Trip from Trinidad - 6 More on Mairi

One day Elsie and Mairi were sent to collect a wounded officer from Lokeren, six miles north-east of Ghent, and dangerously close to the German lines. As they hurried to him they passed the Belgian army in retreat. They opened the door of a cottage, stepped into the gloom, and heard 'a horribly eerie sound ringing through the emptiness. Mairi described it as “ the sound of a steady drip, like the sound of a kitchen-tap.” They groped their way down the hall and into the room where they found the young officer lying on a table. He was a new recruit – his uniform was brand-new, the buttons brightly polished – and his blood was dripping on the floor, his life was 'draining away. Elsie and Mairi could do nothing for him as he was beyond help. As they were leaving the cottage they could hear the Germans pouring into the other end of Lokeren: they drove off.

From the middle of October the Corps were on the run from the Germans: Elsie and Mairi had several close encounters with them, and had heard terrifying tales of what had happened when they over-ran Antwerp. One day they walked out to the battlefields close to Ghent and they noticed a sentry crouched in a ditch and realised they had strayed from the Belgian lines, and that he had gone a bit beyond where he should have gone. Nonchalantly, they decided to carry on walking before turning round. Suddenly a car came along with three German officers fully-plumed in their helmets driving straight towards the Belgian lines. They looked closely at Elsie and Mairi and went on their way.

A few days later at Melle, the women were caught up in the thick of hand-to-hand fighting and had to skulk in a side street while the Germans launched a bayonet charge down the main street. The sound of the bayonets being plunged into men's innards haunted Mairi for years: German bayonets had a saw at the hilt so that they could also be used to cut up wood, but they inflicted gruesome, bloodcurdling injuries. Elsie and Mairi filled the ambulance as fast as they could and had to scoot while under heavy fire from shells bursting all around them, the air was filled with screaming shrapnel.

Although the Corps’ mission was to help wounded Belgians, all the members risked their lives giving medical attention to wounded German soldiers too. Elsie and Mairi made three attempts to rescue some Germans who had been lying wounded in the battlefield at Melle: stumbling over dead bodies and turnips that had been blown out of the ground, the first time they tried to collect the wounded they had to withdraw when they came under fire from German snipers, but not before Mairi had managed to cut four buttons as souvenirs off the uniform of a German soldier who had been shot in the mouth. When they returned they came under shellfire and had to withdraw for a few hours, and when they went back for a third time they were defying Munro’s orders. So they borrowed a Belgian ambulance and returned at dusk to ghastly sights. One of the soldiers they had been trying to save all day had died, but they brought two men back to Ghent, barely alive. Elsie spoke to the men in German, one of whom suggested she remove his coat and crawl underneath it, telling her, “I'll guard you with the remains of my life.” There was criticism when they got back for taking such a frightful risk.

Elsie described it as the greatest day of all her life.

Margaret looked at me and said, “You might feel uncomfortable about them cutting buttons off the uniforms of the dead, but at the time it was part of going to war. Later Elsie and Mairi donated their souvenirs to auctions to raise money to pay for the work they were doing.

Before the outbreak of war, Ostend was known as Queen of watering-places, but quickly it had become the funnel for refugees fleeing the country and a sprawling ad hoc military hospital. The smart hotels and grander houses quickly filled with casualties but by the time the Corps arrived there were no spare beds and little floor space on which to sleep on a straw pallet, and so they drove to Malo-les-Bains, a pretty seaside town just over the border in France, two kilometres from Dunkirk, a vital re-victualling centre and ‘cram jam’ with British, Belgian and French troops.

The wounded were taken to any hospital that could take them and Elsie, Mairi, Dot and Helen and the doctors and drivers hung around having a bit of a break while Hector Munro rushed back to England to collect funds. It was about this time that May Sinclair left too, and went back to England to help with fund raising and to write about the situation.

"The others stayed at the Ocean Hotel, and Mairi sent us postcards and later letters," said Margaret,  "and sent her spare clothes back home, had tea at the casino, and they waited. She asked us to publicise the work they were doing so we sent her letters to The Bournemouth Daily Echo who were proud that Mairi was their ‘Dorset Lady at the Front’, and extracts of her letters to her Aunt Fraser in Nairn appeared in the Nairnshire Telegraph describing the ‘Thrilling Experiences of a Nurse at the Front’.

“Did May write books about what happened?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, several of them, although she changed the names, but Mairi pointed out to me who she really meant by each character. Mairi said that it was all pretty accurate up till the time May left the area. In one of her books, she seems to indicate that she was sexually attracted to Dr. Munro and followed him out to the war. Then she was jealous and humiliated when he chose the younger women recruits and she felt betrayed. He flirted with the recruits, especially apparently with Elsie. But no wonder that he paid her attention as she was the only one who was a nurse.”

I’ve so much more to tell you, but I must stop now, as we need to dress for dinner. I hope we can spend more time with Margaret and Roderick (I don’t feel comfortable in calling him that yet), but I think some of the others are resentful that we always go early and make sure that we sit with each other.

Much love

Grandma Louise