Changes

         I asked for and received a transfer shortly after Lily died, for I couldn’t bear living in Portsmouth without Lily.  She had been my dearest friend, closer than any of my sisters.  I was sent to a convalescent home near Salisbury, where the wounded were being rehabilitated. 

         One of the men in my charge was Leonard James, an extremely handsome member of the Royal Horse Artillery.  A cannon had backfired on him during training at Salisbury Fields.  He was injured in both mind and body, for along with the shrapnel wounds he was badly shell-shocked as well.  Despite his injuries, we slowly bonded with each other over the year I nursed him. 

         During that year I was interested to learn that many towns and villages were following the example of the large memorial the King had ordered to be built in London, and cenotaphs were springing up all over England.  In November of 1919 his majesty had instituted a two-minute silence to be observed in the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, in observance of all the Great War’s dead.  One of the more touching memorials was built in East London, where a class of five and six year old children had died in the bombing of their school. 

         Anti-German feeling was everywhere, so much so that King George decided to change the royal family’s name from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor.  He took the name from one of his castles, I believe.  I often wondered how he managed to live with his decision to refuse admittance to his first cousin the Tsar of Russia, when he was overthrown. I remember how shocked we were to hear the Bolsheviks had murdered Tsar Nicholas and his family in cold blood.   

         Change was in the air, it seemed, in those days.  Airplanes and fast cars were everywhere.  We nurses took a few of the more mobile patients to the cinema, where Ernest Shackleton presented his adventures in Antarctica in a film called “South.”  There were lots of labour strikes, from the bakers and miners to the Liverpool police.  Women’s fashions changed to skimpy little dresses that women had flatten their breasts to wear.  Marie Stopes authored a book everyone was reading, called  “Married Love.”  Like everyone else, I was fascinated to read her theories on contraception and intimacy in marriage.

         Our patients, for the most part, slowly continued to mend and be discharged.  When it was Leonard’s turn to leave he asked me to take a final walk around the garden with him.  We sat on a bench, and it was there, among the sweet-smelling lilacs, he asked me to marry him.   All he had in the world was the bronze cigarette  box presented to soldiers by the Queen as a Christmas present in 1914.  He was handsome and charming, and I accepted, but if I had known what I know now about Leonard James I would have, should have, said no.

In Flew Enza

         My friend Lily wrote me from Portsmouth that she was working with Dr. Harold Gillies, who was becoming famous for rebuilding horribly damaged faces.  He was developing all kinds of ways of helping men to cover or disguise their wounds, so as to make it easier for them to be out in public, as well as to make it easier for those who had to look at them.  Lily told me they were short of nurses, and begged me to join her.  It seemed so interesting I gave notice.  It did seem there was little we could do to help those in my ward.  Those permanently deafened and those so shell-shocked they might as well be deaf as well just seemed to sit by their beds and stare into space with that “thousand-yard stare” we nurses came to know so well.  The nursing assistants could just as easily make the beds and carry the food trays.

         Lily found a wonderful flat for us to share in Portsmouth. The work was fascinating, and some of the masks Dr, Gillies devised were so lifelike one never knew they were not actual faces, until it became clear the masks were not able to change expression.

         We did find time to go to the cinema a few times, but the one I recall most vividly was the gala evening about Lawrence of Arabia.  The introduction was a lead in by the Welsh Guards playing what seemed to be Arabic music. It set the atmosphere, as well as the incense piped in.    We were told the painted set had been used in the “Moonlight on the Nile” scene from an opera.  Exotic dancers came on and did the dance of the seven veils.  Then Lowell Thomas came on stage and explained he had been with Lawrence and had filmed his exploits.  As the lights dimmed he invited us to “Come with me to lands of history, mystery and romance . . .”  There was no doubt Lawrence was a dashing and exciting figure!

         When we cam out into the evening I suggested we stop for cakes and tea, but Lily had a bad headache.  We had been nursing men who had come down with the Spanish Flu, and most of them had died, in their weakened condition.  I learned later that fifty million people around the world died between 1918 and 1920 of the disease.  The streets of Portsmouth became quiet, as most people took refuge in their homes.  As we walked to the hospital we got used to hearing the little street urchins chanting their grisly song;  “I had a little bird/ It’s name as Enza/ I opened the window/ And in flew Enza”.

         The morning after our outing to the cinema my dear friend was admitted as a patient.  By evening she had died, and I was heartbroken.

Nursing Career

Nursing Career

         During World War I  Britain lost almost a quarter of a million of her young men.  The ones who were not killed suffered many injuries, and some of them were horribly disfigured.   We nurses saw most of them only briefly, on their way back home, where they were repaired and rebuilt during their convalescence.  Some were too badly injured to be moved, and all we could do was sit with them and comfort them while they died. 

