Pearls before Poppies

by Rachel Trethewey

  Convoy after convoy of men arrived, often unattended, in any vehicle that would carry them, from ambulances to cattle trucks. Lying on stretchers, often moaning or crying out with pain, the wounded lay in their blood-soaked khaki uniforms torn open to expose their wounds. Many went to England just a few hours later, after just a wash and change of dressing. Others never made it home, instead they were sent to the cemetery after a hurried laying out that was too rushed to be reverent. The operating theatres were fully stretched day and night, with nurses and doctors often working fourteen-hour days. There was no time to tidy the wards or finish off one job before another convoy arrived demanding immediate attention.14

  In a letter home, Katherine described the relentless flow of men at her hospital:

  Poor fellows, they have some awful wounds. We have one very sick man. Amputation of both legs above the knees. He lost so much blood that I am afraid for him. We had to send him to the Operating Room again tonight and when he came back he would not rest unless he had my hand and there I sat and thought every minute my back would break. He is a dear but I am so afraid he will go out.15

  In Katherine’s scrapbook there is a handwritten poem called ‘The Nursing Sister’, by Captain Ronald Gordon Cumming, who she had met in the Eastbourne hospital. As it is undated, we do not know when he wrote it or gave it to her, but the verse recreates the tender care she gave her patients. In the ‘long, long nights of suffering’ the nursing sister battled hard with death trying ‘to ease a sinking sufferer’ by smoothing his forehead and just watching over him during ‘the last grim tussle’ before he died. However, the last lines of the poem were an uncannily accurate forecast of Katherine’s fate:

  For throughout a life of mercy

  That has much to teach and learn

  She must always face the prospect

  That in time will come her turn.

  May some spirit haunt her pathway

  To help her down that road.

  With willing hands to lead her

  And to help her bear her load.16

  At times, Katherine’s load seemed very heavy and her duties in France tested her to her limits. After two months at this unrelenting pace she had asked for a transfer back to England to the Canadian Hospital in Brighton, which she considered to be her home. She was hoping to leave the hospital soon and was looking forward to returning to her old friends, but she knew that while they were so busy in France they would not want to let her go.

  By May there was a shortage of trained nurses in France and it was estimated that another 342 nurses were needed.17 The Germans had gone quiet for a few weeks, but it was clear they were still planning something.18 In her last letter home, written the night before she died, she wrote reassuringly to her mother and sister, ‘I suppose we will have another big push again. Hope they make one grand one and finish but don’t worry we are far from harm.’19 However, the final paragraph of her letter suggests that like everyone else, male or female, at the Front, death was never far from her mind. The night before, she had visited the war cemetery where there were ‘millions’ buried. She looked for Canadians but did not find any she knew. Showing a surprising interest in the details of the burials, she noted that the officers had graves to themselves but the privates were two to a grave although ‘each have a wooden cross at the head and all are fixed up nicely’.20

  Those were the last words she wrote to her family, just a few days later one of those simple wooden crosses would bear her name. On 19 May, after a long day on the wards, Katherine had attended the Whit Sunday Communion service. When it finished at 9.30 p.m. she went with her friend, Margaret Lowe, to drop into the room of another sister. Together they talked of the sermon and service and then they set off for their own rooms. As they did so, bombs began to drop on the men’s quarters. There was no time to think of getting to the bombproof shelters.

  Katherine was with several other nurses when the fatal shell fell directly on the building where they were. None were killed outright, but Katherine was wounded by a piece of shrapnel which severed the femoral artery causing extensive bleeding and shock. She told her friends that she felt faint. Another sister suggested that the others tried to move her but Katherine then said, ‘I am fainting,’ and wilted in front of them. She died a few minutes later.21

  The matron of the hospital, Edith Campbell, wrote, ‘Poor little soul, she did not suffer long, death came very soon.’22 Drawing on her Christian faith, the matron added, ‘It was a terrible night. It’s only God’s mercy that any of the Sisters were saved. They simply hammered at us for hours it seemed.’23

