw him-
self, in his book Verdun to the Vosges. But the story of
Gerbeviller-La-Martyre is known to every Frenchman,
not only for the savage things done there, but still more
for the shining courage and devotion of the famous Sister
Julie and the little band of Sisters of Mercy who worked
with her during those August days of horror.
Gerbeviller has the pre-eminence of desolation, but it is
only one place among how many !
And now think for a moment what all these wrecked towns
and obliterated villages mean. What armies of the beggared
and the homeless ! France has on her hands over two
million refugees from the devastated districts. How and
where are they to be housed, fed, clothed, comforted,
employed ?
Two years before, in the summer of 1915, at Sermaize-
les-Bains, in the Department of the Marne, which is a scene
of ruin wellnigh as complete as Gerbeviller itself, I had
a glimpse of the work that is being done in the devastated
districts by the Society of Friends, side by side with various
256 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
French organisations, and with the help and sanction of the
Government.
It was just a year after the battles of the Marne. Among
the forlorn remains of the destroyed town new clusters of
neat wooden huts and brick cottages were springing up.
It was like a colony of settlers building on some ancient
ruins ; for these destroyed towns and villages might be of
any age ; they belong to Death, who keeps no dates. A
group of Quaker workers stood in a line tossing bricks from
one to another with the deft rapidity of practised brick-
layers, where a cottage was nearing completion. A woman
invited me into her cottage, and showed it to me with a
certain pride and pleasure, in spite of the calamities into
which the war had thrown her. I talked with some of the
Friends in their own hut, and found them very eager upon
their work, especially upon the human side of it. They
felt their real reward was when they had succeeded in im-
planting some seed of hope and care for the future in the
stunned hearts of those homeless ones.
For the frightful suddenness of the blow had been a
paralysing shock. There was no warning, no preparation.
The first shell burst close to the church on Sunday during
Mass, just at the moment of the elevation of the Host ;
yet the cure finished the Mass. After the wave of war had
passed, leaving the town in ruins, there were numbers of the
inhabitants, here as elsewhere, who crept back to the place ;
and families were found living in what were cellars, with a
makeshift roof to shelter them, the smoke from the stove
they had contrived to introduce going up in the midst of
the chaos of desolation, to witness to that passionate cling-
ing to home which the French have so strongly. If these
forlorn and stricken people could have had all the world
to choose from, they would still have chosen the spot that,
wrecked, burnt-out, and defaced, alone meant home for
them. For these unhappy families the huts and cottages of
RUINS AND REFUGEES 257
the Friends, and still more their encouraging presence and
sympathy, were indeed comfort and support.
At Gerbeviller, a few months after its destruction, the
Friends helped the Prefet of Meurthe-et-Moselle, at his
request, by making an inventory of all goods belonging to
the refugees. They had already done the same service at
Remereville, and had administered relief in a number of
villages of the Department. But this work had all been
completed early in 191 6.
As has been told already, there are numbers of refugees
collected in the city of Troyes, the old capital of Champagne.
They have streamed down southwards and westwards from
the Ardennes ; pitiable and bewildered processions, pushing
hand-carts with their hastily snatched belongings piled upon
them, or carrying in their hands whatever a wild instinct
had prompted them to save — objects sometimes of a pathetic
and absurd unlikeliness. One sad lady found herself, to her
own subsequent bewilderment and dismay, clasping three
umbrellas, the sole treasure rescued from her household
goods.
I came to Troyes one morning and sought out the head-
quarters of the Friends ; and the officer in charge was my
hospitable guide in a little journey of exploration through
the town.
Troyes is a city of fine Gothic architecture ; of pictur-
esque corners ; of narrow alleys, where the gabled houses
lean toward each other across the way in their extreme
old age ; a place to rejoice the heart of an etcher, and to
make a sanitary surveyor stand aghast. Every here and
there one finds a little stream, an outlet from the Seine,
which winds through the town, gliding along the back walls
of old stooping houses ; and one sees women kneeling to
wash clothes in the running water. To find decent accom-
modation for refugees in an old town like this, the population
of which had been so much swollen since the war began,
R
258 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
was no easy matter. Owing to the crowded conditions and
the great demand for rooms, rents were exorbitantly high.
The Society of Friends had constructed a large number of
movable wooden huts, built to a pattern, in an open space
on the outskirts, when, owing to the Allies' advance in the
spring of 191 7 and the liberation of a great tract of country,
these huts had to be given up to the more pressing necessity
of providing shelters for refugees in the Noyon district.
What was to be done ? It happened that there were a
certain number of old houses marked for demolition. As
these were better than nothing for the time being, the
Friends arranged with the civil authorities for the postpone-
ment of their demolition, and housed several families in
each. Besides this, the representatives of the Society supply
cheap furniture — chairs and simple wardrobes — made on
the spot ; and this they sell at a very low price on the instal-
ment system. Also bedding and clothes. I saw piles, of
mattresses in store-rooms, and feather-beds in process of
being filled ; and in another part of the town saw a shop full
of chairs and wardrobes, neat pieces of plain carpentry,
unpainted.
As we walked through those ancient streets, passing the
church where our Henry the Fifth wedded his French Kate,
I noted how often my companion was greeted with smiles
and shining eyes, and we stopped to exchange a word with
one or other of the refugees ; I remember especially a
mother with her child whom she had lost for two whole years
(the father had been shot), and who was now restored to her.
We visited some of the families lodged in the houses
that had been procured for them. It was in one of these
that we found that old couple whose story I have already
told. Others were young, though they had memories
enough to fill a lifetime. I heard their histories ; full of
terrors and hairbreadth escapes, and violent partings and
strange unhoped-for meetings. g But here in their quiet
RUINS AND REFUGEES 259
rooms, with the sunlight falling on the floor, they were busy
with their occupations — dressmaking, tailoring, or what
not. For it is the aim of the Friends to find work for the
refugees — by preference of course the work to which they
have been bred. What so blessed as the dulling solace of
regular daily work for those who have so vivid a nightmare
behind them ?
Yet, for all that has been done and is doing, how im-
mense and dark is this world of dislocated existences ! Its
immensity haunts the mind, it makes the heart sore.
and
LYONS AND NEVERS
It was six o'clock of a cloudless morning when I alighted at
Lyons from the Paris express.
Breakfast over, I asked for the Ulster Hospital. I was
told it was a long way off, and advised to take a carriage.
Carriages, however, seemed extremely scarce. The immense
tree-planted square in front of the Perrache station was still
full of the booths of the great Lyons Fair, which had
recently been held. Here I sought for a fly, but none was
visible ; and it was a long time before one appeared and
consented to take me to my destination. Crossing the
Rhone, I was driven down many long streets and leafy
boulevards to the outlying suburb, where at last we turned
in to the Allee du Sacre Cceur, and I saw the legend Ulster
Volunteer Hospital, No. 250 bis.
The building which has been taken over for the hospital
was a technical school. It has large and pleasant rooms
which serve for wards, but otherwise is not fitted with much
in the way of modern comfort and convenience. All short-
comings, however, of this kind had been overcome by the
energy of the staff. There was evidence of inventive im-
provisation ; and every opportunity was turned to account.
The Medecin-chef gave me a cordial welcome, and we went
the round of the wards. It was easy to see that the happiest
relations prevailed between staff and patients. The Poilu
was among friends. An Irish gaiety and animation were
in the air. A great cherry-tree thick with exquisite white
blossom, just outside the window of one of the wards,
seemed to be flowering expressly for the pleasure of the
teo
LYONS AND NEVERS 261
wounded. I talked with some of these, and found them all
more than contented with their quarters and the care
bestowed on them. The hospital contains a hundred beds.
It was three-quarters full, and more wounded were expected.
The Directrice invited me to lunch, in company with some
of the nurses, at a modest, tiny, but amusing and excellent
restaurant a few doors off, to which the staff are in the habit
of adjourning. Afterwards we were to drive across the
city to the other British hospital at St-Rambert.
I was told about the move from Pau, where the Ulster
Hospital was originally set up, and heard experiences of
those early days of the war.
A motor ambulance came round from the garage to
take me across the town. It was an opportunity for a
joy-ride for some of the more convalescent soldiers ; and
with a good deal of merriment and raillery among them-
selves, and friendly comments and commands from the
nurses, they were collected for the outing and helped each
other in. The Directrice (whose French is of an enviable
perfection) gave her orders, punctiliously obeyed by the
soldiers, and took her seat at the wheel. We called at a
suburban station to see if there were any wounded expected
by the train for the hospital, but none were arriving that
day. It is usually arranged for the tram, which passes
close to the hospital, to bring the sitting cases.
Our way led us across both the Rhone and the Saone,
the two noble streams which curve through the city and
unite below it. At the other extremity of the town and
beyond its suburbs is the island of St-Barbe, a resort of
holiday-makers lying in the stream of the Saone ; and a little
nearer the city, on a steep and wooded height above the
river, is the Lycee, which houses the hospital of the Wounded
Allies Relief Committee. Here I was set down, and made
my farewells.
A steep ascent brought me to the hospital, built round
262 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
the sides of a courtyard planted with thick-growing syca-
mores. The building is a high one, and has wards for the
wounded on three floors. Like most French Lycees, it has
a certain sombreness of aspect; but the interior is roomy
and spacious, and the view from the windows over the Saone,
as it sweeps between hills to the terraced heights and distant
towers of Lyons, is magnificent. The hospital has three
hundred beds. There is a wing (filled at one time by
Serbian refugee children) for the sick, who are under the
charge of a French doctor. French workers also look after
the linen and housekeeping. All the rest of the work is in
the hands of the English staff.
But a new convoy had just arrived. Every one was being
overworked and terribly busy ; and I felt I should have
timed my visit more conveniently. However, the Doctor
in charge and the matron gave me of their precious time,
and I was shown both the interior of the hospital and the
wooded grounds and gardens about it on the slopes of the
hill. And I had a piece of good fortune, for it so happened
that on this afternoon a colonel of the French Army was
coming to present decorations to some of the wounded.
I had seen this ceremony elsewhere ; but on this occasion
the peculiar dignity of face and bearing of the aged colonel
— all about him spoke of race, and breathed of old France —
made it specially memorable. Tall and very thin, rather
frail-looking, but very erect, the colonel was escorted into
the large ward. There was a little stir, and a general
saluting, and a certain amount of standing to attention ;
but French soldiers seem incapable of the inhuman and
expressionless rigidity which is the ideal of the sergeant-
major at home. The military secretary read out the names
of those to be decorated.
One was to have the Medaille Militaire, and a number of
others the Croix de Guerre. After the first name had been
called and the soldier's ' citation ' read, the colonel drew his
LYONS AND NEVERS 263
sword and made a little speech in the name of the Republic's
President to the man who had proved himself * bon et brave
soldat.'
The words were at once ceremonious and simple. The
Colonel spoke of the debt that all her loyal children owed
to France ; of the pride of sacrifice ; of the token now given
of remembrance, and its inspiration for the new generation
when in its turn it was called on to do and to suffer. As I
listened to his voice, clear and firm, yet touched with a fine
emotion, I understood the meaning of fraternity in a nation ;
all casual and formal difference of age and office, rank and
fortune, was drowned in the supreme and common dignity
of being sons of France.
The medal was then pinned to the breast of the wounded
man. On the other occasion at which I was present, the
presiding General had at this moment kissed the decorated
hero — a sturdy little man who had lost an eye — on both his
cheeks. But, perhaps, because the soldier in this case was
supine on his bed and could not raise himself, that cus-
tomary salute was omitted.
I had now to visit a hospital at Nevers, which is about
half-way between Lyons and Paris. On returning to my
hotel — a longish journey by a succession of trams — I found
that unless I was to waste a whole day, so ill-timed and in-
frequent were the trains, it was necessary to start the same
evening and catch the express from Marseilles.
Waiting at the station I saw a group of English blue-
jackets hurry past, tumbling over each other with jokes and
laughter, to catch a train just starting. The P.L.M. in
these days is a highway of many peoples and thronged with
many uniforms of many services besides the horizon-blue
of the French infantry, the mustardy khaki of the Colonial
troops, the dark-blue of the Chasseurs Alpins, and the
medley of various uniforms, difficult to get on terms with,
of the officers of the French Army. Russians with broad
264 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
epaulettes, Serbians, occasional Italians, Belgians (I had
travelled the night before with two Belgian officers on
leave, one from Dixmude, the other from East Africa) ; an
English troop-train, stopped on the line, with hundreds of
cheerful soldiers in shirt-sleeves taking their ease, smoking
or washing at a pump — such are common sights of the
P.L.M. between Paris and the Mediterranean.
As the express was certain to be crowded, I presented
myself to the controleur, who politely assured me that I
should certainly have a seat. He kept his word. When the
train came in I was invited to step on first of the waiting
crowd, as having ' an urgent mission.' No slight advantage,
for the train was soon packed, corridors and all.
Stumbling out of the train at Nevers between three and
four in the morning — what with the dark stations and my
own sleepiness, I was fearful of missing it — I found the plat-
forms thronged with a multitude of soldiers, sitting or
standing in a disconsolate drowsiness, or asleep on the bare
stone with their packs under their heads. I wished for
some magic power to transport a canteen of the Dames
Anglaises to that dark station and open it then and there.
After knocking up one hotel in vain — all its beds were
full — I found another which could take me in, and after
two nights of sitting up in the crowded train was glad of a
few hours' sleep.
The morning was brilliant and the air exhilarating when
I drove out of the town a little way into the country, and
soon found myself at the English Hospital. It is housed in
a group of big, plain, modern buildings intended to be
depots of the P.L.M. railway. Not picturesque, there-
fore, and with somewhat bare surroundings ; but on the
other hand the hospital has free air all about it, and has
none of the many drawbacks and dirt-lodging capacities
common to most old buildings. It has bathrooms and a
system of heating. The French gestionnaire, who, I learnt,
LYONS AND NEVERS 265
had been with the hospital from the first, took me into his
office (he spoke an excellent English), and then went to find
the Medecin-chef, a very distinguished English surgeon —
famous, too, among runners in his youth ; three times in
succession he won the Three Miles' Race for Oxford. The
wards we now went the round of were pleasant and sunny ;
they were full of cheerful patients, though at the moment
the hospital was wanting more wounded than it could get.
One fine, spacious ward contained over sixty beds. The
X-Ray room leads out of the operating theatre, so that the
patient could be operated on under the X-Rays in the dark,
if necessary, with the least amount of inconvenience.
Everything in the hospital seemed to be admirably
ordered. Things were done briskly ; and one had an im-
pression of cheerful animation both among the staff and the
patients. The English nurses lodge in chalets near the
building. Orderlies are supplied by the French ; and
French girls give their services in mending clothes and
looking after the linen.
This hospital is an Hopital Autonome.
Early in the afternoon I left for Paris. For the first part
of the journey the railway skirts the Loire ; and one caught
glimpses of that spacious stream, looped among sandy islets,
and with oozy wide margins of reed-bed and poplar, and
towns upon the hills beyond.
Saone and Rhone, Loire, Garonne, and Seine : how full
of personality are these noble rivers, whose rich veins
animate great tracts of glorious country. Their presence
is felt as a felicity, even at a distance. Some involuntary
prompting of the old pagan intuitive feeling about them,
as of tutelar spirits or divinities, comes into the mind when
one pictures these rivers of France ; and I understood
more nearly what France means to the simple tiller of her
soil, how passionately he springs to her defence, and dies
to save her.
IN THE VOSGES
' At this point,' said my companion, * we are within four
hundred yards of the German trenches.'
It seemed incredible.
We were high up on the side of the thickly wooded hill,
the curves of which were followed by the road. It was an
excellent road, and I was surprised to learn that it had been
entirely made during the war. But what peace was in the
air ! A lazy, luxurious silence, with nothing but a slight
warm wind trembling among the anemones and shifting
ever so little the blue shadows of the pines. Yet just the
other side of the ridge was the enemy. A few shells had
come over that morning. But all was quiet now : and
though an expert eye would doubtless have known that the
sleeping, scented wood was full of cunningly hidden guns,
war seemed as distant as in some valley in western England.
We had just visited a First Aid Post among the pines.
Close under it were two ambulances, waiting by the dug-
out which was the temporary home of the drivers.
This post is one of half a dozen served by Section 5 of
the British Ambulance Committee. The headquarters of
the section is a little town in a valley. A number of roads
radiate from this centre, which is also a railhead. There
are perhaps thirty volunteers and paid drivers in the section.
And each taking his turn of a spell of five days, they spend
their time at one post or another. There are usually two
cars at each post, each with two men. The men live in
dug-outs while on duty, and their work is usually done at
night, and practically always under fire. You may be sure
that where a car can go, there it will be taken. But there
266
IN THE VOSGES 267
are places where a car cannot go in the mountains, especi-
ally in the winter snows. And then Alaskan dogs with
sledges are brought into service ; and the motor-cycles with
stretchers attached, whose splendid work has been described
on an earlier page of this book.
We had reached the headquarters of Section 5 the
evening before, after a long drive over the mountains.
I had come from Paris by railway with a French officer,
who in the office in the Rue Pinel, now so familiar to our
ambulance men, looks after the affairs of the British convoys,
and makes the ways smooth for the drivers as they come and
go. I had called on this officer a week before, and found
him with his foot in plaster, the result of an accident ; but
he expressed the firm intention of accompanying me to the
front, and, though I think at the cost of considerable pain,
was to be my most efficient and courteous guide.
At Belfort, where we left the train, the streets glared with
blazing heat. It was astonishing to hear from the B.A.C.
officer and chauffeurs, who met us with a powerful car,
that it was impossible to go over the Ballon. d' Alsace, as had
been planned, because the snow was so deep on the road.
They had tried to come that way in the morning, but all
their efforts had been baffled.
We had therefore to take another route. My chief
regret was that this meant missing an English canteen which
I had purposed and particularly wished to visit, at Bussang.
The three hours' drive was one which, if the war could have
been forgotten, was enchanting. It was the height of
spring. Everywhere in the valleys, as we wound among
them, were innumerable fruit-trees, shining with clouds of
blossom ; and as we gradually climbed to the higher ranges,
and patches of snow appeared in clefts of rock or on the
summit-slopes, we would pass grassy shoulders entirely
covered with millions of blowing daffodils.
Evening was falling when we arrived at our destination,
268 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
a villa beside a small lake which serves as headquarters for
Section 5, and we dined pleasantly in the hospitable mess-
room. A French officer and sous-qfficier are attached to
each section ; and the conversation was now in French, now
in English, which both officers had to perfection. Two men
of the section were leaving to join the English Flying Corps.
We drank their health, and the commander of the section
made a little farewell speech, full of praises for their fine
service with the convoy, their daring and devotion. I
noted the terms of frank and cordial intimacy on which the
French officers and the English were with each other. Much
merriment passed between them ; especially over a jest
that they had jointly played off, the day before, on an
outpost hospital on the mountains. At this hospital an
infirmiere was expected to arrive. The head of the hospital
was always playing practical jokes on the men of our convoy
when they visited it, and they determined to be revenged.
A young chauffeur, dressed up as a nurse, looked charmingly
plausible with his fresh English complexion. He was
taken up to the outpost and introduced. The hospital
staff were entirely taken in, and full of gallant attentions,
when a shell burst quite near. The pretended infirmiere,
quite used to such things, moved not a muscle. There
was natural astonishment, then suspicion, and the scene
exploded in laughter.
In the particular sector we were to visit, no wounded have
been evacuated, since the beginning of 1915, except by
British ambulances.
At the point where we passed so close to the German
trenches there was, as I have said, a singular absence of
any trace of war.
But during the morning, as we climbed the hills and
descended the valleys, there were sufficient relics of battle
and destruction, though the glory of May was over every-
thing, and for the moment it was hard for anything to
IN THE VOSGES 269
appear dead or defeated. Radiant foliage masked the ruins
of farms and factories except at a close view. But nothing
could disguise the broad rents in pine-woods devastated by
artillery, or the gaps on the sky-line where a ridge was swept
for a certain distance of everything but charred and
shattered trees.
In order to visit the whole sector, we had to make long
detours and return upon our tracks. Now we were in the
warmth of smiling sheltered valleys, now on the heights from
which one looked out far over the valley of the Rhine to the
Black Forest beyond.
At a certain post on a mountain top we were warmly
greeted by the staff of a little hospital which the French
have installed there. It is what is called an Alpine Post ;
and this one is ingeniously constructed in duplicate, below
ground and above. When there is a bombardment, the
staff transfer themselves, and the patients are carried, under-
ground, where there is an exact counterpart of the rooms
above. We were pressed for time, having much to visit ;
but our French friends insisted on making tea, and a young
officer of the famous Chasseurs Alpins, witty and gay,
whether speaking his own tongue or admirable English,
took me round the little hospital and showed me all its
ingenious contrivances.
But there was a greater surprise in store. ' You must
see our theatre,' he said. I imagined an operating theatre.
But no, it was a theatre for entertainments, rigged up with
stage and scenery complete.
1 And if the audience is not enthusiastic, we can always
rely on the shells for salvoes of applause ! ' In fact, as we
emerged on the mountain road, though at the moment all
was quiet, the mark of the enemy met the eye. A shell had
struck a roofed-over recess in the rock which served as
garage to one of the English cars. Happily the car was
away at the time.
270 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Great slides of snow were clinging to the mountain slopes,
though, the wild spring flowers were in every crevice of earth.
We descended to a hollow of the hills, cupping a black tarn,
on which a sheet of ice still floated.
Here, taking gas-masks, we set out to walk. From
vantage-points on the path one had wonderful views, both
of the snow-streaked summits which have been the scene
of such desperate fighting, and of the country below, green
with many-folded valleys.
One village spire was on French territory, the next beyond
on German, though there was nothing to tell this to the eye.
And at times one could see the ribboned seams of the rival
trenches, quite near, following irregular parallels over the
undulations of the country. The desultory sound of an
occasional shell lumbering over and bursting was all the
sign of war.
After walking for some time in single file on an exposed
slope, we suddenly plunged into a boyau or communication
trench, roofed with boughs. It was hot and airless in the
boyau, which seemed interminable. Now and then we met
soldiers, in twos and threes, brown-faced under their blue
helmets, trudging to their outposts.
At last we emerged.
It was an extraordinary scene in which to find oneself.
The stony slope of a mountain-side rose before us. The
trees may once have been thick upon it, though now but
a ragged remnant. Over the shoulder of the hill could be
seen, clear in the evening sun, a desolated summit, rust-
coloured, with all its forest burnt and shot away, save
scattered ragged stumps and splinters. How many brave
lives had perished on those slopes ! But where we stood
there was every sign of industrious human animation.
Infantrymen and orderlies passed to and fro.
I must not describe all I saw and was shown. But
what I saw intensified my admiration of the French
IN THE VOSGES 271
genius for creating order and adapting hard necessity
to use.
I found that we were to dine with a French officer of
the Army Medical Service. He came to meet us with a
cordial greeting. The Doctor, not tall, but square and
strong, with black moustache and bright observant eyes,
had served for years with the army in Algeria.
A little later, as we passed along, two enemy aeroplanes
came over flying at a great height in the bright evening still-
ness. Anti-aircraft guns at once opened on them, with quick,
eager reports. White puffs appeared in the distant blue ;
and a tinkle of falling fragments sounded on the rock near
by. The Doctor with a smile drove us in to shelter. And
now an orderly announced that dinner was ready.
The dug-out, with its curved inner shell of corrugated
metal, had been adorned with decorative paintings by a
former occupant interested in marine zoology. It was
snug, cheerful, home-like. We had an excellent dinner,
admirably cooked, and seasoned with pleasant talk. We
discussed national characteristics and customs ; and we
English tried to explain to the French doctors some of
the labyrinthine strangeness of our insular character, our
absurd shyness, even amongst ourselves, and the odd ways
in which an Englishman disguises his emotions. We drank
to the friendship and better understanding of the two
nations, and I think on both sides the wish was warm. Time
passed quickly, and before we were aware night had fallen.
Out in the darkness we sought the post from which an
ambulance was to take back the wounded. The ambulance
had already arrived. Since the road is under fire, it cannot
be traversed by day, and by night only without lamps.
There were five wounded in the ambulance, and as all
happened to be sitting cases, my companion and I took our
places with them, after farewells to our hosts.
We began to descend the mountain-road. It is simply
272 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
a succession of hairpin bends, on the corners of which the
German guns are trained. Showing no light, the car felt
its way down the zigzags, but the driver knew his road by
heart, and our progress was surprisingly smooth and easy.
Every other minute a star-shell exploded a mild radiance
over the valley. We sat and talked in the darkness, and as
each voice made itself heard from this corner or that — low-
toned phrases, tired exclamations, little humorous com-
ments — the intermittent, tentative talk of casually met
people — one could not help speculating on the character
of the voices and wondering what sort of corresponding
face would be revealed when the lights should disclose us
to each other.
At last we were over the pass. Two sudden long beams
of light leapt out from the lamps in front, and inside the
ambulance we could be safely lit up too. There were the
bandaged Poilus, friendly and familiar types with their brown
faces and quiet eyes, comparing reminiscences in a matter-
of-fact, reticent way — reminiscences of the war that already
seems to have filled a lifetime.
The road by which we had come so smoothly and safely
has seen terrible things, when the battle raged on the
mountains for weeks at a time and the Germans burst their
huge shells over the road and smothered it with splintered
rocks. Our ambulances were then at work incessantly.
On one side of the barrier they could only work in the dark-
ness ; on the other they worked both by day and by night,
carrying the wounded down to railhead and hospital, and
saving one knows not how many lives by the narrow margin
that secured an early treatment.
The reader may be able to imagine just a little of what
this work is like from what I have described. But winter
lasts long in the Vosges, and to understand the real con-
ditions of the service, you must picture the depth of frozen
snow, the bitter cold, the slushy mire of the thaws, added
IN THE VOSGES 273
to all the difficulties and dangers of the steep mountain
roads, along which the ambulances must drive. I regretted
that I had not been among the Vosges in the snow-time,
that I might better understand. There have been casualties
and deaths among the men of our various convoys with the
French ; but for the most part one would think, after a
glimpse of their work and with a knowledge of what it means,
that their lives are charmed. For my part, I found myself
wondering how any of them had survived.
SOME CANTEENS IN THE WAR ZONE
We were leaving the mountains behind us ; and as the
car rounded the corners of the white road, the face of the
country gradually changed and took on softer outlines.
I looked back regretfully to the pine-clothed ranges,
wishing that time allowed us to turn back, and visit the
English canteen on the distant mountain pass.
The lady in charge of this canteen has written me an
account of it, from which I shall take leave to quote.
It is a canteen at a station, not very far from the front.
Work begins at half-past four in the morning. The men
returning to the front from their leave take the train which
starts at five. But even at half-past four there are some-
times men waiting, who have walked down from the
trenches. And in the long winter the snow through which
they have to tramp is over their knees or even up to their
chests. The men returning from leave arrive with sad
looks, for they have just parted from their families ; they are
tired and sleepy, and though they do not grumble, they are
cheered and comforted by hot coffee, a cigarette, and a word
of welcome at that dreary hour of the morning.
And now to quote the Directrice, who, though she found
the work exacting — ' when one is not providing food, one
is providing conversation ' — was chiefly anxious to be
moved nearer the front, where there would be an opportunity
for serving more men and having still harder work. ' It
is all most interesting ' (she wrote), ' and the more one
knows the Poilu, the more one likes him. . . .'
274
SOME CANTEENS IN THE WAR ZONE 275
* Some of the soldiers insist on paying something ; and when we
say that all is gratuity they say we must give it to the blesses. The
older men with families are only too thankful to get a good meal
for nothing, as everything costs so much now. Besides, in this part
of the world so many cafes are shut, or only open for a short time
daily. And many have two, or even three days' journey after they
leave us, so that several francs a day mounts up.
1 We had a boy of nineteen the other day who asked for " a very
little bouillon," and took out his purse. He was told that it was all
free ; and that we gave bouillon, meat, and coffee. He looked
immensely relieved, and ate a large plate of bouillon and a big slice
of meat ; and then he confided to us that he had a long journey
before him, and everything cost so much. So we " stoked " him
thoroughly before he started. He was just a hungry boy with a
healthy appetite.
* I explained to a man one day that all was gratuity when he had
put down fifty centimes. He picked it up and then put it down
again, for I told him that the Government gave the meat and coffee,
and we did the cooking only. " But why should you take all that
trouble for nothing? " said he, and offered me the money. I said,
" Monsieur, it is not for nothing, it is for the pleasure it gives us to
do something for the French Army ! " He looked perfectly de-
lighted ; said that was really chic, and resumed his money. They
certainly meet all friendliness more than half-way.
* Any man that speaks English, however little, always airs it. It
is sometimes a little surprising, and frequently has a marked American
accent. One gentleman this morning, at our 5 a.m. reception, saluted
me with " Well, Girls ! " in a very American voice, as he put his
quart down for some coffee. It was said in a most polite tone,
which made it sound extremely funny. ' Oh, you speak English ! "
said I, and he beamed with satisfaction. Yesterday we had a French
Hindu with an Indian detachment ; a corporal, smart and intelligent.
He had been in an English family in Madras ; spoke excellent English,
and said what a pleasure it was to hear English ladies' voices again.
Many tell us they hope to come to England after the war.
' A good many of our men come from the pays envahis. We
have put up in the foyer of the canteen the addresses of societies
helping to find or get news of refugUs. It is very sad for the per-
missionnaires who have no home or family. Two came through the
other day, who were to spend their leave in barracks in Paris. I
suppose they would be the better for a change from the trenches ;
but it was pathetic, when all the others had somewhere to go where
they were sure of a welcome. We gave them an address in Paris,
276 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
where they could make inquiries for their families, of whom they
had heard nothing for months ; and they seemed ever so grateful
for the chance of doing something definite. They felt that, after all,
there was some use in having leave.
* We have heard some tragic tales of the carrying into captivity of
little daughters and young sisters. And as the men say gloomily :
" When we get into Germany, we can do nothing to their women
and children ; for we are civilised."
• ' There was a brush with the Boches a short time ago. They got
them into a communication trench, and turned machine-guns on
them. Few Boches , survived. One man frankly rejoiced, but was
pulled up by the others for going into too many details before us.
Another, a young sergeant, said it was perfectly revolting, and he
had loathed the whole business, which was one of the most appalling
sights he had ever seen. Though equally glad of the victory, he had
not enjoyed the carnage. Probably the other man had the greater
reason to hate them, and felt it was only retribution. They are very
good to their prisoners. No doubt you have noticed the men with
rings, with bits of glass from Rheims set like jewels in them. They are
always rather grim, and mean business when they meet the enemy.
' The men from the Midi find this climate little to their liking.
It is a hard life anywhere of course ; but two days' tramping through
deep snow, even with " leave " at the end of it, adds much to the
misery of trench-life in winter. They all appreciate the canteen
immensely.
' What strikes one most is that they all consider themselves as
such aged men after about forty-three. But there is no doubt that
the life does tell very much on the older ones.
' The other day we were presented with a poem written in the
canteen. The men generally come in with one or two " copains "
(pals), and take their bouillon in little parties at the same table.
We have three rows of tables down the foyer. A soldier came up
to me with a paper on which was written " Miss ; Misses ! " He
wished to know if this was the plural of " Miss." I said it was ;
and he retired to his two friends, one of whom was the poet. Before
they left they thanked us, and presented us with these verses :
Respectueux Souvenir des Soldats du Regt.
d'Inf tr,e
Vigilantes et secourables,
A qui paya l'impot du sang,
Vous etes toutes adorables,
AiftiaWcs Misses de Bussang.
SOME CANTEENS IN THE WAR ZONE 277
Pour nous les permissionnaires
Vos soins affables et charmants
Paraissent les preliminaires
Du doux accueil de nos mamans.
Dans la tendresse qui nous gagne
Nous regrettons pourtant ici,
O soeurs de la Grande Bretagne !
De ne vous dire que Merci.
Puissons-nous, bien chere espe'rance,
Vous prouver en un prochain jour
Avec notre reconnaissance
Notre plus fraternel amour.
V , Caporal,
Signaleur du i er Bataillon — Rt.
If any one can find it in his heart to criticise verses so full
of cordial and graceful feeling, I do not envy him. But
though they do not always write in verse, the Poilus have
the art of expressing gratitude and friendship in a way that
shames us tongue-tied English. If I were to quote half the
letters that have come from soldiers to our workers in
hospitals, canteens, and convoys, I should fill many volumes.
While I was in Paris I saw a copy of a provincial paper
in which the men of a certain regiment had had printed
their testimony of thanks to the English canteen in their
district, and it was charmingly worded.
But to return to our journey.
Early in the afternoon we arrived at the little town of
Remiremont, and sought out the ' Cantine des Dames
Anglaises.' This was in the barracks ; for it was a Depot
des Eclopes, that is, as we have explained already, a military
depot for tired men sent back from the front for a few weeks'
rest.
This canteen was started in December 1916, and had
therefore been going for five months. I found the
Directrice and her daughter behind the counter in a room
on the ground floor. They were dispensing refreshments to
278 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
a group of soldiers, and at the same time helping them to
piece out jig-saw puzzles, over which the men pored with
the exasperated fascination that occupation provokes.
The canteen, I found, was open from eleven to twelve-
thirty in the morning, and from two till five in the afternoon;
but the working hours of the staff were, of course, much
longer.
The Government supplies tea, coffee, and sugar ; also
bones and vegetables for the soup. Invalid dishes are
cooked for the infirmary. Three times a week cigarettes
are given out ; and if there has been a victory for the
Allies, French and English cigarettes are given out together ;
it is the kind of pleasant touch which appeals to the Poilu.
The men are terribly tired, I was told ; they need rest
for the mind as well as for the body. A barrack is not an
exhilarating place in which to rest, though delightful
enough, no doubt, after the trenches. But the presence of
these Englishwomen makes a very human difference.
The soldiers soon make friends, and then they tell of
their troubles, of the anxiety about those they have left
at home, of all that is on their minds ; we can imagine with
what relief, to have womanly sympathy ready to listen !
And they ask about England ; it is a fresh interest to counter
the dull pressure of care and monotony. ' They think it
so heroic of us to have dared to cross the Channel ! ' the
Directrice told me, smiling ; ' to them it seems a most
dangerous undertaking ! ' Imagination pictures the narrow
seas sown thick with mines and crowded with submarines.
A point is made of always having flowers in the canteen.
I noticed jars full of blossom, and saw what a brightness
they made in the place. I heard that the men from the Midi
have always a word and a brightening face for the flowers ;
it is something they have missed too long.
When the men depart, each is given a little present.
They are loth enough to go, as you may guess.
SOME CANTEENS IN THE WAR ZONE 279
Resuming our journey northward towards Nancy, we
stopped an hour or so later at Rambervillers.
Here, also in the barracks outside the town, was another
Depot des Eclopes, and a Cantine des Dames Anglaises.
But we had arrived at an hour when nothing was going on
but preparations by the staff. I noticed the decorations
in the rooms, and the trouble spent on making the place
cheerful and attractive.
As this was a canteen of the same type as the one I had just
visited at Remiremont, there was nothing new to learn. Just
at the moment, they told me, things happened to be very quiet.
The next canteen I visited, two days later, was at the
little town of Revigny, now half battered and burnt into
ruins.
Perhaps none of our canteens is kept more continually
busy than the canteen at this station. We passed through
Revigny in the morning, and the canteen was not open ; but
I saw the capable English lady who manages it, and she told
me how much coffee they served out in a month ; it was
280,000 cups, a figure which conjures up a little ocean of
fragrant liquid. But if you have, as sometimes happens, some
thou ands of men a day coming through, all tired and eager
for refreshment, you have need of a running river for the
relays of soon-emptied cauldrons.
The canteen is at work from one to six in the morning,
often at full pressure. How I regretted that I had not
been able to spend a night at the canteen and seen it in full
operation !
So far the canteens visited had been either station
canteens or canteens for Depots des Eclopes. There still
remained the third type, the canteens for the Depots des
Isoles. I saw one of these last, when I visited Troyes.
In the outskirts of that old city, in the yard of a factory
building, I found the canteen, and cheerful faces of the
Dames Anglaises at the window-counter, and little knots
280 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
of soldiers drinking coffee or coming for a postcard and a
chat. I had a charming welcome. The first thing that
caught me was the canteen's attractiveness to the eye. In
the ugly yard, with its bare, sombre surroundings the canteen
shed made a little island, full of hints and associations of
home and women's handiwork and daintiness, with its
pretty curtains, its pots of flowers, the glimpse you had of
its simple gaiety of decoration.
The Isoles come and go, rarely staying more than a day
or two. Here are lost sheep who have somehow strayed
from their regiment on a journey and are waiting for it to
be found for them, and other migrants on their way to or
from the lines. I was introduced to the lieutenant in charge
of the soldiers, who showed me over the place ; the great
bare room where the men have their soupe, at eleven in the
morning and five in the evening, and over that, upstairs,
an immense loft with row on row of beds of straw. It was
all clean and orderly. On the other side of the yard we
found the foyer, where men were sitting, writing letters
and postcards, or reading newspapers or magazines. A
piano stood in one corner. The lieutenant told me what
a world of difference the canteen made, how much it
lightened the appalling boredom of the war.
The canteen is open from nine in the morning till seven
in the evening. Coffee is the staple refreshment. Over
eleven thousand litres of it, I found, had been dispensed
during the preceding month. But tea, milk, eggs, cigarettes,
chocolate, air-pillows, letter-paper, postcards, and pencils
are also things served out at the canteen. Seven to eight
hundred a day is the average number of soldiers served. In
the foyer the ladies of the staff get up little concerts and
sing to the men. In the winter they have a cinema.
I came away, wishing to linger. Here was the best sort
of work being done, and I would have liked to share in it.
VERDUN TO CHALONS
Outside Bar-le-Duc we were stopped for our papers to be
scrutinised.
There, at the cross-roads, on a new signpost of bare, un-
painted wood was the direction in big letters : A VERDUN.
The name thrilled.
How often in those momentous days of June 191 6, when
the very skies, with their alternations of bright heat and cold,
stormy rains, seemed to reflect the agitation of our spirits
and the fluctuating crises of the battle — how often, helping
carry men wounded the day before at Thiaumont or Fleury,
had I tried to picture in my mind the actual aspect of Verdun
and its surroundings ! In those evenings we would go up
on the hills that we might listen better to the noise of the
guns ; the sullen thudding never ceased, and intermittently
came spasms of rapid shocks, and one felt the battle mount-
ing to fury. At night, lying awake or half asleep, I would
picture that endless train of cars and lorries which was
driving in the darkness to and from the fortress through a
rain of explosions and feeding the obstinate, superb
defence.
This morning we were bound for the headquarters of
more than one ambulance section in the Verdun region.
Two of these sections were British Red Cross convoys.
The officer in charge at headquarters — in private life known
to me as a librarian in a famous library — welcomed us at
Bar-le-Duc, gave us luncheon, and took us with him in the
staff car on this tour of inspection. Since I happen to
share with him an interest in Oriental art and history, our
281
282 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
talk now and then rebounded from the war and from our
immediate business to regions detached from Time, that
seemed oddly incongruous with the scenes we were visiting.
And yet at a turn of the road, here were a troop of yellow-
uniformed Annamese soldiers, mending the road with
Oriental industry, and looking at us as we passed with bright
curiosity in their black almond eyes. The remote East had
come to us here in the midst of France.
In one of the muddy and desolate hamlets of this region
we found B.R.C.S. Section 17. The staff was quartered in
a roomy sort of old farmhouse, with large stables which
made a garage for the ambulances. The accommodation
was rough, especially for volunteers of a certain age, used
to the comforts of their own homes. But all had cheery
faces, and gave us a good welcome. Many of the men
were busy cleaning and overhauling the mechanism of their
cars. Others were in the mess-room with the French
officers attached to the section. As in the Vosges, one
could not help being struck by the intimate and cordial
relations between the French and English. It was the
same with all the sections we visited this day. B.R.C.S.
Section 16, which shared with Section 17 the most strenuous
days of Verdun, was, we heard, au repos; but Section 18
(also veterans of Verdun) we came upon, after a long drive,
quartered in a long wooden barrack, among the ruins of an
abandoned village. On the way we had stopped for a
quarter of an hour to greet the officers of Section 13, more
pleasantly accommodated in a hamlet of orchards, where
the trees were all in blossom. This is one of the convoys
belonging to the Society of Friends, which had recently
had so hard a time of it in the Champagne battle.
These sections were now serving the Verdun region.
Their posts, where their dug-outs are and from which they
bring down the wounded, are at various points in the ranges
of hills that flank the Meuse, and make a barrier eastwards
VERDUN TO CHALONS 283
and northwards about Verdun. They have done magni-
ficent work ; some notion of it may be gathered from the
brief record in an earlier chapter. The men look like
veterans of war, as indeed they are.
For the moment this part of the front was quiescent.
But Verdun has for the Germans the magnetism of fear as
well as hope ; it is a vantage-point that menaces them
nearly : and it seems as if those trenched and fire-tormented
hills would never regain peace. Only a few months from
this day when all was lulled in quiet, the tempest was to
break again — but this time on the French side — and our
convoys once more were to be working day and night.
But never, I imagine, will it be as it was in 1916, from
February to the end of June. The British Red Cross
chauffeur drove us ; and he described to me in a vivid lan-
guage, racy of our northern Midlands, what the days and
nights of the great defence were like ; especially the nights !
As we neared Verdun itself, he pointed out the many places
by the roadside where the car had miraculously escaped
being blown to bits. Frankly, he didn't mind saying that
he didn't enjoy those trips : but the Colonel ! The hotter
the place was, the more the Colonel liked it, the more he
was interested ; he would actually stop the car to inspect
the damage — ' Stop the car ! when the shells were banging
and crashing all round us. Look there ! ' And the chauffeur
pointed to a roof with a gaping rent in it. * I thought we
had gone to limbo, when that burst just over our heads.
But we haven't been caught yet, though it 's a wonder we 're
alive, I say.' I had a vision of the Colonel, who had been so
courteous to me in Paris, enjoying his imperturbable cigar-
ette and chatting with keen interest, while the high explosive
spat up volumes of earth and stones, and made blanks of
jaggedness where houses had been a second before. It is
said that on the slightest excuse he would have taken his
car into the smoking ruins of Douaumont itself, under the
284 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
tornado of the battle. What wonder that the men of these
convoys are salamanders ?
We were now skirting a marshy meadow, all pitted with
shell-holes, great and small. And before us rose Verdun.
The little city is built upon a mound, with compactly
clustered roofs and the cathedral rising over all. The twin
towers told dark against scarred and scorched ranges of hills,
an amphitheatre of desolation. To the naked eye, at a
distance, the city does not show its wounds. But a strange
silence hung over it. And as we turned in at the gates of
the city under the gigantic stone walls of the Citadel, and
began to pass along the streets, the sense of ruin rushed
upon one. Not a house but was shattered and maimed.
Shops with the familiar legends over the door — ' Boul-
angerie,' ' Quincaillerie,' ' Epicene,' ' Charcuterie ' — stood
with parts of their interior still intact, and it seemed sur-
prising that the brutal rents in them had not completed
their demolition. But that was what made so singular an
impression ; the shapeless ruin — fallen ceilings, dislodged
beams, crumpled walls — side by side with things that spoke
so freshly of the old days of peace, of gossiping neighbours,
of housewives shopping, of the good bourgeois at dominoes
in the cafe — all the prosperous leisurely business and
homely amenities of a French provincial town. And with
all this there was the sense of callous defacement and
desecrated privacy. Off one house the side had been torn
at a blow. There was the interior forlornly exposed with
its gay wall-paper and pieces of furniture and prints upon
the wall ; and over an upper floor a bedstead hung pro-
jecting and askew. It was a pitiful wreck not of a house
only but of a home ; and the sight set the mind suddenly
wondering what had become of the population of this
deserted, broken city ? Where were the old men and
women, where the children ? The sunlight, making
shadows on white walls, the rustling of chestnut and willow
VERDUN TO CHALONS 285
in the breeze along the Meuse and its canals that wind
through and about the town, the peaceful reflections in the
green water, the benches under the trees, the swallows, the
bursts of blossom — all the spring stir of life and beauty
sharpened the divorce between the absent and the present ;
they seemed to claim a human responsiveness, and there
was nothing but ghostly silence.
