Women of War: Gender, Modernity and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry 9781526145659

Citation preview

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Women of war

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Cultural History of Modern War editors Cultural Series History of Modern War Ana Carden-Coyne, Peter Gatrell, Max Jones, Penny Summerfield and Series editors Ana Carden-​Coyne, Peter Gatrell,Bertrand Taithe Max Jones, Penny Summerfield and Bertrand Taithe Already Alreadypublished published Carol Acton andand Jane Potter andresilience resilienceininthe the Carol Acton Jane PotterWorking Workingininaaworld world of of hurt: Trauma hurt: Trauma and narratives ofofmedical narratives medicalpersonnel personnelin in warzones warzones Julie Anderson War, Maria disability and rehabilitation in Britain: Soul a nation Michael Brown, Anna Barry and Joanne Begiato (eds) Martial of masculinities: Experiencing and imagining the military in the long nineteenth century Lindsey Dodd French children under the Allied bombs, 1940–45: An oral history Rachel Duffett Quintin The stomach forand fighting: Food theAsoldiers of the First World War Colville James Daveyand (eds) new naval history Christine E. Hallett Containing trauma: Nursing work in the First World War James E. Connolly The experience of occupation in the Nord, 1914–18: Living with the enemy in First World War France Jo Laycock Imagining Armenia: Orientalism, ambiguity and intervention

Chris Millington victory tothe Vichy: Veterans in inter-war France Lindsey Dodd FrenchFrom children under Allied bombs, 1940–45: An oral history JuliettePeter Pattinson Behind enemy lines: Gender, passing andmove: the Special Operations Gatrell and Liubov Zhvanko (eds) Europe on the Refugees in the Executiveera in of thethe Second Great World War War Chris Pearson Mobilizing nature: The environmental history of war and militarization Grace Huxford The Korean War in Britain: Citizenship, selfhood and forgetting in Modern France Duy Nguyen The unimagined community: Imperialism and culture in South Jeff reyLap S. Reznick Healing the nation: Soldiers and the culture of caregiving inVietnam Britain during the Great War Lucy Noakes Dying for the nation: Death, grief and bereavement in Secondand World War Britain Jeffrey S. Reznick John Galsworthy disabled soldiers of the Great War: Sith an illustrated selection of his writings Juliette Pattinson, Arthur McIvor and Linsey Robb Men in reserve: British civilian Michael Roper Thmasculinities e secret battle: Emotional survival in the Second World Warin the Great War

Penny eld and Corinna PenistonBird Contesting homeWorld defence: Men, SpyrosSummerfi Tsoutsoumpis A history of the Greek resistance in the Second War: The women and the Homepeople’s Guardarmies in the Second World War Trudi Tate and Kate Kennedy (eds.) The silent morning: Culture and memory after the Armistice Spiros Tsoutsoumpis The People’s Armies: A history of the Greek resistance Laura Ugolini Civvies: Middle-class men on the English Home Front, 1914–18 Wendy Ugolini Experiencing war as the ‘enemy other’: Italian Scottish experience in World War II Colette Wilson Paris and the Commune, 1871–78: The politics of forgetting

http:// www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/ subjectareas/ history/ research/ cchw/ www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/​ history/​ research/​centres/​ cultural-​ history-​ of-​war/​

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Women of war Gender, modernity and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry

 Juliet te Pat tinson

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Juliette Pattinson 2020 The right of Juliette Pattinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 4565 9 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover: Two FANYs carrying a wounded soldier in a staged photograph. Reproduced with the permission of the University of Leeds, Special Collections, W0/ 077A.

Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK

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For Graeme (1970–​2013)

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Contents

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List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction: Daughters of war – Gender modernity and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry 1 2 3 4 5

‘Fresh laurels for the brow of womanhood’: The formation of a female nursing yeomanry ‘Hussies’, ‘freaks’ and ‘lady soldiers’: Constructing the uniformed woman ‘Determined women full of initiative and vision’: The professionalisation of a voluntary women’s corps ‘Here we were, girls of the twentieth century’: Active service in the First World War ‘Gloried in her grotesque and spurious manhood’: Driving in the First World War Concluding thoughts

1 34 78 122 165 216 263

Bibliography Index

269 298

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Figures

1.1 FANYs bareback-​riding at camp, 1911. Reproduced with the permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. page 52 1.2 FANY wagon outside Gamages, the FANY headquarters, 1911. Reproduced with the permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. 57 1.3 ‘Women and War’, Daily Graphic, 25 February 1909. Reproduced with the permission of the British Library. 60 2.1 Edith Walton in the original FANY uniform, 1909. Reproduced with the permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. 83 2.2 FANYs in khaki uniform, 1914. Reproduced with the permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. 84 2.3 FANYs of Unit 6, based in Amiens, wearing soft bonnets, 1917. Reproduced with the permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. 85 2.4 FANYs in their fur coats, Calais, 1917. Reproduced with the permission of the Imperial War Museum, Q 4669. 86 2.5 Grace Ashley-​Smith in an advert for ‘Sandow’s Corset Co.’, 1910. Reproduced with the permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. 91 2.6 Studio portrait of Gwendolyn Peyton Jones. Reproduced with the permission of the Imperial War Museum, Q 107958G. 100 2.7 Studio portrait of Molly O’Connell Bianconi. Reproduced with the permission of the Imperial War Museum, WWC D4-​1-​10. 101 2.8 ‘Our Amazon Corps “Standing Easy” ’, Punch, 26 April 1916. Reproduced with the permission of the Punch Cartoon Library/​TopFoto. 106 v viii v

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List of figures 2.9 Mary Richardson attends to her ambulance’s engine, St Omer, 1918. Reproduced with the permission of the Imperial War Museum, Q 11557. 2.10 FANYs of Unit 7 wearing French steel helmets on the Western Front, 1918. Reproduced with the permission of the Imperial War Museum, Q 107951. 3.1 ‘Girl “Yeowomen” at Work and Play’, War Budget Illustrated, 30 March 1916. Reproduced with the permission of University of Leeds, Special Collections. 3.2 FANY carrying a stretcher at camp, Daily Sketch, 20 July 1914. Reproduced with the permission of the British Library. 3.3 FANYs participating in a jumping contest at camp, Daily Mirror, 20 July 1914. Reproduced with the permission of the British Library. 3.4 ‘Will Ulster Fight? These Ladies, at Least, are Ready to Take the Field’, London Weekly Budget, 2 November 1913. Reproduced with the permission of the British Library. 4.1 FANYs in the dug-​out in Calais, 1916. Reproduced with the permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. 4.2 Staged photograph of FANYs in a front-line trench, Tatler, 13 January 1915. Reproduced with the permission of the British Library. 4.3 Two FANYs carrying a wounded Belgian soldier, Daily Mirror, 16 December 1914. Reproduced with the permission of the British Library. 4.4 Two FANYs carrying a wounded soldier in a staged photograph. Reproduced with the permission of the University of Leeds, Special Collections, W0/​077A. 5.1 Ambulance drivers attending to their cars at St Omer, 28 February 1918. Reproduced with the permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. 5.2 Four FANYs of the Calais convoy pose by their car for Olive Edis in March 1919. Reproduced with the permission of the Imperial War Museum, Q 7950. 6.1 FANY Molly O’Connell Bianconi. Reproduced with the permission of the University of Leeds, Special Collections.

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109 111 139 140 141 154 195 196 201 203 230 244 267

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Acknowledgements

I have enormously enjoyed researching and writing this book on the fabulous FANYs. It is not the book I set out to write, however. This was meant to be an oral history of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in the Second World War. I became so fascinated by reading and writing about the Corps’s formation, uniform and First World War experience, which draws on my childhood love of horses and adult interest in cars, that the opening contextual chapter transformed into the entire project. My thanks (and apologies!) go to the ESRC who are still patiently awaiting the book linked to the project that they generously funded in 2006–​7 (which has been delayed by two periods of academic management, another book project and my partner’s long ill-​health and subsequent death). I promise I will return to and complete that project…! I am enormously grateful to Lynette Beardwood of the FANY. She has been enthusiastically in support of this project and without her coming over from the South of France to accompany me to the (closed) archive I would have been unable to access it. She is a mine of valuable information and answered my numerous enquiries for factual information. She also generously read the manuscript and assisted with the photographs that are reproduced here by permission of the FANY (PRVC) archive. I would like to thank the University of Kent for giving me a year’s sabbatical in between two periods as Head of School, and for the generous research allowance which enabled me to undertake my archival trips and pay for images. Because this project is a departure from my comfort area of the Second World War, I have consulted a number of colleagues who have given me invaluable information. Thanks go to Julie Anderson, Howard Booth, Mark Connelly, Krista Cowman, Dominiek Dendooven, Mario Draper, Karen Jones, Tim Luckhurst and Jan Montefiore for useful snippets of information that I  have incorporated. Thanks also vxv

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Acknowledgements to childhood friend George Kester for answering some random horsey questions. I benefited hugely from insightful questions from those who attended my talk on the FANY at the University of Plymouth and to Chatterbox, a women’s group in Wingham. I am tremendously grateful to those who were generous with their time and made insightful comments on chapters that they read:  Ian Beckett, Tim Bowman, Kate Bradley, Alison Fell, Lucy Noakes, Corinna Peniston-​Bird and Angela Smith. I am especially indebted to Emily Manktelow for her close reading of and astute observations on a very early draft of a chapter, my book proposal and the entire manuscript. It was her suggestion to split the book into two and without her planting that seed I would have (eventually) produced an unwieldly and incoherent tome. In addition to her brilliant mind, she has an equally wonderful heart and her friendship is immensely meaningful to me. While the reward of a year’s study leave is much longed for and a wonderful opportunity to have uninterrupted research time, there’s a real danger of turning into something of a recluse and talking only to the dog (whose conversation is really quite limited…). Fortunately, in addition to Rufus the Springer, I  had lovely people around me. Thanks to my parents Val and Steve for their loving support and great interest in this project. It was wonderful to visit Brooklands circuit (where FANY Muriel Thompson raced in 1908)  with my dad, who has a life-​long love of motoring, on Father’s Day. Thanks too to Chantal and her early morning gym crew for stimulating the brain cells each weekday with some exceptionally gruelling exercise; to the chaps of Trotters Run Club and Wingham Wheelers cycling group for welcoming me into their male enclave; and finally to the fabulous Gin Club: Helen, Sheena, Claire and Amanda. Cheers ladies!

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Abbreviations

ANS FANY QAIMNS QARNNS QMAAC RAMC RAP TFNS VAD WAAC WRAF WRNS WSPU WVR

Army Nursing Service First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps Royal Army Medical Corps Regimental Aid Post Territorial Force Nursing Service Voluntary Aid Detachment Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps Women’s Royal Air Force Women’s Royal Naval Service Women’s Social and Political Union Women’s Volunteer Reserve

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Introduction: Daughters of war – Gender modernity and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry

‘Call yourselves women? You’re a bloody disgrace!’ ‘Gallivanting about in uniform. Who do you think you are?’ ‘They’re not women, they’re bleeding suffragettes!’ ‘Riding astride, like men! Really it’s shameful.’

London, 1909:  six elite women dressed in scarlet uniform, with riding breeches underneath their divided skirts, were defying convention by not riding side-​saddle. While this unsettled a group of jeering workmen, scandalised two upper-​class ladies and prompted someone to throw stones at the horses, one fashionably dressed young woman, made ‘aware of the frustrating impediment of her own petticoats’ by the riders’ rational clothing, was enthralled.1 So begins Hilary Green’s trilogy of historical novels that were inspired by the real-​life experiences of Mabel St Clair Stobart and Flora Sandes, two women who made important contributions during the First World War and had formerly been members of an elite women’s mounted organisation founded in 1907 called the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY).2 Green draws on the recollections of early members of the FANY who recorded similar experiences of being castigated for their gender transgressions, rebuked for their donning of military attire, reproached for riding astride, had items thrown at them and were mistaken for suffrage supporters, weaving into a fictionalised story real women, genuine episodes and dialogue taken from historical sources.3 Lead characters Leonora (‘Leo’) Malham Brown and Victoria Langford were independent, adventurous, athletic New Women who came from privileged backgrounds and relished the opportunity of serving the nation in a collective endeavour in a future war. Indeed, the women that enlisted in the FANY in real life came from the aristocracy and upper middle class: there were titled v1v

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Women of war ladies and debutantes who had been presented at court, and women whose parents had inherited considerable wealth, as well as those whose fathers had amassed fortunes in business. Their affluence enabled them to purchase costly Corps uniforms, pay hefty subscriptions and fees, and fund expensive hobbies. First World War FANY ambulance-​driver Muriel Thompson, for example, had been a competitive motor racer, like Green’s character Victoria. Victoria outlines the Corps’s purpose to Leo, the captivated onlooker: ‘Imagine a battlefield in the aftermath of a battle. The ground is strewn with bodies. Some are dead but many are just wounded … [and] may bleed to death unless there is someone to staunch their wounds. Now imagine a corps of mounted nurses who gallop onto the battlefield to care for them. How does that picture strike you?’ Leo thinks it sounds ‘terribly romantic’ and ‘sparked a sense of new possibilities’.4 The notion appealed hugely to women in real life also, and over 100 women quickly enrolled, although membership within three years had dwindled to a dozen. Like so many women who enlisted in the Corps in its first few years, the fictional FANY led a life ‘constrained and limited by circumstance and convention’. Consequently, she ‘could not help envying [men’s] freedom of choice’ and saw the unit as ‘offer[ing] a respite from the boredom of her normal routine’. Leo applies to join the Corps, ignoring the scorn of her military brother who primly asserts ‘The battlefield is no place for a lady… [H]‌ow would delicately brought up young ladies, like yourselves, have the strength to lift a man and carry him back to the clearing station?’5 When asked by Sergeant Major Ashley Smith why she wishes to enlist, Leo replies ‘I think it is a way of showing that women can be more than mothers and wives –​and it shows that we are ready to serve our country if the need arises.’ The recruiting officer, real-​life member Grace Ashley-​Smith, who joined the Corps in 1910 and went on to command it, is reassured, noting that ‘if you had said that you thought it would be fun, I should have turned you down’. Leo embarks on the martial training, meeting for a few hours a week to ride, train and participate in competitions as did actual FANYs, horrifies her grandmother by going away with the Corps to camp ‘like common soldiers’, and despite ‘never work[ing] so hard in her life … loved every minute of it’.6 In 1912, during the Balkan Crisis, she follows Stobart across Europe, crops her hair and puts into practice her first aid training, and also serves during the First World War. Confronted with mechanised warfare and the horrors it can inflict on soldiers’ bodies, she comes to realise her previous naivety: ‘Her original conception had been romantic nonsense … She had never imagined the filth, the stench, the sheer inhumanity of v2v

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Introduction a war like this … [C]ruel reality had imposed itself over what she had imagined.’7 Clearly, Daughters of War, written by a retired drama teacher and published a century after the events it describes, ought not to be viewed as a historical source equivalent to contemporaneous accounts such as personal writings, newspaper articles or literary texts produced during the war and in its immediate aftermath, nor as a transparent window onto the past. It departs wildly from reality by locating Leo and Victoria in eastern Europe (where Stobart and Sandes were independently based, having left the FANY) rather than northern France, to which over 400 members of the Corps had navigated their way at their own expense in order to staff canteens and hospital wards and convey the wounded. My interest in Green’s novel lies purely in the subject matter that inspired her:  much of what she writes is underpinned by first-​ hand FANY accounts, as we shall see. The chapters that follow here flesh out and contextualise Green’s fictional account outlined above. We consider the original idea and formation of the Corps under its male founder, a military man who recognised that upper-​class women could play an important role in the defence of Britain’s imperial supremacy; its recruitment of independent adventurous upper-​ middle-​ class New Women such as Mabel St Clair Stobart and Grace Ashley-​Smith, who in their leisure time drove cars and played sport, and were determined to escape the confines of their privileged backgrounds; their military-​style training, during which they used weapons, drilled, drove vehicles and rode astride; their participation in camps, parades, military tattoos and displays, where they exhibited their skill, stamina, physical prowess, efficiency and competitiveness  –​all behaviours culturally associated with masculinity; their martial ­uniform –​first spectacular scarlet then functional khaki –​and the responses that were provoked by their wearing of clothing that increasingly distanced them from conventional female attire; their ousting of the male founder and the increasing professionalisation of the FANY under female leadership; their deployment of innovative new technologies such as the motor car, the illustrated press, advertisements and cinematic film; their proactive involvement in impending civil war in Ulster; and members’ making their own way to France during the First World War, whereupon they played a highly demanding, active and skilled role, driving motor ambulances and nursing men wounded in the first total war. Each aspect is illustrative of the very modernity of the Corps. Women of War, which utilises a diverse range of sources including FANYs’ diaries, letters, memoirs and novels, the Corps magazine, and the v3v

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Women of war print media, presents the FANY, the earliest uniformed quasi-​military female organisation in existence, as a case study of gender modernity, and it is to a consideration of these terms that we first turn. ‘No more certain sign of the times’: Modernity and the New Woman ‘Modernity’ is a concept that has long animated scholars.8 There is no fixed set of features nor a universally accepted definition of what constitutes the modern. It is a discursive category that is as imprecise and bland as it is contested. Scholars have deployed this culturally constructed analytical tool to consider the unfolding social, political and cultural transformations that took place between roughly the 1880s and 1920s (although some scholars would push these parameters further back and forward). While it is broadly useful as a category of historical periodisation, more crucial is its signalling of possibilities and perils in a time of rapid change. A prevalent tone of anxiety haunted this period of progress and advancement. Such tensions, contradictions and paradoxes evoke the very condition of modernity:  as Marshall Berman notes, ‘[t]‌o be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and our world  –​and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are’.9 Conceptualisations of modernity build upon discourses of eighteenth-​ and early-​nineteenth-​century Britain as ‘an age of improvement’ that witnessed slow evolutionary (as opposed to revolutionary) progress in agriculture, transport and industry and, as the title of Eric Evans’ influential book on Britain from 1783 to 1870 makes clear, ‘forged the modern state’.10 The notion of the modern saturates the rhetoric of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and has been used as an umbrella term to signify the acceleration of changes that occurred. As Alan O’Shea acknowledges, it involves ‘the practical negotiation of one’s life and one’s identity within a complex and fast-​changing world’.11 Positive attributes that denote that Britain was modern and dynamic include the extension of the franchise in 1867, 1884, 1918 and 1928, as well as the intensification of the campaign for female suffrage; expanding newspaper circulation figures, and the advent of photojournalism as a mass cultural form underpinned by increased literacy and new technology that replaced the power of the pulpit; the invention of novel machines, including the bicycle, the car and the aeroplane, which led to new forms of leisure; advances in advertising and photography and the rise of new forms of popular v4v

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Introduction entertainment such as the cinema; changing patterns of consumption such as cigarette smoking; new welfare reforms such as insurance (1908) and old-​age pensions (1911); and changes to women’s status enshrined in laws such as the Married Women’s Property Act (1882) and signified by the adoption of new styles of clothing and increased access to higher education and skilled ‘white blouse’ occupations. Britain’s pre-​eminence on the world stage was a key aspect of modernity: the Empire wielded a strong power over what it meant to be a modern nation, and a pervasive popular imperialism saturated British culture. Civilian life became increasingly militarised in the Edwardian period as martial organisations proliferated. Femininity too became battle-​ready as women flocked to first aid classes and joined Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs). The world’s first truly modern, or ‘total’, war, which wrought unprecedented devastation, warranted the mobilisation of millions of men and women.12 The modernity of martial service was illustrated both by the raising of a volunteer army and by women’s work in a wide range of wartime roles. Publications by female authors during the war about the new opportunities it afforded consistently refer to modernity. In her 1916 account The Flaming Sword, ex-​FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart noted that she was ‘a modern woman’, while Barbara McLaren, in her hagiographical account Women of the War, published in 1917, asserted ‘there is no more certain sign of the times than the sight of women in khaki uniforms and military badges driving Army motors and lorries’.13 Indeed, the uniformed woman became firmly associated with the modern. Similarly, one of the chapters in Edith Barton and Marguerite Cody’s 1918 book Eve in Khaki is entitled ‘Modern Woman to the Fore’ and they note the existence of a ‘new genus –​the “khaki girl” ’ in ‘these modern days’ of war. They celebrate the women who donned military clothing and served their country in various organisations, who they predict will ‘stand out in history [as] a fascinating type of modern femininity’ to ‘rival’ Cleopatra, Boudicca and Joan of Arc.14 With a restoration of prewar practices, codified in an Act of that name, the interwar period witnessed a spirited traditionalism as well as a popular avant-​gardism that combined to shape a ‘conservative modernity’, as Alison Light has persuasively argued. Long-​held discourses of modernity began steadily to recede in the twenties and thirties.15 To be modern was to: be enlightened, experimental, creative; support the notion of progress; reject unequivocally the prevailing principles of one’s own generation; and be seen as ahead of one’s time, as Rita Felski notes, ‘to be modern is often paradoxically to be antimodern’.16 Modernity was predominantly an urban phenomenon, as it was metropolitan v5v

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Women of war culture that first witnessed many of the transformations, including the motor vehicle and the cinema, as well as providing the stage where the latest trends in fashion were exhibited. And it was inexorably classed and gendered, experienced differently by social groups and by men and women. While the upper classes had the leisure time and the wealth to afford the luxury of a car, for example, bicycles and the cinema were more democratic inventions. Modernity is often perceived as inherently masculine, in that it was connected to the public sphere, the city, technology, mass media, and the figures of the flâneur and the dandy. As an example, Marshall Berman equates modernity with masculinity, and tradition with femininity.17 Felski takes issue with this simplistic elision, however, making a compelling case for the interconnectivity between femininity and modernism and revealing how modernity is experienced in gender-​specific ways by women.18 Indeed, modernity is nearly always represented as a woman: the quintessential modern female figure in the nineteenth century was the ‘bluestocking’, the fin de siècle witnessed the emergence of the ‘New Woman’, and following in the wake of the First World War was the ‘flapper’, each a by-​word for the enlightened and liberated young woman. Discourses of modernity are, however, manifold, diverse and multifaceted: as well as being seen by contemporaries as positive and inventive, change could also be feared as negative and detrimental, and such notions were troubled by (counter) reactions that ranged from ambivalence to anxiety. Thus modernity, note David Glover and Cora Kaplan, has a ‘disquieting underside’.19 Transformations were experienced by some as deeply bewildering, destabilising ‘the given’ and raising the possibility of ‘the unknown’. As Bernhard Rieger and Martin Daunton assert, ‘to create the new, the old or the traditional had to be displaced or destroyed’.20 The spectre of change for the worse haunted the modern. The early twentieth century was an epoch of transition and crisis:  the clustering of the fin de siècle, the death of Queen Victoria (1901) and the end of the South African War (1902) amounted to a watershed signifying both the end of one era and the birth of another. The sense of exhilaration at the advent of the new age was offset by the fear of invasion and concerns over Britain’s global position and economic decline. The First World War, another turning point, brought home to contemporaries the fragile base on which Britain’s global status was grounded, as well as the notion that the modern age could also have a very dark undercurrent. Fears over the effeminacy of men and the masculinisation of women were stoked by the campaign for female suffrage, and the v6v

