Women as army surgeons

In Boulogne itself every place which was suitable for hospital purposes was already occupied, but there was a large house at Wimereux which was to let. The little town was full of jerry-built hotels and chalets, erected by the maire and rented in times of peace to the summer visitors, who were a source of revenue both to him and to the town. The large hotels were all let to the Army, but the Château Mauricien was vacant; and although it was Sunday, the agent was prepared to do business.

The château had originally been built by an Englishman, and it was provided with an English cooking range and hot-water system as well as with central heating. Its chief attractions were its position in the eye of the sun, with a large garden all round it, and the purity and freshness of the air. Attached to it was a three-storied dépendance, which promised quarters for the staff. In addition the stable, coach-house, garage and greenhouses could all be made use of. It is true that the roof was inclined to leak and that the drainage system was obsolete and broke down hopelessly; but the place was full of sunshine and sweetness, and made a passable hospital both then and later.

The agent, M. Jean Bataille, who acted for the maire, had the appearance and manners of a bluff sea-captain. His appearance suggested that his blue serge clothing covered an honest heart, that his mind was as guileless as a child’s, and that philanthropy was his hobby. He had a fixed idea that to be English was to be wealthy; and experience had shown him that in matters of business the English were as babes in the hands of the maire and himself. Between them they monopolised most of the trades and all the public offices of the town; nothing could be obtained and very little could be done without applying to the maire. Builders, chimney-sweeps, plumbers, gas-fitters—all seemed to be his employees. No one else had houses or hotels to let. The milk came from his farm; the coal through his agency. He controlled l’apparat by which the congestion of drains was relieved; and by virtue of his office he issued requisition orders and autorités at his own discretion and his own price.

The greater part of the morning was spent in argument, on the sunny terrace of the château, before the bargain was struck. The terms of the maire were high, and he haggled and held out; but finally, having been assured that the Légion d’honneur was likely to be his, and that his association with the British Army might bring further honours, he melted, and agreed to put the house in order and let it to the Women’s Hospital Corps for six weeks, or longer if they wanted it. The party adjourned to the maire’s office—a black little den behind his house—so that the agreement might be drawn up. There was only standing room in the office, and a board laid on the top of the stove acted as a writing table! M. le Maire and M. Bataille were unable to write more than their own names, and the agreement had to be composed and written by the doctors themselves. With much concentration and deep breathing the gentlemen affixed their signatures. The document being completed, they beamed on the ladies, and promised to have workmen and cleaners in the house by sunrise next day.

By ten o’clock in the morning the sweep, the plumber and the gas-fitter had not arrived; the women who were to do the cleaning were still absent, and the maire himself was invisible. The town had to be turned upside down to discover them all; and when once they were set to work, it was necessary to stand by and keep a watchful eye upon them, lest they should disappear and get lost again.

The château needed furniture. And here the maire was supreme; for he had stores of furniture stacked in the ‘Salle Jeanne d’Arc,’ which he had removed from the Grand Hotel when he let it to the R.A.M.C. for a hospital. He was charmed that it should be requisitioned, and the agent sent two ramshackle old carts and a couple of men to convey mattresses and tables and chairs from the salle to the new hospital. Through him also a batterie de cuisine was unearthed from the underground cellars of the Grand Hotel; and from cupboards in the typhoid wards cutlery and knives and forks were forthcoming. With the supplies and stores from Paris, and others which Dr. Woodcock sent over, the château assumed a fairly habitable and comfortable appearance. There was no furniture available for the staff; for the maire lent on hire at exorbitant rates; and therefore they contented themselves with mattresses on the floor of the dépendance for many weeks, until the British Red Cross came to their relief with bedsteads.

Dr. Cuthbert arrived from Paris with a detachment of nurses and orderlies, who soon brought order into the house. And, to every one’s joy, Miss Fenn and Miss Goodwin, professional cook and parlour-maid, came over from London to run the establishment. After the arrangements at Claridge’s, English cooking and ample army rations almost constituted luxury.

For the service some Belgian girls were engaged, and a French-English vocabulary was pinned on the kitchen wall, by means of which Miss Fenn and Miss Goodwin were able to direct the work. After a few days, a complete understanding took place between them; and cheerful conversation was not wanting.

For heavier work, one ‘Joseph’ was added to the establishment. He was a young Belgian of military age, who had no taste for military service! He was a refugee with his wife and child. He roused the sympathies of the staff by relating the graphic story of the death of his brother, whom he said he had seen cut into small pieces by German soldiers ‘before his very eyes.’

‘My only brother,’ he would say, and burst into tears.

Much kindness was shown to his wife and little girl; and Joseph’s own shortcomings and disappearances were leniently treated. A few weeks later he told the quartermaster with much indignation that his brother had written him a begging letter.

‘But,’ said the quartermaster, ‘I thought you had only one brother?’

‘It is true, mam’selle, and now he wishes to beg of me.’

‘But you said that you saw the Germans cut him to pieces,’ remonstrated the quartermaster.

‘It is true, mam’selle. Nevertheless, he has written asking me for money,’ replied Joseph, too much absorbed in his anger against his brother to notice his own want of veracity.

