The idea of a well-known local woman donating a jewel to represent her community’s role in the war became an essential element of the Pearl Appeal’s success. In Hampshire, Alice Shrubb sent her pearl for the men of Boldre and Pilley. The Shrubbs were important figures in the area. They lived in Boldre Grange, an impressive Victorian house designed by the architect Norman Shaw and, like the Kekewichs, they took an active part in public life. Mr Shrubb served first as a county councillor, then as mayor of the nearby town of Lymington.
Before the war the villages of Boldre and Pilley were reminiscent of the static, hierarchical societies in a Jane Austen novel – the same families had taken the same roles in the community for generations. In Pilley, the squire, Justice of the Peace and vicar lived in ivy and creeper-clad mansions while the other villagers lived in cottages tucked behind thorn hedges and shrubbery. On the boundary of Pilley was the hamlet of East Boldre, which had grown up when landless labourers had set up ‘squatter’ settlements on the forest common land. The surrounding countryside was noted for its peaceful, picturesque beauty. Dotted across the landscape were smallholdings where cattle and ponies grazed.
However, the sleepy serenity of the area was disturbed in 1915 when East Boldre was chosen as a base for a flying school by the Royal Flying Corps. The first airfield in the area had been built five years earlier by William McArdle and John Armstrong Drexel, who established the New Forest Flying School on the site. It was one of the first flying schools in Britain. Although it only lasted until 1912, the training centre became an exciting addition to village life. In May 1910, the headmaster of East Boldre School sketched a plane in the school logbook, many of his pupils had never even seen a train, but they could now boast of being among the first to watch aeroplanes flying overhead.42
During the war, the site became home to No. 16 Training Squadron. Hangars were built and grass runways were marked out, and then the first men arrived for training. In 1917 the site was extended to become a large complex. Added to the existing hangars were new Bessonneau canvas ones; there were also accommodation huts, mess halls and workshops. Three new squadrons were trained at the airfield.
In April 1918, the naval and military wings of the RFC were merged to establish the Royal Air Force and the base at East Boldre became RAF Station Beaulieu. The trainee pilots came from all over the world to the base – there were men from Canada, the United States, South Africa, Australia and Belgium. In their late teens or early twenties, they were full of bravado.
Women were also stationed at the airfield; some drove lorries or acted as officers’ chauffeurs, while others were employed as waitresses in the Officers’ Mess or as shorthand typists. Women worked in the sewing room, in the workshops stitching material onto the wings of planes, or in the doping room, where the material was dipped in a foul-smelling stiffener.
The life expectancy of pilots was short so they seized every moment and made sure they had plenty of fun. When they were off duty they would cycle over to the local pubs at Boldre and Pilley, making the most of the old-world charm. Dances were held regularly in the Sergeants’ Mess. A lorryload of girls would come up from the villages to dance to music played on the piano and fiddle. At midnight, flirtations were forgotten and their dancing partners were unceremoniously helped back into the lorries and sent home. On Sundays, when the camp was less busy, there was time for roller-skating on the hangar floor. Occasionally there would be a camp concert with plenty of beer and comic choruses.43
The airmen were risk-takers, who enjoyed showing off. Against the rules, one pilot took up a single-seater plane with a fellow airman sitting astride the fuselage and waving to a gasping audience beneath. There were about a dozen pilot instructors who were allocated three student pilots each. One of the most popular instructors was Tone Hippolyte Paul Bayetto. He had joined the RFC in 1915 and seen extensive service in France. During a mission in September 1917 his plane was shot down. In the subsequent crash landing, he fractured his skull and he was sent home to recover. In March 1918 he was posted to East Boldre. His daring flying stunts, which included flying between the hangars, gained him the nickname ‘Mad Jack’. A few months after his arrival he was involved in an accident – while flying in formation he turned back to look for his pupil pilot, 21-year old Sergeant Patrick Hogan, but their planes collided killing both men. Bayetto’s plane crashed into the trees on a nearby hill and his dead body was found spread-eagled on the ground below.44
As aviation was in its infancy, crashes were common. Planes landed on top of the hangars or upside down on the landing strip. One pilot clipped the chimneys of Norfolk House, in the village, before crashing into a neighbouring garden. On 24 October 1917, a plane crash-landed on the roof of the village post office, above the bedroom of the postmaster’s daughter. She was just getting dressed when the ceiling came down around her head. Thankfully no one was injured and the pilot was provided with a ladder to climb down to safety.
