...to end all wars....
In Germany, November 11th is always overshadowed by November 9th, which is when just about everything of impact in the 20th century happened: the declaration of the first German republic in 1918, Hitler's attempted coup in the early 20s, the so called "Reichskristallnacht", aka the nation wide progrom that started the worst phase of the persecution of the Jews in 1936, Georg Elser's unsucessful attempt to kill Hitler in 1939, and of course the fall of the wall, the opening of the East German border, in 1989. So we don't have the same emotional focus on two days later. But we do remember.
During the last year, I came across the author Vera Brittain and her book Testament of Youth. Vera Brittain, a feminist, had been a V.A.D. in World War I, had served in France and Cypres, and had written her memoirs not least because in the flood of poignant post war literature, she missed hearing about women's experiences in the war. As she put it: The war was a phase of life in wich women's experiences did vastly differ from men's, and I make no puerile claim to equality of suffering and service when I maintain that any picture of the war is incomplete which omits those aspects that mainly concerned women.
I found her book as moving and shattering to read as those by Sasson and Graves. For this Armestice day, I would like to quote a passage in which she writes about nursing German prisoners. Bear in mind Brittain lost her fiancé, her brother and her two closest male friends in the war, which hadn't happened yet at the point she describes but of course did before she wrote her memoirs.
Before the War I had never been in Germany and had hardly met any Germans apart from the succession of German mistresses at St. Monica's, every one of whom I had hated with a provincial school girl's pitiless distaste for foreigners. So it was somewhat disconcerting to be pitch-forked, all alone - since V.A.D.s went on duty half an bour before Sisters - into the midst of thirty representatives of the nation which, as I had repeatedly been told, had crucified Canadians, cut off the hands of babies, and subjected pure and stainless females to unmentionable atrocities. I didn't think I had really believed all those stories, but I wasn't quite sure. I half expected that one or two of the patients would get out of bed and try to rape me, but I soon discovered that none of them were in a position to rape anybody, or indeed to do anything but cling with stupendous exertion to a life in which the scales were already weighted heavily against them.
At least a third of the men were dying; their daily dressings were not a mere matter of changing huge wads of stained gauze and wool, but of stopping haemorrhages, replacing intestines and draining and re-inserting innumerable rubber tubes. (...) Soon after my arrival, the first Sister-in-charge was replaced by one of the most remarkable members of the nursing profession in France or anywhere else. (...) Sister Milroy was a highbrow in active revolt against highbrows; connected on one side with a famous family of clerics, and on the other with an equally celebrated household of actors and actresses, she had deliberately chosen a hospital training in preference to the university education for which heredity seemed to have designed her, though no one ever suffered fools less gladly than she. When she first came to the ward her furious re-organisations were devastating, and she treated the German orderlies and myself with impartial contempt. On behalf of the patients she displayed determination and efficiency but never compassion; to her they were all "Huns", though she dressed their wounds with gentleness and skill.
"Nurse!" she would call to me in her high disdainful voice, pointing to an unfortunate patient whose wound unduly advertised itself. "For heaven's sake get the iodoform powder and scatter it over that filfthy Hun!"
The staff of 24 General described her as "mental", not realising that she used her reputation for excentricity and the uncompromising candour which it was supposed to excuse as a means of demanding more work from her subordinates than other Sisters were able to exact. At first I detested her dark attractiveness and sarcastic, relentless youth, but when I recognised her for whatshe was - by far the cleverest woman in the hospital, even if potentially the most alarmingk and temperamentally as fitful as a weathercock - we became constant companions off duty.
(...) (T)he German officers seemed more bitterly conscious of their position as prisoners than the men. There were about half a dozen of these officers, separated by a green curtain fron the rest of the ward, and I found their punctilious manner of accepting my ministrations disconcerting long after I had grown accustomed to the other patients.
