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
ordering gowns for a gay season in Mayfair, Leila Paget gave her
instructions and assembled her equipment. It was, you see, her hour.
She arrived at Uskub in October, 1914, with the first English hospital
on the scene to stem the tide of the frightful conditions that
prevailed toward the end of 1914. After the retreat of the Austrians,
Serbia had been left a charnel house of the dead and dying. Every
large building of any kind—schools, inns, stables—was filled with the
wounded, among whom now raged also typhus, typhoid, and smallpox.
There were few doctors and no nurses, only orderlies who were Austrian
prisoners. At one huge barracks fifteen hundred cases lay on the cots
and under them; at another three thousand fever patients overflowed
the building and lay on the ground outside in their uniforms,
absolutely unattended. Facing conditions like these, Lady Paget opened
her hospital in a former school building. And here in the war zone
she instituted for herself such a régime as probably was never before
arranged for an Englishwoman of title.
She arose at four o’clock in the morning, and when she slipped from
her cot, no one handed her a silk kimono. The regulation “germ
proof” uniform worn by women relief workers in Serbia consisted of a
white cotton combination affair, the legs of which tucked tight into
high Serbian boots. Over this went an overall tunic with a collar
tight about the neck and bands tight about the wrists. There was a
tight-fitting cap to go over the hair. And beneath this uniform, about
neck and arms, you wore bandages soaked in vaseline and petroleum. It
was the protection against the attacking vermin that swarmed everywhere
as thick as common flies. Wounded men from the trenches arrived
infested with lice, and typhus is spread by lice. Lady Paget stood
heroically at her post by their bedsides, with her own hands attending
to their needs. What there was to be done in the way of every personal
service, she did not shrink from. And she unpacked bales of goods. And
she scrubbed floors. And she assisted with the rites for the dying.
There had to be a lighted candle in a dying Serbian soldier’s hand,
and often her own hand closed firmly about the hand too weak to hold
the candle alone. Her wonderful nerve never failed, but there came a
time when her frail physical strength gave out. She still held on,
working for two days with a high fever temperature before she finally
succumbed, herself the victim of typhus. Her husband was telegraphed
for. She was unconscious when he arrived and it was three or four days
before he could be permitted to see her. Her life hung in the balance
for weeks. But finally recovery began and it was planned for her to
return to England for convalescence. She and Sir Ralph were attended
to the railroad station by the military governor of Macedonia, the
archbishop of the Serbian Church, and a guard of honour of Serbian
officers. The Serbian people in their devotion lined the street and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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