Villagers became used to seeing planes flying in formation overhead, and many attended air shows at the base, where they were entertained by displays of stunt flying. However, the high level of risk involved could never be forgotten. On 28 April 1918, a large crowd was watching as one of the most senior officers, 28-year-old Major John Lawson Kinnear, did rolls, loops and spins. The atmosphere of excitement changed in a second to horror as one set of the wings of his Sopwith Scout plane became detached. As he spun to the ground, he switched off his engine just before impact; he was killed immediately.45
From March 1918, not a month was to pass without at least one fatality at East Boldre. During the war years, twenty-three trainee pilots were killed at the base. Their dynamism and courage would never be forgotten by the villagers, and a lasting reminder remains in the village churchyard where nineteen of the airmen were buried.46 They had become as much a part of the community’s wartime story as the local men whose names were engraved on the village’s war memorial. Alice Shrubb’s gift of a pearl commemorated all their brief lives.
The courage of pilots like the men trained at East Boldre was essential to the British fightback against the Germans in 1918. On 12 April, the newly-created RAF dropped more bombs than on any other day of the war. Its pilots were told that ‘very low flying is essential. All risks to be taken.’47 With the Allied forces working effectively together, the German advance was halted and General Ludendorff had to change his plans again, turning the attack on the French.
East Boldre pilots had proven themselves prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to prevent the Allies’ defeat and Alice Shrubb made sure their contribution was remembered. Mrs Shrubb was just the type of woman that Lady Northcliffe had been looking for when she launched the Red Cross appeal. It was thanks to dedicated provincial women that the fundraising spread to cover the whole country. Local committees had been formed in forty-three counties. In twenty counties the collections were organised by the wives of the high sheriffs, and in most of the other areas mayoresses like Mrs Shrubb took the lead.
Lady Northcliffe and her committee encouraged competition between the different areas to keep the pearls coming in. Donors were kept informed of which areas were doing best, and a few months into the appeal it was made known that the southern counties had been more generous than the northern ones. Areas that were falling behind were chastised.
The wide geographical range of the donations, and the fact that they were given in memory of men from all classes, showed that, like the men in the trenches, the women at home believed that they were all in it together. The necklace became a symbol of the determination that even when their ‘backs were against the wall’ they would not surrender.
Six
PEARLS FOR HEROIC NURSES
Pearls were not only given for soldiers who died in action, they were also donated for nurses who made the ultimate sacrifice. In the first week of June 1918, a pearl was added to the collection ‘in memory of the heroism of our nurses on May 19’.1 The tragedy that prompted this gift marked a new low
point in the conduct of the war. During May, German airships bombed hospitals clearly marked with the Red Cross sign. It was never proved that the Germans had adopted a deliberate policy of bombing hospitals; they claimed not to have seen the Red Cross symbol and argued that the hospitals were placed near railways, army camps and depots which were legitimate military targets.2 However, their actions were seen by many as a war crime that went against all moral and international law. On Whit Sunday, 19 May, the No. 1 Canadian General Hospital at Étaples was struck, killing three nursing sisters and many patients.
