XX
MISS LILIAN RUSSELL AND MISS ALICE BROWN
Miss Lilian Russelland Miss Alice Brown are amongst the ladies who are working in one of the branches of the Y.M.C.A. work in France—the hostels for the relatives of the wounded. The medical officers in the various hospitals in France are empowered to telegraph to the parents, wife, or sweetheart of any soldier whose condition they consider critical. At the request of the military authorities, the Y.M.C.A. undertook nearly two years ago the work of meeting, housing, and caring for the relations during their stay. The sight of their own people has undoubtedly saved the lives of many patients by reviving their desire to live, even in cases which the doctors had thought to be hopeless.
Many women are giving themselves with the utmost devotion to the work of managing these hostels. The following accounts are given as typical workers’ experiences.
Miss Alice Brown and her sister, Mrs. Ballantyne, have been in charge of a hostel for many months, and no more poignant human experience can be imagined. At the end of ten months over 1200 people had stayed with them, though there is accommodation for only about twenty people at atime. Miss Brown and Mrs. Ballantyne look after their visitors entirely during their stay, and with two or three voluntary helpers they keep the house and cook for a household which sometimes numbers fifty. Writing of her life at the hostel, Miss Brown says: “We have all our meals with our visitors, and family prayers after breakfast bring a quaint and cosmopolitan household together. They come from all parts of Great Britain and Ireland. There are also wives who have followed their husbands from Canada to England, and brothers of New Zealand and Australian boys who have been sent straight down from the line. They stay with us as long as the O.C. at the hospital thinks necessary. The patients are not usually told that their relations are coming until they are actually on the spot, and then great are the joys of meeting.”
Sometimes visitors have stayed with Miss Brown at the hostel for many weeks, and on one occasion a baby was born there, whose mother had come out to see her badly wounded husband.
From time to time there come the tragedies of the relations who arrive too late, and then it is that the ladies of the hostels can comfort and befriend these poor stricken people, go with them to the military funeral, and help them to return to England. Indeed it is mostly sad work, for the relatives are sent for only in the very dangerous cases, and sometimes they stay on through weeks of anguish and suspense; but Miss Brown strives to keep up an atmosphere of cheerfulness and courage, following the wonderful examples from the hospital wards, and there is an unwritten law in the hostel that no one must break down. As an illustration, Miss Brownonce described an occasion when she found a girl sobbing bitterly in the hostel sitting-room. On asking what was the matter, she was told that the girl’s brother was to have his foot amputated. “Oh, that’s nothing,” said Miss Brown, and was astonished afterwards, when she had comforted her visitor, at what must have seemed heartlessness on her part; but the loss of a foot is indeed nothing as compared with many cases.
Miss Russell’s work is somewhat different in character, for the hostel which she manages is at one of the chief bases, and is the clearing station at which all the relatives coming to France arrive. From this base they are then posted on to the various hospitals, some having to be sent eighty miles by motor. The work here is very strenuous, for it means perpetual comings and goings, and there are always twenty to thirty relatives resident at this hostel, besides those who pass through. The workers can never, at any hour of the day or night, feel safe from fresh arrivals, for whom food and accommodation have to be provided pending the uncertain departures of boats and trains. Miss Russell reports that in most cases the relatives are touchingly grateful. A welcome for all who come is never lacking, but the work of hostel helpers is exhausting, physically and mentally, and relentless in its demands on their sympathy. One of Miss Russell’s privileges is a permit giving her the entry into all the hospitals, so that she is able to keep in touch with some of the soldiers after their people have returned, if they are, as she says, “homesick, and in need of a little extra spoiling.” In a letter to a friend she writes: “The opportunities this bit of one’s work gives are inestimable, and the example ofthe patient, faithful work the sisters do is the greatest help and comfort. Everything, I think, pales before their glory—second only to that of the soldiers in courage, sacrifice and devotion. As to the men themselves, I can’t write of what they almost all are—how self-forgetful, modest and unselfish down to the very gates of death.”
To those who wait in the shadow of suspense and anxiety which hangs over so many English homes, it is indeed a consolation to know that, if their soldier should be lying in danger, his own people will be able to go to him. This privilege is available for rich and poor alike, the Government being responsible for the cost of their journey and visit, however long the relations may stay.