Tumult and Tears

by Vivien Newman

  Some FANYs poetically contrasted the humour and the harshness of wartime life with their pre-war existence. As the Corps recruited from amongst the most privileged strata of society, the differences between ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ were pronounced. This poet who terms herself ‘One of the Saints’, looks wryly back to her time as a débutante, comparing this to life in France during the grim winter of 1917-1918.

  F.A.N.Y

  (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry motor ambulance corps)

  I wish my mother could see me now, with a grease-gun under my car Filling my differential ’ere I start for the sea afar,

  A-top of a sheet of frozen iron, in cold that would make you cry.

  “Why do we do it?” you ask. “Why? We’re the F.A.N.Y.”

  I used to be in Society once,

  Danced, hunted and flirted, once!

  Had white hands and complexion once!

  Now I am F.A.N.Y.

  That is what we are known as – that is what you must call,

  If you want “Officers’ Luggage”, “Sisters,” “Patients” an’ all,

  Details for “Burial Duty”, Hospital Stores” or “Supply”,

  Ring up the Ambulance convoy, turn out the F.A.N.Y.

  They used to say we were idling—once,

  Joy-riding round the battle-field—once,

  Wasting petrol and carbide—once:

  Now we’re the F.A.N.Y.

  That is what we are known as, we are the children to blame,

  For begging the loan of a spare wheel, and fitting a car to the same.

  We can’t even look at the workshop, but the Sergeant comes up with a sigh

  “It’s no use denying them nothin’!” “Give it to the F.A.N.Y!”

  We used to fancy an air raid—once;

  Called it a bit of excitement—once;

  Prided ourselves on our tin-hats once:

  Now we’re the F.A.N.Y

  That is what we are known as, we are the girls who have been

  Over three years at the business: felt it and smelt it and seen –

  Remarkably quick to the dug-out now, when the Archies rake the sky;

  Till they want to collect the wounded, then it’s “Out with the F.A.N.Y.”

  Crank! Crank! You Fanys!

  Stand to your buses again –

  Snatch up the stretchers and blankets,

  Down to the barge through the rain!

  Up go the planes in the dawning!

  Up go the cars to stand by –

  There’s many a job for the wounded,

  Forward the F.A.N.Y

  [Editor: There is more than one version of this poem. This one is taken from Pat Beauchamp’s 1919 autobiography FANY Goes to War. During air raids, personnel were supposed to shelter in dug-outs and over time they got used to sprinting towards these at breakneck speed. All the women willingly left their dug-outs when called on to drive the ambulances, even during an air-raid. ‘Archies’ was the name given to the large calibre anti-aircraft fire.]

  One FANY, Muriel De Wend, daughter of a retired colonel and sister of a young lieutenant who had been killed on 11 November 1914, worked with the St Omer Convoy. In a letter to her mother she describes one of the many ghastly nights during the winter of 1917, when she drove a windscreen-less ambulance through a hailstorm with ‘the wind straight against us’. The hail was so severe that she thought that ‘my poor face was bleeding’. Having to drive at four miles an hour in order to be able to see where she was going, the hail turned to snow and soon she ‘could not see at all’. Throughout the drive, as she recounts in her letter, she was agonisingly aware of her fatally wounded passenger, who ‘was conscious but dreadfully hit in the stomach, arms. I’ve got kind of numb at hearing people in agony but I think one hates seeing (these) dreadful sights more and more.’

  Perhaps because only those who had driven in such conditions knew the full misery both for patient and driver, Ada Harris’ poem focuses upon the ambulances themselves rather than the drivers. This poem also appeared in Pat Beauchamp’s autobiography.

  THE RED CROSS CARS

  They are bringing them back who went forth so bravely.

  Grey, ghostlike cars down the long white road

  Come gliding, each with its cross of scarlet

  On canvas hood, and its heavy load

  Of human sheaves from the crimson harvest

  That greed and falsehood and hatred sowed.

  Maimed and blinded and torn and shattered,

  Yet with hardly a groan or a cry

  From lips as white as the linen bandage;

  Though a stifled prayer ‘God let me die,’

  Is wrung, maybe, from a soul in torment

  As the car with the blood-red cross goes by

  Oh, Red Cross car! What a world of anguish

  On noiseless wheels you bear night and day.

  Each one that comes from the field of slaughter

  Is a moving Calvary, painted grey.

  And over the water, at home in England

  “Let’s play at soldiers,” the children say.

  Ada Harris

  Women did not only drive ambulances. A very significant number drove vehicles for the army staff officers of both the British and Imperial forces. Initially figures of fun, many of those whom they drove came to respect their skills and request their services rather than those of a male driver. This poem, found amongst the Scrapbooks held in the Birmingham Public Library War Poetry Collection, had entertaining cartoon drawings to further re-inforce its point.

