Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Dr. Elsie Maud Inglis

DR. ELSIE MAUD INGLIS 

Commandant, Scottish Women’s Hospitals 

Educated Edinburgh School Of Medicine for Women. Active in Women’s Francise Movement. Founder of Scottish Women’s Hospitals and commanded units in Serbia and Russia. Died of illness due to war service, Newcastle, 26 November, 1917, at the age of 53.
                                                                 [Reni, Rumania] 

                                                                                     March 23, 1917 

We have been awfully excited and interested in the news from Petrograd.* We heard of it, probably long after you people at home knew all about it!  It is most interesting to see how everybody is on the side of change, from Russian officers, who come to tea and beam at us, and say Heresho (good) to the men in the wards. In any case, they say we shall find the difference all over the war area.... 

Do you know we have all been given the St. George Medal? Prince Dolgourokoff, who is in command on this front, arrived quite unexpectedly, just after roll call. The telegram saying he was coming arrived a quarter of an hour after he left!  General Kropensky, the head of the Red Cross, rushed up, and the Prince arrived about two minutes after him. He went all over the hospital, and a member of his gilded staff told matron he was very pleased with everything.  He decorated two men in the wards with St. George's Medal, and then said he wanted to see us together, and shook hands with everybody and said, "Thank you," and gave each of us a medal too; Dr. Laird's was for service, as she had not been under fire. St. George's Medal is a silver one with "for Bravery" on its back. Our patients were awfully pleased, and impressed on us that it carried with it a pension of a rouble a month for life. We gave them all cigarettes to commemorate the occasion. 

It was rather satisfactory to see how the hospital looked in its ordinary, and even I was fairly satisfied.    I tell the unit that they must remember that they have an old maid as commandant, and must live up to it!  I cannot stand dirt, and crooked charts and crumpled sheets. One Sister, I hear, put it delightfully in a letter home: "Our C.M.O. is an idealist!"  I thought that was rather sweet; I believe she added, "but she does appreciate good work." Certainly, I appreciate hers. She is in charge of the room for dressings, and it is one of the thoroughly satisfactory points in the hospital. 

The Greek priest came yesterday to bless the hospital. We put up "Icons" in each of the four wards. The Russians are very religious people, and it seems to appeal to some mystic sense in them. The priest just put on a stole, green and gold, and came in his long grey cloak.  The two wards open out of one another, so he held the service in one, the men all saying the responses and crossing themselves. The four icons lay on a table before him, the three lighted candles at the inner corners, and he blessed  water and sprinkled them, and then he sprinkled everybody in the room. The icons were fixed up in the corner of the wards, and I bought little lamps to burn in front of them, as they always have them. We are going to have the evening hymn sung every evening at six o'clock. I heard that first in Serbia from those poor Russian prisoners, who sang it regularly every evening... 

I have heard two delightful stories from the Sisters who have returned from Odessa.  There is a great rivalry between the Armoured Car men and the British Red Cross men about the capabilities of the Sisters. (We, it appears, are the Armoured Car Sisters!). A B.R.C. man said their Sisters were so smart they got a man on to operating table in five minutes after the other went off. Said an Armoured Car man: "But that's nothing. The Scottish Sisters get the second one on before the first one is off."  The other story runs that there was some idea of the men waiting all night on a quay, and the men said, "But you don't think we are Scottish Sisters, sir, do you?" I have no doubt that refers to Galatz, where we made them work all night. 

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*The Russian Revolution which led to an early ceasefire on the Eastern Front.

The letter is part of series called "Letters From Their Eleventh Hour" which I began a few years ago. The letters come from two books described here.

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Paul Rohweder (1890-1915)

PAUL ROHWEDER 

Student of Theology, Kiel 

Born December 18th, 1890, at Zarpen (Holstein),
Killed April 23rd, 1915 near Het Sas. 

October 29th, 1914 

Under a golden poplar lies a dead comrade. In the peasants’ farmyards lie dead cattle. The windows are broken by shell-fire. Not a bird is to be seen. All nature holds its breath with fear. The air is heavy with the reek of gunpowder. The sun is setting, blood-red. Yet I cannot say that things are going ill with me. A man feels himself really free and independent only when he has learned to be ready to give up his life at any moment. 

I have already fired many a shot and the bullets may have gone home. I can now only think with disgust of the battle-pictures which one sees in books. They show a repulsive levity. One never takes a real battle lightly. When one is in the midst of it and fully conscious of its reality, one can speak of it only in the most deeply earnest spirit. How many a quite young married man have I seen lying dead!  One must not attempt to sweeten or beautify such a thing as that.* 

I dream so often of you. Then I see our house in the moonlight. In the sitting-room a light is burning. Round the table I see your dear heads: Uncle Lau is reading; Mum is knitting stockings; Dad is smoking his long pipe and holding forth about the war. I know that you all are thinking of me. 