  The matron and sisters had shown great courage during the raid. All night the sisters remained at their posts and, despite the heavy bombing, many of those who were off duty went up to the hospital to help. Their bravery was widely recognised. Queen Alexandra sent a telegram to Miss McCarthy, matron-in-chief, expressing her deep shock at the terrible casualties ‘to our dear nurses’. She wrote:

  Please tell all those at Étaples how truly I sympathise with them in the terrible ordeal they had to undergo. It is too dreadful to think that our brave nurses whose lives are devoted to looking after the sick and wounded should have been exposed to such wicked and uncalled for trials.24

  Two Sisters were awarded the Military Medal for distinguished service in the field for their bravery that night. Nursing Sister Helen Elizabeth Hansen ‘worked devotedly in the operating room throughout the period of the severe bombardment, which lasted for 2 hours’. Her citation stated that she ‘was ready for any duty, and exhibited qualities of coolness and courage’. Nursing Sister Beatrice McNair also ‘carried on her duties throughout the night without interruption’. During the period of severe bombardment, she ‘showed great solicitude for the patients in her wards, and was wholly unmindful of her personal safety’.25 The bombing destroyed the quarters where Katherine and her friends had been and the adjacent building of HRH Princess Victoria’s Rest Club for Nurses was also in ruins. The only thing left intact in the building was Her Royal Highness’ picture, which was on a small table on the ground floor – neither the table nor the picture had been touched.26

  Rather than shattering morale, the German atrocities made the doctors and nurses all the more determined to continue with their vital work. ‘Carry on’ became the motto of the Canadian Nursing Sisters in all the hospitals after the bombing. The colonel of one hospital decided to send his nurses off to a distant hospital on the coast where they would be safe, but the women refused to go and the colonel allowed them to continue. Each night the sisters on duty were provided with shrapnel-proof shields to wear under their uniforms.

  Emergency operations continued to be carried out, although the surgical hut rocked with the force of explosions from bombs that dropped a few yards off. In other huts, when the raid siren was blown, the nurses went through the wards and gently lifted helpless patients to the floor where, protected by the sandbag barrier that lined the hut, they were comparatively safe from flying shrapnel. Only after they had completed all these tasks would the nurses go to the bombproof shelters. If a ward was hit by a bomb, nursing sisters would rush to the rescue, ready to calm the men who were in their care.27 When the sisters’ quarters were no longer considered safe after dark the nurses spent their nights in trenches in the woods.28

  In the days after the raid Katherine’s fiancé, Captain Ballantyne, wrote to her mother about his darling ‘Christy’. He wrote that she was ‘a brave girl and so devoted to her duty in the cause of justice and relief to the suffering that she has made the supreme sacrifice. Her heart and soul were in her work and nothing was too extreme for her powers.’29 Comforting Mrs MacDonald, he assured her that she was ‘always her chief thought’ and that Katherine adored her. He credited her mother with instilling strong Christian values in Katherine and making her ‘a sterling character’.30 He then turned to his own feelings, explaining:

  My personal relations with her were most intimate, as you no doubt know, and to me she was
ideal in every respect and our love meant much to us. Now that bond is severed, but her memory will always be one to inspire me to higher ideals and may I be able to avenge her loss.31

  Still in shock, he added, ‘I can scarcely realise that all this has come to pass and that I am not to enjoy her companionship again. She was everything to me and our hopes were for the future.’32 In his overwhelming grief he tried to cling on to what little he had left of her. Spending time looking at the photos of them together during the more carefree days at Eastbourne, he attempted to recreate that time by asking Katherine’s sister, Florence, what she had told them about him. He wrote, ‘Could you give me some idea of Christy’s esteem for me from things she had written home. It seems strange to ask such a question but it would be so self-satisfying.’33