Beyond the town, in the afternoon brightness, rose the
encircling hills, their slopes zigzagged with communication
trenches. There was the Cote St-Michel ; and beyond
it, I knew, lay Fleury, and Fort de Vaux, and Douaumont ;
and on the northern side, beyond the first ranges, were the
Mort Homme and the hill called 304 ; names for ever scored
into the history of Europe ; scenes of hideous slaughter
and of indescribable valour ; fought for with desperate
tenacity, lost and won, and lost and yet again won, in the
hugest and most fiercely protracted battle that this earth
had ever seen.
We had turned for the homeward journey, leaving Verdun
behind us. And soon we were on that famous ' Sacred
Way,' on which that spring and early summer (the Clermont
railway being usable no longer) an endless chain of auto-
mobiles streamed without intermission, in spite of bursts
of dropping shells, bringing up supplies, guns, munitions,
men ; bringing back the wounded ; saving Verdun. Those
were times when the transport drivers had spells of twenty-
four hours or more at the wheel without sleep ; driving
a five-ton lorry, with another five-ton weight of shells on it,
each with a similar lorry just behind him and another just
in front, blinded by the lights of hundreds of cars coming
in the reverse direction, along gradients greasy with mud or
slippery with frost.
To-day the road was solitary and silent in the windy
sunshine. But suddenly, as from nowhere, appeared by the
poplars of the roadside the grey-blue figure of a Poilu. A
286 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
single soldier tramping towards Verdun, with rifle slung,
blue helmet on head, and his pack upon his back. How
familiar a type ! Swarthily sunburnt, clear-eyed, without
angularity or swagger, he had an air suggesting indefinite
resources, an elastic toughness, an independent intelligence.
A very serious soldier, in his dusty steel-blue ; yet assuredly
the soldier has not supplanted and usurped the man. Alone
on that famous, empty highway, he seemed the symbol and
incarnation of the enduring soul of France.
Twilight was drawing on with a clouded sky, and rain had
come up from the west, when at last we drew in at the
Urgency Cases hospital, of ' Faux Miroir,' where we were
to spend the night. Our host and guide had brought us
all the way in his car, bumped mercilessly along the rough
cross-country roads leading round to Revigny ; and now
we bade him farewell and he started back for Bar-le-Duc,
very late, I fear, for dinner. We too were late. We had
tumbled into festivities, and Faux Miroir was all bustle
and preparation. The young Englishmen who act as
orderlies in the hospital are noted for their inventive talent
in the arts ; they were giving an entertainment to the
blesses, and the audience was already gathering. After a
hasty supper, we repaired to the improvised theatre. The
performance had already begun. Room was found for us
to squeeze into at the sides ; and what we saw was played
with a zest and gaiety worthy of the most accomplished
performers. It ended with a ballet of the Death of Pierrot,
charming in its poetic sentiment. The applause was richly
earned. I wished I had had the opportunity of asking some
of the wounded, who have all too little distractions of the
kind, but whose criticism would, I am sure, have been
intelligent, what they thought of this performance by the
young men who next morning were sweeping out the
wards and attending to their wants.
It was still raining and promised to continue, when, next
VERDUN TO CHALONS 287
morning, after breakfast, the Medecin-chef, a Scottish
surgeon from London, took me round the hospital. Faux
Miroir is a fairly modern house, of nondescript architecture
and of no great size. The hospital wards are big huts
which have been built in the grounds. How the hospital,
first established at Bar-le-Duc, was transferred to Revigny,
has been described in an earlier chapter. It so happened
that one scorching August day in 191 5 I was driving in this
region with the administrator of another hospital, and on
our way to the ruins of Vassincourt we met part of the
Bar-le-Duc unit with their furniture piled mountainously
on a lorry, though I did not know that Faux Miroir was
their destination.
Faux Miroir still shows traces of the Crown Prince's
brief occupation. Just outside one of the windows is the
grave of an officer, who, I was told, was one of his intimate
friends. And German trenches run obliquely across the
park, all overgrown now with tall grass.
In spite of cloud and rain, one could see that it was a
pleasant place for the wounded to be in. The park stretched
all round with acres of verdure and clumps of wood. The
wards, too, were airy and comfortable. All the patients
had a smile for the chief's genial greeting.
I was struck by the good equipment of the hospital,
among other things by a magnificent steriliser for disinfecting
the soldiers' clothes ; but most of all I was impressed by
the atmosphere of expansiveness, of easy cordiality, which
seemed to be reflected from the example of the Medecin-
chef.
Those who have seen the book about Faux Miroir,
printed and illustrated by the staff, with contributions also
from the wounded, will understand this atmosphere.
One of the sights of the hospital was a baby wild boar
gambolling up and down in a house of wire-netting. The
forests of Eastern France are full of wild boar, multiplied
288 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
by the absence of shooting parties since 1914, and increased
by numbers of their kind driven down from the Ardennes
by the fighting. They do much damage to the crops on
outlying farms. But this youthful tusker was as yet an
engaging little animal.
Unfortunately our stay at Faux Miroir had to be brief ;
and all too soon the car was at the door. We stopped a
few minutes in the village of Revigny to see the canteen,
of which I have written already.
We left the car which had brought us from Revigny in the
main street of a village, crowded with soldiers and with
transport of every kind. The wide street formed a kind of
shallow trough, with the houses on higher ground at either
side, and the church at the end of it ; and this rainy morning
it was a mass of mire. Here we had a rendezvous with
the officers of Section 10 ; and as we were a little early we
had to wait for some time in the mud and wet before the
staff car of the section arrived. The Commandant of the
section and the French officer attached to it were in the
car, and we were soon on our way to headquarters.
Section 10 belongs to the British Committee of the
French Red Cross. It prides itself on the fact that all its
men are volunteers ; also on having been the first of the
foreign sections to go on duty at the front beyond Verdun.
But something of its doings has already been chronicled in
these pages ; and, as the reader of these pages knows, its
share in the Verdun battles was not yet over.
We lunched with the officers in the upper room of a
cottage in one of the forlorn hamlets of this district, but
the quarters were cosy enough, and we were delightfully
entertained. As we were chatting after the meal, the
English convoy commander turned to me and said that no
doubt I would like to inspect the section. Knowing nothing
of the ways of generals, and of those whose habit it is to
inspect, I was somewhat embarrassed, on descending, to
VERDUN TO CHALONS 289
find the whole of the section drawn up in two ranks in their
helmets and accoutrements, as stalwart, weather-beaten,
disciplined, and serviceable a body of men as any general
could wish to see.
I suppose the ceremony of mutual salutes and presen-
tations should have concluded with the kind of speech that
personages of importance make on these occasions ; but a
gust of irresistible modesty in face of these English gentle-
men, who for love of France and desire of service were
living a life of splendid hardship and danger, overwhelmed
my military manners. Even now, relieved of that in-
voluntary importance of the inspector, I can but lamely
express the admiration so warmly felt for these my country-
men, and the envy of all they were able to do and undergo.
Formalities over, there was opportunity for friendly
talk, and, so it chanced, for renewing some old acquaintances,
as we were shown the long shed where the men had their
bunks and living quarters.
But we had far to go ; and, after cordial farewell of the
chief and his men, we were soon speeding along the road
which passes the southern end of the Argonne.
That long ridge which heaves itself so strangely out of
the plain, muffled with close forests — the barrier that
proved so impenetrable to the obstinate thrusts of the
Crown Prince in his endeavour to join up with the German
armies farther south — appeared before us. It stretched
away into the distance, heavily green under the dismal sky,
inscrutable with its dense wood, and as if jealous of its
secrets. We passed through half-ruined deserted little
towns, with the rain blowing on defaced church towers and
calcined walls and gaping house-fronts.
The landscape, so fresh with wounds of war, was steeped
also in history. There on the eastern side of the Argonne,
where the high-road threads its forest, was Varennes ;
and in the plain, on towards Paris, was Valmy. The place
T
290 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
where the old France of the Monarchy yielded up its spirit ;
the place where the new France of the Republic rose to its
feet amid the salvoes of its first victorious guns. Here,
fifteen centuries ago, Attila's wild Mongol armies, over-
running Europe from the East, were stopped and shattered ;
here the invading Prussians, gathered to avenge the cause
of all the autocrats, were rolled back by Dumouriez' ragged
troops ; and here the power of France was to have been
broken for ever, three summers ago, by the greatest army
ever known ; but destiny once again was on her side. To
be fighting in Champagne is in itself an inspiration to the
French soldier, conscious of that wonderful past.
Our road was now roughly parallel to the Front, which
here is on a line from east to west. The villages we passed
through were all full of soldiers coming and going in their
muddy uniform, and of all the varied traffic that goes on
behind the lines. In a big barn were assembled a battalion
fresh from the trenches and preparing for rest ; and some of
them were singing songs and making merry. But for the
most part the soldiers wore an air of grave endurance and
determination. And truly the sodden roads and dripping
clouds were not responsive to hilarity.
In one of these villages we found Section 20, the Scottish
Red Cross convoy of the Comite Britannique, and in another
Section 3 of the British Ambulance Committee. The
officers of each of these sections gave us a good welcome,
and we were shown their quarters, and had a talk of what
was doing. After recent great exertions they were enjoying
a comparative rest. But Section 20 was saddened by the
loss of one of their members, the latest joined and youngest,
in the battle of Champagne the month before. His death
has been described on an earlier page. And another
member, of equal youth, had died in hospital.
I should have liked to linger and see more of what these
sections were doing, and the posts they served ; but it was
VERDUN TO CHALONS 291
only possible to visit the posts at night, and we were due
at Chalons that evening.
It was already late in the afternoon when we took farewell
of Section 3, which was so good as to send us on in another
car.
The last part of our journey was over the famous Plain of
Chalons, that unfertile, vast, melancholy region, to which
the rain and the fading of the day gave a heightened spirit
of emptiness and desolation. It matched with thoughts
of that unending war of the trenches manned with men so
brave in disillusion, among the hills in the cloudy distance.
And, suddenly, there returned to my memory, like an in-
carnate spirit of the soil, the figure of the solitary soldier
on the road above Verdun.
IN THE MIDI
In Normandy, but a few days ago, spring was still shy and
winter's long bareness timidly disputed by the first leaves,
which so suddenly were to burst out in triumph. In the
valleys and uplands of the Vosges it was a world of blossom.
And now as the train sped along the Rhone valley, past
Avignon and Aries, the hay was being carted, and fruit-
pickers were busy among the cherry-trees.
I reached Mentone, my journey's end, in a rainy twilight.
Grey clouds drooped over the mountains, and the sea was
leaden. But early next morning, as I walked up the garden
walks of Hopital No. 222, the coast looked radiant and the
Mediterranean had recovered its own blue.
Swinburne in one of his letters entertainingly finds an
excuse for the sourness and arrogance of Carlyle's remini-
scences in the fact that they were mostly written at Men-
tone : ' No temper, no character could be expected to
remain tolerable under the influence of that hateful hole.'
No doubt the vehement poet was expressing his genuine
feeling. This luxurious landscape and tideless sea were
alien to his physical fibre. He craved for movement in
wind and water, for salt and sting. But wounded and sick
men in the first weakness of convalescence feel otherwise.
And Southerners, born to the sun, how they love it in their
bones ! How dolefully they miss its absence !
The vast hospital, once the Hotel Imperial, in which its
administrator received me, seemed full of sunlit air. As
we went through the spacious rooms and broad corridors,
where the patients could sit at long tables for their meals ;
292
IN THE MIDI 293
as we inspected a kitchen obviously adequate to the most
royal of peace-time banquets, the store-rooms with their
ample cupboards, the magnificent X-Ray installation, the
ouvroir, the pharmacy, the baths of divers sorts, the laby-
rinthine resources of a modern hotel — my thoughts went
back to some of the other hospitals I knew, where electricity
was remote as the pole, where hot water could only be
procured by boiling it on a stove, where tables and cup-
boards had to be improvised on the spot, where every man
became a kind of Crusoe and invention was put to all con-
ceivable tests, where dust and dirt were old and jealous
inhabitants, only to be driven out by sleepless warfare.
It must be a delight to have all this smooth convenience
at one's service. And yet I doubt, were it not for the sake
of the patients, if the Red Cross worker in one of those
other hospitals would so willingly exchange the extra labour,
the endless little difficulties which have daily to be over-
come, for the amplitude, the sumptuous appointments and
contrivances of a modern hotel : for are not all the roughness
and improvisation part of a victory achieved — the spice and
savour of service ?
Hospital No. 222 has five hundred beds, and its main-
tenance is a big affair. The question of supplies, and
especially of fuel, now so scarce, is by no means an easy one.
But I carried away an impression of detailed efficiency and
harmonious control which had their reflection in the
contented faces and manner of the patients.
Earlier in the war the hospitals of this region were filled
with wounded from the Western front. But since a certain
date they have been devoted to cases from Salonika. And
these are suffering less often from wounds than from
sickness, malarial for the most part.
On this southern coast, the sun is a great physician. You
may have all the appointments of the costliest hotel, but
you cannot buy sun-baths anywhere. Here they are to be
294 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
had for nothing ; and the healing virtues of radiant sun are
put to wonderful use.
At the little English hospital on Mont Boron, overlooking
Nice, which I was next to visit, there were the same pleasant
conditions, the same sensation of cleansing sunshine, and
how wonderful a prospect over coast and sea ! Trains
being impossibly rare, I took the tram, which is slower, but
a great deal more agreeable than the railway, since it climbs
the heights above the sea-board, and gives an endlessly
changing view of the landscape with all its blossoming
profusion. One changes at Monte Carlo, and I had an
hour of waiting in the trimly swept terraces and gardens of
the Casino.
How this coast smells of riches !
To eyes fresh from the ruined homes of Eastern France,
from the ghastly desolations and sublime endurances of the
Front, this previous world of moneyed idleness, these
innumerable villas perched on the hills and clouded with
flowers, these glowing white walls and basking blue bays,
the crowd of monstrous hotels, parasites of that glaring
gamblers' Paradise in the middle of them — all seemed a
transplantation from another planet, a projection of dreams
into the sunlight. This was not France ; it was some
cosmopolitan country, detached from reality and now in
some way inexpressibly exposed and forlorn, as if inhabited
by ghosts of purposeless rich people driven in phantom
automobiles on endless circles. Even the landscape appeared
still to have an obsequious and subservient air. The red-
roofed, white-walled trimness of towns and villages, the
scenic heights, the soft curves of coast, the anchored
yachts, the immobile blue of the Mediterranean ; it was
like a box of toys set out with glittering and the most
expensive neatness — for whom ?
Yet to the senses it was all warmly alluring. And
recalling long days of illness, and slow, feeble convalescence,
IN THE MIDI 295
I tried to think myself into the state of the sick and wounded
in the hospitals, and felt that just this isolation from the
actual, this touch of dream, was a potent charm to conspire
with Nature's instinct for recovery. I thought that to
come from malarial trenches and the brutal monotony of
war to this world that breathed of sun and the idle flowers
might bring one whole sooner than all medicines.
My journey to Mont Boron was beguiled by interesting
talk with a fellow-traveller, a French lady, who, seeing my
uniform, and speaking admirable English, asked for news of
England. She had a son who lived in England and was
fighting with our army, and she herself had nursed our
soldiers and interpreted for our officers at the battle of the
Marne. She described in the most vivid manner how she
had seen the triumphant Germans passing through the
village where she happened to be ; how they had all but
shot her, because they thought she was English ; how she
had been taken before the General in his headquarters —
none other than the famous von Kluck ; how at a certain
moment an atmosphere of telegrams and anxiety superseded
the cocksure confidence of the advance on Paris ; how a
regiment suddenly appeared, retreating, tattered, blood-
stained ; the abrupt vanishing of the German host ; and
then, after a little interval, the first arrival of the English,
dead-tired and mortally hungry, with a colonel at their
head who was sorely put out because, though he perpetually
asked for 'oofs,' he could make no one understand. You
may imagine he was ready to fall on the neck of any one who
could order a meal and interpret the wants of his men.
Here was an opening to expand on the deplorable lack
of languages in the British Army. But my generous
acquaintance, on the contrary, was only eloquent of the
virtues of our countrymen at war, and became enthusiastic
about the merits of English nursing. It was quite home-
like to listen to this Frenchwoman, so severe on French
296 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
deficiencies, so glowing in praise of England. Perhaps in
long visits to our island she had acquired some of our
national habits ; we are all so used to this strain at home,
in the complementary sense. There were so many incidents
to recount, both tragic and entertaining, that we had almost
slipped by my destination before I was aware of it ; and I
was obliged to descend from the tram with some abruptness,
loth to lose the end of a story, and say farewell.
Mont Boron, rising steeply from the seashore, looks out
far over Nice and its harbour to the shining Mediterranean
and the beautiful sharp ridges of the Esterel in the west.
High up on its seaward slope are the white buildings of the
Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital. It has been explained
in an earlier chapter how this hospital, which existed before
the war for the needs of British patients on the Riviera,
was made over at the beginning of the war to the use of the
French Government, and has been filled with wounded
from the French armies.
For a period of a few months during the war it was
closed, but was then asked by the French Government to
reopen, and promised a regular supply of sixty patients.
The Directress, who held her post before war began, showed
me the hospital. There was an inviting air of semi-privacy
in the small, spotless wards, opening on to terraces which
held the southern sun, and yet were fanned by the sea
breezes and looked out into limitless space. On these
terraces sat loungingly little groups of soldiers, playing
games or looking on at the players, or enjoying a simplicity
of basking idleness. Among them were sinewy black
Senegalese, who looked up with great childish smiles of
welcome. Most negroes look as if the suns of Time,
through countless generations, had burnt them to a hue
that has richly deepened the brown skin to their particular
shade of bronze or ebony. But the Senegalese have a singular
tinge of blue in their duskiness. You might fancy that they
IN THE MIDI 297
had been dipped in inky fluid, a factitious dye upon their
native brownness. A certain want of familiarity with such
things as chairs and tables embarrasses their movements,
which are apt to be huge and sudden, so that, as I was told,
the furniture was always coming to pieces under the stress of
their cheerfulness. I recalled a story told in his book by Mr.
Baerlein, who was with our ambulances in the Vosges, of a
Senegalese found wandering stark naked by a corporal, who
proceeded to arrest him. ' But it is all right,' said the
Senegalese, * we have had leave to go out in mufti J
With the blacks were sundry Moors, and Frenchmen of the
Midi speaking with a strong southern accent. All were
native lovers of the sun ; and it was good to see them
responding to that congenial warmth and light, the absence
of which in grey northern skies is a kind of starvation to such
natures.
The hospital has an annexe at the back, higher up on the
steep slope, and reached by climbing garden paths, where
figures of picturesque convalescents were slowly sauntering.
It is divided into four pavilions, isolated from each other,
for infectious cases, if necessary, and has its own indepen-
dent kitchens, offices, and nurses' rooms. Beyond this
annexe are woods stretching up to the forest road of Mont
Boron. These woods have been leased from the Govern-
ment ; and delicious shady paths, with seats, have been made
among the trees.
Early next morning, having reached Cannes by an evening
train from Nice, I was walking along the famous esplanade
with its unshady palm-trees, and presented myself to the
Director of the South African Ambulance, occupying the
Hotel Beau-Rivage, which, with its garden, fronts the sea.
Though not (so I was told) absolutely of the most
modern, this hotel, like that at Mentone, makes a sump-
tuous hospital. You enter a spacious hall, high as the roof,
with balconies on each of the four floors surrounding it.
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The hospital contains 225 beds, and all, as it happened,
were occupied. Here again were great numbers of malarial
cases.
Among the staff of our hospitals in France one is always
meeting nurses, and doctors too, from Canada, Australia,
and other of the Dominions overseas. But here was a whole
splendid hospital equipped and maintained by South
Africa. Love of France has indeed called helpers to her
service from all quarters of the world. And this hospital
is specially fortunate in having at its head the present
Director and his wife, who, though South Africa is their
home, are French themselves in blood. They are well
acquainted therefore with both French and English ways,
and able to interpret one to the other. Some of the
wounded who have been nursed here have been touched more
than a little by the thought that not only Britain but her
distant dominions have sent aid to their country in its hour
of need and danger ; and this particular gift of a hospital so
magnificent and complete is thrice appreciated because it
is in the charge of representatives so sympathetic.
After going the round of the three different floors where
the wounded are, and seeing the big ouvroir (where bandages
and dressings were being made, and the clothes of the
wounded repaired), the two operating theatres — one for
septic operations — the pharmacy, and so on, I was taken
down to the basement. It is there that the wounded are
brought when they first come in. There they are stripped,
helped to the bathroom and washed, and taken by lift and
stretcher to their wards.
At the Beau-Rivage, as at Mentone and Nice, the sun
is called in to aid the surgeon. When a man has under-
gone an operation, and has recovered from its first effects,
he is taken out on a balcony on a fine day ; all his bandages
are removed, and the wound or amputated stump is exposed
to the direct rays of the sun. It is astonishing how rapidly
IN THE MIDI 299
even extremely foul wounds clear up under this treatment.
The sun hurries on the healing processes of nature ; the
wounds lose their septic appearance ; and it becomes
possible to close a huge gap by surgical means and obtain
the same results as in a clean aseptic surface. The treat-
ment is used of course in hospitals in the interior, but
radiant sunlight is the special fortune of the Riviera.
Besides the wounded, many are the civil patients, both
male and female, who are treated in the hospital, for the
reputation of its surgery has spread over the district. The
Director visits the civil patients in their homes as often as
is necessary after the operation. The Mayor of Cannes
has lent a motor car specially for this purpose. And so
highly appreciated is the Colonel's work, that he has been
asked by the Service de Sante to form a mobile unit —
Equipe de Chirurgie Volante — for the Fifteenth Region.
This means providing a motor ambulance with surgeons,
assistants, and outfit, ready to travel in the district and
perform the major operations in the civil hospitals. Such
an invitation is an honour rarely offered, as may be imagined,
to foreigners.
The same morning I took a fly, and drove out of the town
by leafy lanes up the gentle slopes of the hills to the Villa
Felicie. This is the sanatorium attached to the South
African Ambulance. Tuberculous cases in an early stage,
or cases where tuberculosis is threatened, are treated here ;
and the villa is admirably adapted for its purpose. It
stands among beautiful grounds, with sloping gardens and
sunny terraces. The uses of fresh air and the virtue of
scrupulous cleanliness are taught in a winning and per-
suasive manner. The windows are kept open day and night.
If a patient should break this rule he gets no dessert with
his dinner next day. Such formidable punishment is very
effective. The Captain and his wife, who are in charge
of the hospital, gave me a charming welcome, and showed
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me every corner of the villa. There was a pleasant family
air about it all. I was particularly struck with a group of
Serbians, the first I had seen. The Captain told me they
were all peasants, but had quickly learnt to talk French.
They were very cleanly, he said ; and they looked intelligent
and good-natured. But, of course, the patients are French
soldiers for the most part. The long exposure in the
trenches has brought tuberculosis all too often in its train :
and such an excellent sanatorium as this does much-needed
work.
On my way back to Cannes, I called at the Hotel Gallia,
now a big French military hospital. I wished to have a
talk with some English nurses who, I knew, had been
working in this hospital since the beginning of the war. The
hotel is a huge flamboyant building — German, I believe ;
certainly the decorations, so determined to be imposing at
all costs, smacked of Teutonic taste. After being led
through many corridors and a vast hall crowded with
soldiers at their dinner, I at last found one of the two
trained English nurses whom I sought. Her companion
happened to be ill and in bed. I think it has already been
explained that, apart from English hospitals for the French
wounded, there are numbers of English trained nurses
working in French hospitals. Their position has, from
the nature of the case, not been an easy one, as they have
no authority and have to fit into a system to which they are
not accustomed. They also have many prejudices to con-
tend against. The nurse I talked with has no official title
or status at the Gallia ; but, as I heard, she and her colleague
have won by patience, tact, and the proof of skill and de-
votion, the esteem of the staff and the aifection of the
wounded. She told me that, in spite of all difficulties, she
was happy in her work, and especially happy in having won
appreciation of trained English nursing from the French
authorities. She was now in charge of the operating theatre,
IN THE MIDI 301
and had succeeded in substituting scrupulous order and
method for the more casual and nonchalant ways of the
usual military hospital.
Our admiration must go out to such workers as these,
scattered over France, lavishing their trained skill and
experience on the care of the French wounded, for love of
their own calling and of France. In paying homage to this
nurse's work, we pay homage to a devoted band whose
labours should not be unknown because they are wholly
unadvertised.
The two trained nurses at the Gallia are assisted by a
number of V.A.D.'s — some fourteen or fifteen — nearly all
of whom are Canadian ladies of position. These not only
give their personal services, but have helped with gifts of
their own and of their friends in Canada. Help has also
come from the Comite Britannique, and I found that all
' extras ' in the way of surgical instruments, etc., came
from England.
My plan was now to visit Chateau St-Rome, near Tou-
louse, on my way back to Paris. The only express left
Cannes in the morning about eleven. But in these days it
is one thing to decide on a train, and another to travel by
it. I was told that it was necessary to reserve a seat at
least eight days beforehand. In the early spring three
weeks or a month's notice had been required. I had no seat
reserved when I repaired to the station next morning, and
must take my chance. The long train drew in. At once
a conductor appeared on the steps of each car and barred
all passage to the besieging groups of would-be travellers,
mostly officers on leave. The train was absolutely full ;
not a seat was vacant. Moreover, it was forbidden to stand
in the corridor. I tried my best persuasion, but in vain.
I demanded the Chef de la Gare, and explained the urgency
of my mission. My status and importance rose with every
minute as the train's departure approached ; at the warning
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whistle I scaled the giddiest heights of dignity ; and at
last, tired by importunity, he told me that I might board
either of the first two cars. My triumph was rudely dashed.
* What has the station-master to do with it ? ' cried the
conductors. * On ne monte pas.'' And each looked more
ferocious and incorruptible than the other. The train was
about to start ; the disappointed travellers were falling
back, resigned to the prospect of the crawling i omnibus ' ;
but I had a feeling that I should go in that train, and clung
on to the last. Obstinacy was rewarded. Just as the
wheels began to move, a young French officer at the window
of the car called out to me : * There is a vacant seat ! ' I
hopped up past the surly conductor, and the train moved
out.
Needless to say, in a few minutes the owner of the seat —
another officer — appeared to claim it. It was not vacant
after all. But I was to leave the train at Tarascon in the
afternoon, and meanwhile there was the corridor and the
restaurant, though the owner of the seat was most amiable
and assured me it was quite at my disposition. The officer
who had rescued me from the threatened prospect of
spending a full week at Cannes, attempting each day to
insert myself into an impregnable express, began now to
converse in perfect English, and proved to be a professor
of French in a Welsh University, when wars were not
claiming him for France. He was engaged in translating
Bernard Shaw's You Never can Tell, which diverted the
leisure of his dug-out at the front. We lunched together,
talked of books, and drank to each other's country. I was
sorry when the time came to part, and the train drew up at
Tarascon.
Here the station was thronged with soldiers from the
front in frayed and soiled blue tunics, and with others
returning. But Tarascon itself seemed far enough from
the trenches and from Kaiserdom.
IN THE MIDI 303
A hundred swallows were darting and skimming in low
flight over the broad and rapid Rhone. Sunset shone down
the tree-bordered stream that swept eddying away into the
South ; it warmed the old walls and roofs of Tarascon and
the huge square tower that stands magnificent and forbidding
by the river, the tower of Rene of Anjou. And I thought of
that old king, and his ironical destiny. Lover of all the
arts and Muses, to him warfare was a stupid waste of
glorious energies ; but from boyhood he was always being
bequeathed by thoughtless kinsfolk some distant kingdom or
estate — always in the hands of some one else — and honour
compelled him to go forth and claim it by force of arms.
Fate also gave him a terrible daughter, our own Queen
Margaret, to plague his old age with her fierce ambitions
and her scorn for his simple joys. How much of mankind
is in Rene's case to-day !
With night falling over the darkening green of the
immense fruitful plain, the train kept on through Nimes
and other cities of the South, which it was tantalising to
pass through in such haste. In the grey of the night, I
had a ghost-like glimpse of the tremendous ramparts of
Carcassonne.
Early dawn found me wandering the silent streets of
Toulouse. I had some hours to wait for a train, and sought
out St-Servin's famous church, the ruddy bricks of its
tower just catching the first light of the sun ; and, as I stood
there in the shadowy solitude, heard a clatter on the cobbles,
and coming past the great Romanesque apse saw one of
those incongruous apparitions of the war — a party of An-
namese soldiers, going out to work. No one else was in
sight. It was a strange juxtaposition of Oriental humanity
and Western architecture of the Middle Ages.
By nine o'clock I was driving from the station of Ville-
nouvelle. In the bright morning sunshine the snows of the
Pyrenees shone on the horizon. The day was already hot.
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In a few minutes we were at the Chateau St-Rome, the
home of the Presidente of the Comite Britannique and her
husband.
The English doctor in charge of the hospital, who received
me, was wearing a French uniform and has a commission
in the French army. He has French officers for colleagues,
one of whom is the Medecin-chef and has charge of the
malades, and an English — or rather Canadian — assistant.
The constitution of the hospital is therefore a little different
from that of any of those I had visited.
The matron is a fully trained nurse ; the rest of the
nursing is done by English V.A.D.'s. There are about
three hundred beds, and nearly all happened to be full.
The orderlies are Annamese.
The wounded are disposed of in various buildings in
the grounds of the chateau. One is a large building in
Renaissance style, with a loggia. All about is the park, with
winding, shady walks. I asked if the heat were not very
trying in the full summer. But the doctor told me that
though the heat was sometimes intense — it was decidedly
hot this day of my visit — yet the nights were cool, and
there was nearly always a draught of wind along the valley
of the Garonne.
At St-Rome, many of the patients must make a long
stay, for since convoys of wounded ceased to come from the
front, the hospital has specialised in bone-surgery and the
treatment of cases where compound fractures have failed to
heal. These cases — all too frequent in the war, owing
usually to too hurried surgery at the outset, when the
doctors were driven at high pressure — are obstinate, and
demand long treatment. It must be a boon at least to
find such pleasant quarters as St-Rome.
A leisurely inspection of the hospital occupied the
morning. I met the genial French officers at luncheon,
and one of them accompanied me to the station.
IN THE MIDI 305
Returning to Toulouse, I took the evening train for Paris.
There was the usual crowd ; and before we started the
corridor was packed with officers and soldiers, who slept
somewhere on the floor. It was an opportunity for noticing
once more the charming relations between officers and men
in the French army. A Poilu would come up and ask
* mon lieutenant ' for help ; he had a cross-country journey
to make, and was quite at a loss ; and the lieutenant would
take out his time-tables and look up trains and explain the
connections. There were others who sought advice on
other points, and all were sure of friendly help and counsel.
There was respect on one side, courtesy and patience on the
other. And with it all a simple human kindness.
A MATERNITY HOSPITAL
An incident recorded by an English lady working in a canteen
for the British Army in France has stuck in my mind.
A battalion of miners, if I remember rightly, had passed
through the station to which the canteen was attached,
and had solemnly eaten and drunken with great satisfaction,
and then trooped out without a word. The ladies of the
canteen were surprised and just a little hurt that no one of
them said ' Thank you ! ' But after a few minutes an envoy
— a man of another regiment — appeared, sent by the bat-
talion to express their gratitude for them. Conscious of
rough speech and ways, and feeling that they could not
frame their thanks in any words which they could suppose
appropriate to the ears of ladies, they had chosen this in-
direct shy way of showing their gratitude.
There is something touching and human in this little
story ; something very English too. It is certainly difficult
to imagine a Frenchman, of whatever class or training,
failing to find the right words in such a case. But then it is
an essential part of education in France to teach the ex-
pression of thoughts and feeling in fit and clear language.
How many Englishmen are taught anything of the kind ?
All our workers in France know with what grace and
point the wounded soldiers express themselves. There are
thousands of letters which I might have quoted in this
book, each delightful in form and feeling (even when eccen-
tric in orthography and grammar), though naturally of a
sameness of subject-matter. Here, for once, I cannot
resist reproducing a letter from a gunner fighting in the
•06
A MATERNITY HOSPITAL 307
Argonne to the Directress of the Society of Friends'
Maternity Hospital at Chalons : — ■
' Madame la Directrice, — Veuillez avoir la bonte d'excuser la
liberte que je prends de vous ecrire, e'en est du reste pour moi un
plaisir, et surtout un devoir. La presente est pour vous remercier
du grand service que vous venez de nous rendre et de tous les bons
soins que vous avez prodigues a ma femme, Mme. D .
' C'est pour moi un puissant reconfort de relire les lettres que ma
femme m'a envoyees, tandis qu'elle etait votre pensionnaire, elles
sont toutes a votre eloge et, grace a vous, alors que nous sommes
separes, ma femme et moi, du fait de la guerre, j'avais la certitude
que rien ne lui manquait, et qu'elle a ete aussi bien soignee que
l'on pourrait le desirer.
* C'est pour moi un double plaisir de penser que ma fille a vu le
jour entre vos mains, et, plus tard, quand elle pourra comprendre,
elle sera aussi heureuse et fiere de penser a vous et a votre belle
nation que j'admire et qui nous est encore plus chere pour ce que
nous vous devons.
' Vous voudrez bien avoir la bonte de remercier pour moi vos
infirmieres qui ont ete si gentilles et si devouees pour nous, jamais
nous n'oublierons tous vos bienfaits et nous penserons toujours a
vous.
' En l'attente de jours meilleurs qui viendront par suite de la
victoire que nous gagnerons a cote de nos camarades anglais, je vous
prie, Mme. la Directrice, de croire a notre consideration et a nos
plus sinceres remerciments. — Votre respectueux,
'Gaston D .'
What instinctive courtesy there is here, not only in the
phrasing but in the thought ! There are letters by other
husbands, which I could quote, very far from perfect in
spelling and grammar, but still so expressive, so natural in
their courteous gratitude.
The little hospital occupies one wing of a large block of
buildings used to house homeless old people of the Depart-
ment of the Marne. On the first floor are two long wards,
containing twenty-eight beds in all. On the ground floor
is the creche, to which the mothers may bring their older
children when they cannot otherwise be cared for ; it con-
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sists of two dormitories, one for boys and one for girls,
and a dining-room where they can play when it is wet.
The mothers remain for three weeks after the baby is born,
sometimes longer ; and when they leave they receive the
clothing necessary for themselves, their children, and the
newest baby, from the stores in England. They are visited
whenever possible after they leave ; for the Directress told
me that she and her colleagues are above all things anxious
to keep in touch with them, and make the friendship of
the Friends a real and lasting thing.
These women had been fetched in an ambulance from
Rheims and the villages of the neighbourhood, often under
a heavy bombardment ; and the devotion and courage of
the staff of the hospital, who were at their exacting and
dangerous work for days and nights together when the
bombardment was at its worst, shine beyond all words.
The month before my visit had been, in fact, an over-
whelmingly arduous time.
As I went through the wards, I felt that this was indeed
a haven of reassuring peace, after the places from which
the women had come. As one mother says : * Ce n'est pas
gai de rester dans les caves avec les petits enfants,' especially
when you have no cellar of your own and have to share a
neighbour's. Earlier in the war it was not so much from
bombardment and the misery of a cellar life that the patients
had suffered, as from exposure and privation. The bread-
winner was gone ; all the doctors had been mobilised for
the campaign ; and the houses were scarcely habitable. It
was in those earlier days (the Directress has recorded) that
an expectant mother was * brought away from a small shed,
about twelve by fourteen feet, the only lighting other than
the door being a piece of glass a foot or so square let into
the planking.' On a pile of straw on the earthen floor
slept three men, four women, and six children ! ' Here,
two months before we came, a baby had been born. The
A MATERNITY HOSPITAL 309
mud was six inches deep before the door, but, in spite of this
and of our unexpected visit, the six children were all clean,
and on a string across that wretched hovel were hanging a
few meagre articles of children's clothing, not only washed
but ironed ! '
What a fine self-respect, through every degradation of
circumstance, is seen in that brief glimpse ! The hospital
was nearly full on the morning of my visit. In one of the
wards a woman, whose house had been burnt over her head
only a week before — she came from one of the bombarded
villages — lay between her twin infants of a few days old.
Tiny creatures, with faces as of sages wrinkled with disgust
at this miserable world, they were in that ruddy stage of
babyhood which is apt to awe rather than charm the
ignorant male, even though he be the father. But mothers
are wiser. They do not wait till the mysterious trans-
formation of infancy replaces those rueful puckers with
flower-like bloom ; they even regret perhaps each day that,
familiarising the baby with the interest of its new world,
removes its helplessness a little further from the first
thrilling maternal intimacy. The mother, dark-haired,
and with dark eyes large in the pallor of her face, brought
a smile from the depths of her great weariness. She looked
from side to side, and she seemed content. She had the
look of one who knows that all cares for the time being are
lifted from her. Yet it was the face of one who had passed
through immense pain.
Downstairs were the children. Some tiny still ; others
of three or four years ; others of yet greater age and
experience. They had toys to play with ; they played,
or talked, or slept in their cots. There was a happy air
in that room. Georges and Georgette, Pierre and Susanne,
how much will you remember, I wonder, of this strange and
terrible world you happened into and which you take so
calmly in these sheltering walls, where instead of father
3io FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
and mother the Demoiselles Anglaises feed you, and
medicine your ailments, and play with you, and kindly
scold you when you forget their orders, and tuck you up at
night ?
Some of the children were getting rosy cheeks and a
plumpness of round limbs, but some were still pale with the
pallor of the cellars from which they came. For in the
perpetually bombarded city and the little towns and villages
in its neighbourhood there are thousands who live perforce
an underground life. And the children, starved of sun and
air, grow white with the unnatural whiteness of a mushroom
in the dark cellars.
It is only with pangs and reluctance that a French mother
gives up her child to another's custody, even in such
circumstances. But the mothers give their children to the
Demoiselles Anglaises, if tearfully, yet without misgiving.
For the word has gone about that these are indeed friends
in trouble ; they know whom they may trust.
I saw in the garden a kind of wooden shelter, airy as
possible, in which were slung a number of little cots and
hammocks, where the sunshine and the fresh air — fetish of
les Anglais as the French are apt to think it — do marvels with
those pale young cheeks.
It was on this same day that I watched the battlefield,
sinister with all the science of desolation, and heard the
guns blankly echo about the flayed and barren hills. Barren-
ness and destruction triumphed there, as if men's one
desire were to disnature earth, to blast the tree, choke the
spring, shrivel the grass, and most of all to break, maim,
blind, and utterly destroy the body into which their souls
were born. But here, snatched from desolation, shielded
and cherished, life was budding and flowering ; restorative
nature sought its old channels. To look on these sleeping
faces of infancy, to watch the young movements of the
children in their play, made the distant thudding of the
A MATERNITY HOSPITAL 311
guns seem unreal, or at least a transitory terror and destined
to defeat.
There, was nothing but ends ; here, all was beginning.
There, was shattering mechanism ; here, was growing life.
I seemed to see, out of all this blood, and all these tears,
young France re-risen.
A THOUGHT FOR THE FUTURE
The reader has now some idea of the scope of the work that
Britain has done in aid of the wounded and the war victims
of France. It is right that this work should be known, and
this country may well take pride in it as good service loyally
rendered. But it has been essentially a labour of love.
It has been as the gift of friend to friend ; and our chief
pride and satisfaction is that France has accepted this
token of friendship and allowed us the privilege of taking
some small part in the caring for her wounds.
For we must not exaggerate. Let not any reader of
this little record forget for a moment how vast has been the
burden which France has borne and is bearing. The help
that we have been able to give to her wounded and sick
has been generously appreciated by the French, and in
actual amount is not inconsiderable. Yet in a compre-
hensive view of the whole work of the Service de Sante and
the Red Cross in France it may seem small enough, statisti-
cally measured. It is only when we view it in a larger light
and in the purely human aspect, that this voluntary labour
of British men and women assumes a deeper value and
significance. It is not so much work carried through as
seed sown in the future. That the friendship between
England and France should be firm, loyal, and enduring ;
that it should be rooted in reality and knit by mutual
understanding as well as esteem ; this is a matter of
supreme moment for the future of Europe. And for the
furthering of that good end may it not be that the work
described in these pages will have done more than speeches
311
A THOUGHT FOR THE FUTURE 313
of statesmen or commercial treaties, perhaps more than any
other agency ?
Nothing has been more vividly proved by the world's
experience in the war than the shallowness of the calculation
that nations are governed solely by self-interest and fear.
At bottom what one nation feels for another is of the same
stuff and the same inspiration as what one man feels for
another man. In the end we come down to human issues.
Truly the preservation of oneself is the sovereign motive of
action ; but that ' self,' of what splendid, as well as ignoble,
things it may be compounded ! And to save its integrity
how many have given up possessions, home, happiness,
existence ! The action of Belgium, the action of the
British Dominions, the action of the United States — these
reveal what human nature is, they are events to make us
' feel that we are greater than we know.'
What does a man stand for ? Of what fibre is he made ?
What choice does our instinct tell us that he will make in
a crisis ? Is he one whom we cannot help loving, and doing
sacrifices for, in spite even, it may be, of fault and weakness ?
So we judge of men, or feel about them in ways beyond
judgment and reason, and so we act in their regard. But
it is essential that we should know them as persons, by
personal contact and experience.
The trouble is that between nations there is so little
opportunity of real acquaintance. Mists of ignorance
float between them and solidify into walls of prejudice.
Governments misinterpret the people they govern. And
the old primeval instinct of dislike for the foreigner, simply
because he is different and strange, survives and is not
easily dislodged.
When after the few days of anxious suspense it was
known that England was to take her stand by the side of
France, there was a recoil of profound relief. With this
satisfaction at the prospect of strong support in a struggle
;U4 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
of which the terrible character was far more clearly realised
in France from the first than in this country, there was
mingled a warm appreciation of England's loyalty. The
power and vast resources of our Empire were known, even
perhaps exaggerated in the popular mind. But the diffi-
culty of bringing this enormous power readily into action
was not understood. As a French writer has told us, when
the length of the British front was first announced, there
was a feeling of blank disillusion. The old distrust of
English policy made itself heard here and there. There
were those who thought, what the Germans wished them to
think, that England would let France do all the fighting,
and then step in for the spoils. Instructed opinion knew
better, and could appreciate at something like its true value
the services of our Navy. But it was natural that those
who had but a vague notion of Britain as a world-wide
empire, should contrast that fraction of the front which our
army held with the immense line held by the French, and
ask why so great a power was doing so little. Then came
the report of our new millions of soldiers. Great camp6
arose in France. And still, among a people used to
military service as a part of national life, it was asked, what
these millions were doing, and why were they not in the
firing-line beside the French whose manhood was being
drained of its best blood. ' We will go through with you
to the end,' Kitchener had said, ' but you must have
patience and give us time to prepare.' Patience is hard
in the midst of a mortal struggle. The marvellous speed
with which our improvised armies were trained seemed like
slowness.