If only our warfare achieves the right kind of success; if it brings blessing upon the Fatherland and eventually on the whole of mankind; if we were sure of that, we should bear our sufferings and privations gladly. How I thank God that I am naturally endowed with powers of such endurance! I never felt so strong as I do now.

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*Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Albin Müller (1892-1915)

ALBIN MÜLLER 

Student of Theology, Bamberg Lyceum 

Born December 16th, 1892, at Tiefenstockheim, Unterfranken. Died March 28th, 1915, in the military hospital at Tourcoing. 

Comines, January 19th, 1915 

Here with us it pours with rain every day. You can’t possibly imagine how filthy we get, wet to the skin. To-day we had to lie down in such filth that it made me shudder. But then I said to myself: ‘Into it, in the name of God!’ And while the others were cursing I thought of the story of our Holy Father St. Francis, how he said to one of the Brothers: ‘When we get home, soaked with rain and besmirched with mud as we are, and knock at the door of the Convent, and the porter strikes us and calls us thieves and rogues, therein is perfect joy.’* 

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*My Google search of St. Francis and the keywords from that St. Francis story was fruitless. I wish I knew his writings well enough to recall.

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Friedrich Sohnrey (1887-1914)*

FRIEDRICH (FIDUS) SOHNREY 

Student of Political Economy, Berlin 

Born December 21st, 1887, at Möllenden.
Killed November 8th, 1914, near Clamecy. France 

In the trenches near Clamecy, October 24th, 1914. 

    I go everyday into the village here to see a family with six children. The father is in the war.¹ The woman says that he is a Reserve Dragoon. She innocently believes that he has not yet been under fire, but she has no news for two months. She sheds tears when she tells me that and hears that we get letters from home every day. I get hot water there so as to have a good wash after four days' interval., but I can't stop too long, as suspicious scratchings on the part of the children indicate undesirable house-mates.² 

    One does feel sorry for these poor people, who have hardly a stitch of underclothing to change into, not to speak of anything to eat--nothing left but potatoes, and the woman is always tearfully asking me how much longer she and her children will have to go on living like that. She is always lamenting over the war: 'C'est triste pour nous et pour vous." She lays the blame for it on the English and curses them. It makes her very unhappy when I tell her that we are making preparations for the winter and shall probably spend Christmas in the village. She just sobs helplessly. By way of thanks I leave her some bread and an army biscuit, which the children fall upon with shouts of delight. The youngest is five months old. It is true that one cow has been left in the village, by order of the Area-Commandant, to supply milk for the babies, but even so that is little enough. On the second day I gave each of the children two sous. The woman was very much pleased and touched by my sympathy. She followed me to the door and assured me that her house always 'à votre disposition.' 

    We all pity these poor people who are clinging to the last remnants of their former happy existence, though in constant danger of seeing all their possessions burnt and smashed up by their own artillery, and I hardly think that a single one of our soldiers would treat them with anything but friendliness. Many of the men habitually give them some of their bread. The inhabitants of the place gather round our field-kitchens regularly to collect their tribute. So we are seeing to it that our enemies' belongings do not starve. Kindliness is probably that part of the German character from which it derives its greatness. 'It is the German soul, that makes a sick world whole'³ -- and no doubt that means the German heart. 

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*The letter is part of series called "Letters From Their Eleventh Hour" which I began a few years ago. The letters come from two books described here.

¹France and Germany lost comparable numbers of soldiers, but France and Belgium bore the brunt of civilian casualties on the Western Front.

²Lice?

³He was quoting someone -- who?

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Rudolf Hauer (1894-1914)

RUDOLF MOLDEN HAUER 

Student at the High School of Commerce, Munich* 

Born March 18th, 1894, at Munich.
Killed December 13th, 1914, near Peronne. 

Halle, near Perone, December 9th, 1914. 

...When we have the treat of a beautiful sunset over the watery marshes of the Somme; when a beautiful, cold, December morning breaks through the mist of dawn and the red clay of the trench glows in the sunshine: then we are happy and rejoice like children over the beauty of it. We watch our men in their fleld-grey uniforms; they come out of the dug-outs, stretch themselves, wash themselves and clean their rifles. They look over the edge of the trench with shining eyes, and their bodies seem to be bursting with health and fitness. They are all young, full of joy in Nature, are living parts of that most wonderful whole--a nation developed into full beauty, goodness and strength.