  Mrs MacDonald also needed a tangible link with Katherine to help her grieve; she requested that her daughter’s body should be brought home to Brantford. Although Captain Ballantyne wrote many letters on her behalf and even offered to go over to France to arrange it, the authorities would not allow it so Katherine was buried in France. At 9.30 a.m. on 21 May, 110 Canadian sisters, with seven generals and many British and American officers from the area, attended her funeral. Her fellow sisters showed their high esteem for her by lining her grave with white and purple lilacs and pink peonies. Flowers were also sent from all the hospitals in the area. At the service, the Canadian Army chaplain read from Corinthians and Revelations. Describing the great multitude standing before the throne of God to a congregation who were still in shock from recent traumatic events, he read, ‘These are those who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. Therefore […] He will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’34

  The two other sisters who were seriously wounded did not survive. Thirty-five-year-old Nursing Sister Gladys Maude Mary Wake died from a compound fracture of the femur two days after the attack. Nursing Sister Margaret Lowe, aged 32, suffered a fractured skull and wounds to the chest in the air raid. She was operated on three days later, when a portion of her rib was removed and fluid was drained from her chest. Her head wound was also examined and some of the bone was removed.35 She was nursed in a hut as her condition was too serious to allow her to be moved to the Sick Sisters’ Hospital at the Villa Tino. A few days after the attack, she was just conscious but very ill, and she died on 28 May.

  All of the staff and patients in the hospital were deeply affected by the three deaths. The chaplain wrote, ‘Those of us who are alive, live very much in our thoughts with those who have gone.’36 The strength of feeling among their fellow nurses was evident at Margaret’s funeral as a long line of nurses in uniform followed her coffin. Three small white crosses mark the graves of the heroic Canadian sisters in the Military Cemetery at Étaples.

  Five other nurses had also been wounded during the raid. Their injuries included wounds to the back, wrists and eyes. Three of them were sent to the Sick Sisters’ Hospital to recuperate, but Sisters Wishart and Gallagher, whose injuries were only slight, asked to remain on duty after a brief period of rest. However, when another heavy barrage happened it was too much for Sister Wishart, she ‘became unnerved’ and had to be taken to the Villa Tino.37

  She was not the only one to suffer from shattered nerves. Vera Brittain admitted that her teeth chattered with terror when she heard the deafening noise of the German planes overhead. One nurse who, like Sister Wishart, had previously been shelled completely lost her nerve and ran screaming through the mess until two sisters grabbed her, forcibly put her to bed and held her down until the raid was over to prevent panic spreading.38

  The strain on nurses was at times unbearable and all matrons were instructed to send off duty any nurses who were overtired. Since 1 April 1918, the Red Cross had opened a rest home for nurses in Boulogne. Previously run as a hotel, it was made to feel like a real home with the prettiest chintzes, freshest curtains and good china. Nurses could relax in the terraced garden, which provided freshly grown vegetables for their meals. However, even at the rest home they could not escape the German threat. During the air raids all the guests and staff went down to the large concrete cellar where, by the light of electric torches, they told stories and played games until it was safe to emerge.39

  Back in Canada, as Mrs MacDonald tried to come to terms with her loss the letters of condolence continued to arrive. There were the official ones from King George V, the Secretary of State for War and the Governor General of Canada, but the ones that moved her to tears were from Katherine’s friends. On opening one letter a few pressed flowers fell out, a Canadian sister had sent flowers from Katherine’s grave to her mother, writing, ‘I hope you will keep strength Mrs MacDonald. It is hard I know that you should not see Katherine again. She was a dear girl – you know loved by all – Dear Girl. She is “often, often with you when you think her far away”.’40

  However, perhaps the most poignant letter was from Katherine’s admirer, Dr Graham. When he wrote to Mrs MacDonald he was serving in No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital at Doullens. Recalling their time in England, he wrote, ‘You don’t know how difficult it is for me to write to you. So many little things come to mind. I can close my eyes and look back over the joyous times spent together. The climax seems so strange.’41 He added that it was difficult to realise how ‘wonderfully brave’ the nurses were under the bombing until you saw it at first hand, but their calm conduct made a huge difference to the wounded soldiers. Knowing how close Katherine was to her mother and sister, he tried to comfort them by reassuring them that it was beyond doubt that:

  … were Maudie [his name for Katherine] to do it all over again she would most assuredly tell you that to have been such a service as Canadian Nursing Sisters are to the wounded in pain racked body and the heroic spirit of our Tommies – to be of service is worth the price.42

  Dr Graham was also to pay the ultimate price. He died only a few months later on 20 September 1918. When No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital was bombed at the end of May he carried on his crucial work in the resuscitation and chest wounds ward, even when he heard the German planes overhead. Remaining calm and cheerful, he reassured his critically ill patients with his usual kind words.43 As German bombs descended on the hospital, a huge triangle in the Citadel was destroyed and in the rest of the building the roof fell in leaving only walls. He survived, but three nursing sisters and two medical officers died. The whole of the operating theatre and X-ray appliances had been wiped out and the medical staff who had been working in the theatre were unrecognisable. Those who were not killed were badly wounded.44 Revealing much about his own ethos, at the funeral of his colleagues Dr Graham was most forcibly struck by the words of the bishop who, in speaking of the nurses, said it was ‘such a glorious ending to such a glorious life of service’.45

  Dr Graham only narrowly escaped death again in August 1918 when a German bombing raid killed his roommate and destroyed all Fleck’s possessions. A week after that incident, more people were killed at the hospital and the unit moved to Rouen. In a letter home, Dr Graham expressed the belief that if he met the almost inevitable death in France he felt that he had been of just as much use to humanity as if he had returned and lived to be an old man in Brantford.46 Although he remained cheerful, the constant physical and mental strain was debilitating. He had never fully recovered from his earlier back injury and was in constant pain from severe sciatica. The night before he died he was quite positive and was talking about returning to work, so it came as a shock to his colleagues when he was found dead in his bedroom early the next morning. He had died from cardiac failure and exhaustion – he was only 34.

  The self-sacrificing valour of the Canadian nurses and doctors was captured in a painting by Gerald Moira, entitled ‘No. 3. Canadian Stationary Hospital at Doullens’. Disappointed that Canadian achievements had not been recorded visually, Lord Beaverbrook had commissioned British a
rtists to document the Canadian war effort. The Canadian War Memorial Fund eventually employed more than 100 artists, including Gerald Moira. Born in 1867, Moira studied at the School of the Royal Academy of Arts and later taught at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington. Inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists, many of his works of art were allegorical.

  In 1917, he wrote that he would like the opportunity to go to France and do decorative paintings for the nation because it was essential that the country should have memorials of the war.47 Moira visited the hospital in early 1918, before the raids, and made sketches for his picture. The hospital had been set up inside the chapel of a fifteenth-century château in Doullens. Reflecting the religious environment, Moira set the tender care of these nurses in a Christian context. Designed like a triptych which could go above an altar, the left panel depicts convalescence and healing, the central panel illustrates the chapel turned into a receiving room where the wounded had their field dressings removed, while the right panel shows the wounded being evacuated to a base hospital. Moira portrayed the nurses tending wounded soldiers like angels of mercy. Emphasising the importance of nurses in the war, they are placed in the foreground and centre of the painting. They are shown tending wounds and bandaging injured soldiers lying on stretchers. Linking their care to Christian ideology, in the central panel a nurse carrying bandages is placed below a statue of the Virgin Mary cradling Christ’s wounded body. The connection between the sisters and Mary is further highlighted by the nurses’ clothing, reminiscent of the Virgin they wear white veils and a blue dress.

  Like the Red Cross Pearl Necklace Appeal, Moira’s painting showed that amidst death and destruction there was a need to remember the humanitarian values that were under threat. Moira’s work of art reflected the importance of Christianity for Canadians during the First World War. Many Canadians saw it as a Christian battle fought under the banner of Christ.