One of the nurses who died was 25-year-old Katherine Maud MacDonald. Katherine had everything to live for. Attractive and full of joie de vivre, her strong conscience made nursing her vocation. Born in 1893, before the war she had lived in Brantford, Ontario, in Canada, with her mother and sister, Florence, who was chief operator of the Bell Telephone Company in the town. When Katherine graduated from Victoria Hospital, London, Ontario, in 1915 it was a proud moment for the whole family. She was photographed at her graduation in her immaculate uniform surrounded by bouquets of flowers. She then nursed privately in her home town before enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Unlike nursing units in other Allied forces, the Canadian nurses were fully integrated within the military structure and assigned a rank. They were nicknamed ‘Bluebirds’ by soldiers because of their blue dresses, white aprons and sheer white veils.
At Easter 1917 Katherine left home for England, full of excitement and travelling with two other local nurses. A pipe band played and a crowd of friends cheered Katherine off as the train pulled out of the station. Looking forward to the adventure, on the journey she wrote home, ‘Oh what a lovely time I have. I just adore being on the train. This suits me fine.’3 She proudly explained that she had been chosen to be in charge of all nineteen nurses in her unit, although some were as old as her mother. Leadership came naturally to her and she enjoyed booking their hotel rooms, arranging meals, organising their tickets, documents and luggage, and taking them to matron if they became ill. Evidently her easy charm made her popular, the porters could not do enough for her, calling her group of nurses first for meals and thus annoying the other nursing unit from Toronto, who had arrived before them. When they set sail to cross the Atlantic on HMHS Essequibo, life on board ship had plenty to keep them entertained, and Katherine particularly enjoyed a grand concert put on by the stewards’ minstrel troop.
Once in England, Katherine was posted to military hospitals in Eastbourne and then Brighton. Her life on the south coast is captured in the red leather scrapbook she kept. As well as the serious side of life, there are snapshots that recall the fun she had with her fellow nurses and army officers. She was loved by both her patients and colleagues. In one photograph, Katherine is the only nurse sitting in the middle of a group of wounded soldiers; some have bandaged heads, others have crutches, but several are fit enough to be larking about in the background. One grateful patient wrote Katherine a poem:
My work is on Ward Number Seven
The day sisters there, they simply remind one of heaven.
The patients all say
That it was lucky that they were admitted to Ward Number Seven.4
The hospital at Eastbourne was a large Gothic building set in well-manicured gardens. When she was off duty, Katherine went for walks on the seafront or the nearby clifftops, followed by a picnic on the beach with other nurses and officers.
Katherine had many admirers, including Dr Fleck Graham, an earnest young doctor who had grown up just a couple of streets away from her in Brantford. When the war began, Dr Graham had just graduated in medicine from Toronto University and was taking a postgraduate course in New York. He immediately enlisted in the 86th Machine Gun Battalion but just before his unit was sent overseas he was badly injured in a railway crash. The damage to his back was so severe that he could have been invalided out of military service. However, he was determined to do his duty. Wearing a plaster of Paris cast for his back injury, he went to England and worked with Katherine in the military hospital in Eastbourne. At dances, while Katherine energetically joined in with equally exuberant young soldiers, Fleck was restricted by his back problem and, instead of joining her on the dance floor, was left playing bridge with the ‘serious’.5
During this time, Katherine met and fell in love with a Canadian captain in the 12th Canadian Reserve Battalion called John Ballantyne. Spending time together at Eastbourne when he was on leave, the relationship developed quickly and they got engaged. John captured some of their precious moments together with his camera. One particularly relaxed photograph shows Katherine standing on a windswept clifftop; she is holding on to her hat while laughing flirtatiously at the photographer. However, although she was so happy during her time in England, she was always looking for the next challenge. Her fiancé counselled her against going to France but she was determined, as Captain Ballantyne later wrote to her mother, for Katherine ‘duty was ever foremost and prevailed’.6
Her opportunity came after she impressed doctors by helping in a difficult operation. When she was first asked to scrub up and help ‘a big man’ who had come down from London in the operating theatre she was nervous. She wrote to her mother, ‘I was a fussed girl when they told me.’ However, she was delighted afterwards when ‘they all said it was fine and our Colonel was tickled to death, praised me sky high’.7 When she heard that some nurses would soon be selected to go to France, Katherine asked the colonel if she could be one of them and, recalling her competence in the recent operation, he agreed, saying ‘we want some good nurses’. She warned her mother and sister that she might be gone before they got her letter and added enthusiastically, ‘hope so’.8
In March 1918, she set off for France. Her arrival coincided with one of the most intense phases of the fighting. Vera Brittain, who was nursing at a hospital near to Katherine’s, described the experience as like being in Dante’s Inferno. There was constant and deafening noise, crashes and thuds from the battlefield mixed with the roar of ammunition lorries and ambulances travelling along the broken roads day and night. The flashes of fire on the horizon were a reminder of how close they were to the fighting as the Germans advanced.9
Canadian Nursing Sisters served in military hospitals and casualty clearing stations in France, Belgium, Greece, Malta and the Eastern Mediterranean. The casualty clearing stations received the wounded first. Ambulances rolled up in a steady stream and then stretcher bearers would move the wounded to the wards. Often the men were gassed and choking for breath or bleeding copiously from their wounds. The nurses would care for them immediately, feeding them and clothing them in clean outfits.