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Introduction expansion of women’s roles prompted anxieties about female modernity and challenged long-​standing gender imperatives that fixed the limits of what was considered appropriate for women. Received notions of femininity and masculinity were destabilised further during the war, in which uniformed women lifted stretchers and drove ambulances conveying men who had sustained injuries in a devastating war of attrition. Elaine Showalter’s ‘crisis of masculinity’ and Arthur Marwick’s (much critiqued) ‘emancipation of women’ theses suggest that the war led to huge upheaval and a reconfiguration of gender roles.21 The war might be seen to have emasculated men by feminising the wounded, and defeminised women through the masculinisation of those who took on roles previously regarded as male. Newspapers stoked such anxieties. Given that change could be embraced as well as feared, constructions of modernity are complex and never simply black or white. They entail an interaction of multiple disparate discourses that sit uneasily together. Indeed, commentators were often partial in their support or rejection of modernity. An organisation that prepared women for martial activities and dressed them in military uniform was thus simultaneously intriguing and troubling. Some of the earliest articles to be published about the FANY were contradictory in their reporting. In July 1909, articles appeared in newspapers in Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma reporting on their martial activities at camp. They reassured readers that ‘being women, however, as well as soldiers, they have smuggled in some comforts’, and went on to note how they adorned their tents with rugs, easy chairs and a piano.22 Another article reproduced in several American newspapers noted, ‘the swash-​buckler novelty of the idea may repel some critics, but the majority is charitably withholding judgement until the time tells whether the movement has its root in a feminine fondness for smart tunics and jaunty caps, or in patriotic zeal and womanly sympathy’.23 Similarly, an article published in a British newspaper a few months previously was equally ambiguous, exhibiting what Janet Lee calls ‘titillation’ as well as ‘anxiety and condescension’ and a ‘desire to return to normal gendered relations’.24 A ‘mere male’ journalist noted in 1909 how he had given a password to the ‘pretty sentinel on duty at the door’ and ‘invaded the sanctum’ of the FANY headquarters, which was replete with ‘gaily-​garbed’ members who looked ‘dashing’ in their ‘picturesque uniforms’ and were engaged in activities that were ‘not a child’s play’.25 Nowhere is the sense of the instability of modern times more apparent than in newspaper articles such as these that focused on the FANY’s activities and described their appearance. In providing information about their destabilising activities, v7v

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Women of war such accounts fed both the public’s fascination and fear. To invoke Erika Rappaport, the ‘pretty sentinel’ functioned as ‘a trigger of male fantasy about modernity’.26 This ambivalence, partly admiring, partly fearful, partly condescending, illustrates how fraught the navigation of an epoch frequently described as ‘modern’ was for contemporaries. One of the key ways that modernity was symbolised was through the figure of the New Woman. A term first used in 1894 by the writer Sarah Grand in her article published in the North American Review, it soon gained wide currency as a label for the self-​reliant, independent, confident, assertive, active, educated, modern young woman who battled against the constraints of prescribed femininity  –​the ‘Cult of True Womanhood’ and ‘the Angel in the Home’ –​and posed a challenge to established Victorian norms. This powerful cultural icon who surfaced in the 1890s was a discursive response to changes to women’s lives, a fictional character drawn in the imaginations of journalists and authors. Over 100 novels were published about the New Woman before the fin de siècle, mainly by female authors, with titles such as The Woman who Wouldn’t, The Woman who Didn’t and The Woman who Did.27 She was the free-​spirited Sue Bridehead in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, both independent, intelligent and rejecting aspects of the conventional feminine role. The contemporary discourses about these new liberating forms of femininity that were in circulation were positively saturated with notions of modernity. As Sally Ledger notes, ‘the New Woman was nothing if not modern’, her ‘newness’ denoting her as someone ‘committed to change.’28 And like modernity, the New Woman defies easy definition. Of course, class further fractured women’s experience of the modern: the New Woman largely figured in the popular imagination as a product of the upper and middle classes, having benefited from expanded educational opportunities and legal rights, and having a taste for freedom, mobility and action. A Mrs Humphrey, writing in the Isle of Thanet Gazette in 1906 about ‘The Restlessness of Modern Woman’, noted that ‘It would seem to be a necessity to be always going somewhere and doing something.’29 Certainly, the New Woman was not to be a ‘sidelined spectator’ and was most likely to be found adopting rational dress and clothing tagged as male, inhabiting the public sphere, playing tennis, cricket or golf, riding her bicycle or horse, or driving her motor car.30 Punch found the sportswomen who were riding, pedalling or driving their way to freedom an irresistible target.31 The trope of depicting modern women as strapping Amazons was also widespread, both in Britain and abroad. An early French poster v8v

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Introduction advertising ‘Liberator Cycles and Motorcycles’, for example, depicted a bare-​breasted female warrior wearing a winged helmet, her arm looped through a round shield and the other holding a sword that stood as high as her head, dressed in a chainmail skirt and with leather straps bound around her legs, which are clothed in close-​fitting breeches. But while the New Woman was often depicted as an Amazon, she was not one discrete figure but many, and was also portrayed, often less positively, as the spectacled intellectual, the thin embittered spinster and the professional career woman, who rejected marriage and motherhood, demanded social and political reform, and dared to envisage an alternative future for herself. Women campaigning for the vote made particularly easy targets, and were frequently the subject of media attacks, which depicted them as imperilling the status quo, emasculating their husbands, neglecting their children and abandoning their duties in the house.32 The modern woman, with her politicisation, occupation outside the home, shorter hair, masculine clothing and sporting achievements, was read as a sign that femininity was on the wane. In the first decade of the new century, gender was a highly unstable category, in flux and in crisis, and there was a preoccupation in print with the New Woman. One of the more measured articles appeared in Church Weekly in 1900: ‘the “modern woman” [is] seiz[ing] all the opportunities that are now so freely offered to her, of developing her intellect, strengthening her mental calibre, and enlarging her outlook and sphere of usefulness’. This positive acclamation, however, was undermined by a pressing concern that, in ‘emulat[ing] men’ in clothing, sport and intellect, she was in danger of losing her ‘truest glory’, her ‘meek and quiet spirit’.33 A far more potent illustration of gender conflict is seen in Léon Blouet’s 1901 diatribe Her Royal Highness. The New Woman, who he asserted was found only in Britain and America, not his native France, was ‘the most ridiculous production of modern times, and destined to be the most ghastly failure of the century’. Personified by ‘ugly women, old maids, and disappointed and neglected wives’, she can be identified by her ‘thin, sallow complexion, eyes without lustre, wrinkled, mouth sulky, haughty, the disgust of life written on every feature’. He castigated those who were in danger of ceasing to be women in their desire to adopt manly pursuits: ‘I hate the woman who appears in public … I hate the woman who speaks about politics … I  hate the scientific woman who lectures on evolution … I  hate the lady physician, the lady lawyer, the lady member of the School Board … I  hate the prominent woman.’34 British newspapers reported on Blouet’s book and could be equally v9v

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Women of war disparaging of the ‘shrieking sisterhood of to-​day’ that destabilised dominant gender taxonomies.35 Yet the New Women who were the target of such misogynist attacks did not passively tolerate them: an article about men written five years later by ‘a spinster’, who is proudly assertive of her marital status and reclaims the derogatory term, serves as a feisty riposte. Man, as we are all aware, has no words strong enough to express his contempt for the new woman. He sneers when she obtains a scholarship that will send her to college; he sneers more when she takes her degree; and he positively gibes when she sets up practising as a physician. Her independence, her manly self-​assurance, her sensible clothes, all come in for a share of his scorn.

She wrote of the women who had been ‘named “new”, “advanced”, “progressive” “pioneers” ’, and of the ‘modern amazon’ who declares ‘ “I will be free and throw off the yoke!” … revolts from the fireside and goes forth, armed with diplomas and a splendid courage … into the battlefield of life to fight, ostensibly side by side with him, but actually … against him!’36 As these descriptions suggest, the New Woman was largely a product of (heated) discourse that came to life on the pages of novels and newspapers, rather than a flesh-​and-​blood female. The FANY, however, was both a textual creation (both at the time, in newspaper articles, and subsequently, in novels such as Hilary Green’s trilogy) as well as a real woman, and can be regarded as indicative of the modern. Accordingly, we shall examine both her configuration in text in order to scrutinise how she was thought of by others, and also her self-​representation and lived experience. The case study of the FANY, which serves as a barometer of Edwardian and wartime society, reveals explicitly how modernity and gender are interlinked in myriad ways. ‘England’s New Woman: A Woman of War’: the FANY and gender modernity Anxieties about Britain’s status in the world and its war readiness, which we shall examine in Chapter  2, coupled with concerns brought on by the headline-​grabbing activities of the suffragettes, many of whom came from elite backgrounds, warranted the creation of a new type of woman from the leisured classes. The FANY was a very modern organisation formed by a military man who recognised that upper-​class women could play a much bigger role in the defence of Britain’s imperial supremacy. Women who enlisted in the newly founded Corps were v 10 v

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Introduction products of an age in which gender roles were being redefined and were living through a period of considerable flux. The context of the New Woman enables an appreciation of the impulses behind their enrolment. Dissatisfaction with their constrained leisured lives and a desire to break free of restrictive norms propelled these elite women into this innovative organisation, which offered a colourful escape from a dull routine, and the possibility of adventure, new skills and to be of service to their country. Many had previously driven cars, ridden horses, fenced and shot, and they enlisted in an organisation that prepared them to serve in war, ride astride and drill, all behaviours culturally associated with masculinity. Members were dressed in a functional martial uniform, one of the most powerful symbols of modernity, first spectacular scarlet then functional khaki, which increasingly distanced them from conventional female clothing. Their occupation of urban public space was distinctly modern: indeed, theirs was a modernity that was literally fashioned in the most public manner, on the streets of London, at military tournaments and overseas in wartime, and we can map their participation in rides, displays, parades and on the battlefield onto the spaces of modernity. They undertook martial-​style training and went to camp, where on occasion they drank alcohol, socialised with men and smoked, their class privilege enabling them to behave in a manner that otherwise would have generated disapproval. Prewar FANY Bannatyne recalled ‘an invitation to one of their [officers’] smoking dinners in their mess. It was a strictly male smoker, but there were ten of us girls and Captain Baker … So we sat, smoked and joined in the sing-​song and had a wonderful time.’37 Smoking, which had virtually been the sole preserve of men, had become increasingly more prevalent among upper-​class women after 1880, and in the Edwardian period was a modern symbol, much like the motor car, that exemplified the ‘spirit of the times’. As the Standard noted in 1914, more women had taken up smoking and ‘old social traditions and laws of etiquette are dying out’.38 Smoking was a distinctly gendered proclamation of modernity for elite women, signalling a form of ‘gender rebellion’ as they rejected conventional modes of passive, domesticated femininity. Smoking epitomised ‘a claim to equality’, asserts Penny Tinkler, and could be ‘used to symbolize acceptance into male society’.39 Photographs of uniformed women undertaking activities such as chopping wood with an axe, jumping over obstacles and carrying soldiers on stretchers were also emblematic of FANYs’ modernity and featured frequently in the press: they were shown to be strong, fit, independent and mobile. Indeed, v 11 v

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Women of war their use of the media, both written and illustrated press as well as cinematic film, was in itself highly novel. The frequent probing into the governance of the male founder by female members and his later removal by Grace Ashley-​Smith, who sought in myriad ways to professionalise the Corps and make it fit for service, is testament to female agency. Under her command, they proactively sought involvement in the Balkan Crisis, impending hostilities in Ulster and the First World War. While the first two failed to come to fruition, the Corps was mobilised in the autumn of 1914 and travelled to northern France. They subverted conventional gender norms by sharing with men the burden of overseas national service, being located on occasion in dangerous proximity to the battlefield and engaging in strenuous work carrying stretchers and driving motor ambulances. In such ways, FANYs embodied the modern woman, a challenge all the more emphatic in an era of rapid transformation and anxiety in gender relations. Commentators (not only journalists writing in the local, national or international press but also members recording in their private diaries and memoirs produced for public consumption) described their present as a period of change, of innovation, of modern ways. That contemporaries regarded FANYs’ achievements as explicitly modern is illustrated by American newspapers, which informed readers in Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma in July 1909 of ‘England’s New Woman:  A Woman of War’, from which this book takes its title. It pictured members of the Corps at camp riding side-​saddle in their ‘natty’ uniforms with pitched tents in the distance, and applauded these ‘women fighters’ who in a future conflict ‘will play a conspicuous part. Not as casual visitors giving tea for the officers, but as actual members of the army’.40 As Anne Phillips asserts, the modern is often represented as being typified by men’s increased respect for women, as evidenced here, as well as by women’s greater self-​esteem.41 One such example of this heightened personal assurance is FANY Enid Bagnold who, in her autobiography published at the time of Second Wave Feminism, used language that denotes modern forms of subjectivity: ‘I thought I was emancipated, just as girls think now.’42 She had been an art student under Walter Sickert, had two drawings included in an exhibition, one of which was mentioned in The Times, was a prolific, popular and critically acclaimed author, and had love affairs before her marriage to a peer. Another example of this enhanced self-​image is Grace Ashley-​Smith’s marvelling at her new experiences, which confirms that FANYs understood at the time that their activities were new and progressive: ‘Here we were, girls of the twentieth century in this atmosphere of v 12 v

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Introduction storm and war living what surely few women ever dreamt in their wildest fancies until this war began. This was life!’43 It is statements such as these revealing aspects of their interiority that suggest they understood themselves as possessing a modern gendered identity. FANYs were, then, New Women embodying modernity, challenging the limits of convention and pushing back the boundaries of what was considered appropriate for women in terms of behaviour, dress and role. But while they absorbed the rhetoric of modernity and the New Woman, reproducing them in personal and public accounts when it suited them to draw themselves as radical progressives, they also on occasion eschewed such discourses and adopted more conformist ones, emphasising their role as one of ‘succouring’ the wounded and thereby ‘gain[ing] fresh laurels for the brow of womanhood’.44 As Jay Winter notes, ‘modernists reconfigured conventions; they didn’t discard them’.45 As well as deeply progressive forms of modernity there are also decidedly conservative ones: the FANY embraced a moderate version of avant-​gardism and were highly paradoxical, full of ambiguities and contradictions, and are open to multiple readings. The Corps was thus an expression of gender modernity as well as an illustration of old-​fashioned class conservativism, and we shall consider the fascinating interplay of conformity and deviance throughout the book. Alison Light’s notion of conservative modernism is pertinent here.46 While she was writing about the interwar period, this concept can equally be applied to the FANY in the Edwardian era. The dominant mood then was largely conservative in rhetoric and yet often modern in the form it took, as we shall see. A mentality prevailed wherein the superiority of the upper classes, the jingoistic revelling in Britain’s imperial supremacy, the deference to State and Church, and conventional notions of femininity as innately caring and nurturing were secure, and yet simultaneously there were the imaginative opportunities to forge new, more martial modes of femininity and to side against the Government (in relation to the issue of Irish Home Rule). The FANY case study thus offers a multiplicity of intriguing interpretative possibilities. Moreover, the Corps is ripe for a gendered analysis as it was one of the earliest women’s organisations to be formed, its constitution, drafted the following year in 1908, confirming the FANY as the first British women’s voluntary troop. It was the first self-​styled military female force, the first to wear military uniform, the first to prepare for war service, possibly the world’s only mounted women’s unit and a forerunner of the many uniformed women’s organisations that proliferated in the two world wars. Moreover, some of its members were pioneers in their own right: Mabel v 13 v

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Women of war St Clair Stobart, who left the Corps in 1910, formed a unit called the Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps, which had a very similar remit, uniform and training to the FANY. By setting up and running a hospital for sick and wounded soldiers in the Balkan War of 1912, it became the first exclusively female company to go abroad and undertake service during wartime.47 Another ex-​FANY, Flora Sandes, enrolled in and fought with the Second Serbian Infantry Regiment during the First World War without attempting to pass as male (as previous female combatants had been compelled to do).48 Muriel Thompson, who joined the Corps during the war, had been a champion motor-​racer, winning the inaugural Ladies’ Bracelet Handicap at Brooklands in July 1908 in her car ‘Pobble’, travelling at an average speed of 50 m.p.h. over the three-​mile course.49 Grace Ashley-​Smith, the first woman to receive the Mons Star, was also the most highly decorated woman of the war, with ten awards bestowed on her by grateful Belgian, French and British Governments.50 Moreover, the Corps remains the world’s longest-​running organisation for women, celebrating its centenary in 2007, is the only all-​women unit left in the country and still assists in national emergencies today.51 Yet despite its longevity and pioneering status, a national amnesia precludes awareness of the Corps and there are surprisingly few books about it. While the Corps has been a rich source for novelists,52 only two books have chronicled the organisation from its inception in 1907 to the respective dates of their publication (1955 and 1984).53 They have been written with a non-​specialist audience in mind and appeal to the general reader: these are not scholarly texts equivalent to those produced by historians researching other organisations. However, such a text has been written by Janet Lee on the First World War FANYs’ negotiations of gender. She adopts a chronological structure closely examining different FANY units that were operational in France during the conflict. She concludes her book by noting that ‘The FANY used traditional notions of femininity while aspiring to heights beyond their confines and therefore faced the cultural paradox of both using and reworking existing discourses on class and gender.’54 She examines one of the ways that members played upon conventional norms in an article about their furnishing of billets with cushions, divans, sofas, chintz curtains and tapestries. In her application of Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to this case study, she asserts that they established feminine sites of domesticity within the masculine space of the front. These served as ‘crises heterotopia’, ‘diffus[ing]’ the subversive nature of their hard physical wartime work by softening its brutalising effects and reflecting genteel femininity. Such recreations v 14 v

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Introduction of home functioned as a ‘spatial imaginary’, Lee argues, juxtaposing the ‘material practices of femininity’ with the seemingly incompatible ‘sites of combat’.55 Lee’s monograph and four articles are the only scholarly work focusing on the Corps.56 A few other scholars have, however, referred to the unit in their broader analyses: the prewar FANY feature in Lucy Noakes’ study Women in the British Army, the First World War FANY ambulance-​drivers figure in Laura Doan’s Disturbing Practices, and there are passing references to the FANY in a number of influential scholarly texts including Angela K. Smith’s The Second Battlefield and Janet Watson’s Fighting Different Wars.57 We shall return to each in the course of the book. My study, which builds on this excellent body of feminist scholarship, interrogates these ideas about gender and class further through an application of the concepts of modernity and the New Woman. It uses a multi-​method approach. Archival research was carried out at FANY Headquarters, the Imperial War Museum, the Liddle Collection held at the University of Leeds’s Special Collections and the British Library. Online international newspaper repositories were also utilised. While few FANYs left accounts of their time with the Corps and formal records are patchy, documents are available for the early days and the First World War, enabling us to piece together their history. Several minutes of early meetings have survived, as have private letters from 1909 written by the early FANY recruits to headquarters, some letters written home to family from northern France throughout the First World War and a few diaries. While not highly educated, the women who joined the Corps were extremely literate and left some revealing correspondence, as well as diaries, poems, published memoirs and unpublished written testimonies in which they self-​consciously reflected on their lives.58 In building a picture of the FANY as an organisation and an experience, we can use these literary sources alongside other contemporaneous documents such as personal scrapbooks, autograph books, photograph albums, the FANY magazine and Corps ephemera. Together, they present a picture, albeit an incomplete one, of how members bestowed meaning upon their experience at the time:  their motivations for joining, their prewar activities, their uniform and their wartime adventures, all lived out against the backdrop of a hugely transformative period of gender relations. While contemporary accounts form the base upon which this historical analysis is founded, they are supplemented with later sources, including novels and memoirs written by FANYs after the war and oral recordings conducted in the 1970s. Such retrospective accounts are even more explicitly v 15 v

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Women of war mediated and reveal as much about the time in which the accounts are constructed as they do about the historical past they are reconstructing. Occasional reference is also made to popular fiction about the Corps between 1928 and 2015 to reveal dominant representations of the FANY as pioneering women of war. A  wide range of different sources, both published and unpublished, constructed by and about FANYs, produced across a number of decades –​some highly mediated, others less explicitly so –​speak to the multiple aspects of FANY life, representation and memory. It is worth us exploring these ideas of memory, memorialisation and media in more detail. Witnesses of war: FANYs’ contemporaneous and retrospective accounts The Corps’s unprecedented trespassing on male terrain and members’ status as witnesses to and co-​participants in war gave FANYs narrative authority, facilitating their chronicling of their experiences, as well as interesting journalists enough to write about them. Three First World War FANYs, Grace Ashley-​ Smith, Pat Waddell and Enid Bagnold, published personal accounts of their wartime experiences. Their decision to compose accounts about their war service speaks to a conviction that their histories were worthy of being told, of being heard, of being preserved. These testimonies are another indicator of the Corps’s modernity, not least because, as Janet Butler observes, very few women wrote about their lives in the early twentieth century.59 Grace Ashley-​Smith captured in diary form her daily experiences. On more than one occasion, she ‘fell into bed more dead than alive, but even then burnt my candle low jotting the events of the day in my diary in case of forgetting what occurred’.60 These entries, recording dialogue and feelings, were later expanded upon and transformed into a public text, Nursing Adventures: A F.A.N.Y. in France, which was published anonymously in 1917. Her novel status as a woman who was an eyewitness to the fighting permitted her to construct a public persona. As the Evening Standard reported, Ashley-​Smith ‘must possess the spirit of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, the gaiety of Ellen Terry, and the endurance of a farm labourer’s wife (old style) with a large family and 15 s a week’.61 It received wide press coverage, both nationally and regionally.62 The Yorkshire Observer noted the book’s very modernity, with concomitant admiration and anxiety, regarding it as ‘a curious commentary on what women  –​mere girls  –​can accomplish nowadays, in comparison with v 16 v

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Introduction the dead and gone age before the war’.63 Like other socially privileged women who sought to attract the attention of publishers and interest potential readers, including Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, Mabel St Clair Stobart and May Sinclair, whose accounts of their overseas work we shall come across in the course of the book, Ashley-​Smith’s testimony conforms to the war memoir genre and is infused with what Janet Lee calls ‘the sentimental high diction of the Great War’.64 First, she deploys archetypical tropes including navigating her own way to the front, being fearless in a dangerous wartime setting, stoically witnessing the horrors of battle, risking being shot as a spy and escaping from an occupied city, all experiences she presumed her reader wished to hear about. It is peppered with heroic deeds and she emphasises her proximity to the front and her experience of danger. Secondly, she writes in a register that is fast-​paced  –​what Punch called ‘a rather breathless style’  –​and deploys literary conventions, such as hyperbole and cliché: for instance, ‘death came bringing freedom in her hands’.65 The use of such highly stylised language renders the content so contrived and impersonal that it conceals (as opposed to divulges) the author’s subjectivity. But instead of dismissing such formulaic language and clichéd expressions as hopelessly old-​fashioned and insincere, Penny Summerfield urges historians to acknowledge that they provide the author with a way to convey complex issues as well as to assist readers who recognise the expression as shorthand.66 Thus, we might interpret Ashley-​Smith’s seemingly insouciant response to being threatened with arrest (‘I swanked out through that courtyard filled with Germans as if khaki had never before been fittingly worn!’) as an articulation of British arrogance and superiority borne of her class privilege that would be well-received by her patriotic (and xenophobic) readers.67 Her selection (and rejection) of linguistic structures and narrative frameworks from a range of available scripts (such as the ‘rush to colours’ and ‘khaki fever’ motifs) constitutes the very process of telling her fresh and unique story. Such romantic rhetoric and language became increasingly out of step with the times, however, as the horrors of the war unfolded. Nevertheless, this memoir can be read as an act of female agency in that she constructed herself as a fearless and audacious pioneer who played a significant role in the war and whose exploits are of interest to the public. In utilising her wartime escapades as the raw material for her account, she offered readers what Alison Fell terms ‘the authority of direct experience’.68 That fifteen photographs are included in the publication (captioned ‘Ruins of a church’, ‘Life in the front line’) serves to v 17 v

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Women of war emphasise the notion that this is a genuine account by a woman who is right in the thick of it. And her use of direct dialogue further enhances the perceived authenticity of the dramatic events being narrated. Her status of active participant in the war, which endowed her with a professional military identity, brought with it a significant degree of cultural capital.69 Hers is an authentic, valid voice. But that is not to say that we can treat Nursing Adventures uncritically, of course. It is an illustration of ‘life writing’, a term that Summerfield describes as emphasising ‘the fictional techniques deployed to shape the story to make it matter to others’. Such devices include the insertion of dialogue, vivid description, a distinct plot and personal musing in order to construct an account that is part autobiographical, part fantasy.70 Thus the woman who is fashioned in text is as much the product of imagination as she is of reality. Summerfield cautions the historian to understand the factual content of memoirs within a broader context of the production of the self for a public audience.71 A memoir is not an unmediated tale of an individual’s ‘true’ experiences and ought not be seen as a transparent window onto the past but rather one that is misted over, the patina tarnished and encrusted with time, and is a constructed account replete with the narrator’s selections, some of which are conscious, others unconscious. The writing of a memoir does not occur in a void; dominant public discourses breathe air into the telling of personal narratives. Such forms of self-​(re)presentation are contingent upon public discourses circulating both at the time at which they are written and the time that they are written about. Events are thus interpreted through the prism of the present and made sense of through the intervening period. Moreover, we also ought not to dismiss her agenda in writing the account:  to raise the profile and fundraising activities of the Corps.72 Hilary Green undoubtedly drew on Ashley-​Smith’s (as well as Stobart’s and Sandes’) accounts for her fictional trilogy, but while such sources provide fascinating material for novels, using them in scholarly research has been criticised by some historians:  A. J.  P. Taylor dismisses autobiographical accounts, noting that ‘written memoirs are a form of oral history set down to mislead historians’ and are ‘useless except for atmosphere’, and Paul Thompson, in his robust defence of oral history, asserts that autobiographical accounts are, unlike interviews, a one-​directional communication that follows the conventions of a literary genre, the content intentionally selected to appeal to readers.73 Certainly, Ashley-​ Smith’s account is patently both atmospheric and replete with tales of exploits at the front to whet the appetite of a reading public hungry for v 18 v

