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
For the amazing figure that has emerged by magic directly out of the
battle smoke of this war, see the woman in khaki! Khaki, I explain to
My Suffragette, is one of the most popular of government offerings for
women’s wear. The material has been found most serviceable in a war
zone either to die in or to live in, while you save others from dying.
It is sometimes varied with woollen cloth preferred for warmth. But the
essential features of the costume are preserved: the short skirt, the
leather leggings, the military hat and the shoulder straps with the
insignia of special service. When governments have called for unusual
duty that is difficult or disagreeable or dangerous, it is the woman
in khaki who responds: “Take me. I am here.” She will, in fact, do
anything that there’s no one else to do.
Stick-at-nothings, the London newspapers have nicknamed the women’s
Reserve Ambulance Corps of 400 women who wear a khaki uniform with
a green cross armlet. With white tunics over these khaki suits, a
detachment of green cross girls at Peel House, the soldiers’ club in
Westminster, does house-maid duty from seven in the morning until
eight at night. They are making beds and waiting on table, these young
women, who, many of them, in stately English homes have all their lives
been served by butlers and footmen. I saw a Green Cross girl at the
military headquarters of the corps in Piccadilly making to Commandant
Mabel Beatty her report of another phase of war work. She was such a
young thing, I should say perhaps eighteen, and delicately bred. I know
I noticed the slender aristocratic hand that she lifted to her hat
in salute to her superior officer: “I have,” she said, “this morning
burned three amputated arms, two legs and a section of a jaw bone. And
I have carried my end of five heavy coffins to the dead wagon.” That’s
all in her day’s work. She’s a hospital orderly. And it’s one of the
things an orderly is for, to dispose of the by-products of a great war
hospital.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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