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*Quite possibly the Königlich Bayerische Technische Hochschule München, the forerunner of today's Technical University Munich.

The letter is part of series called "Letters From Their Eleventh Hour" which I began a few years ago. The letters come from two books described here.

Hauer's words are so striking and full of color that I chose a WW I color photo to illustrate.

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Ivar Campbell (1891-1916)

Captain Ivar Campbell wrote this while fighting in the trenches of France:

France, 1915: 

The sputter of shrapnel, the red squeal of field guns, N.E.; the growl of the heavies moving slowly through the air, the cr-r-r-r-ump of their explosion. But in a bombardment all tones mingle and their voice is like machinery running not smoothly but roughly, pantingly, angrily, wildly making shows of peace and wholeness. 

You perceive, too, in imagination, men infinitely small, running, affrighted rabbits, from the upheaval of the shells, nerve-wracked, deafened; clinging to earth, hiding eyes, whispering "O God, O God!"  You perceive, too, other men, sweaty, brown, infinitely small also, moving guns, feeding the belching monster, grimly, quietly pleased. 

But with eyes looking over this land of innumerable eruptions, you see no line. The land is inhuman. 

But thousands of men are there; men who are below ground, men who have little bodies but immense brains. And the men facing West are saying, "This is an attack, they will attack when this hell's over," and they go on saying this to themselves continually. 

And the men facing East are saying, "We have got to get over the parapet. We have got to get over the parapet--when the guns lift." 

And then the guns lift up their heads and so a long, higher song. 

And then untenanted land is suddenly alive with little men, rushing stumbling--rather foolishly leaping forward--laughing, shouting, crying in the charge... 

There is one thing cheering. The men of the battalion--through all and in spite of that noisy, untasty day; through the wet cold night, hungry and tired, living now in mud and water, with every prospect of more rain to-morrow--are cheery. Sometimes, back in billets, I hate the men--their petty crimes, their continual bad language with no variety of expression, their stubborn moods. But in a difficult time they show up splendidly. Laughing in mud, joking in water--I'd "demonstrate" into Hell with some of them and not care. 

Yet under heavy shell-fire it was curious to look into their eyes--some of them little fellows from shops, civilians before, now and after: you perceived the wide, rather frightened, piteous wonder in their eyes, the patient look turned towards you, not, "What the blankety, blankety hell is this?" but "Is this quite fair? We cannot move, we are like little animals. Is it quite necessary to make such infernally large shells to kill such infernally small and feeble animals as ourselves?" 

I quite agreed with them, but had to put my eye-glass fairly in my eye and make jokes; and, looking back, I blush to think of the damnably bad jokes I did make...

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Captain Campbell was killed in action in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), January 8, 1916, aged 25 years. Prior to his service, he had been educated at Eton and at Christ Church College, Oxford, and had traveled to America.  I blogged another letter of his last year as part of a series "Letters From Their Eleventh Hour" in remembrance of 11/11/18. Link

Campbell's family published an entire series of his letters posthumously.  This one came from a collection of British soldiers' letters called "War Letters Of Fallen Englishmen." More about this remarkable book here. Link

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Wilhelm Wolter (1895-1915)

WILHELM WOLTER
Student of Philosophy, University of Munich

Born May 28th, 1895, at Kladow, Mecklenburg.

Killed April 16th, 1915, near Vouziers, France

Just shy of his 20th birthday, the teenaged Wolter asks (his parents? a friend? a teacher? us? God?) whether it is fair that a young man should die for a higher cause before having had time to give anything back. Wolter wrote that he had a mission in life--"a message to deliver:"

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Ivar Campbell (1891-1916)

Captain Ivar Campbell
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,
Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford.
Killed in action at Mesopotamia, January 8, 1916, aged 25 years.

Campbell survived earlier action in France, to which this letter refers:

France, 1915 

...It is difficult to write things out here. Journalists do it, yet miss the note of naturalness which strikes me. For these things are natural. I suppose we have been fighting a thousand years to a thousand years' peace; they miss, too, the beauty of the scene and action as a whole--that beauty defined as something strange, rarefied; our deep passions made lawful and evident; our desires made acceptable; our direction straight. Such will be the impressions to linger, to be handed on to future generations, as the Napoleonic wars are adventures to us. Here, present and glaring to our eyes in trenches and billets, etc., the more abiding and deeper meanings of the war are readable. 