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Introduction adventurous war stories. But this self-​representation also reveals much about the way she wanted to portray herself, and can be read as actively constructing selfhood. The composure of subjectivities in life-​story telling has been the subject of much research. Popular memory theorists such as Graham Dawson, whose ideas have subsequently been developed by oral historians Alistair Thomson and Penny Summerfield, consider the dual meanings of the term: narrators compose accounts about themselves for intended audiences, and this in itself often, but not always, provides a sense of equanimity or composure.74 Memoirs such as Ashley-​Smith’s are, in both senses of the term, composed. As Katie Barclay and Sarah Richardson note in an analysis of female selfhood, autobiographical accounts are ‘constructed narratives in which narrators perform a range of rhetorical acts in the process of producing an understanding of the “meaning of life”.’75 Indeed, writing may well have been cathartic, facilitating a quest for composure: prior to writing, Ashley-​Smith, as well as another FANY author, Pat Waddell, had recently experienced trauma.76 Waddell had had a leg amputated after she sustained an injury while driving a motorised FANY ambulance in northern France, as we shall see in Chapter  5. Ashley-​Smith, who wrote her anonymous published account while in Canterbury recovering from an appendix operation and a near-​perforated ear drum, had by 1916 lost two much loved brothers, and according to another FANY was ‘very cut up’.77 Moreover, Ashley-​ Smith wrote a further account of the Corps as well as a novel at a time when she had become disillusioned and bored by her new (postwar) life in Rhodesia. Her son, Desmond McDougall noted that writing ‘went a long way to alleviating the unhappiness’ of his mother.78 The act of crafting her account may have become a way of coming to terms with the changing pace of postwar life. Ashley-​Smith wrestled with this later account, returning again and again to it: the first was ‘too long, to [sic] intimate and too frank to be passed on, it was [a]‌necessary outpouring of all that happened, in truth and in detail’; the second account was ‘too long, too prosy, too badly arranged’ but ‘for the purpose of a real account it is the most suitable’, while in the third version ‘I cut out too much and by that time had lost interest in the task’. She was unable to find a publisher for her manuscript, the thirst for stories about the war having been quenched: ‘[I] have been told by all publishers to whom I have submitted it that it is too long after the war to be of interest to the Public.’79 She deposited the unpublished manuscript, entitled ‘Five Years with the Allies’, at the Imperial War Museum in 1938. Ashley-​Smith was, however, successful in finding a publisher for her novel The Golden Bowl, v 19 v

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Women of war which came out in 1926 and drew heavily upon her experiences during the war and her subsequent depression when living in Rhodesia with her husband. The opening pages are filled with ‘khaki girls’: the novel’s first line refers to ‘a girl in khaki, shirt and skirt, slim, silk-​clad khaki legs and brown brogues’, while a few pages in the reader is informed of Marion O’Hea’s war service:  ‘The khaki-​clad English girl with her double row of war ribbons, her four years’ chevrons of service … [A] F.A.N.Y. … that splendid women’s corp [sic]’.80 We also read about Doris, a FANY driver working with the French army, who, finding herself frightened in a forest at night-​time, takes off her skirt so that she can pass as a man in her leather coat and long boots.81 The wartime experience of being in the FANY, however, serves as background context, and it is Marion’s attempt to carve out a life after the war that takes centre stage. Her lover has just died and she is pregnant with his child when her husband, who has been missing presumed dead for two years following a marriage of just three days, unexpectedly resurfaces, ‘a stranger … morose, moody’.82 They move to Rhodesia to farm and she passes the child off as his. She descends into despair, ‘the monotony of life on the veldt’ resulting in her becoming ‘morbid and depressed’, and she experiences the kind of ‘awful loneliness … that may drive women to suicide or immorality’.83 It is her husband, however, who embarks upon an adulterous relationship, and she leaves with her child, named Desmond after the author’s son, who is later taken by the woman with whom the father is having an affair. Marion is reunited with both her child and her husband, with whom she falls in love. Weaving into her narrative the highly modern tropes of marital infidelities, an illegitimate pregnancy, depression and suicidal thoughts, Ashley-​Smith reveals herself to be thoroughly progressive. While her publications wrestled with some very modern storylines, conformed to the grand narratives of war and painted her as an adventurous, athletic, audacious young woman, another published FANY adopts what Angela Smith calls ‘alternative dimensions to cultural memory’ that do not imitate key features of the war genre.84 Enid Bagnold, the great-​grandmother of Samantha Cameron, the ex-​Prime Minister’s wife, deployed explicitly modernist techniques in her writing, of which there was much, as she was highly prolific. Her poems appeared in the New Statesman and Nation; she published a book of poetry in 1917, and she went on to write eight plays, an autobiographical account, an autobiography (which frustratingly omits her time in the VADs and the FANY as she felt she had covered those experiences in other publications), a children’s book and five novels.85 Her most lucrative v 20 v

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Introduction and widely known publication was National Velvet (1935) which was turned into an award-​winning film starring Elizabeth Taylor. This was a fairytale updated for a modern generation: the lead character, Velvet Brown, who is the daughter of a butcher and a mother who had swum the Channel in her youth, rejects a future of domestic drudgery in favour of the fantasy of winning at Olympia and the reality of disguising her sex by cropping her hair and riding to victory at the Grand National. In this deftly written novel, Bagnold uses richer, more original prose than subsequent books published in the pony-​girl genre. Her artistry, in particular her novel manipulation of language –​what Lenemaja Friedman equated to a ‘talent for the use of words, a fondness for aphorisms and elliptical utterances, and a flair for wit and horror’ –​can be noted in her first full-​ length and most critically acclaimed publication, A Diary without Dates (1918).86 While never achieving the public recognition of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, it is heralded as a significant account of being a volunteer nurse in a VAD at a military hospital, and was reprinted by the feminist publishing house Virago in 1978. H. G. Wells, a personal friend, made reference to it in an article, and it was widely reviewed. One literary critic, however, was loathe to review it: writing disparagingly to her sister Vanessa Bell about the ‘disagreeable chit’, Virginia Woolf observed: She has written a book, called as you can imagine ‘A Diary Without Dates’, all to prove that she’s the most attractive, and popular and exquisite of creatures –​all her patients fall in love with her –​her feet are the smallest in Middlesex –​one night she missed her bus and a soldier was rude to her in the dark –​that sort of thing … The question is, am I a match for Bagnold?87

In exposing the horrors of war and the insensitive and uncompassionate behaviour of the professional nurses, A Diary without Dates, which led to Bagnold’s dismissal following its publication, provides a highly impressionistic and modernist rendering of events that are literally undated and neither meticulously factual nor verbose. For example, she unsettles the essential femininity of the trained nurse, the quintessence of ideal womanhood, writing of the ‘strangely unsexed women’.88 The tropes of modernist writing are also apparent in her novel The Happy Foreigner (1920), which is even more germane to a discussion of the FANY. Bagnold’s principal reason for going to France after the Armistice and driving with the Corps had been to get material for a novel. She planned to keep a diary of her experiences, but short of time, she instead wrote daily numbered letters to her parents and her mother diligently typed them up and filed them for future use. These v 21 v

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Women of war letters formed the basis of her novel, and thus are a synthesis of personal thoughts and something always intended to be made public. The frank honesty of her letters facilitated by their very immediacy can be seen in one that she wrote to her parents after being in France just ten days: ‘Isn’t it disappointing … I don’t believe I can stick to it … I can’t think how the others stuck to it. Of course, I can’t think or write or get any impressions at all.’89 She did persevere, however, and the resultant novel, according to Stella Deen, ought to be regarded as one of the finest, if lesser-​known, examples of women’s war literature; it too was reprinted by Virago.90 Informed by Bagnold’s wartime experiences, which included a love affair, the novel’s protagonist, a driver wryly named Fanny, meets Julien Châtel, a French artillery captain. ‘[T]‌he fictional worlds that she created were so close to the real world as she knew it that they became as one’, notes Anna Sebba. ‘There were elements of Enid in every woman she wrote of.’91 Her novel displays modernist tendencies as she experiments with both form and technique, adopting a minimalist style that is the hallmark of modernist writing. The reader learns little about Fanny’s background and there are few markers to ground the story in a specific time. Fanny’s daily routines are monotonous, rising early to drive through the rain, sleet and mud, and returning late too exhausted to do anything but desire to be alone: ‘the eight crept back to their boxes and sat again by the lamps to read, to darn or write. They lived so close to each other that even the most genial learnt to care for solitude, and the sitting-​room remained empty.’92 And there’s a bleakness to the landscape caused by the weather that is one illustration of the ‘impressionistic technique’ that Friedman identifies Bagnold as deploying: ‘boundless rain, the swollen rivers, the shining swamps, the mud which ebbed and flowed upon the land like a tide’.93 In her New Statesman review, Rebecca West noted Bagnold’s ‘eye for landscape, not made glassy by any moral preoccupation … a uniquely vivid and impressive picture of the desolation of the war ravaged areas’.94 The novel is neither pacifistic nor hawkish and does not reproduce the dominant discourses that were circulating in this period, and while it does not shy away from describing the horrors of the aftermath of war that effect its protagonist, it also offers a positive optimism. In such ways, it is strikingly different from Evadne Price’s Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War, with its blistering critique.95 Bagnold draws Fanny as extraordinarily independent and self-​reliant, and she subverts the romance genre by ending the book not happily ever after, the conventional denouement of a heterosexual love story, but with Fanny resilient, recognising herself as ‘a green bough which bursts into leaf ’ and acknowledging that v 22 v

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Introduction her happiness lies within herself and not with Julien.96 As Deen notes, it is ‘a self-​discovery narrative dramatizing Fanny’s growth towards self-​ sufficiency in this wider world … her gradual self-​definition as a solitary human creature who … does not derive her essence from her role in a heterosexual pair’.97 While the narrative style adopted by Bagnold in A Diary without Dates and The Happy Foreigner points to an experimental modernism, even more explicitly modernist was ‘Base Notes’, an unpublished (undated) diary kept by FANY driver Muriel Thompson. Her prose, much of which was pared back, abstract, detached, fragmented and divorced from familiar functions of language and conventions of form, maps onto the indicators of modernist stylistic practices that Eugene Lunn identifies:  aesthetic self-​consciousness; simultaneity, juxtaposition and montage as an alternative to linearity; paradox, ambiguity and uncertainty; and defamiliarisation.98 For example, she writes about a ship that is ‘a twisted, distorted mass –​tubes, wheels, cogs –​blades –​incredible, misshapen remains of what was but a few hours back, a living destroyer’.99 She brings together an assortment of startling observations on the theme of suffering and despair, often not specific occurrences that she had personally experienced, that, through the use of light, colour and image, convey atmospheric tone that is frequently Gothic in style. One note written in badly faded pencil is highly evocative in its use of multiple senses: Black darkness all around –​the smell of the sea and the rain –​just in front a semi-​circle of light thrown by the ship’s lamps, showing up the wet rails on the quay and shining on the dark space below. Twinkling in the distance other lights, and at regular intervals ambulances arriving and stopping by the gangway, while slowly  –​carefully, four limp forms on stretchers are drawn out one after the other, lowered for a moment to the ground, then raised, & carried on board … Not even the darkness hides the white head on the next stretcher, it shows up startlingly as the lamp strikes it –​no particle of human face is seen –​only holes in a white mask … They hop, limp, hobble and crawl up the gangway and take their place in the semi-​circle of light, showing up the black darkness of the early winter morning. 4am on a chilly November day, with a Channel crossing before them, and, like as not, a Boche souvenir inside them.100

Language is used here with poetic precision and the effect is highly visual. Such observations, in which she has not written herself into the narrative but remains outside it, seemingly removed and impartial, have led Smith to note that Thompson’s ‘Base Notes’ exhibit literary characteristics, possibly not consciously, that at a later date will be considered modernist.101 v 23 v

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Women of war At the other end of the stylistic spectrum are the eight small pocket diaries, three inches by two, each labelled ‘Boys Scouts Notebook and diary’, that were kept by FANY driver Mary Marshall. It is difficult to read these for signs of subjectivity, as they are frustratingly factual and non-​descriptive, often with just one word recording what she did: ‘drill’, for example, featured several times a week in 1913 when she was training with the Corps. Her diary of 1915, by which time she was working at Lamarck hospital in Calais, records things such as ‘Night duty’, ‘slept 2 hrs’, ‘felt rotten’.102 Marshall was a close friend of Grace Ashley-​Smith, but even Ashley-​Smith’s marriage to Ronald McDougall, purportedly the first wedding in which the bride wore khaki, elicited only ‘Gracie’s wedding’. She herself noted that ‘My diaries were rather dull because I was always scared of saying something I shouldn’t.’103 On occasion she writes more but much of the pencilled handwriting has since faded and become largely illegible. They are, however, useful as a batch, as one can piece together how she was feeling over the course of nearly a decade: her 1915 diary records frequent bouts of depression, fatigue and sickness; the 1917 diary, when she is stationed at Port-​à-​Binson near Rheims, which was much quieter than the hub of Calais, notes her isolation, and there are numerous references to melancholy (‘frightfully depressed all day’, ‘Absolutely miserable all afternoon’, ‘slack day’, ‘Not very busy morning’).104 By contrast, she appears much happier in her 1918 diary, where ‘ripping’ and ‘topping’ appear often. Her diaries from 1921 and 1922, when she is back with her family, reference playing bridge, doing jigsaws and knitting, and there is a palpable sense that she is bored and wishing to do more (‘very depressed, hate most things’; ‘I am not sorry to see the end of ’22. So many illnesses and deaths and not a great deal of happiness in it for me.’)105 The war had given a form and meaning to her life that had left a gaping void, as it had for Grace McDougall (née Ashley-​Smith) stranded out in Rhodesia. Marshall also wrote regular letters to her family, and these provide more detail of her daily work and her mental health. At Easter 1918, for example, she wrote, ‘One gets the blues badly sometimes, you know … I am not so sociable yet. I believe it really is because I do find the people one’s meet [sic] here so impossible and uncongenial … I  haven’t got a real friend amongst them  –​it has never been like that with me before.’106 The immediacy of the diaries and letters revealing her loneliness and depression (as well as less savoury attitudes107) can be contrasted with an interview conducted by the Imperial War Museum nearly six decades later. With the distance of time, she came to regard her experiences in France quite differently –​‘The whole thing was very v 24 v

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Introduction interesting you know’ –​and, laughing at a recollection, she remarks ‘what times we had’.108 While published and unpublished first-​ hand accounts such as memoirs, poems, diaries, letters and oral interviews cannot give us direct access to personal experience, they do provide a revealing entry point to an examination of the Corps and its members as an example of gender modernity. By foregrounding the FANY’s own self-​representations, we insert ‘real’ women’s experiences into the analysis and get a sense of whether these elite women considered themselves as in any way ‘modern’. Another key source heavily drawn upon throughout Women of War is the contemporary print media, what Adrian Bingham regards as ‘an invaluable window into popular culture’.109 The FANY was a product of a modernising society in which textual and pictorial newspapers catered for the appetites of a public hungry for information about an elite group of martial women. The nation’s gaze was very much focused on the Corps, as they were the subject of extensive press coverage. They featured prominently in popular national papers such as the Daily Mail, one of the most influential dailies with over a million readers; pictorial journals, including the Illustrated London News and Daily Graphic; the highbrow dailies, for instance the explicitly Conservative Morning Post; publications with a working-​class readership such as the Workers’ Paper; regional leaders such as the South Wales Daily News and the Western Morning News; local newspapers including the Croydon Guardian; society papers such as Lady’s Pictorial; magazines such as The Queen, read by upper-​class women, and the Gentlewoman, purchased by the aspirational social climber; Vogue, the glossy fashion publication; Punch, the satirical magazine; and Home Chat, targeting working-​class women. They were thus deemed to have appeal across the social spectrum. News of their activities also spread throughout the United States, and they featured in publications in Wisconsin in the north, Utah in the west, Colorado in the centre, Alabama in the south and Massachusetts in the east. Articles and photographs were culled from one publication and reproduced in others in later issues. They featured in ‘hard news’ sections, such as on the front page and in leading articles, news columns and editorials. Placement on the upper-​left-​hand corner of a page, the closer to the front page and the more space (‘column inches’) articles about the FANY covered, the more newsworthy the Corps was considered to be, and the higher the status awarded to it by the editor. The FANY also appeared in other parts of newspapers, such as feature articles written by journalists as witnesses and by ‘expert’ writers, book reviews, cartoons, advertisements and letters v 25 v

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Women of war to editors sent in by readers, which serve as a barometer of contemporary attitudes.110 Their extensive newspaper coverage, which amassed cultural capital, resulted in the FANY gaining widespread legitimacy. Scrutiny of textual and visual representations of the Corps in the local, national and international press enable us to explore the construction of their public identities. The newspaper, the market for which had exploded in the late nineteenth century encouraged by the growth of literacy, had by 1907 replaced the pulpit and the pamphlet as the most influential form of communication. Roughly one adult in every five read a daily, and about one in three read a Sunday publication.111 The Corps’s activities would have been read about by a large proportion of the British public and, by serving as a model for identification, encouraged some women readers to consider the ways in which they might contribute to the nation, even inspiring some to join. Representations of the Corps may or may not have reflected lived ‘realities’ but the messages they conveyed, which were symbolically loaded, are fascinating. While the extent to which newspapers shaped the public’s attitudes toward the Corps is impossible fully to ascertain, we can conclude that articles largely reflected the views of their paying readership, publishing what they thought people wanted to read (not least because readers could purchase competitor newspapers if they disagreed), and providing ‘interpretative frameworks’ by which readers ‘made sense of their world’, while simultaneously sculpting those views through the articles they published.112 As Gail Braybon notes, newspapers are both ‘a reflector and arbiter of opinion’.113 Moreover, articles reveal much about contemporary attitudes toward gender. At a time when suffrage campaigners were showing that women could assume behaviours more commonly associated with men, an anxiety about the need to preserve conventional passive femininity can be detected. During the war, editors and journalists acting out of patriotism underscored the positive features of women’s war work. This was blatant propaganda. Membership of the Corps thus brought women into the public gaze in a novel and highly visible way. Bringing both public and personal representations into dialogue, Women of War sits at the crossroads of British, social, gender and women’s history, drawing upon literature in the diverse fields of military history, animal studies, trans studies, dress history, sociology of the professions, nursing history and transport history. It reconstructs the formation of this novel organisation, its adoption of martial clothing, its increased v 26 v

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Introduction professionalisation and its wartime activities of first aid and driving, focusing specifically upon the significance of gender modernity. While the FANY were radical progressives, New Women embodying modernity, challenging the limits of convention and pushing back the boundaries of what was considered appropriate for women in terms of behaviour, dress and role, concurrently, they held deeply conservative views, upholding Unionist, imperial and antifeminist values. That the Corps was a complex mix of progressive and conservative elements, simultaneously conformist and reformist, gets to the heart of the fascinating complexity surrounding the organisation: as a senior British army officer noted during the First World War, the FANY were ‘neither fish, flesh nor fowl but damned good red herring’.114 Notes 1 Hilary Green, Daughters of War (Sutton: Severn House, 2011), pp. 1, 3. 2 Hilary Green, Passions of War (Sutton:  Severn House, 2011); Hilary Green, Harvest of War (Sutton: Severn House, 2012). 3 Mabel St Clair Stobart, Grace Ashley-​Smith, Lilian Franklin, Betty Hutchinson, the Gamwell sisters and Mary Baxter Ellis, whom we will come across in the course of this book, all feature in Green’s stories. 4 Green, Daughters of War, pp. 11, 8. 5 Ibid., pp. 6, 8, 16–​17. 6 Ibid., pp. 14, 16, 20. 7 Ibid., pp. 62, 67. 8 For accessible overviews see Marianne DeKoven, Rich and Strange:  Gender, History, Modernism (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1991); Michael Levenson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Liz Connor, The Spectacular Modern Woman:  Feminine Visibility in the 1920s (Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 2004); David Glover and Cora Kaplan (eds), ‘Editorial’, in Conservative Modernity, special issue of New Formations: A Journal of Culture/​ Theory/​Politics, 28 (1996), 1–​2; Harry Cocks, ‘Modernity and Modernism’, in Francesca Carnevali and Julie-​ Marie Strange (eds), 20th Century Britain: Economic, Cultural and Social Change (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 26–​41; Bonnie Kinne Scott (ed.), The Gender of Modernism: A Critical Anthology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Alan O’Shea, ‘English Subjects of Modernity’, in Mica Nova and Alan O’Shea (eds), Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 7–​37. 9 Marshall Berman, All that Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London: Verso, 1983), p. 15.

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Women of war 10 Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement 1783–​1867 (London: Routledge, 1999); Eric Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783–​ 1870 (London: Longman, 1983). 11 O’Shea, ‘English Subjects of Modernity’, p. 11. 12 While aspects of the American Civil War were total, the First World War is widely recognised by historians as the first total war; Hew Strachan, ‘Total War in the Twentieth Century’, in Arthur Marwick and Wendy Simpson (eds), Total War and Historical Change:  Europe 1914–​1955 (Buckingham:  Open University Press, 2001), pp. 255–​83. 13 Mabel Annie Stobart, The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916), p. vii; Barbara McLaren, Women of the War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917), p. 136. 14 Edith M. Barton and Marguerite Cody, Eve in Khaki: The Story of the Women’s Army at Home and Abroad (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1918), pp. 96, 43, 5, 42. 15 Alison Light, Forever England:  Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London: Routledge, 1991). 16 Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 11. 17 Berman, All that Is Solid Melts into Air. 18 Felski, The Gender of Modernity. 19 Glover and Kaplan, ‘Editorial’, p. 1. 20 Bernhard Rieger and Martin Daunton, ‘Introduction’, in Martin Daunton and Bernhard Rieger (eds), Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late Victorian Era to World War II (Oxford: Berg, 2001), pp. 1–​21 (p. 7). 21 Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady:  Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–​1980 (London:  Virago, 1987) p.  167; Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (Houndmills: Palgrave, 1991), p. 100. 22 ‘England’s New Woman: A Woman of War’, San Antonio Light and Gazette, 8 July 1909; ‘England’s New Woman:  A Woman of War’, Logansport Daily Reporter, 8 July 1909; New State Tribune, 15 July 1909. See also ‘The New Woman: An Historical Note’, The Times, 6 January 1916. 23 ‘Women’s Militarism’, Medina Sentinel, 7 May 1909; Manitowoc Daily Tribune, 13 July 1909; Jefferson Bee, 27 December 1909. 24 Janet Lee, War Girls: The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 23. 25 ‘Women and War’, Daily Graphic, 25 February 1909. 26 Erika Rappaport, ‘Travelling in the Lady Guides:  London, Consumption, Modernity, and the Fin-​ de-​ Siècle Metropolis’, in Daunton and Rieger, Meanings of Modernity, pp. 25–​43 (p. 26). 27 Lucas Cleeve [Adelina Kingscote], The Woman who Wouldn’t (London:  Simpkin, Marshall, 1895); Victoria Cross [Vivian Cory], The

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Introduction Woman who Didn’t (London:  John Lane, 1895); Grant Allen, The Woman who Did (London: John Lane, 1895); Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis, ‘Introduction’, in Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis (eds), The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: ‘Fin-​de-​Siècle’ Feminisms (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 1–​38 (p. 1). 28 Sally Ledger, The New Woman:  Fiction and Feminism at the ‘Fin de Siècle’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 150, p. 5. 29 Mrs Humphrey, ‘The Restlessness of Modern Woman’, Isle of Thanet Gazette, 6 January 1906. 30 Julia Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (London:  University of Leicester Press, 2000), p. 170. 31 See for example ‘Modern Athletics –​a Diplotribicyclical Quartet’, Punch, 10 June 1882; ‘The Last New Fad: A Reaction from Asthetics’, Punch, 6 March 1886; ‘What a Charming Surprise …’, Punch, 15 June 1895; ‘The Force of Habit’, Punch, 3 August 1895; ‘Rational Costume’, Punch, 13 June 1896; ‘Fashion à la Shakespeare’, Punch, 11 September 1897; ‘In Dorsetshire’, Punch, 6 September 1899. 32 For example, see ‘A Suffragette’s Home after a Hard Day’s Work’, ‘The Suffragette Not at Home’ and ‘Taking It Out on Hubby’, as well as the film Milling the Militants: A Comical Absurdity, dir. Percy Stow (Clarendon Film Company, 1913)  and Nina Simmonds’ novel The House of the Suffragette (London:  Doherty, 1911). Krista Cowman, ‘“Doing something silly”:  The Uses of Humour by the Women’s Social and Political Union’, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, 52 (2007), 259–​74. 33 ‘The New Woman’, Church Weekly, 13 July 1900. 34 Max O’Rell [Léon Blouet], Her Royal Highness:  Woman and His Majesty Cupid (New York: Abbey Press, 1901), pp. 193, 191, 162, 164, 192, 188–​9. 35 ‘The Library’, Westminster Budget, 6 September 1901. 36 ‘The Truth about Man by a Spinster’, Mainly about People, 21 April 1906. 37 Bannatyne, cited in Irene Ward, FANY Invicta:  A History of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p. 30. 38 ‘Women Smokers: Increase of the Cigarette Habit’, Standard, 17 March 1914. 39 Penny Tinkler, ‘Sapphic Smokers and English Modernities’, in Laura Doan and Jane Garrity (eds), Sapphic Modernities: Sexuality, Women and Natural Culture (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 75–​90 (pp. 81, 76). 40 ‘England’s New Woman, Logansport Daily Reporter. 41 Anne Phillips, ‘Gender and Modernity’, Political Theory, 46:6 (2018), 837–​60 (p. 843). 42 Enid Bagnold, Enid Bagnold’s Autobiography (from 1889) (London: Heinemann, 1969), p. 55. 43 Grace McDougall (née Ashley-​Smith), A Nurse at the War: Nursing Adventures in Belgium and France (New York: McBride, 1917), p. 132. 44 Edward Baker, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’, Woman and War, 1 (June 1910), 3.