At last came the battles of the Somme. The quality
of our new armies shone out before the world, and the
French, ever quick to admire, began to understand the
magnitude of our effort and achievement. That understand-
ing has been steadily and surely growing with our increasing
A THOUGHT FOR THE FUTURE 315
efforts, and with each new blow that our armies have struck.
Our inevitable first delay may still be lamented ; the weight
of our aid is no longer belittledL
And what of the English people ? What did they think
of the French ? It must be said that before the war our
country-people knew very little of their nearest neighbours.
Far less than in some former times. After the war we may
hope that the intellectual and social relations between the
two countries may recover that old and mutually invigorating
closeness of intercourse that prevailed in the eighteenth
century among the educated classes of a far smaller popula-
tion. But though for a number of decades the general
ignorance of France and the French among the people of
Britain had perhaps rather increased than diminished, yet
there was a certain traditional sentiment about France
among us that has never been extinguished. Philip
Sidney's famous phrase in one of his sonnets, ' our sweet
enemy France,' crystallises that sentiment with exact
felicity. For centuries France was our enemy by force of
circumstance and situation ; but in spite of all our wars
there was always something lover-like in our feeling for
that country and its radiant spirit. Even during the
Napoleonic wars there was no sign of the bitterness of race-
hatred. When the Peace of Amiens in 1802 brought a brief
interlude in warfare, all London flocked to Paris, and English
travellers were greeted in Picardy with the friendliest
welcome. And in 181 5 when the Allied Armies marched
into Paris, and Blucher, in the Prussian way we now know
so well, proposed to levy a huge indemnity on the city,
Wellington would not hear of it ; it was not France, he
said, but Napoleon, that was the conquered enemy. When
the Prussians wanted to blow up the Pont de Jena, he placed
a British sentry on the bridge and defied them. Such
episodes are pleasant to remember. English character is
different from French character, our ways and habits of
316 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
mind are equally different from theirs ; but it is a difference
that does not prevent a mutual admiration and respect.
On that night of the 3rd of August when, in the House of
Commons, Sir Edward Grey bade us look into hearts and
see if we could bear to sit with folded arms while the
Germans ravaged the coasts of France, we looked into our
hearts ; and there were few who were doubtful of their
answer. For many of us, even apart from the outrage upon
Belgium, it seemed a crime beyond pardon that Germany
should seek, as Germans have proclaimed, to strike down
France so that she should never rise again. Take out
France from the history of modern Europe, and what an
inconceivable gap and loss the imagination feels ! A
diffusing light and energy is gone, and all our civilisation
sapped and maimed. The Germans, exalting as ever their
desire into fact, had repeated the creed that France was
degenerate and her day of beneficence over, till they believed
it. The English perhaps were too indolent and incurious
to have formed an explicit opinion. They may be, they are,
illogical ; but of character they judge instinctively as the
finger-tips of what they touch. And when they read of
those interminable legions of the German army, equipped
to a perfection never known before, the hugest, best-
disciplined and best-munitioned army ever assembled in
history, launched through Belgium upon France with a
momentum and velocity apparently irresistible ; when
they saw with what intrepid calm and with what a noble
unanimity the people of France turned to meet that
tremendous onset ; how staunchly they supported those
agonising days of suspense while the enemy each morning
came ever nearer, with so terrible a rapidity, to Paris ; how
they bore the test of an abrupt and utter dislocation of their
homes and daily existence, and that perhaps still greater
test, the intoxication of victory in those miraculous
September days ; — then throughout all Britain it was felt
A THOUGHT FOR THE FUTURE 317
that this was a nation by whose side we should be proud to
fight, and whose sacrifices we should be proud to share.
Nothing indeed has been more remarkable than the
unfeigned, profound, and lasting admiration of France that
her bearing in the war has evoked throughout all classes of
folk in this country, as indeed throughout the world. Of
the spontaneous sympathy with her sufferings this little
record is itself a witness ; and the progressive success of
France's Day in Britain is a symptom of its deepened
character.
France has not proclaimed the sufferings of her wounded
and her homeless refugees. She asked no help. What we
have done to aid her was offered simply because of our
great desire to show our loyalty and friendship, and because
of the undying debt we owe to her, not only for her
European past, but for the unexampled burden she bore
during the first two years of this war.
Surely then, in so much common sacrifice and mutual
esteem, in admiration on either side for so vast a national
effort, there is a sure base of friendship in the future.
But this is not all. For is there any parallel in history
to the immingling for so long a period at such close quarters
of one nation with another, on terms of equal friendship,
as has happened these last years in the case of France and
England ? At this moment the whole flower of our male
population is abroad, and for the most part on French
territory.
France, like other nations, has experienced what the
sinister phrase-makers of Prussia call * peaceful penetration.'
She has experienced a foreign infiltration, professedly
friendly, the extent and volume of which she never suspected
till suddenly in a night she woke to find that those myriad
dwellers in her cities and country towns, industrious and
ingratiating, useful and well-behaved, were smiling thieves
of her secrets, priers into her resources and her weaknesses —
318 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
returning in helmet and uniform as swaggering conquerors
to the homes where they had been trusted and subservient —
the implements of a patient and laborious perfidy. Nothing
was further from this most odious form of German
efficiency than the friendly invasion of the British soldier.
Billeted in French farm and cottage, he has gone his own
wonderful way, cheerfully resourceful, carrying his own
world with him, little dependent on conditions, careless of
the impression he makes, disguising nothing of rough
exterior or natural kindness. The French peasants have
come to be familiar with him, have wondered at his exuber-
ance, his lavish washings, his light-hearted energy ; they
have seen him playing with their children, have noted his
instinctive helpfulness and handiness.
But after all — though necessity makes itself understood
easily enough — the barrier of language is a formidable one,
and ignorance on either side of the other's habits and
manners and ways of thought is a still greater impediment.
Take a salient instance of contrast. The French
peasantry have an admirable quality of thrift. Their
saving habit is no dull meanness ; it is motived not only by
intelligent foresight, but by devotion to their children, and
often involves a long self-sacrifice. To them, the wasteful-
ness of our soldiers in matters like cooking and feeding is
something little short of monstrous ; it must seem like a
sort of mental vice. Waste is indeed one of our capital
faults as a nation. We are as indulgent to the spendthrift's
warm heart as we are indifferent to the painful lack of
intelligence and proportion in our public expenditure.
Yet this wastefulness belongs to qualities and energies
that have made for splendour in our history. The generosity
of the English people knows no limit. We are prodigals
born ; we like an expansive temper that enjoys the adventure
of life. And to our soldiers the economical proficiency of
the small French shopkeeper, for instance, still steeped
A THOUGHT FOR THE FUTURE 319
in the legend that all Englishmen are rich and care nothing
what they spend, is in its turn not endearing. On either
side the superficial strikes more than the essential. It is
useless to ignore or to lament such things. They cannot
be mended by magic or in a day. Only more real and
deep acquaintance can bring the larger tolerance of
understanding.
No one probably can yet tell what predominant or most
enduring impression will have been left by this close, yet
quite unprepared-for, intermingling of two very different
types of national character. Each man judges by his own
temperament and inclination, within the limits of his own
observation. Moreover, it is only certain parts of France
which have had this experience of the English.
But in the case of our work under the Red Cross and
kindred activities in France, we are on much surer ground.
For here have been set up very different relations from the
enforced and mostly passive acquaintance between the
British Army and the French peasantry and townsfolk,
where each after all has been absorbed in his own business.
In every unit there have been some, often many, who had
a previous knowledge of France and of French manners and
modes of thinking ; who with this knowledge had a special
love for the country, and who could talk to the wounded
soldiers or the poor refugees in their own language. They
could discuss things with them and interpret our own point
of view. By the time the war is over, there will be hardly
a village in France that does not contain at least one returned
soldier who has known the English as friends and had
familiar talk with them, in hospitals, in canteens, or at the
front.
In days before hatred of England was part of the school-
drill of German children, Heine was eminent as a good
hater of our country. He loved to contrast the stiffness
of Wellington (who yet could weep tears after Waterloo
320 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
because of the brave men dead) with the classic features and
enchanting smile of his adored Napoleon ; and he carried
away from his visit to London a tourist's impression of
Englishmen as all stiff, hard, and unsympathetic, each
grossly immersed in his own prosaic business. But in his
last years, when he lay on his ' mattress-grave ' in Paris, he
was visited by an Englishwoman ; and, getting to know her,
he came to feel that he had wronged her nation, that he had
made up his mind too quickly, seen us only from the out-
side, and petted a prejudice that served his satiric turn.
He came to believe that under the hard shell of an English-
man there might be a sound sweet kernel. So much can
one drop of personal knowledge colour and change a man's
conception of a nation.
Many French people before the war (like the charming
and accomplished Mme. Adam, for example) had inherited
or imbibed a prejudice against Albion. But in talk with
one of our English nurses, as she tends his wounds, or with
one of our ladies of the canteens, as she gives him coffee and
cigarettes, will not many a French soldier, if such prejudices
were his, have felt them melt away ? At least, when
Britain is spoken of, he will have a living person to connect
that name with, one who came over of her own accord to
help him in his hardships and sufferings.
* Cordial Understanding ' is a good word ; for what is
understanding without sympathy, and what is friendly
feeling without understanding ? To understand with
goodwill ; that is what we English and French need now,
at this most pregnant moment of all our intertwined
national history, more than anything. Just because of the
absence of personal knowledge, the feeling of one country
about another is little calculable and liable to strange recoils
and fluctuations. And it is on this account that the work
described in this little book with its resultant gradual
filtering of kindly memories, its diffusion of a personal
A THOUGHT FOR THE FUTURE 321
experience, of something shared in time of trouble, may-
prove for the future an influence much beyond the actual
service rendered, and be a reassurance and a stand-by when
newspapers are imagining vain things. Little rubs, resent-
ments, and misunderstandings there will inevitably have
been ; there will always be these so long as human beings
are human — and sometimes official. But such things are
as nothing when we think of the Poilu as we have known
him, and he comes before our eyes as we think of him, with
his good smile, his warm grasp of the hand, his cordial,
courteous, grateful speech, and his transparent friendliness.
That new sense of fraternity which many in England have
discovered for the first time among ourselves, of whatever
class or station, is extended, for those who have worked
among the French wounded and victims of the war, across
the Channel. We have discovered in France, as in our
own country, what wonders are hidden in the common man,
what unconscious heights of heroic effort and divine self-
sacrifice — a finer legacy perhaps to posterity than the
discovery of a superhuman genius ! The stuff of our
common humanity has been proved in a fiercer fire and an
intenser trial than any man ever anticipated, and its worth
shines out not only to confound the scoffers and scorners,
but to dim the visions of dreamers.
Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, if at any time we have
misinterpreted ourselves and ignorantly offended, you in
your generosity will forgive ; for be assured that we had no
other and no greater wish than to show how Britain admired
the greatness, and felt with the sufferings, of her sister
nation. You did not ask for our help ; but you received us
as friends. What you have allowed us to do for him is
little beside what we feel, now that we know him, for the
simple soldier of France.
PART IV
STATISTICAL INDEX
N.B. — Owing to lack of space it has not been possible to give the whole of the names
of each committee, only Governors and Executive being shown.
PAGE
Agricultural Relief of Allies Committee (Royal Agricultural
Society), ........ 226
Allhusen Formations, Nos. 1 and 2. Founded and managed by
Mrs. Allhusen, Stoke Court, Stoke Poges, Bucks. British sub-
scribers, also some French and American.
Ceret (P.O.), Hopital Benevole No. 62 bis, May 1915-Feb. 1917,
35 beds , '.■•*•*.' ' • ' • 1 SS
Martouret, Die (Drome) Etablissement de Tassistance aux Con-
valescents Militaires Francois, May 191 6— -still open, 45 beds, . 161
Allies Hospital Benevolent Society, 135 New Bond St., W. 1.
Hon. Sec. and Treas. — J. Gregory Jones ; Hon. Pres. — H. B. Lees
Smith, M.P. ; Chairman — Major Sir William Younger, Bart.j
Vice-Chairman — G. W. F. Reed ; Committee — O. H. Baldwin,
Herbert Burnage, T. W. Gaunt, Mrs. T. W. Gaunt, Mrs. E. H.
Holman, Mrs. G. W. F. Reed.
Yvetot (S.-I.), Hopital de l 1 Alliance, Jan. 1915-Jan. 1917 with
British personnel, still open with French staff, 262 beds, . . 134
Veules-les-Roses (S.-I.), Convalescent Hospital, Dec. 1914-Aug.
1 91 5, annexe to Yvetot. Re-opened Dec. 1915-July 191 7 as
annexe to Hopital 43 bis, St-Valery-en-Caux, July 191 7 — still
working with Hospice No. 28 bis. Directed and maintained by
Miss Hudson and Miss Sands, 30 beds, . . . . 134
Anglo-French Hospitals Committee, 83 Pall Mall, S.W. 1.
Chairman — Hon. Sir Arthur Stanley, G.B.E., M.P. ; Vice-Chairman
— Sir Claude MacDonald ; Hon. Sec. — Geoffrey Sawyer; ChieJ
Matron- Mrs. Kiero Watson ; Matron — Miss Bracewell. Formed
Oct. 1 9 14 by the British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John.
Most of the Anglo-French hospitals described in this book were
established under the aegis of this committee, which issued 7309
certificates to British personnel going to France, working always in
close association with the London Committee of the French Red
Cross, the two being amalgamated 1st Jan. 19 18 in the British
Committee of the French Red Cross, 9 Knightsbridge, S.W. 1
(Anglo-French Records Sub-Committee — Hon. Sir Arthur Stanley,
G.B.E., Rt. Hon. Evelyn Cecil, M.P., D. H. Ulingworth, 9
Knightsbridge, S.W. 1), . . . . .13-14
ArC-en-Barrois (H.M.), Hopital Temporaire, Jan. 191 5 — still open.
London Executive, 20 Elvaston Place, S.W. 7. Robert Holland-
Martin, Mrs. Holland-Martin, Hon. Mrs. Victor Russell, W.
Hancock, Miss M. C. Allen ; Directrice— Miss C. S. H. Bromley-
Martin, 190 beds, . . . . . . .145
Argyll Robertson, Maison de Convalescence, Villa Le Belvedere, Les
Buttes, Dinan (Cotes du Nord). Founded by Mrs. Argyll Robert-
son, Dec. 191 6 — still open, 30 beds, .... 162
32s
324 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
PAGE
Australian Red Cross Society, 3 6 Grosvenor Place, S.W. i. Com-
missioners — Lt.-Col. J. A. Murdoch, Major F. Lamb. In addition
to the immense gifts of money and material from Australia to
various war charities in France, the A.R.C. through the Brit. Com.
F.R.C., has made many contributions and sent a unit of 20
fully trained nurses who have worked in French hospitals since
Sept. 1916, ........ 115-168
Bar-le-Duc, Urgency Cases Hospital (q.v.).
Berck Plage (P.-de-C), Glamorgan and Monmouthshire Hospital
(Hopital Auxiliaire Anglaise Annexe No. 44), Dec. 1914-Aug. 1915.
Chairman — J. A. Jones ; Treas. — M. Neltner and M. Wideman ;
Sees. — Miss Sybel Corbett, Mine. R. V. de Guelis; Committee —
Mrs. Greenmeadow, Hon. V. Douglas Pennant, Lady Tatem,
N. Lewis, Dr. M. Paterson, Mrs. Karnes, etc. Administrator —
Mrs. Paterson. 100 beds, ...... 141
Bettancourt-la-Longue (Marne). Convalescent Home for Children
—see Friends W.V.R.C.
British Ambulance Committee, 2 3aBruton St., w. 1. Hon. Sec—
Mrs. G. Cecil Baker, G.B.E. ; Pres.— Duke of Portland, K.G.,
G.C.V.O. ; Vice-Pres.—M. Paul Cambon, D.C.L. (French Am-
bassador at St. James 1 ), Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, Lord Bertie,
G.C.B., G.C.M.G. (British Ambassador at Paris) ; Chairman —
Admiral Rt. Hon. Lord Beresford, G.C.B. ; Deputy-Chairman —
Lord Blyth ; Chairman Executive Committee — W. J. Peake Mason,
J. P. ; Inspecteur General — Bradby Peyman ; Governors — Captain
Dennis Bayley (Inspector of Convoys), A. Barton Kent, Mrs.
Aubrey le Blond, Lord Nunburnholme, D.S.O., Theodore C. Owen,
Sir Alex. Roger, Sir Charles Hilton Seely, Bart., M.P., Mrs.
Swinburne j Hon. Treas. — Norris Oakley.
Five Convoys, each consisting of 20 motor ambulances, travel-
ling workshop, two lorries, staff cars, etc.
One Motor Cycle Section, consisting of 10 motor cycle side cars
with stretchers.
There is a personnel of about 300 always maintained in
France, . . 41-42, 64-75, 85, 88-96, 99, 104-107, 235, 266, etc.
British Committee of the French Red Cross, 9 Knightsbridge,
S.W. 1. (also 3 Knightsbridge and 34 Wilton Place) — uniting the
London Committee of the French Red Cross and the Anglo-French
Committee of the British Red Cross, 1st Jan. 1918. — H.M. Queen
Alexandra ; Pres. d'Honneur — M. Paul Cambon ; Presidente —
Vicomtesse de la Panouse ; Vice-Pres. — M. A. de Fleuriau, M. de
la Chauss^e ; Advisory Committee — Hon. Sir Arthur Stanley, G.B.E.,
C.B., Rt. Hon. Evelyn Cecil, M.P., D. Baird Smith, Herbert Brown,
Mrs. J. T. Hunter, Capt. Sir H. Dennis Bayley, D.L., Lt.-Col. John
Murdoch, Lt.-Col. H. W. Blaylock, Major J. H. Perkins; Executive
— T- B. Blow, R. Carlyon-Britton, Mine. A. Duche, Angus
Faulkner, Mrs. A. Faulkner, Miss M. Foster, Mme. Girard,
T. S. C. Lee, Mrs. Hugh Playfair, Miss E. M. Roberts, Comtesse
de Saint-Seine, Rupert Simpson, Mrs. G. Yardley ; Hon. Treas. —
Mrs. Noel Lake ; Hon. Sees. — Philip A. Wilkins, H. Fraser Simson ;
Direeteur General — D. H. Illingworth ; Hon. Auditors — Price,
Waterhouse & Co. ; Med. Council — Sir W. Watson Cheyne, Bart.,
W. H. Clayton-Greene, Sir Arbuthnot Lane, Bart., Hugh J. M.
Playfair, Col. A. W. Mayo Robson, Sir St. Clair Thomson, Gen.
Sir Alfred Keogh.
STATISTICAL INDEX 325
PAGE
British Committee of the French Red Cross, continued—
Paris Office, 36 rue de Chateaudun. De'legue — W. Harold Cobb ;
Directeur des Confines — Leon Desmarquoy ; Matron — Miss E. J.
Haswell.
Selection of Personnel ; scrutiny of credentials ; issue of certificates
and papers for British, Allies, and Neutrals leaving England for war
work for the French (8537 by both Committees to end 1917), . 14, 21
Receipt, purchase, despatch and distribution of clothing, drugs,
dressings, hospital equipment and stores, for Red Cross and Military
Hospitals, soldiers at the front, and war relief in France (98,391
bales, etc., despatched to end of 191 7), .... 22-25
Paquetage du Soldat — Kits to soldiers on front (35,549), • 24
Parcels to French prisoners of war in Germany (20,827), . 27
London Agents and Administrators for various Units and
Funds, ........ 102, 163
Reconstituting Devastated Territory and Civilian Relief ; Rebuild-
ing Churches; Widows, Orphans, Blind and Maimed Funds, . 227
Motor Ambulance Convoys — Section Sanitaire Angl. No. 10
(25 cars, 45 voluntary Brit, drivers), . . 78, 86, 90, 94, 288
Section Sanitaire Angl. No. 20 (Convoi de PEcosse No. 1 — 25
cars, 45 voluntary Brit, drivers), .... 77, 103-107
Groupement Croix Rouge (Convoi de PEcosse No. 2 — 12 cars,
12 voluntary Brit, drivers), . . . . .102
Balkan Convoy (24 cars, 25 voluntary Brit, drivers), . . 108
Motor Cars and Ambulances for Hospitals, etc. (443, many with
voluntary drivers), ....... 26
X-Ray Automobiles (13 on front and for Base Hospitals), . 168
Dental Ambulances (2 working behind the French trenches with
British surgeons and mechanics),; ..... 168-9
Bacteriological Automobile Laboratory on French front, . . 170
Canteens and Soldiers' Clubs (55 at railway stations, military
convalescent depots and camps, . . 29, 191-212, 237-242, 274-280
French Flag Nursing Corps (fully trained Brit. Nurses — max. No.
200 — in a French Military Hospital), .... 32-37
Hospitals: — In addition to monetary grants and regular monthly
contributions to many Red Cross Hospitals, the following are con-
trolled by the Committee :
Hopital Auxiliaire, Fort Mahon (Somme). Opened Oct. 1914 by
Dr. Maurice Renton, Bridge House, Dartford, Kent, Med. -chef, and
a number of other British and American voluntary surgeons, nurses
and helpers, under PUnion des Femmes de France, 107 beds, . 132
Chateau de Boisment la Comte (P.-de-C.) annexe of Fort Mahon,
30 beds, . . . . . . . 133
Hopital Franco-Britannique Aux. 222, Mentone (q.v.).
Hopital Neo-Zelandais, Etrembieres (grant from the Government
of New Zealand). For rapatrie's returned from occupied territory
through Germany and Switzerland, 300 beds, . . . 163
Urgency Cases Hospital, Revigny (Meuse) (q.v.).
Permanent Tuberculosis Farm Colony (in formation), . 228
British Red Cross Society's Motor Ambulance Convoys, 8 3 Pall
Mall, S.W. 1. Inspecteur General— Col. A. J. Barry ; Adjoint —
Capt. G. B. Marshall. Three Motor Ambulance Convoys (Section
Sanitaire Anglaise Nos. 16, 17, and 18), each consisting of
22 ambulances, 4 lorries, 1 kitchen car, 1 workshop, and 1 touring
car; 60 British drivers and 3 officers, 43~45> 49~55> 83-96, 106, 281-283
326
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
British Farmers' Bed Cross Fund (Hon. Organiser — Herbert Brown,
Tower Bridge Flour Mills, Shad Thames, S.E. i), through the Joint
War Committees of the British Red Cross and Order of St. John,
has presented to the Brit. Com. F.R.C. ten motor ambulances, and
voted the sum of £75,000 towards a Tuberculosis Farm Colony in
France, ....... 43, 86, 228
Caen, Church Army War Hospital (see Church Army).
Canadian Bed Cross Society, temporarily at Hotel York, Berners
Street, W. Commissioner— Col. H. W. Blaylock, C.A.M.C. In addi-
tion to monetary grants and the distribution of large quantities of
medical supplies (56,593 cases), the following hospitals are main-
tained and staffed by the C.R.C S. :
Troyes, No. 6 Canadian General Hospital, July 191 6 — still open,
1400 beds, . . . . . . . .161
St-Cloud, No. 8 Canadian General Hospital, Nov. 1915 — still
open, 500 beds, . . . . . . .160
Ward equipped at Royaumont, 15 July 1915, . . . 143
Supply Depots: 16 rue de l'Estrapade, Paris, Aug. 191 5 — still
open. Five storehouses at Bastion 55, Porte Dauphine, Nov. 1915
— still open, . . . . . . .115
Joinville-le-Pont, 520 beds (in formation).
Cannes, Ambulance Sud-Africaine, Hopital Beau-Rivage No. 156 bis,
and Villa Felicie (see South African Ambulance).
Canteens, under TCEuvre de la Goutte de Cafe. Fondateur — M. Leon
Desmarquoy, merged in the Brit. Com. F.R.C. (q.v.).
Carqueiranne, Sanatorium Beau-Soleil, Nov. 1916 — still open. Or-
ganised by Miss Lind-af-Hageby, 7 St. Edmund's Terrace, Regent's
Park, N.W., supported by British subscribers, 30 beds, . . 161
C^ret (P.O.), Hopital Benevole No. 62 bis, Allhusen Formation,
No. 1 (q.v.).
Chalons-SUr-Mame, Maternite Departementale Anglaise (see Friends 1
W.V.R.C.)
Chateau de Boismont, Le Comte (P.-de-C), (see Brit. Com. F.R.C).
Cherbourg, Hdpital Gare Maritime, April 1915-June 191 6, managed
by Col. and Mrs. Swayne, Tillington Court, nr. Hereford. British
subscribers, transf. to S.S.B.M. Comite de Cherbourg, 60 beds, 154
Chateau Tourlaville, Stobart Hospital (Anglo-French Unit No.
2), Nov. 1914-March 19 1 5. Maintained by the (late) Women's
Imperial Service League under the direction of Mrs. Stobart, 7
Turner's Wood, Hampstead, 75 beds, . . . . 134
Church Army, 55 Bryanston St., W. 1. Hon. Chief Sec. — Prebendary
Carlile; Hon. Organiser — Lady Bagot, R.R.C. ; Hasp. Sec. — W.
Thirlwell.
Caen, Church Army War Hosp., Sept. 1914-April 19 16, 100 beds, 127
Compiegne, Chateau du Fayel, Hopital Wemyss, Feb. 1915-Oct. 191 5.
Founded by Lady Eva Wemyss, 51 Portland Place, W. i, and
completely maintained by her and two of her friends, 50 beds, . 148
Dennis Bayley Fund for the Transport of Sick and Wounded
Soldiers. Chairman — Col. Sir Charles Seely, Bart. ; Organiser —
Capt. Sir H. Dennis Bayley, Lenton Abbey, Beeston, Notts ; Asst.
Organiser — Lt. T. L. Staniland ; Hon. Sec. — W. H. Cunningham ;
Hon. Treas. — C. J. Pain, equipped and maintains many Motor
Ambulance Convoys through the Joint War Committee, the British
Ambulance Committee and the British Committee of the French
Red Cross ......*. 4*-43> 87
STATISTICAL INDEX 327
PAGE
Dieppe, Hopital 37a (H8tel de K Alliance). Founded Oct. 19 14, by the
Med.-chef. Dr. Dudley d'A. Wright, F.R.C.S., 3 Bentinck Mans.,
W. 1. Carried on by succeeding Meds. -chefs, and supported by
friends of workers in the Hospital, British Committee of the French
Red Cross, and Wounded Allies Relief Committee. Taken over
by latter Jan. 191 5, and transferred to Pile Barbe (Rhone) (q.v.).
Dieppe — Anglo-French Aid Dep6t, . . . . .114
Dinan (see Argyll Robertson Maison de Convalescence).
Dunkerque (Headquarters), H6pital Chirurgical Mobile 1. Founded
July 191 5 by Mrs. Borden Turner, under Brit. Com. F.R.C. — still
open. Funds supplied by Mrs. Borden Turner, her friends, and
British subscribers; London Sec. — Miss M. Harris, 222 Strand, W.C.
2 (previously Prof. Hobhouse) ; Treas. — W. B. Keen, 160 beds, . 156
Millicent Sutherland Ambulance — Namur, Aug. 1914; Dunkerque,
Oct. 1 9 14; Bourbourg, June 19 15 ; Dunkerque, autumn of 1915;
shortly after transferred to the British — still open, 100 beds, . 123, 133
Convoy, ........ 48
Edinburgh and Border Hospital. Hon. Sec—W. H. Murray, 48
Castle St., Edinburgh, maintained by the Directrice — Mrs. R. B.
Hay and British subscribers, Malo-les-Bains, pres Dunkerque —
Nov. 1914-Nov. 1915, 75 beds; Pavilion Royal, Bois-de-Boulogne,
Paris, Jan. 1916 — still open, 65 beds, .... 136, 160
Etrembieres, Hopital N£o-Z<jlandais for Rapatries (see Brit. Com.
F.R.C.).
Fecamp (S.-I.), Hopital Anglais du Casino, founded Dec. 19 14, by Lady
Guernsey, Lady McCalmont and Hon. Mrs. Barry, and carried on
under direction of Lady Guernsey — closed June 19 14 (see also
G^zaincourt), English subscribers, 1 10 beds, • . . 139
First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps. Hon. Organiser — Mrs.
McDougall ; London Sec. — Miss Anderson ; British Committee of
French Red Cross, 34 Wilton Place, S.W. 1.
Motor Ambulance Convoys, S.S.Y. 2 & 4, . . . 109
Hopital Auxiliaire,76Port-a-Binson(Marne),S.S.B.M.; F.A.N Y.
nursing and ambulance staff and equipment, March 191 7 — still open,
200 beds, . . . . . . . .162
Fort Mahon (Somme) (see Brit. Com. F.R.C).
'France's Day,' appeal to the British Empire for the funds of British
Committee of French Red Cross. Hon. Sec. — Percy Collins, J. P.,
34 Wilton Place, S.W. 1 (formerly 3 Knightsbridge, S.W. 1).
Treas. (in 19 15) — Sir Charles Johnston, Bart., Lord Mayor of
London — net proceeds £24,115, is. 7d. Treas. (in 1916) — Sir
Charles C. Wakefield, Bart., Lord Mayor of London — net proceeds
£104,111, 13s. 2d. Treas. (in 1917) — Sir William Henry Dunn,
Bart., Lord Mayor of London — net proceeds £190,349, 16s. nd.
(Sub-Committees and workers in cities, towns and districts through-
out the Empire), . . . . . . 29,156,317
French Flag Nursing Corps, founded Oct. 19 14 by Miss Grace
Ellison ; Hon. Superintendent and Treas. — Mrs. Bedford Fenwick ;
Hon. Medical Adviser — Dr. R. Murray Leslie ; Sec. — Miss I.
Hutchinson. Transferred March 1917^0 Brit. Com. F.R.C. (q.v.).
French War Emergency Fund, 44 Lowndes Square, S.W. 1 (pre-
viously at 34). Chairman — Albert Gray, C.B., K.C. ; Vice-Chair-
man — W. Vaux Graham ; Hon. Sec. — Miss Evelyn Wyld ; Hon.
Sec. (for branches in U.K. and Canada)— Mrs. W. M. Dobell ;
Hon. Sec. (for America) — Mrs. John G. Elliott ; Hon. Treas. — Sir
3*8
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
David Erskine ; Asst. Sec. — Mrs. Foley ; Committee — Lady Cecilia
Roberts, Lady Hunter, Hon. Maud Ritchie, Mme. CTGorman, Mrs.
Swinburne, Mrs. Lee Warner, Miss K. Weatherby, Hon. Arthur
Davey. Founded autumn 19 14, for supplies to Military Hospitals,
Hospital Canteens, Civilian Relief (including reconstruction, ravi-
taillement, etc). ; Emergency Work, No. of towns in which hospitals
have been supplied over 1200 ; Appeals received over 6000 ; Bales
despatched about 21,000; Garments and linen over 1,286,000 ; also
large quantities of bandages, dressings, surgical instruments, drugs,
and hospital requisites of all kinds, .... 1 16-122
Fr^vent (P.-de-C), Anglo-Ethiopian Hospital, Dec. 19 14. Transferred
to St-Valery-sur-Somme, April 191 5 — closed Oct. 191 5 (since
transferred to Mudros. Established and maintained by Mrs.
Doughty Wylie, 67 beds, ...... 140
Friends' Ambulance Unit, Hon. Sec. — J. R. Little, 8 Weymouth
St., W. 1 ; Chairman — Sir George Newman, K.C.B. ; Hon. Treas.
— W. Chas. Braithwaite ; Committee — P. Alden, M.P., J. A. Baker,
M.P., Dr. L. Doncaster, F.R.S., Rt. Hon. Lord Gainford, G. M.
Gillett, Sir Rickman J. Godlee, Bart., K.C.V.O., T. E. Harvey,
M.P., A. S. Rowntree, M.P., Rt. Hon. J. W. Wilson, M.P.
Queen Alexandra Hospital, B.E.F., March 19 15 — still open, 80
beds for the French (200 in all), . . . . .150
Three Motor Convoys working with French army for last
three years, staffed throughout 5 S.S.A. 13, S.S.A. 14, S.S.A. 19. 77
cars, 143 drivers, .... 55-64, 100, 101, 104-106, 282
Friends' War Victims Belief Committee. Hon. Sec— Miss A.
Ruth Fry, 91 Bishopsgate, E.C.; W. A. Albright, E. Wright
Brooks, H. Morland, I. Sharp (deceased), W. F. Nicholson.
Bettancourt-la-Longue (Marne), Convalescent Home for Children,
Sept. 1 91 6, taken over from Mrs. E. V. Lucas and Sir James Barrie,
by whom it was opened May 191 5 — still open, 57 beds, . . 222
Chalons-sur-Marne, Maternite" Departementale Anglaise, Dec.
1914 — still open, 96 beds, ..... 221,307-311
Samoens (H.S.), Maison de Convalescence pour Refugies, April
1916 — still open, 1 00 beds, . ..... 223
Sermaize-les-Bains (Marne), Hopital du Chateau, Dec. 191 7 —
still open, jointly with American Red Cross, 100 beds, . . Addenda
Sermaize-les-Bains (Marne), Hopital de la Source, May 191 5 —
still open, 25 beds, ....... 223
Medical work, rebuilding and repair of houses, agricultural relief,
repair and distribution of agricultural machines, ploughing, thresh-
ing, distribution of seed, tools and live stock.
General relief among refugees, distribution of clothing, furniture,
domestic necessities, employment in needlework, etc.
Relief work has been carried out in over 400 villages and towns
in eleven departments of France, . . . 213-224,251-259
G^zaincourt, par Doullens (Somme), Hopital Irlandais ; divided from
Fecamp, Hopital Casino (q. v.), May 1915-Mar. 1916. Directrice —
Hon. Mrs. Barry, Willsbrook, Lucan, Co. Dublin. Hon. Treas. —
Lady McCalmont. Subscribers in Ireland, 60 beds, . . 155
Hackett-Lowther Unit. Canteens and motor ambulances . . 1 10-21 1
Le Tr^port (S.-L), Hopital Anglo-Francais, Dec. 1914-June 191 6
(transferred to British). Founded and directed by Hon. Lady
Murray, 50 Grosvenor Gardens, S.W. 1, and maintained by her
and friends, 65 beds, . . . . . . 139
STATISTICAL INDEX
329
Ligue Franco-Australienne. Sec. Delegue— Mile. A. Soubeiran,
372 rue St.-Honore, Paris, Dec. 19 14 — still working. Besides gifts
of money to various societies, large quantities of clothing have been
sent for the wounded, soldiers at the front, rapatnes and evacue's,
and the widows and orphans of the war (over 800,000 garments), . 115
Limoges, Hopital Militaire Anglais (see Wounded Allies Relief
Committee).
Longueil-Annel (Oise), Allies Anglo-French Hospital. Founded
Aug. 1 9 14 by Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey Mitchell Depew.
American and British subscribers and staff — still open, no beds, . 128
Lyon, see Ulster Volunteer Hospital.
Hopital Anglais 249 bis, Lycee de St-Rambert, 1'Ile Barbe (see
Wounded Allies Relief Committee).
Malo-leS-Bains, pres Dunkerque, Villa Belle Plage, Nov. 1914-May
19 1 5. Maintained by the Directrice — Lady Sykes, Sledmere,
Malton, Yorks, and subscriptions from her friends, 40 beds, . 133
pres Dunkerque (see Edinburgh and Border Hospital).
Martouret Die (Drome), see Allhusen Formation, No. 2.
Mentone (A.-M.), Ateliers pour Fabrication et Fourniture aux Hopitaux
de Guerre, Lady Menzies, ...... 114-115
(A.M.), Hopital Franco-Britannique Auxiliaire 222 (formerly
de TEntente Cordiale, A.D.F.). Inaugurated Mar. 1915 under
A.D.F. by Dr. Stanley Rendall and Mr. and Mrs. Percy Cochrane.
Maintained by contributions of the latter, Mr. Kenneth Clark, the
Scottish Red Cross and others, assisted and at end 1917 taken over
by Brit. Com. F.R.C. — still open, 500 beds, . . . 153, 292
Munro Ambulance Corps, Sept. 1914-Oct. 191 7. Founded by Dr.
Hector Munro, and commanded by him Sept. 19 14- April 191 5 ;
Mr. Ivor Bevan, Apl.-Aug. 191 5; Dr. Henry Jellett, Aug. 191 5-
Oct. 19 1 7. Nine ambulances, 1 motor workshop, and 1 small
semi-lorry, ....... 46-48, 99-100
Nevers, Hopital Anglais Autonome 6 bis, Dec. 1914-Dec. 191 7.
Founded by Anglo-French Hosps. Com., afterwards maintained by
Mr. and Mrs. R. Woods Bliss of the U.S. Embassy, Paris; British
staff, 170 beds, . . . . . . . 139, 264
Nice, Hopital Militaire 92 bis, Queen Victoria Memorial Hosp., Mont
Boron, Sept. 19 14 — still open. Chairman — Sir Henry Samuelson,
Bart., Hatchford Park, Cobham ; J. Jaffe, J. Wiseman Keogh, Sir
George White (deceased), 85 beds, . . . .123, 294-297
Parame* (I.-et-V.), Hopital Complementaire No. 94 (Bristol), Oct.
1 9 14- Jan. 1915. Convalescent Home to Hopital Moka, St-Malo.
Maintained by the St. John Amb. Assn., 210 beds, . . 131
Paris, Hopital Auxiliare 137, U.F.F., Hotel Claridge (see Women's
Hospital Corps).
Hopital de TEcosse (see Scottish Branch, B.R.C.S.).
Pavilion Royal, Bois-de-Boulogne (see Edinburgh and Border
Hospital.
■ Hopital Auxiliaire 307, Anglo-French-American Homoeopathic
Hospital, Feb. 1915-Mar. 191 6. Pres. — Rt. Hon. Earl of
Donoughmore, R. H. Caird, E. H. Morton, Dr. Byres Moir, Dr.
G. Burford, W. H. Poate, Knox Shaw, Lady Perks, Mrs. Holman.
Sec. — Miss Lambert, 37 Colville Terrace, W. 11, . . . 149
Michelham Hospital (Astoria), Sept. 191 6 — still working. In-
augurated under the Anglo-French Committee by Lord Michelham
and maintained by him, i83,beds, . . . , .160
33o FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
PAGE
Paris, Hopital Hotel Majestic, Sept. 1914-Jan. 19 15. Founded by Dr.
Haden Guest, 100 beds, . . . . . .125
„ Societe pour les Blesses, . . . . . . 114
Paris Plage, Hopital Militaire 35 (Annexe Tangye), Feb. 191 5 —
still open. Started and maintained by Lady Tangye and Mr.
Stonor Crowther, with the assistance of Mrs. Twining, Mrs.
Wyllie, Mrs. Burns, Mrs. Lionel Robinson, and Mrs. Dudley
Aman, 85 beds, ....... 149
Pau (see Ulster Volunteer Hospital).
Port-a-BinSOn, Hopital Auxiliaire No. 76 (see First Aid Nursing
Yeomanry Corps).
Queen Alexandra Hospital, B.E.F. (see Friends' Ambulance Unit).
Revigny (Meuse) (sec Urgency Cases Hospital).
Rimberlieu (Aisne), Ambulance Symons. Committee — Major and
Mrs. Symons, 18 Ennismore Gardens, S.W. 7; Lord Louth and
Mr. Perowne, . . . . . . .146
Ris-Orangis (S.-et-O.), Johnstone Reckitt Hospital (Hopital Militaire,
V.R. 76). Founded Sept. 191 5 and maintained by Hon. Lady
Johnstone and Harold J. Reckitt, with help from their personal
friends. Staff, British and American — still open, 208 beds, . 158, 248
Royal Horticultural Society, Reconstruction Committee, . . 227
Royaumont, Hopital Auxiliaire 301 (see Scottish Women's Hosps.
Com.).
Salonika («' Scottish Women's Hosps. Com.).
Samoens (H.S.), Maison de Convalescence pour Refugie's (see Friends'
W.V.R. Com.).
Scottish Branch British Red Cross Society, 205 St. Vincent St.,
Glasgow ; Sir George T. Beatson, M.D., K.C.B., K.B.E., R. J.
Smith, C.A., A. MacG. Trotter, W. J. Anderson, D. Baird Smith.
Paris, Hopital de l'Ecosse (Hopital Auxiliaire 49, S.S.B.M.,
7 rue dc la Chaise). In the private clinique of Dr. Bonnet.
Financed in 19 15 by the Press of Canada, Jan. 1916 taken over by
Scottish Branch of B.R.C.S., and maintained by them through the
Brit. Com. F.R.C.— still open. Patroness— H.R.H. The Duchess
of Argyll, 150 beds, ..... 157,246-248
Ambulance Convoy S.S.A. No. 20 (Convoi de l'Ecosse No. 1),
25 cars, 45 Voluntary drivers, .... 77, 105-107
Ambulance Convoy Groupement Croix Rouge (Convoi de
TEcosse No. 2), 12 cars, 12 voluntary drivers, . - . 102
Scottish Women's Hospitals Committee, 2 St. Andrew Square,
Edinburgh. Com. of Hosps. — Miss S. E. S. Mair; Chairman of
Hosps. Com.— Mm. J. T. Hunter; Hon. Sec— Miss J. H. Kemp;
Hon. Treas. — Mrs. Laurie ; Committee — Dr. Marian Erskine, Mrs.
M'Cuaig, Mrs. Shaw M'Laren, Mrs. Russell, Mrs. Walker, Mrs.
Wallace Williamson ; Rep. in Canada and U.S.A. — Miss Kathleen
Burke ; Rep. in India, Australia, and New Zealand — Mrs. Abbott.
London Com., Chairman — Miss E. Palliser ; Hon. Treas. —
Viscountess Cowdray, Hon. Mrs. Spencer Graves ; Hon. Sec. — Mrs.
Flinders Petrie.
Abbaye de Royaumont (S.-et-O.), Hopital Auxiliaire 301, Dec.
1914 — still open, 350 beds, .... 141-143, 243-246
Villers-Cotterets (Aisne) Hospital, Aug. 191 7 — still open, 300
beds, ........ Addenda
Troyes (Aube), May 1915, transferred to Salonika Oct. 1915,
250 beds, ........ 143
STATISTICAL INDEX 331
PAGE
Scottish Women's Hospitals Committee, continued—
Salonika, Jan. 191 6 — still open, 500 beds, . . . 144
Canteens in association with the Brit. Com. F.R.C., . . Addenda
Sermaize-les-BainS (Marne), Hopital de la Source {see Friends'
W.V.R. Com.).
Hopital du Chateau {see Friends' W.V.R. Com.).
South African Ambulance, 2 London Wall Buildings, E.C. Hon.
Sec. — Ernest G. Grew ; Pres. — Rt. Hon. Viscount Gladstone, P.C.,
G.C.M.G. ; Chairman — Baron Emile d'Erlanger, N. H. Smith,
H. Wilson, Sir H. Birchenough, J. Friedlander, F. Dyer ; Hon.
Treas.—Rt. Hon. Lord Islington, G.C.M.G. ; Asst. Hon. Treas.—
P. J. Baird.
Cannes, Ambulance Sud-Africaine, Hopital Beau Rivage No.
156 bis, Feb. 1915 — still open, 225 beds, . . . 147, 297-299
Cannes, Villa Felicie, for tuberculosis, Oct. 19 16 — still open, 40
beds, . . . • ■ • 148, 299
Cannes, Refugees' Home at Sunny Bank, and Officers' Villa
known as the Ladies' Home.
South of France Relief Association of Montreal, Rep. in France
— Mrs. Philip Riddett, Villa Riddett, Route de Frejus, Cannes.
Founded in Feb. 1915 — still working. Hon. Pres. — Dr. Bruce
Taylor; Pres. — Mrs. Wellington Dixon; Vice-Pres. — Mrs.