The town was full of Belgians, for whom relief was organised by M. Larensard, the proprietor of the stationer’s shop and library. He had a soup-kitchen in the coach-house of the château, and begged that he might not be displaced. He came daily to supervise the soupe, looking like an El Greco grandee, with his long ivory face, his pointed beard and erect white hair. He wore black clothes, a white clerical-looking tie and fluffy yellow socks, and on his arm a white brassard indicated his merciful calling. He had a Christian creed and lived up to it.

Dr. Flora Murray had brought letters of introduction with her from Paris, and as the preparations for the hospital were nearing completion, accompanied by Dr. Garrett Anderson, she called at the headquarters of the Army Medical Service in Boulogne and presented the letters. In a bare little hotel bedroom with a hideous French wallpaper on the walls, they found two colonels and a soldiers’ table. The senior officer glanced at the correspondence and said:

‘We know all about the Women’s Hospital Corps here. Saw you in Paris. You are very welcome here. Have you got a place? How many beds can you give us?’

He seemed satisfied when the doctors answered that their ‘place’ with a hundred beds would be ready next day. In answer to their inquiry whether he would make use of it, he said:

‘Yes, to the fullest extent. I am Commandant here. You will be working directly under me. Will you take surgery? We need another operating station.’

Their hearts leapt within them; for all the time it had been their ambition to see women doctors working as army surgeons under the British War Office.

The conversation then took the form of instructions about registers, returns, reports and nominal rolls. The question of maintenance was discussed; and it was proposed to provide the hospital with rations and coal, as well as petrol for its ambulances.

‘Have you a quartermaster?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we have one,’ Dr. Garrett Anderson replied, mentally appointing Orderly Campbell to this post as she spoke.

It was arranged that the Château Mauricien should be attached to the Military Hospital in the Grand Hotel, and that the newly appointed quartermaster should understudy the quartermaster of that hospital. An official document was issued for her use:

Armed with this, Quartermaster Campbell assumed her duties, and, accompanied by her model from the Grand, sought out the Supply Depot. She returned with most superabundant rations, the male quartermaster apologising and puzzled; for he could not understand how or why they had got so much. Miss Campbell’s account was:

‘An orderly asked me if I would like a side of bacon, and when I said yes, he put it in the car. And another said a case of peaches would be useful and put it in. And some one else brought the jam and the cheese, and they said a bag of tea and another of sugar would not come amiss. And just as we were leaving, a sergeant threw in two hams.’

‘So there it all is,’ she ended gleefully.

On the following day, the 6th of November, the hospital was ready for occupation; the plumber and gas-fitter were ejected, the pantry became an operating theatre, the greenhouse was converted into a linen room and packstore. In the evening the ambulances met the trains, and the large ward on the ground floor filled up. Before very long all the beds were occupied, and the Chief Surgeon and her two assistants were kept busy with severe cases and heavy surgery. The pressure of work continued until January; and both doctors and nurses had their hands full. The place was small enough to be very personal, and the relationship between the staff and the men was a close one.

The women felt strangely near the Front, for the men came down from the lines in a few hours, and their tales of the mud and wet in which they were standing almost up to their waists, the agony of frostbite, the terrible shortage of ammunition and the superiority of the German guns made pitiful hearing. The anxiety and strain of the severe cases was as nothing to the pathos of the slight cases who had to be sent straight back. As the day came nearer, their eyes would follow the Chief Surgeon round the ward, apprehensive of discharge; and when at last the moment of farewell came, they were silent, for fear of losing their composure. A parcel of all the comforts possible was prepared for each one, and the hospital turned out to see them off, and some one would go with them to ‘Base Details,’ as the reporting station was called. But there was no getting over the horror of going back. Many of them, when they came out, had had no idea of what was before them; and others were unfitted by temperament and by their former life for all they had to endure.

A Lancashire operative, no longer a young man, told how he had put his name to a paper.

‘Missus she said I should, and so I did, but I never thought anything would coom of it.’

Then one day as he sat at dinner a military escort knocked at his door and called him out.

‘But they coom for me,’ he went on, ‘at one o’clock they coom, just as I was settin’ down to my dinner they coom, and took me outside, and the orficer he said, “Now, A——, you’re soldier, and if you desert, you will be shot,” says he, and they took me away. I had often heard tell of abroad and I thought I would like to go, but I never thought abroad was like this. Just a sea o’ mood, abroad is! I don’t want to coom abroad no more.’

It was very easy for friends to come over from England, and many of them took advantage of the opportunity. They did not come empty-handed, and the hospital was supplied with games and gramophones, and with abundance of such things as water-beds and air-rings. Sir Alan Anderson arrived with a car load of pheasants, which were the last word in luxury. And work depots were kind in sending linen and warm clothing.

It was in this hospital that a suffragist friend met and recognised a wounded policemen. She claimed his acquaintance.

‘I remember you,’ she said. ‘You arrested me once in Whitehall.’

‘I wouldn’t have mentioned it, Miss,’ he replied with embarrassment. ‘We’ll let byegones be byegones.’

There was a constant stream of official visitors—colonels, inspectors and consultants—all of whom were more or less eager to pass men on—to send them to England or back to the line. The surgical work came in for a good deal of scrutiny; for the R.A.M.C. were zealous about the turn-over, and went round every week or sometimes oftener, with the desire of emptying beds. Through constant observation, it was borne in upon these officers that the professional work and the organisation of the women were worthy of a wider opportunity; and when the chance of saying a word of commendation came, that word was generously and freely said.