Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World WarDaggett, Mabel Potter
History
Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World War
Daggett, Mabel Potter
Women -- Employment; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
In a corner of this wall is set Christ Church, beside which a porter
opens a gate to admit you to the courtyard. Here where the ambulances
come through in the dark, the bands play on visitors’ day. It is a
grey court yard with ornamental boxes of bright green privet. On the
benches about wait the soldiers, legless soldiers, armless soldiers,
some of them blind soldiers. On convalescent parade in blue cotton
uniform with the gaiety of red neckties, every man of them at two
o’clock on a Tuesday is eager, expectant, waiting—for his woman.
Mothers, wives, sweethearts are arriving, the girls with flowers, the
women with babies in their arms. And each grabs his own to his hungry
heart. You go by the terrible pain and the terrible joy of it all that
grips you so at the throat. Inside where each woman just sits by the
bedside to hold her man’s hand, it is more numb and more still. A girl
orderly in khaki takes you through. Her blue shoulder straps are brass
lettered “W. H. C.,” “Women’s Hospital Corps.” The only man about the
place who is not a patient is the porter at the gate. The women in
khaki with the epaulets in red, also brass lettered “W. H. C.,” are the
physicians and surgeons.
There is one of these you should not miss. You will know her by her
mascot, the little fluffy white dog “Baby” that follows close at her
heels. Her figure in its Norfolk belted jacket is slightly below the
medium height. Her short swinging skirt reveals trim brown clad ankles
and low brown shoes. She has abundant red brown hair that is plainly
parted and rolled away on either side from a low smooth brow to fasten
in a heavy knot at the back of her head. I set down all of these
details as being of some interest concerning a woman you surely will
want to see. Surgeon in chief and the commanding officer in charge
of this military hospital with 600 beds, she is the daughter of Dr.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. She is also the niece of Mrs. Millicent
Garrett Fawcett, president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies. And she is to-day one of England’s greatest surgeons, Dr.
Louisa Garrett Anderson, with the rank of major in the English army.
Her place in this new woman movement is the more significant because
of her prominent affiliation with that of yesterday. For the militancy
in which she is now enlisted Dr. Anderson had her training in that
other militancy that landed women in Holloway Jail. Her transfer to
her present place of government service has come about in a way that
makes her one of our most famous victory exhibits. “You have silenced
all your critics” the War Office told her when they bestowed on her the
honour of her present official rank as she and her Woman’s Hospital
Corps “took” Endell Street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account