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Women of war 45 Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 197. 46 Light, Forever England. 47 Mabel Annie Stobart, War and Women: From Experience in the Balkans and Elsewhere (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913). 48 Flora Sandes, An English Woman-​ Sergeant in the Serbian Army (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916); Flora Sandes, The Autobiography of a Woman Soldier: A Brief Record of Adventure with the Serbian Army, 1916–​ 1919 (London: H. F. & G. Witherby, 1927); Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids: Women who Dressed as Men in the Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness (London: Pandora, 1990). 49 ‘Women Even in Motor-​Racing’, Illustrated London News, 11 July 1908. 50 Letter from Rona Dobson to Hugh Popham, 1 May 1985, Grace McDougall file, FANY HQ. 51 There are currently 152 active members and 232 associate members, some of whom are veterans; email from FANY adjutant, 21 June 2019. 52 For example, Cynthia Harrod-​Eagles, The Fallen Kings (London:  Sphere, 2009); June Gadsby, The Glory Girls (London: Robert Hale, 2007); Charlotte Bingham, Goodnight Sweetheart (London: Bantam, 2008); Hilary Green, We’ll Meet Again (London: Hodder, 2005). 53 Ward, FANY Invicta; Hugh Popham, F.A.N.Y.:  The Story of the Women’s Transport Service, 1907–​1984 (London: Leo Cooper, 1984). 54 Lee, War Girls, p. 258. 55 Janet Lee, ‘FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) “Other Spaces”: Toward an Application of Foucault’s Heterotopias as Alternate Spaces of Social Ordering’, Gender, Place and Culture, 16:6 (2009), 647–​64 (pp. 655, 657, 659). 56 Lee, War Girls; Janet Lee, ‘A Nurse and a Soldier: Gender, Class and National Identity in the First World War Adventures of Grace McDougall and Flora Sandes’, Women’s History Review, 15:1 (2006), 83–​103; Janet Lee, ‘ “I wish my mother could see me now”:  The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and Negotiation of Gender and Class Relations, 1907–​1918’, National Women’s Studies Association Journal 19:2 (2007), 138–​58; Janet Lee, ‘Sisterhood at the Front: Friendship, Comradeship, and the Feminine Appropriation of Military Heroism among World War I First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY)’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 31:1 (2008), 16–​ 29; Lee, ‘FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) “Other Spaces” ’. 57 Lucy Noakes, Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907–​1948 (London: Routledge, 2006); Laura Doan, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality and Women’s Experience of Modern War (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2013); Angela K. Smith, The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism and the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); Janet S. K. Watson, Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory, and the First World War in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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Introduction 58 For a discussion of the value of poetry to cultural and military histories, see Julia Ribeiro, ‘“Knowing you will understand”:  The Usage of Poetry as a Historical Source about the Experience of the First World War’, Alicante Journal of English Studies, 31 (2018), 109–​24. 59 Janet Butler, ‘“Very busy in Bosches Alley”: One Day of the Somme in Sister Kit McNaughton’s Diary’, Health and History, 6:2 (2004), 18–​32. 60 Grace McDougall, Nursing Adventures: A F.A.N.Y. in France (London: William Heinemann, 1917), p. 61. 61 Evening Standard, 14 April 1917. 62 See for example ‘Nursing Adventures’, Liverpool Courier, 10 April 1917; ‘Women at the Front’, Gentlewoman, 21 July 1917. 63 ‘Nursing Adventures’, Yorkshire Observer, 1 August 1917. 64 Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, Six Weeks at the War (London: The Times, 1914); Stobart, The Flaming Sword; May Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (London: Hutchinson, 1915); Lee, War Girls, p. 198. 65 Punch, 18 April 1917; McDougall, Nursing Adventures, p. 72. 66 Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self:  Personal Narratives and Historical Practice (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), p. 27. 67 McDougall, Nursing Adventures, p. 74. 68 Alison S. Fell, Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 197. 69 Ibid., p. 139. 70 Summerfield, Histories of the Self, p. 4. 71 Ibid., p. 91. 72 Similarly, ex-​FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart had political motivations for writing her account, wishing to enhance awareness of women’s wartime service. She repeatedly notes that she was motivated to write her book to show that women had ‘prove[d]‌’ by ‘practical demonstration’ that they were capable of performing important work in the defence of their country. Unfortunately, there is no mention of her time with the FANY. Stobart, War and Women, pp. xii, 4, 9. 73 Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 121. 74 Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London:  Routledge, 1994); Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories:  Living with the Legend (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1994); Penny Summerfield, ‘Culture and Composure:  Creating Narratives of the Gendered Self in Oral History Interviews’, Cultural and Social History, 1 (2004)  65–​93. 75 Katie Barclay and Sarah Richardson (eds), Performing the Self: Women’s Lives in Historical Perspective (London: Routledge 2016), p. 350. 76 Published under the pen name Pat Beauchamp, Waddell’s 1919 memoir Fanny Goes to War (London: John Murray, 1919) was part of the first wave

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Women of war of veteran books published in the immediate aftermath of the Armistice. She wrote eloquently about her joy at joining the Corps and of being part of something bigger than herself. It drew on her wartime experience and includes lengthy extracts from contemporary newspaper clippings. This account was re-​released in 1940 with a slightly revised title, Fanny Went to War (London: Routledge, 1940), and again in 2005 as Fanny Goes to War: An Englishwoman in the F.A.N.Y. (Burgess Hill:  Diggory Press, 2005). She also wrote about her experiences during the Second World War:  Eagles in Exile: Experiences of a F.A.N.Y. with the Polish Army in France and in Britain (London: Maxwell, Love, 1942). 77 Mary Marshall, letter to her mother, 31 May 1915, Mary Devas Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 78 Desmond McDougall, ‘A Spirited Stubborn Woman: The Story of a Woman at War. A  Biography of Grace McDougall, 1886–​1963, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corp’ (2012), Imperial War Museum, LBY 13/​149. This account was published as Desmond McDougall, War and Grace: One Woman’s Time at the Trenches (Whitley Bay: UK Book Publishing, 2015), p. 285. 79 Grace McDougall, letter to curator of the Imperial War Museum accompanying the manuscript ‘Five Years with the Allies, 1914–​1919: The Story of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Imperial War Museum, 16605, pp. 6, 1. 80 Grace McDougall, The Golden Bowl (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1926), pp. 7, 9. 81 Ibid., p. 210. 82 Ibid., p. 39. 83 Ibid., pp. 50, 63, 53. 84 Angela K. Smith, ‘Outsider Positions:  Negotiating Gender, Nationality and Memory in the War Writing of Enid Bagnold’, Women’s Writing, 24:1 (2017),  8–​22. 85 Bagnold, Autobiography, p. 12. 86 Lenemaja Friedman, Enid Bagnold (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1986), preface. 87 Ibid., p. 8. 88 Enid Bagnold, A Diary without Dates (London: Virago, 1978 [1918]), p. 31. 89 Anna Sebba, ‘Introduction’, in Enid Bagnold, The Happy Foreigner (London: Virago, 1987 [1920]), pp. vii–​xiv (p. vii). 90 Ibid. Stella Deen, ‘Enid Bagnold’s The Happy Foreigner:  The Wider World beyond Love’, English Literature in Transition, 1880–​1920, 44:2 (2001), 131–​47. 91 Anna Sebba, Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), p. 2. 92 Bagnold, The Happy Foreigner, p. 11. 93 Friedman, Enid Bagnold, p. 8; Bagnold, The Happy Foreigner, p. 26. 94 Rebecca West, New Statesman, 10 July 1920. 95 Helen Zenna Smith [Evadne Price], Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War (London: A. E. Marriott, 1930). 96 Bagnold, The Happy Foreigner, p. 207.

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Introduction 97 Deen, ‘Enid Bagnold’s The Happy Foreigner’, pp. 134, 137. 98 Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism:  An Historical Study of Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin and Adorno (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1984), p. 2. 99 Muriel Thompson file, Liddle Collection, WO/​115. 100 Muriel Thompson, ‘Base Notes’, 7 November 1916, Liddle Collection, WO/​115. 101 Smith, The Second Battlefield, p. 28. 102 Pocket diary of Mary Marshall, 3, 5, 24 January 1915, Marshall Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 103 Mary Devas Wilkinson, interviewed by Margaret A. Brooks, 25 July 1974, Imperial War Museum, 486. 104 Mary Marshall diary, 10 March; 10, 21, 8 April 1917; Marshall Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 105 Mary Marshall diary, 19 June, 31 December 1922, Marshall Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. See also archivist’s notes about pocket diaries of Marshall Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 106 Mary Marshall, letter to her mother, undated (Easter 1918), Marshall Box 3, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 107 ‘Just think of it 6 of them are negroes from New Caledonia, some islands in the Pacific! And also I believe they were the last cannibals … There was a revolution in their islands 20 years ago … they eat each other… it is rather awful to think that my patients –​who must all be well over 20 years old –​perhaps eat [sic] some man then. They are the most hideous negroes I have ever seen and that is saying a good deal. They have got very receding foreheads and huge jaws. Their faces are either square or like this [draws a trapezoid] I am scared of them needless to say but they don’t give me any trouble … they smell so. There is a distinct smell about a nigger which is loathsome.’ Mary Marshall, letter to her parents, 10 September 1917, Marshall Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 108 Wilkinson, Imperial War Museum, 486. 109 Adrian Bingham, ‘Reading Newspapers:  Cultural Histories of the Popular Press in Modern Britain’, History Compass, 10:2 (2012), 140–​50 (p. 142). See also Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-​War Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). 110 Glenn R. Wilkinson, ‘At the Coal‐Face of History: Personal Reflections on Using Newspapers as a Source’, Media History, 3:1–​2 (1995), 211–​25. 111 Hugh Cunningham, ‘Leisure and Culture’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–​1950 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 279–​339 (p. 312). 112 Bingham, ‘Reading Newspapers’, p. 142. 113 Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (London:  Croom Helm, 1981), p. 154. 114 Gazette, April 1920.

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‘Fresh laurels for the brow of womanhood’: The formation of a female nursing yeomanry

As anxieties about the possibility of an invasion circulated in Edwardian Britain, ex-​cavalry Sergeant-​Major Edward Baker established an independent female unit of mounted first aiders trained to undertake ambulance work behind the front line. He had first conceived the notion of his Corps, which took the name First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANY, after being wounded in the shin in a cavalry charge against the Mahdists in 1898 at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan. The inhospitable landscape proved taxing to the horse-​drawn field-​ambulance wagons that slowly navigated the terrain, and he was left unattended on the battlefield for several hours before being located and taken to the base medical post. He later was to record in the first issue of the FANY magazine Women and War that there was a ‘missing link somewhere in the Ambulance Department’,1 and though he himself was fortunate, many soldiers were dying of injuries that, if treated earlier, would otherwise not have proved fatal. Indeed, in the South African War, 13,250 men died from their wounds, and nearly 3,000 as a result of disease, whereas far fewer (5,774) were killed in action.2 Further service with his regiment, the Twenty-​ First Lancers, in that war confirmed his view that ambulance wagons, now drawn by oxen, which lacked springs and jolted their wounded passengers over the rocky terrain were wholly inadequate to assist small mobile mounted units of fighting men.3 Medical personnel riding saddle-​ horses could, he recognised, traverse the open ground far more quickly. Moreover, as various nursing publications observed, Cape Town had been ‘invaded’ by ‘idle society women’, ‘nurses only in name’ rather than those equipped with any training, each of whom was ‘posing as a ministering angel with Parisian gown and headgear’. Such ‘untrained women’ were, one wounded soldier wrote, ‘no good at all’.4 Baker undoubtedly saw an opportunity to improve competency. v 34 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry What motivated a man of relatively lowly social status to found an organisation of elite mounted female first aiders? A useful contemporary parallel may be Dr Hector Munro’s Flying Ambulance Corps, which was formed, albeit by a more highly educated and socially privileged man, following the declaration of war. Member May Sinclair speculated on the Commandant’s reasons: ‘Is it uncanniness? Is it obstinacy? Is it dreamy innocence? Or is it some gorgeous streak of Feminism? Is it the New Chivalry, that refuses to keep women back, even from the firing-​line? The New Romance, that gives them their share of divine danger?’5 Whether it was folly, idealism, egalitarianism or gallantry that prompted Baker to establish a women’s military unit, he spotted an opportunity to harness the enthusiasm and finances of wealthy women, providing training in first aid to those who were prepared to pay. Upon his return to Britain, he ‘thought out a plan’ to tackle the high mortality rate:  he envisaged a band of courageous, socially elite, skilled horsewomen trained in first aid, following in the wake of the cavalry and horse artillery, and, after the fighting had finished, galloping side-​saddle among the dead and wounded to tend to soldiers’ injuries and to assist in their transportation to the dressing stations. As FANY Mary Marshall recalled, their remit of collecting the wounded from the battlefield had ‘an echo of the Boer War’.6 Three years later, the Corps, ‘the first of its kind’, had ‘created a world-​wide interest’, and in ‘the opinion of military experts of all nations’ had a ‘great future’.7 It was Baker’s ‘FERVENT WISH’ that ‘every woman in Britain’ would join such an organisation. Having received instruction and regular training, the unit had ‘reached the highest possible stage of efficiency, and is READY TO TAKE THE FIELD at a moment’s notice, should there be the necessity to mobilise the defending forces of the country’.8 He deployed the rhetoric of sacrifice, noting that women would ‘ride with the skirmishing parties, take their chances with them, and, if spared’, undertake their task of ‘succouring’ the wounded. This, he acknowledged, was ‘a great work to ask of a woman’. However, he was confident that ‘should ever the horrors of war loom on our horizon THEY SHALL NOT SHIRK the task in front of them, but will ride forward with stout hearts and willing hands to render a great service to our country and gain fresh laurels for the brow of womanhood’.9 Thus, while Baker’s vision was couched in conventional terms of morally superior women undertaking their duty by providing comfort to men as they had done for centuries, he simultaneously envisaged a much more modern, extended, active and physically demanding role for women that placed them in a position of considerable danger on the battlefield. His idea clearly struck v 35 v

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Women of war a chord, and adventurous women, keen to escape the suffocating confines of Edwardian femininity, flocked in great numbers to his novel organisation eager to serve their country in the event of war. Analysis of the years prior to the outbreak of a localised conflict that soon evolved into a protracted total war spanning the globe has animated historians for decades. Military historians such as Edward Spiers, Stephen Badsey, Tim Bowman and Mark Connelly have examined the wide-​ranging changes the army instituted in order to make itself into a more modern force.10 The pervasiveness of imperial sentiment that underpinned the formation of various youth organisations in this period has been discussed by Alan Warren and Robert MacDonald.11 The myriad social and political domestic crises that unfolded in the Edwardian period, including class conflict, the controversy over female suffrage and the debate over Irish Home Rule, that resulted in a ‘deep-​ seated malaise’ have been the subject of studies by Samuel Hynes, Donald Read and David Powell.12 Women’s voices have largely been silenced in these analyses. The FANY, comprising privileged women who left written accounts of their lives, were featured regularly in contemporary newspaper articles and were interviewed decades later, can help historians fill that void, adding much to our understanding about the mood of the Edwardian period. They make a fascinating case study, not least because they were so pioneering:  Baker’s unit was the first military force to mobilise women, to wear uniform and to undertake training in preparation for war. Despite their very modernity, to date, the formation of the FANYs in the prewar period is discussed in just two scholarly works. In her excellent wide-​ranging account of women in the army in the first half of the twentieth century, Lucy Noakes has six pages on the FANY in a chapter entitled ‘Early Days: Women and the Armed Forces before 1914’.13 And in her monograph on the First World War FANY, Janet Lee includes a chapter on the social context in which the Corps was founded, focusing on the rigid class structure of Edwardian society, ‘scientific’ theories of female subordination, and emerging educational opportunities and legal changes to women’s status.14 The early Corps is thus ripe for a comprehensive analysis, and the next three chapters in this study on gender modernity examine its formation, its adoption of martial dress and its increasing professionalisation under female members. This chapter examines the climate in which the Corps was formed and that inspired Baker’s rousing article, with its penchant for florid language and indented capitalised text; the dual rationale of nursing and equestrianism that was central to his notion of the organisation; and the social v 36 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry composition of its membership, upon which rests part of the claim that these were exemplars of modernity. As we shall see, the formation of the organisation was the process of a complex interplay of social factors: it was the vision of a man living in the past but was populated by New Women who were very much wishing for a different future. A nation in arms: the militarisation of civilian life The FANY was founded in a period of intense introspection. Baker’s notion of a mounted unit of female first aiders, which was overladen with ideologies of class and gender, may have had its roots in a colonial past but it was firmly embedded in contemporary anxieties circulating in Edwardian Britain about its declining place in the world in the face of challenges to its hegemony.15 Barely a year after the successful campaign in Omdurman in which Baker was wounded, the country was plunged into a disastrous and protracted campaign whereby a group of 40,000 white South African farmers of Dutch descent seeking independence in the Cape and Transvaal repeatedly fended off a British force more than ten times its size. It took thirty months to foil these attempts and very nearly ended in defeat. The South African War dealt a severe blow to British self-​assurance, exposing many deficiencies, not least of which was the vulnerability of the military system, and the years that followed were ones of fear and self-​examination. The country was particularly in shock at revelations about the high proportion of would-​be volunteers who were rejected for being physically unfit. As the leader of the Scouting movement frequently asserted, ‘You cannot maintain an A-​1 Empire on C-​3 men.’16 The National Service League, formed in 1902 and born out of that context of near failure and resultant fear, sought to highlight the army’s shortcomings in fighting a future war and campaigned for compulsory military training for all physically fit eighteen-​to-​twenty-​one-​ year-​old men.17 The speeches of Lord Roberts, one of its founders and Commander-​in-​Chief of the British Army in the South African War, were published in the year the FANY was formed, entitled A Nation in Arms.18 By 1909 the League had 35,000 members, suggesting it was not an irrelevant interest group but rather reflected a widespread sentiment.19 Worries about the country’s military preparedness were enflamed when new conflicts, including the Russo-​Japanese War (1904–​5), broke out. The introduction of a series of reforms by R. B. Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, sought to improve the army’s recruitment, training, professionalism and readiness for war, and resulted in it being ‘remade … from v 37 v

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Women of war top to bottom’.20 One of the key changes was the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act of 1907, reorganising the existing disparate volunteer, militia and yeomanry groups, which had been a key plank of Britain’s ‘amateur military tradition’, into a Territorial Force in which men volunteered their services to the army on a part-​time basis.21 The trauma inflicted on Britain by near defeat in South Africa aroused intense imperialist emotions and was exacerbated by the alarm felt at new threats to the Empire. While relations with France and Russia were greatly improved by the Anglo-​French Entente Cordiale (1904) and Anglo-​Russian Entente (1907), those with Germany were deteriorating. An emboldened Germany was perceived to be attempting to rival Britain’s imperial dominance (by demanding colonies and its ‘place in the sun’22), naval supremacy (by increasing its warship production) and industrial might (by producing in huge quantities coal, steel, iron and electricity, and wanting a greater proportion of global trade). This challenge to Britain’s imperial possessions, military strength and industrial primacy as the ‘workshop of the world’ unleashed a war mentality within the country. Such an acute consciousness of the necessity to preserve and extend power –​what Anne Summers has called ‘popular militarism’  –​was fuelled by novels such as Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands (1903), which warned of the threat from Germany’s expanding fleet, and the most influential in this genre, William Le Queux’s epic The Invasion of 1910 (1906), on which Lord Roberts advised.23 Le Queux declared that ‘The object of this book is to illustrate our utter unpreparedness for war from a military standpoint; to show how … England can be successfully invaded by Germany … [in a] not far-​distant day.’24 With such inflammatory language and a fast-​paced, alarmist narrative telling of what I. F. Clarke calls the ‘war-​to-​come’, it was hugely successful and gained an even wider readership with its serialisation in the Daily Mail.25 Novels by Baroness Orczy, E.  Phillips Oppenheim and John Buchan stoked that sense of paranoia and contributed to a highly contagious spy fever.26 And the jingoistic tone of the popular press further spread alarm. As A. J. A. Morris notes, the ‘lies and half-​truths of irresponsible journalists’ who wrote for the Mail and the Express  –​ ‘simple-​minded, vulgar trash … jingo rags’ –​promoted an irrational loathing of Germany, fuelling ‘Teutophobia’.27 FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart recollected that a possible invasion was ‘expected every morning at breakfast time with the arrival of the Daily Mail … the population was in a real state of panic’.28 The threat was certainly deemed credible by the founder of the FANY, motivating him to propose a military exercise to provide first aid in the v 38 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry wake of such an attack, as we shall see in Chapter 3. Images of war were so in abundance in the Edwardian period that Britain was, in the words of Michael Paris, effectively a ‘warrior nation’.29 Amid such concerns about Britain’s conflict-​preparedness a number of uniformed organisations were established that, as David Powell asserts, ‘strengthened the sinews of the nation’s manhood, or at least its boyhood’.30 These included the Boys’ Brigade (1883), Church Lads’ Brigade (1891), London Diocesan Church Lads’ Brigade (1891), Jewish Lads’ Brigade (1895), Catholic Boys’ Brigade (1896), Lads’ Drill Association (1897), Boys’ Life Brigade (1899), Boy Scouts (1908) and Officer Training Corps (1908).31 Another club that inculcated boys with a spirit of militarism, preparing the ‘imperial warriors of the future’ for combat, was the Cadet Yeomanry, founded by staunch imperialist Edward Baker, ‘a well-​known advocate of physical culture and a thorough disciplinarian’, and the man who conceived of the FANY.32 It offered boys aged between twelve and seventeen, who were from ‘good social position whose parents are able to bear the –​not heavy –​expense’, the opportunity to be ‘embryo soldiers’ by training in horsemanship, cavalry drill, signalling, basic veterinary practice and ambulance drill.33 They were active from 1907 but had folded by 1910. The largest of these Edwardian youth groups, the Boy Scouts, had reportedly drawn 130,000 members by 1912 and thus, as Michael Rosenthal notes, it functioned as a ‘character factory’ for a large proportion of Edwardian adolescents.34 With the exception of the Church Lads’ Brigade, which was an ‘official’ cadet force, and the Officer Training Corps, which was an authorised component of the British Army with War Office support (including the involvement of officers and NCOs) and subsidies, these boys’ groups were not officially affiliated to the military but, nevertheless, they were distinctly militarised.35 Duty, loyalty, obedience, honour and sacrifice  –​what J.  O. Springhall calls the ‘emotional moulds’ within which the country’s imperial outlook was set –​became the motto of these modern organisations, which were preparing impressionable boys to serve on the imperial frontier.36 With so many units each seeking to contribute to national efficiency by providing more than 40 per cent of teenage boys who belonged to them with a military-​style apprenticeship, instilling in them codes of martial honour and attiring them in uniforms that had military echoes, and with over half-​a-​million men in uniform in the regular army, Territorials and Special Reserve, militarism pervaded British society.37 Although much of the reorganisation of civic life focused on boys and men, girls were not overlooked in this quest for an efficient citizenry to v 39 v