Keenan ; Hon. Sec. and Treas. — Mrs. W. Drew.
Over 600 cases, bales, and postal parcels distributed to Hospitals,
Children's Homes, Refugees, etc., ..... Addenda
St-Cloud {see Canadian Red Cross Society).
St-Malo (I.-et-V.), Chateau St-Malo, Notre-Dame des Greves, Sept.
1914-Sept. 191 6. Founded and maintained by Mr. E. Insley, Le
Sillon, St-Malo, 135 beds (transferred to Service de Sante, Oct.
1916), ........ 128
Hopital Complementaire No. 62 (Moka), Oct. 1914-Jan. 1915,
transferred to Hotel Bristol, Parame'. Maintained by St. John's
Ambulance Association and Mayoress of Ipswich Fund, 195
beds, . . . • • • .130
Troyes (Aube), {see Canadian Red Cross Society).
See Scottish Women's Hosps. Com.
Ulster Volunteer Hospital, Nov. 1914-April 1916, villa Beaupr<§,
Pau, 80 beds, April 1916-Aug. 1917, Allee du Sacre Cceur, Lyon.
Maintained by Ulster Women's Unionist Council and subscribers.
Sec.—]. M. Hamill, Old Town Hall, Belfast ; Directrice— Miss
R. Sinclair; Committee — Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry,
Duchess of Abercorn, Dowager Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava,
Miss E. J. Connor, Mrs. M. Clements, Miss M. Herdman, Mrs.
G. H. Wheeler, Mrs. Sinclair, 100 beds, . . . 137-138,260
Urgency Cases Hospital for France, opened at Bar-le-Duc, near
Verdun, Mar. 1915. Moved to Faux Miroir, Revigny (Meuse),
Aug. 1915. Administered by London Committee. Pres. — Sir W.
Arbuthnot Lane, Bart., C.B., F.R.C.S.; Chairman and Hon. Treas.
—Herbert Samuelson ; Chairman— Stephen Paget, F.R.C.S. (Jan.-
July 1915); Hon. Sees. — James Baird, Godfrey B. Samuelson,
T. S. C. Lee; Hon. Treas.— Herbert Powell (Jan.-July 191 5);
Consulting Surgeon— Col. A. W. Mayo-Robson, A.M.S., C.B.,
M.V.O., F.R.C.S.; Matrott-in-Chief—Mhs Swift; Originator—
Miss E. L. C. Eden. July 191 7 taken over by Brit. Com. F.R.C.
— still open, 120 beds, .... 150-153,286-288
332
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Veules-leS-Roses (S.-L), Convalescent Hospital (see Allies Hospital
Benevolent Society).
Villers-Cotteret (Aisne), see Scottish Women's Hospitals Committee.
Villenouvelle (H.G.), Hopital Complementaire No. 64, July 1915 —
still open. Chateau de St-Rome lent by General Vicomte de la
Panouse. British surgeons and nursing staff. Maintained by
Service de Sante, Vicomtesse de la Panouse, and friends in England
Brit. Com. F.R.C., 9 Knightsbridge, S.W. 1, 307 beds, . . 159-160
Women's Hospital Corps. Organiser in England — (late) Dr. Louisa
Woodcock. Paris, H3pital Auxiliaire 137, Hotel Claridge, Sept
1914-Jan. 1915. British subscribers, 100 beds, . . . 127
Wounded Allies Relief Committee, 176 Cromwell Road, S.W. 5
Chairman — Rt. Hon. Lord Swaythling ; Hon. Sees. — R. C. Hawlcin
Sir Lindsey Smith, Dr. V. H. Rutherford ; Hon. Treas. — Hon. Mrs
Fred. Guest, T. O. Roberts, Sir William F. Clerke, Bart. ; Hon
Consulting Surgeon— Sir Wm. Collins, K.C.V.O., M.P. ; Hon. Med.
Director — Dr. G. B. Clark j Chairman of Hosp. Sub-Committee —
John S. Henry, J.P.
Limoges, Hopital Militaire Anglais, Jan. 1915-Mar. 1917,225
beds, ........ 126, 146
Lyon, HSpital Anglais 249 bis, Lycee de St-Rambert, Pile
Barbe (Rhone), 300 beds, transferred Feb. 191 6 from H6*pital de
T Alliance, Dieppe (q.v.), Oct. 191 7, . . . 147,261-263
Have sent many other gifts to French Hospitals.
Women's Emergency Canteens for Soldiers. Founded and
organised by Mrs. Wilkie, Hon. Sec, 27 Upper Baker St., N.W. 1.
Pres. — H. E. The Lady Bertie of Thane, Hon. Mrs. Norman
Grosvenor; Hon. Treas. — Mrs. Lindsay-Poison; Speaker — Mrs.
Pertwee ; Asst. Hon. Sec. — Miss W. Stobart. Canteens for soldiers
and sailors, British and Allies at the Gare du Nord and Gare de
Lyons, Paris. Canteens and Recreation Rooms in War Zone for
French troops. Jan. 191 5 — still working, . . . .Addenda
Yvetot (S.-L), HSpital de TAlliance (see Allies' Hospital Benevolent
Society).
LIST OF WAR HOSPITAL SUPPLY DEP6TS WHICH
HAVE SENT CLOTHING, DRESSINGS, ETC., TO
FRANCE THROUGH THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL
OF VOLUNTARY ORGANISATIONS, THE
FRENCH WAR EMERGENCY FUND, AND THE
BRITISH COMMITTEE OF THE FRENCH RED
CROSS
LONDON
Anaesthetics Emergency Fund.
Anglo-South American Central Dfipdt.
Baptist Women's League.
Barnet W.H.S.D.
Barnet Work Party.
Battersea Voluntary War Workers Assn.
Bedford College Workrooms.
Belgravia W.H.S.D.
Blackheath W.H.S.D.
Canadian War Contingent Assn.
Central Depot Queen Mary's Needlework Guild.
Chelsea Work Party.
Chiswick War Relief Fund.
City of London School for Girls.
Clarke (Miss) Girls' School.
Covent Garden W.H.S.D.
Croydon Dist. Assn. of Voluntary Organisations.
Croydon W.H.S.D.
Deptford W.H.S.D.
Ealing Red Cross Work Party.
Ealing War Dressings Assn.
Ealing W.H. Workshop.
Ealing Women's Lib. Assn.
Emperors Gate Work Party.
Empress Club E.V.A. Com.
Englishwomen's Anaesthetics.
Finchley Work Party.
Forest Gate Supply Depot.
Hampstead W.H.S.D.
Highgate W.H.S.D.
Kensington Voluntary Workers' Assn.
Kensington W.H.S.D.
League of the Empire.
Marylebone Pres. Church Work Party.
Middlesex Regt. County Committee.
Munro (Hon. Lady) War Work Depdt.
New Constitutional War Workroom.
New South Wales' Clothing Distributing Cte.
Nicholson (Lady) Work Party.
Order of St. John.
Pimlico W.H.S.D.
Primrose League Needlework and War Comforts
Fund.
Queen's Gate Women's War Dressings Assn.
Queen Mary's Sewing Guild.
Royal Horse Guards European War Fund.
Sclater's (Lady) Depot.
Smith-Dorrien's (Lady) Association.
Stoke Newington W.H.S.D.
Streatham Common W.H.S.D.
Turnham Green Red Cross.
Troup's (Lady) Work Party.
Wandsworth Borough Assn. of Voluntary Workers.
West Ham Association.
West Norwood— St. Luke's Red Cross Depdt.
Westminster Supply Depdt.
Wimbledon War Work Depdt.
Women's Emergency Corps.
Women's Nat. Lib. Assn.
Women's War Dressings Assn.
Woolwich Royal Hubert Hospital.
Wounded Allies Relief Cte. W.H.S.D|
COUNTRY
Abbey Leix War Hosp. Supply Depdt.
Aberdeen City War Work Assn.
Aberdeen County War Work Assn.
Aberdeen Red Cross Work Party.
Aberdeen Sphagnum Moss Cte.
Aberdeen War Dressings Depdt.
Aberdeenshire, The Gordon Schools.
Abergavenny Labour Bureau.
Aberystwith County Assn.
Abingdon D6pdt.
Adderbury War Work Party.
Airdrie, New Monkland Assn.
Albury British Red Cross Depdt.
Albury Work Depdt.
Aldershot W.H.S.D.
Allies Bandage Committee.
Alsager Work Party.
Altrincham and Dist. Supply Depdt.
Ambleside 16 V.A.D.
Annan Red Cross Work Party.
Anstruther Moss Picking Party.
Arnfleld W.H.S.D.
Arundel Assn.
Ascot W.H.S.D.
Ashby-de-la-Zouch Work Party.
Ayrshire County Assn.
Badger Heath W.H.S.D.
Bagnalstown Hosp. Supply Depdt.
Bala Branch French War Emergency Fund.
Balcaskie Work Party.
Ballyshannon Assn. for Voluntary Work.
Banbury W.H.S.D.
SS3
334
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Banbury Work Party.
Banff County Assn.
Bangor Parish Church Work Party.
Bangor Women's Patriotic Guild.
Bantry Dist. Assn.
Barnsley War League Depdt.
Barnstaple War Supply D6pdt.
Barrow-in-Fumess W.H.S.D.
Bath Abbey Work Party.
Bath Needlework Guild.
Bath Voluntary Workers' Assn.
Batley Assn.
Batley Sewing Guild.
Bawtry W.H.S.D.
Bayton Work Party.
Belfast W.H.S.D.
Bemerton Women's Social.
Berkhampstead W.H.S.D.
Berkshire Assn. of Voluntary Organisations.
Berkshire Branch B.R.C.S.
Berwick-on-Tweed Assn.
Bideford W.H.S.D.
Biggleswade Work Party.
Birkenhead Branch B.R.C.S.
Birkenhead W.H.S.D.
Birmingham Depdt.
Birmingham, Mrs. Davies' St. Matthew's School.
Bishop Auckland Women's Clothing Depdt.
Bishopstowe Work Party.
Bishop's Waltham-Swanmore Work Party.
Bletchley War Workrooms.
Blotham Red Cross Society.
Blundellsands Civic Service League.
Bolton War Supply Depdt.
Bonchurch, Mrs. Freeman's Work Party.
Bonerley Patriotic Fund.
Bootle W.H.S.D.
Bosbury War Work Party.
Boston Mayoress' Needlework Guild.
Boston W.H.S.D.
Bournemouth Assn.
Bournemouth Borough Needlework Assn.
Bournemouth Women's Emergency Corps.
Bournemouth W.H.S.D.
Bowden Wesleyan Red Cross Party.
Bramber and Beeding Knitting Guild.
Bramber and Steyning Club.
Brasted Red Cross Work Party.
Bray War Hospital Supply Depdt.
Bridgnorth Assn. of Voluntary Workers.
Bridport Work Party.
Brighton War Work Depdt.
Brighton New Road Work Party.
Bristol and Clifton W.H.S.D.
British Women's Work Party.
Bromley W.H.S.D.
Broomfield Depdt.
Broughty Ferry Branch Red Cross Society.
Broughty Ferry W.H.S.D.
Buckfastleigh Work Party.
Buckle W.H.S.D.
Bude W.H.S.D.
Bury St. Edmunds, Mrs. Bramley Firth W.H.S.D.
Bury St. Edmunds Red Cross.
Cabinteely W.H.S.D.
Cahir in Clogheen B.R.C.
California Overseas War Relief Needlework Guild.
Cambridge W.H.S.D.
Canada Women's Patriotic Cte.
Canadian Field Comforts Commn.
Cannock W.H.S.D.
Canterbury and Dist. War Work D6p6t.
Cardiff Sewing Party.
Carlisle and Dist. Women's League.
Carlow Assn.
Carlow Branch B.R.C.S.
Carnoustie Voluntary Assn.
Castlemorton Work Party.
Caterham League of Honour.
Charlton King's Voluntary Workers.
Chatham Borough Assn.
Chelmsford Depdt.
Cheltenham County and City of Gloucester Assn.
for Voluntary Organisations.
Cheltenham St. 'Hilda's College.
Cheltenham W.H.S.D.
Chesham Red Cross Work Party.
Chester, the Mayoress' Bureau.
Chew Magna Work Party.
Chichester W.H.S.D.
Chieveley Working Party.
Chili Allies Bandage Cte.
Chingford Ladies' Work Society.
Chipping Camden Red Cross Hosp.
Church Stretton W.H.S.D.
Churchdown Working Party.
Cirencester Work Party.
Clackmannan County Assn.
Clacton-on-sea War Work Depot.
Clare County Assn.
Clare County Needlework Guild.
Claygate Work Depdt.
Cleveland War Work Guild.
Clitheroe War Fund Committee.
Colchester W.H.S.D.
Colne Assn.
Colwyn Bay War Emergency Workrooms.
Conway W.H.S.D.
Corbridge Work Party.
Crediton Patriotic Work Party.
Croft Working Party.
Cumberland and Westmorland Assn.
Cupar and Dist. Voluntary Work Assn.
Curridge Work Party.
Dartford Women's Aid Society.
Dartmouth W.H.S.D.
Datchet W.H.S.D.
Denbighshire County Comforts Assn.
Derbyshire W.H.S.D.
Devonport W.H.S.D.
Dickleburgh Working Party.
Dorchester-Broadway Work Party.
Dorchester W.H.S.D.
Dorking W.H.S.D.
Dorset Guild of Workers.
Dover and Dist. War Work Depot.
Droitwich W.H.S.D.
Drumoness Women's Work Party.
Dublin — Irish War Hosp. Supply, Royal College
of Science Sub-Depdt.
Dumbartonshire V.A.D.
Dumfries and Maxwelltown Assn.
Dundee Women's War Relief Fund Cte.
Durham County Work Depdt.
Durham W.H.S.D.
Eastbourne Red Cross Work Party.
Eastbourne W.H.S.D.
East Cowes W.H.S.D.
East Grinstead Girl Guides.
East Grinstead War Work Assn., Ltd.
East Lothian Work D6pdt.
East of Scotland Branch F.W.E.F.
Edinburgh B.R.C.S.
Edinburgh W.H.S.D.
Elgin City War Workers' Assn.
Ellesmere War Needlework Guild.
Elstead Work Party.
Ely War Hosp. Supply Depdt.
Emsworth W.H.S.D.
Endmoor War Work Party.
Epping W.H.S.D.
Essex W.H.S.D.
Eton W.H.S.D.
Ewhurst Work Party.
Exeter Assn.
Exmouth Assn.
WAR HOSPITAL SUPPLY DEP6TS
335
Falmouth W.H.S.D.
Falmouth Studio W.H.S. Workrooms.
Fareham Assn.
Folkestone War Workers' Guild.
Ford Working Party.
Forfarshire-Monifieth Local Branch.
Fowey Women's Unionist Assn.
Freshwater W.H.S.D.
Frimley, Camberley, and Yorktown War Work
Depdt.
Frome W.H.S.D.
Fryerning Work Parties.
Fuller W.H.S.D.
Glasgow W.H.S.D.
Godalming W.W. Depdt.
Goldsithney and Dist. Red Cross Party.
Grantham," Adlercron Working Party.
Grantham Girls' Friendly Society.
Great Yarmouth W.H.S.D.
Grimsby W.H.S.D.
Guernsey Assn.
Guildford W.H.S.D.
Halifax Work Party.
Hambledon, Mrs. Clowes' Work Party.
Harrogate Assn.
Harrow W.H.S.D.
Hartley Wintney W.H.S.D.
Hatfield, North Mymms Work Party.
Haverfordwest W.H.S.D.
Haversham Work Party.
Haverthwaite Work Party.
Hayling W.W. Depdt.
Hendon W.W.R. Assn.
Hereford Red Cross Hosp. Depdt.
Herefordshire, Ross W.H.S.D.
Heme Bay Dist. Voluntary Assn.
Hertford Voluntary Workers' Assn.
Hessle Ladies W.W. Party.
Hexham W.H.S. and Clothing Dept.
Hildenborough Work Party.
Hindhead W.H.S.D.
Holme Work Party.
Holycross and Thurles Branch B.R.C.S.
Holyhead Church Guild.
Hongkong Branch Queen Mary's Needlework
Guild.
Horsham W.H.S.D.
Hounslow Women's Work Assn.
Hove Assn. of Voluntary Organisations.
Huddersfield Central Needlework Depdt.
Huddersfield Women'slCte. for Soldiers and Sailors.
Huntingdon County Assn.
Hurworth W.H.S.D.
Hylam W.H.S.D.
Ipplepen Women's Club.
Ipswich, The Mayoress' W.H.S.D.
Ipswich, Mrs. Millbank's Work Party.
Jersey First Town Work Party.
Jersey Hosp. Stores Depdt.
Kempsey W.H.S.D.
Keswick Work Party.
Kettering Urban Dist. Council Assn.
Kidderminster and Dist. Voluntary War Workers'
Assn.
Kingsbarns Work Party.
Kington Red Cross.
Kinross County Assn.
Kirkby Stephen, Church of Eng. Women's Help
Society.
Kirkcaldy Voluntary Workers' Assn.
Kirkcudbright Assn. of War Work Parties.
Lanark Moss Depdt.
Lanarkshire County Assn.
Lanarkshire War Work Party.
Lancashire County W.H.S.D.
Lancaster, Mrs. Bardsle/s Work Party.
Lancaster W.H.S.D.
Leamington W.H.S.D.
Leeds W.H.S.D.
Leeds, Lady Mayoress' Committee.
Leicester, Mayoress' Equipment Fund.
Leighton Buzzard W.H.S.D.
Lewes W.H.S.D.
Leyton Voluntary Work Organisation Committee.
Lichfield W.H.S.D.
Limerick City and County United Aid League.
Limpsfield W.H.S.D.
Lincolnshire Women Workers' Assn. and War
Hosp.
Liverpool Civic Service League.
Liverpool, David Lewis Club— Women's Section.
Liverpool Women's War Service Bureau.
Llangefini V.A. Assn.
Londonderry Ulster Sphagnum Moss Assn.
Londonderry W.H.S.D.
Loughborough W.H.S.D.
Loughton W.H.S.D.
Lowestoft W.H.S.D.
Lyme Regis W.H.S.D.
Lyme Regis Red Cross Workrooms.
Lymington Assn.
Lyneham Work Party.
Maidenhead Surgical Dressing Emergency Society.
Maidstone and Dist. Central War Work Assn.
Malmesbury W.W. Guild.
Malton, Lady Sykes' Red Cross Hosp.
Malvern Red Cross and Soldiers' Comforts.
Malvern Wells W.W.W. Assn.
Manchester W.H.S.D.
Market Harborough W.H.S.D.
Meath County Work Fund.
Menmuir Depdt.
Middlesborough Assn.
Midhurst, Woolbcding Work Party.
Midhurst W.H.S.D.
Minehead W.H.S.D.
Monmouth Assn.
Montrose War Dressings Depdt.
Moreton-in-Marsh W. Depdt.
Morley W.W.
Motherwell Assn.
Nairn W.H.S.D.
Newark Assn.
Newark Work Party.
Newbury and Dist. Voluntary Organisation.
Newlyn W.H.S.D.
New Milton Sphagnum Moss Depdt.
Newport Pagnell Work Party.
New South Wales, Babies' Kit Society.
New South Wales, French Australian League of
Help.
New York City British American War Relief Assn.
New York City British American War Relief Fund.
Northallerton County Work Depdt.
Northampton Central Workrooms.
Northants Assn. for Voluntary Workers.
North Berwick Assn. V.W.W.O.
Northumberland W.H.S.D.
Norwich W.H.S.D.
Nottingham Assn.
Nuneaton W.H.S.D.
Olton and Dist. Work Depdt.
Ongar W.H.S.D.
Otford W.H.S.D.
Oughtrington Working Party.
Oundle Central Workrooms.
Oxford County Assn.
Pembroke Branch B.R.C.S.
Penmaenmawr, Miss Kelsale's Work Party.
Penrith, Dawson-Scott Working Party.
Penzance W.H.S.D.
Perth W. Dressings Organisations.
Peterborough County D6pdt.
Peterborough-Northamptonshire Red Cross Cte.
Petworth, Mrs. Penrose's Work Party.
Petworth Vol. Workers.
336
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Petworth W.H.S.D.
Petworth War Relief Assn.
Pewsey, Mrs. Butter's Work Party.
Pillaton and St. Million Work Party.
Plymouth W.H.S.D.
Prestbury, Gloucester City and County Assn.
Preston, Queen Mary's Needlework Guild.
Prestwick Needlework Organisation.
Purley W.H.S.D.
Queenstown War Work Fund.
Radnorshire (Llandrindod Wells) Assn. for
Voluntary Work.
Reading W.H.S.D.
Reigate W.H.S.D.
Renfrewshire County Territorial Force Assn.
Rhuddlam W.H.S.D.
Richmond W.H.S.D.
Rochester Assn.
Rotherham and Dist. Soldiers' Comforts Assn.
Ryde W.H.S.D.
St. Andrews City Voluntary Work Assn.
St. Helen's W.H.S.D.
St. Helen's War Service Assn.
St. Ives W.H.S.D.
St. Ives Art Club Work Party.
St. Leonards-on-Sea Branch B.R.C.S.
Salisbury Needlework Guild.
Sanderstead W.H.S.D.
Sandwich W.H.S.D.
San Francisco British-American War Relief Fund.
Saxham W.H.S.D.
Saxmundham and Dist. War Hosp. Supply.
Scalby W.W. Society.
Scarborough Mayoress' Central Cte.
Scarborough W.H.S.D.
Scottish Branch B.R.C.S., Glasgow.
Sevenoaks W.H.S.D.
Sheffield A. and N. Assn.
Sheffield University Hosp. Supply Depdt.
Shrewsbury Mayoress' Committee.
Shropshire Vol. Aid Assn.
Sidcup W.H.S.D.
Sittingbourne Dist. W.H.S.D.
Sligo Town and County W.W. Assn.
Somerset Voluntary Help Assn.
South Brent W.N. Depdt.
South Molton Assn.
Southampton and Dist. Voluntary Clothing
Organisation.
Southborough W.H.S.D.
Southborough Work Party.
Southboume, Miss Lewis' Work Party.
Southend-on-sea W.H.S.D.
Southsea, Mrs. Slade Baker's Supply Dep&t.
Stafford Territorial Force Assn.
Stamford Needlework Guild.
Stevenage Red Cross Dep6t.
Stirling W.H.S.D.
Stirling V.A.D.
Stirlingshire Work D6p6t.
Stocksfleld W. Saving Party.
Stockton W.H.S.D.
Stoke d'Abernon Work Party.
Stone Work Party.
Stour Valley War Hosp.
Stourbridge Amalgamated Women's Work Com-
mittee.
Stratford-on-Avon Borough Public Service Com-
mittee.
Stratton Work Party.
Suffolk Branch B.R.C.S.
Suffolk (West) Borough Assn.
Sunderland Branch B.R.C.S.
Sunderland Roper Ladies.
Sundridge Work Party.
Sunningdale War Work.
Surbiton W.H.S.D.
Surgical Requisites Assn.
Sussex Branch B.R.C.S.
Sussex (Mid) Voluntary Work Organisation.
Sussex (Ringmir) War Aid Society.
Sussex W.H.S.D.
Sutton Coldfield Assn.
Sutton Emergency Com.
Sutton, St. Barnabas Band of Hope.
Sutton W.H.S.D.
Sutton Women's War Aid League.
Taunton W.H.S.D.
Teignmouth W.H.S.D.
Tewkesbury W.H.S.D.
Theydon Bois W.H.S.D.
Thombury Work Party.
Thorpe Bay Ladies' Hosp. Aid Assn.
Thrapstone V.W. Assn.
Tiverton Work Party.
Torquay City Assn.
Torquay W.H.S.D.
Totnes W.H.S.D.
Totteridge and Whetstone W.H.S.D.
Truro W.H.S.D.
Tullow W.H.S.D.
Tunbridge Wells W.H.S.D.
Upgate.
Wakefield Worn. W. League.
Wallasey Assn. of Voluntary Organisations.
Wallingford Benson Needlework Guild.
Wallingford W.H.S.D.
Wantage, Mrs. Adkin's Work Party.
Wantage Crutch Works.
Wargrave Hosp. Dressing Emergency Society.
Warwickshire W.H.S.D.
Waterford H.S.D.
Wavertree St. Mary's Guild.
Wellingborough, Mrs. Kitchin's Work Party.
Wem, Mrs. Stapleton Cotton's Work Party.
West Hartlepool Assn.
West Herts W.H.S.D.
Westbury on Frym W.H.S.D.
Westerham National Service Committee,
Weston-super-Mare Red Cross.
Wexford Voluntary Organisation.
Wexford W.H.S.D.
Weybridge W. DepAt.
Weymouth Women Workers' Guild.
Whitchurch (Bucks) District Assn.
Wicklow W.H.S.D.
Wimbledon Red Cross Aux.
Wimbledon War Workers' D6p6t.
Winchester Central Clothing D6pdt.
Winchester, Mrs. Gilbey's Work Party.
Winchester, Miss Toogood's Work Depot.
Windermere W.H.S.D.
Windsor War Work Party.
Windsor W.H.S.D.
Winsford War Relief.
Wisbech and Walsoken W.H.S.D.
Witham Red Cross Dep6t.
Wolverton, Mrs. Penny's Work Party.
Woodford Women's Lib. Assn.
Woodhall, Spa W.H.S.D.
Woolhampton Vol. Workers.
Worthing, St. George's Red Cross Guild.
Wrotham W.H.S.D.
Wye W.H.S.D.
Wylam Hosp. Supply and Clothing D6p6t.
Yelverton-Buckland Girls' Working Party.
Yelverton W.H.S.D.
Yeovil W.H.S.D.
Yorkshire County Work D6p6t.
Yorkshire North,, Riding Depot.
A LIST OF BRITISH SUBJECTS WHO ARE RECORDED
AS HAVING GONE ABROAD ON RED CROSS
AND KINDRED WAR-WORK FOR THE FRENCH
UP TO DECEMBER 31, 1917
Abbatt, C. B.
Abbott, Miss A.
Abbott, C. F. R.
Abbott, Miss E. M.
Abbott, Miss R. M.
Abbott, W. F.
Abbs, Miss E. A.
Abell, Miss L.
Abercrombie, Miss A. L.
Abinger, Lady.
Abraham, Mrs. R. E.
Abrahams, Miss E.
Abrahams, F.
Abrahams, H.
Abrahams, Miss M.
Absalom, J. K.
Ackroyd, Miss B.
Acland, Miss A. C. M.
Adam, Miss A. K. B.
Adam, Miss B. W.
Adam, Miss H.
Adam, Miss M. B.
Adams, Miss E. J.
Adams, F.
Adams, H.
Adams, Miss H.
Adams, Miss M. L.
Adamson, Miss Alice.
Adamson, Miss Annie.
Adamson, Mrs. E. K.
Adamson, Miss K. M. B.
Addie, Miss C.
Addie, Mrs. C. G.
Addison, E.
Ade, F. C.
Adeney, Miss M.
Adlercron, Miss A. G. M.
Adlercron, Mrs. H.
Adrain, Miss S. K.
Affleck, Miss E. M. T.
Agnew, Mrs. L. A.
Ainslie, Miss G. S.
Ainsworth, Miss F. E.
Airston, A. J.
Aitchison, G.
Aitken, Mrs. A.
Aitken, Mrs. E. R.
Aitken, Mrs. J. C.
Aitken, J. G.
Aitken, Miss M.
Aitken, R.
Aked, Miss O.
Albrecht, Mrs. L.
Albright, W. A.
Alcock, Miss A. T.
Alderton, F. W.
Aldham, M. S.
Alexander, Mr.
Alexander, Miss A.
Alexander, Dr. A. S.
Alexander, G. C.
Alexander, H. B.
Alexander, Miss J. I.
Alexander, Miss M.
Alexander, R. E.
Alexander, Miss R. F.
Alexander, V. W.
Alexander, Miss W. E. C.
Alford, Mrs. A. L.
Alford, E. J.
Alger, T.
Alington, C. E. A.
Allan, Miss A. J.
Allan, Miss D.
Allan, Miss D. K.
Allan, Miss M.
Allan, R. J.
Allan, Miss S.
Allardyce, Miss A. B.
Allchurch, Miss E.
Allen, Miss B.
Allen, Miss Charlotte M.
Allen, Miss Constance M.
Allen, Miss D.
Allen, Miss D. E. R.
Allen, D. K. P.
Allen, D. R.
Allen, Miss G. M. R.
Allen, Miss L.
Allen, Miss M.
Allen, Miss M. C.
Allen, Lady M. W.
Allen, R. C.
Allen, Mrs. R. E.
Allen, S.
Allen, S. P.
Allen, Miss W. M.
Alletson, L. G.
Allhusen, Mrs. D.
Allhusen, Miss G. A.
Allhusen, Miss M. E.
Allinson, Dr. B.
Allison, Miss C.
Allix, Miss L. M. H. de B.
Allom, Mrs. C. M.
Allott, J.
Allwood, S. G.
Almond, Miss C. E.
Alsop, H. F.
Alston, Miss M.
Alt, Miss P.
Altham, W. R.
Aman, Mrs. O. T.
Ambler, Miss M.
Ambler, Miss^S.
Ambrose, G.
Amcotts, Miss S.r,C.
Ames, A.
Amos, Mrs. K. I.
Amos, Miss M. B.
Amour, Miss M. H.
Anderson, Mrs.
Anderson, Miss A. D.
Anderson, Miss A. L.
Anderson, Miss A. M. ;
Anderson, Miss E. L.
Anderson, Mrs. E. M.
Anderson, Miss F. A.
Anderson, Miss G.
Anderson, Dr. G. C.
Anderson, Miss H.
Anderson, Mrs. H. A.*
Anderson, Miss I.
Anderson, James.
Anderson, Miss L. B.
Anderson, Mrs. L. B.
Anderson, Dr. L. Garrett-
Anderson, Miss M. E.
Anderson, Miss M. M.
Anderson, Miss M. T.
Anderson, Mrs. P. M.
Anderson, T. J.
Anderson, T. T.
Anderton, Miss F. E.
Andrew, Miss E. M.
Andrew, Miss J.
Andrewes, G. S.
Andrews, A.
Andrews, E. F.
Andrews, Miss E. F. 6.
Andrews, H. S.
Andrews, Miss S. M.
Angel, Miss S. M.
Anger, F. B.
Angstrom, Miss N. E.
Angus, Miss A. M.
Angus, Miss E.
Angus, L. M.
Annandale, Miss J. G.
Anson, Miss D. S.
Anson, Miss H. F.
Anstice, Miss F. E.
Anwyl, Miss M. A.
Applegarth, R. G.
Arbon, R. J.
Arbuthnot, Miss E. G. G.
Archbald, Mrs. E.
Archdale, Miss A.
Archer, Miss B. C.
Archer, Miss H. I.
Archer, Miss K. •
Archer, Miss M.
338
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Ardley, A. F.
Ardley, B.
Ardley, F. J.
Argles, Miss R. B.
Arifat, A. C. de L. d'.
Arkle, J. V., F.R.C.S.
Arkle, Mrs. M. A.
Armes, Miss M. J.
Armitage, Miss E. M.
Armitage, H. A.
Armitage, Miss H. R.
Armitage, J. W.
Armitage, N, H.
Armitstead, Mrs. K. H.
Armstrong, Miss A. B.
Armstrong, Miss B. R.
Armstrong, Miss C.
Armstrong, C. A.
Armstrong, F. E.
Armstrong, Miss G. E. Herbert-
Armstrong, Miss M. S.
Armstrong, R. A.
Arnold, Mr.
Arnold, G. J., F.R.C.S.
Arnold, Miss J.
Arnold, L. G.
Aronovitch, A.
Arthur, Miss B. E.
Arthur, Mrs. M. E.
Arundale, G. S.
Ascherson, Mrs. A. M.
Ashby, C. L.
Ashby, G. D.
Ashford, Miss.
Ashhurst, Miss G. M.
Ashley, Miss B. M.
Ashley, F.
Ashman, G. F.
Ashmore, Miss A. R.
Ashton, Miss C.
Ashton, Miss E. M.
Ashton, L. C.
Ash win, Miss R.
Ashworth, Miss R. H.
Askew, Mrs. A. J. de C.
Aspland, Graham, F.R.C.S.
Aspland, Mrs. G.
Astbury, Miss E. B.
Astbury, Miss M. K.
Aste, Mrs. A. C.
Astell, G. F.
Astley, J.
Atkey, Miss M.
Atkin, Miss A. Mi
Atkins, A.
Atkinson, Miss C.
Atkinson, Mrs. E. R. M.
Atkinson, G. B.
Atkinson, J. A.
Atkinson, Miss L.
Atkinson, Miss M.
Atkinson, Rev. W.
Attrill, A. J.
Auchinleck, Miss K. R. L.
Austen, H. P.
Austin, C.
Austin, Mrs. M. E.
Austin, S. A. V.
Aveling, Mrs. R. R.
Avery, Miss S.
Awmack, E.
B
Backhouse, G. D.
Bacon, Miss B. P.
Bacon, Miss I. F.
Bacon, Miss U. M. M.
Badcock, C. E.
Baddeley, Miss L. H.
Baerlein, H. P. B.
Bailey, The Hon. Mrs.
Bailey, F.
Bailey, Miss G. S.
Bailey, Mrs. I. N. G.
Bailey, Miss K.
Bailey, Miss M.
Bailey, Miss M. A.
Bailey, Miss M. E.
Baillie, Miss C. N.
Baillie, G. H.
Baillie, Miss M. de L.
Bailly, Miss M. G. Le.
Baily, Dr. E.
Baird, Lady C.
Baird, J.
Baker, A. R.
Baker, A. V.
Baker, C. J.
Baker, Miss E. M.
Baker, F.
Baker, Francis.
Baker, H. W.
Baker, I. J.
Baker, J. C.
Baker, J. H.
Baker, J. S.
Baker, Miss M. A.
Baker, Miss M. B.
Baker, Miss M. H.
Baker, Mrs. M. T.
Baker, P. J.
Baker, Miss R. A.
Baker, R. D.
Baker, S. D.
Baker, V. F.
Baker, W.
Balchin, W. J.
Baldwin, Miss H. M.
Baldwin, W. A.
Balfour, H.
Ball, Miss B. A.
Ball, P. W.
Ball, S. J.
Ballantine, Miss L.
Ballantine, Miss M.
Balmain, Miss D. J.
Bamforth, J. W.
Banfather, Mrs. A. E.
Banfield, Miss
Banister, Mrs. D. J.
Banister, Dr. J. B.
Banks, Miss A. B.
Banks, Miss I. D.
Banks, Miss M. D.
Banks, Mrs. M. T.
Banks, Mrs. W. H.
Bannon, B. D.
Bannon, R. B.
Barber, Mrs. E.
Barber, Miss E. A.
Barber, E. S.
Barbour, G. B.
Barbour, Miss I. E.
Barclay, Mrs. M. C.
Barclay, Miss R. E.
Barclay, Miss Yvonne.
Bardsley, Harry W.
Bardswell, Mrs. P. M.
Baring, The Hon. A. M.
Barkas, W. W.
Barker, C. R.
Barker, Miss E. M.
Barker, Miss M. J. H.
Barker, M. T.
Barkworth, J. E.
Barlee, Dr. H. J. W.
Barlow, Miss D.
Barnard, H.
Barnascone, Mrs. E. M.
Barnes, J. E.
Barnes, J. H.
Barnes, Miss L.
Barnett, Miss A. L.
Barnett, C.
Barnett, J.
Barnett, Miss M. G.
Barnett, Miss M. M.
Barnewall, Miss A. T.
Barney, Miss E. M.
Barnwell, Miss A.
Barr, Miss K. M.
Barr, W.
Barratt, Miss D. Layland.
Barratt, M.
Barratt, T. F.
Barret, Miss A.
Barrett, Mrs. A. E.
Barrett, A. G.
Barrett, Miss M. Y.
Barrett, W. F.
Barringer, L.
Barrington, Col. Sir C.
Barrington, Lieut. J. B.
Barris, Dr. J. D.
Barrow, R. M.
Barrs, Miss J. K.
Barry, Lt.-Col. A. J.
Barry, The Hon. Mrs. F. M.
Barry, Mrs. M. M. J.
Barry, Miss R. T.
Barter, Miss E. M.
Barter, G. F.
Bartlett, Miss C. G.
Bartlett, H. A.
Bartlett, R. A.
Bartley, Miss M. A.
Barton, B. H.
Barton, C. S.
Barton, C. W.
Barton, Mrs. E. D.
Barton, Dr. G. D.
Barton, Mrs. G. E.
Barton, Miss J. K.
Barton, Dr. P. F.
Bartram, Miss L. M.
Barugh, Miss S. M.
Barwick, Miss P. N. G.
Barwise, Miss A.
Basebe, J. B.
Bashford, P.
Basley, A.
Basnett, Miss I. C.
Basnett, Miss M. C.
Bass, W. M.
Bassenger, C. E.
Bassenger, W. F.
Bassett, Miss E. B.
Bassett, Mrs. F. J.
Basson, G. J.
Batchelor, Miss E.
Batchelor, Miss E. M.
Bateman, Mrs. A. G.
Bateman, Miss M. A. R.
Bathe, Sir H. G. de.
Batt, J.
Batten, Miss A. M.
Batten, Mrs. M. E. B.
Battenberg, H.R.H. Princess
Louise of.
Batterham, D. J.
Batton, Miss M. E. B.
Battrick, E.
Baughan, Miss M. R.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 339
Bawlf, Miss J. H.
Baxendale, Mrs. C.
Baxter, A.
Baxter, Miss E. M.
Baxter, W. E. E.
Bayfield, Miss M.
Bayldon, Mrs. D. A.
Bayles, G.
Bayley, Capt. Sir Dennis.
Bayley, E. L.
Bayley, F. E.
Bayley, Miss M. M. S.
Bayliss, V. S.
Bayne, Miss E.
Bays, W. H.
Bazely, C. H. B.
Beacon, C. W.
Beal, C. J.
Beal, N. W.
Beal, T. B.
Beale, A. W.
Bean, A. R.
Bean, Miss E. M.
Beard, Lieut. J.
Beard, Miss M. S.
Beard, Miss S. R.
Beath, Miss E.
Beattie, Mrs. M.
Beatty, A. P.
Beatty, H.
Beauchamp, Miss A. F.
Beauchamp, Miss I. M.
Beauchamp, Dr. S.
Beaumont, Miss F. C.
Beaumont, Miss G.
Beaumont, Miss N. A.
Beausire, Miss W. A.
Beaven, Miss G.
Beckett, Miss G. E. M.
Beckton, Miss A. B. H.
Bedingfeld, F. N.
Bedwell, Miss C.
Beeby, A. J.
Beech, Miss M.
Beer, F. T.
Beere, T. H.
Beeston, Miss F. G.
Begg, Miss A.
Begg, F. C.
Begg, Miss L.
Behrens, A. G.
Belabre, Miss D. de
Belgrave, Miss V.
Bell, A.
Bell, Miss A. M. Bainbridge
Bell, Miss B. S.
Bell, Miss C. A.
Bell, C. L.
Bell, Mrs. Ellen.
Bell, E. D.
Bell, Miss E. E. N.
Bell, Miss E. J. A.
Bell, E. P.
Bell, Miss G. E. G.
Bell, Miss H. D. H.
Bell, Mrs. L. Lynden-.
Bell, Miss M. A.
Bell, Miss M. L.
Bell, N. H.
Bell, R. J.
Bell, S. A.
Bell, W.
Bell, W. L. Lynden-.
Bellairs, Miss A. F.
Bellasis, Miss A. M. H.
Bellasis, Miss M. M.
Belleroche, Mrs. M. de.
Bellew, Miss I. C.
Bellows, Miss H.
Bellows, Miss K.
Bendall, A. C.
Bendall, Miss H. A.
Bendall, T. B.
Benest, E. E.
Bengough, Miss E. R.
Beningneld, Miss V. N.
Benington, H.
Benjamin, A. W.
Benjamin, Miss E.
Benjamin, L. J.
Benjamin, Miss M.
Bennett, A. C.
Bennett, Miss A. L.
Bennett, Miss E. F.
Bennett, F. W.
Bennett, H. E.
Bennett, J.
Bennett, J. H., F.R.C.S.
Bennett, J. T.
Bennett, Miss L.
Bennett, Miss M. J. L.
Bennett, R. C.
Bennett, W. C.
Benson, Miss A. E.
Benson, Sir F.
Benson, Lady G. C.
Benson, L. E.
Benson, Miss M. A.
Bentham, Miss B.
Bentinck, Lady.
Bentinck, Miss L. J. C.
Bentley, B. A.
Bentley, H. J.
Benton, Miss C. H.
Beresford, Admiral Lord C.
Beresford, Miss R. R.
Bernard, Miss C.
Berridge, Miss J. M.
Berry, E. J. P.
Berry, Miss J. A.
Berry, Miss Margaret.
Berry, Miss M.
Berry, Mrs. M. B.
Bertie, Lady M. F.
Bertin, P. J.
Bertram, A.
Bertram, Miss E.
Bertram, Miss P.
Bertrand, Miss M. R.
Best, G. A.
Beswick, Miss E. M. G.
Beswick, Miss I. M. L.
Bethell, Miss J.
Bevan, Dr. A.
Bevan, Dr. I.
Bevan, Dr. J. O.
Bevan, Miss L. M.
Bevington, Dr. E. F.
Bevington, G.
Bevis, Miss A.
Bevis, Mrs. A. G.
Beynon, Miss B. M.
Bianconi, Miss M. O'C.
Bibby, E. E.
Bibby, Miss I. F.
Bibby, J. R.
Bibby, T.
Bibby, W. A.
Bickersteth, Miss C. M.
Bidder, Mrs. B. M. P.
Biddies, Miss L. G.
Biddulph, Miss J.
Bidgood, Miss E. T.
Bidgood, Miss I. S.
Biggs, Miss K. I.
Bigland, R. A.
Billups, Dr. H. B.
Bilton, J.E.
Bingham, Hon. Mrs. A. E.
Bingham, Miss A. I.
Bingham, Miss B.
Bingham, Miss B. E. K.
Bingham, E.
Bingham, Miss E. C. A.
Bingham, Miss N. A.
Binks, H.
Binnie, A.
Binnie, H.
Binning, Mrs. D. A.
Binns, H. G.
Binyon, D. H.
Binyon, Laurence.
Bird, A. E.
Bird, C. H. W.
Bird, Harold R.
Bird, Hugh R.
Bird, W. J.
Birdwood, Miss L. J.
Birkbeck, Miss I.
Birkett, T.
Birkin, Miss E. L.
Birks, Mr.
Birks, Miss B. C.
Birks, Miss C. E.
Birley, Miss E. M.
Birrell, F. L.
Bishop, Miss E. L.
Bishop, Mrs. G. M. B.
Bishop, T.
Bisset, Miss J. D.
Bizat, H.
Bizat, L. P.
Black, Miss A. C,
Black, A. J.
Black, Miss E.
Black, Miss I. J.
Black, Mrs. Jane.
Black, Mrs. M. E. D.
Black, Norman
Black, R.
Black, R. M'C.
Black, Rev. W. B.
Biackader, Miss D. M. M.
Blackburn, Mrs. L.
Blackburn, L. C.
Blacker, Miss W. E. B.
Blackett, Dr. J. F.
Blackford, E. J.
Blackley, A. D.
Blackley, Mrs. D. A.
Blackwell, Mrs. K. J. G.
Blackwood, Lady H.
Blaine, Miss S. C.
Blake, A. M'T.
Blake, Miss A. Y.
