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By Root 2210 0

the French Red Cross, and offered their skills, and medical supplies which would be paid for by their supporters. Money poured in, from suffragists and women’s colleges. A uniform was devised, for doctors, nurses, orderlies and managers. It was greenish-grey, short-skirted, with a neat loose long tunic, buttoned high. There were small cloth hats, with veils and overcoats. The women looked smart and purposeful. They had learnt that women must do everything more competently, more carefully, with more unrelenting discipline than men. In September 1914 they went from Victoria and Dieppe to Paris, which was full of wounded men. “An excitable British Red Cross lady,” said Flora Murray, “explained that nothing was any good here. The red tape was awful—all the arrangements had broken down. The sepsis was appalling. The town was full of Germans whose legs and arms had been cut off and who were being sent to Havre next day like that!!”

Griselda Wellwood was with them. Newnham College was supporting the doctors. Griselda—after a brief training as a VAD in Cambridge—went with them as a kind of liaison officer provided by the College, someone who spoke fluent French and German, and could help out with patients and authorities. Nurses with next to no French were asking wounded soldiers “Monsieur, avec-vous de pain in l’estomac?” Griselda helped both patients and nurses.

A hospital was set up in Claridge’s Hotel, in Paris, allotted by the French. Rooms were cleared, wards were set up, sterilising equipment and an operating theatre were installed and wounded men came in, steadily, French, British, German, to be nursed, to be operated on, to be protected, by severe Sisters, from curious flocks of visiting elegant ladies. To die. There was a quiet mortuary, in the basement. The surgeons amongst them had previously operated almost exclusively on women. They learned quickly.

Dorothy became skilled at amputations. Griselda made herself useful when, at Christmas, there were parties, and entertainments. The men put up a Union Jack with the legend: “The Flag of Freedom.” The suffragists were not amused. The men became aware of this and the flag was changed. “Freedom” became “England” and the doctors were told that the men were “all for Votes for Women.”

They put on plays. Wounded, shell-shocked, bandaged, tremulous, they put on plays. Some were farces and some were not. The Deserter was a precise representation of the court martial of a deserter, with bullying sergeant-major, bounding lieutenant, relentless judge-advocate. The accused was the hero, and died courageously, on stage, in front of the firing-squad.

The wounded men applauded, from beds and wheelchairs. Dorothy touched Griselda’s arm.

“Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

“It’s the execution. I have a horror of executions. They did it so matter-of-fact. But their sympathy was with—with him.”

Dorothy said, quietly and grimly, that if what they had seen, and what they had been told, was a true description of events out at the Front, most men would be driven to desert. She said “They said it would be over by Christmas. It isn’t. They don’t know now how or when it will end. I’m glad you’re here.”

Griselda said “What do you think made them put it on? Does play-acting help them look it in the face? Or cut it down to size? It is gruesome.”

“We can’t afford to think about what is gruesome. You take a temporary bandage off a wound, and what is under it is gruesome and there is nothing you can do. They mostly know, not always. You know, Grisel, I am simply not the same person I was last year. She doesn’t exist.”

“I’m glad we are with the women. They are so intent on—on managing perfectly—that they just go on. Most of us, most of the time.”

“It’s early days,” said Dorothy.

52

Philip Warren was still in Purchase House. The gardener and the handyman had gone to the war, and there were weeds in the drive and the grass was wild in the orchard. Seraphita sat in semi-darkness, semiconscious, and waited for the day to end, coming briefly to life in the early evening, when safe sleep