  THE ‘IF’ IN THE CAR

  With apologies to Rudyard Kipling

  If you can get up early every morning

  When you would much prefer to stay in bed,

  If you clean your car without a warning

  From the sergeant in command and not get ‘fed’;

  If you can drive along in any weather

  And keep a cheery smile upon your face,

  If you keep yourself in good boot leather

  When it wears out at a terrific pace;

  If you can laugh when your car declines

  And holds up all the traffic on the roads,

  If you can find the fault and it unravel

  Before the breakdown gang itself unloads;

  If you can keep your hood from floating upwards

  In every breeze and gale that doth appear,

  If you can keep your various broken footboards

  From slipping in and out your beastly gears;

  If you can keep your radiator full of water

  When it’s leaking out in gallons on the road;

  If you can run all day without a slaughter

  Of a chicken! or a cow, perchance a toad;

  If you can manage to digest your luncheon,

  In ten and a half minutes by the clock,

  And be back again at your destination,

  Without receiving an electric shock;

  If you can drive from nine o’clock till seven

  Every day of the long week and still live on;

  If you can keep your temper until even,

  You deserve a putty medal nobly won!

  If you can put up with each hardship,

  The weather, the passenger, your car,

  And still keep bright – well all that I can say is:

  ‘You’re a topper absolutely, nothing bar.’

  The fact that these women could firstly drive and secondly afford to do so on a voluntary basis – and keep themselves in ‘good boot leather’ – provides a hint as to their elevated social status.

  ‘For now I am a soldier’: Poets in the Auxiliary Armed Services

  In direct contrast to the privileged backgrounds of many VADs, FANYs, and members of organisations such as the Green Cross, the majority of women who served in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), established in 1917 to ‘free up a man for the ‘Front’ by performing domestic roles, were from the lower classes. They did not have the same access to pu
blishers as more affluent women and almost certainly much of their poetry has been lost.

  Only two WAAC poets’ works appear in published volumes: I. Grindlay’s Ripples from the Ranks is entirely based upon service life, whilst Brenda Bartlett avoids writing about her WAAC service (her work is considered in this book’s last chapter). Hunting through personal documents and service magazines brings some to light and, like their sisters in other uniformed sections, these provide insight into their day-to-day lives and service.

  Following the WAAC’s foundation, the Press immediately suggested that their very presence would endanger the morals of the British Army. To try to dampen soldiers’ ardour, the WAAC uniform was far from alluring but, for many women, the khaki-coloured coat-frock, clumsy looking shoes and round, brown felt hats provided a visible sign of their patriotic fervour.

  MY ARMY HAT

  My comrades sniff and sneer about my hat,

  Regarding it as a blemish on the Corps;

  They cast aspersions on it from behind,

  And say it is disgraceful from before.

  Their idle words do not excite my rage,

  For there is no dishonour in old age.

  For seven months now has it braved the blast,

  And, certainly ‘tis somewhat worn and frayed,

  Upholding not the beauty but the worth

  Of that from which an Army hat is made.

  It is not yet by any means unfit,

  And still must carry on and do its bit.

  At any rate I would not change it now,

  Not even for a model from Paree.

  Of envy for the sweetest hat on view

  My soul is most unutterably free.

  ’Tis old and scarred but what care I for that?

  I’m very proud to wear an army hat.

  (3617) I Grindlay

  Other women became equally attached to both their uniforms and to their initially strange, militarized lives.

  SOME WAAC

  If you can smile when in your time “off duty”

  You’re told to go and do some beastly drill,

  If you can joke when pinning on your brassard,

  Although the colour makes you feel quite ill;

  If you can jest when wearing Army stockings,

  Beneath a dress nine inches from your feet,

  Knowing that given ‘half an earthly’

  Your legs and ankles really are quite neat.

  If you can grin when on your rare late morning,

  You’re wakened up to give your name and rank,

  If on the pay you may (or may not) draw on Friday

  You swagger round as if you own a bank,

  If when you’re told to fasten your top button,

  You don’t pass rude remarks about a “cheek”;

  If when you’ve got your frock so nicely gathered,

  You don’t mind putting back the pleat.

  If you can laugh when down the main street walking,

  The crowds of soldiers anything but mute,

  You have to give (for all escape is cut off)

  Your own inimitable rag-time jazz salute;

  If you can stroll serenely onwards,

  When Administrators and patrols are on your back;

  If you can do these things and not get fed up,

  You can bet your bottom dollar

  You’re SOME WAAC!

  E M Murray

  In case uniforms were not sufficiently unattractive to deter the opposite sex, fraternising was strictly forbidden, irrespective of the age or even occupation of the gentleman in question.

  SMALL MERCIES

  “Good morning,” said the banker;

  “Good morning,” I replied.

  “A nasty day,” he ventured;

  “Oh, not at all,” I cried.

  He gazed upon the landscape,

  And said, “I think it’s wet”;

  “But very fresh,” I told him,

  His puzzled frown I met.

  “It’s really beastly windy,”

  He challenged me again;

  “But really very bracing,”

  I answered him. And then

  The argument was finished,

  He handed back my book,

  And once more said, “Good morning,”

  With quite an absent look.