         Most of the time we were kept just behind the front lines, in field hospitals.  We cleaned and bandaged wounds.  We disinfected stretchers, blankets and instruments, as well as soldiers infested with lice and fleas.  We wrote letters on behalf of blinded soldiers.  The very worst cases were gas poisoning.  With mustard gas the body starts to rot after about twelve hours.  The skin blisters and the eyes become extremely painful.  Nausea and vomiting begins.  The gas attacks the bronchial tubes and strips it of its mucous membrane, so swallowing becomes almost impossible.  Chlorine gas blinded, and it became painful to watch lines of soldiers, arms on each other’s shoulders, groping their way along.

         When we were on leave I couldn’t help think that if those at home saw the effects of the war on their loved ones they would not have encouraged the boys to go off and fight “for king and country.”

         I stayed nursing after the war ended.  I loved the work but caring for some of the wounded and maimed took every ounce of energy and compassion we had.  Some of those affected by the trauma wrote stories and poems.  One of the most affecting was called “Suicide in the Trenches”, by Siegfried Sassoon;

I knew a simple soldier boy/who grinning at life in empty joy

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark/and whistled early with the lark,

In winter trenches, cowed and glum/with crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain/no one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye/ who cheer when soldier lads walk by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know/ the hell where youth and laughter go.

Grandmother James' Story

Grandmother James’ Story:

         I am old now, and a grandmother several times over, but I remember being young, being a wife, being a mother, being deserted, being betrayed, living through two world wars – I remember everything.

         Old Granddad William James came from Ireland to Portsmouth in 1870.  He was a military man of the Royal Horse Artillery, and he was posted to Hillside Barracks.  Not long after he met and married my Grannie, whose name was Hol Crosse.  They had four boys – Albert, Percy, Bill and Leonard.    On reaching the age of fourteen, every one of those lads became drummer boys in the Royal Horse. 

         Leonard and I both grew up in Southern England, in what the historians called “La Belle Epoch” – the beautiful time.  Well, it may have been a beautiful time for the rich, especially the aristocracy, for not for the poor working classes. I left school at fourteen, just like the rest, and was apprenticed as a seamstress. At first I was kept in the back, doing plain “straight stitch” sewing on the treadle machine – seams and suchlike.  As I learned more I was able to sew the tailored traveling suits and day dresses the gentry came in to be fitted for.  I loved sewing the gored skirts and low-cut evening gowns.  By 1909 the skirts had lost their fullness and the silhouette was slim, and women showed their feet again.  But I did not enjoy the treatment I was often given by our clients.    Many of them were what I would call “stuck up.”

         As much as I enjoyed making my own wages and living at home with my parents and sisters, our life in Farnham was much the same from day to day. Farnham is in a valley, and a river flows just south of town.  But one day as I was walking home I saw a crowd collecting around the narrow bridge that fords the river.  The river was quite swollen after the heavy winter rains, and I could see a horse and cart under the arch.  The driver, one of the village lads, seemed trapped under the cart, and a number of people were shouting advice to each other as to how to rescue the boy.  I saw Mr. Bourne the schoolteacher handing one of the local bricklayers a rope. The labourer fashioned a noose, descended into the river and secured it under the driver’s armpits.  By then several other men were down in the water and they hauled the poor lad out.  Mr. Bourne had had the foresight to cut the horse fee of its harness, and it scrambled up onto the meadow.  The driver was carried to the nearby inn.

         Mr. Bourne is really rather a handsome man, and my younger sister Emily says he is kind and patient, especially with the younger children.  He replaced old Mr. Johnson who retired two or three years after I left school.  I knew he is not married, so I persuaded mother to ask him to tea, so I could formally meet him.          

         I wore an afternoon dress I had made myself, and I knew I looked well in it.  The talk around the tea-table turned to Germany and how Mr. Bourne was certain the Kaiser was preparing to challenge Britain for mastery of the seas, and was openly hostile to France and Belgium.  I paid little attention to the talk of war between my father and Mr. Bourne, but by the end of tea found myself liking him more and more.  He was so different from the village lads!

         Well, to make a long story short he and I started walking out together, although in Farnham there were few places to walk to.  A stroll in the woods, or along a back lane to view the flower beds that grew in almost all the cottage gardens or tea with his friend the doctor and his wife made up our courtship.

         Then in August of 1914 an archduke and his wife were murdered in Austria and although this did not cause the war, somehow Britain, France and Russia declared themselves against Germany and suddenly all of Europe was fighting.  John Bourne asked me to wait for him until Christmas, when the war was sure to be over, and then we would be married. 

         Our village emptied of all the young men, those who were not disabled, and we at home were left to worry.  Christmas came and went, and families started to receive telegrams regretting the death of our boys.  Among those was Captain John Bourne, who died in France. 

         Despite my grief I knew I had to do something besides sew fine clothes for ladies.  My friend Lily and I decided to train for nurses, and so we joined the Great War, as it came to be known.

June 13, 2011

To those faithful few who are following this story:  You are probably wondering about "the rest of the story" - it is coming really!  The scene shifts to England, where we will meet the English side of Eileen's family.  Stay posted for future blogs!