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Women of war serve the Empire:  the formation of ‘sister’ organisations, including the Girls’ Guildry (1900), Church Red Cross Brigade (1901), Girls’ Life Brigade (1902) and Girl Guides (1908), as well as over 6,000 girls who had joined the Scouts by November 1909, gave young women, whose imaginations had been fired by reading G. A. Henty and H. Rider Haggard along with their brothers, an opportunity to wear military-​style uniform, be self-​sufficient, learn new skills such as drill and first aid, and experience what Graham Dawson calls the ‘pleasure-​culture of war’.38 Books specifically written for girls were also published in the first decade of the twentieth century that included stories about the Indian Mutiny and the South African War. Henty, who was hugely popular with girls too, wrote a piece called ‘A Frontier Girl’, in which the title character wielded a weapon, paddled canoes, and was composed and fearless, while Bessie Marchant, the ‘girls’ Henty’, wrote over 130 books.39 They were often set against the backdrop of an imperial landscape, featured female characters who came into their own under crisis, undertook a man’s role, often rescued the hero and frequently either aspired to be nurses or put into practice their first aid skills. Another hugely prolific author was L. T. Meade, who wrote about 250 books. One of her most popular was entitled A Sister of the Red Cross and celebrated the wartime nurse.40 Such novels, which were part of the broader New Woman fiction, inculcated readers with a sense of mission. Girls, too, had fantasies about heroic exploits and were determined to contribute to the defence of the nation. A pamphlet produced by the Baden-​Powells exhorted girls to play their part: ‘Girls! Imagine that a battle has taken place in and around your town and village … Are you going to sit down, and wring your hands, and cry? Or are you going to be plucky and do something to help your brothers and fathers who are fighting and falling on your behalf?’41 Edward Baker, the father of a teenage daughter, Katie, also established a rather select mounted unit of ‘strong and efficient riders’ called the Girls’ Nursing Yeomanry Corps. As one member noted, he was ‘devoted’ to Katie:  ‘I think it was probably out of his feeling for her [that] he created the corps.’42 This group, which ‘stimulate[d]‌the spirit of patriotism and pride in our Army’, featured in an article in First Aid that played upon normative ideas about elite women’s superior morals and noted they would be a positive influence on their male comrades: ‘the idea of “mounted nurses” is good … [E]ach regiment should … have attached to its strength nurses wearing the regimental dress, riding with “the boys”, in time of peace making for their moral and physical wellfare [sic] and in time of war acting as their ministering angels.’ While reproducing historic gender norms, the article v 40 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry also emphasised both its pioneering status and its huge potential on the imperial stage. This ‘interesting’ ‘experiment’, of which it was said that ‘there was [not] anything like it in the world’, was deemed ‘a very good idea indeed’ by the army colonel who inspected them, and the article’s author anticipated that they might go on to be ‘the nucleus’ of other similar units both in Britain and on the imperial frontier: [A]‌girl who can ride well, and can also administer first aid in cases of emergency, is a valuable acquisition in a new country … [Some] will go abroad, and they will certainly keep up the honour and glory of the old country better if they are able to hold their own with their colonial sisters, who can ride anything and anyway –​side saddle, astride or bare-​back; and this is how English girls should be taught.43

In the aftermath of the near defeat in the South African War, there were repeated attempts to increase South Africa’s British-​born population. Physically robust and morally fit young women were required. Such exhortations abound elsewhere. The journal The Nineteenth Century, for example, encouraged women ‘of high moral character possessed of common sense and a sound constitution’ to migrate to South Africa in order ‘to help build up our Empire’.44 The Handbook for Girl Guides was subtitled How Girls Can Help Build the Empire and included sections on woodcraft, tracking, first aid, camping, self-​defence, sanitation, cookery, the Empire and citizenship.45 As Lucy Noakes asserts, ‘the Empire provided an imagined landscape in which women could fulfil their fantasies of escape, action and adventure’.46 Girls and women thus had a role to play that extended far beyond that afforded by their reproductive capacities. The various organisations that were in existence represented the very promise of modernity. The establishment of the FANY, in many ways an adult, female version of the Boy Scouts, must therefore be seen within a wider context of widespread paranoia and increasing bellicosity, a climate that ultimately helped to hasten the First World War, as Anne Summers observes.47 Yet despite the wealth of research into the militarisation of civilian life in the Edwardian period, the FANY, to date, has escaped the attention of scholars. Even studies of female nursing before the First World War have overlooked the Corps: Summers’ authoritative account of military nurses between 1854 and 1914 makes only passing reference to it.48 Despite the oversight by historians, the pre-​First World War Corps is a significant case study, not least because it reveals that it was not only men who responded to Haldane’s scheme to improve Britain’s defence system: young women v 41 v

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Women of war from privileged backgrounds rallied to the call to join a band of uniformed, mounted first aiders who would be trained in peacetime and mobilised in the event of war. As Summers notes, ‘Women’s experience of nationalism before the First World War does not seem to have been markedly different from men’s.’49 Their investment in the imperial project, one that had long been regarded as a masculine enterprise, tells us much about the Edwardian mentality. Qualified nurse Kate Finzi was dismissive of the ‘caprices’ of the ‘past generation’ who had not been ‘brought up with the public school esprit de corps which characterises the modern girls, and which has taught them to play for their side or institution, and not for their own ends’.50 Similarly, FANY Betty Hutchinson asserted that imperial sentiments were powerful motivators: My generation had absorbed the idea of responsibility; our men-​folk had gone out in peace as in war to SERVE the Empire with its many, many irresponsible people who suffered famine and disease. Despite ‘Paternalism’, we honestly felt that it was our destiny to supply the need.51

This study of the formation of the FANY and its subsequent recruitment, which the rest of this chapter examines, as well as the public’s response to a uniformed Corps of martial women and the early struggles to professionalise the unit, upon which the next two chapters focus, contributes greatly to understandings of the period. Moreover, the final two chapters on the Corps’s role in the First World War show how those Edwardian attitudes were put under pressure in a total war requiring the mobilisation of all resources. Here was an organisation that recruited socially and physically elite women, that trained them along military lines, dressed them in militarised attire with the intention of utilising them on the fringes of the battlefield, and whose activities were documented in the print and illustrated media for a readership eager to consume news of a novel organisation of modern young women training for war. As Summers notes, the ‘right sort of woman’, dressed in quasi-​ military uniform, performing mounted rescue work, lifting stretchers and camping, could be a ‘source of reassurance and hope’ at a time of intense anxiety in which the country’s ability to be ready for a future conflict was being scrutinised and reservations were widely held that some men were lacking.52 ‘A very feminine idealism’: the influence of Florence Nightingale In spite of Florence Nightingale’s activities at Scutari, military nursing had until the turn of the century remained primarily a male occupation. v 42 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry The debacle of the South African War, however, prompted the formation of a number of nursing organisations, and a flood of enrolments in them by women eager to play their part in national defence. By the time Baker formed the Corps in 1907, small units of military nurses had been established in Britain and also in some of its dominions, including Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada, as well as South Africa. British women wishing to be military nurses had been receiving instruction at the Army Training School since 1860 when it was founded by Nightingale, and could be deployed to work in military general hospitals from 1866 providing nursing care to soldiers. It was not until 1884, however, that the Army Nursing Service (ANS) was officially established. It never recruited large numbers and there were fewer than 200 nurses in the service and its reserve at the time of the South African War.53 In 1902, Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) was established to replace the ANS, and many nurses enrolled following the end of the war. Social status was important.54 However, it numbered fewer than 300 by early 1912, and a sister organisation founded in 1884 to tend mariners, called Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service (QARNNS), also drew relatively few recruits.55 Haldane’s reforms and the subsequent restructuring of the army also included the creation of military nursing units. The Territorial Force Nursing Service (TFNS), which followed the inauguration of a Territorial Force, counted nearly 3,000 members within four years of its formation in 1908. Elizabeth Haldane, his sister, wrote in the Contemporary Review in July 1908 that nurses were currently being enrolled for the new unit who had completed a three-​year term of training and gained a certificate, were in good health and had the consent of their matron. ‘Women cannot don the sword and helmet’, she asserted, ‘but they can fight their nation’s battles just as truly, if perhaps more subtly’. She was confident that ‘there is every probability that the women will prove themselves to be as patriotic and self-​sacrificing as their brothers’.56 Elizabeth Haldane was instrumental in establishing the largest of the military nursing initiatives, the VADs, founded in 1909. Unlike the other units, this initially had a mixed gender composition, with two-​thirds of its volunteers women, although it soon evolved into a purely female organisation. By early 1912, 26,000 had joined and by the outbreak of war, this had doubled.57 In establishing the VADs, the military took the ‘unusual and unorthodox step’ of handing over responsibility for the convoying of wounded and sick men from professional military orderlies and stretcher-​bearers to amateur civilians, as Sara Adams notes.58 v 43 v

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Women of war Katherine Furse recalled that her VAD training went far beyond that dictated by their syllabus and was more akin to a probationer’s experience in a teaching hospital, with lectures on hygiene and sanitation.59 In addition to instruction in nursing, first aid and bandaging, going to camp and learning to drill, VADs, as members came to be known, were also presumed to be proficient in domestic duties such as cookery, hygiene, laundry, darning, knitting and sewing. This unit was thus less militaristic than the FANY and also differed from it in receiving official recognition and financial support from the War Office. But like the FANY, as we shall explore in Chapter 2, members ‘suffered the usual fate of pioneers’ and, notes VAD Thekla Bowser, were ‘subjected to more or less good-​natured ridicule’.60 These schemes reflected the acknowledgement that war was pending, that existing forces needed to be supplemented by civilian volunteers and that women would be required in greater numbers than previously to serve as nurses. That they flocked to these ‘suitable organisations for the outlet of their energies’ suggests that women longed for action, refused to be marginalised within the imperial project and were inclined, like men, to respond to the call to prepare for a future conflict.61 Writing over two decades later, Furse recalled that there was a ‘value of so many having taken First Aid and Home Nursing certificates’ before the war. ‘Though these courses might seem to teach comparatively little’, she noted, ‘they served to prepare women to some extent, enabling them to fit more quickly into war work. And they did a little to eliminate our bug bear “the born nurse”.’62 We shall return to this in Chapter 4. Civic-​minded women were also able to serve in the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War (1870) and the St John Ambulance Brigade (1897), organisations whose members began wearing a military-​ style uniform to underscore their martial role and reinforce their value to the country. John F. Hutchinson calls this shift from private philanthropy to a mechanism of the State the ‘militarisation of charity’.63 The National Aid Society, as it was known for short, saw service in: 1879 in Zululand and subsequently in the Anglo-​Transvaal War (1881); the Gordon Relief Expedition and the two Suakin expeditions (1884, 1885); the concurrent Matabeleland and Mashonaland revolts (1896); the reconquest of the Sudan (1896–​8); and the South African War (1899–​1902); as well as the Franco-​Prussian War (1870–​1); the Russo-​Japanese War (1904–​5); and various conflicts among Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. It changed its name to the British Red Cross Society in 1905.64 There was then a place for women to undertake non-​military civilian service within this broader mobilisation. Thus Baker’s conception of the FANY, which offered ‘loyal v 44 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry and patriotic women who desire to work under the Red Cross flag’ the opportunity to be trained in first aid, was part of a broader shift toward women serving as professional or volunteer nurses in military contexts. We might regard the Corps as part of a wider mixed economy of warfare in augmenting units such as the TFNS and the VADs, which were financed centrally.65 Baker’s notion of female first aiders was safely entrenched within established understandings of femininity as compassionate, nurturing, tender, submissive, self-​sacrificing, gentle and caring.66 It built on the traditions of women’s philanthropic work within the armed services, such as those who founded and volunteered at religious missions, temperance clubs, hospitals and Sailors’ Rests.67 Undertaking charitable work was one way in which leisured women with time on their hands could fulfil the obligations of citizenship, enter the public sphere, utilise their social skills, evade the control of chaperones, push against the boundaries of enforced idleness, extend their influence and be useful to others, all the while remaining within the bounds of acceptable feminine behaviour, as Anne Summers, F. K. Prochaska and Jane Lewis note.68 Moreover, women were believed to have a ‘natural’ predisposition toward caring for others. By the 1840s, upper-​and middle-​class women were starting to tend to the sick, and it was widely believed right through into the First World War that elite women with little training were innately equipped with the capacity for nursing.69 News of Florence Nightingale’s role at Scutari Hospital during the Crimean War further promoted nursing among socially elite British women as a respectable vocation, having largely shed its association with servants, prostitutes, dissolute women who drank excessively (exemplified by Grace Poole in Jane Eyre and Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig in Martin Chuzzlewit) and lower-​class ‘camp followers’ –​a pejorative term to refer to women who performed various support roles, including nursing.70 Their class identities not only conferred a greatly enhanced status on nursing, but also enabled these elite women to: attend to the naked bodies of male patients, many of whom were exhibiting the signs of syphilis; undertake filthy menial labour; and work alongside working-​ class male orderlies in often squalid conditions without their character being called into question. Nevertheless, a quarter of a century after the Crimea, the army had just a dozen female nurses in its ranks.71 Baker was clearly influenced by the activities of Nightingale and ‘her courageous band of helpers’, whose aid to the wounded was offered voluntarily.72 The eighty-​seven-​year-​old Nightingale had, in 1907, the year the FANY were formed, become the first female recipient of the Order of v 45 v

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Women of war Merit from Edward VII, an honour that resulted, according to one of her biographers, in ‘a fresh cult of her name and work’.73 In a report he wrote in 1909 outlining his original intention in founding the Corps, Baker noted ‘This is no more than Florence Nightingale did in the Crimea.’74 A 1910 article about her in the FANY magazine was headed ‘A Woman We All Honour’, and within a fortnight of her death that August, letters headed ‘Are There No Florence Nightingales Left?’ were sent to twelve leading newspapers advertising a horse ride from London to Edinburgh (as we shall see in Chapter 3).75 A later issue of the magazine announcing her death that same year described members’ wishes to follow in her footsteps, proclaiming their desire to ‘prove ourselves worthy countrywomen of the first and greatest of Britain’s army nurses’.76 The inspiration of Nightingale became part of the Corps’s popular memory: reflecting on its formation on the fiftieth anniversary in 1957, Mary Baxter Ellis, who joined in August 1915 and later became Commanding Officer, noted that the Corps was created out of a ‘very feminine idealism centred round that great Victorian heroine, Florence Nightingale’.77 In such ways, the Corps conformed to traditional conservative attitudes. Nightingale’s legacy launched not only various military nursing services such as QAIMNS, TFNS, VADs and FANY, but it also shaped what Janet Watson calls ‘a cultural memory of ladies of leisure dashing off to the battlefields’.78 Because of a shortage of military nurses within the ANS and its reserve, which counted fewer than 200 to draw upon, many civilian nurses enlisted for service in the South African War, swelling the number to nearly 900.79 One of them was Isabel Wicks, who a decade later, in October 1909 at the age of thirty-​four, joined the FANY. In addition to professional nurses, untrained but altruistic upper-​class women, dismissively referred to as ‘butterflies’ in that they were decorative, fragile and fluttering, also travelled to the veldt and set themselves up as ‘nurses’.80 One of the very earliest FANY recruits, Lady Ernestine Hunt, had worked without financial recompense in field hospitals in both Egypt and South Africa, undoubtedly inspired by Nightingale’s work half a century previously. According to a 1908 article in the journal First Aid, her ‘practical knowledge of nursing gained in wartime and under adverse circumstances’ made Hunt an ideal recruit to the Corps.81 Both Wicks and Hunt were stirred by a strong imperial allegiance. Such altruism was, Julia Bush noted, ‘the finest and most feminine of all virtues’.82 Another FANY named Robinson, who joined in September 1913, was, like Wicks, a trained nurse. But they were the exception. v 46 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry A number of women who joined the FANY had, however, previously undertaken first aid and home nursing lessons:  Phyllis Puckle, for example, who enrolled in the Corps in summer 1918, recollected attending classes in 1913 put on by the VADs ‘with the purpose of being useful if war broke out … a conscious preparation for having to get experience’.83 Enid Bagnold, who joined the FANY right at the end of the war, arriving in France after the Armistice, had worked for two years as a VAD in the Royal Herbert Hospital, a military hospital in southeast London constructed for veterans of the Crimean War.84 For others with aspirations to being a nurse, the Corps was a route in. Mary Marshall, who joined in 1912 encouraged by an ‘ardent’ FANY, had been ‘always interested in nursing’. She recollected decades later that there had been a ‘vague’ sense that war was coming but that ‘we didn’t sort of take it very seriously … I personally wasn’t hoping for it. I was rather hoping to get a chance of some nursing some time but I didn’t think I actively wanted a war to come.’85 Cecily Mordaunt thought the prospect of conflict was ‘a remote possibility, an unlikely event’, and when asked if she thought she would be able to utilise her first aid training in a war situation, Edith Walton responded ‘none whatsoever’.86 She had joined in February 1909 aged twenty and was still a member with unbroken service in 1967. She had wanted to go into nursing: ‘just something I fancied to do’. She recollected: My mother was against me training as a nurse. She said I was not strong enough … She was always against nurses. I  don’t know why but she had no love of nurses at all … She saw in the paper a huge page about girls who could join a corps who could be taught to ride and first aid and she said to me. Well, here you are. Here is the very thing for you. You needn’t go into a hospital you can learn your first aid through this Corps.87

The FANY was thus a respectable means into a profession that in the minds of some of the older generation continued to be tarnished by its association with camp followers. While she would not have received the formal instruction that women training to be professional nurses would have had at the leading hospital training schools, notably St Bartholomew and the London, by joining the FANY Walton was taught first aid and home nursing. She recollected that ‘we had to take our first aid course at the polytechnic’ and remembered attending lectures on poisoning, bleeding and broken bones, and practicing bandaging and stretcher drill on Hampstead Heath. Others reported volunteering in the outpatients’ department at Bolingbroke Hospital and working in the military field v 47 v

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Women of war hospital at Bisley, recalling ‘the hours we put in at different hospitals doing dressings, learning to make beds, tak[ing] temperatures etc!’88 Most members were complete novices, and they were expected to purchase first aid supplies, always to carry a basic kit when in uniform and to practice regularly so that they could pass, within twelve months of enlisting, examinations, both practical and written, and be awarded certificates proclaiming their proficiency. Mary Marshall, who joined in November 1912 aged nineteen, kept her certificate, dated December 1912: ‘This is to certify that Mary D. Marshall has attended a course of Instruction at the South Croydon Branch of the St John Ambulance Association, and is qualified to render “First Aid to the Injured”.’89 Another from March 1913 confirmed that she had passed an examination in home nursing. Other members, including Lilian Franklin and Edith Walton, were awarded the St John’s Medallion for First Aid.90 In his broad-​ranging overview of leisure since 1750, Hugh Cunningham notes that people joined organisations such as chapel-​run football teams or the Boys’ Brigade because they wished to enjoy the leisure activities they provided and were largely unconcerned by the ideologies that the groups expounded. Despite members’ ‘calculating spirit’, in which they ‘extracted’ from the clubs what they needed and ignored their broader remit, whether it was religious, political or militaristic in nature, many undoubtedly absorbed and internalised aspects of the organisations’ discourses and may have been inclined toward them.91 Similarly, women who joined the FANY did so because they wished to partake in horse-​ riding, wagon-​driving and camping, and pursue a more active life. If the FANY training had purely consisted of first aid, it would never have attracted members, despite the belief that the country was at risk of being invaded and would require trained first aiders, as most had little interest in the underlying ideology of the Corps. Other organisations existed for that purpose. In order to attract and retain members, the Corps had to put on exciting activities; their very survival depended upon it. Thus the ‘Orders’ for October 1910 included just three first aid sessions, but they met eight times during the month to ride.92 And it is this that appealed to the New Women who flocked to the Corps in the first few years. ‘More suitable to a point-​to-​point than nursing’: a modern women’s yeomanry corps While first aid and nursing were key to Baker’s notion of the unit, the martial aspect was arguably more so, and it is its explicitly military v 48 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry nature that underscores its modernity. He chose to include the word ‘Corps’ as part of the title, a term that signalled this was a military unit trained to undertake particular duties. His bold scheme, in which members would ‘follow the fighting line as closely as possible’, controversially placed women for the first time on the battlefield where they would supplant non-​combatant men in first aid roles and risk considerable danger.93 While wars are generally fought to safeguard women (and children), Baker proposed sending women into the combat zone, albeit not to engage in fighting. He felt that any risk posed by proximity to the enemy was worth it so that men’s lives could be saved. When asked if there was not ‘great danger attached to this’, he downplayed the peril, replying ‘I do not consider that there is, in practice any more danger than stopping at the base, considering the distance guns are now made to carry.’94 Nevertheless, this was putting women in a position of danger and his progressive and novel idea, albeit one that was wildly naive and predicated on an understanding of war that Janet Lee rightly calls ‘sentimental and pre-​modern’, diverged considerably from established ideas of appropriate wartime roles for women.95 His army service clearly shaped his construction of the FANY and he evidently envisaged them as military personnel, not just medical staff:  recruits were known by their surnames, military ranks were adopted, uniform was worn. They had to commit for the minimum of a year’s service, were expected to turn out for duty within twenty four hours, had to disclose their membership of other organisations and had to possess a doctor’s certificate attesting to good physical fitness. There were height and age restrictions; they ‘trained on strictly military lines’, saluted and practised marching in formation, and undertook open-​air field displays. From summer 1909 they attended weekend and summer camps ‘run on military lines as far as possible’, training in camp cookery, Morse signalling, semaphore and ambulance-​wagon driving.96 And at some point in the first couple of years, Baker adopted the ‘courtesy title’ of Captain, a purely honorary status.97 It was not just any ordinary armed force on which Baker wished to model the Corps. He was steeped in nostalgic and premodern notions of martial endeavour that stemmed from his experience in the cavalry fighting in colonial wars. The romance of a mounted force with a high social prestige shaped his vision of uniformed members on horseback and, as such, they fitted into discourses of valour, courage and dash that the professional cavalry embodied. As Mary Baxter Ellis noted, the FANY was ‘created out of the Old World. It belonged to the age of v 49 v

