Please welcome author Viv Newman to Melissa Lee's Many Reads.. I hope you all find her post as fascinating to read as I did.
Thank you so much
Melissa for inviting me to post about “The Forgotten Women of the First World
War”.
‘She Knew the Meaning of
Sacrifice’
“Armistice Day”, “Remembrance
Sunday”, the traditional days when we remember The Fallen. But how many of us pause to wonder about the women
who perished in The Great War? When
researching We Also Served: The Forgotten
Women of the First World War, I was amazed to discover that between 1914
and 1918 around 2,000 women from Allied countries died due to their war
service. Here are the stories of just
three of them.
In 1915, New
Zealand Army Staff Nurse Margaret Rogers, wrote home to her father, “There is
no romance about war; it spells
suffering, hunger, filth”. She was one
of 36 professional nurses about to set sail from Alexandria in Egypt to
Salonika (now Thessalonika) with British and New Zealand soldiers on H.T.
Marquette. At 9.15 am on 23rd
October 1915, a torpedo hit Marquette; as a troopship, she was a
legitimate target for enemy action. She
sank within ten minutes. When after
upwards of eight hours in the sea, the few survivors were rescued, it was
obvious that the New Zealand Nursing service had received a significant
blow. Weighed down by their voluminous
uniforms, nine nurses had perished; Acting Matron Cameron, had suffered what
today’s newspapers would call ‘life-changing injuries’. She never worked again. Of the nurses who drowned that October morning,
only one body was identifiable thanks to her watch. The case was engraved ‘Margaret Rogers’. The names of Marquette victims and the
many other New Zealand nurses who served their country with pride and devotion
in far-flung corners of the globe, are remembered in the Christ Church Nurses’
Memorial Chapel - which has withstood two demolition attempts and an earthquake.
The names of those whom it commemorates
‘liveth for ever more’.
Canadian Army Nursing Service nurse Agnes Forneri arrived in England in
April 1917, her head held high, her heart full of sorrow. The previous month her brother Lieutenant David had
been killed in action at Vimy. Now more
determined than ever to serve Canadian soldiers, Agnes spent several months on the Western Front
during the terrible Battle of Passchendaele.
In January 1918, she was invalided back to England suffering from
‘ptomaine poisoning and bronchitis’, aggravated by ‘active service
conditions.’ She returned to duty at
No.12 Canadian General Hospital in Bramshott, before she was fully
fit. She collapsed in April 1918 with a
violent stomach haemorrhage, dying a week later. The stated cause of her death was ‘multiple
peptic ulcers’. However, it is probable
that, like other nurses including American Helen Fairchild, exposure to poison gas
contributed to her death. Buried
with full military honours,
one journalist felt
‘it is most fitting that our dear
Canadian sisters should be buried like soldiers and in a soldier’s grave, for
they are indeed as brave and true as any soldier.’ She lies with fellow Canadian service
personnel at Bramshott Churchyard in Southern England, one of the 977
foreign nurses who had travelled from the four corners of the earth to war-torn
France and lost their lives through their actions. These nurses’ sacrifices are commemorated on
an ornate memorial in the French city of Reims.
Passers-by who visit the memorial are requested to pause and ‘Remember
Them’ – not only on Armistice Day but throughout the year.
Agnes Forneri https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/5871984
New Zealander
Margaret and Canadian Agnes perished far from home. Belgian shop assistant Gabrielle Petit died
in her native city – although it was one that by 1916 she barely recognized for
Brussels was occupied by Germany. Twenty-one-year-old
Gabrielle was one of the most accomplished spies working behind enemy lines –
she saw herself as a soldier in the Allied cause. Having undergone espionage training in London,
once back in Brussels, she created her own cell and network and supplied meticulous
vital information on trains, troop movements and armaments. The British authorities saw her as one of
their most reliable agents.
 |
Gabrielle Petit
postcard author’s own
collection |
Very aware of the
dangers she faced, Gabrielle claimed that ‘If I die in service,’ my death will
be ‘like a soldier’s’. For several
months she passed undetected until the German occupiers became increasingly
suspicious of this seemingly simple shop assistant. They watched her every move. Having successfully evaded capture on one
occasion, on 20 January 1916, her luck gave out. Betrayed, arrested and tried, she was
sentenced to ‘Death by Firing Squad’. On
1 April 1916, handcuffed to the execution post, she proudly mocked her
assembled executioners, ‘You will see that a young Belgian woman knows how to
die. (Vous allez voir comment une jeune fille belge sait mourir.’) Seconds later, she lay dead. Most of Brussels, let alone the outside world,
oblivious to her fate.
Yet, recognition
finally came. Post war, her body was
exhumed and re-buried in an elaborate ceremony and, in 1923 a memorial was
unveiled at Place Saint-Jean in Brussels.
But the statue is not the representation of a martyred victim (which the
city had commissioned) nor even heroine but that of a defiant ‘ordinary’ woman
who, like all the women who gave their lives in the service of their country,
accepted that her own life, when weighed against her nation’s cause, counted
for little.
As we remember
The Fallen, this Armistice Day, let us also honour Margaret, Agnes and
Gabrielle and indeed all the women of the Great War who ‘knew the meaning of
sacrifice’. Their lives, deaths and war
stories are retold, many for the first time, in We Also Served: The Forgotten Women of the First World War (Pen and
Sword). Available from Amazon. Visit www.firstworldwarwomen.co.uk to learn more about women in
The Great War.
Viv has three
books in publication about women in the Great War – and a fourth on the way for
late 2017.
A great post to read as I think usually, when one thinks of veterans, he/she thinks of men. This post is a great reminded there were and are brave women who serve in our militaries.
ReplyDeleteI am guilty of that as well. Glad to hear you enjoyed the post, Stefanie.
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