NURSING IN WAR-TIME

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 260, 2 November 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

NURSING IN WAR-TIME

ENGLISHWOMAN'S STORY. On August 4, 1914, the Hon. Monica Grcnfell, daughter of Lord and Lady Desborough, celebrated her 21st birthday. A few days later ("shadowed by .my maid—l was not allowed to go out in London alone") she was calling at the great city hospitals, socking a post as probationer. After initial failure she passed the medical test for the London Hospital, and on August 10 she started work. The contrast between her life as one in the highest social circle (her mother was Lady-in-Waiting' to the Queen),, and the gruelling work which fell to her lot in a hospital in the heart of Whitcehapcl could hardly have been sharper. She tells of her experience, and of her war service generally in

''Bright Armour" (Faber and Faber). It is a quietly-written record of a woman wjio t>y. sheer determination succeeded at a task which was uncongenial to her, but which she was impelled to begin by patriotic duty. All the adult members of her family shared her spirit. Two of her three brothers—including Julian Grcnfell, one of the finest of the war poets—>wero killed; the third joined the army as soon as he had left school. Her home for three and a half "y ears was given up for use as a rest hospital for nurses. . But, perhaps needless to say, there is no mention of patriotism in her book.

It will interest members of the N.Z.E.F. to know that the author (who is now Lady Salmond) spent some time nursing at Avon Tyrrell, which belonged to Lord Manners, and was a convalescent home for New Zealand oflicers, a branch of the Brockenhurst Hospital. She writes with enthusiasm of the New Zealanders sho met, and her book closes with, a description of the scene on Armistice night, when soldiers and nurses gathered around a great bonfire in the heather. "We were in the company of great soldiers, the flames licked up, and in the flare one could see their brave faces, very moved, their uniforms, and our sisters' caps. The light flickered on us. Lord Manners began a speech. He said: 'This signals the end of the greatest war the world has ever known.' The words were not spoken without I tears, and our thoughts soared far beyond the bonfire, and the moorland scene." |