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Women of war the horse. Its members, primarily horsewomen, took as their standard the élan and daring of their cavalry and hunting fathers and brothers.’98 Baker deployed the term ‘yeomanry’ in the title of his new group, as it made reference to the cavalry’s reserve. These paid volunteers gave twenty to thirty days service a year to train, attended an annual camp and were liable to be called for duty in the event of foreign invasion or domestic civil unrest.99 They were organised into regional units that were often called the ‘Hussars’ and drew a varied membership:  the Northumberland Hussars and Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars, for example, whose members wore very fancy uniforms embellished with plenty of braid, had links to the landed gentry and aristocracy, and had a long history. Other yeomanry regiments, however, such as the London Roughriders and London Sharpshooters, had formed in the aftermath of the South African War, were less prestigious, recruited from mainly urban areas and clothed their members in rather dreary uniforms. While the class background of the FANY was clearly different from this later group, and volunteers would not be paid, Baker’s yeomanry Corps similarly sought to prepare for a possible assault. As we have seen, Baker also established yeomanry organisations for boys and girls. Each of the three organisations that he founded sought to recruit proficient riders and train them in readiness for serving their country as a mounted corps. As a 1908 article noted, ‘The members are all strong and efficient riders and handle their mounts in a manner calculated to excite the admiration of critical equestrians.’100 Moreover, Baker fostered strong connections with other newly established yeomanry forces. The FANY had close links with the Legion of Frontiersmen101  –​a voluntary organisation of South African War veterans formed in 1905 by a constable with the North-​West Mounted Police to function as a pool of battle-​experienced men, to be drawn on in the event of a future conflict, and mentioned in William Le Queux’s The Invasion of 1910 –​and with the cavalry from the Military Riding School, who instructed them in mounted drill and side-​saddle equestrianism. They also had a considerable amount of support from the Nineteenth Royal Hussars (Queen Alexandra’s Own) and the Surrey Yeomanry, both mounted units formed comparatively recently (1858 and 1902 respectively) and thereby lacking the prestige of longer established regiments such as the Fourth or Eighth Hussars. This was a mutually beneficial relationship: while the FANY enjoyed support from these mounted units, the Corps offered them the sort of aristocratic connections that, otherwise, these regiments lacked. v 50 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry The training curriculum also suggests Baker’s desire for members to be taken seriously as mounted military first aiders rather than primarily as nurses: the FANY recruits went on weekly rides and were trained in horsemanship so that they could saddle, bridle, harness and yoke pairs. The early FANYs had to be ‘accomplished horsewomen’, proficient at both mounting and dismounting as well as riding side-​saddle, because they would follow in the wake of the cavalry.102 As Edith Walton noted, ‘that was the thing to do, to ride side saddle in those days’.103 Early members participated in various riding events, including the Territorial Forces Exhibition in May 1909, at which Katie Baker, the founder’s teenage daughter, won a gold medal for jumping, and the Ranelagh Club gymkhana in June 1909, where the Corps was awarded a cup for its ‘excellent horsemanship’. They also participated in exercises to rescue wounded combatants in a test of their proficiency as riders: members would gallop side-​saddle up to their male patients; dismount and administer first aid on the spot; either heave the men’s bodies across the horses’ hindquarters, which took great physical strength, or place them on a wheeled stretcher harnessed to a horse; and, having remounted, charge side-​saddle back to the start. As one FANY wrote over fifty years later, ‘this exercise was practised with great rigour and valour’, and the men they rescued ‘enjoyed the “fun and games” so much and were so keen to win they would rise from their prone position across the horses’ loins, drive home their heels shouting “give ’im ’ell, miss!” ’104 Such public displays of skill, stamina, physical prowess, efficiency and competitiveness, qualities characterised conventionally as masculine, illustrate why the FANY are a particularly revealing case study of gender modernity. On one occasion, highly competitive member Flora Sandes returned over a minute ahead of the others with her wounded soldier but was disqualified from the race because the judge felt that the speed at which she performed her exercise was more suitable to a point-​ to-​point than a nursing competition. Had the unfortunate private really been wounded … her precipitant haste would not only have seriously aggravated his condition, but in all likelihood she would have arrived at the field hospital with a corpse.105

Sandes was bitterly disappointed at her disqualification and bought herself and the private she had ‘rescued’ a glass of ale: just one sign among many, as we shall soon see, of her pushing against established gender mores. The presence of FANYs on horseback at competitions such as this one, as well as at military tattoos, the Army and Navy Tournament at Olympia, v 51 v

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Women of war

Figure 1.1  FANYs bareback-​riding at camp, 1911. Grace Ashley-​Smith is without a hat. and the Epsom Derby, led to a stream of women wishing to join. The equestrian nature of the organisation was certainly what attracted most women to the unit, and not the first aid side of it: while the majority of members had no medical knowledge whatsoever before joining, nearly all owned their own horses, were competent riders and regularly hunted. As Betty Hutchinson noted, ‘Being “yeomanry” most of us were horsewomen’, and Mary Marshall, who joined in 1912, asserted ‘A great many of the girls were you know country girls from big estates or quite well off people who’d always had horses, several of them.’ She, however, was ‘rather afraid’ of horses and ‘never any good a rider’.106 More typical of its recruits was Grace Ashley-​Smith, who affirmed that the Corps initially appealed to ‘prominent hunting women’ and was herself ‘crazy about horses’, noting they were ‘friends or companions to me –​not just hunters to be shown off for a season and then sold at a profit’.107 She had ‘spent a great deal of my teens careering about the countryside astride horses when it was not at all correct to do so!’, had studied physical training, fencing and horse-​riding at Aberdeen University and had been taught ‘tricks’ by a cavalry sergeant-major. She could confidently stand on a horse’s rear and she noted proudly:  ‘I had taken jumps without reins and stirrups, v 52 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry and gone over with my face to the horse’s tail. I could jump onto a horse when it was cantering, and it was solely because of the title Yeomanry I had sought out this corps.’108 Similarly, Pat Waddell recollected: ‘I was country-​bred and I adored horses’, while Katie Baker asserted: ‘Riding is my hobby … I am never so happy as when I am in the saddle.’109 Another horse lover was Enid Bagnold, who wrote the novel National Velvet and included in her autobiography a photograph of herself as a young girl in Jamaica sitting on a horse’s rump as was the custom.110 Baker’s scheme of a mounted unit of female first aiders who would ride at speed to administer nursing care on the battlefield would have been impossible to conceive without the construction in the 1860s of the pommelled side-​ saddle, which facilitated women’s independent entry into the public domain. Prior to its invention, female riders had to perch precariously sideways on the horse and were led by someone on the ground, usually a male servant or suitor. The side-​saddle with its additional pommel enabled women to sit face on, their right foot close to their left knee for stability, and they were able to control their horse without the need for male assistance, as well as gallop and jump over obstacles. It was ‘quite easy’, noted FANY Edith Walton.111 Such apparatus thus facilitated new gender identities, enabling women to enjoy the thrill of speed, mobility, activity and autonomy, as experienced by their male counterparts. With the development of the side-​saddle, the horse was, then, as emancipatory a vehicle as the bicycle. As noted in a recent Spectator article dubiously entitled ‘Side-​Saddle Is Sexy’, the device can be seen as ‘a liberation’: ‘With the side-​saddle, women entered the kingdom of the horse, seized it from men and made it their own.’112 The world of the horse was indeed historically the realm of men: the cavalry officer and the red-​jacketed huntsman that had inspired Baker, and to which Baxter Ellis referred, were key figures within the British popular imagination.113 Cavalry officers were also held in particularly high and romantic regard in France; Spanish kings were often depicted in portraiture astride rearing horses; the cowboy of the American West, a term applied after the Civil War to ranch hands who drove cattle, was celebrated in folklore, as was the gaucho, the poncho-​wearing, long-​ haired, bearded wild-​cattle herder of South America who lived by traditional equestrian values.114 The masculinity of each of these historic figures was secure:  they had tamed a wild animal, one that is often regarded as a symbol of virility and sexual energy; harnessed its power; and used it for the purposes of rural labour, martial activity or blood v 53 v

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Women of war sports that, in turn, served to revitalise manhood. Thus, riding, which was thought to foster manly traits such as competence, independence, self-​assurance, chivalry and physical fitness, signified the enactment of normative masculinity.115 What, then, of the female rider? Was she defeminised by her adoption of this manly pastime, and what impact did it have on constructions of normative femininity? Before the mid-​twentieth century, there are few representations of women with horses and there are no female equivalents to the cowboy or cavalry officer; the main image of equine women in British culture is that of the pony-​mad girl of the mid-​to-​ late twentieth century, a staple of girls’ fiction, who entered gymkhanas dressed in jug-​eared jodhpurs, tweed hacking jacket and velvet hunting cap, and spent her spare time at the yard caring for her adored animal.116 The mounted FANY is thus a striking case study, posing a challenge to yeomanry and cavalry units, which had hitherto been the preserve of men, and offering elite women the opportunity to develop expertise, independence, self-​possession, courage and physicality, attributes that were more typically associated with men. On the one hand, riding reinforced conventional gender ideals, as it invoked strictly gendered rules: while men rode astride, it would have been unseemly for a woman in 1907 to sit squarely in the saddle with a leg either side straddling her mount, and would have necessitated the wearing of bifurcated skirts that looked dangerously unfeminine. Indeed, the fashionably elegant habit worn by women when riding side-​saddle is just one of the many ways horse-​riding shaped genteel femininity, as Alison Matthews David and Alison Goodrum have discussed.117 Unlike many other sports, riding is not competitive, has no rules, is recreational, and does not require physical strength or the wearing of defeminising clothing. Moreover, the labour required to look after a horse, including grooming, feeding, exercising and turning out, fits within a notion of female nurturing and care-​giving.118 And yet given the hard, dirty and exhausting manual labour involved in mucking out and carrying heavy bales of hay, and the practical clothing that women wore at the yard, conventional notions of femininity were challenged by the female rider. Being around horses permitted girls and women ‘freedoms that they might otherwise be denied’, the yard giving them a space in which to be tomboys and enabling them to develop self-​esteem and confidence.119 As a Daily Mail article noted in 1910, ‘riding encourages pluck and independence, sureness of judgement, and quick decision, all qualities of immense service and necessity in times of emergency to women, as well as men’.120 Riding also v 54 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry encouraged physical freedom, as women went further afield, exploring the countryside. And by the early twentieth century, women had begun to assume the highly gendered position of ‘master of the hunt’, emerging as the New Woman according to Erica Munkwitz, and giving what she calls ‘an erotic charge’ that challenged the sexual relations between men and women.121 Thus, while it has long been seen as a masculine endeavour crucial to the project of fostering manliness, horse-​riding can also be considered a ‘feminized milieu’ that enabled socially elite women such as the ‘hunt mistresses’ and FANYs, as well as readers of riding manuals written specifically for women that were produced from the 1890s, to challenge dominant gender practices.122 A further illustration of FANYs’ subversion of conventional gender norms is the adoption of riding cross-​saddle. Such behaviour was an explicit articulation of modernity, ‘an innovation to this generation’.123 In her memoirs, the Marchioness of Londonderry wrote at length about riding: ‘In the nineties no nice-​minded girl would have thought of riding astride, as it was considered the reverse of convenable.’124 By the fin de siècle, it was ‘still considered very unusual … not considered comme il faut’, and during Edward VII’s reign it was still ‘most unbecoming … not considered “quite nice” … I  wrote an article on the desirability of women riding astride. This was just before the war, and the idea was most unpopular.’125 Riding with a leg each side of the horse was seen as unseemly and undignified. In Riding Astride for Girls, published in 1924, Ivy Maddison noted that ‘twenty years ago a girl who rode astride was looked on as a hoydenish creature with a shocking lack of modesty whose only reason for adopting their style must be a desire to ape masculine ways and make herself unduly conspicuous’.126 King George V had requested that no women riding cross-​saddle be permitted into the arena at the Horse Show held at Olympia in 1913. Indeed, it was not until 1922 that a woman entered the ring riding astride. One of the reasons for its being so disliked was because it was thought to be dangerous to women’s reproductive capacity. The Marchioness, a mother of two, recalled Kaiser Wilhelm, who had ordered the wives of his army officers to desist from riding cross-​saddle, saying to her ‘I hear you ride astride like a man. It is very wrong, and you will never have children if you continue to do so.’127 FANYs’ adoption of riding astride in 1909 was thus unconventionally modern. It was initially only practised in the riding school and not in public, in order to contain societal disapproval.128 By 1910, however, they were riding cross-​ saddle through Regent’s Park, and their activities were photographed and featured in the press.129 Pat Waddell recollected reading the Daily Mirror v 55 v

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Women of war in 1913, a very popular pictorial newspaper targeting a largely female middle-​class readership, and being tempted by recreational opportunities on horseback as well as the chance to dispense with a side-​saddle: I saw a snapshot of a girl astride on horseback leaping a fence in a khaki uniform and topee [a lightweight cloth-​covered helmet dating back to the 1840s, as seen in Figure  2.2]. Underneath was merely the line ‘Women Yeomanry in Camp’, and nothing more. ‘That’, said I, pointing out the photo to a friend, ‘is the sort of show I’d like to belong to: I’m sick of ambling round the Row on a Park hack’.130

Rotten Row, the fashionable equestrian alley in Hyde Park, was a site populated by society women, and an increasing number had for several years been wearing divided skirts and riding astride.131 Twenty-​year-​ old Waddell, who held distinctly modern notions of autonomy, wanted to exchange her genteel life of elegantly sauntering side-​saddle about Rotten Row for one of activity and daring, having seen a photograph of a woman dressed in khaki uniform, jumping over an obstacle with her legs wrapped manfully around her horse’s girth. Thus it was the yeomanry aspect of the Corps that strongly appealed to its early recruits, and it is its membership that we shall now explore. ‘A busy band of aristocratic Amazons in arms’: the social composition of the Corps Baker began his mission to establish the Corps by advertising in national newspapers in autumn 1907 for ‘high spirited and adventurous young ladies’ in order to ‘see how my ideas on the subject would work’.132 The publicity attracted a number of young women to headquarters, which were initially based at 118–​22 Holborn, London, in a building belonging to Gamages department store. The first meeting was held in September 1907; within two years about 100 women, mostly drawn from an upper-​ class constituency, had been recruited, and there were ambitious, and wildly unrealistic, plans to increase to 1,000 members and form a Corps ‘in every big City and Town in the Empire’.133 In February 1909, Baker’s daughter, Katie, attended a recruitment event at Whitehall where, alongside male representatives of the regular forces, she signed up new members. This was reported in the media: the Evening News, for example, noted that ‘[l]‌ady recruiting agents’ had started ‘a systematic scheme of recruiting … taking advantage of the present wave of enthusiasm … and invit[ing] likely girls to join them’.134 News of this recruitment event v 56 v

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Figure 1.2  FANY wagon outside Gamages, the FANY headquarters, 1911. Note the huge attention it attracted. even reached America, and it was reported in the Oakland Tribune, a Californian publication. In addition to 1,000 mounted nurses, it reported that a further 3,000 ‘unmounted’ members were proposed.135 A wave of recruits came into both the FANY and the Territorial Force following the commercially successful dramatisation of Guy du Maurier’s popular 1909 invasion play The Englishman’s Home. This ran at Wyndham’s Theatre to a mainly packed house for eighteen months from January 1909 and emphasised Britain’s unpreparedness for conflict.136 A  FANY known only by her surname, Bannatyne, recollected that the Corps were ‘swamped’ as a result of the play.137 One such new recruit was Mabel St Clair Stobart:  ‘the play was crude, inartistic, melodramatic, and far-​ fetched, but it hit straight home … And at that moment my attention was drawn to an organisation, the Women’s First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.’138 She joined immediately, inspired by the play to contribute actively to the defence of the nation and Britain’s imperial supremacy. As Julia Bush notes, ‘the British Empire was a subject of interest, and even a source of great pride and enthusiasm, for a great many Edwardian women’.139 The proximity of the imperial imaginary in the minds of female recruits is made clear by their wish, articulated in the Corps magazine, to ‘help to maintain supreme the mightiest empire the world has known’.140 Joining the Corps was thus partly motivated by what one article circulating in v 57 v

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Women of war several American states noted stemmed from ‘an echo of the general jingo sentiment noticeable in all England’.141 These women, who were as susceptible as men to the lure of defending the nation, were drawn by the ‘devotional glamour’, as Sharon Ouditt terms it, of patriotic service and outdoor adventure.142 This yearning was also noted by a Daily Mail journalist: ‘Patriotic women who desire to serve their country in an active way have the same impulse that leads men to join the Territorial Forces.’143 Surprisingly, there were even applications to join the Corps submitted by German women. Two members speculated that this was ‘a possible subterfuge to discover the system which led to such remarkable efficiency without professionalism, officiousness or friction’.144 That they were rejected suggests that Baker followed the Territorial Force’s stipulation that only British subjects could become members and, perhaps also recognising Germany as a potent threat to Britain, did not wish his organisation to be infiltrated by a likely imminent adversary. A class-​based homogeneity was strongly in evidence as membership was effectively restricted to daughters of the aristocracy and the upper middle class:  the aforementioned Lady Ernestine Hunt was the eldest daughter of the Marquis of Ailesbury; sisters Cicely and Winifred Mordaunt were the daughters of Lady Harriet Sarah Mordaunt, who allegedly had a number of lovers, prompting her husband to begin divorce proceedings against her, embroiling the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII); and Josephine d’Arcy, who joined in 1908, became Lady Waechter three years later and her painting hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Others had been brought up in households with servants, educated by governesses, attended finishing schools on the Continent and had been presented at court as débutantes in readiness for social engagements throughout ‘the Season’. While the log book from 1912 shows that most members’ ‘town’ addresses were in west London, such as Kew Gardens, Richmond, Hammersmith and Holland Park, ‘most of the girls were country dwellers from well-​off homes’.145 Born in June 1888, Sadie Bonnell, whose father was a dentist, had governesses and recalled ‘living at home, looked after the servants, that kind of thing’.146 Similarly, country doctor’s daughter Phyllis Puckle, born in April 1895, was ‘brought up at home, under the sway of a succession of governesses’.147 Both parents of Enid Bagnold came from prominent families; her mother’s side was propertied and in politics, while that of her father, himself a colonel in the Royal Engineers, included many career army officers. Bagnold, who was born in 1889, lived in Jamaica as a child, was educated by governesses, spent two years in Germany and Paris, and had v 58 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry a coming-​out ball. Mary Marshall also attended a finishing school for two years from 1910 in Berlin, where she spent her time learning about dressmaking, art and architecture, playing tennis and the cello, dancing and regularly attending theatre performances, operas and concerts, as well as visiting galleries and churches. She was born in July 1893 to a solicitor and his wife, who were, like most parents, supportive of their daughter’s desire to join the Corps: ‘Oh they didn’t mind at all. They were very good about it. Quite interested I  think.’148 Similarly, Bannatyne noted ‘it was my father who heard about Captain Baker starting the Yeomanry, asked if I would like to join, and bought my commission for me. My brothers took it in their stride.’149 The old girl network was firmly in operation, with potential recruits being presented by an existing FANY or needing to provide two references.150 This mirrored the practice in some of the ‘class corps’ of the Territorial Force –​regiments such as the London Rifle Brigade –​where potential recruits were introduced by current members. Recruits had to be sufficiently affluent to have the leisure time to devote to drill and to attend Easter, summer and autumn camps; to offer their services voluntarily; to provide their own uniforms and first aid equipment; to own or have access to a horse; and to afford the enrolment fee of 10s, the monthly subscription of 6s to headquarters and the riding school, weekend and summer camp expenses, and regular first aid courses.151 This effectively excluded women from the working and lower-​middle classes. It is much higher than the £2 annual membership costs of men serving in the ranks in yeomanry regiments in the Edwardian period (equivalent to about £235 today) but is broadly comparable to an officer’s annual expenses of about £150 in a regular infantry unit (just under £18,000 –​although elite cavalry regiments, which prided themselves on lavish mess dinners, fine wine and expensive uniforms, might pay ten times that amount).152 This figure was far beyond the means of the average female worker who earned about 11s a week.153 Even some middle-​class women would have been excluded. Betty Hutchinson, the daughter of a Lancashire woollen manufacturer, was unable to join until January 1915: ‘Alas with uniform, hire of horse and so on I just could not afford it.’ She recalled being ‘very full of envy’ as she watched them set off from Marble Arch riding side-​saddle on their way to camp.154 The outfit alone cost between £15 and £20 (comparable to over £1,500 today). As Edith Walton noted, the FANYs were a ‘very nice type of girl. They had a very good background at home … Well educated girls’.155 By contrast, she came from a lower-​middle-​class background, her mother the proprietor of a small hotel and her father a v 59 v

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Women of war

Figure 1.3  ‘Women and War’, Daily Graphic, 25 February 1909. shorthand writer working in the legal profession, which led her to conclude: ‘I don’t think Captain Baker was very keen on me because I hadn’t any financial status.’156 Walton was the exception that proved the rule, however. The restricted class base was reported in many articles written about them, including one of the first. They were, a Daily Graphic journalist noted in February 1909, ‘a busy band of aristocratic Amazons in arms … [with] a constant stream of lady callers, most of them society folk’. They were ‘to be kept very select, only those who can find their own horses, pay all expenses and devote plenty of time to drill and study, being accepted’.157 One article published in several American newspapers in v 60 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry July 1909 noted these were ‘fashionable, well to do women … prominent women –​society leaders, rich, leisure-​loving’, while another reproduced in papers in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa asserted: ‘the ranks are recruited from women of position and means’.158 This continued to be the case several years later:  a 1913 Standard article observed that ‘the body is recruited from a class most of whose members ride well before they join’, while the Surrey Comet opined in 1917 that the Corps ‘should be of interest to ladies’.159 Their socially elite background conferred additional glamour upon a modern mounted corps of uniformed women. The FANY generated a lot of publicity in the early years and featured prominently in the press, which aided its recruitment endeavours. Grace Ashley-​Smith, for example, saw an advertisement for an equestrian female ambulance unit in The Times, while Pat Waddell, as we saw, first heard of the Corps when she read the Daily Mirror. Reference was often made to ‘Amazons’, the mythical band of brutal, war-​minded female warriors who have been alleged to have initially conceived the notion of cavalry: not only were they referred to as ‘aristocratic Amazons’, but as ‘The Amazons in khaki’, and the ‘Amazons of Mercy’.160 The new technology of printing machines that enabled high-​quality photographs to be reproduced cheaply, and the drive to capture an ever greater share of the reading audience, led to the inclusion of photographs and interesting articles written in an informal, often humorous, style that sought primarily to entertain. As Alison Oram notes, ‘the popular press helped to produce the shared mass culture of modernity’.161 They were depicted as exotic, sensational, exciting. Their activities at camp were also rich fodder for the press: their prominent media profile was beneficial to the Corps, which attracted more members, as well as to newspaper editors who, desperate for interesting copy to fill their pages, eagerly lapped up dramatic accounts of seemingly cross-​gendered civic performances and presented them to readers as tantalising tales to entertain. That reports on their activities reached readers as far away as Wisconsin, Alabama and Utah is evidence of the newsworthiness of this small band of ‘trooperesses’.162 It was also because of their class background that they attracted publicity: an organisation comprising working-​class women that was practising for war, encouraging the use of weapons and clothing its recruits in something akin to the king’s uniform would have been regarded as making a political statement, and would surely have been quashed as a dangerous threat to both gender norms and public safety. Although Baker attempted to widen its membership in early 1910, with leaflets being handed out at an East End factory dance, the Corps remained v 61 v