Here is the scene I shall remember always: A misty summer morning--I went along a sap-head* running towards the German line at right-angles to our own. Looking out over the country, flat and uninteresting in peace, I beheld what at first would seem to be a land ploughed by the ploughs of giants. In England you read of concealed trenches--here we don't trouble with that. Trenches rise up, grey clay, three or four feet above the ground. Save for one or two men--snipers--at the sap-head, the country was deserted. No sign of humanity--a dead land. And yet thousands of men were there, like rabbits concealed. The artillery was quiet; there was no sound but a cuckoo in a shell-torn poplar. Then, as a rabbit in the early morning comes out to crop grass, a German stepped over the enemy trench--the only living thing in sight. 'I'll take him,' says the man near me. And like a rabbit the German falls. And again complete silence and desolation...

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*A Sap-head was a smaller trench running forward from and perpendicular to a main trench and was used for spying and for sniping.

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: John L. T. Jones (1895-1917)

Captain John Llewellyn Thomas Jones,
3rd London Regiment
Educated at Llangollen Country School,
A member of a printing firm.
Killed in action, Flanders, August 16, 1917, aged 22.

[To his father and family]      France, 4/4/17 

My Dearest Dad, Ethel and Gwen, 

I have written this letter so that, in the event of anything happening to me, I do not go under without letting all you dear ones at home know how much I owe to your loving care and the little kindnesses that go to make life so pleasant and inviting. 

You know what an undemonstrative nature mine is, but my love for you all is, nevertheless, strong and deep, and though I said nothing about these things before I left England, it was just because--I couldn't--my heart was too full. 

One has to face the prospect of getting knocked out, as many other and probably better fellows than I have been. All I can say is that you do not grieve for me, because, although it may sound exceedingly quixotic, how better can one make one's exit from this world than fighting for the country which has sheltered and nurtured one through all life? 

War is cruel and I detest it, but since it was not possible to keep out of this without loss of prestige and perhaps worse, it behooves us all to carry it on to a successful conclusion. Of course, it entails sacrifices, but that is all in the game. I had hoped to be able to return home and take up what little responsibility lay in my power away from your shoulders, and to care for and look after the girls, but if that is not to be, I want you all to remember that though the break may seem unbearable--there are many other homes which have suffered loses. We should rather, I think, thank God that we have we have been a happy and united little family. I know how hard it is, and, as I write, the thought that I may not see you dear ones again in this world brings a lump to my throat and tears in my eyes. I trust that I shall return, but... 

All I can say to you is that I thank God for giving me the best father in the world and two very dear sisters. I cannot write to all, but send my deepest love to....I don't think that I can write any more, so just good-bye and God bless you all and protect you is my fervent prayer.

            With all my fondest love,
                                         Yours affectionately,
                                                                       Llew

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour: Eduard Bruhn (1890-1915)

EDUARD BRUHN,
Student of Theology, Kiel

Born October 18th, 1890, at Schlamersdorf.
Killed September 17th, 1915, in Russia.

Bruhn writes (or dictates) his last letter:

Letters From Their Eleventh Hour

Tomorrow is Veterans Day.  I'm going to honor it the same way I always do, flying the flag, talking to my friends and neighbors--in Oceanside we're surrounded by veterans. I am blessed.  And thank you--all of you!  But also, tomorrow, I'm going to take a historical moment to remember those veterans who are no more. No, I'm not confused about Veterans Day and Memorial Day.

November 11, 1918 marked the end of the First World War. The last combat veteran of the First World War, Claude Choules, died this year. Now there are no more of so many.

The companion books War Letters of Fallen Englishmen and German Students' War Letters are both collections of letters written by British and German soldiers who died in those battles. Yale historian J.M. Winter writes in the preface to the latter:

The entries in the book resemble gravestones, in a general way. There is the name, and instead of military rank, there is his academic affiliation. Then follows the date and place of his birth and his death. So far the parallel with a grave site is similar to that used in other similar ventures, for instance, Laurence Housman's War Letters of Fallen Englishmen. Housman's identification also includes the service arm and rank, which Witkop's book avoids. Still, the similarity to a cemetery stone is clear.

What both editions add, of course, is a letter or several letters. This practice helps establish the individuality of the soldier who died; without such special individuation, he would fade into an army of the dead and therefore into oblivion. Thus these books offer two services to bereaved families. For those whose sons or husbands or brothers had no known grave, these pages provide a kind of surrogate resting place his remains never had. And second, the text of the letters does more than just list his name, date of birth, and date of death. It is a kind of portrait, like those found in East European cemeteries. The letters construct a snapshot of the mind of the fallen soldier. The prose comes to stand for the man himself, his nobility, his beliefs, his aspirations. It was as if he wrote his own epitaph.

I've prepared four memorial posts for two English and two German soldiers. In the case of the two Germans, I made voice recordings of their letters.

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