Blake, Dr. L. B. Aldrich-.
Blake, Miss R. M. F.
Blakesley, F. E.
Blarney, Miss R.
Blampied, Miss A.
Blampied, Miss M. le Q.
Bland, Miss E. M.
Bland, O. T.
Blane, Miss M. E. S.
Blatch, H.
Blay, J.
Bleakley, Miss L. E.
Bleek, Miss D.
Blelloch, D. H.
Bles, Miss C. H.
Bless, Mrs. M. E. H. de.
Blight, W. A.
Bliss, Miss J. R.
Blond, Mrs. E. Le.
34°
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Blood, Miss M. Lloyd-.
Blow, T. B.
Bloxham, A.
Blundell, W.
Blunt, A. C.
Blythe, Hon. M.
Boag, Miss E.
Boddell, Miss M. C.
Boddy, P. J.
Boden, G.
Boden, R. S.
Boggie, W. J.
Boggis, F. W.
Bokenham, C, R.
Bolger, Dr. P. T.
Bollam, E. S.
Bolt, G. F.
Bolton, Miss A. M.
Bolton, A. T.
Bolton, Miss L. F.
Bolton, Miss M.
Bolton, S.
Bond, Mrs. E. S.
Bond, Miss R. M.
Bone, W.
Boness, Miss C. C.
Bonner, Miss H. D.
Bonsor, Miss A. D.
Booker, C. F.
Booker, Miss E. J. V.
Boosey, Miss A. E.
Boot, Miss M.
Booth, Miss E. M.
Booth, Miss M.
Booth, Miss M. A.
Booth, Miss S. Blakeney-.
Boothman, J. N.
Borradaile, Miss V.
Borthwick, Miss E. M. H.
Borthwick, Miss H.
Borthwick, J. M.
Borwick, Miss D.
Bosanquet, Miss E. S.
Bosbury, G,
Boston, E. J.
Bottomley, Mrs. M. F.
Bottone, A. E. R.
Bottrill, Miss E. M.
Boulter, Miss E. G.
Boulton, C. L.
Boulton, D. H.
Boulton, Miss E.
Boulton, Miss E. N.
Boulty, A. T.
Bourbel, Miss C. O. R. de.
Bouibel, R. de.
Bourke, Mrs. E. M. P.
Bourke, Miss O. M.
Bourne, Mrs. L. P.
Bousfleld, R.
Boustred, C. E.
Boutillier, S. J. D. le.
Boutle, Miss E. M.
Bouverie, Miss K. H.D. Pleydell.
Bovey, Miss C. M.
Bowden, C.
Bowden, Miss E.
Bowe, Miss P.
Bowen, Mrs. I. A.
Bowen, Miss L.
Bower, J.
Bower, J. H.
Bower, Miss K.
Bowhay, A.
Bowker, O.
Bowler, Miss K. L.
Bowles, Mrs. M. J.
Bowley, R. E.
Bowling, Miss M.
Bowlker, Mrs. F. M.
Bowman, J. A. H.
Bowman, K. J.
Bowry, J. T.
Bowser, A. E.
Box, H. T.
Boxwell, Miss G. M.
Boyce, Dr. C.
Boys, Miss A. F.
Bracey, F.
Bracher, F. A.
Brackenbury, H. S.
Bradbury, E. V.
Brad dick, I.
Bradford, Miss K. M.
Bradley, A. P.
Bradley, A. S.
Bradley, D.
Bradley, D. H.
Bradley, Miss M. D.
Bradney, Miss N.
Bradshaw, Mrs. F. M.
Bradshaw, Miss M.
Bradshaw, S. W.
Brady, E. R.
Brady, J. P.
Brailsford, Miss D.
Brailsford, Mrs. R. L.
Brain, J. A.
Bramell, J. J.
Bramley, Miss A.
Branch, Miss N.
Brand, Mrs. A. B.
Bransby, H.
Branson, N. L.
Branston, Miss E. E.
Branston, R.
Brant, A. M.
Brass, Miss C. I.
Braund, A. E.
Braund, G. H.
Bray, C. T. B.
Bray, Miss
Bray, Miss L. E.
Brazier, H. B.
Breakey, C. C.
Breakey, Mrs. L. E.
Brend, Dr. W. A.
Bresland, Miss S. J.
Breton, Miss E.
Brett, Mrs. M. E.
Brewer, Miss A. E.
Brewis, H.
Brewster, Miss J. F.
Bricknell, A.
Bride, Mrs. C. A.
Bridge, Miss A.
Bridle, E.
Brierley, S.
Briggs, D. B.
Briggs, Miss M. H.
Bright, A. W.
Briming, Mrs. D.
Brimson, Miss N.
Brimstin, Miss C. M.
Briscoe, Miss E. W.
Briscoe, Miss H.
Bristow, H. G.
Bristow, H. W.
Broad, Miss E. G.
Broadbent, Mrs. L. F.
Broadbury, Miss G.
Broadhead, J. E.
Broadhead, J. G.
Broadhead, W. C.
Broadley, J. W.
Broadley, Miss K. N.
Brock, Miss E. L.
Brockbank, Miss A.
Brockbank, W.
Brockie, Miss M.
Brodie, Miss M. F. V.
Brodrick, Hon. Mrs. L.
Brodrick, Miss M.
Broe, Miss V. de.
Bromley, Miss E.
Brook, R.
Brooke, Miss B. J.
Brooke, Miss C. I.
Brooke, Miss D.
Brooke, N. F.
Brooker, Miss E.
Brooks, A. B.
Brooks, D. C. M.
Brooks, N. E.
Brooks, Mrs. R. O.
Brooksbank, P. A.
Broom, Miss C.
Broome, Miss E.
Broster, Miss D. K.
Broster, Miss G.
Broughton, Miss R. L. D.
Brown, A.
Brown, Miss A.
Brown, Miss A. H.
Brown, A. H. G.
Brown, Miss A. J.
Brown, Miss A. M.
Brown, A. M.
Brown, Mrs. B.
Brown, C. A.
Brown, C. R.
Brown, C. V.
Brown, Mrs. E.
Brown, Miss E.
Brown, E. D.
Brown, Miss E. M.
Brown, Mrs. E.
Brown, F. A.
Brown, Miss F. E.
Brown, G. L.
Brown, H.
Brown, Miss H. A.
Brown, H. T.
Brown, H. W.
Brown, Miss I. G.
Brown, J.
Brown, Mrs. J. M.
Brown, Miss J. S.
Brown, J. W.
Brown, L. W.
Brown, Miss M.
Brown, Miss Margaret.
Brown, Miss Mary.
Brown, Miss M. A.
Brown, Miss M. E.
Brown, Miss M. G.
Brown, Miss M. K.
Brown, Miss M. S.
Brown, Miss M. W.
Brown, Mrs. N. F. J.
Brown, O. P.
Brown, R. S.
Brown, R. V.
Brown, Miss W.
Brown, W. N.
Browne, Miss C. E.
Browne, C. E.
Browne, H.
Browne, Dr. J. A.
Browne, L. G.
Browne, Mrs. M.
Browne, Mrs. W. S.
Browning, A. H.
Browning, Mrs. E. M.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 341
Brownlow, Miss R.
Brownrigg, Miss H.
Bruce, Miss D.
Bruce, Miss F.
Bruce, Mrs. I. J. O.
Bruce, Miss J. M.
Bruce, Miss L. H. M.
Bruce, Miss M.
Bruce, Miss M. D.
Bruce, W. D.
Brune, Miss E. Prideaux.
Brunner, Miss B. A.
Brunning, Miss A. L.
Bryan, Miss A. G.
Bryan, Miss M.
Bryant, Miss.
Bryant, Miss E. G. M.
Bryant, H. J.
Bryce, Miss R.
Bryden, W. S.
Bryer, H. C.
Bubb, W. H.
Buchan, Miss C.
Buchanan, Miss E.
Buchanan, G. A.
Buchanan, L. C.
Buchanan, M. T.
Buck, G. H.
Buckle, E. V.
Buckley, Miss G. L.
Buckley, H.
Buckley, H. L.
Buckley, Mrs. S.
Buckmaster, W. S.
Bucknall, B. C.
Bucknall, H. M.
Bucknall, Miss M. B.
Bucknall, S. L.
Bucknill, Miss M. S. F.
Buckton, Mrs. M. C.
Buckton, Rev. T. F.
Buckworth, C. N.
Bull, Miss E. A.
Bullen, Miss M.
Bulley, Miss K.
Bulley, Miss M. H.
Bullivant, E.
Bullock, Miss M. E.
Bullock, Miss Maud E.
Bunch, Miss J.
Bundock, A. J.
Bunting, H. F.
Burden, E. R.
Burden, Mrs. H. S.
Burdett, Mrs. M.
Burford, Miss E. M.
Burgess, J.
Burgess, Miss M.
Burgess, W. A.
Burgess, W. H.
Burke, Mrs. A. M.
Burke, Miss H.
Burke, Miss K. A. M.
Burke, M.
Burke, Miss M.
Burke, Miss M. D.
Burkitt, Miss M. E. D.
Burn, Mrs. E.
Burn, Miss F.
Burn, J. R. G.
Bumage, H.
Burnand, Miss M.
Burne, R. H.
Burnett, A. D. G.
Burnett, E. de B.
Burnett, J. A.
Burnett, Miss M. E.
Burns, R. H.
Burr, Miss A. M.
Burr, Miss F. L.
Burrage, R. E. W.
Burrell, D. H. W.
Burrell, Miss O. M.
Burrows, Miss E.
Burrows, G. L.
Burrows, Miss K. L.
Burt, Miss A. M.
Burt, Miss de Burgh.
Burt, Miss E. M.
Burt, Mrs. G. A.
Burt, Miss H. M.
Burt, Mrs. J. C.
Burt, Miss M. A.
Burt, Miss W.
Burton, D. S. G.
Burton, F.
Burton, Miss F. E. M.
Burton J.
Burton, J. C.
Burtt, E. G.
Burtt, G. E.
Burtt, H. F.
Burtt, H. H.
Burtt, Miss M. G.
Burtt, P. A.
Burtt, T.
Bury, Miss E. M.
Bury, Mrs. G. L.
Bury, L.
Bury, Miss M.
Bury, S. B.
Bushby, C. H.
Busby, O. R.
Buse, Miss M. A.
Bush, Miss E. E.
Bush, Miss I. E.
Bush, Miss M. E.
Bush, Mrs. M. S.
Bushell, Miss S. D.
Bussell, Miss E. M.
Butcher, Mrs. M.
Butcher, Miss M. B.
Butcher, Miss M. K.
Butcher, Miss.
Butler, Dr. E. F.
Butler, F. W. R.
Butler, H. W.
Butler, J. N.
Butler, Miss M. A.
Butler, Miss Maud A.
Butler, Mr.
Butler, Miss.
Butler, P. J.
Butler, W. H.
Butt, Miss F. A.
Butter, A. E.
Butter, Dr. M. D.
Buxton, Mrs. E. M.
Buxton, Miss T.
Byam, Miss C. L.
Byng, Miss A. V.
Byres, Mrs. V. M.
Cadbury, L. J.
Cadbury, Miss M.
Cadbury, P. S.
Caddick, Miss A. H.
Cadell, Miss K. J.
Cadell, Miss M. M'C.
Cadoux, C. J.
Caird, Miss E.
Caird, J. T.
Cairnie, J.
Cairns, Miss J. A.
Callanan, Miss F. S.
Calland, E. F.
Callaway, C. A.
Callen, W. W.
Callender, Miss M. M.
Callingham, Miss R. M.
Calpin, G. H.
Calthrop, Commander D. C.
Calthrop, Miss M. C.
Calvert, Miss B. C.
Calvert, Miss M. G.
Calwell, Miss M.
Cameron, H. S.
Cameron, J.
Cameron, Miss M. M.
Cameron, Miss N. M'N.
Camm, Miss E. S.
Campbell, Miss A. H. M.
Campbell, Mrs. C.
Campbell, Miss C. E.
Campbell, Miss E.
Campbell, Miss F. M.
Campbell, Mrs. G. S.
Campbell, Miss Joan.
Campbell, Miss J. M'G.
Campbell, Miss Mary
Campbell, Miss M. H.
Campbell, Miss M. S.
Campbell, Miss O. M.
Campion, S. H.
Cancellor, Miss E. M.
Candelatt, W.
Candish, W.
Cane, Miss F. du.
Cane, Miss Isabel C. L. du.
Canning, Miss H. E.
Cannon, Miss S. A.
Capper, Miss M. C.
Capron, Mrs. N. M.
Capstick, J. W.
Card, Miss A.
Cardew, S. R.
Cardwell, S. O.
Carew, Miss B.
Carew, Miss I. E.
Carey, Miss C. I.
Carey, Miss D. F.
Carey, H. L.
Carey, Miss V. E.
Carless, W. J.
Carlile, E.
Carlisle, Miss M. H. M-
Carlyon, Miss A. M. M.
Carmichael, Miss L. H.
Carmichael, Miss M.
Carnegie, D. F.
Carpenter, Miss M. D.
Carr, C. O. G.
Carr, E. W.
Carr, F. C.
Carr, J. S.
Carr, L.
Carr, R. S.
Carr, W. R.
Carr, W. T.
Carrabine, J.
Carrick, Miss W. E.
Carrodus, G. W.
Carrodus, J. T.
Carrow, G. E.
Carruthers, R. B.
Carsley, S. H.
Carsley, W. F.
Carson, Dr. H. W.
Carson, Mrs. M.
Carstairs, Mrs. A. E.
Carswell, Miss C. O.
Carswell, Miss K.
342
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Carter, Miss A.
Chavasse, Miss F. G. R.
Clarke, Mrs. E. M.
Carter, Miss E. A.
Chawkley, Miss H. M.
Clarke, Miss H. D.
Carter, Miss E. H. S.
Cheatle, Dr. C. T.
Clarke, J. H.
Carter, Mrs. E. M.
Cheetham, G.
Clarke, K. B.
Carter, H.
Cheetham, Miss M. G.
Clarke, K. M.
Carter, H. B.
Cheffins, C. P. E.
Clarke, L. J.
Carter, H. F.
Cheney, H. L.
Clarke, Miss M. C.
Carter, Miss J. M.
Chennell, H.
Clarke, R. E.
Carter, Miss K.
Cherrill, Mrs. F.
Clarke, S.
Carter, Miss M. L.
Cherriman, Miss E. E.
Clarke, S. A.
Carter, R. C.
Cherry, H. W.
Clarke, T. C.
Carter, W. R., F.R.C.S.
Cherry, M. T.
Clarke, Mrs. V.
Cartier, W.
Chesney, Miss L. M.
Clarke, W. E.
Cary, Miss K.
Chester, R. C.
Clarkson, W. H.
Casas, J. C. Las.
Chesterman, A. de M.
Clay, F. .
Cashmore, Miss D. M.
Chesterman, P. G.
Clay, Mrs. M. K. Bertie-.
Cashmore, Miss H.
Chesterman, Miss W. E.
Clay, S. R.
Cass, Miss B.
Chetwynd, Miss M. E.
Cleary, Sister A.
Cassel, J.
Chew, Miss A. M.
Clease, A. G. D.
Cassels, Miss M. C.
Chichester, Miss O. O'M.
Cleave, Miss M. G.
Castell, Mrs. R.
Childers, Miss D. M.
Cleburne, Miss E. A.
Castle, I.
Childs, A. T.
Cleeves, C. E.
Castle, M.
Chilton, Miss S. E.
Clegg, Miss A. W.
Catchpool, E. St.
Chin, H. E. A.
Clegg, Miss S. A.
Catchpool, T. C. P.
Chipman, Miss L.
Cleland, Mrs. N. H.
Cater, A. Parker-.
Chippindall, Mrs. A. H. Q.
Clements, J.
Cathcart, Miss F. M.
Chisholm, Miss F. E.
Clements, L. J.
Cathcart, Miss L. A.
Chisholm, Miss M. L. C. G.
Clements, Miss M. G.
Catley, Miss H.
Chisholm, R. C.
Clements, N. C.
Caton, Miss F. M.
Chivers, C. H.
Clements, R. J.
Cattell, Sister B.
Chi vers, W.
Clemes, A. W.
Cattell, Miss C. L.
Cholmeley, H. S.
Clemesha, Miss M. E.
Caudwell, H.
Cholmeley, Miss M. G.
Clerk, Miss F. E.
Caulfield, Mrs. A.
Cholmeley, N. G.
Clery, A. A. A.
Caux, F. P. de.
Cholmondeley, H. A.
Cleveland, Sister C.
Cave, C. J. P.
Christian, Mrs. E. M. K.
Clibborn, A. A. B.
Cave, Miss E.
Christie, Mrs. E. B.
Clibborn, A. S.
Cavenie, Miss S. M'D.
Christie, Miss E. R.
Clifford, Miss E. K.
Cawood, Miss B. M.
Christie, Miss M.
Clifford, Mrs. L. M.
Chadwick, Miss D.
Christie, P. H.
Clifford, Miss M. C.
Chad wick, Mrs. J. D.
Christie, Mrs. W. T.
Clifford, Miss M. M.
Chaffee, Miss E. M.
Chrystall, Miss D.
Clifton, Miss A. K. Snow
Chalk, A.
Chubb, T. J.
Clifton, Miss F.
Chalkley, H. J.
Church, H. W.
Clough, Miss A.
Challiner, C. S.
Churcher, R. A.
Clough, H.
Challiner, E.
Churchill, Miss A. J.
Clough, Miss M.
Challis, T. H.
Churchill, Miss B. S.
Clough, Miss M. M.
Chalmers, Miss A. B.
Churchill, Miss E. C. P.
Clow, M. P.
Chamberlain, Miss D.
Churchward, J. W.
Clowe, J.
Chambers, Miss B. E.
Churchward, Miss U. E. G.
Clymo, Mrs. A.
Chambers, Miss E. V.
Churton, C. G.
Coates, A. I.
Chambers, Miss W.
Claggett, Miss F.
Coates, Mrs. E. R.
Chamney, E. C.
Clapham, P. A.
Coates, Miss F. M.
Champion, Miss D. A.
Clare, Miss A.
Cobb, Miss E. C.
Chandler, A.
Clare, Miss C. Leigh.
Cobb, Mrs. E. R.
Channer, Miss D. de R.
Claridge, A.
Cobb, Miss V.
Chant, E. D. T.
Claridge, G. 0.
Cobb, W. H.
Chaplin, Mrs. E. D.
Clark, Miss A.
Cobbald, Miss E. J.
Chaplin, Miss M. E.
Clark, A. R.
Cobbold, Mrs. E. F.
Chapman, Mrs. B. E.
Clark, C.
Cobbold, Miss G.
Chapman, Miss E.
Clark, Miss E. C.
Cochrane, Miss J. H. D.
Chapman, G. A.
Clark, E. C.
Cochrane, K. D.
Chapman, Rev. H. B.
Clark, F. A.
Cochrane, Miss M. E.
Chapman, J. H.
Clark, G. W. E.
Cochrane, R. D.
Chapman, Miss M.
Clark, H. B.
Cochrane, W. P.
Chappell, Mrs. E. A.
Clark, H. E.
Cocking, Miss M. K.
Chappell, G. J.
Clark, H. G.
Cogan, H. B.
Charlson, E.
Clark, Miss H. M. B.
Coggs, J. W.
Charlton, Miss B. A. M.
Clark, H. M. G.
Colborne, The Hon. F.
Charlton, O.
Clark, Miss I. M. B.
Colbourne, Mrs. F. M.
Charman, G. E.
Clark, J.
Colclough, A.
Charnaud, Miss D. E.
Clark, J. P.
Cole, Miss J.
Charnley, R.
Clark, M. A. A.
Cole, Miss B. A.
Chart, Miss A.
Clark, M. Gordon
Cole, C. H.
Charteris, Mrs. E. A. M.
Clark, Miss M. T. G.
Cole, Miss F.
Chatham, Miss E.
Clark, S. E.
Cole, F. G.
Chattin, Miss G.
Clark, W. E.
Cole, Mrs. L. W.
Chavasse, Miss E. M. R.
Clark, Major W. L. Lyon-.
Cole, Miss R.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 343
Cole, S.
Cole, S. W.
Colebrook, Mrs. D. S.
Colebrook, Miss M. B.
Coleman, Mrs. E.
Coleman, H.
Coleman, Miss M. K.
Colenso, Miss A. M. C.
Colles, C.
Collet, Mrs. E. E.
Colley, K. L.
Collier, D. W.
Collingridge, Miss C. M.
Collings, A.
Collings, B. S.
Collins, Miss A. A.
Collins, Miss C.
Collins, Mrs. C.
Collins, Miss D. Edwards-
Collins, H.
Collins, Mrs. K. F.
Collins, M.
Collins, P. F.
Collinson, F. J.
Collomb, G. W.
Collum, Miss V. C.
Colson, W.
Coltart, Miss G.
Colville, Miss M. R.
Colwell, Miss G. B.
Comber, Miss W. M.
Comerford, Miss J.
Compton, R. H.
Comyn, Mrs. H.
Condi, Miss S.
Condon, Mrs. M. J.
Condon, Miss R. E. G.
Congdon, C. J.
Congreve, Lady C. H. D.
Conley, Miss M.
Connah, Miss S. H.
Connell, Miss M.
Connelly, Miss E.
Conran, Miss N. M.
Constable, E. A.
Contamin, L.
Conway, Sister B. A.
Cook, A. J.
Cook, Mrs. E.
Cook, Miss E. M.
Cook, G.
Cook, Miss J.
Cook, J. B.
Cook, J. G.
Cook, Miss M. A.
Cooke, Miss A. C.
Cooke, Miss B. H.
Cooke, F. H.
Cooke, Miss F. M. F.
Cooke, J.
Cooke, Miss T. M.
Cooke, V. G. W.
Coombs, J.
Cooney, Mrs. M. E.
Coope, R.
Cooper, Miss A. G.
Cooper, E.
Cooper, Miss E.
Cooper, Miss E.
Cooper, G.
Cooper, Miss G.
Cooper, H. F.
Cooper, N. C.
Cooper, Miss V.
Cooper, V. H. L.
Cooper, W. L.
Coote, C.
Cope, H. R., F.R.C.S.
Copeland, R. R. J.
Copp, L. W.
Coppen, J. M. C. H.
Coppin, Miss D. E.
Corbett, Miss A.
Corbett, C. H., F.R.C.S.
Corbett, Miss G. L.
Corbett, Miss E. C.
Corbett, Miss H.
Corbett, Miss K. M. J.
Corbett, Miss R. A.
Corcoran, Miss K.
Corcoran, Miss N.
Corder, S.
Cordey, Trooper L. C.
Cork, W. J.
Corke, B. S.
Comer, Miss H.
Comisb, Miss M. W.
Cortould, Miss E.
Cory, I.
Cossens, Miss A.
Cotes, V. G. S.
Cotter, I. F.
Cotterell, A. N.
Cotterell, B. H.
Cotterell, G. S.
Cotterell, W. H.
Cottom, R.
Cotton, R. H., F.R.C.S.
Cottrell, F. S.
Cottrell, H.
Cottrell, W. G.
Cottrill, Miss C.
Coulin, Miss M. E.
Coull, J. C.
Coulson, Miss J.
Coulthard, Miss C.
Coulthard, Mrs. E.
Coulthard, Miss M. G.
Counter, A. W.
Couplands, Miss M. M.
Court, A. H.
Courtauld, Miss E.
Courteen, Miss N.
Cousin, Miss J. M.
Cousins, C. H.
Cousins, Mrs. F. E.
Cousins, Miss M. M.
Cowan, Miss G.
Cowan, Mrs. H.
Coward, Miss I.
Cowbum, Miss L.
Cowdell, Miss E. F.
Cowdell, N. F.
Cowell, C.
Cowell, Miss N.
Cowie, J. P.
Cowles, A. S.
Cowles, Miss E. S.
Cowles, S. E. W.
Cowley, A. E.
Cox, Mrs. A.
Cox, A. B., F.R.C.S.
Cox, Miss D. R.
Cox, E. E. E.
Cox, H.
Cox, J. R.
Cox, Miss K.
Cox, Miss L. K. N.
Cox, Miss M.
Cox, Miss M. E.
Cox, Mrs. M. J.
Cox, Miss O. M.
Cox, S.
Cox, T. C.
Cox, W. A. S., M.D.
Cox, W. L., F.R.C.S.
Cox, Dr. W. Laird-.
Coxe, Miss R.
Crabb, Miss E. M.
Crabb, Miss H. P.
Crabb, Mrs. M. M.
Crabb, Miss P. R.
Crack, L. C.
Crackenthorpe, Mrs. I.
Crackston, Miss A. E.
Cracroft, Miss G.
Craddock, A. E. B.
Craig, Miss A.
Craig, Miss C. G.
Craig, Miss E. M.
Craig, Miss H. F.
Craig, Miss N. M.
Craig, Miss R. M.
Craig, Miss S. M.
Craig, Miss W. Jennings-.
Cranage, Miss L. M.
Craniord, Miss E. K.
Craven, Mrs. C. P.
Crawford, Miss M.
Crawford, Miss R.
Crawley, J.
Crawshaw, P. H.
Crawshay, R. O.
Crean, F. S.
Cree, Miss E.
Creighton, F. E.
Cresswell, Mrs. I. B.
Cresswell, J. C.
Cresswell, Miss M. D.
Cresswell, Miss M. L.
Creswell, Miss M. G.
Creveld, Miss V. L.
Crewdson, W.
Crighton, Miss L. B.
Crisfield, Mrs. M. R.
Crisp, F. L.
Crisp, G. T.
Crisp, W. F.
Critchley, A. W.
Croager, Miss E. G.
Crockett, Miss A. L.
Croft, Miss W.
Crofts, Miss G. Grove-.
Crommelin, Miss N. W.
Crompton, Miss G.
Crook, Miss A. E.
Crook, Miss M. B.
Crookenden, Miss M.
Cropper, Dr. J.
Crosfield, Miss G.
Crosland, Mrs. L. E.
Cross, Mrs. A. M.
Cross, Miss E. M.
Cross, Miss H. C.
Cross, Miss J. E.
Cross, Miss K. M.
Cross, K. M. B.
Cross, Miss M.
Cross, Miss R. M.
Cross, W. H.
Crosse. Miss K. M.
Crossfield, Miss N. E.
Crossley, Mrs. E.
Crossley, Miss E.
Crossley, F.
Croucher, Dr. A. H.
Crow, T. L.
Crowe, Miss M. J.
Crowhurst, H. G.
Crowther, P. D.
Crozier, Miss L. E.
Cruickshank, Mrs. H. M.
Cruickshank, Miss J. S.
Crysler, Miss F.
344
Cubitt, Miss E. L.
Cubitt, Miss M. D.
Cuffe, H. G.
Culling, Mrs. E. H. V. S.
Cullis, Miss H. A.
Cullis, Miss M. A.
Culross, Miss J. F.
Culross, Miss M.
Cumberland, S.
Cumberlege, F. C. R.
Cumming, Miss J.
Cummings, Miss Hi A.
Cunlifie, Mrs.
Cunliffe, Miss E.
Cunlifie, Miss M. E.
Cunningham, Miss A.
Cunningham, Mrs. B. E. E.
Cunningham, Miss B. M.
Cunningham, Miss C. I.
Cunningham, W.
Cunninghame, Miss N.
Cunnington, Mrs. N. W.
Cunnison, J.
Curnock, D. R.
Currie, A. N.
Currie, Miss B. M.
Currie, Miss C. R.
Curry, A.
Curtis, Miss E. H.
Curtis, H. W.
Curtis, Mrs. L. S.
Cuthbert, Mrs. A. B.
Cuthbert, Miss G.
Cuthbert, Dr. H.
Cuthbert, Miss M.
Cuthbertson, J. H.
Cuthbertson, W. W.
Cutter, Miss E.
d'Abernon, Lady H. V.
Dabney, H.
Dadswell, F. G.
Daglisb, W. A.
Dahl, Mrs. E. M.
Dakin, Dr. W. R.
Dale, Miss.
Dale, Mrs. A. E.
Dale, H.
Dalglish, Miss E. N.
Dalrymple, Miss M. A.
Dalrymple, Lady M. L.
Daly, Miss A.
Dalyell, Miss E. J.
Dana, Miss J. P.
Dancocks, Miss H. G. L.
Dane, G. D.
Dangar, C. H.
Daniel, Miss B.
Daniel, Miss I. F.
Daniel, Miss O.
Daniels, D. W.
Dann, T. D.
Dann, R.
Dansey, Miss M. E.
Darby, H. B.
Darby, T. E.
Darbyshire, J. W.
Darley, Miss E. A.
Darley, Mrs. L.
Darling, Miss A. M.
Darling, Dr. T. N.
Darrock, J. R. S.
Darwin, Miss R. F.
Dashwood, C. E. B.
Daunt, Miss M. L. D. O'N.
Davenport, J.
Davenport, Miss M. W.
Dean, G. H.
Davey, E. A.
Deane, B. F.
Davey, L. J.
Dear, Dr. D. P.
Davey, Mrs. M.
Dearden, H.
Davey, M.
Dease, A. J.
Davidson, Miss E.
Death, J.
Davidson, Miss F.
Debenham, Miss E.
Davidson, Miss F. J.
Debenham, F. J.
Davidson, H. M'G. M.
Deedes, Miss M. C.
Davidson, J.
Deinstadt, Miss H. L.
Davidson, Miss L.
Delft, C. van.
Davidson, Mrs. L. A.
Delius, MissB C.
Davidson, Miss M.
Dell, Miss F. F.
Davidson, Miss M. C.
Dell, M. 0.
Davidson, Lady T.
Dempster, Miss E. M.
Davidson, W. R.
Denbigh, Miss D.
Davies, Miss A. E.
Denham, A. H.
Davies
Miss A. M.
Denham, Miss E. R.
Davies
B.
Denham, T.
Davies
Mrs. E. B.
Denman, Miss D.
Davies
Miss E. D.
Deuman, Miss E. K.
Davies
Mrs. E. D. H.
Denney, Miss H.
Davies
Miss E. H.
Denning, Miss F. M. V
Davies
E. H.
Denny, Miss J. G.
Davies
F. E. S.
Denny, Miss M.
Davies
G.
Dent, Miss S. M.
Davies
G. E.
Denys, Miss M. S.
Davies
H. G.
Depuis, H. F.
Davies
H. R.
Deny, Miss N. M.
Davies
J. M. E.
D'Evelyn, Miss M. E.
Davies
J. R.
Devereux, L. W.
Davies
Miss K. M. G.
Devitt, R. T.
Davies
M.
Dewar, C. D.
Davies
Miss M.
Dewar, Miss F.
Davies
Miss M. H.
Dewar, Miss M. L.
Davies
Miss M. L.
Dewar, Miss M. S.
Davies
Miss M. S.
Dewhurst, Miss M.
Davies
Mrs. S. H.
Dewson, Miss G. E.
Davies
S.J.
Dick, Mrs. C. C.
Davies
S. W.
Dick, Miss D. L.
Davies
T.J.
Dick, Major W. F.
Davies
W. R.
Dickenson, C. J.
Davis, Miss C. B.
Dickenson, W. E.
Davis, Mrs. C. F.
Dickie, Miss J.
Davis, Miss D. M.
Dickinson, A. E.
Davis, Miss E. H.
Dickinson, J. T.
Davis, Miss J. M.
Dickinson, Miss M.
Davis, L. C.
Dickinson, Miss M. E.
Davis, Miss M.
Dickinson, S. H.
Davis, N. S.
Dicksee, Miss E. M.
Davis, Mrs. R.
Dickson, Miss A. E.
Davis, T.
Dickson, Miss C.
Davison, Miss C. M.
Dickson, Mrs. E. H.
Davy, C. B.
Dickson, Miss H. K.
Davy, Miss G.
Dickson, Miss I.
Dawbarn, Miss M. A. W.
Dickson, Miss J. R.
Dawdrey, J.
Digby, Miss E. O.
Dawes, A. H.
Digby, Miss M.
Dawkins, T. F.
Diggett, E. W.
Dawnay, The Hon. F.
Dillon, Miss K. N.
Dawnay, Miss L. M.
Dimsdale, T.
Daws, R.
Dineley, Mrs. E. M.
Dawson, D. T. K.
Dingle, C. F.
Dawson, Miss E.
Dingle, Miss C. M.
Dawson, Miss E. M.
Dingwall, Miss C.
Dawson, Miss I.
Dinsdale, H. W.
Dawson, J.
Disney, Miss CM.
Day, Miss B.
Dix, J. W. H.
Day, Miss E. M.
Dixon, Mrs. A. M.
Day, J. B.
Dixon, Miss D. C. D.
Day, Dr. J. R.
Dixon, F. H.
Day, J. R.
Dixon, Miss F. K.
Day, Miss P. I.
Dixon, Miss H. R.
Day, Miss S. R.
Dixon, Miss I.
Day, T. W.
Dixon, Mrs. I.
Daye, Miss R. V. G.
Dixon, Miss K.
Deakin, B.
Dixon, Miss L. F. D.
Deakin
Miss E.
Dixon R.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 345
Dixon, S. M.
Dobson, Miss A. M.
Dobson, W. E.
Dobson, W. H.
Dodd, A. J.
Dodd, E. E.
Dodd, Mrs. E. M.
Dodd, Miss M. H.
Dodds, Miss I. M.
Dodgshun, E. J.
Doherty, Miss E.
Doig, Miss M. B.
Dolling, Mrs. A. V. R.
Donajowska, Miss B. d'A.
Donaldson, Miss M. E.
Done, J. T.
Donelly, Miss E.
Donisthorpe, Miss F. E.
Donley, Miss E. B.
Donnell, Miss L. J.
Donnan, Miss V. I. C.
Dorrington, Miss L. Colis,
Dottridge, Miss S.
Douch, N. E.
Douglas, Miss G. M.
Douglas, J. M.
Douglas, Miss M. H.
Douglas, W. F.
Douglass, G. A.
Dove, R. T.
Dow, Miss I. P.
Dowling, Miss R. M.
Down, E. E.
Down, Miss M. E.
Downer, A. C.
Downes, C. N.
Downes, Miss G. F. P.
Downie, Miss I. C.
Downie, Miss J. R.
Dowson, Major P. S.
Doxford, Miss W.
Dracopoli, J. C.
Drakard, Miss M.
Draper, J.
Drew, Miss M. N.
Drillien, Miss B. M. A.
Druce, Miss M.
Drummond, Miss B.
Drummond, Miss J. M'K.
Drury, C. E.
Dryden, S.
Drysdale, A. H.
Drysdale, H. H.
Drysdale, P. D.
Dube, L. T.
Dubois, E. A.
Dubourg, Mrs. C. M.
Dubs, R. A.
Dudley, Miss P. G.
Duff, Miss J. C.
Duff, Miss M. N.
Duffin, Miss M. R.
Duffy, Miss D. E.
Dufour, A. P. D.
Dugdale, Miss A. R.
Dugdale, Miss S. E. K.
Duguid, J. B.
Duguid, Miss M. P.
Duke, B. M.
Duke, Miss E. B.
Duke, H. M.
Dulley, H. A.
Dunbar, Miss E. G.
Duncan, Miss C.
Duncan, Miss E. D.
Duncan, Miss E. R.
Duncan, Miss I.
Duncan, R. T.
Dunkerley, O.
Dunlop, A. H.
Dunlop, D. C.
Dunlop, Miss M.
Dunlop, Miss S. K. S.
Dunn, A.
Dunn, J.
Dunn, J. D.
Dunn, J. P. S.
Dunn, Miss J. R.
Dunn, Miss I-.
Dunn, Miss L. M.
Dunn, Miss M.
Dunne, Miss K. P.
Dunne, Miss M.
Dunne, Miss K. Plunkett-
Dunne, R. E.
Dunning, E. W.
Dunning, H.
Dunning, Miss M. S.
Dunsford, F. B.
Dunstan, M. E. G.
Durance, H. A.
Durant, J. G.
Durant, Miss M. G.
Durdy, F. T.
Durell, W.
Durie, Miss A.
Durman, S. J.
Durn, A.
Dumford, Miss B. E.
Durr, Miss F.
Durst, Miss M. R.
Dutson, W. J. F.
Duvey, G. H.
Dyer, C.
Dyer, Miss K. V. T.
Dyke, I. H.
Dyke, Miss S. L.
Dykes, Miss M. E.
Dymant, A. R.
Dyne, H. M.
Dyne, W. B.
Dysart, J. G.
Dyson, P. E.
Eade, C. A.
Eade, J.
Eade, J.
Eadie, Miss E. P.
Eadie, Miss F.
Eadie, Miss M. A.
Eadie, Miss M. W.
Eagle, Miss M. J.
Earle, Mrs. G. D.
Earle, Miss I. C.
Earp, J. R.
Earwaker, Miss J.
East, R.
Eastham, Mrs. A.
Eastwood, H. M.
Eastwood, Miss I. F.
Eaton, Miss M.
Eaton R.
Eckersley, H.
Eckersley, S. B.
Eddington, A. J.
Eddis, E. U.
Eddison, Miss F. E.
Edgar, Miss E.
Edgar, Miss M. M.
Edgecombe, Miss E. A.
Edgelow, Miss H. H.
Edmonds, A. C.
Edmonds, B. E.
Edmonds, H. L.
Edmonds, Miss K. M.
Edmonds, P. A.
Edmonds, Miss R. V.
Edmondson, H. H.
Edmunds, Mrs. M. D.
Edwards, Miss A.
Edwards, A. G.
Edwards, A. M. P.
Edwards, Mrs. E. G.
Edwards, Dr. E. H.
Edwards, Miss E. M.
Edwards, Miss E. M.
Edwards, Mrs. E. R.
Edwards, F.
Edwards, F. W. E.
Edwards, G. C.
Edwards, H.
Edwards, Miss H. S.
Edwards, Miss J.
Edwards, Miss M. M.
Edwards, Mrs. M. R.
Edwards, Miss S. M.
Edwards, Y.
Egar, Miss Edith.
Egar, Miss Evelyn.
Egerton, Miss B. S.
Egerton, Major C. F.
Egerton, Mrs. M.
Eldridge, E. A. D.
Elford, F. H.
Eliott, Mrs. A.
Eliott, A.
Eliott, D.
Eliott, Mrs. H.
Elkington, G. A. C.
Elkins, C. G.
Ellett, B. W.
Elliot, Mrs. C. A.
Elliot, Miss I.
Elliot, Miss I. A.
Elliot, Miss J. S.
Elliot, Miss R. M. H.
Elliot, Miss S. E.
Elliott, Miss C.
Elliott, C. A.
Elliott, F.
Elliott, Miss M.
Elliot*, Sister M.
Elliott, R.
Ellis, Miss C. M.
Ellis, Miss D. M. B.
Ellis, E.
Ellis, E. A.
EUis, E. T.
Ellis, E. W.
EUis, G. H.
EUis, J.
EUis, J. E.
ElUs, Miss M. B.
EUis, Miss M. Q.
EUis, T.
Ellison, Miss G.
Elmer, C. A.
Elsee, H.
Elsey, Miss M. J.
Elsley, H. J.
Eltringham, H. C.
Elwes, Miss M. S.
Elwes, Miss V.
El wood, H.
Emerson, Miss H. M.
Emery, H.
Emery, Miss M. K.
Emmott, The Hon. D.
Emptage, H. J.
Emslie, Dr. IsabeUa.
Emson, E.
England, N. B.
34 6
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
English, A.
English, Miss E. D.
English, Miss E. H.
English, G. F.
English, H.
English, J. M.
Engstromer, Miss S. C.
Enock, G.
Enticknap, Miss E. A.
Entwistle, A.
Entwistle, Miss S. E.
Eppstein, J. C. N.
Erlanger, Baron E. B. d',
Ellington, G.
Erskine, Miss J. H. G.
Erskine, Mrs. M. B.
Esson, Miss M. B.
Estcourt, Miss E. H. S.
Etches, Miss C. M. N.
Ethelston, Miss D. E.
Etheridge, F. L.
Etherton, Miss E. E.
Evans, Miss A.
Evans, Miss A. B.
Evans, Miss C. F.
Evans, C. H. Middleton-.
Evans, Miss C. P.
Evans, Miss E. G.
Evans, Miss E. J.
Evans, Miss F. J.
Evans, Miss F. M. H.
Evans, H.
Evans, L. V.
Evans, M.
Evans, Miss M.
Evans, Miss M. H.
Evans, R.
Evans, Mrs. S. L.
Evans, W. J.
Everett, J. G.
Everitt, E. A.
Everingham, Miss W. L.
Evill, L. H.
Ewart, Miss M. J.
Ewing, Mrs E. Orr-.
Ewing, Mrs. L.
Excell, Mrs. D. A.
Eyres, H. C. A.
Fabey, Mrs. C. C.
Fagan, Mrs. C. F.
Fagan, Miss J. M.
Fagan, Miss M. J.
Fair, M. R.
Fairbairn, W.
Fairbourn, F.
Fairbourne, E.
Fairlie, Miss M.
Fairweather, F. K.
Falkner, Miss I. N.
Falla, F. G. M.
Fanning, Miss A.
Fanning, Mrs. Burton.
Fardon, Dr. A. H.
Fardon, H. J.
Farindon, H. L.
Farmer, S. N.
Farmer, W. J.
Farmery, A.
Farquharson, Miss J.
Fair, Miss V. E.
Farr, Miss W. M.
Farran, Dr. G. E.
Farrar, Mrs. A. M.
Farrar, Dr. R.
Farrell, F. G.
Farrell, J.
Farrell, J. W.
Faulder, Miss E.
Faulkner, Angus.
Faulkner, Miss A. M.
Faulkner, Miss F. E.
Faux, E. P.
Fawcett, Mrs. A.
Fawcitt, Miss C. M.
Fawcitt, Mrs. M.
Fawcus, Mrs. D. A.
Fear, E.
Fegge, Miss E. M. C.
Fell, T. E.
Fellowes, Miss I.
Fenn, B. S.
Fenton, H.
Fenton, H.
Fenwick, Miss A. M.
Fenwick, Dr. C.
Fenwick, C. H.
Fenwick, Miss C. M.
Fenwick, Mrs. E.
Fenwick, Mrs. E. G.
Fenwick, Miss H.
Ferguson, Miss A. I.
Ferguson, Miss E.
Ferguson, Miss J. M.
Ferguson, Miss M.
Fergusson, Miss E.
Fergusson, Miss E. A.
Fernihough, Mrs. R.
Ferte, Miss B. M. J. de la.
Feugard, H. W.
Ffolkes, Mrs. E. L. P.
Fidler, G. E.
Field, H. A. M.
Field, Miss M. D.
Field, Mrs. M. I.
Field, T.
Fifield, W. F.
Figgis, Miss E. M.
Figgis, Miss M. A.
Finch, Miss C. G.
Finch, H. K.
Finch, Mrs. J. M.
Finch, Miss L. E.
Finch, Miss M.
Finch, V.
Findlay, Miss C. M.
Finlay, Miss C. M.
Finlay, Miss S. T.
Fish, R. C.
Fisher, Miss C. M.
Fisher, E. M. P.
Fisher, Miss G. A.
Fisher, H.
Fisher, H. J.
Fisher, Miss S. E.
Fish wick, J.
Fison, Miss M. L.
FitzClarence, Miss A.
FitzGerald, G. P.
FitzGerald, J. F. V.
FitzGerald, Miss K.
Fitzjohn, Miss L.
FitzPatrick, R.
Fitz-Simons, Miss M. L.
FitzWilliams, Dr. G. H. L.
Flack, H. G.
Flanagan, Miss E.
Flanagan, J.
Flanders, Miss E. M.