The base hospitals in France were part of the casualty evacuation chain. Further back from the front line than the casualty clearing stations, they needed to be close to a railway line for casualties to arrive. Most of them were located not far from the coast because they also had to be near a port so that men could be evacuated for longer-term treatment in Britain. There were two types of base hospitals, known as stationary and general hospitals. Often, they were established in large buildings which had been seaside hotels or châteaux before the war.
The Canadian Red Cross made sure that the hospitals were kept well equipped and both nurses and patients were supplied with what they needed. The organisation was responsible for building some special wards for chest and fractured femur cases, and in all the larger Canadian hospitals there was a special Red Cross storeroom where supplies were kept and were looked after by a Red Cross orderly. As well as necessities, members of the Red Cross also provided a personal touch, handing out cigarettes, chewing gum and maple sugar to cheer up wounded men.
In December, 38,235 Christmas stockings stuck with bright seals and tied with multi-coloured ribbon were sent from Canada to soldiers in hospital in France. It was a reminder to each man that people at home were with him in spirit at Christmas. Mary Macleod Moore, a contemporary chronicler of the Ca
nadian Red Cross, explained that it allowed ‘a soldier who has fought for years, and known all the horrors and privations of a long campaign’ to be a child again.10 Mrs Macleod Moore saw many of the Red Cross’ activities in maternal terms, writing that the Information Bureau of the Canadian Red Cross might be called ‘the Mothering Bureau’, because it made sure that each Canadian soldier when he was admitted to hospital had a visitor to comfort and befriend him and make sure he was given what he craved. They also kept in touch with the man’s family in Canada.11 Mrs Macleod Moore wrote, ‘It was a deputy for all the mothers and wives longing to make the time of suffering easier. In a word, it represented a human and personal side to that awful thing called War.’12
Katherine was based at No. 1 Canadian General Hospital at Étaples. Many of the wards were devoted to patients with leg injuries and by May 1918 they were nursing more than 300 patients with fractured femurs.13 Wounds to the femur carried high mortality rates, but at Katherine’s hospital they were using a new method of treatment which was improving outcomes. Major Meurice Sinclair, a Regular Army Medical Officer, had transformed the management of gunshot fractures of the femur by introducing a system of traction on the Thomas splint, in suspension. It was very successful and in his own hospital, where the treatment was first used, the death rate in open fractures of the femur was reduced from 80 to 7.3 per cent.
The work at the hospital was demanding and after a hectic day Katherine was often too tired to write letters. During this final phase of the war, hospitals were working at high pressure. As the Germans advanced, casualty clearing stations had been bombed and field ambulances wiped out so patients were sent directly to the hospital from the battlefield. Wounded in the morning, soldiers would often be at the hospital by the afternoon.
Pearls before Poppies Page 12