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Women of war exclusively a unit for affluent women. The select nature of the membership is attested to in the FANY magazine later that year with the inclusion of adverts for Bertrand’s Fencing Academy in Regent Street and the Regent’s Park Riding School.163 In addition to their elite social backgrounds, a further factor unifying its members into a relatively homogeneous group was a profound desire for adventure. As we have seen, Baker acknowledged that his organisation would interest ‘high spirited and adventurous young ladies’ who wished to seize the opportunities afforded by the FANY to throw off ‘the shackles of decorous femininity’, which Sharon Ouditt defines as ‘chaperones, corsets [and] flowing hair’.164 The work of the ‘modern girl’ who enjoyed ‘all the chances’ was, asserted Oxford-​educated anti-​suffragist Lucy Soulsby, in her booklet published in 1900, that ‘of raising, resting, beautifying, purifying the world she lives in’. Elite women’s ‘vocation in life seems more to be than to do’, and thus accordingly she needed to ‘cultivat[e]‌the Art of Leisure!’165 Although ‘aristocratic idleness’ was, as Anson Rabinbach notes, admired and respected, ‘butterfly women –​the type that is a survival of the mediaeval courtesan, the eighteenth century drawing-​room parasite’ were rare.166 Scholars examining aristocratic women in the Victorian and Edwardian periods have challenged the stereotype of the passive, acquiescent, idle woman, noting the gap between the prescribed ideal and the reality.167 Many women wished to escape the suffocating boredom that structured life as a lady of the leisured classes, and joining the Corps served as an outlet for their frustrations. Phyllis Morris, who joined in July 1912 aged twenty, asserted: ‘in the pre-​war days we certainly were adventurous!’168 The organisation appealed to ‘a number of wealthy women who just perhaps wanted something different to do’, noted Edith Walton, whose lower-​middle-​class background differed from that of the other members.169 The training, which combined outdoor pursuits such as riding, camping and hiking, with the worthy addition of first aid and ambulance work, held great appeal. One FANY recalled: ‘I lived in a little village in Scotland. You can imagine the narrowness. There was nothing to do. There was no one to meet. It was quiet and monotonous … riding a little, walking a little, shooting a little … [a] life of emptiness.’170 To those who wished to break free from the pervasive constraints of Edwardian domesticated femininity, to enlarge the scope of activities accessible to women and to enjoy experiences hitherto available only to men, the Corps offered alternative ways of being a woman. It provided women, ‘on whom the restrictions of the era sat very heavily’ and who possessed ‘a love of excitement and fads’, the opportunity to surpass the prescribed role v 62 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry expected of them in elite society.171 The pursuit of healthy outdoor activities, which belied the stereotype of passivity, helplessness and fragility, was associated with modern femininity.172 As Kathleen McCrone notes, sport was ‘transforming and liberating’, offering women ‘unprecedented opportunities to free themselves from some of the more entrenched and pervasive tenets of the Victorian ideology of femininity’.173 In Edwardian Britain, physical fitness was highly prized. Upper-​class young women were relatively autonomous and had the independence to pursue unconventional possibilities, such as taking up sports tagged until then as male preserves, including golf, cricket, yachting, shooting and stalking, as well as driving.174 A number of FANYs had learnt to drive before the war (as we shall see in Chapter 5): Sadie Bonnell, for example, drove an open-​ topped sports car around Europe. Pat Waddell recorded in her memoir ‘I loved running’, and in an article she wrote with another FANY that was published in the Cavalry Journal she noted that the Corps appealed ‘particularly [to] those of sporting proclivities’.175 Mabel St Clair Stobart reflected in her autobiography that she was ‘athletic and physically strong … possessed of a tireless energy’.176 She was a keen golfer, cricketer, skater, swimmer, ice-​hockey player, rider and county champion tennis player; enjoyed fishing and billiards; and, according to a 2014 exhibition, was ‘independently-​minded, rebelled against her conventional upbringing –​ which as a female she found restricting and frustrating –​and so refused to be presented at Court’.177 She was highly critical of the limitations imposed on women (‘When I was young it was not customary for girls to have ambitions or professions beyond that of marriage’; ‘girls seem to live up or down to anything that is expected of them’) and was scathing of her schooling (‘I was educated (sic) at home. My brothers went to Harrow and Oxford’; ‘my education was not worthy of the name’; ‘No Mathematics, no Latin, or Greek or Science’; ‘in those days it wasn’t fashionable for the intellect of the female sex to be taken into account. If you had brains and could not hide the fact, you were sent to College and University, more or less in disgrace, and nicknamed a blue-​stocking’).178 The gendered culture in which Stobart grew up clearly had a profound effect on how she presented her history, shaping the account she produced. The FANY rescued many New Women who wished for more out of life, some of whom had lamented being deprived of opportunities by the fact that they were female. Flora Sandes, who enjoyed an athletic outdoor life with pursuits such as shooting and riding, asserted in her memoir that she had ‘the misfortune to be born a woman’, and notes in the first line of her autobiography that ‘I used to pray every night that I might wake up in v 63 v

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Women of war the morning and find myself a boy.’179 This seeming cross-​gender identification is also apparent in all three of Pat Waddell’s written accounts: she repeatedly stated that she had ‘always regretted that I had not been born a boy’, ‘always wished I had been one [a man]’ and ‘longed to be a boy! In fact I used to pray I could be changed into one as a child, and was full of high spirits and tomboy tricks.’180 Both Waddell and Sandes were conscious of themselves as (out-​of-​)gender beings, feeling themselves more masculine than feminine. This interior feeling of dysphoria, of a mismatched gender identity and a deeply held conviction that they ought to have been born male, was central to their sense of self, and they constructed themselves in opposition, rather than conformity, to ideas about femininity that were dominant or hegemonic when they were growing up. A number of FANYs identified readily as ‘tomboys’: Enid Bagnold, for example, was ‘good at sports’, dismantled her bicycle purely to learn how to reassemble it and was ‘a natural tomboy’.181 Lenemaja Friedman notes that ‘it more suited her “emancipated” disposition to remain, in one sense, the tomboy, to realise that like her father, she also had a curiosity about mechanical objects’.182 The ‘tomboy narrative’ was a common trope within women’s writing, having lost its pejorative connotations by the last quarter of the nineteenth century and developed what Sally Mitchell calls ‘a publicly acceptable face’.183 Charlotte Mary Yonge, writing in 1876, noted that it entailed ‘a wholesome delight in rushing about at full speed, playing at active games, climbing trees, rowing boats, making dirt pies, and the like’.184 As various gender and trans scholars have noted, a degree of female masculinity is widely tolerated in girlhood, accommodated by gender parameters that have less rigidity and more flexibility than in adulthood (whereupon a conflation of gender manifestation with sexual expression means that masculinity in women is often equated with lesbianism).185 Furthermore, the limitations of identity categories are illuminated by an increasingly sophisticated canon in gender studies that has usefully elucidated the complicated nature of gender as a category, as well as problematising the idea of gender-​specific actions, dress and gesture. As Sally Hines notes, subjectivity often falls across, between and beyond stable categories of ‘woman’ and ‘man’, and yet the status quo of binary sexes can be maintained, argues Jack Halberstam, while simultaneously merging gender characteristics.186 Indeed, FANYs’ ‘masculinities’, evident in their penchant for boisterous pastimes and a vivacious attitude to a sporting life, were not pathologised by contemporaries and associated with ‘inversion’ and lesbianism, but rather were regarded as evidence of their very modernity and indicative of upper-​class eccentricity. As Jenny v 64 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry Ingemarsdotter notes in relation to the Swedish interwar masculine modern woman, she was configured as enlightened and playful, not sinister or queer, and was accepted as an emblem of youthful progress.187 Moreover, as Janet Lee notes in an article about Sandes, Caution must be taken in characterising her as transgendered in the contemporary sense given the need to historicise her behaviour and experiences in the context of the cultural myths and social relations of the period, although she does fit an understanding of transgendered as pushing against the boundaries of gender in ways that help reveal its constructed nature.188

We need to be alert to the dissonance between how we might read such statements of yearning to be male if articulated today and what these women meant by these complaints 100 years ago. According to her biographer, Sandes, who had a succession of male admirers, ‘had not consciously chosen to stay single in her youth’, and in 1927, aged fifty-​one, married a thirty-​eight-​year-​old Serb she had served alongside in the First World War.189 Waddell’s and Sandes’ comments ought then to be read not purely at a superficial level of gender dysphoria but as a shrewd observation about the cultural valuation of male as superior and the concomitant privileges bestowed on boys –​and, by contrast, a bemoaning of the structural barriers impeding women, the frustrations they felt with those limited opportunities, and their desire to break out of the confines of such a constrained quotidian life and access more venturesome possibilities that were available to men. Thus they claimed male space by taking on the performance, routine and tasks associated with them. Sandes, for example, actively sought to rectify her circumscribed life: she travelled to Cairo in 1902 and worked for a year as a typist; moved in 1903 to America, where she travelled extensively; bought a motor car in 1908 upon her return to Britain; joined the FANY; had an overseas driving holiday in May 1911; served as a military nurse in a hospital in Serbia during the First World War; and went on to be enrolled as an infantry soldier, later promoted to sergeant-​major, fighting in trousered khaki uniform.190 She is often cited as a rare example of a woman who took up arms and saw active service in the First World War. Sandes was, then, ‘the epitome of the independent, forthright and determined “New Woman”, with an interest in fast cars, gruelling physical challenges and, above all, travel’.191 Other recruits to the FANY were also well travelled (Grace Ashley-​Smith, for example, had been to New Zealand as well as South Africa), were similarly modern in their attitudes and behaviours, sought to renegotiate their position in patriarchal society, and were equally v 65 v

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Women of war pioneering in their resistance to pressures to conform. A  few articles explicitly referred to FANYs in this way: in July 1909, articles printed in newspapers in Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma, for example, reported on ‘England’s New Woman: A Woman of War’.192 The FANY thus offered economically privileged, thrill-​seeking, athletic, modern young women such as Ashley-​Smith, Stobart, Waddell and Sandes, whose cross-​gendered identification was evident in their desire for masculine pastimes such as fencing, shooting, driving, riding astride and camping, the opportunity to release themselves from the ‘culture of constraint’ imposed by their backgrounds to have new experiences that were outside the usual narrow confines of their prescriptive lives.193 They had the will to test convention, a sense of adventure and the desire to lead an independent and active life; as one Edwardian FANY recruit recalled, ‘it was just another crazy experience I was trying out’.194 This was a far cry from the vocation that motivated many young women into the nursing profession. Conclusion The FANY, a small patriotic imperialist organisation that epitomised Edwardian Britishness in both its modern and reactionary forms, was founded in a period of intense anxiety about the country’s ability to be ready for a future conflict. While much of the reorganisation of civic life focused on boys and men in order to improve their physical fitness, the FANY sought to attract strong athletic women who were motivated by a desire to assist their country as mounted first aiders. Women who did not need to earn a living to support themselves needed to feel they were doing something meaningful. Thus the Corps offered women the appeal of uniform, adventure, mobility and modernity undertaken for a patriotic cause. While couching his vision in very conventional terms of feminine compassion that harked back to Florence Nightingale, Baker simultaneously visualised a much more modern, expanded, active and physically strenuous function for women. Thus their role as mounted first aiders could be mobilised as part of the wider imperialist project. In many respects, the FANY was forward-​thinking. It offered adventurous New Women from elite backgrounds an exciting and worthwhile outlet for their pent-​up energies and presented an opportunity to escape the suffocating confines of Edwardian femininity. Its objective of positioning women on the battlefield posed a challenge to conventional gender hierarchies. It was also liberal and modern in the opportunities it presented v 66 v

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry its members to access public spaces, to show skill and strength in its activities and to ride astride, and it was especially radical in clothing its members in uniform, as we shall now see. Notes 1 Edward Baker, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’, Woman and War, 1 (June 1910), 3. 2 Edward M. Spiers, ‘The Armed Forces’, in Chris Williams (ed.), A Companion to Nineteenth-​Century Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 79–​92 (p. 89). 3 John S. Haller Jr, Farmcarts to Fords:  A History of the Military Ambulance, 1790–​1925 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), pp. 76–​9. 4 Nursing Record, 20 January 1900; Hospital World, 27 January 1900. Cited in Eric Taylor, Wartime Nurse:  One Hundred Years from the Crimea to Korea, 1854–​1954 (Oxford: Isis, 2001), pp. 50, 55. 5 May Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (London:  Hutchinson, 1915), p. 111. 6 Mary Marshall, ‘War Record of Mary Devas Marshall’, Marshall, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 7 Baker, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’, p. 3. 8 Ibid., p. 4. 9 Ibid., p. 5. 10 Edward M. Spiers, The Army and Society, 1815–​1914 (London:  Longman, 1980); Stephen Badsey, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry, 1880–​ 1918 (Aldershot: Aldgate, 2008); Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The Edwardian Army: Recruiting, Training and Deploying the British Army, 1902–​ 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 11 Alan Warren, ‘Citizens of the Empire:  Baden-​Powell, Scouts and Guides and an Imperial Idea, 1900–​1940’ in John Mackenzie (ed.), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), pp. 232–​ 56; Robert H. MacDonald, Sons of the Empire: The Frontier and the Boy Scout Movement: 1890–​1918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). 12 Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1968); Donald Read, Edwardian England, 1901–​ 1915 (London: Harrap, 1972); David Powell, Edwardian Crisis: Britain, 1901–​1914 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996). 13 Lucy Noakes, Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907–​1948 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 29–​35. 14 Janet Lee, War Girls: The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). See Chapter 1, ‘Aristocratic Amazons in Arms: The Founding of the FANY’, pp. 23–​61. 15 Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind. 16 The phrase was originally Lloyd-​ George’s. Michael Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Baden-​Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement

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Women of war (London: Collins, 1986), p. 3. See also Ina Zweiniger-​Bargielowska, Managing the Body: Beauty, Health, and Fitness in Britain, 1800–​1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. pp. 62–​104. 17 R. J.  Q. Adams, ‘The National Service League and Mandatory Service in Edwardian Britain’, Armed Forces and Society, 12:1 (1985), 53–​74. There was a highly significant debate sparked by articles by Arnold White in the Weekly Sun, then taken up by Frederick Maurice in Contemporary Review and C.  M. Douglas at the Royal United Services Institution. It led to the Royal Commission on Physical Training in Scotland in 1902 and the Inter-​ Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration in 1903. Thanks to Ian Beckett for information. 18 Frederick Roberts, A Nation in Arms:  Speeches on the Requirements of the British Army Delivered by Field-​Marshal the Earl Roberts, V.C., K.G. (London: John Murray 1907). 19 Read, Edwardian England, p. 244. 20 Cyril Falls, ‘The Army’, in Simon Nowell-​Smith (ed.), Edwardian England, 1901–​1914 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 519–​44. 21 Ian F.  W. Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, 1558–​ 1948 (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 1991); Edward M. Spiers, Haldane: An Army Reformer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980); Hugh Cunningham, The Volunteer Force: A Social and Political History 1859–​ 1908 (Hamden: Archon, 1975.) 22 As stated by German Chancellor von Bülow in an 1897 speech to the Reichstag. 23 Anne Summers, ‘Militarism in Britain before the Great War’, History Workshop Journal, 1:2 (1976), 104–​23; Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service Recently Achieved. A Novel Illustrating the Possibility of a German Invasion of England (London:  Smith, Elder, 1903); William Le Queux, The Invasion of 1910, with a Full Account of the Siege of London (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1906). 24 Le Queux, The Invasion of 1910, p. 1. 25 I. F. Clarke (ed.), The Great War With Germany, 1890–​1914:  Fictions and Fantasies of the War-​to-​Come (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997); William Le Queux, ‘The Invasion of 1910’, Daily Mail, daily from 14 March until 4 July 1906. See also A. J. A. Morris, The Scaremongers: The Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896–​1914 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 148–​63. 26 David French, ‘Spy Fever in Britain, 1900–​15’, Historical Journal, 21:2 (1978), 355–​70; James Hampshire, ‘“Spy Fever” in Britain, 1900 to 1914’, Historian, 72 (2001),  22–​7. 27 Morris, The Scaremongers, pp. 3–​5. 28 Mabel Annie Stobart, War and Women: From Experience in the Balkans and Elsewhere (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1913), p. 5. See also Mabel Annie Stobart,

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry Miracles and Adventures: An Autobiography (London: Rider, 1935), p. 83; I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars, 1763–​1984 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 29 Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850–​ 2000 (London: Reaktion, 2000); Glenn R. Wilkinson, Depictions and Images of War in Edwardian Newspapers, 1899–​1914 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2002). 30 Powell, Edwardian Crisis, p. 140. 31 Martin Dedman, ‘Baden-​Powell, Militarism and the “Invisible Contributors” to the Boy Scout Scheme, 1904–​1920, Twentieth Century British History, 4:3 (1993), 201–​23. 32 Paris, Warrior Nation, p.  8; F. Cordeux-​Rhys, ‘The Mounted Nurses of the Girls Yeomanry Corps’, First Aid, August 1908. 33 ‘The Cadet Yeomanry’, Women and War, 1 (June 1910), 9. 34 Rosenthal, The Character Factory, p. 199. 35 Dedman, however, argues that the Scouts were not militaristic but were rather an educational movement aimed at developing character and citizenship. Dedman, ‘Baden-​Powell, Militarism and the “Invisible Contributors” ’, p. 218. 36 J. O. Springhall, ‘The Boy Scouts, Class and Militarism in Relation to British Youth Movements, 1908–​1930’, International Review of Social History, 16:2 (1971), 125–​58 (p. 127). The Boys’ Brigade, which was essentially a religious organisation, refused to become a cadet force under War Office control, while Baden-​Powell was also wary of forging a close relationship with the army, believing that drill would extinguish the autonomy that the Boy Scout movement sought to cultivate in its members. Drilling was, in principle, prohibited under the Illegal Drilling Act (1819), brought in after the Peterloo Massacre as one of the so-​called Six Acts. Thanks to Tim Bowman for this information. 37 George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (London:  Palgrave, 2015), pp. 38–​9. There were roughly 242,000 regulars, 246,000 Territorials and 50,000 Special Reservists by 1913; Bowman and Connelly, The Edwardian Army; Beckett, The Amateur Military Tradition, pp. 199–​200. 38 Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes:  British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinity (London:  Routledge, 1994), pp. 233–​58; Tammy Proctor, Scouting for Girls:  A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (Santa Barbara:  Praeger, 2009). These various youth organisations were not operating in isolation: Sir Francis Vane, Baden-​Powell’s second-​in-​command and first Scout Commissioner for London, inspected FANY recruits in 1909. 39 G. A. Henty, ‘A Frontier Girl:  A Tale of the Backwood Settlement’, in Girl’s Realm (1900/​1), 169–​76; Michelle J. Smith, Empire in British Girls’ Literature and Culture:  Imperial Girls, 1880–​1915 (Houndmills:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Michelle Smith, ‘Adventurous Girls of the British Empire:  The Pre-​ War Novels of Bessie Marchant’, The Lion and the Unicorn, 33 (2009), 1–​25;

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Women of war Terri Doughty, ‘The Empire Girl Goes to War: Bessie Marchant’s World War I Fiction’, Women’s Writing, 25:1 (2018), 95–​108. 40 L. T. [Elizabeth Thomasina] Meade, A Sister of the Red Cross (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1900). 41 Agnes Baden-​Powell and Robert Baden-​Powell, Girl Guides: A Suggestion for Character Training for Girls (London: Bishopsgate Press, 1901), p. 4. 42 Grace McDougall, ‘Prologue: The Start of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, Box 3, Imperial War Museum, 46733. 43 Cordeux-​Rhys, ‘The Mounted Nurses of the Girls Yeomanry Corps’. 44 The Hon. Mrs Evelyn Cecil, ‘The Needs of South Africa II: Female Emigration’, The Nineteenth Century, April 1902. 45 Agnes Baden-​Powell, The Handbook for Girl Guides:  How Girls Can Help Build the Empire (London: Thomas Nelson, 1912). 46 Noakes, Women and the British Army, p. 24. 47 Summers, ‘Militarism in Britain before the Great War’. The FANY were established not long after the recently adopted Martens Clause had been incorporated into the preamble of the 1899 Hague Convention. This clause sought to clarify the position of civilians who armed themselves and acted as francs-​tireurs. A. Cassese, ‘The Martens Clause: Half a Loaf or Simply Pie in the Sky?’, European Journal of International Law, 11:1 (January 2000), 187–​216. 48 Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens:  British Women as Military Nurses, 1854–​1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988). 49 Ibid., p. xix. 50 Kate Finzi, Eighteen Months in the War Zone: A Record of a Woman’s Work on the Western Front (London: Cassell, 1916), p. 250. 51 Betty Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 52 Summers, Angels and Citizens, p. 239. 53 Charlotte Dale, ‘Traversing the Veldt with “Tommy Atkins”:  The Clinical Challenges of Nursing Typhoid Patients during the Second Anglo-​Boer War (1899–​1902)’, in Jane Brooks and Christine E. Hallett (eds), One Hundred Years of Wartime Nursing Practices, 1854–​1953 (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 58–​97 (p. 72). 54 Eric Gruber von Arni and Gary Searle, Sub Cruce Candida:  A Celebration of One Hundred Years of Army Nursing, 1902–​2002 (Peterhead:  QARANC Association, 2002). 55 Summers, Angels and Citizens, p. 217; Jo Stanley, Women and the Royal Navy, A History of the Royal Navy (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018). 56 Elizabeth S. Haldane, ‘Sick Nursing in the Territorial Army’, Contemporary Review, 94 (1 July 1908), 356–​63 (pp. 363, 359). 57 Summers, Angels and Citizens, pp. 217, xviii. 58 Sara Adams, ‘Creating Amateur Professionals:  British Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurses and the First World War’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, New York, 1997), p. 9.

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry 59 Dame Katherine Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates:  The Story of Forty Five Years, 1875–​1920 (London: Peter Davies, 1940), pp. 293–​4. 60 Thekla Bowser, The Story of British V.A.D. Work in the Great War (London: Andrew Melrose, n.d.), p. 9. 61 ‘How Women are Preparing to Help in War:  Training for the “Voluntary Aid  Detachments”. The Work of an Auxiliary Corps’, Daily Mail, 12 March 1910. 62 Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates, p. 327. 63 John F. Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), p. 202. 64 A. K. Loyd, An Outline History of the British Red Cross Society from Its Foundation in 1870 to the Outbreak of War in 1914 (London: BRCS, 1917). 65 Jane Lewis notes that women’s voluntary organisations were a key part of Britain’s ‘mixed economy of welfare’, sitting alongside State-​run initiatives. Jane Lewis, ‘Gender, the Family and Women’s Agency in the Building of “Welfare States”: The British Case’, Social History, 19:1 (1994), 37–​55 (p. 40). 66 Baker, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’, p. 4. 67 Mary A. Conley, ‘“You don’t make a torpedo gunner out of a drunkard”: Agnes Weston, Temperance, and the British Navy’, Northern Mariner, 9:1 (1999),  1–​22. 68 Anne Summers, ‘A Home from Home:  Women’s Philanthropic Work in the Nineteenth Century’, in Sandra Burman (ed.), Fit Work for Women (New  York:  St Martin’s Press, 1979), pp. 33–​63; F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-​Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Jane Lewis, Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1991). 69 Summers, Angels and Citizens, p. 3. 70 Currer Bell [Charlotte Brontë], Jane Eyre (London: Smith, Elder, 1847); Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1843). 71 Summers, Angels and Citizens, p.  xiii; Sue Hawkins, Nursing and Women’s Labour in the Nineteenth Century:  The Quest for Independence (London: Routledge, 2010). 72 Baker, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’. 73 Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale in Two Volumes, Vol. II: 1862–​1910 (London: Macmillan, 1913), p. 419. 74 Edward Baker, ‘ “First Aid” in War Time … Women’s Role by the Founder of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, FANY HQ. 75 ‘A Woman We All Honour: The Career of England’s First Army Nurse’, Women and War, 2 (July 1910), 29. 76 ‘Miss Florence Nightingale’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 43. 77 Gazette, spring 1957, 8. 78 Janet Watson, Fighting Different Wars:  Experience, Memory, and the First World War in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 77.

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Women of war 79 Christopher Schmitz, “‘We too were soldiers”:  The Experiences of British Nurses in the Anglo-​Boer War, 1899–​1902’, in Gerard DeGroot and Corinna Peniston-​Bird (eds), A Soldier and a Woman:  Sexual Integration in the Military (Harlow:  Pearson, 2000), pp. 49–​65; Dale, ‘Traversing the Veldt with “Tommy Atkins” ’. 80 Taylor, Wartime Nurse, p. 55. 81 Cordeux-​Rhys, ‘The Mounted Nurses of the Girls Yeomanry Corps’. 82 Julia Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (London:  University of Leicester Press, 2000), p. 76. 83 Phyllis Puckle, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, 1973, Liddle Collection, WO/​097. 84 Enid Bagnold, A Diary without Dates (London: Virago, 1978 [1918]). 85 Mary Devas Wilkinson, interviewed by Margaret A. Brooks, 25 July 1974, Imperial War Museum, 486. 86 Cecily Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’, FANY HQ; Edith Colston, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, May 1973, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 87 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 88 A. H.  Gamwell and P.  Beauchamp Waddell, ‘The FANY’, Cavalry Journal, 11:41 July (1921), 272–​7 (p. 273); Phyllis E. Thompson, ‘More Glimpses of Early F.A.N.Y. Days’, Gazette, spring 1962, 20–​1. 89 Marshall, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 90 FANY log book, FANY HQ. 91 Hugh Cunningham, ‘Leisure and Culture’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–​1950 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 279–​339 (p. 330). 92 ‘Orders for October’, Women and War, 4 (October 1910), 62. 93 ‘Interview with Capt. Baker’, Women and War, 5 (November 1910), 74; Baker, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’, p. 5. 94 ‘Interview with Capt. Baker’, p.  73. See also ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, The Road, October 1910. 95 Janet Lee, “I wish my mother could see me now”:  The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and Negotiation of Gender and Class Relations, 1907–​ 1918’, National Women’s Studies Association Journal 19:2 (2007), 138–​58. 96 Gamwell and Waddell, ‘The FANY’, pp. 273, 272; Baker, ‘ “First Aid” in War Time’. Recruits were required to be over 5ft 3in tall and between the ages of seventeen and forty-​five; ‘Particulars of the F.A.N.Y.C.’, Women and War, 5 (November 1910), 76. 97 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 98 Gazette, spring 1957, p.8. 99 George Murray Hay, ‘The British Yeomanry Cavalry, 1794–​1920’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kent, 2011); Badsey, Doctrine and Reform, p.  12; Edward M. Spiers, ‘The British Cavalry, 1902–​1914’, Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research, 57:230 (Summer 1979), 71–​9.

