The Times Great War Letters: Correspondence during the First World War. James Owen
with the military.
Now I believe that if people would look these scandals in the face, and insist upon authentication before they believed and passed them on, sometimes in the form of letters to the Press, that a great injustice would be removed from our soldier friends and our working girls.
I have no doubt whatever that other towns would be found the same if things were looked into, as, no doubt, they have been in many places. It is nothing short of wicked even to believe without strict authentication the bad stories that are circulated. At the meeting I have referred to it seemed to me that exactly the right note was struck by a factory worker who quietly said, “I am willing to do anything I can to help girls, but I will not be a patrol because I am a factory worker myself, and it is not for me to sit in judgment upon my fellow workers”; and she added, “There are several hundred in the factory where I work, but there are no cases among them such as have been mentioned.”
I could multiply instances that prove things are not so bad as many seem willing to believe, but I have already taken up too much space.
I remain, Sir, &c.
E. M. Y.
LOSS OF KIT
6 May 1915
SIR,—I AM WRITING TO ask you to help all wounded and sick officers and men, by bringing to notice the loss to which they are put on returning from the front. Nearly every wounded officer I met while on the journey to England made the complaint that they had lost all their personal belongings, haversack field glasses, revolver, belt, &c. The loss to which I refer takes place in the “field ambulances” and in the “clearing hospitals,” not in the field. I give you my own experience. I reached the “field ambulance” one afternoon with all my belongings strapped on my person; they were taken off me and laid at my side on the straw; that evening, when I was removed on a stretcher, I asked that these things might be placed under my head on the stretcher, but was told that it was against the order. I refused to be moved until the medical officer in charge of the “field ambulance” allowed me to have my things; permission was then given and my things reached the “clearing hospital” with me. I lay on the floor of a room that night with my equipment beside me. The following morning, on being removed on a stretcher to the train, I asked to take the equipment with me, but was again informed that I could not have it, and that it would be sent after me. As most wounded officers of my regiment have written afterwards to say they have lost all their belongings in hospitals on the way to the base, I would not agree to this, and had an extremely heated argument with the R.A.M.C. captain on the subject; he eventually let me have the things. As I had all the cash I possessed in my haversack, I naturally wished to keep it with me. In the train all the wounded near me were complaining that they had lost everything. The officer next me in the ambulance train, in France, said he had been wounded at Ypres in November and had lost literally everything he had; he was again wounded last month after having been at the front only a week, and lost all his things for the second time. With his previous experience he tried to keep his things, and insist on taking them with him, but was not allowed to; he said he was so weak from the loss of blood that he could not argue the point. Field glasses, revolvers, &c., cost a certain amount to replace, and it is a scandal that we should be put to the unnecessary expense of buying them again.
No doubt, an order has been issued that nothing heavy is to be carried on the stretcher, but the above-mentioned articles are a part of one’s personal equipment, and as they must in all cases have been carried on the stretcher (sometimes for long distances) in the field before they reach the field ambulance at all, it is absurd that this procedure cannot be continued on leaving the hospital, where the stretcher is usually only carried a few paces.
I am informed that in the town where the “clearing hospital” is to which I was taken there is a shop where second-hand field glasses can be bought, supposed to be the property of wounded officers! In view of the appeal made by Lady Roberts for field glasses to be lent to the troops, it is an abuse that they should be purloined in this fashion. I do not presume to say who disposes of these things to the shop, I do not entirely blame the orderlies, the chief fault lies in the order which prevents the personal equipment being carried on the stretcher. Perhaps if this state of affairs is brought to the notice of the public something may be done to rectify it.
This is my personal experience as an officer; the men may also have money or other effects that they are loth to part with; they are exposed to the same treatment.
The “field ambulance” is not a vehicle, as might be supposed, but a place, usually a house, that is being used as a temporary hospital.
AN OFFICER
LOST KIT
28 May 1915
SIR,—MORE THAN ONCE you have drawn attention to the robberies committed on wounded officers by the orderlies who have dealt with the wounded. Usually these cases are connected with the transit of the wounded from the field of action. There has come to my knowledge the case of an officer in a Highland regiment, severely wounded at Ypres, and who arrived lately at Charing Cross, and now lies in a London hospital. Through all his journey he managed to retain his revolver and a flask given him by a relative. It was a stretcher case, and the officer became slightly unconscious on reaching Charing Cross. In that interval he found he had been robbed at the station of these two articles of his equipment which he had managed to retain till close to the hospital, where he will have to lie for many months. The fact that the orderlies commit these robberies again and again, and that the shops of certain towns in France are full of “secondhand” glasses and other effects taken from officers, is a matter of common notoriety. Is there no possibility of some discipline being exercised in this matter, or if it is part of a system to permit this form of perquisite, that the War Office should amply, and above all rapidly, compensate the officer, who is probably not so rich as not to feel the loss in a pecuniary as well as a personal manner?
Yours faithfully,
FRANCES BALFOUR
5 June 1915
SIR,—IN THE TIMES OF May 28 you published a letter signed by Lady Frances Balfour, charging the orderlies who were responsible for removing “an officer” in a “Highland Regiment, severely wounded at Ypres, and who arrived lately at Charing-cross and now lies in a London hospital,” with having stolen his revolver and flask. The charge is a disgraceful one, wantonly made. It is untrue. The officer in question, Second Lieutenant C. Warr, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (T.F.), was removed from Charing-cross on Monday, May 17, by the ambulance column attached to the London district to St. Thomas’s Hospital. The revolver and flask referred to were, in accordance with practice, handed to the orderlies in charge of the luggage van, and a voucher therefor was properly made out in the delivery book. The revolver and flask were delivered at St. Thomas’s Hospital within a few hours and the receipt therefor duly signed by the hospital authorities. The revolver and flask were then placed with Second Lieutenant Warr’s Burberry coat, all tied, together, in the hospital kit room, duly labelled. They were quite safe there as late as June 3. The wicked accusation so lightly made and so unfounded has caused the greatest pain to those concerned. I desire to add that this organization is a voluntary one, recognized by the War Office, and has removed upwards of 22,000 cases from the stations to the hospitals.
Yours faithfully,
L. W. DENT, in Charge of the Ambulance Column attached to the London District
14 July 1915
SIR,—ON MAY 28 LAST you published a letter of mine referring to the losses sustained by wounded officers on removal from the field of action, and giving details of an instance where a similar loss had, apparently, been sustained by an officer between Charing Cross and the hospital in London to which he was being removed. The removal of the wounded is, I understand, entrusted to the Ambulance Column attached to the London District, a voluntary association. Colonel Giles, the Commandant of the Corps, at once gave me every facility to investigate the case, with the