  “Good morning,” I said brightly,

  And plodded through the rain,

  Our intellectual converse

  Revolving in my brain.

  For, since I am a soldier,

  ’Tis seldom that I can

  Permit myself the pleasure

  Of talking with a man.

  (3617) I Grindlay

  From March 1917, WAACs served in France alongside the Army Service Corps (ASC). Following an adverse (and entirely unfounded) attack in the Press on their morals, measures were put in place to restrict interaction still further. Often the first indication the men of the ASC gained of WAACs’ arrival was an order to erect a barbed wire compound around the camp.

  Women who had previously served in camps in England found the increased restrictions irksome. To compound the difficulties, following aerial attacks on WAAC camps in France in May 1918, trenches and dug-outs were constructed in order to offer some protection against such attacks. This Army Post Office clerk WAAC is far from alone in bemoaning the lack of male company and the physical restrictions. Like many others, she is not averse to pointing out the irritations of service in the Dannes-Camiers district whilst nevertheless recognising its joys.

  From THE WAIL OF THE WAAC

  If you’re walking, call me early, call me early, Rosie dear

  Tomorrow may be the happiest day of all the year.

  For the Sergeants of the Ordnance are coming here today

  And perchance their funny faces will drive dull care away.

  Once my life was free from care, my smile a sight to see,

  As to Signals I tripped gaily and poured out a cup of tea.

  The Signals-master strafed me but I didn’t care a jot,

  But said to “Doings” Quickly go and bring another pot.

  In my window boys would look, and smile as they passed by,

  And when the spirit moved me, I would wink the other eye;

  On the road I’d watch the Troops a-marching to and fro,

  Whilst Dip and Rene pointed out the boys they’d like to know.

  But now my lot is darkened and my temper’s wearing thin,

  For alas my view is all obscured by heaps of Sand and Tin;

  And all around the office there are holes and wire fences,

  And when ‘tis dark you bark your shins or fall into trenches.

  Gladys fell down one last night, no men were on the scene,

  For if there had been they’d have seen her stockings coloured green;

  And when I get back into Camp, pray what do I find there,

  But Trenches, Dug-outs, buildings and changes everywhere.

  …But when the war is over and we’re safe at home once more,

  We’ll have many happy memories of the Q.M.A.A.C. Corps

  ‘A[rmy].P[ost].O[ffice]. S.39.R.M.

  June 15th 1918’

  The women who served in the WAAC (subsequently the Queen Mary’s Auxiliary Army Corps, QMAAC) outnumbered those who joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and the last-born, Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF). Poems by members of these two services are even rarer, although angst about the WRNS, their uniform and even their eagerness to enlist, appears in Mabel Beatty’s parody ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’. This rather trivializes would-be ‘Wrens’ who flocked to the new service’s HQ at Stanhope Street, London, where recruitment was underway, overseen by the service’s newly appointed ‘Admiral’ or Principal Violet Waldy.

  Members of both contemporary and present military services would recognize the endless administrative tasks, with individuals being referred to by their jobs rather than their names, and the acronyms that are part a
nd parcel of service life.

  THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER

  The Sea Lord and the Admiral were walking

  On the sand,

  They wept like anything to see

  So many men at hand;

  “If women could be used instead”

  They said, “it would be grand.”

  The sun was shining merrily

  On 15 Stanhope Street,

  The Wrens were busy bustling round

  With eager black-shod feet,

  With braided coats, three cornered hats,

  They looked quite trim and neat.

  “Oh women come and work with us”,

  The ‘Admiral’ did beseech;

  With pleasant smile and full of guile

  She made her opening speech:

  We badly want your help ashore

  (Correctly, on the beach)”.

  Then 4 young women hurried up,

  All eager for the fray,

  Their heels were high, their necks were low

  (The fashion of the day),

  “Shall we enquire at Stanhope Street

  About the rates of pay?”

  Four other women followed them

  And yet another four

  And thick and fast they came at last,

  And more and more and more,

  Until they reached from *Harrods

  Up to Headquarters door.

  It’s very nice of you to come,

  We wish you’d come to stay:

  Perhaps you are a little ‘old’,

  Or else a trifle ‘gay’,

  Now this one here is ‘just the type’

  (This happens every day!)

  “It seems a shame” young Waldy said,

  To play them such a trick,

  After we’ve brought them out so far

  To turn them down so quick.”

  The A.D.P. said nothing but

  “Their answers make me sick.”

  “The time has come”, Recruiting said

  “To talk of many things,

  Selecting boards, enrolment forms

  And whether wrens have wings.”

  “And whether dockets have them too”

  Administration sings.

  We weep for you,” the others cried,

  “We deeply sympathise.”

  With tears and sobs they sorted out

  Those of the largest size.

  Their tattered hieroglyphics swam

  Before her weary eyes.

  If seven wrens with seven pens,

  Sat at them half a year,

  “Do you suppose”, the Admiral said

  “That they could make them clear?”