One tall, bearded captain would invariably stand to attention when I had rebandanged his arm, click his spurred heels together, and bow with ceremonious gravity. Another badly wounded boy - a Prussian lieutenant who was being transferred to England - held out an emaciated hand to me as he lay on the stretcher waiting to go and murmured: "I thank you, Sister." After barely a second's hesitation I took the pale fingers in mine, thinking how ridiculous it was that I should be holding this man's hand in friendship when perhaps, only a week or two earlier, Edward up at Ypres had been doing his best to kill him. The world was mad and we were all victims; that was the only way to look at it. These shattered, dying boys and I were paying alike for a situation that none of us had desired or done anything to bring about.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/838795.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
During the last year, I came across the author Vera Brittain and her book Testament of Youth. Vera Brittain, a feminist, had been a V.A.D. in World War I, had served in France and Cypres, and had written her memoirs not least because in the flood of poignant post war literature, she missed hearing about women's experiences in the war. As she put it: The war was a phase of life in wich women's experiences did vastly differ from men's, and I make no puerile claim to equality of suffering and service when I maintain that any picture of the war is incomplete which omits those aspects that mainly concerned women.
I found her book as moving and shattering to read as those by Sasson and Graves. For this Armestice day, I would like to quote a passage in which she writes about nursing German prisoners. Bear in mind Brittain lost her fiancé, her brother and her two closest male friends in the war, which hadn't happened yet at the point she describes but of course did before she wrote her memoirs.
Before the War I had never been in Germany and had hardly met any Germans apart from the succession of German mistresses at St. Monica's, every one of whom I had hated with a provincial school girl's pitiless distaste for foreigners. So it was somewhat disconcerting to be pitch-forked, all alone - since V.A.D.s went on duty half an bour before Sisters - into the midst of thirty representatives of the nation which, as I had repeatedly been told, had crucified Canadians, cut off the hands of babies, and subjected pure and stainless females to unmentionable atrocities. I didn't think I had really believed all those stories, but I wasn't quite sure. I half expected that one or two of the patients would get out of bed and try to rape me, but I soon discovered that none of them were in a position to rape anybody, or indeed to do anything but cling with stupendous exertion to a life in which the scales were already weighted heavily against them.
At least a third of the men were dying; their daily dressings were not a mere matter of changing huge wads of stained gauze and wool, but of stopping haemorrhages, replacing intestines and draining and re-inserting innumerable rubber tubes. (...) Soon after my arrival, the first Sister-in-charge was replaced by one of the most remarkable members of the nursing profession in France or anywhere else. (...) Sister Milroy was a highbrow in active revolt against highbrows; connected on one side with a famous family of clerics, and on the other with an equally celebrated household of actors and actresses, she had deliberately chosen a hospital training in preference to the university education for which heredity seemed to have designed her, though no one ever suffered fools less gladly than she. When she first came to the ward her furious re-organisations were devastating, and she treated the German orderlies and myself with impartial contempt. On behalf of the patients she displayed determination and efficiency but never compassion; to her they were all "Huns", though she dressed their wounds with gentleness and skill.
"Nurse!" she would call to me in her high disdainful voice, pointing to an unfortunate patient whose wound unduly advertised itself. "For heaven's sake get the iodoform powder and scatter it over that filfthy Hun!"
The staff of 24 General described her as "mental", not realising that she used her reputation for excentricity and the uncompromising candour which it was supposed to excuse as a means of demanding more work from her subordinates than other Sisters were able to exact. At first I detested her dark attractiveness and sarcastic, relentless youth, but when I recognised her for whatshe was - by far the cleverest woman in the hospital, even if potentially the most alarmingk and temperamentally as fitful as a weathercock - we became constant companions off duty.
(...) (T)he German officers seemed more bitterly conscious of their position as prisoners than the men. There were about half a dozen of these officers, separated by a green curtain fron the rest of the ward, and I found their punctilious manner of accepting my ministrations disconcerting long after I had grown accustomed to the other patients.
One tall, bearded captain would invariably stand to attention when I had rebandanged his arm, click his spurred heels together, and bow with ceremonious gravity. Another badly wounded boy - a Prussian lieutenant who was being transferred to England - held out an emaciated hand to me as he lay on the stretcher waiting to go and murmured: "I thank you, Sister." After barely a second's hesitation I took the pale fingers in mine, thinking how ridiculous it was that I should be holding this man's hand in friendship when perhaps, only a week or two earlier, Edward up at Ypres had been doing his best to kill him. The world was mad and we were all victims; that was the only way to look at it. These shattered, dying boys and I were paying alike for a situation that none of us had desired or done anything to bring about.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/838795.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.