My War Experiences in Two ContinentsMacnaughtan, S. (Sarah)
History
My War Experiences in Two Continents
Macnaughtan, S. (Sarah)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals, charities, etc.; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English
Among individual cases, too, there were many men who benefited by some
special care bestowed on them by her. There was one wounded Belgian to
whom my aunt gave my address before she left for Russia that he might
have someone with whom he might correspond. I used to hear from him
regularly, and every letter breathed gratitude to "la dame ecossaise."
He said she had saved his life.
Miss Macnaughtan's lectures to munition-workers were, perhaps, the best
work that she did during the war. She was a charming speaker, and I
never heard one who got more quickly into touch with an audience. As I
saw it expressed in one of the papers "Stiffness and depression vanished
from any company when she took the platform." Her enunciation was
extraordinarily distinct, and she had an arresting delivery which
compelled attention from the first word to the last.
She never minced the truth about the war, but showed people at home how
far removed it was from being a "merry picnic."
"They say recruiting will stop if people know what is going on at the
Front," she used to tell them. "I am a woman, but I know what I would do
if I were a man when I heard of these things. _I would do my durndest._"
All through her life the idea of personal service appealed to Miss
Macnaughtan. She never sent a message of sympathy or a gift of help
unless it was quite impossible to go herself to the sufferer.
She was only a girl when she heard of what proved to be the fatal
accident to her eldest brother in the Argentine. She went to him by the
next ship, alone, save for the escort of his old yacht's skipper, and a
journey to the Argentine in those days was a big undertaking for a
delicate young girl. On another occasion she was in Switzerland when
she heard of the death, in Northamptonshire, of a little niece. She left
for England the same day, to go and offer her sympathy, and try to
comfort the child's mother.
"When I hear of trouble I always go at once," she used to say.
I have known her drive in her brougham to the most horrible slum in the
East End to see what she could do for a woman who had begged from her in
the street--yes, and go there again and again until she had done all
that was possible to help the sad case.
[Page Heading: ZEAL TO HELP OTHERS]
It was this burning zeal to help which sent her to Belgium and carried
her through the long dark winter there, and it was, perhaps, the same
feeling which obscured her judgment when her expedition to Russia was
contemplated. She was a delicate woman, and there did not seem to be
much scope for her services in Russia. She was not a qualified nurse,
and the distance from home, and the handicap of her ignorance of the
Russian language, would probably have prevented her organising anything
like comforts for the soldiers there as she had done in Belgium. To
those of us who loved her the very uselessness of her efforts in Russia
adds to the poignancy of the tragedy of the death which resulted from
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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