The Sword of Deborah: First-hand impressions of the British Women's Army in FranceJesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
History
The Sword of Deborah: First-hand impressions of the British Women's Army in France
Jesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
I have left till the last what to some people will be the dullest and
what is certainly the least spectacular of all the work done by the
women in France, but what is to me perhaps the most wonderful and
admirable of all. I mean that of the Domestic Staffs.
For there is something thrilling about driving wounded, something
eternally picturesque about nursing them, but there is no glamour about
being a general servant.... A general servant, year in, year out, and
with no wages at that, for I talk of the voluntary staffs, girls of
gentle birth and breeding who deliberately undertake to wash dishes and
clean floors and empty slops day after day. I think heroism can no
higher go, and I am not trying to be funny; I mean it.
All the voluntary camps I had seen, all the hostels, the rest stations,
and many hospitals, are staffed by voluntary domestic help; and the
girls they wait upon, the drivers and secretaries and such like, are
eager in recognition of them. But that seems to me about all the
recognition they do get; they get no "snappy pars," no photographs in
the picture papers, no songs are sung of them, no reward is theirs in
the shape of medal or ribbon, nothing but the sense of a dish properly
cleaned or rugs duly swept under. I consider that there ought to be a
special medal for girls who have slaved as general servants during the
war, without a thrill of romance to support them; a "Skivvy's Ribbon" as
one of them laughingly suggested to me when I propounded the idea.
Take, for example, the Headquarters of the British Red Cross, at the
Hotel Christol at Boulogne, to which I returned on my homeward way, as I
had come to it on landing. The staff, counting the Commissioner and
officials, the clerks, typists, secretaries, and Post Office girls,
amount to about a hundred and forty-five people, and the house staff
number seventeen and are all V.A.D.'s. The Hotel Christol is also the
headquarters for all Red Cross people going on leave or arriving
therefrom via Boulogne, and all have to report there; nearly all want a
meal, many want a bed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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