Flanders, G. C.
Flanigan, Miss E.
Fleet, Miss J. D.
Fleet, Mrs. M. H.
Fleming, Miss J. F.
Fletcher, Miss A. M.
Fletcher, B.
Fletcher, Mrs. E. J.
Fletcher, Miss E. M.
Fletcher, Mrs. F. du P.
Fletcher, Miss G. H.
Fletcher, Lieut. N.
Flett, Miss I. H.
Flint, Miss N. K.
Flower, Miss A. I.
Flowitt, W.
Foan, Miss L.
Fogerty, Miss E.
Foggo.Miss E. M. C.
Fogwell, R. G. G.
Foley, Mrs. C. M.
Foley, Miss V., M.B., B.S.
Follows, Miss A. B.
Folwell, W. H.
Foot, Miss H. R.
Forbes, Miss E.
Forbes, Miss E. B.
Forbes, Mrs. F. E.
Forbes, Miss F. M.
Forbes, J. A.
Forbes, Mrs. J. R.
Ford, C. E.
Ford, Miss C. G.
Ford, Miss E. M. L. M.
Ford, Mrs. F. S. Napier.
Ford, G. L.
Ford, Miss H. F.
Ford, Miss I. J. Napier.
Ford, Miss M. C. N.
Ford, Mrs. M. J. M.
Ford, Miss M. R.
Fordham, M. E.
Forrest, Mrs. A. E. F.
Forrest, G. V.
Forrest, Miss K.
Forsdyke, G. F.
Forster, Miss D.
Forster, Miss M.
Forsyth, Miss G. B.
Forsyth, J. A. Cairns, F.R.C.S.
Foster, B. H.
Foster, Miss E. K.
Foster, H. L.
Foster, Miss H. M.
Foster, Miss L. A.
Foster, L. W.
Foster, Miss M.
Foster, Sister M. E.
Foster, Miss P. M.
Foster, Miss V.
Fotheringham, Miss M. T.
Foulds, E. J.
Foulds, R. P.
Foulds, S.
Fountain, F.
Fowler, Miss A. L.
Fowler, E. D.
Fowler, H. E.
Fowler, Miss M. S.
Fowler, Miss R. E.
Fox, Miss A.
Fox, Dr. C. Iris.
Fox, Miss D. E.
Fox, E. B.
Fox, Miss E. M.
Fox, F.
Fox, Miss F. G.
Fox, Dr. G. R.
Fox, G. R.
Fox, H.
Fox, Miss H. A.
Fox, J. P.
Fox, L. H.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 347
Fox, Miss M.
Fox, Miss N.
Fox, Miss S. F. M.
Fox, Miss V. G.
Frakes, R. H. C.
Frances, Miss D.
Francis, B. R.
Francis, D. E.
Francis, Miss L.
Francis, P.
Francis, Miss P.
Frankland, Miss K. M. C.
Franklin, E. W.
Franklin, G. M. E.
Franklin, Miss J. L.
Fraser, Miss A. R.
Fraser, Miss E. S. J.
Fraser, F. B.
Fraser, Miss G. D.
Fraser, Miss H. G.
Fraser, Miss J.
Fraser, J. M.
Fraser, Miss K.
Fraser, Miss L.
Fraser, Miss P.
Freeland, Miss E.
Freeman, F. W.
Freeman, Miss M. E.
Freer, Miss H.
Freer, Miss K, F. C.
French, Mrs. L.
Frere, J. E., F.R.C.S.
Freshfield, Miss E.
Freshfield, Miss M. K.
Friend, Miss B.
Friend, L. de.
Friend, Miss S.
Frith, Miss E.
Frith, E. A.
Frith, F. E.
Fritz, J. M.
Frogley, Miss F. M.
Frogley, Miss L. H.
Fromont, M. L. J.
Frost, A. W.
Frost, Miss D. M. F.
Frost, Miss E. W.
Frost, F. J. H.
Fry, A. R.
Fry, C. E.
Fry, Mrs. E.
Fry, Miss E. A.
Fry, Mrs. F. A. B.
Fry, J. N. P.
Fry, Miss M. A.
Fry, Miss M. A. B.
Fry, Miss P.
Fry, Miss S. M.
Fryer, A. H. E.
Fryer, C. F.
Fryer, J. B.
Fulford, Miss C. L. M.
Fuller, Miss A. W.
Fuller, H.
Fullwood, J. H.
Furber, F. W.
Furber, J. O.
Furlonger, Mrs. M. F.
Furse, Miss A. A. A. P.
Fyson, Miss M.
Gadsby, S. O.
Gaffikm, R. M.
Gage, H. C.
Galbraith, Miss C. E.
Gale, E.
Gale, Miss M.
Gale, W.
Gallagher, Mrs. L.
Gallimore, Mrs. E. M. B.
Gallop, Miss M. A.
Gallwey, Miss G. Payne-.
Gallwey, Miss D. Payne-.
Galston, A.
Galsworthy, Mrs. A.
Galsworthy, J.
Gait, Miss M. G.
Galton, Miss K. C.
Galvin, H. D.
Gamble, E. T.
Gammon, W. A.
Gam well, Miss A. M.
Gamwell, Miss J. M.
Gandin, Miss C.
Gandy, Miss M. H.
Gane, C. E.
Gardiner, Miss A. E.
Gardiner, Miss D.
Gardiner, Miss F. A.
Gardiner, L. F.
Gardiner, Mrs. P. M.
Gardner, A. W.
Gardner, Mrs. B.
Gardner, Miss E. M.
Garforth, Mrs. C. M.
Gargan, Miss A. M.
Garland, Miss E.
Garman, Mrs. C. M.
Garman, Mrs. E.
Garner, Miss B. S.
Gamer, O. W.
Garnett, C.
Garnett, D.
Garnett, W.
Garrard, Mrs. E. M.
Garratt, A. A.
Garrett, Dr. P. G.
Garstang, J.
Garstang, Mrs. M. L.
Garstin, Miss M. D. A.
Gartland, Miss E.
Garwood, A. W.
Garwood, R. T.
Gatty, Rev. E. P.
Gaudin, Miss C.
Gaunt, Miss I. H.
Gaunt, T. W.
Gavin, Miss E. C.
Gavin, Mrs. M. J.
Gawith, S. H.
Gawn, A. W.
Gay, Miss V. M.
Gayner, W. H.
Gazdan, Dr. Gertrude.
Geale, A.
Geddes, A.
Gedge, Rev. H. T. S.
Geekie, Miss M. M.
Geering, W. T.
Gefeall, Mrs. A. M.
Geldard, Miss E.
Gemmill, Miss M. E.
Genders, C. H.
Genders, J. A.
Gent, F. C.
Gent, Miss L. M.
George, Miss B. R.
George, E.
George, W. H.
Gerard, Miss L. A.
German, B.
Gibb, R.
Gibbes, Miss H. M.
Gibbings, Mrs. A. G.
i Gibbins, F.
Gibbins, Miss M. E.
Gibbon, H.
Gibbons, Miss D. B.
Gibbons, Miss G.
Gibbons, J.
Gibbons, Miss M. E.
Gibbs, A.
Gibbs, C. H.
Gibbs, C. S.
Gibbs, W. R.
Gibson, Mrs. A. de F.
Gibson, Miss B.
Gibson, C.
Gibson, Miss E.
Gibson, Hon. E. G. M.
Gibson, H.
Gibson, Dr. Kathleen.
Gibson, L. M.
Gibson, Miss M.
Gibson, Miss S. J.
Gidley, R. D.
Gilbanks, Miss L. A.
Gilbert, H. U.
Gilbert, L. H.
Gilchrist, Miss E. L.
Gilchrist, Miss M. M.
Gilderdale, H. A.
Giles, A. E., M.D., F.R.C.S.
Giles, Miss E. A.
Giles, Miss L. B.
Giles, Mrs. M. H.
Giles, Dr. W. B.
Gill, E. L.
Gill, Miss H.
Gill, Miss H. M.
Gill, H. R.
Gill, J. A.
Gill, T. E.
Gill, W. P.
Gillespie, Dr. E.
Gillespie, Miss M. E. W.
Gillett, G.
Gillett, Dr. H. T.
Gillibrand, T. P.
Gillies, R. G., M.D.
Gilling, G.
Gillispie, E., F.R.C.S.
GiUman, F. C.
Gilmore, Miss E. J.
Gilmour, Mrs. E. F.
Gilmour, Miss H. F.
Gilmour, Miss M. C.
Gilmour, Mrs. R. D.
Gilpin, C. J.
Gilpin, E. M.
Ginner, E. W., F.R.C.S.
Gissing, A. C.
Gladstone, the Viscountess.
Gladstone, the Viscount.
Gladstone, Miss E.
Gladstone, Mrs. I.
Gladstone. Mrs. M. E.
Glancy, Miss C.
Glass, Miss J. M.
Glasse, E.
Gleadow, Miss C.
Gleave, Miss M.
Glegg, Miss H. E.
Glenn, Mrs. de.
Glenn, W. de.
Gleichen, Countess H.
Glossop, Miss B. M.
Glover, J. H.
Glynn, W. M.
Goad, H. E.
Godby, Miss M. V.
Goddard, Miss A.
Goddard, Miss A. E.
34 8
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Goddard, C. V.
Goddard, E.
Goddard, Miss G. F. F.
Goddard, J.
Godden, E. W.
Godderis, Miss R.
Godfrey, Miss A. B.
Godfrey, Sir J., M.B., CM.
Godfrey, Mrs. M. A.
Godwin, Miss M.
Gofton, Miss H.
Goldie, Miss M.
Golding, Miss B.
Goldsmid, Mrs. M. L.
Goldsmith, Miss A. A.
Goldsmith, A. R.
Gomme, Mrs. P. K.
Gooch, Miss E. M. E.
Good, Dr. J. W.
Good, Mrs. L. M. A.
Goodall, Mrs. E.
Goodall, Miss E.
Goodall, Dr. E. W.
Goodall, L. J. C.
Goodall, P. D.
Goodall, W.
Goodbody, D.
Goodbody, J. E.
Goodbourn, G. T.
Gooddy, R. W.
Goodfellow, Mrs. E. E.
Goodwill, J. J.
Goodwin, Miss D. M.
Goodwin, Miss H. E. F.
Goodwin, J. G.
Goodwin, J. H.
Goodwin, Miss S. M.
Goody, E., L.R.C.S.
Gordon, Miss A.
Gordon, Miss A. M.
Gordon, Mrs. H.
Gordon, Miss I. W.
Gordon, Miss J. P.
Gordon, Sister M.
Gordon, Miss M. Conway-.
Gordon, Miss M. L.
Gordon, Miss O. M.
Gordon, Rev. P. L.
Gordon, T. L.
Gormall, W.
Gorman, Mrs. C. M.
Gorman, Mrs. E. G.
Gomall, W.
Gorst, Miss E. R.
Goss, F.
Goss, R.
Gossage, R. H.
Gotelee, Miss E.
Gough, B.
Gould, Miss A. C. M. T.
Gould, Mrs. C.
Gould, T. R.
Govette, T. R.
Gow, Miss E. C.
Gowan, Miss F. D.
Gowan, Miss F. W.
Gower, E. I. ,
Gower, Lady R. M. Leveson-.
Grace, E. G.
Grace, Miss F. E.
Grace, R. H.
Gradwell, R. L.
Graham, Miss B. H.
Graham, Miss E.
Graham, Dr. F. M.
Graham, J. I.
Graham, Mrs. L. Grier-.
Graham, Miss N. E.
Graham, Miss S.
Graham, T. B.
Graham, T. C.
Graham, W. M.
Grahame, Miss M.
Grainger, S.
Grandage, Miss K.
Grange, Miss K.
Grant, F. M. S.
Grant, Miss L. M.
Grant, Mrs. M. F.
Grant. Miss M. I.
Grant) R. H.
Grattan, Miss L. T.
Gravely, C. H.
Graves, F. W. B.
Graveson, Miss H. H.
Gray, A.
Gray, Miss A. F.
Gray, C.
Gray, D.
Gray, The Hon. E. E.
Gray, Miss E. G.
Gray, H. D.
Gray, Miss H. B. M.
Gray, H. W.
Gray, H. W. S.
Gray, J. H.
Gray, Miss M. A.
Gray, Miss M. S.
Gray, Miss O.
Gray, Mrs. R. B. Wingate.
Gray, Mrs. R. E. D.
Gray, Mrs. S.
Grayeson, A. W.
Grayson, L.
Greame, Y. Lloyd-.
Greatorex, T. H.
Greaves, A.
Greaves-Elmsall, Mrs. L.
Greaves, Sister M. L.
Greaves, Miss N. M.
Green, Miss B. P.
Green, C. de B.
Green, Miss C. I.
Green, G. C.
Green, Miss H. M.
Green, Miss I. S. S.
Green, K. H.
Green, L. G.
Green, Mrs. M. H. G.
Green, Miss.
Green, Mrs.
Green, Miss S.
Green, W.
Greenbank, J. A.
Greene, B. V.
Greene, Mrs. I. M.
Greene, Miss M. J.
Greene, Mrs. M. L.
Greene, Miss N. E. C.
Greene, R. S.
Greene, W. A.
Greenfield, Miss K.
Greengrass, H. W.
Greenhalgh, I. A.
Greenhalgh, J.
Greenhalgh, W. H.
Grecnham, L.
Greenland, Miss C. E.
Greenough, F. G. M.
Greenway, Miss E. G.
Greeves, Miss A. K.
Greeves, John.
Greeves, T. M.
Greeves, W. E.
Greg, W. W.
Gregoire, Miss J.
Gregory, G.
Gregory, H. E.
Gregory, H. I.
Gregory, Sister M.
Gregory, W. S.
Greig, Miss A. R.
Greig, Miss A. R. H.
Greig, J. B.
Grenside, Miss W. E.
Gretton, Miss A. F.
Grew, E. G.
Grey, Miss M. G.
Grey, W. A. S.
Grice, Miss C. E.
Grier, A. E.
Grier, A. H.
Grieve, A. H.
Grifien, C. F.
Griffin, B. C.
Griffin. Miss D. M.
Griffin, Miss G.
Griffin, Miss L. M.
Griffin, Miss M. E.
Griffin, T.
Griffin, W. B., F.R.C.S.
Griffith, Miss E. M. B.
Griffith, Mrs. F. E.
Griffith, Miss R. E.
Griffiths, I. H.
Grimley, W. T.
Grindon, Miss E.
Grindon, Miss F. C.
Grineau, Mrs. F. G. de.
Gripper, Miss E. M.
Gripper, F. H.
Gripper, L. A.
Gripper, N. E.
Gronous, F. G.
Groom, Miss M. G.
Grotrian, F.
Grotrian, H. B.
Grove, Miss E. A.
Groves, C.
Groves, Miss L.
Grubb, A. V.
Grundy, C. S.
Grylls, Miss F. M.
Guernsey, Lady.
Guest, Hon. Mrs. F.
Guest, Dr. H.
Guest, Miss J. L.
Guest, L. H.
Guest, Mrs. M. E. H.
Guggisberg, Mrs. D. M.
Guinness, Miss M. C.
Gulland, Mrs. B. E. Ker-
Gullett, Miss L. E.
Gully, Miss D. L.
Gunn, D.
Gunn, J. A.
Gunn, L. G., F.R.C.S.
Gurdon, Miss N.
Gurney, Miss A. M.
Gurney, E.
Gurney, Miss G. S.
Gurney, H.
Gurney, L.
Gurney, Miss R.
Guthrie, Mrs. D. B.
Gutsell, Miss A. B.
Guttridge, J. M.
Guttridge, Miss L. J.
Guy, Miss A. A.
Guyatt, Miss M.
H
Habgood, R. P.
Hack, O. P.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 349
Hackett, Miss N. D.
Hacking, E. H.
Hackney, Miss E. M.
Hacon, Mrs. E. C. L.
Haddon, H. V.
Hadfield, Miss E.
Hadgraft, F. M.
Hadlum, S. F.
Hadnutt, G. W. F.
Haggas, Miss E. G.
Haggas, Miss E. M.
Haigh, C. R.
Haine, Miss N. P.
Haines, Miss E. de W.
Haines, Miss M. I.
Hainsworth, Miss H. E.
Hainsworth, Miss M. E.
Hale, Miss V. A.
Hales, Miss E. B run win-.
Hales, G. E.
Halkett, Miss D. R.
Halkett, Miss E. M. G.
Hall, A. K.
Hall, C. D.
Hall, D. A.
Hall, Miss D. M.
Hall, Miss F. C.
Hall, Miss G. E.
Hall, J. H.
Hall, Miss L. G.
Hall, Miss M. C. A.
Hall, Miss M. E.
Hall, Miss M. L.
Hall, Mrs. M. M.
Hall, Mrs. M. M. E.
Hall, Miss N. G.
Hall, R. W.
Hall, Sister S.
Hallam, Miss E. L.
Hallam, Miss J.
Hallara, M. R.
Hallatt, C. M.
Hallatt, J. V.
Halliday, Miss C.
Halliday, Miss L.
HaUidie, Mrs. A. M. M.
Halloran, Dr. G. R.
Hallowes, Major-Gen. H. J.
Halpert, Mrs. M. F. de.
Halsey, A. H.
Halsey, Miss E.
Hamblin, Miss M. L.
Hambrook, Miss M. L.
Hamilton, A. S.
Hamilton, Miss C.
Hamilton, Lady C. A. Baillie-.
Hamilton, Dr.
Hamilton, Miss E.
Hamilton, Miss E. M.
Hamilton, Mrs. E. M. Cole.
Hamilton, F. G.
Hamilton, G. H. R.
Hamilton, Hon. Helen Baillie-.
Hamilton, Mrs. I. E. Baillie-.
Hamilton, J. A. K.
Hamilton, Rev. J. M.
Hamilton, Miss M. A.
Hamilton, Miss M. S. C.
Hamilton, Miss.
Hamilton, Miss P. M.
Hamilton, S. de C.
Hamlen-Williaras, D. W.
Hamrnersley, Mrs. M.
Hammond, Miss E. M.
Hammond, G. S.
Hammond, J. M., F.R.C.S.
Hammond, Miss.
Hammond, Miss Mary.
Hammond, Nina C.
Hammond, N. L.
Hampshire, Miss F. B.
Hampson, H. F.
Hancock, Dr. Deborah.
Hancock, Mrs. D.
Hancock, Miss K. M.
Hancock, Miss M.
Handley, R.
Hanley, Mrs. K. G.
Hanly, Miss G. C.
Hanman, J. L.
Hanna, A. E.
Hanna, Miss J. H.
Hanna, J. H.
Hanna, Miss M.
Hanna, Miss M. G.
Hanna, Mrs. S. F. T.
Hannah, Miss M. S.
Hannah, Miss R.
Hannay, A. A.
Hanning, Miss A. H.
Hanning, Miss A. M.
Hansell, Miss L. D.
Hanson, Dr. Helen.
Hanson, Mrs. K. J.
Harben, H. D.
Harbord, Miss F. M.
Harcombe, F. C.
Harcourt, Miss D. V.
Harden, F. A.
Harden, J.
Hardern, G. D.
Hardern, I.
Hardern, L. R.
Hardie, Miss M.
Hardie, Dr. Mabel.
Harding, S. H.
Hardman, H. C.
Hardwick, Miss F. E.
Hardwicke, Dr. C.
Hardy, Miss B.
Hardy, Miss H. C.
Hardy, Miss J. H.
Hardy, Miss L. S.
Hardy, Miss M. E.
Hargreaves, Miss E. L.
Hargreaves, F.
Hargreaves, J. R.
Harker, Mrs. N. B.
Harker, W.
Harkness, Miss L.
Harland, E. R.
Harland, Mrs. L.
Harley, Miss E. J.
Harley, Mrs. K. M.
Harmsworth, F.
Harper, G. J.
Harper, W. J.
Harpham, Miss C. F.
Harpham, Mrs. K.
Harrays, Miss A.
Harries, F.
Harris, Miss E.
Harris, Miss E. D.
Harris, F.
Harris, Miss F. M.
Harris, H.
Harris, Miss H. M.
Harris, L. M.
Harris, Miss M. A.
Harris, Miss M. L.
Harris, R. S.
Harris, Dr. St. G. E.
Harrison, Miss A. M.
Harrison, C. A.
Harrison, Miss D. E.
Harrison, Miss E. A.
Harrison, Miss E. C.
Harrison, H. P.
Harrison, J. A.
Harrison, Miss J. E.
Harrison, Miss J. M.
Harrison, Miss M.
Harrison, Miss M. E.
Harrison, R.
Harrison, T.
Harry, Mrs. S. M.
Hart, G. C.
Hartigan, Mrs. E. J.
Hartigan, Dr. J.
Hartley, C. A.
Hartley, Miss D.
Hartley, Miss D. K.
Hartley, Mrs. E. M.
Hartley, H.
Hartley, H. A.
Harvey, Miss A.
Haivey, Mrs. A. I.
Harvey, Miss D.
Harvey, Miss E. C.
Harvey, F. J.
Harvey, J. W.
Harvey, Miss M.
Harvey, Miss M. C.
Harvey, T. E.
Harvey, Miss V.
Harvey, W. F.
Harvey, Dr. W. G.
Harvie, Miss M. E.
Haskins, F. W.
Haskins, S. G.
Haslam, Miss F. E. C.
Haslam, Miss H. E. V.
Haslam, J. C.
Haslewood, Mrs. M. M. Barrett-
Hastings, Mrs. B. D.
Hastings- Irwin, Miss.
Hastings, J. D.
Hastings, Miss K. A.
Hastings, Lady M. E. M.
Has ton, Miss A.
Haswell, Miss E. J.
Hatch, Lady C. B.
Hatcher, Miss G. K.
Hathway, Miss B.
Hattrill, Miss H. L.
Haughton, J. A.
Haughton, W. T. H.
Haverfield, Mrs. E.
Havers, A. C.
Haviland, Miss L.
Haward, G. L.
Hawes, Mrs. E. W.
Hawkes, Dr. A. E.
Hawkings, Mrs. L. A.
Hawkins, Miss Agnes.
Hawkins, Miss Alice.
Hawkins, Miss Annie.
Hawkins, Miss A. M.
Hawkins, Miss D.
Hawkins, Miss H.
Hawkins, Miss H. M.
Hawkins, Miss L. C.
Hawkins, Miss L. W.
Hawksley, Mrs. J. L. A.
Haworth, H. J.
Haworth, J.
Hawthorn, Mrs. J. L.
Hawthorne, Miss G. M.
Hay, C. T.
Hay, Sir D. E.
Hay, Miss E. M.
Hay, Miss F. L.
Hay, Mrs. H. M.
Hay, W.
35°
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Haycock, A. W.
Hayden, Mrs. C. S. E.
Hayes, Miss E.
Hayhurst, Miss M.
Haynes, Miss I. M.
Haynes, Miss J.
Hayter, Miss M. E.
Hayward, G. A.
Hayward, W. H.
Haywood, C. F.
Hazelton, Miss H. M.
Head, Miss A. N.
Head, Mrs. V. J. F.
Headon, E. J. G.
Heald, A.
Healey, J. W.
Heape, B.
Hearne, Miss E.
Heasman, Miss D.
Heath, H. S.
Heath, R.
Heathfield, Miss F.
Heaton, A. W.
Heaton, Mrs. E. K.
Heaton, Miss M.
Heaton-Smith, Miss M.
Hebblethwaite, Miss M. B.
Hedges, Pte.
Hedges, Miss G.
Hedley, O. W. C.
Hefler, Miss L.
Heiigers, Miss H. F. I.
Heiser, Mrs. Bologne.
Heiser, W. E. Bologne.
Heisser, Miss.
Hellard, Nurse L. D.
Helme, W. N.
Helmore, Miss F.
Helmore, Miss F. M.
Helyar, Miss C. I.
Hemingway, Miss L.
Hemmons, Miss N. G.
Henderson, A.
Henderson, A.
Henderson, Miss A. M.
Henderson, Miss B.
Henderson, Miss B. A. M.
Henderson, D.
Henderson, Miss D. B.
Henderson, Mrs. E. H.
Henderson, H.
Henderson, Miss H.
Henderson, Miss I. A.
Henderson, Sister I. S.
Henderson, J. A. F.
Henderson, Mrs. L. E.
Henderson, Miss M.
Henderson, Miss M.
Henderson, Miss M. H. J.
Henderson, R. W.
Henderson, Miss S. P. A.
Henderson, T.
Henderson, T. B., F.R.C.S.
Henderson, W.
Henderson, W. C.
Hendry, A. G.
Hendry, Mrs. J. C.
Henkley, B. G.
Henley, Hon. Mrs. E. S.
Hennessy, W. J.
Henning, F. W.
Henry, A. K.
Henry.JMrs. D. K. M.
Henry, F. C.
Henry, J. C.
Henry, J. S.
Henry, Miss L.
Henry, S. A.
Henshaw, Mrs. J. W.
Hensley, Miss M. P.
Hensley, W. E.
Henwood, A. E.
Henwood, Mrs. S.
Henzell, M. D.
Hepburn, Miss A. B.
Herbert, D.
Herbert, F. W.
Herbert, J.
Herbert, J. T.
Herbert, Mrs. M.
Herbert, R.
Herbert, Mrs. R. G. M.
Herdman, Dr. G.
Herdman, G.
Herklots, Mrs. E. A. B.
Herrick, Miss K. M. G.
Heseltine, Miss I. L.
Heslop, Miss I. M.
Hessel, E.
Hett, Mrs. A. B. M. S.
Hett, Dr. G. S.
Hevinson, C. R. W.
Hewart, W.
Hewartson, W. H.
Hewett, Miss G. A.
Hewitt, A.
Hewitt, Dr. R. M.
Hewitt, Sister T.
Heywood, Miss K.
Heywood, Dr. T.
Heyworth, Miss W. T.
Hibberdine, Miss E.
Hibbert, W. L.
Hibbert-Ware, Miss J. W.
Hickling, Miss M. G.
Hickman, E.J.
Hicks, C. C.
Hicks, Miss H. M.
Hicks, W. H.
Hicks, W. H.
Higginbotham, Miss E. B.
Higgins, Miss D. E.
Higgins, Mrs. H. M.
Higgins, P.
Higgins, S. M.
Higgs, A .J.
Higgs, Miss A. M.
Higgs, Miss E.
Higham, W.
Highet, Miss N. M'G.
Hilder, Miss R.
Hiley, W.
Hill, Miss A. E.
Hill, A. E.
Hill, A. J.
Hill, A. S. H.
Hill, Miss E.
Hill, E.
Hill, F. E. J.
Hill, Miss G.
Hill, H. A.
Hill, H. G.
Hill, H. P.
Hill, Dr. Henry Wood-.
Hill, Miss N. F.
Hill, Miss P.
Hill, W. E.
Hilliard, J. F.
Hilliard, Miss M.
Hills, Dr. W. E.
Hillsborough, Rt. Hon.
Earl of
Himing, Miss E.
Hinchlifie, W. A. S.
Hind, Miss A.
Hind, Mrs. C. E.
Hinde, E. C.
Hinde, J. D.
Hindle, Lieut. F.
Hindley, Mrs. A.
Hine, E. D.
Hines, R. R.
Hinkins, G.
Hinks, S. H.
Hinsley, W. T.
Hinton, H. T.
Hireson, W. S.
Hirst, H.
Hirst, J. G.
Hirst, R. H.
Hiscock, W. W.
Hiscos, A. S.
Hoare, Mrs. A. M.
Hoare, Miss M.
Hoare, Miss P.
Hoare, R.
Hoare, Miss W. G.
Hobbis, H. E.
Hobbs, Miss B.
Hobbs, E.
Hobbs, Mrs. M. E.
Hobbs, P. W.
Hobbs, W.
Hobson, Miss E. A.
Hocart, Miss E. M.
Hodges, E. G. S.
Hodges, Miss K. M. E.
Hodgins, Miss E. C.
Hodgkin, A. J.
Hodgkiss, A. J.
Hodgkiss, E. F.
Hodgson, Miss E. B.
Hodgson, J. A.
Hodgson, Sister L.
Hodgson, M. E.
Hodgson, Miss M. E.
Hodgson, Mrs. M. G. E
Hodgson, P.
Hodgson, Miss R. L.
Hodson, Dr. Eleanor.
Hodson, Miss F. F. L.
Hoffman, E. L.
Hogan, Miss E.
Hogan, N. L. H.
Hogarth, Miss E. J.
Hogarth, Miss L.
Hogben, L. T.
Hogg, Miss G*
Hogg, Miss M. E.
Hogg, W.
Holden, J. W.
Holden, Miss M. G.
Holden, Miss R.
Holding, Miss B. E
Holding, Miss W.
Holdstock, T. H.
Holdsworth, Dr. C. D.
Holdsworth, J. O.
Holdsworth, Miss R. I.
Holland, Mrs. H. K.
Holland, Mrs. P. M. W
Holland, Mrs. R.
Holland, Miss S.
Hollands, MissE. A.
Hollebv, T. L.
HoUiday, Miss L. H.
Holliday, Miss R.
Hollings, Mrs. N. A. S.
Holloway, A. M.
Hollway, Dr. Edith.
Holman, C.
Holman, Miss F. G.
Holman, P.
Holman, W. L.
D.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 351
Holme, Miss E. A.
Holme, Miss L. C.
Holme, Miss V. L. C.
Holmes, Miss C.
Holmes, E.
Holmes, I.
Holmes, G. L.
Holmes, Mrs. M. E.
Holmes, Miss M. M.
Holmes, Miss M. V.
Holmes, Miss N.
Holmes, R. G.
Holmes, R. T.
Holt, A.
Holt, R.
Holt, T. E.
Holttom, R. E.
Home, Dr. A. L.
Hone, Miss M.
Hone, Mrs. M.
Hone, Mrs. P.
Hood, Mrs. M. B.
Hooker, E. A.
Hookey, Miss N. M.
Hoole, Miss M. A. M.
Hoon, A.
Hoon, L. W.
Hope, Miss E. C.
Hope, Miss I. M.
Hope, J. C. D.
Hope, Miss M. A.
Hope, Miss M. F.
Hope, O. J. G.
Hope, Miss S. E. M,
Hopkin, Miss R.
Hopkings, Miss L. M.
Hopkins, Mrs. A. K. N.
Hopkins, G. W.
Hopkins, Miss H. M.
Hopkins, O. S.
Hopkins, R. B.
Hopkins, T. W.
Hopkins, W. J.
Hopkinson, Miss M. B.
Hore, Miss E. E. F.
Horn, Mrs. C. E. G.
Horn, Mrs. E. M.
Horn, Miss I.
Home, J.
Home, Miss M. W.
Home, VV. K.
Home, W. O.
Homer, E. H.
Homer, L. W.
Homer, M. T.
Horner, W.
Homer, W. E.
Horniman, R. H.
Hornung, Mrs. C.
Horrocks, A. S.
Horrocks, G. S.
Horsbrugh, Mrs. E. K.
Horsfall, Miss M.
Horsfleld, W. R.
Hosack, Mrs. F. E. M.
Hosegood, G.
Hoskyns, Mrs. E. R. C.
Hossack, Dr. J.
Hoste, Miss V. M.
Hotblack, F. A.
Hotbam, Miss E. M.
Houblon, Miss E. A.
Houfton, J. P.
Hough, Miss W. A.
Houghton, W. A.
Hounsfield, Miss T. M.
House, L. R.
Housley, W. R.
Houston, Mrs. M.
Houston, Mrs. M. M'K.
Hovey, W. A.
How, Miss M. H.
Howard, Miss Alice.
Howard, Miss E.
Howard, Miss K. M'L.
Howard, Miss M.
Howard, P. H.
Howard-Tripp, Mrs. D. A.
Howarth, H. E. B.
Howarth, T. H.
Howatson, Miss J. C.
Howe, Miss E.
Howe, P.
Howell, Miss M. C. B.
Howell, Dr. B. W.
Howland, T. C.
Howley, Miss C.
Howroyd, Miss G.
Howse, Miss E. E.
Howson, Miss J.
Howson, J. L.
Howson, W. G.
Hoyles, H. S.
Hoysted, B. B.
Hudson, C. E.
Hudson, Miss D. L.
Hudson, Miss D. M.
Hudson, S. L.
Hudson, T.
Hudson, W.
Huggett, W. G.
Hughes, Miss D. G.
Hughes, Dr. E. P. L.
Hughes, F.
Hughes, H. H.
Hughes, Miss H. M. S.
Hughes, H. N.
Hughes, Miss J.
Hughes, Miss J. C.
Hughes, Miss J. E.
Hughes, Miss M. L.
Hughes, R. V.
Hughes, Miss S. M.
Hughes, S. W.
Huins, Mrs. A. A.
Hull, J.
Hull, W.
Hulton, Rev. C. B.
Hulton, J. G.
Hume, J. H., F.R.C.S.
Humphrey, A. W.
Humphrey, C. F.
Humphreys, E. C.
Humphreys-Davies, Mrs. E. D.
Humphreys, Miss L. F.
Humphreys, Mrs. W.
Hundley, Miss D.
Hungerford, Miss M, C.
Hunt, Dr. A. D.
Hunt, Miss A. L.
Hunt, Miss C. M.
Hunt, Miss E. A.
Hunt, F.
Hunt, G.
Hunt, Miss G.
Hunt, Mrs. Holman.
Hunt, H. V.
Hunt, Miss M.
Hunt, Miss M.
Hunt, Mrs. M. S.
Hunt, Mrs. V.
Hunt, V. L.
Hunt, W. F.
Hunter, Mrs. A.
Hunter, Miss A.
Hunter, Miss A. R.
Hunter, Miss C.
Hunter, Miss D. E.
Hunter, Miss E. J. D.
Hunter, J. W.
Hunter, Miss M.
Hunter, Miss N.
Hunter, Mrs. N. M'l.
Hunter, Miss S. K.
Hunter, S. K.
Hunter, Miss S. M.
Hunting, Miss A. K. J.
Huntington, Mrs. M.
Hurll, M.
Hurst, H.
Huskisson, Miss P. G.
Hustwick, W.
Hutchins, L. M.
Hutchins, M. L.
Hutchinson, Miss B. B.
Hutchinson, Miss B. M.
Hutchinson, C. E.
Hutchinson, G. W.
Hutchinson, H. E.
Hutchinson, Miss M.
Hutchinson, M. S.
Hutchinson, Miss R.
Hutchinson, Miss R. A.
Hutchinson, Miss S.
Hutchison, Dr. Alice.
Hutchison, Miss A.
Hutchison, Miss A. M.
Hutchison, Miss A. M. S.
Hutchison, Miss J. I.
Huth, Miss M.
Hutton, E.
Hutton, Miss E. C.
Hutton, Miss M. J.
Hyde, E.
Hyde, G. N.
Hyland, Miss E.
Hyland, F. W.
Hyman, C. E. J.
I
levers, Mrs. E. C. N. B.
Illington, Miss C. M.
Illingworth, D. H.
Illingworth, F. H.
Illingworth, Miss M. E. P.
Illingworth, N. H.
Impey, Dr. Elsie.
Impey, L. A.
Imrie, P. K.
Incledon, Miss M. M.
Ingham, J.
Ingleby, Miss.
Inglis, Miss E.
Inglis, Dr. Elsie M.
Inglis, Miss E. M.
Inglis, Miss F. E.
Inglis, Mrs. I. E. C.
Inglis, Miss K. C.
Inglis, Miss P. W.
Inglis, Miss V.
Inglis, VV. G.
Ingram, Miss R. M.
Ingrams, W.
Inkson, Miss K.
Innes, Miss A. C.
Innes, J. A.
Insley, Mrs. D.
Insley, E.
Insley, H.
Insley, Miss L.
Insley, Miss M.
Insley, Miss N.
352
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Iredale, A. M.
Ireland, K. W.
Ireland, Miss W. B.
Ireland, W. C.
Irvine, Mrs. D. L. E.
Irvine, Miss I. M.
Irvine, Lieut.-Col. L.
Irving, E. K.
Irwin, Miss E. H.
Irwin, Miss F.
Irwin, L. L.
Irwin, Miss M.
Isaac, A. L.
Isaac, Miss E. F. Archer-
Isemonger, Miss M.
Ismay, T. B.
Ivatt, Mrs. D. S.
Ivens, Dr. Frances.
Izard, Miss J.
Izard, Miss L.
Izat, Mrs. J.
Jack, Miss F. B.
Jacks, W. T.
Jackson, Mrs.
Jackson, Mrs. A.
Jackson, A.
Jackson, Miss C.
Jackson, Mrs. C. A.
Jackson, Miss C. M.
Jackson, Miss E. M.
Jackson, E. St. J.
Jackson, F. A.
Jackson, Dr. F. D. S.
Jackson, H. B.
Jackson, H. H.
Jackson, H. S.
Jackson, Miss M. S.
Jackson, R.
Jackson, Miss S.
Jackson, Miss S. B.
Jackson, S. H.
Jackson, Miss W. K. H.
Jackson, W. R.
Jacob, Miss M. L.
Jacobs, Mrs. D. E.
Jacobs, Miss O. P.
Jacques W.
Jafiray, Miss M. F.
James, Nurse.
James, A. C.
James, C.
James, Miss C. A. B.
James, Mrs. E.
James, H.
James, I. B.
James, Miss J. M.
James, Miss M. H.
James, Miss M. K.
James, Mrs. P.
James, Q. S. H.
James, Miss S. M.
James, W. A.
James, W. W., F.R.C.S.
Jameson, A.
Jamieson, Miss A.
Jamieson, Miss A. B.
Jamieson, Miss A. L.
Janson, A.
Japp, Miss O.
Jaques, O. H.
Jarman, C. E.
Jarrett, E. T.
Jarvis, L. G.
Javel,E. G.
Jayne, Miss E. B.
Jayne, Mrs. M. S.
Jeans, Miss M.
Jefiery, F.
Jefiery, Miss M. E.
Jefiery, Mrs. N.
Jefferys, Miss B.
Jefierys, G.
Jeffrey, A.
Jeffrey, A. L.
Jeffrey, B.
Jeffreys, Miss A. S.
Jeffreys, H.
Jeffreys, Miss L. M.
Jekyll, Miss R.
Jellett, H.
Jenkins, A.
Jenkins, B.
Jenkins, Miss F.
Jenkins, Mrs. M. E.
Jenkins, P. E.
Jenkins, Miss S.
Jenkyn-Brown, Mrs. N. F.
Jennings, J. H.
Jennings, J. W.
Jennings, Miss M.
Jennings, S. J.
Jennings, Miss W.
Jerome, J. K.
Jervis, A.
Jervis-Waldy, Miss E.
Jerwood, B. E.
Jesper, A.
Jessop, A.
Jewel, W. H.
Jewson, J. C.
Jewson, Miss M.
Jeynes, Miss E. C.
Jiddu, N.
Joel, Mrs. O. C.
Johnson, B.
Johnson, Miss B.
Johnson, Miss B. J.
Johnson, Mrs. E.
Johnson, Miss E. L. H. A.
Johnson, G.
Johnson, G. P.
Johnson, H. R.
Johnson, Miss J. E.
Johnson, Miss J. H.
Johnson, Miss K. S.
Johnson, Miss L. A.
Johnson, Mrs. M.
Johnson, Miss M. E.
Johnson, R.
Johnson, S.
Johnson, Miss S.
Johnson, Miss W. Cowper-.
Johnson, W. E.
Johnson, Rev. W. R.
Johnston, A. E.
Johnston, Miss A. M.
Johnston, Miss G. K. D.
Johnston, Miss K. H.
Johnston, Miss M. L.
Johnstone, Hon. Lady.
Johnstone, Miss A.
Johnstone, Miss I. N.
Johnstone, Miss K. P.
Johnstone, Miss L. P.
Johnstone, Miss M. B. D.
Johnstone, Miss S. E. A. D.
Joice, Miss M. M.
Jolly, Miss C. B.
Jolly, F.
Jones, A.
Jones, Miss B.
Jones, Miss B. Lloyd-.
Jones, Miss B. R.
Jones, Miss C. E."
Jones, D. A.
Jones, Mrs. D. J.
Jones, D. L.
Jones, Miss D. M.
Jones, Miss E.
Jones, E.
Jones, Miss E. C.
Jones, E. H. G. I.
Jones, E. P.
Jones, Miss F. C.
Jones, Miss F. E.
Jones, Mrs. F. M. O.
Jones, Miss G.
Jones, Miss G. G. Peyton-.
Jones, Mrs. G. M. E.
Jones, Miss G. M. L.
Jones, Miss G. M. ManseK
Jones, Miss H. G.
Jones, J.
Jones, Miss J. E.
Jones, J. G.
Jones, Miss J. Mansel-.
Jones, J. Peyton-.
Jones, J. R.
Jones, Miss K. Lloyd-.
Jones, Sir L. J., Bart.
Jones, Miss L. W.
Jones, Miss M.
Jones, Miss M. C.
Jones, Miss M. C. M'Carthy.
Jones, Miss M. G.
Jones, P. P.
Jones, R.
Jones, R. B. S.
Jones, Miss R. L.
Jones, Trevor-Wynne.
Jones, Miss V. M. H.
Jones, Miss W.
Jones, W. H.
Jones, W. R.
Jopling, W. J.
Joseph, F. E.
Joseph, Miss M. B.
Josling, H. S.
Jourdain, Mrs. O.
Journeaux, W.
Jowitt, Miss L.
Joy, Miss E. M.
Joy, Mrs. M. G.
Joyce, Miss M.
Joynson, Miss L. B.
Jubb, Miss W. O.
Judd, Miss F.
Judge, Dr. G.
Judge, Miss J.
Judkins, Mrs. M. C. L.
Julian, J. E. J.
Jupp, Miss O.
Karr, Capt. H. W. Seton-
Kater, Dr. N. W.
Katz, S.
Kavanagh, M. F.
Kay, A. J.
Kay, Major E. H.
Kay, Miss F. P.
Kay, J.
Kay, W.
Kaye, C.
Kayes, C. B.
Keay, Miss G. Seymour.
Kebble, R. C.
Keegan, Miss G. M.
Keeler, Miss L. E.
Keeler, Miss Z. E.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 353
Keenlyside, Miss.
Keer, Mrs. A. L.
Keer, Dr. Honoria.
Keiley, G. A.
Kekewich, Mrs. N. N.
Kellett, J.
Kellihcr, Miss A. E.
Kelly, Miss C. Fitz-Roy.
Kelly, F. J. J.
Kelly, F. J. K.
Kelly, J.
Kelly, J. H. L. A.
Kelly, Mrs. Sherwood-.
Kelsall, J.
Kelsall, W. T.
Kelsey, Dr. A. E.
Kelshaw, F.
Kelso, Miss C. A. D. Utterson.
Kemball, Miss D. M.
Kemmy, 1.
Kemp, Miss.
Kemp, D. H.
Kemp, Miss E. C.
Kemp, Miss J. K.
Kemp, K.
Kemp, Miss L.
Kemp, T. W.
Keropson, Miss L. C.
Kempster, E. J.
Kemys-TvDte, Miss G. H.
Kendal, H. M.
Kendal, Mrs. H. S.
Kendall, Miss K. H.
Kennard, C. F.
Kennard, Miss M. G.
Kennedy, Miss.
Kennedy, Miss E. B.
Kennedy, G. L.
Kennedy, Miss I. C. Clark-.
Kennedy, Mrs. I. F.
Kennedy, Miss J.
Kennedy, Mrs. M.
Kennedy, Miss M,
Kennedy, Miss M. A.
' Kennedy, Miss M. D.
Kennedy, Miss M. I. M. M'K.
Kennedy, Miss M. R. M.
Kennedy, Miss R.
Kennedy, W.
