'At the edge of the grave...you grab at life'
We all know that men were appallingly injured and died horrible deaths on the battlefields of the First World War. We rarely, however, make the jump to think about the women who nursed them. I came across a book called The Roses Of No Man’s Land by Lyn Mac- Donald, which is a historical account of the military and volunteer nurses during the First World War. From then on, I was hooked. I read everything I could get my hands on: diaries, journals, letters.
There is a lot of patriotism, a lot of keeping the side up, but after a while you read between the lines. I remember one account in particular, by a lady named Edith Appleton who wrote about looking after men with terrible head injuries. She said she could hear them choking as their brain matter dripped down their throats. It wasn’t self-pitying, it was just honest.
This inspired my latest series for the BBC , The Crimson Field, which is about the women and the men who nursed the soldiers during the First World War. It stars Oona Chaplin and Hermione Norris and is set in a field hospital in France within hearing distance of the front.
At the start of the war, everybody thought it was going to be a question of smacking ‘the Hun’ on the backside and that it would all be over by Christmas. All the nursing on the front was done by military nurses, while there were civilian nurses at home in England to look after the men as they came back. But it quickly became obvious that this wasn’t going to be a brief war. The appalling and unprecedented number of casualties meant that there just weren’t enough military nurses to cope.
There was a desperate need for volunteer women to be ambulance drivers, nurses, laundry maids and so forth, and women signed up in their thousands. After a few weeks’ training in the most basic nursing care, they got on a boat or a train and off they went to the field hospitals.
The volunteers generally came from quite well-to-do backgrounds. They received a tiny allowance, so they needed their own money to support themselves. These girls came from rather comfortable drawing rooms and suddenly they were attending to men with their limbs blown off. They would barely have interacted with men, let alone like this. At the same time, there was freedom. There was work. There was a whole new life. All that was required was that these women were over the age of 23 and unmarried. The age stipulation seems a bit arbitrary, but there was a kind of a tacit acknowledgement that if you weren’t married by the time you were 23, you were not likely to be so.
The cast of The Crimson Field
They were united by their patriotism, but there was also a real clash between the military and civilian nurses. At that time, a military nurse was forbidden to marry. She was expected to have the dedication of a nun towards her profession. So you can imagine the military nurses’ view of these inexperienced girls coming to join them on their wards. These girls were well-meaning but they had scant training, and yet here they were in a place where a grain of dirt under their fingernail was the difference between a man’s life and his death.
And not only that: these girls were looking for adventure, and romance. Relationships were forbidden, of course. Men and women weren’t even supposed to dance with each other, but inevitably they did, and much more. One of the things that came across is that when you are quite literally on the edge of the grave, you live very intensely and you grab at life. You put men and women in any sort of extreme situation and relationships are always going to occur. When I told people I was writing this, many revealed that it’s how their great-granddad and great-grandma had met: he was a Tommy and she was the volunteer who nursed him. Everybody had a story of incredible romance.
So for these women there was sexual freedom, independence and relief from the constraints of society. Lots of the women wrote that they felt guilty for being exhilarated by the work, but why should they? They were on the go all the time, they lived outside with no real way of washing or keeping clean, they drove ambulances, they rode horses, and they were as good as on the front. It must have been terrifying and thrilling at the same time. But these women rolled their sleeves up and got on with it.
This dramatically changed women’s expectations about what their life could be. Suddenly, a great door opened and this enlivening blast of air blew in, and even if it blew down from the terrible Western Front, it did something. It created a new century. T
he Crimson Field focuses on three nurses called Flora, Rosalie and Kitty. They all have different stories and different reasons for being there. There are lots of other characters and voices too because, ultimately, the drama is not just about the war: it’s about Britain at that time and about the birth of a new society. To my mind, the 20th century didn’t begin in 1900. The 20th century was born psychologically, sexually, socially and medically in that dark crucible of war.
