We will remember them

Vera Brittain's "Testament of Youth", her account of her service as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse during the First World War, is a classic of its period and subject matter, and rightly so.

Anyone wanting to read beyond that into the history of medical services in the Great War should discover for themselves the remarkable Dr. Elsie Inglis (1864-1917).

She was Edinburgh's foremost woman doctor in the early years of the twentieth century, founding a hospital for the poor and becoming a noted campaigner for women's suffrage. At the outbreak of the war she went to Edinburgh Castle to offer her services to the Royal Army Medical Corps, only to be told, famously, "My good lady, go home and sit still!"

Elsie was undeterred. With the support of like-minded friends and associates, she set up the Scottish Women's Hospitals, battlefield hospitals run entirely by women at the front lines across Europe. It was not the sole organisation of its type but it was the largest and best known, and Elsie was in the thick of things working in the field as a surgeon and leading her teams tirelessly and with a selfless sense of purpose.

When she died of cancer in 1917, barely two days after returning to Britain from Serbia via Russia, public reaction was intense. Her body lay in state at St. Giles' Cathedral before a funeral procession took her through the city to her place of burial; thousands lined the route and young children were held up on their parents' shoulders so they could say they too had been there to pay their respects to Dr. Elsie.

Leah Leneman describes her thus: " ...she was a heroine of a very British kind, her virtues those of a devotion to duty and a keen sense of responsibility. She had endured hardships and privations uncomplainingly in pursuit of her mission to succour the sick and wounded....Her appeal was truly international. There was her sympathy and compassion ... her vision and inspiration, her courage and energy. All these were greatly mourned and missed when she died."

Her name lives on in the city today, though few people even here have much idea of exactly who she was and what she did. It is time that changed.

Comments

[Peter the flautist]

A timely reminder of the vital work done by some heroic women in mitigating the horrors of wars waged primarily by men.

[Ex Libris]

Karen, I keep intending to read Vera Brittain, and now must add the book about Dr. Inglis to the list. I just can't get over how little we hear about WWI in the US these days.