Kennett, Miss E. M.
Kenny, L. F.
Kent, E. C.
Kent, Miss F. A.
Kenyon, Miss VV. L.
Keogh, Miss E. M.
Keogh, Miss F. M.
Keogh, Miss M. D.
Keppel, Ladv E.
Kerby, Miss C. M.
Kerr, A. M.
Kerr, Miss H. I. \V.
Kerr, Miss J. E.
Kerr, J. G.
Kerr, Miss J. M.
Kerr, Dr. J. R.
Kerr, Miss M. H.
Kerr, Miss M. T. G.
Kerr, Dr. Winifred.
Kerrich, Miss M. V.
Kerrigan, Mi^s H. L.
Ketchell, E. V.
Kew, Miss E. C.
Keyser, Miss M.
Keyser, Miss S.
Kidd, Dr. F. S.
Kiddell, Miss E. B. \V.
Kierch, F. A.
Kilbey, R.
Kilbourne, Miss 0. A.
Kilgour, Mrs, E. F.
Killick, G.
Kiln, W. C.
Kilner, Miss C. E.
Kilner, H. S.
Kilpatrick, Miss P.
Kimpton, S. W. I.
King, Mrs. A. J.
King, A. M.
King, A. \V.
King, B. VV.
King, E. F.
King, Mrs. E. K.
King, Miss G.
King, Miss G. V.
King, Miss H. F. M.
King, H. H.
King, H. M.
King, J. F. O.
King, Miss M. M.
King, Miss O. Kelso.
King, P. F.
King, Miss P. I.
Kingdon, A.
Kingsford, Miss A. G.
Kingsford, D. H.
Kingsford, Miss E. A. M.
Kingsford, Miss G.
Kingsford, Miss M. B.
Kingston, J. D.
Kininmonth, Miss A.
Kinnear, Miss K. F.
Kinross, Miss A. M.
Kinross, Miss E.
Kinross, Miss M.
Kirby, Miss L. I.
Kirk, Miss J. H.
Kirk, P.
Kirkaldy, Miss J. D.
Kirkaldv, Miss M. I.
Kirkby, R. W.
Kirkkmd, G. B.
Kirkland, Miss R. \V.
Kirkwood, Miss C.
Kirkwood, Miss N.
Kitchen, W.
Kitching, A.
Kitching, F. O.
Kitching, H.
Kitching, H. F.
Kitching, W. H.
Kitney, Miss E.
Kitson, Hon. Svlvia.
Knight, Miss E. M. F.
Knight, F. A.
Knight, H. J.
Knipe, Miss S. C. M'Call.
Knocker, Mrs. E.
Knollys, Miss R. E.
Knowles, Miss D. Y.
Knowles, Miss E. B.
Knowles, H.
Knowles, Miss M.
Koettgen, Miss L.
Krishnamurti, J.
Krohn, A. A.
Kusel, Mrs. G. de.
Kusel, S. de.
Kynnersley, Miss I. F. Sneyd-
Kynnersley, Mrs. L. Sneyd-.
Kvrle, Miss J. A. Monev-.
Kyrle, Mrs. F. C. Money-.
Lace, A. E.
Lace, W. H.
Lack, W. P.
Lade, A.
Laidlay, Miss M. F.
Laing, A.
Laing, C. M.
Laing, Miss M. F. L.
Laird, C. V. J.
Laird, Mrs. M. G.
Laird, Miss M. H.
Lake, Mrs. O.
Laloe, Miss M. A. L.
Lalor, Miss S.
Lamb, F. J. G.
Lamb, G. C.
Lamb, J.
Lamb, J. B.
Lamb, Miss J. C.
Lambert, Miss A. M.
Lambert, E. E.
Lambert, Miss M. J.
Lambert, R. T.
Lambert, W. H.
Lambourn, A.
Larabton, Miss A. M.
Lamington, Lady M.
Lampen, Miss E. L.
Landor, W. N.
Lane, Mrs. C.
Lane, Miss K. A.
Lane, Miss K. L.
Lane, Miss M.
Lane, Sir W. A.
Lane, W. A.
Lang, Miss A. L.
Lang, Miss M.
Langdon, G. M.
Langdon, Rev. R. E.
Langford, F. E.
Langton, Miss F. M.
Langton, J. P.
Langton, Miss M.
Lanze, H. A. •
Lappington, E. M.
La Primandaye, Miss B. M.
La Primandaye, Mi~s I.
Larcher, H.
Larken, Miss E. M.
Larking, J. R.
Larnach, Miss I. A.
Larsen, F. L.
Lasbrey, Dr. F. O.
Lash, A. W.
Last, W. G. D.
Latham, Miss P.. E.
Latham, Mrs. F. A.
Latham, Miss F. E.
Latham, Mrs. F. M.
Laurence, Rev. F. S.
Laurence, H. P.
Lauriston, A.
Laver, A. G.
Laverick, Mrs. K.
Law, Mrs. E.
Law, Miss L. M.
Lawder, Miss P. E.
Lawless, A. P.
Lawless, Miss K.
Lawless, Mrs. S. H. B.
Lawley, Miss A.
Lawley, Miss C.
Lawley, Hon. U.
Lawrence, Sister A. L.
Lawrence, Mrs. C. L.
Lawrence, Miss H.
Lawrence, Miss L. M.
Lawrence, Miss R.
Laws, G. G.
Lawson, Miss A.
354
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Lawson, B. G.
Lawson, Miss D. G.
Lawson, Miss J. M.
Lawson, Mrs. R.
Lawson, R.
Lawson, T. H.
Lawton, Miss M. E.
Lazenby, Miss M.
Lea, Miss A. H.
Lea, Miss D. E.
Leach, Miss M.
Leadam, Mrs. G. E.
Leaf, Miss E. M.
Leale, Miss M.
Lean, Miss J. W.
Lean, O. B.
Lean, W. K.
Learmouth, Miss B.
Learmouth, Miss N.
Leask, Miss M.
Leavis, F. R.
Leavis, R. M.
Leavy, Miss B.
Le Blond, Mrs. A.
Lechmere, Lady.
Lechmere, Miss K. M.
Leckie, Miss E. L. L.
Leckie, J. I.
Leckie, Miss I.
Leckie, Miss M. E.
Lee, A.
Lee, Miss D. M.
Lee, Miss M.
Lee, T. S. C.
Lee, W.
Leech, J. B. M.
Leek, H.
Lees, Miss A. M.
Lees, Miss C.
Lees, Miss C. A.
Lees, C. J. D.
Lees, Miss M. C. M.
Legarrick, Miss D.
Legg, W. A. H.
Legge, Mrs. M.
Leggett, C.
Leggett, Mrs. F. M.
Legrew, Mrs.
Leigh, Miss A. M.
Leighton, Miss C.
Leighton, G. W.
Leighton, T. S.
Leishman, Miss C. S.
Leitch, Miss E.
Leitch, J. T.
Lemon, J. W.
Le Mottee, Miss H.
Lendrum, Miss B.
Leneghan, Miss M.
Leng, Miss H. M.
Leng, W. St. Q.
Lennie, C. D.
Lennox, Hon. C. C. Gordon-.
Leon, R. H.
Le Poidevin, H. A.
Le Rossignol, Miss C. E.
Leslie, Miss A. Arbuthnot.
Leslie, Miss M. M.
Lester, Miss B. D.
Lester, H. M.
Lethbridge, Miss H.
Lethem, Miss T. H.
Letten, A. L.
Letts, Mrs. K. M.
Leuchars, Miss M. C.
Levcson, Miss A. L.
Levett, C. W.
Levett, Mrs. M. M. L. W.
Levett, R. B.
Levey, Miss K. G.
Leviansky, Mrs. A. M.
Levy, R. G.
Lewin, Dr. Octavia.
Lewis, A. M.
Lewis, C. G.
Lewis, Miss D. G. L.
Lewis, Miss E. M.
Lewis, F.
Lewis, F. P.
Lewis, H. D. W.
Lewis, Miss I. M.
Lewis, Mrs. M. K.
Lewis, Dr. Sybil.
Lewis, T. J.
Lewis, Miss V. C. E.
Lewis, Miss VV.
Lewsey, A.
Leybourne, J.
Leyland, J. T.
Lidbetter, H.
Lidbury, A. C.
Liddall, Miss M. E.
Liddell, Miss D. M.
Liddell, Miss R.
Liddell, Miss V. C.
Liddle, Miss M. A.
Liescbing, L. O.
Lightbody, Mrs. H. F.
Lightfoot, Mrs. K. M.
Liley, J. A.
Lillie, Miss A. C.
Lillington, Miss CM.
Lincoln, Mrs. M. A.
Linday, J. A.
Linday, R. K.
Lind-af-Hageby, Miss L.
Lindon, Miss A.
Lindsay, Miss A.
Lindsay, Miss E. T.
Lindsay, Miss G.
Lindsay, Miss J. M.
Lindsay, R.
Linforth, Miss.
Lingard, J. G.
Lingford, H. M.
Lingford, H. S. W.
Linkhorn, Mrs. F. M. E.
Linkhorn, J. W.
Lings, C.
Linnell, F.
Linsell, W. D.
Linton, A.
Linton, Miss.
Linton, Mrs. A. C. C.
Linton-Orman, Miss R. B. L.
Lipscombe, Miss E. M.
Lister, Miss D.
Lithgow, H.
Lithgow, S.
Little, G. J. K.
Little, H. B.
Little, Miss M.
Little, W.
Littleboy, G.
Littleboy, M.
Littlejohn, Miss D. K.
Livock, S. G.
Llewelyn, Miss B. 1.
Lloyd, Miss A.
Lloyd, A.
Llovd, A. H.
Lloyd, Mrs. C. M.
Lloyd, E. J.
Lloyd, Miss H. F.
Lloyd, Miss M. A. E.
Lloyd, Miss M. B.
Lloyd, Miss M. C.
Lloyd, Miss M. J.
Lloyd, R. L.
Lloyd, T. O.
Lock, H. W.
Locke, G.
Locke, Miss H. K.
Locke, H. W.
Locke, Mrs. M. H.
Lockwood, Miss L.
Lockyer, A. R.
Logan, Miss N.
Logan, R. W.
Logan, T.
Lonergan, Miss E. M.
Long, Miss A. L.
Long. D. S.
Long, E. C.
Long, H. Cj
Longbotham, E. G.
Longueuil, Miss E. K. G. de.
Lord, C.
Lorimer, Miss H. L.
Lothian, Miss R.
Louch, J. G.
Loudon, Miss K. M.
Loughery, Miss A. L.
Loughnane, Dr. F. M'G.
Lound, B. R.
Lovat, The Lady.
Loveless, C. H.
Loveless, W. A.
Lovell, Mrs. A. M.
Lovell, Mrs. L. M.
Lovett, Mrs. M. M. L. W.
Low, Miss A. M.
Low, A. S. M.
Low, Sister C.
Low, Miss E.
Low, Mrs. J. A.
Low, Mrs. L. M. M.
Low, Mrs. M. D.
Low, R. S.
Lowder, Miss P. E.
Lowe, Mrs. C.
Lowe, Miss C. V.
Lowe, Miss E.
Lowe, Miss I.
Lowe, P.
Lowe, Miss V.
Loweth, H.
Lowrance, W. A.
Lowrey, Dr. G.
Lowry, Miss E. K. A.
Lowry, Mrs. E. le L.
Lowry, Miss R. M.
Lowson, Miss N. F.
Lowther, Hon. Mrs. L. C. S.
Lowther, Miss T.
Loxton, Miss H. M.
Luard, Miss F. M.
Luard, Miss L. E.
Luby, Miss V. G.
Lucas, Mrs. D.
Lucas, Miss E. M.
Lucas, Mrs. E. V.
Lucas, E. V.
Lucas, J. C.
Lucas, R. M.
Luce, Miss E. G.
Lucena, Miss F. B. D.
Lucy, Miss M.
Lucy, Sister M.
Luden, Miss B. L.
Ludkin, Miss E.
Ludlow, Miss M. S.
Lumley, Miss E. M.
Lumsden, Miss A. L.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 355
Lumsden, Miss E. T.
Lumsden, Mrs. M.
Lumsden, Miss M. T.
Lund, Miss L. E.
Lunn, A. H. M.
Lunnon, R. G.
Lupton, Miss E. G.
Lupton, H. B.
Lupton, Miss M. W.
Lyle, C. E. L.
Lyle, Mrs. F. F.
Lynch, Miss E. G.
Lynn, F. G.
Lyon, Hon. Mrs. Bowes.
Lyon, Mrs. J. E.
Lyon, J. M.
Lyons, J.
Lyons-Tracey, Miss H. H.
Lysaught, Miss C. L.
Lysaught, Miss M. E.
Lyster, Miss D. L.
Lyttelton, Hon. Mrs. R. H.
M
Macadam, S.
Macalpine, B.
MacAndrew, K. A.
Macarthur, Miss V. E.
Macartney, Miss H. J.
Macaulay, Miss J.
Macaulay, M.
Macbean, Miss M.
MacClaren, M. S.
MacClvmont, Miss R.
MacDonald, A. G.
Macdonald, Miss C.
Macdonald, Mrs. C.
Macdonald, Mrs. D.
Macdonald, G. R.
Macdonald, Miss I.
Macdonald, Miss J. C.
Macdonald, Miss J. M'K.
MacDonald, J. R. M.
Macdonald, Miss M.
Macdonald, Miss M. A.
Macdonald, Miss M. C.
Macdonald, Miss M. F.
Macdonald, Mrs. S.
Macdonald, Mrs. S. C.
Macdonald, Dr. W. M.
MacDonnell, Miss M. G. A.
MacDonnell, Miss M. R. B.
MacDougall, Miss.
MacDougall, Miss M. M.
Macdufi, Miss M. E. F.
Macduff, Miss U. E.
Macewan, A.
MacEwen, Miss V. E. C.
Macfarlan, Miss M. E. B.
Macfarlane, Miss A. T.
Macfarlane, Miss R. H.
Macfie, Miss A. D.
MacGillivray, Rev. G. J.
Macgregor, Dr. A.
MacGregor, Miss C.
MacGregor, C. G.
MacGregor, Miss H.
MacGregor, J. C. T.
MacGusty, Miss M.
Machan, Mrs. B.
Maclnnes, M. L.
Macintosh, Miss H. M.
Macintosh, J. B.
Maclntyre, J.
Maclntyre, Miss J. P.
Mackail, Mrs. L. R.
Mackay, Miss C. F. N.
Mackay, Miss E,
Mackay, Miss N.
Mackenzie, Miss A. C.
Mackenzie, Sister E. D.
Mackenzie, Miss E. H.
Mackenzie, Miss F. A.
Mackenzie, Miss G.
Mackenzie, Dr. H. D. N.
Mackenzie, Miss I.
Mackenzie, Miss S. H. Muir-.
Mackenzie- Kennedy, Miss M. I
Mackinnon, Miss A. P.
Mackinnon, Miss M. P.
Mackintosh, Miss B. M. A.
Mackintosh, Miss D. H.
Mackintosh, Miss E. G.
Mackintosh', Miss E. L.
MacKintosh, H.
Mackintosh, Miss H. M.
Mackintosh, Miss I. M.
Mackney, Miss E. M.
Maclachlan, Dr. Margaret J.
Maclagan, Miss E. W.
Maclaren, Miss E. M.
Maclaren, Miss J.
Maclaw, Miss V. H.
Maclean, Miss C.
Maclean, Mrs. Harriet
MacLean, Dr. J.
MacLean, Miss L. C. C. D.
Maclean, Miss N.
Maclennan, Miss K. C.
Macleod, Miss A.
Macleod, Mrs. I. A.
Macleod, Mrs. J. A.
Macleod, Miss N.
MacManus, Miss C. S. V.
MacMurtrie, Mrs. B.
Macnamara, Miss E.
Macnaughton, Miss E. M.
Macnaughton, Miss N. M.
Macneil, Miss.
Macneill, Miss E. E.
MacNish, Dr. D.
Macphail, D. A. M.
Macphail, Miss I. M.
MacPhail, Dr. K. S.
Macpherson, Miss B.
Macpherson, Miss B. F.
Macpherson, Miss H. I.
Macpherson, Miss J.
Macpherson, Miss J. B. H.
MacRae, Miss J.
Macran, Mrs. S.
Macran, Miss S.
Macray, Mrs. J.
Macrory, Miss O.
Macvane, C.
Maddeford, F.
Madden, A. E.
Magee, H. E.
Magennis, J. B.
Mahmud, Dr. H.
Mahon, Dr. R. B.
Main, Miss M. M.
Mainwaring, Mrs. G. M.
Mairet, P. A.
Maitland, Miss F. E.
Maitland, Rev. R. W.
Maize, Miss L. C. E.
Majolier, Miss C. R.
Majolier, Madame.
Majolier, Miss S. II.
Major, Dr. H. G. T.
Major, J. W.
Malcolm, Miss B.
Malcomson, Miss A. L.
Malcomson, D.
Malcomson, D. J.
Malcomson, H. F.
Malik, H. S.
Mallet, G. E.
Mallock, Dr.
Mallon, Miss L.
Manders, Miss B. M.
Manders, Mrs. M. B.
Mandling, Miss C. R.
Manley, Miss 1.
Manley, Miss A. L.
Manley, E. B.
Manley, Miss E. F.
Mann, Miss C. R.
Mann, H.
Mann, Miss M. L.
Manning, F.
Manning, Dr. H. C.
Mansel, Miss J. E.
Mansford, C. G.
Mansford, C. J.
Manson, Miss A. W.
Manton, D. L.
Manton, N. H.
Maple, Miss M.
Mapletoft, Miss P.
Marcel, C.
March, Miss A.
Marchant, S. G.
Marchment, C. T.
Mare, Miss E. R. de la.
Markham, E.
Marks, A. B.
Marlow, F. C.
Marlow, H. VV.
Marples, Miss G. H.
Marquand, Miss M. G. le.
Marriage, A. H.
Marriage, A. W.
Marriage, G. C.
Marriage, Miss P.
Marriott, Miss B. I.
Marris, Miss I. D.
Marrow, Miss M. N.
Marrow, Miss M. S.
Marsden, Mrs. A. M.
Marsden, H. J. E.
Marsden, Sister L.
Marsh, Dr. C. A.
Marsh, E. H.
Marsh, F. W.
Marsh, J.
Marsh, J. K.
Marsh, J. T.
Marsh, W. A.
Marsh, W. J.
Marshall, A.
Marshall, A. C.
Marshall, A. S. F.
Marshall, Miss C.
Marshall, C. E.
Marshall, D. G.
Marshall, Miss E.
Marshall, Sister E.
Marshall, Miss F. M.
Marshall, Capt. G. B.
Marshall, Mi's. M.
Marshall, Miss M. D.
Marshall, Miss M. L.
Marshall, W.
Marshall, Miss \V.
Marson, C. B.
Marten, D. H.
Martin, Dr. Ann.
Martin, Miss A. M.
Martin, B. K.
Martin, C. S. B.
Martin, Miss E. C.
35^
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Martin, Miss E. N.
Martin, Dr. F. B.
Martin, Miss G. le Q.
Martin, Miss I. D. D. Bromley-.
Martin, J. R.
Martin, Miss L. E.
Martin, Miss M.
Martin, Miss M. F. Bromley-.
Martin, Miss S. Bromley-.
Martin, W..F.R.C.S.
Martin, W. A.
Martland, Dr. Edith M.
Martlin, Miss E. L.
Marx, Miss C. M.
Masefield, J. E.
Maskell, A. W.
Mason, Miss B.
Mason, Miss E.
Mason, E.
Mason, Miss E. L. F.
Mason, F.
Mason, G. R.
Mason, Mrs. M. D.
Mason, Miss W.
Mason, W. J. P.
Massey, Mrs. A. E.
Massey, E. C. W.
Masson, Miss H. M.
Mastennan, Capt. J. S.
Masters, Miss C. A.
Masters, Miss H.
Masterson, Miss A.
Masterson, Mrs. E. M. D.
Mather, Miss E. L.
Mather, H.
Matheson, VV.
Mathews, Miss A. C.
Mathews, Miss M. S.
Mathews, VV.
Mathie, Miss D. G.
Matthews, Miss Berkley.
Matthews, Miss H.
Matthews, Miss M. D.
Matthews, Sister O. M.
Matthews, Miss R. L.
Matthews, W.
Maud, C. E.
Maude, A. E.
Maude, Miss E.
Mauger, P. V. E.
Maugham, Mr.
Maunsey, R. E.
Maurier, Mrs. G. M. B. du.
Maxse, Miss S. A. M.
Maxted, P.
Maxwell, Miss A.
Maxwell, Miss A. A.
Maxwell, Mrs. B. Heron.
Maxwell, Miss E. M.
Maxwell, Mrs. G.
Maxwell, I. A.
Maxwell, Miss I. M.
Maxwell, Miss J.
Maxwell, L. B.
Maxwell, Miss M.
Maxwell, Mrs. M. B.
May, Miss B. M.
May, Miss C.
May, Miss C. M. D.
May, Miss D.
May, Miss E.
May, Mrs. E. A.
May, E. H.
May, Miss E. L.
May, E. S.
May, F. A.
May, W. H.
Mayer, C. E.-
Mayhew, Miss A. G.
Maynard, Miss D.
M'Ainsh, J.
M'Alister, Miss R.
M'Allen, J.
M'Ara, Miss C. H.
M'Arthur, F. B.
M'Cahon, Miss M.
M'Call, D.
M'Call, Miss F. M.
M'Call, Miss I. H.
M'Callum, Miss M.
M'Carthv, Mr.
M'Carthy, Miss M.
M'Caskie, H. B.
M'Caskie, Dr. N. J.
M'Causland, Miss M.
M'Claskey, C. W.
M'Claverty, Miss M.
M'Clelland, Mrs. E. M.
M'Clughan, J. A.
M'Coli, Miss M.
M'Coll, Miss VV. M.
M'Combe, Miss M.
M'Connell, Miss M. J.
M'Cormack, J. P.
M'Cowen, J. VV. M.
M'Culloch, Miss H.
M'Culloch, Miss I. M.
M'Culloch, VV.
M'Dermid, H. R.
M'Donald, Mrs. M. C.
M'Donald, Miss S. E.
M'Dougall, Mrs.
M'Dougall, Mrs. G.
M'Dougall, Miss H.
M'Dougall, Miss M.
M'Dowall, Miss I.
M'Dowell, J.
M'Dunphy, Miss S.
M'Eacham, Mrs.
M'Elroy, Mrs. M. H.
M'Enery. VV. A., F.R.C.S.
M'Entire, Mrs. M. A.
M'Ewan, P. F.
M'Farlane, Miss A. M.
M'Gibbon, Mrs. G. V. E.
M'Glade, Miss A.
M'Glashan, Miss B.
M'Grath, Miss M.
M'Gregor, Miss B.
M'Gregor, Miss C. C.
M'Gregor, Miss E. J.
M'Gregor, Miss J. L.
M'Guinness, Miss N.
M'Guire, P.
M'Guire, Miss M. E.
M'Hardy, Miss E. L.
M'llroy, Dr. Anne.
M'llroy, Miss L.
M'Intosh, MissE. M.
M'Intyre, Miss M.
M'lvor, W. J. G.
M'Kay, Dr.
M'Kay, J.
M'Kean, Miss M. G.
M'Kelvie, Miss E.
M'Kenzie, D.
M'Kerlie, Miss M. B.
M'Killop, MissE. M.
M'Killop, Mrs. J. D.
M'Kinery, Mrs. G.
M'Kittrick, F. H.
M'Knight, Miss J.
M'Lachlan, J. A.
M'Lachlan, Miss S.
M'Laren, Mrs. E.
M'Laren, Miss J.
M'Laren, Miss M.
M'Laren, M. S.
M'Lean, Miss Adelaide.
M'Lean, Miss Amy.
M'Lean, G. H.
M'Lennan, Miss K.
M'Leod, Miss F. M.
M'Leod, Miss H. M.
M'Leod, J.
M'Leod, Mrs. J. C.
M'Leod, Miss J. M.
M'Leod, J. M.
M'Loughlin, Miss F. M.
M'Michael, G. J. VV.
M'Micking, R. G.
M'Millan, Miss M. J.
M'Minn, Miss M. E.
M'Munick, Miss H. M.
M'Nalby, Miss D.
M'Neil, Mrs. D.
M'Neil, Miss M. M.
M'Neile, Mrs. A. E.
M'Neill, A.
M'Neill, Dr. Mary L.
M'Nellan, Miss E. M. R.
M'Onie, J. A.
M'Wean, Miss J.
M'Whirter, J. D.
Mead, Miss A. M.
Meade, Miss A. L. G.
Meade, Miss C. G.
Meade, Miss S. C.
Meakiti, H. J.
Meakin, L. G.
Mears, Miss L. H.
Medcalf, Mrs. L. B.
Meere, Miss M. M.
Meikle, Miss E. P.
Meiklejohn, C.
Meiklejohn, Mrs. H. B.
Meiklejohn, Miss S. J.
Mellanby, T. G.
Melland, Miss R.
Meller, Mrs. B.
Melling, VV.
Mellish, J. H.
Mello, Miss T. N.
Mellor, E. C.
Mellor, H.
Mellor, Mrs. H.
Mellor, VV.
Melville, Miss C. T-
Melville, F.
Melville, VV. G.
Mendham, F.
Mennell, B.
Mennell, E. N.
Mennell, G. H.
Menteth, O. M. S.
Menzies, Lady S. H.
Meray, H. C. E. E. de.
Mercer, Miss C. A.
Mercer, G.
Meredith, Miss M. C.
Meredith, T. C.
Meredith, VV. E.
Merey, Mrs. C. M. de.
Merington, Miss R.
Merrill, Mrs. O. M.
Merrylees, Miss A. L.
Merrylees, Miss M. C.
Merton, F.
Messenger, D. O. J.
Messer, A. I.
Messer, VV.
Mesurier, C. le.
Metcalf, Miss M. VV.
Meyer, P.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 357
Meynell, Miss E.
Michels, Mrs. E. M.
Michie, Miss A. M.
Middlemiss, Miss M.
Middleton, Miss A. M.
Middleton, G.
Middleton, Miss M.
Middleton, Miss R.
Middleton, R.
Middleweek, H. J.
Midgley, Miss A.
Midgley, Miss D.
Miell, W. J.
Milburn, W. G.
Miles, Miss A.
Miles, J. E.
Miles, O. M. T.
Milestone, Miss C. F.
Milford, Mrs. H. A.
Millar, J. G.
Millar, Miss L.
Millar, W. M.
Millea, L. S.
Miller, Mrs. A. R. M.
Miller, C. St. J. G.
Miller, E. V.
Miller, G.
Miller, H. C.
Miller, Miss I. K.
Miller, Miss J.
Miller, Miss J. J.
Miller, Miss K. L.
Miller, Miss M.
Millgate, R.
Milligan, J. L.
Millman, H.
Mills, A. H.
MiUs, Mrs. E.
Mills, E. A. C.
Mills, Mrs. F. G.
Mills, Rev. W. E.
Mills, W. P.
Milman, Miss I. M.
Milne, Miss A. S.
Milne, F. J.
Milne, Mrs. M. N. F.
Milner, G. R.
Milner, V. C. S.
Milson, S. E.
Milton, A. F.
Milton, H. H.
Milward, Mrs. R. M.
Minchin, L. E.
Misick, Miss G. C. de C.
Mitchell, A.
Mitchell, A. G.
Mitchell, Miss B.
Mitchell, Miss B. I. A.
Mitchell, Miss C. T.
Mitchell, Miss E. C.
Mitchell, Miss I.
Mitchell, Miss M.
Mitchell, Miss M. A.
Mockler, Miss V. K. S.
Mofiat, Miss C.
Mofiatt, Miss A. M.
Moffatt, C. H.
Moffatt, P. W.
Mofiet, Miss F. C.
Moger, Miss E. L.
Mogg, E. F. Rees.
Moggach, Miss G.
Mohan, Dr. H.
Moir, Dr. Byres.
Moir, Miss E.
Moir, Miss I.
Moir, Miss M.
Moleyns, Hon. E. D. E. de.
Molloy, Miss M. C.
Molson, Miss N.
Molyneux, A. E.
Molyneux, Rev. E. G.
Moncrieff, Miss C. S. L.
Moncrieff, Miss H. M. S.
Moncrieff, Miss I. M. S.
Money, Miss A. L.
Money, F. J.
Monk, Miss L. M.
Monk, Miss R. E.
Monkhouse, Miss M. M.
Monk-Jones, M.
Monks, F.
Montagu, Hon. S. A. S.
Montaldi, Mrs. M.
Montefiore, Mrs. D. B.
Montford, E. G.
Montmorency, Hon. K. dc.
Montmorency, Hon. R. de,
Montmorency, Viscountess.
Moodie, Miss E. E.
Moody, Miss D. M. P.
Moody, Miss M. M.
Moon, Miss M.
Mooney, Miss L. M.
Moor, Miss M.
Moorat, Mrs. J.
Mooratt, F. J.
Moore, Miss.
Moore, Miss A.
Moore, Miss C. H.
Moore, C. W.
Moore, Miss E.
Moore, Mrs. E. M.
Moore, F.
Moore, F. G.
Moore, Mrs. H.
Moore, Miss I. H.
Moore, J. R.
Moore, Miss K. M.
Moore, Miss L. V. E.
Moore, Miss M. E.
Moore, Miss M. M.
Moore, R. C.
Moore, S. S.
Moore, Miss S. W.
Moore, T. L.
Moore, W. MacLeod.
Moores, Mrs. F.
Moorhouse, Dr. C.
Moorhouse, R. J.
Moppett, Miss M.
Mordaunt, Miss C.
Mordaunt, Miss W.
Mordey, W.
More, Miss M. I.
Moreton, F. E.
Moreton, Miss I. J.
Morgan, Miss A. C.
Morgan, Miss A. M.
Morgan, Miss D. Carey.
Morgan, Miss E.
Morgan, Miss E. A.
Morgan, F.
Morgan, Miss H. J.
Morgan, Miss J.
Morgan, J. A.
Morgan, J. H, F.R.C.S.
Morgan, J. H.
Morgan, Miss M. F t
Morgan, O. G., F.R.C.S.
Morgan, W. P., F.R.C.S.
Moriarty, Miss A. M.
Moring, Miss M. E.
Morison, A. E.
Morison, Miss M. C.
Morland, A. J.
Morland, Mrs. E.
Morland, E. C, M.B.
Morland, Mi6S M. E.
Morley, Miss B.
Morley, Rev. E. W.
Morlev, F. M.
Morrell, H. H.
Morrell, Miss M.
Morrell, T. G.
Morrell, W. F.
Morrill, Mrs. O. E.
Morris, C. H.
Morris, Miss D. M.
Morris, Miss E.
Morris, E. E.
Morris, Mrs. E. M. J.
Morris, Miss F.
Morris, Miss J.
Morris, Miss M. E. R.
Morrison, L. M.
Morrison, Miss L. N.
Morrison, Miss M.
Morrison, Miss M. C.
Morrison, Miss S. P.
Morrison, W. C.
Morse, Miss H. L.
Morten, Mrs. F. C. H.
Mortimer, C. R. B.
Mortimer, E.
Mortimer, G. H.
Mortimer, H.
Morton, A. B.
Morton, Miss A. C.
Morton, Miss C. M.
Morton, D. H.
Morton, Miss E.
Morton, E. H.
Morton, E. R.
Morton, F. C.
Moscrop, Mrs. E.
Moseley, Miss R. G.
Moser, Mrs.
Mosley, Miss K. E.
Moss, Miss B. M. B.
Moss, H.
Moss, Mrs. H. K.
Moss, S. A.
Mothersole, R. D., F.R.C.S.
Motion, Miss M. B.
Mould, B.
Mounsey, Dr. R. E.
Moyes, T. B.
Mudie, Miss E.
Mugliston, Miss K. F.
Muir, E. C.
Muir, Rev. J. C.
Muir, W. E.
Muirhead, Miss C. E.
Muirhead, \V. H.
Mullen, J. J.
Muller, R. Burden-.
MulvUle, C. B.
Mulville, Miss E. E.
Mummery, Miss E. M.
Muucaster, Miss A. L.
Mundy Cox, Miss L. K.
Munro, Miss G. E.
Munro, J.
Murdoch, Miss A.
Murdoch, Miss E.
Murdoch, Miss I. M.
Murdoch, Miss M. Burn-.
Murdoch, Dr. Rhoda.
Murdoch, Miss S. S.
Murgatroyd, I. T.
Murphy, Miss C.
Murphy, Miss G. B.
Murphy, Miss H.
358
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Murphy, Miss L.
Murphy, Miss M. D.
Murray, Mrs. A. H. Keith.
Murray, Miss D.
Murray, Miss E.
Murray, Dr. Flora.
Murray, Miss G. G.
Murray, G. Keith.
Murray, I.ady H. M.
Murray, Miss H. M.
Murray, Miss J.
Murray, Miss J. C.
Murray, Miss J. C. H.
Murray, J. P. W.
Murray, Miss L.
Murray, Miss M.
Murray, Dr. Mary.
Murray, Mrs. M. A. F.
Murray, Miss M. E.
Murray, Miss R.
Murray, Miss R. I.
Murray, Miss R. P.
Muschamp. J.
Muschamp, T.
Muskett, Miss M. G.
Muskett, Miss W.
Muspratt, C. D., M.D.
Mussell, I. F. H. S.
Muwell, O.
Myatt, Miss D. F.
Myers, Miss H.
N
Nairne, Miss M. D. S.
Naish, P. L.
Napier, Miss M.
Nash, E. L.
Nason, Miss E. L. F.
Nathan, Miss N.
Neale, Miss R. K. B.
Neatby, Miss F.
Neatle'y, Miss W.
Neave, B. W.
Neave, J. N.
Neave, Miss V.
Nedderman, G. H.
Neild, Miss E. M. C.
Neild, Miss M.
Neill, Miss L. C.
Neish, Miss B.
Neisb, Miss E. C.
Neithercott, H. A.
Nelmes, W. H.
Nelson, A.
Nelson, Miss F. E. R.
Nelson, Miss G. M.
Nelson, Mrs. I. Hope-.
Nelson, J.
Nelson, R.
Nelson, T.
Nelson, Miss W.
Nelthorpe, Hon. Mrs. D. S.
Nelthorpe, Mrs. M. E. S.
Nelthorpe, Miss U. S.
Nerontsos, Miss F.
Nettleship, Miss E.
Nettleton, D.
Nevill, Miss M. C.
Neville, Miss D. E.
Neville, Mrs. F. A. L.
Neville, Miss K. C.
Neville, Mrs. N.
Nevinson, H. W.
New, G. II.
Newall, N. D.
Newberry, Miss E. M.
Newbold, Miss K. A.
Newbury, A. E.
Newby, W. T.
Newcomen, Mrs. E.
Newmau, Miss A. C. M.
Newman, E. H.
Newman, F. H.
Newman, Mrs. R. E. M.
Newton, C.
Newton, Miss E.
Newton, G. D. C.
Newton, H.
Newton, Miss M. T.
Newton, T. I.
Ney, F. J.
Nichol, Miss A.
Nichol, Miss M.
Nichol, Miss M. F.
Nichol, Miss S.
Nicholas, Miss M. E.
Nicholl, Miss S.
Nicholls, Miss M. A.
Nicholls, Miss M. M.
Nichols, W.
Nicholson, Miss A.
Nicholson, H. O.
Nicholson, Miss M. G.
Nicholson, Miss R.
Nickalls, Miss G.
Nickalls, J. L.
Nickalls, Miss M.
Nicol, Miss E.
Nicol, Mrs.
Nicoll, Miss I.
Nicolson, Miss A. M.
Nicolson, Miss C.
Nicolson, Miss M.
Nield, S.
Nisbet, Miss E.
Nisbett, A. G.
Niven, Miss I. H.
Niven, VV. A. C.
Nixon, Miss M.
Noakes, E.
Noble, Miss A. M.
Noble, E. J.
Noble, Colonel L.
Noble, Mrs. N. C.
Noble, Miss W.
Nockolds, Captain H.
Noel, Miss I.
Nolan, Miss M. H.
Norbury, Miss L. E.
Norgate, Mrs. E. M.
Norman, Miss B.
Norman, Miss O. H.
Norrington, Mrs. M.
Norris, A. E. W.
North, H.
North, H. L.
Northcote, Miss C. H.
Northcote, The Lady R.
Northcott, Miss N. K.
Norton, T. W.
Nowell, Miss A. I.
Nowell, H. W.
Nugent, Miss B. M. M'N.
Nugent, Miss M. V.
Nutbrown, F.
Nuttall, W. V.
O
Oakcs, A. S.
Oakes, Miss C.
Oakes, Miss M.
Oakes, Miss N.
Oakley, T. N.
O'Brien, Mrs. A. C.
O'Brien, B.
O'Brien, E. L.
O'Brien, Miss G. M.
O'Brien, Miss M.
O'Brien, Mrs. M. A.
O'Brien, Mrs.
O'Brien, T. H.
O'Brien, Miss V.
Ockwell, Dr. C. M.
O'Connor, Miss A. M.
O'Connor, Miss E. B.
O'Connor, Miss K. O.
O'Connor, Miss M. G.
O'Connor, Miss M. J.
O'Connor, Mrs. P. D.
O' Conor, Miss E. M.
Oddie, Miss C.
Officer, Miss E.
Ogilvie, Dr. D. C.
Ogilvie, W. H.
Ogilvy, Miss E. M.
Ogle, Miss F.
Ogle, Mrs.
O'Gorman, Madame.
O'Kane, Miss E.
Okey, Miss D. K.
Oldfield, Miss M. G.
Oldfield, Miss V.
Oldham, E. VV.
O'Leary, Miss E.
O'Leary, Miss K. M.
O'Leary, T. G.
Oliver, Miss A. G.
Oliver, D. L.
Oliver, G. P.
Oliver, K. L.
Oliver, K. S.
Olson, H.
O'Mahony, Miss C. K.
Onions, G. C.
Onslow, Miss A. M.
Ord, Miss A. M. Blackett.
Onnandy, J.
Ormerod, F. S.
Onniston, Miss M. I.
O'Rorke, Miss C.
O'Rourke, Miss S.
On-, Mrs. E.
Orr, F.
Orr, J. H.
Orred, Miss M. S.
Orred, Miss R.
Orvis, S. M.
Osborn, H. E.
Osborn, Mrs. M. A.
Osborn, R. J.
Osborne, Miss E. M.
Osborne, Miss P. E.
Osborne, Miss S.
O'Shea, Miss K.
Osier, Miss A. I.
Osier, Mrs. J.
Osmond, Miss D. S.
Osmond, Mrs. M.
Ostler, W. B.
O'Sullivan, Miss E.
Oswald, Dr. Agnes Estcourt.
Oswald, Miss E. M.
Oswald, Miss E.
Overton, Miss M. H.
Overton, R. E.
Owbridge, Mrs. L. A.
Owen, Mrs.
Owen, Miss A. M.
Owen, Mrs. A. M.
Owen, MibS B. M.
Owen, Miss D. M.
Owen, Mrs. F. II. F.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 359
Owen, Miss G. H. P.
Owen, Miss H.
Owen, Miss P. V.
Owen, R. L.
Owen, T. C.
Owen, W. B.
Owst, G. R.
Oxford, Dr. A. W.
Oyston, M.
Ozanne, Mrs. A. H.
Ozanne, Miss R.
Packe, Miss M. R.
Padgham, R. E.
Padian, F. M.
Page, Miss B.
Page, Miss H. M.
Page, J. S.
Page, V. F.
Paget, Miss A. M.
Paget, Lady A. V.
Paget, Miss C.
Paget, Stephen.
Pailthorpe, Miss G.
Paisley, Mrs. C.
Paisley, Miss C. E.
Pakenham, Miss O. D.
Palaeologus, W. C.
Paley, Miss K. H.
Palk, Miss E. B. M.
Pallett, W. F.
Palmer, A.
Palmer, C. B.
Palmer, E. J.
Palmer, F.
Palmer, H. G. K.
Palmer, Miss K.
Palmer, Miss N. M.
Palmer, W.
Palmer, W. N.
Papillon, Miss C. G.
Papineau, P.
Papprill, Miss A. M.
Papps, T. H.
Parbury, Miss F. T.
Parish, Mrs. D. M. C.
Park, Miss A. M.
Park, Miss G. E.
Park, Miss L. M.
Park, T.
Parker, A. F.
Parker, Mrs. C.
Parker, Miss E. C.
Parker, Miss E. E.
Parker, Miss E. F. N.
Parker, Miss F. H. O.
Parker, Miss K.
Parker, Mrs. P. B.
Parker, Miss P. B.
Parker, R. T.
Parker, T.
Parker, W. G.
Parkin, E. H.
Parkinson, Miss D.
Parkinson, F. W.
Parkinson, S.
Parnall, R. H.
Parr, Miss M. E.
Parr, Miss V. E.
Parrington, Miss,M. A.
Parsons, A. E.
Parsons, Miss B. A.
Parsons, J. F.
Parsons, Miss Marie.
Parsons, Miss M. R.
Parsons, Miss V. G.
Parton, F. L.
Partridge, F. S.
Partridge, G. W., F.R.C.S.
Pasley, Mrs. C. \V. Sabine-.
Pasotti, F. G.
Passmore, Miss C.
Patal, Miss O.
Patch, Miss E. R.
Patching, G. A.
Pateman, G. H.
Paterson, Miss A. W.
Paterson, Miss C. H. T.
Paterson, Mrs. F. O.
Paterson, Miss K.
Paterson, Mrs. L.
Paterson, Miss M.
Paterson, Miss Margaret.
Paterson, Dr. M. S.
Patriarca, Miss E. J. F.
Patrick, Miss I. J.
Patterson, Mrs. A. H.
Patterson, Miss E. J.
Patterson, H.
Patterson, Miss J.
Patterson, Mrs. On-.
Pattinson, G. N.
Pattison, Miss M. B.
Paul, Mrs. C. S. J.
Pavey, Miss E. A.
Pavey, Miss G. M.
Pawson, J.
Payley, Mr.
Payne, A. E.
Payne, C. B.
Payne, Mrs. E.
Payne, J.
Payne, Mrs. K.
Payne, K. C.
Payne, R. R. B.
Payne, W.
Payne, W. J.
Payton, Lady M. S.
Peacop, E.
Peake, Miss E. J.
Peake, G. H., F.R.C.S.
Peake, Miss H. H.
Pearce, D. C.
Pearce, H. V.
Pearce, T. VV.
Peard, Mrs. E. A. M.
Pearl, R. T.
Pearse, Miss D. W.
Pearson, Miss A.
Pearson, A.
Pearson, Miss A. J.
Pearson, C.
Pearson, Miss E.
Pearson, Miss F.
Pearson, J. S.
Pearson, L. K.
Pearson, R. T.
Pearson, W.
Pearson, W. C.
Pease, Cyril.
Pease, H.
Pease, Miss M. C.
Pease, W. F.
Peckover, W. L. H.
Pedley, C. F., F.R.C.S.
Pedley, Miss P. J.
Peebles, Miss A.
Peek, Miss G.
Peeke, Miss H. H.
Pegler, L.
Peile, Miss I.
Peile, J. A.
Pcile, T. M.
Peirson, C. J.
Peirson, S. F.
Pellanf, A.
Pemberton, Miss A. M.
Pemberton, T. T.
Penberthy, E. E.
Peniaux, E.
Pennant, Hon. V. D.
Penney, H. L.
Penrose, A. P.
Pentreath, Miss C. A.
Pepper, S. D.
Percival, Miss A. M.
Percival, Miss C. M.
Percival, Miss J. M.