There was tragedy and horror, but there were also moments of joy. In the lesser-known stories of these nurses, there is a huge amount of compassion, companionship and care. It is set during the war, but what The Crimson Field is ultimately about is the human capacity for love.
The Crimson Field will be broadcast later this year on BBC One.
There is a lot of patriotism, a lot of keeping the side up, but after a while you read between the lines. I remember one account in particular, by a lady named Edith Appleton who wrote about looking after men with terrible head injuries. She said she could hear them choking as their brain matter dripped down their throats. It wasn’t self-pitying, it was just honest.
This inspired my latest series for the BBC , The Crimson Field, which is about the women and the men who nursed the soldiers during the First World War. It stars Oona Chaplin and Hermione Norris and is set in a field hospital in France within hearing distance of the front.
At the start of the war, everybody thought it was going to be a question of smacking ‘the Hun’ on the backside and that it would all be over by Christmas. All the nursing on the front was done by military nurses, while there were civilian nurses at home in England to look after the men as they came back. But it quickly became obvious that this wasn’t going to be a brief war. The appalling and unprecedented number of casualties meant that there just weren’t enough military nurses to cope.
There was a desperate need for volunteer women to be ambulance drivers, nurses, laundry maids and so forth, and women signed up in their thousands. After a few weeks’ training in the most basic nursing care, they got on a boat or a train and off they went to the field hospitals.
The volunteers generally came from quite well-to-do backgrounds. They received a tiny allowance, so they needed their own money to support themselves. These girls came from rather comfortable drawing rooms and suddenly they were attending to men with their limbs blown off. They would barely have interacted with men, let alone like this. At the same time, there was freedom. There was work. There was a whole new life. All that was required was that these women were over the age of 23 and unmarried. The age stipulation seems a bit arbitrary, but there was a kind of a tacit acknowledgement that if you weren’t married by the time you were 23, you were not likely to be so.
The cast of The Crimson FieldThey were united by their patriotism, but there was also a real clash between the military and civilian nurses. At that time, a military nurse was forbidden to marry. She was expected to have the dedication of a nun towards her profession. So you can imagine the military nurses’ view of these inexperienced girls coming to join them on their wards. These girls were well-meaning but they had scant training, and yet here they were in a place where a grain of dirt under their fingernail was the difference between a man’s life and his death.
And not only that: these girls were looking for adventure, and romance. Relationships were forbidden, of course. Men and women weren’t even supposed to dance with each other, but inevitably they did, and much more. One of the things that came across is that when you are quite literally on the edge of the grave, you live very intensely and you grab at life. You put men and women in any sort of extreme situation and relationships are always going to occur. When I told people I was writing this, many revealed that it’s how their great-granddad and great-grandma had met: he was a Tommy and she was the volunteer who nursed him. Everybody had a story of incredible romance.
So for these women there was sexual freedom, independence and relief from the constraints of society. Lots of the women wrote that they felt guilty for being exhilarated by the work, but why should they? They were on the go all the time, they lived outside with no real way of washing or keeping clean, they drove ambulances, they rode horses, and they were as good as on the front. It must have been terrifying and thrilling at the same time. But these women rolled their sleeves up and got on with it.
This dramatically changed women’s expectations about what their life could be. Suddenly, a great door opened and this enlivening blast of air blew in, and even if it blew down from the terrible Western Front, it did something. It created a new century. T
he Crimson Field focuses on three nurses called Flora, Rosalie and Kitty. They all have different stories and different reasons for being there. There are lots of other characters and voices too because, ultimately, the drama is not just about the war: it’s about Britain at that time and about the birth of a new society. To my mind, the 20th century didn’t begin in 1900. The 20th century was born psychologically, sexually, socially and medically in that dark crucible of war.
There was tragedy and horror, but there were also moments of joy. In the lesser-known stories of these nurses, there is a huge amount of compassion, companionship and care. It is set during the war, but what The Crimson Field is ultimately about is the human capacity for love.
The Crimson Field will be broadcast later this year on BBC One.