Percival, N. S.
Percy, E. J.
Percy, Mrs. H. E.
Perdue, Miss F.
Perkins, B. W.
Perkins, Miss C. A.
Perkins, F. S.
Perkins, H. D.
Perkins, J. S.
Perkins, Mrs.
Perkins, Mrs. K. A.
Perkins, Miss V. F.
Perkins, Mrs. W.
Perks, Miss M.
Perowne, C. I. S.
Persse, Miss D. G.
Pertwee, Mrs. E.
Peter, Sister M.
Peter, Miss M. L.
Peter, Miss M. W.
Peterkin, Miss K. M. G.
Peters, Miss A.
Peters, Miss L.
Peterson, Miss M.
Pethick, Mrs. M. E.
Petre, Miss M. D. M.
Petrie, Miss J.
Petrie, J. A.
Petrie, Mrs. L.
Petrie, Miss M. M.
Pettifer, E. VV.
Pettit, Mrs. F. W.
Peyman, B.
Phelps, H. A.
Phelps, Miss J.
Phelps, J. H.
Phelps, J. V.
Phibbs, B.
Phibbs, Miss S. M.
Phillimore, J. E.
Phillimore, R. C.
Phillipps, H. M.
Phillips, A. H.
Phillips, A. R.
Phillips, A. W.
Phillips, B. W.
Phillips, Miss C. C.
Phillips, Miss C. I.
Phillips, H. A.
Phillips, J.
Phillips, Miss K. L.
Phillips, L.
Phillips, Miss M. E.
Phillips, R. G.
Phillips, R. W.
Phillips, Miss W.
Philp, E. G.
Phipps, Miss A.
Phipps, Mrs. A. M.
Phipps, Miss A. M.
Phipps, K. C. G.
Pichet, Miss M. M.
Wckard, W. H.
Pickeu, Miss.
360
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Pickersgill, H. E.
Pidgeon, Mrs. F. M.
Pierce, Miss B. L.
Pierce, Edmund.
Pigeon, H. R.
Pignev, Miss C. If.
Pigot,' Miss K. M.
Pigou, A. C.
Pilcher, Mrs. K. M.
Pile, Miss M.
Pim, Miss C. A.
Pim, Miss G.
Pim, S.
Pimm, L.
Pinhorn, Miss J. M.
Pinniger, Miss A.J.
Pirie, Miss C. R.
Pirie, Miss J.
Pirmez, R.
Pirnie, Miss A. E.
Pitken, G. W.
Pitkin, A. J.
Pitman, Mrs. F. J. S.
Pitman, Miss J. W.
Pitman, Miss Wynne.
Pitt, Mrs. M.
Pittman, O.
Plaistowe, Miss.
Piatt, Miss E. G.
Pleister, Miss E. M. ].
Pleydell, M. D. Mansel-.
Plevins, Miss M. T. N.
Plimsoll, Miss R. W.
Podd, Miss F. L.
Poidevin, H. A. le.
Pollard, Miss A. M.
Pollard, Mrs. B. L. S.
Pollard, E. B.
Pollard, H. E.
Pollard, Miss O. M.
Pollard, R. S.
Pomeroy, Miss E.
Ponsford, Miss I. A.
Ponsonby, Lady V. L.
Pontefract, J.
Pontefract, Miss J. S. G.
Pontifex, Miss H. M. L.
Pool, G. H.
Poole, Miss D.
Poole, H,
Poole, VV. A.
Pope, Miss C. M. L.
Pope, Miss D. E.
Pope, Miss M. K.
Pope, Miss M. D.
Popplestone, C. G.
Porcher, Miss C. W.
Porcher, Miss M. S.
Porritt, L.
Porritt, R. N., M.R.C.S.
Portal, Miss A. J.
Portal, Miss K.
Portal, Miss M. E.
Portal, Miss O.
Porte, Madame J. de la.
Porteous, Miss E.
Porteous, Miss H.
Porteous, R.
Porter, Miss A. E.
Porter, A. H.
Porter, Miss C.
Porter, Miss E.
Porter, Miss E. E.
Porter, Dr. Ellen.
Porter, Miss E. A.
Portus, Miss E. E.
Posnett, Dr. W. G. T.
Post, Miss E. A.
Poston, G.
Pott, F. H.
Potter, E. S.
Potter, G. H.
Potts, T. V.
Poulson, W.
Pound, Miss E. M. E.
Pounds, Miss E. M. A.
Powell, A.
Powell, E. J.
Powell, Miss H. C.
Powell, J. W.
Powell, Miss M. L.
Powell, P. H.
Powell, Miss S. E.
Power, Miss M. W. B.
Power, Miss V. O'N.
Powicke, Miss G. M.
Powys, Miss E. J.
Prance, Miss E.
Prance, Miss G.
Prance, Miss E. L.
Pratt, Mrs. M.
Pratt, Miss M.
Preedy, Miss E. E. de S.
Prest, H. J.
Preston, Miss F. G.
Preston, Miss G. A.
Preston, W. R.
Prestwick, J. G.
Price, E. J.
Price, Miss E. M.
Price, Mrs. F. M. H.
Price, G. P.
Price, G. R.
Price, Miss H.
Price, Miss H. F.
Price, Miss J. A. V.
Price, Miss L. R.
Price, Miss R. M.
Price, Corporal S. J.
Priest, J. W.
Priestley, A.
Priestman, Basil.
Priestman, Bernard.
Priestman, Bryan.
Priestman, C.
Priestman, Miss J.
Priestman, K. M.
Priestman, N.
Prince, H.
Pringle, Miss D. M.
Pringle, Miss E. L. H.
Pringle, Miss E. M. L. H.
Pringle, Miss I.
Pringle, S. S., F.R.C.S.
Prinsep, T. B. L.
Prioleau, R.
Prior, C. E.
Prior, E.
Prior, Miss M.
Prior, Mrs. M. E.
Pritchard, E. A. B.
Pritchard, P. J.
Pritchett, Mrs. E. M.
Procter, B.
Procter, C. L.
Procter, E.
Procter, Miss G. D.
Procter, Miss R. E.
Proctor, Miss.
Proctor, Miss E.
Proctor, Miss E. H.
Proctor, Miss H. G.
Proctor, Miss J.
Proctor, Miss M.
Proctor, Miss M. S.
Proctor, Miss R. M. B.
Propert, Miss H. D.
Protheroe, J. H.
Pryce, Miss E. J. M.
Pryce, Miss H. F.
Pryce, Mrs. M. M.
Ptolemy, Miss J. M'l.
Puckett, E. G.
Pugh, S. T.
Pulford, Miss S. M.
Pulham, W. O.
Pullen, G. H.
Pulleyn, T. E.
Pullin, Mrs. V.
Pullinger, Miss A.
Pullman, Miss B.
Pumphrey, A. H.
Pumphrey, Miss E. M.
Pumphrey, G. S.
Pumphrey, O. N.
Pumphrey, T.
Pursaill, R. G.
Pursey, C. J.
Puisey, C. S.
Pursey, N. C. S.
Pursey, Miss R. C.
Purvis, Miss M. F. A.
Purvis, Miss V. M.
Puxley, Miss Z.
Pycott, Miss M.
Pye, Miss Edith.
Pye, Miss Ethel.
Pvle, H.
Pym, Miss B. M.
Pym, Miss S. A.
Q
Quaife, Mrs. E. M. M.
Quain, C.
Quartermain, Miss E.
Quatermain, G.
Quihampton, Mi6s N
Quilter, D.
Quin, Miss G. M.
Quinn, J. H.
Rackstraw, Miss M.
Radcliffe, J. C.
Radclyffe, F. G. P.
Raffan, E.
Ralli, P. S.
Ralph, Miss I. M.
Ram, Miss I.
Ramsay, D. M.
Ramsay, Miss J. T.
Ramsay, Dr. Mabel.
Ramsden, E.
Ramsey, Miss A. M.
Randall, Miss A.
Ranger, J. G.
Rankin, H.
Ransome, Miss E.
Ransome, E. O.
Ransome, J. A.
Rasdill, H. \V.
Rata, A.
Rathbone, R. C.
Rattray, M. H.
Ravenshear, Mrs. M.
Ravcrty, H. J., F.R.C.S.
Rawlence, F. A.
Rawlings, Miss B. H.
Rawlings, F. M.
Rawlings, Miss H.
Rawlins, N. L.
Rawlinson, Mrs. G.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 361
RawsoD, Miss E.
Rawson, H. W.
Rawstorne, Miss J.
Ray, J. F.
Ray, Miss K. L.
Raymond, Miss P.
Rayner, Mrs. E.
Rea, Miss A.
Rea, Mrs. M.
Read, F. S.
Reade, Mrs. F. V.
Reade, Miss M. C.
Ready, G.
Reah, Miss D.
Reaney, Miss M. J.
Rear, Miss M.
Reavill, S.
Reckitt, H. J.
Reckitt, Mrs. J. A. C.
Redcate, Mrs.
Redfern, L.
Redgrave, A.
Redman, R. C.
Redmayne, H.
Redmayne, Mrs. K. M.
Redvill, W.
Reed, Miss A. M.
Reed, Miss E.
Reed, Miss E. F.
Reed, Miss K. M.
Rees, D. P.
Rees, Miss G. A. R.
Rees, J. P.
Rees, Dr. J. R.
Rees, R. D.
Rees, Miss R. H.
Reeve, Miss M. G.
Reeve, W. H. Simms-.
Reeves, S.
Reeves, W.
Reid, Miss C. R.
Reid, Miss E.
Reid, Miss H.
Reid, Miss J.
Reid, Miss J, S.
Reid, J. W.
Reid, Miss S. K.
Reid, Miss S. M.
Reid, Mrs. S. M.
Reilly, Mrs. F. M.
Remnant, A. J.
Rendall, Mrs. C. L.
Rendall, Miss H.
Rendall, Dr. Stanley.
Rendel, Miss F. E.
Rennie, Miss K. L.
Renshaw, C. F.
Renshaw, J. G.
Renton, Miss M.
Renton, Mrs. S.
Renzy, A. St. G. de.
Repton, Miss H. K.
Repton, Miss R.
Reynold, Mrs. J.
Reynolds, Mrs. A. M.
Reynolds, Miss B. A.
Reynolds, Miss C. J.
Reynolds, Miss D. P.
Reynolds, Mrs. N. C. C.
Reynolds.'R. W.
Reynolds, Mrs. T. O.
Rhys, Miss M.
Rhys, Miss O.
Ribchester, T. C
Ricardo, Miss S. E.
Rice, B. S.
Rice, E.
Rice, T. A. H.
Richard, Miss C. M.
Richards, Mrs. C. E.
Richards, Miss H. W. L.
Richards, Miss M.
Richards, Dr. Maud.
Richardson, Miss A. M.
Richardson, Miss E.
Richardson, Miss F. M.
Richardson, Mrs. G. E.
Richardson, Miss G. Stewart.
Richardson, J. F.
Richardson, L. F.
Richardson, Miss M.
Richardson, Miss Mary.
Richardson, Miss M. E.
Richardson, N. W.
Richardson, S.
Riches, Miss C.
Richmond, Miss S. E.
Rickards, Mrs. G. G.
Ricketts, Miss K. E.
Ricketts, Miss V. M.
Riddel, Miss N. L.
Riddell, Miss M.
Riddell, Miss R.
Rideal, Mrs. E.
Ridgeway, Miss E. A.
Ridgway, Miss C. M.
Ridgway, Miss G. \V.
Ridgway, Miss H.
Ridley, Brigadier-Gen. C. P.-
Riley, Geoffrey.
Riley, George.
Riley, W. G.
Ripley, W. G.
Rising, Miss H. M.
Ritchie, Miss A. L.
Ritchie, Dr. D. D.
Ritchie, Miss G. P.
Ritchie, Mrs. L. D.
Rivett, Dr. L. C.
Robb, A. A.
Robbie, Miss E.
Roberts, Dr. Adeline.
Roberts, A.
Roberts, Miss A.
Roberts, Miss A. A.
Roberts, Miss A. B.
Roberts, A. H.
Roberts, Miss A. M.
Roberts, Miss A. V. A.
Roberts, Miss C. P.
Roberts, Miss E.
Roberts, E.
Roberts, Miss F. I.
Roberts, H.
Roberts, Mrs. I. H. M.
Roberts, Mrs. I. M.
Roberts, Miss M. F.
Roberts, Miss N.
Roberts, Miss P. P.
Roberts, R. F.
Roberts, W. C.
Robertson, Mrs.
Robertson, Miss A.
Robertson, Mrs. A. M.
Robertson, A. S.
Robertson, Miss.
Robertson, C.
Robertson, Miss Charlotte.
Robertson, Miss Christina.
Robertson, Miss C. R.
Robertson, D. H.
Robertson, E. H. M.
Robertson, Miss H.
Robertson, J. H.
Robertson, Miss K.
Robertson, Mrs. L.
Robertson, L.
Robertson, Miss May.
Robertson, Miss Mary.
Robertson, Miss M. F. B.
Robertson, Miss M. H. A.
Robertson, Miss M. I.
Robertson, Miss Q.
Robertson, Miss S.
Robin, Miss E. \V.
Robinson, A.
Robinson, Miss A. E.
Robinson, Dr. A. S.
Robinson, A. S.
Robinson, A. W.
Robinson, B. I.
Robinson, Mrs. C.
Robinson, Miss C.
Robinson, Miss Cecile Bradbury.
Robinson, Miss E.
Robinson, Dr. Edith.
Robinson, Miss E. B.
Robinson, Miss E. Bradley.
Robinson, Miss E. Bright.
Robinson, Mrs. E. L.
Robinson, Miss Ethel M.
Robinson, Miss Evelyn M.
Robinson, Mrs. E. Rowau.
Robinson, F. W. H.
Robinson, G. S.
Robinson, G. W.
Robinson, Miss H. A.
Robinson, H. M.
Robinson, Dr. J.
Robinson, J. D.
Robinson, Miss L.
Robinson, Miss L. E.
Robinson, Mrs. M. G.
Robinson , Miss M. G.
Robinson, N.
Robinson, Hon. N. E.
Robinson, R. B.
Robinson, R. H.
Robinson, Mrs. W.
Robinson, W. A.
Robinson, Mrs. W. M.
Robson, A. S.
Robson, Col. A. \V. Mayo-.
Robson, Miss E. K.
Robson, Miss G. K. S.
Robson, Miss K. R.
Rochfort, Mrs. E. B.
Rockett, Miss D. E.
Rockey, Miss M. O. H.
Roddis, Miss L.
Rodwell, J. P.
Roffcy, A. E.
Rogers, C. E.
Rogers, C. W. Lyttleton-.
Rogers, Miss E. O.
Rogers, Miss G.
Rogers, H.
Rogers, Mrs. H. M.
Rogers, H. V.
Rogers, J. H. Burcham-.
Rogers, Miss M.
Rogers, Miss M. G.
Rogers, Mrs. S. Burcham-.
Rogers, S.
Rogers, S. R.
Rogerson, Miss E.
Rolinson, Dr. Edith.
Rollins, T. D.
Rollo, Miss M. V.
Rolls, F. P.
I Rolt, Miss A. A. L.
; Romanes, Miss A.
i Rome, Mrs.
1 Romer, Mrs. K. M.
362
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Rooper, R. B.
Rope, Miss I. M.
Roper, W. F.
Roscoe, Miss A.
Rose, A.
Rose, Mrs. A. M.
Rose, A. W.
Rose, D. B.
Rose, Mrs. E.
Rose, Miss G. S.
Rose, Miss J. A.
Rose, W.
Rosenberg, M.
Rosie, Miss J.
Roskell, H.
Roskill, Miss M.
Ross, Miss.
Ross, Miss A. O.
Ross, Miss A. W.
Ross, Miss G. S.
Ross, Miss I. M.
Ross, Miss J. M.
Ross, Lady P.
Ross, Miss R. M.
Ross, Mrs. S. H. Leith-.
Ross, Miss W.
Ross, W. D.
Rosslyn, The Counter of.
Rothermere, Lady M. L.
Rothney, Miss C.
Roussin, Miss C. Z. P. R.
Rowan, F. B.
Rowat, C. W.
Rowbotham, Miss M.
Rowe, A. T.
Rowe, Miss F. E.
Rowe, Miss H. L.
Rowland, Mrs. C.
Rowlands, A.
Rowlands, H.
Rowley, Miss F. A.
Rowley, Mrs. V.
Rowntree, A. C.
Rowntree, C. W.
Rowntree, H.
Rowntree, Miss J. H.
Rowntree, J. H.
Rowntree, J. S.
Rowntree, L. E.
Rowntree, S.
Rowntree, W.
Rowse, Miss E. E.
Rowson, R. H.
Roy, Miss E.
Roy, Miss M. G.
Royds, Miss W. M.
Roylance, A.
Roylance, W.
Rozier, Miss K.
Rudd, Miss C. S.
Ruddock, Miss M.
Rudge, Miss.
Rudman, R. R.
Rudsom, W.
Rumsey, E. F.
Rushen, L.
Rushen, VV.
Rushton, B.
Russell, A. J.
Russell, Dr. B. Ritchie.
Russell, C. E.
Russell, Miss E.
Russell, E. C.
Russell, Miss F.
Russell, Miss G.
Russell, G. II.
Russell, G. I.
Russell, Miss J.
Russell, Hon. Mrs. J. M. E.
Russell, Mrs. L. J.
Russell, Miss L. M.
Russell, Miss M. S.
Russell, Hon. Mrs. V.
Rust, Miss M.
Rutherford, D. L.
Rutherford, Dr. Margaret.
Rutherford, W.
Rutherford, Dr.
Rutter, C. L.
Rutter, Miss D.
Rutter, W. F.
Ruxton, Miss Z.
Ryall, Rev. C. R.
Ryan, Miss E.
Ryan, Miss J. H. R.
Ryder, Lady F.
Ryder, Mrs. M. I.
Ryerson, Colonel G. S.
Ryland, Miss C. W.
Ryrie, Miss E. R.
Sackham, Miss G. D.
Sadler, B. F., L.D.S.
Sadler, Miss B. L.
Sadler, W.
Safiord, Mrs. M.
Sage, Mrs. C. B.
Sage, Mrs. J.
Sainsbury, Miss D.
Salmon, \V.
Salmonson,MissD. M.Critchley.
Salmonson, Mrs. M. Critchley.
Salvage, Mrs. M. V.
Salway, Miss C. V.
Sambrook, C. E.
Sampson, Miss L.
Sams, H. W. H.
Samuel, Miss I.
Samuel, A. D.
Samuels, Mrs. D. G.
Samuels, I.
Samuelson, G. B.
Samuelson, Miss G. E. F.
Samuelson, H. W.
Sandeman, F. S.
Sandeman, Miss L. S.
Sandeman, Miss M.
Sandeman, Mrs. M. M.
Sanders, Mrs.
Sanders, Miss E.
Sanders, Mrs. G. F.
Sanders, J. W.
Sanders, Miss K. A.
Sanders, Miss M. F.
Sanders, Dr. W. G. VV.
Sanderson, Miss D.
Sanderson, Miss E. B.
Sandford, Miss E. A.
Sandilands, Hon. A. M.
Sandilands, Miss C.
Sandon, F.
Sands, Miss E.
Sandwith, B. R.
Sandys, Miss D. B.
Saner, Mrs. M.
Sanger, M. S.
Sapsford, Miss M. E.
Sargeant, Miss A. N.
Sargeant, F. N.
Sargent, Miss A. VV.
Sargent, R. S.
Sargood, Miss L. A.
Satchwell, C.
Satchwcll, \V.
Satge, Baroness A. de.
Sauer, H. N.
Saunders, Miss A.
Saunders, Mrs. F. O. VV.
Saunderson, Mrs. A. A.
Sautoy, Miss C. C. du.
Savill, Dr. Agnes.
Sawtell, Mrs. C.
Sawyer, G. A.
Sawyer, Geoffrey.
Sawyer, S. H.
Saxby, H. G.
Saxon, Miss E.
Saxon, S.
Sayce, Miss F. VV.
Sayer, Miss R. P.
Saywell, Miss K.
Scally, Miss E.
Scanlan, Miss H. M.
Scholfield, Miss.
Schwarz, G. A. V.
Scobell, Miss A. C.
Scobell, Miss C. E.
Scott, Miss A. P.
Scott, A. VV.
Scott, Miss B. M.
Scott, Miss C.
Scott, Miss C. H.
Scott, Mrs. D. H.
Scott, E.
Scott, Miss E. M.
Scott, Mrs. F. O.
Scott, Miss J. A.
Scott, Miss J. M.
Scott, J. P.
Scott, Miss K. A.
Scott, Miss M. D. F.
Scott, Miss P. VV.
Scott, Miss R.
Scott, Miss R. M.
Scott, T.
Scott, T. VV.
Scott, Miss VV.
Scovell, Miss A.
Scovell, Miss E.
Scrimgeour, R. W.
Scriven, F.
Seacombe, Miss L.
Seacome, Miss F.
Seale, Miss M.
Sealey, E. H.
Sealy, C. C.
Sealv, D. M.
Sealy, E. P. V.
Seath, VV. J.
Seeker, Rev. VV. H. N.
Seckham, Miss G.
Sedgebeer, E. E.
Sedgwick, E.
Sedgwick, Miss M. K.
Seekings, Miss M. H.
Selby, VV. F.
Selby, Dr. VV. M'D.
Selincourt, Mrs. A. D. de.
Selincourt, B. de.
Selkirk, C.
Selway, Miss B. M.
Semphill, Hon. G. Forbes.
Sergeant, F. N.
Sergeant, Miss G. H.
Seward, L. C.
Sewell, Mrs. A.
Seymour, Miss A.
Seymour, Miss A. VV.
Seymour, Miss C. C.
Seymour, Miss M. J.
Shadwell, Miss V. M. L.
Shakcspear, Miss P.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 363
Shapland, S. C.
Sharp, Miss E. I.
Sharp, F. J.
Sharp, Miss M.
Shaughnessy, Miss M.
Shaw, Miss A. Dowries.
Shaw, Mrs. B.
Shaw, Miss C. E.
Shaw, Miss E. F.
Shaw, Miss E. Rawson.
Shaw, F.
Shaw, Mrs. H. C.
Shaw, Mrs. M.
Shaw, Miss M. E.
Shaw, R.
Shaw, T.
Sheaf, Miss E. M.
Sheard, Miss I. M.
Shearing, Miss M. E.
Shearman, Miss M.
Sheathfield, Rev. S.
Shee, Miss A. G.
Shekleton, Mrs. H.
Sheldon, R. A.
Shelford, Mrs. A. G.
Shell, L. A.
Shepherd, Miss K. O'D.
Shepherd, Miss M. G.
Shepherd, T. S.
Shepstone, Mrs. H. H. M.
Sherburne, J. C.
Sheridan, Miss G. E.
Sherliker, Mrs. L. E.
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BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 365
Sylvester, F. A. P.
Symington, Mr9. N. T. A.
Synaons, Mrs. M. E.
Tahourin, R. H.
Talbot, Mrs. M. J.
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Waller, Mrs. F. C.
Waller, H.
Waller, Miss K. N. I.
Waller, Miss N.
Waller, Mrs. W. M. L.
Walley, J. E.
Wallice, D.
Wallis, C. E.
Wallis, Miss D. E.
Wallis, E.
Wallis, E. A.
Wallis, Miss F. M.
Wallis, T. H.
Wallis, W. P.
Wallop, G. V.
Walls, L.
Walls, L. H.
Walmesley, C.
Walmsley, Miss A. G. P.
Walsh, Mrs. A. E.
Walsh, Miss E. M.
Walsh, Miss J. O'D.
Walsh, Miss K. M.
Walter, Miss M. L.
Walters, Miss E.
Walters, Miss E. M.
Walters, Miss H.
Walton, A.
Walton, Miss E. W.
Walton, H. A. G.
Walton, J.
Walton, J.W .
Wanklyn, A. M. G.
Wansbrough, T. E.
Warburton, D.
Warburton, Hon. Mrs. L. E.
Warburton, Miss M.
Warburton, Miss M. E.
Warburton, W.
Ward, Miss Edith.
Ward, Miss Ethel.
Ward, G. H.
Ward, Miss H.
Ward, Herbert.
Ward, Miss M.
Ward, Miss S. T.
Ward, W. E.
Wardale, Miss N. G.
Wardell, C. W.
Wardell, H. J.
Wardle, Miss K.
Wardrop, T. Y.
Ware, Miss T. W. Hibbort.
Wareham, A. E.
Waring, Miss M.
Warlow, J. M.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 367
Warner, Miss E.
Warner, F. A., F.R.C.S.
Warner, F. C. F.
Warner, Miss L. M.
Warner, M.
Warner, Mrs. M. A. V.
Warner, Miss M. M.
Warner, R.
Warner, Miss R. A. M. St. J.
Warr, Miss B. V.
Warren, Miss C. D.
Warren, Mrs. E. A.
Warren, E. P.
Warren, Miss F.
Warren, Dr. F. A.
Warren, Mrs. P.
Warren, R. T.
Warren, T. J. C.
Warrender, Miss E. C.
Warrick, R. W.
Warwick, Mrs. L. A.
Wason, Mrs. H. M.
Waterfall, W.
Waterfield, N.
Waterhouse, Miss M. C. G.
Waterhouse, T. H.
Waters, Miss B.
Waters, Mrs. M. L.
Watkin, Miss G.
Watkins, Miss A.
Watkins, A. L.
Watkins, C. L.
Watkins, J. O.
Watkins, Mrs. M. H.
Watson, A. H.
Watson, Dr. Anne.
Watson, Miss A. E.
Watson, MissE.
Watson, Miss E. S. H.
Watson, G. L.
Watson, Miss H.
Watson, Mrs. H. M.
Watson, H.N.
Watson, Mrs. L.
Watson, R. D.
Watson, S.
Watson, Miss S. F. D.
Watson, W. C.
Watson, W. H.
Watt, E.
Watt, N. J. M.
Watters, T. J.
Watts, Arthur.
Watts, Ashton.
Watts, A. H.
Watts, Miss E. A.
Watts, Frank.
Watts, F. T.
Watts, H.
Watts, Dr. Joan.
Watts, L.
Watts, Miss Minnie.
Watts, Miss Mary.
Watts, R.
Watts, V.
Waud, Miss M.
Waugh, G. E., F.R.C.S.
Waugh, Miss S. M. V.
Wauhope, Miss E. M.
Wauhope, Miss K.
Wauton, Miss F. W.
Way, E. T.
Way, Miss L. E.
Wayman, G. E.
Weadon, A. E.
Wearm, Miss R. F.
Weatherby, Miss E.J.
Weatherby, Miss K.
Weaver, Miss Mabel.
Weaver, Miss Mary.
Webb, Mrs. F.
Webb, G.
Webb, Miss Maria.
Webb, Miss R. P.
Webber, Miss C.
Webster, A. B.
Webster, Miss C. R. M.
Webster, Miss E.
Webster, Mrs. E.
Webster, E. B.
Webster, F. O.
Webster, Mrs. N. V.
Webster, Miss R. M.
Wedderburn, Miss Edith.
Wedderburn, Miss Elizabeth.
Weeding, Miss E. M.
Weigall, E.
Weigall, F.
Weighell, Miss A. J.
Weir, Miss A. B.
Weir, W.
Welboume, Miss B.
Welch, A. G.
Welch, Miss E. A.
Welch, G.
Welch, R. S.
Welch, S. J.
Welch, W. H. K.
Weldon, Miss F. E.
Welldon, J. C.
Wellesley, Mrs. A. H.
Wellesley, Miss H. I.
Weilman, F. J.
Wells, Mrs. A.
Wells, Miss C.
Wells, Mrs. E. W.
Wells, Miss G.
Wells, G. W.
Wells, H.
Wells, H. B.
Wells, Miss M.
Wells, Miss W. M.
Welman, Miss F. M.
Welsh, J. O'D.
Wemyss, Lady E.
Wemyss, James.
Wend, Miss A. C. de.
West, Miss C. E.
West, E. G.
West, H. K.
West, Miss M. R. St. L.
Westcombe, Miss A. M.
Westermann, Miss B. M.
Westlake, H. A.
Westley, J.
Weston, F.
Weston, H. P.
Westover, J. A. A.
Wetherall, F. H.
Wetherall, Mrs. L.
Wetherall, T. A.
Wethered, Mrs. F. G.
Wethey, Mrs. L. H.
Whale, J. S.
Whall, J. P.
Whalley, Mrs. U.
Wharton, Miss E. A.
Wharton, Miss M.
Whatman, Mrs. A. M.
Wheatley, Miss I. M.
Whelan, Miss B.
Whelan, Miss B. E.
Whent, Miss M.
Wherry, Mrs. A. L.
Whetham, Miss O.
Whitaker, Miss G. M.
Whitaker, J.
Whitaker, J. E. F.
Whitby, Miss M. H.
Whitby, R. E.
Whitcombe, D.
White, A. J.
White, A. M.
White, Miss A. M.
White, Miss D.
White, Miss E. A.
White, Miss E. G.
White, Miss E. M.
White, F. A.
White, F. C.
White, F. P.
White, Miss G.
White, G. H.
White, G. W. E.
White, Miss H. M.
White, Miss I. A.
White, J.
White, J. H.
White, J. P.
White, Miss L. D.
White, Hon. L. E. M.
White, Miss M.
White, Miss M. E.
White, R.
White, Miss R.
White, Miss R. F.
White, Miss S.
White, W. E.
Whitehead, Miss D. E.
Whitehead, Miss D. P.
Whitehead, Miss I. K.
Whitehead, J. W. E.
Whitehead, Miss M.
Whitehead, W. A.
Whitehorn, Miss D. R.
Whitehorn, H.
Whitehouse, Miss B. S.
Whitehurst, Miss A. T.
Whitelaw, Miss I. G.
Whiteley, C. E.
Whiteley, H. J.
Whiteley, Hon. R.
Whitfield, G.
Whitford, Miss H. C.
Whitham, Mrs. E. C.
Whiting, W. H.
Whitlow, P. J.
Whitmarsh, Miss A. V.
Whitney, C. L.
Whitridge, Miss J.
Whittaker, W. B.
Whittet, Miss I. M.
Whittle, C. H.
Whitton, E. W.
Whitwell, F. A.
Whitwell, J. F.
Whit worth, Miss E. S.
Whitworth, Miss L. L.
Whyte, Miss J. L.
Whyte, Miss Si.
Wickham, Mrs. A. M.
Wickham, H. O. W.
Wickham, Mrs. P. A.
Wickham, Miss S. M.
Wicks, Miss I.
Widdowson, P.
Widlake, Miss E.
Wiffen, S. H.
Wigan, Sir R. G.
Wiggin, Mrs. E.
Wiggins, Miss M.
Wigham, J. T.
Wigham, W. S.
Wight, A., F.R.C.S.
368
FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
Wigley, C. H.
Wilbraham, Miss A. L.
VVilbiabam, Miss B.
Wilbraham, Miss E.
Wilbraham, Miss G.
Wilcock, A. W.
Wild, Rev/T. N.
Wilde, Miss D. I.
Wilde, F.
Wilder, H. A. J.
Wilding, Miss E.
Wileman, Mrs. M. R.
Wiles, A. S.
Wiles, F. W.
Wiles, W.
Wiley, A. E.
Wilford, Miss A. M.
Wilkes, L. C. V.
Wilkie, E. O. H.
Wilkie, Mrs. H. G.
Wilkin, A.
Wilkins, A. G., F.R.C.S.
Wilkins, Philip A.
Wilkinson, Mrs.
Wilkinson, A. H.
Wilkinson, Miss E. G.
Wilkinson, Miss F. M.
Wilkinson, Miss F. V.
Wilkinson, Miss K.
Wilkinson, Miss L.
Wilkinson, Miss M.
Wilkinson, Miss W. J.
Willan, Miss E. M.
Willan, Colonel F.
Willetts, Miss A.
Williams, Mrs.
Williams, A. B. L.
Williams, Mrs. A. Crawshay-
Williams, A. E.
Williams, Miss A. H.
Williams, Miss A. M.
Williams, C.
Williams, Miss E.
Williams, Miss E. G.
Williams, Miss E. H.
Williams, Miss E. L. Colt-.
Williams, Mrs. E. M.
Williams, E. S.
Williams, Mrs. F.
Williams, H. B.
Williams, Dr. H. O.
Williams, Miss I. M.
Williams, J.
Williams, Miss J.
Williams, John.
Williams, Miss K.
Williams, L.
Williams, Miss L. C. Colt-.
Williams, Miss L. M.
Williams, Miss M.
Williams, Miss M. L.
Williams, Miss M. Moseley-.
Williams, Miss O. 0.
Williams, Miss P.
Williams, P. L. Watkin.
Williams, Mrs. P. T.
Williams, R. W.
Williams, W.
Williams, W. E.
Williamson, Miss.
Williamson, Miss C. J.
Williamson, F.
Williamson, T.
Williamson, Rev. T. A. E.
Williamson, Miss V. K.
Willis, Miss C.
Willis, H.
WiUis, Miss M.
Willis, Mrs. N. de L.
Willmore, C. F.
Wills, E. F.
Willson, Miss E. R.
Willson, M. A.
Wilmhurst, F. H.
Wilmot, H. R.
Wilmot, Miss M. Eardley.
Wilson, Dr. A.
Wilson, Miss A.
Wilson, Miss A. B.
Wilson, Miss A. E.
Wilson, Miss Augusta E.
Wilson, A. F.
Wilson, A. L.
Wilson, Miss A. M.
Wilson, Miss Ada M.
Wilson, Miss A. M. L.
Wilson, A. P.
Wilson, Miss C.
Wilson, Miss C. A.
Wilson, C. B.
Wilson, Miss D. J.
Wilson, Mrs. E. A. E.
Wilson, Miss E. B.
Wilson, Mrs. E. M.
Wilson, E. V.
Wilson, Miss F. M.
Wilson, G. A.
Wilson, G. H.
Wilson, H.
Wilson, Miss H.
Wilson, H. H.
Wilson, Miss I. C.
Wilson, J. B.
Wilson, Miss J. L.
Wilson, Miss J. M.
Wilson, Miss J. R. G.
Wilson, Miss J. S.
Wilson, Miss K.
Wilson, K. J. T.
Wilson, Miss L.
Wilson, Dr. Marion.
Wilson, Miss Maud.
Wilson, Miss M. M.
Wilson, Miss O. M.
Wilson, Miss R. A.
Wilson, Miss R. E.
Wilson, Lady S.
Wilson, Mrs. S. M. Holt-.
Wilson, W. A. H.
Wilson, W. E.
Wiltshire, E. T.
Wimberley, Miss A. L.
Wimbush, Mrs. D. M.
Wimbush, P. J.
Wind, Miss E. C. de.
Windeyer, Mrs. M. F.
Windsor, Miss F. C. M. J.
Winfield, E.
Winfield, F. M.
Wing, C. E.
Wingate, Miss R. M.
Winning, Miss M.
Winship, Miss N.
Winstanley, Miss M.
Winstanley, W. W.
Winstow, Mrs. C. L.
Winter, Miss F. S.
Winter, Miss H. O. S.
Winterbon, Miss B. M.
Winterbottom, Mrs. R. S. M.
Winterton, Miss E.
Winthrop, Miss M. G.
Wise, Miss B.
Wise, Miss L. G.
Wiseman, H.
Wishart, Miss A. M. D.
Witmond, M.
Witt, Mrs. H.
Wittet, Miss I. P.
Wixey, Miss E.
Wodehouse, Miss J.
Wodhams, Miss A.
Wolfe, V.
Wolfenden, Miss B.
Wollaston, Miss S. R.
Wolseley, Miss M. B.
Wolstencroft, E.
Wood, Miss A. A.
Wood, Miss A. M.
Wood, D.
Wood, E. A.
Wood, E. F.
Wood, Miss F. A. H.
Wood, F. E.
Wood, G. J.
Wood, H. G.
Wood, H. S.
Wood, J.
Wood, J. P.
Wood, Miss L. F.
Wood, Miss L. M.
Wood, Miss M. M.
Wood, R. K.
Woodall, Miss D.
Woodall, Miss E.
Woodall, H.
Woodall, J. E.
Woodbume, J. F.
Woodfordc, Miss J. II. C.
Woodhams, A. T.
Woodhead, H.
Woodhouse, H. P.
Woodhouse, Miss M. M.
Woodhouse, S. C.
Wooding, Miss L.
Woodman, H. W.
Woodrofie, Dr. G. C. L.
Woodrofie, Dr. H. L. W.
Woodroffe, Miss V.
Woods, Mrs.
Woods, Dr. E. A.
Woods, Miss F. M.
Woods, Miss H.
Woods, H. R.
Woodward, Miss E. M.
Woodward, Miss E. O.
Woodward, Miss M.
Woodward, Miss W. M.
Woodwiss, E. H.
Woodwiss, J. F. W.
Wookey, E. D.
Woollev, A. H.
Woolley, F. H.
Woolmer, Mrs. F.
Wootton, W. E.
Workman, E. W.
Wormald, G.
Worrall, Miss Noel.
Worsdell, T. A.
Worsell, G.
Worsley, Lady A. M. F.
Worsley, Miss A.
Worsley, Miss K. G. H.
Worsley, Miss S.
Worthington, Miss F.
Worthy, R.
Wray, M.
Wray, Miss M.
Wright, Miss A.
Wright, C. B.
Wright, C. S.
Wright, Dr. D. D'A.
Wright, Miss D. M.
Wright, D. S. S.
BRITISH SUBJECTS ON RED CROSS WORK 369
Wright, Mrs. E. L.
Wright, Mrs. E. M. A.
Wright, Miss E. W.
Wright, Miss F. D.
Wright, G.
Wright, H.
Wright, Mrs. H.
Wright, Miss H.
Wright, J. B.
Wright, J. P.
Wright, K. H.
Wright, Miss M.
Wright, Dr. M. B.
Wright, Miss N.
Wright, Miss W. H. D.
Wrightson, Miss H.
Wyatt, C. V.
Wyatt, H.
Wyatt, H. P.
Wyatt, W. P.
Wybrants, Mrs. O. E.
Wycliffe, Mrs. H.
Wyld, Miss E. M.
Wyld, Miss K. M.
Wylie, Miss A. S.
Wylie, Mrs. Doughty-.
Wylie, Miss I. A. R.
Youatt,
Wylie, Miss L. Doughty-.
Youell,
Wylie, Miss M.
Young,
Wylie, Mrs. M. A.
Young,
Wyllie, Mrs. C. L.
Young,
Wyllie, W. R.
Young,
Wyroan, Miss C.
Young,
Wyndham, Hon. Mrs.
Young,
Wynniatt, F. P.
Young,
Wynter, Mrs. M. C.
Young,
Young,
Young,
Y
Young,
Young,
Yates, C F. W.
Young,
Yates, Miss J.
Young,
Yates, R. P.
Young,
Yates, T. P.
Young,
Yeaman, Miss M. E.
Young,
Yeates, Miss A. E.
Young,
Yeates, Dr. A. M.
Young,
Yeats, Miss M.
Young,
Yeo, C.
Young,
York, Mrs. E. M.
Young,
Yorke, Hon. Mrs. M. F.
Young,
Yorkston, Miss W. L.
Young,
. Miss G.
Miss M. M.
Miss A. M. Brownlee.
Mrs. A. M. M.
C.
Mrs. C. E.
Miss E.
E. D.
F.
Miss F. E.
G. W.
Miss H.
Miss I. P. A.
J. M.
Miss J. M.
J. W.
Miss X. F.
Miss L.
Miss L. C. P.
Miss Mabel.
Miss Margaret.
Miss Marjorie.
Miss M. H.
Miss M. H. F.
Miss S. M.
T.
2 A
ADDENDA
Page 115. — The following should be added to the account
of help given by the British Dominions :
In August 191 5 the Canadian Red Cross Society estab-
lished a Paris depot at 16 rue de l'Estrapade, placed at its
disposal by the Societe de l'Hygiene Alimentaire, and the
distribution of gifts to hospitals began. Parcels were
received from the most remote parts of Canada, though the
immense distances of the country make it difficult for news
to circulate from village to village. Canadian women on
isolated farms, as well as in the large towns, sewed and
knitted as if for their own brothers.
The French-Canadian section of the Canadian Red
Cross has contributed no less than 200,000 various articles.
The total value of the cases of supplies given by Canada
is about 12,450,460 francs. And as a result of the
France's Day Appeal in Canada, in 191 7, .£26,000 were
received by the Comite Britannique, in addition to large
quantities of stores. 300,000 francs have been given to
Red Cross and similar societies in France. A ward at
Royaumont was equipped in July 191 5.
At the end of March 191 5, the South of France Relief
Association of Montreal was founded to relieve the distress
of refugees and orphans, and provide comforts for the
wounded, then pouring into the southern districts of
France. Two ladies in Montreal, moved by the accounts
sent by relatives at Cannes, started the Association. In
April the first detachment of eight voluntary workers
arrived at Cannes, and started work in hospitals. The
number soon increased considerably, and work was also
370
ADDENDA 371
found at Greoux in the Basses Alpes. Cases of stores,
clothing, linen, surgical appliances, etc., have also been
regularly despatched from Canada and distributed, on
arrival at Cannes, among hospitals and children's homes,
and among refugee families. Branches have been started at
Nice, Antibes, and Vallauris. A foyer or rest-room and an
information bureau have been of much service to the
refugees. A creche has been founded on the Cap
d'Antibes ; and a disinfecting etuve has been given - to
the town of Cannes for the use of all the hospitals of the
Region.
The Ligue Franco-Australienne was founded at a public
meeting in Sydney, at the end of 1914 ; its creation was
due to the efforts of a French woman long resident in
Sydney ; and ever since it has been sending clothing for
the wounded, for soldiers at the front, refugees from the
invaded districts, widows and orphans of the war. Gifts
have been made to societies rather than individuals, and
chiefly through the British Committee of the French Red
Cross. The League has received about ^300,000 for
distribution, the greater part of which was collected on
' France's Day,' 1917. It has sent some 800,000 garments,
besides helping numberless societies with gifts of money.
Since September 191 7, the League has had a representa-
tive and sub-committee in Paris. This was found neces-
sary, owing to the uncertainty of transport and of the
post, but the Sydney committee retain the financial
control.
Page 163.
In August 191 7 a new hospital was opened at Villers-
Cotterets on the railway between Soissons and Com-
piegne. This was a daughter hospital to the Scottish
Women's Hospital at Royaumont. It is under the same
direction and served by the same staff : that is to say,
372 FOR DAUNTLESS FRANCE
both hospitals are under the same medical officer in com-
mand, and the nurses and orderlies are sent from one
hospital to the other, as occasion demands. At Villers-
Cotterets the hospital was housed in huts, on a particu-
larly open and healthy site. (The hospital was evacuated
at the end of May 191 8, owing to the German advance.)
Page 224.
At the end of 1917, the Friends' War Victims Relief
Committee started another hospital at Sermaize-les-Bains,
the ruined little town which has been a centre also for
relief and reconstruction work by the same committee.
A chateau and outbuildings were lent free of charge by
the owner. The property was taken over on November
25, and the first patients were admitted on December
27. The hospital is maintained by the American Red
Cross, and by the War Victims Relief Committee ; the
staff is mostly American.
Page 212
The canteen at Creil Station was taken over in October
1 91 7 by a party supplied by the Scottish Women's Hos-
pitals Committee. It continues to work under the auspices
of the Comite Britannique, but the Edinburgh Committee
furnishes the staff and their expenses. The canteen has
grown from small dimensions to a large establishment, with
a recreation-room, etc. The canteen at Crepy-en-Valois
was taken over by the same committee at the same date.
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