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry 100 Cordeux-​Rhys, ‘The Mounted Nurses of the Girls Yeomanry Corps’. 101 Geoffrey A. Pocock, For Adventure and for Patriotism: One Hundred Years of the Legion of Frontiersmen. Soldiers, Spies and Counter-​Spies, Sacrifice and Service to the State (Chichester: Phillimore, 2004). 102 ‘Women and War: First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps. Interview with the Founder’, Daily Graphic, 25 February 1909. 103 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 104 Winifred Mordaunt, ‘F.A.N.Y. 1910’, FANY HQ. 105 Alan Burgess, The Lovely Sergeant (New York: Dutton, 1963), p. 11. 106 Wilkinson, Imperial War Museum, 486. 107 Betty Hutchinson, Imperial War Museum, 7712, p.  14; Grace McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies, 1914–​1919: The Story of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Imperial War Museum, 16605, p. 3. Grace’s maiden name was Smith; she added Ashley, the name of her family lodge, to her surname. 108 Letter from Grace McDougall to Maud MacLellan, 27 April 1962, Grace McDougall file, FANY HQ (emphasis in original); McDougall, ‘Prologue’, p. 1; McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 4. 109 Pat Beauchamp [Pat Waddell], Fanny Went to War (London:  Routledge, 1940), p. 5; RSM K. Baker, G.M., ‘Hints on Horsemanship’, Women and War, 1 (June 1910), 11. 110 Enid Bagnold, National Velvet (London: William Heinemann, 1935); Enid Bagnold, Enid Bagnold’s Autobiography (from 1889) (London: Heinemann, 1969), p. 3. 111 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 112 Simon Barnes, ‘Side-​Saddle Is Sexy: It’s Safer and More Elegant than Riding Astride’, Spectator, 15 April 2017, 16. 113 See Joseph Crawhall’s paintings The Whip (c. 1894–​1900), The Meet (c. 1894–​ 8) and Following the Hounds (c. 1898–​1901); and Henry Thomas Alken’s four plates in the ‘Fox Hunting’ series. 114 See the five paintings of Jacques-​Louis David of Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1800–​5). Daniel Roche, ‘Equestrian Culture in France from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century’, Past & Present, 199:1 (2008), 113–​45; Richard W. Slatta, Cowboys of the Americas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 115 Katherine L.  Dashper, ‘Exploring Gender in British Equestrian Sport’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Keele University, 2010), p. 147. 116 See the 173 equestrian books written by sisters Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-​Thompson, the first jointly written in their mid-​teens: It Began with Picotee (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1946). They went on to sell over 11 million copies globally. 117 Alison Matthews David, ‘Elegant Amazons:  Victorian Riding Habits and the Fashionable Horsewoman’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 30:1 (2002), 179–​210; Alison L. Goodrum, ‘Riding Dress History, with a Twist:  The

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Women of war Side-​Saddle Habit and the Horse during the Early Twentieth Century’, in Neil Carr (ed.), Domestic Animals and Leisure (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2015), pp. 175–​200. 118 Dashper, ‘Exploring Gender in British Equestrian Sport’, p. 149. 119 Linda Burke and Keri Brandt, ‘Mutual Corporeality: Gender and Human/​ Horse Relationships’, Women’s Studies International Forum 32:3 (2009), 189–​97 (p. 190). They are writing about a contemporary context. 120 ‘How Women are Preparing to Help in War’. 121 Erica Munkwitz, ‘“The Master is the Mistress”:  Women and Fox-​Hunting as Sports Coaching in Britain’, Sports in History, 37:4 (2017), 395–​422 (pp. 396, 402). 122 Katherine Dashper, ‘Strong, Active Women:  (Re)doing Rural Femininity through Equestrian Sport and Leisure’, Ethnography, 17:3 (2016), 350–​68 (p. 350). 123 ‘Ladies’ Sport. Riding Astride: Becoming General’, Standard, 23 September 1913. 124 Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry, Retrospect (London: Frederick Muller, 1938), p. 19 (emphasis in original). 125 Ibid., pp. 21, 22, 103. 126 Ivy Maddison, Riding Astride for Girls (London: Hutchinson, 1924), p. 19. 127 ‘Women in the Saddle: Disadvantages of Riding Astride’, Standard, 17 March 1914; Londonderry, Retrospect, p. 22. 128 Minutes of the Council of Senior Officers, 21 June 1909, box labelled ‘Women –​FANY –​Early Days –​Organisation at HQ’, Liddle Collection. 129 See ‘FANY Press Cuttings 1914–​1918’ folder held at FANY HQ. 130 Pat Beauchamp [Pat Waddell], Fanny Goes to War: An Englishwoman in the F.A.N.Y. (Burgess Hill: Diggory Press, 2005), p. 2. See also similar comments in Pat Washington, ‘Background’, Liddle Collection, WO/​130. 131 ‘Riding Astride in the Row’, Mainly about People, 25 February 1911. 132 Baker, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’, p. 3. 133 Baker, ‘ “First Aid” in War Time’. 134 ‘Lady Recruiting Agents’, Evening News, 6 February 1909. 135 ‘Woman’s Active Part in War:  “Sergeant Major” Baker Recruiting for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Oakland Tribune, 11 March 1909. 136 Guy du Maurier, An Englishman’s Home: A Play in Three Acts (London: Harper & Brothers, 1909). 137 Bannatyne, cited in Irene Ward, FANY Invicta:  A History of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p. 31. 138 Stobart, Miracles and Adventures, p. 83. 139 Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power, p. 16. 140 ‘The Training of Women to War’, Women and War, 2 (July 1910), 28. 141 ‘Women’s Militarism’, Medina Sentinel, 7 May 1909; Manitowoc Daily Tribune, 13 July 1909; Jefferson Bee, 27 December 1909.

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry 142 Sharon Ouditt, Fighting Forces, Writing Women: Identity and Ideology in the First World War (London: Routledge 1994), p. 34. 143 ‘How Women are Preparing to Help in War’. 144 Gamwell and Waddell, ‘The FANY’, p. 273. 145 Marshall Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 146 Obituary of Sadie Talbot [née Bonnell], Daily Telegraph, 13 September 1993. 147 Puckle, Liddle Collection, WO/​097. 148 Wilkinson, Imperial War Museum, 486; Marshall, Box 7, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 149 Bannatyne, cited in Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 32. 150 ‘Sheet with 14 Points’, Women/​FANY/​‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 151 ‘Particulars of the F.A.N.Y.C.’, p. 76. A khaki tunic and skirt purchased from the A & N Stores cost £3 15s 0d and an overcoat was priced at 3 Guineas; regulations, undated (after 1910), FANY HQ. 152 Evidence given to both the Akers-​Douglas Committee and the Stanley Committee in 1902; Ian F.  W. Beckett, A British Profession of Arms:  The Politics of Command in the Late Victorian Army (Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), pp. 22–​3. 153 Arthur Marwick, Woman at War: 1914–​1918 (London: Fontana, 1977), p. 16. 154 Betty Hutchinson, ‘My FANY Life’, p. 1, Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 155 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 156 Ibid. 157 ‘Women and War: First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps. Interview with the Founder’, Daily Graphic, 25 February 1909. 158 ‘England’s New Woman: A Woman of War’, San Antonio Light and Gazette, 8 July 1909, Logansport Daily Reporter, 8 July 1909, New State Tribune, 15 July 1909; ‘Women’s Militarism’; Manitowoc Daily Tribune, 13 July 1909; Jefferson Bee, 27 December 1909. 159 ‘Amazons of Mercy:  First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Standard, 19 February 1913; ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps:  How Ladies Can Render Assistance in the Event of Invasion’, Surrey Comet, 10 May 1917. 160 ‘Amazons of Mercy’. 161 Alison Oram, Her Husband Was a Woman! Women’s Gender-​Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture (London: Routledge: 2007), p. 6. 162 ‘Women’s Militarism’, Medina Sentinel, 7 May 1909; Manitowoc Daily Tribune, 13 July 1909; Jefferson Bee, 27 December 1909. 163 Women and War, 5 (November 1910), 65; Women and War, 2 (July 1910), 17. 164 Sharon Ouditt, ‘Tommy’s Sisters: The Representation of Working Women’s Experience’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (London:  Leo Cooper, 1996), pp. 736–​71 (p. 736).

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Women of war 165 Lucy H. M. Soulsby, The Use of Leisure (London: Longman’s, Green, 1900), pp. 9, 6, 23. 166 Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor:  Energy, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 27; Edith M. Barton and Marguerite Cody, Eve in Khaki: The Story of the Women’s Army at Home and Abroad (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1918), p. 49. 167 Judith Schneid Lewis, In the Family Way:  Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760–​1860 (New Brunswick:  Rutgers University Press, 1986); Pat Jalland, Women, Marriage and Politics:  1860–​1914 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1988); Joan Perkin, Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-​ Century England (London:  Routledge, 1999); Pamela Horn, Ladies of the Manor: Wives and Daughters in Country-​House Society, 1830–​1918 (Stroud: Sutton, 1991). 168 Thompson, ‘More Glimpses’. 169 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. Her voice does not have the same clipped intonation as contributors who featured in the BBC radio programme ‘The F.A.N.Y.s’ in the series ‘Home This Afternoon’, broadcast 26 September 1967, British Library, ILP0168195. 170 Paul Bewsher, ‘The Future of the Real War Girl: Will She Ever Return to a Life of Pleasure?’, Daily Mirror, 4 April 1919. 171 ‘Women’s Militarism’, Medina Sentinel, 7 May 1909; Manitowoc Daily Tribune, 13 July 1909; Jefferson Bee, 27 December 1909; Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 24. 172 Zweiniger-​Bargielowska, Managing the Body, esp. pp. 105–​48. 173 Kathleen E. McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women, 1870–​1914 (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 2. 174 Jessica Gerard, Country House Life:  Family and Servant, 1815–​ 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 137. 175 Beauchamp, Fanny Went to War, p. 176; Gamwell and Waddell, ‘The FANY’, p. 272. 176 Stobart, Miracles and Adventures, p. 11. 177 Sara (Sadie) Marriott Talbot (née Bonnell), Liddle Collection, WO/​114; ‘A Dorset Woman at War: Mabel Stobart and the Retreat from Serbia’, pamphlet to accompany Dorset County Museum exhibition 31 May–​15 November 2014, https://​issuu.com/​dorsetcountymuseum/​ docs/​dwaw_​003/​2, p.  2 (accessed 23 November 2018). 178 Stobart, Miracles and Adventures, pp. 11, 13, 18. The ‘(sic)’ is Stobart’s own addition to underscore her poor education. 179 Flora Sandes, The Autobiography of a Woman Soldier:  A Brief Record of Adventure with the Serbian Army, 1916–​1918 (London: H. F. & G. Witherby, 1927), p. 9. See also Burgess, The Lovely Sergeant, p. 7; Louise Miller, A Fine Brother:  The Life of Captain Flora Sandes (Richmond:  Alma, 2012); Janet Lee, ‘A Nurse and a Soldier: Gender, Class and National Identity in the First World War Adventures of Grace McDougall and Flora Sandes’, Women’s History Review, 15:1 (2006), 83–​103.

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The formation of a female nursing yeomanry 180 Beauchamp, Fanny Went to War, p.  5; Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War, p. 261; Washington, ‘Background’, Liddle Collection, WO/​130. 181 Lenemaja Friedman, Enid Bagnold (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1986), p. 2. 182 Ibid., p. 4. 183 Sally Mitchell, The New Girl: Girls’ Culture in England, 1880–​1915 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 103–​5. 184 Charlotte Mary Yonge, Womankind (London:  Mozley and Smith, 1876), p. 10. 185 Cameron Awkward-​Rich, ‘Trans, Feminism; or, Reading like a Depressed Transsexual’, Signs: Journal of Culture and Society, 42:4 (2017), 819–​41; Krista Scott-​Dixon, Trans/​Forming Feminisms:  Trans-​Feminist Voices Speak Out (Toronto: Sumach Press, 2006); Gayle Salmon, Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 186 Sally Hines and Tom Sanger (eds), Transgender Identities:  Towards a Social Analysis of Gender Diversity (New  York:  Routledge, 2010), p.  1; Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 1998), p. 20. Halberstam’s concept has been critiqued for validating the very binary it strives to deconstruct. See Claudia Breger, ‘Feminine Masculinities: Scientific and Literary Representations of “Female Inversion” at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 14:1/​2 (2005), 76–​106; Rachel Adams, ‘Masculinity without Men’, GLQ:  A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 6:3 (2000), 467–​78. 187 Jenny Ingemarsdotter, The Masculine Modern Woman: Pushing Boundaries in the Swedish Popular Media of the 1920s (New  York:  Routledge, 2019). See also Katie Sutton, The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany (New York: Berghahn, 2011). 188 Lee, ‘A Nurse and a Soldier’, p. 85. 189 Miller, A Fine Brother, p. 274. 190 ‘The Serbian “Jeanne d’Arc”:  Sergeant-​ Major Flora Sandes’, Tatler, 21 February 1917; Flora Sandes, An English Woman-​Sergeant in the Serbian Army (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916). 191 Miller, A Fine Brother, p. 17. 192 ‘England’s New Woman: A Woman of War’. See also ‘The New Woman: An Historical Note’, The Times, 6 January 1916. 193 Ouditt, ‘Tommy’s Sisters’, p. 749. 194 Bannatyne, cited in Ward, F.A.N.Y Invicta, p. 32.

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‘Hussies’, ‘freaks’ and ‘lady soldiers’: Constructing the uniformed woman

The sight of women dressed in scarlet uniform riding along Oxford Street in 1909 provoked quite a reaction. Some members of the public who witnessed the novel spectacle were perturbed by the gender deviance on display. They questioned the women’s access to public space and chastised them for not performing femininity appropriately:  ‘Look at that red-​haired hussy in front. Why can’t she stay at home and darn her husband’s socks?’1 This incident, which inspires the opening of Hilary Green’s romantic novel Daughters of War, as we saw in the Introduction, is indicative of just one of the ways that uniformed FANYs were perceived by the general public to be embodying a modern mode of femininity.2 Early FANYs were openly ridiculed and subjected to mocking gibes and verbal rebukes. The hostile reaction was undoubtedly because they were the first women’s organisation to wear military uniform: the public had never before seen groups of women dressed in clothing tagged as male. Wearing their boldly coloured uniforms in the public domain was an audacious, visible statement and they were to be scrutinised for what their clothing choices signalled about them, both as individuals and as representatives of their sex. Clothes are highly gendered, serving to reinforce sexual difference and thus the very act of donning a uniform disturbed gender norms:  women clothed publicly in male attire were intrinsically destabilising. By discarding bodices, blouses, bonnets, dainty shoes and ankle-​length skirts in favour of wearing ties, tunics, peaked hats, stout boots and bifurcated skirts that resembled trousers, and by being highly visible in such clothing in the public domain, FANYs posed a challenge to conventional gender norms. By blurring sartorial gender distinctions, they ran the risk of being regarded as ‘un-​sexed females’.3 The instability of uniformed femininity generated anxieties surrounding gender disruption, which was further exacerbated by their confident v 78 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman occupation of public space, their evident self-​militarisation and their blatant preparations for wartime scenarios in peacetime, all illustrations of their very modernity. Many narratives of the New Woman are preoccupied with their clothing. While fashion played a key role in shaping modern femininity, it was military uniform in particular that was the trademark of the emancipated New Woman. In donning martial dress prior to the First World War, the FANY was out of step with the times –​ it presented an image to onlookers of dangerous femininity, of modern independent women, of a changing world. They were prepared to defy censure by wearing martial clothing and, in doing so, members found self-​expression in their choices of sartorial unorthodoxy. As such, the uniformed FANY was a powerful symbol of modernity. It was not that long since attitudes towards the uniformed man had been highly ambivalent. While the volunteer male soldier was held in very high regard from 1914 onward, perceived as the epitome of manliness having proved his readiness to fight, his predecessors were often dismissed as dissolute ‘ne’er-​do-​wells’, and the presence of working-​class uniformed soldiers and sailors in public was troubling.4 The eponymous soldier in Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘Tommy’ (1890) is turned away first from a theatre, which goes on to admit a drunk, and from a public house, being informed ‘We serve no red-​coats here.’ ‘We aren’t no blackguards’, he asserts, frustrated by the reception he receives in uniform.5 This circumspection continued into the new century:  as Laura Ugolini notes, ‘Edwardian “tommies” were not widely admired, and neither were their uniforms.’6 Women’s adoption of such clothing in this period, as this chapter examines, added a gendered twist. But it was one softened by class: while they might be mistaken for ‘hussies’, these privileged women were not suspected of being carriers of disease, perpetrators of crime or imbibers of strong liquor. Nevertheless, as the first women’s unit to don military uniform (1907) and to wear khaki (1910), which Lucy Noakes refers to as ‘a highly complex gendered symbol’ during the First World War, these trailblazers navigated an often hostile path and they did so without the protection of the backdrop of total war.7 While there was censure surrounding these ultra-​modern sartorial oddities there was also curiosity and admiration:  a particular fascination evolved with these ‘aristocratic Amazons in arms’ and there was a demand for illustrated articles that featured photographs of uniformed FANYs undertaking their activities at camp.8 The prurient interest in the Corps attests to both their class and gender identities:  their privileged backgrounds reassured and alleviated concerns about their challenges v 79 v

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Women of war to normative femininity. This interest in the FANY continued into the First World War, a period when more and more women dressed their bodies in military attire to emphasise their patriotic service to their country and their allegiance to a specific organisation. While many articles were perturbed by women who were ‘apeing the bearing of soldiers’ and dishonouring the king’s uniform, representations of the FANY were consistently positive, emphasising their ‘workmanlike costume of khaki’ and acknowledging they were ‘competent and efficient’.9 As Krisztina Robert asserts in her analysis of media representations of female military auxiliaries during the First World War, the continuous thread pulled through all these contradictory depictions was the multiple discourses of modernity that were invoked. These women were upheld as the ‘ultimate symbols of modern femininity’.10 There is a burgeoning scholarship in dress history that acknowledges the significance of clothing in constructing identities and in shaping how individuals experience the world, as well as how they are viewed by it. Fashion historians have engaged with the work of theorists such as Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and Maurice Merleau-​Ponty to consider the process by which a sense of self is performatively created.11 One vibrant strand of this literature focuses on uniforms, which have the power to confer status, symbolise particular values, shape perceptions and affect behaviour. Texts such as Paul Fussell’s Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear, as well as Jennifer Craik’s more scholarly Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression, provide wide-​ranging historical and contemporary examples from across the globe.12 The two world wars, during which time millions of British men and women in military and civilian organisations adopted uniform, have unsurprisingly generated considerable attention. Work on the First World War includes that by Jane Tynan on the bodily transformation of civilians into soldiers through the donning of khaki; by Laura Ugolini on civilian men’s adoption of uniforms on the home front; and by Jenny Gould, Susan Grayzel, Janet Watson, Krisztina Robert and Lucy Noakes on women’s wearing of military-​style uniforms and the media’s reactions.13 Studies of the Second World War include Corinna Peniston-​Bird’s research on civilian men and military uniform, as well as the memorialisation of uniformed women.14 These texts consider the public representations and personal experiences of those attired in military clothing and the negotiations, ambiguities and contestations that uniform provokes. Uniform is polyvalent, meaning different things to the women who wear it, to observers and to broader culture, as Angela Woollacott has v 80 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman observed.15 By utilising both public and personal accounts, this chapter discusses external perceptions of the FANY, as well as self-​representations, in order to examine the uniformed woman as an emblem of modernity. It considers how members negotiated the public’s voyeuristic fascination with their activities as well as the deeply hostile interpretations that they encountered and examines how they navigated existing discourses of gender and class to forge a space for themselves. Some work has been undertaken on working-​class and lower-​middle-​class women’s consumption of uniform and other forms of masculinised dress.16 Cheryl Buckley analyses the definitions and renegotiations of women’s classed and gendered identities in the pages of Home Chat, a weekly journal that, priced at 1d in 1914, was affordable for some working-​class women. She asserts that ‘fashion functioned as the key representational site where women from the skilled working class and lower middle class in Britain began to make visible their changing consciousness and identities’.17 Less work has been undertaken on women higher up the social ladder. This chapter seeks to address that lacuna by examining debates over their public representation and sartorial choices and, by doing so, to contribute to understandings of how masculine-​inflected dress was appropriated by an elite group of women and with what consequences. As such, the chapter demonstrates how members of the first women’s corps to adopt military uniform manoeuvred themselves from being dismissed as ‘hussies’ and ‘freaks’ into a position where they undertook national service as ‘lady soldiers’, the very model of modern femininity. Dressing in vogue: from scarlet spectacle to khaki uniform While the FANY was the first women’s organisation to adopt military-​ style dress, regimental-​style uniforms had been worn by female European royalty imitating Queen Victoria, who had worn a high-​necked tunic and hat to inspect her troops at Windsor in September 1837; by Salvation Army women since its formation in 1867; by at least fifty women who are known to have concealed the fact that they were female and disguised themselves as men on board Royal Navy and merchant ships, such as Anne Chamberlayne in the 1690s and Hannah Snell in the 1740s, as well as pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny in the early eighteenth century; and by women passing as men in the American West.18 Moreover, a uniform of sorts, albeit one that was not militaristic in style, had long been adopted by religious women and by servants. There was also a precedent set for nurses to be clothed in a standardised fashion:  nurses enrolled v 81 v

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Women of war in the Kaiserswerth Deaconess Institute’s Nurse Training School, which was formed in 1836 in Prussia, were the first to wear modern secular nursing uniforms, as Irene Schuessler Poplin has shown.19 Their uniform presented an outward appearance that signified respectability, professional competence and membership of an esteemed occupational group, and crucially distinguished them from camp followers. It was, she notes, ‘a powerful catalyst for gaining the acceptance of modern nursing as a reputable occupation and for quietly revolutionizing women’s status in early nineteenth-​century Prussia’.20 Florence Nightingale’s nurses also wore uniform in Scutari in the mid-​1850s for practical hygiene reasons, as it afforded some protection against the spread of disease and from bodily fluids and, as one of her biographers noted, was ‘perhaps intended to protect the nurses from male admiration’.21 Nightingale was adamant that no symbols of frivolous femininity would undermine the uniform’s status: ‘no crinolines, polonaises [a gown with a ruched overskirt], hair pads etc are to be worn’.22 The 1,400 army nurses who served during the South African War and the members of QAIMNS, formed in 1902, also wore a functional, homogenised nursing uniform.23 The FANY were thus following in the tracks of nurses in donning such outfits. Their livery had more in common with the military than with the grey, white or blue uniforms worn by the nursing profession, however. The colour contrasts and trimmings were aesthetic conventions that made a spectacle of the wearer. The FANY uniform was a visual lexicon, as the choice of colour, fabric, cut and embellishments was not arbitrary; they were deliberately chosen to make a specific statement about the behaviour, attitudes, skills and social attributes of its wearers. Clothing recruits in a specialised form of attire of the same fabric and colour was important for several reasons. Uniforms are an outward sign of membership of a regulated and disciplined body that serve to subsume the recruit’s identity beneath that of the collective. They are then a visual symbol of an individual’s new significance as part of the group and of their spirit of service. They are particularly central to the visual language of the military, endowing recruits with the qualities that the Corps was keen to project: unity, hierarchy, discipline, regulation, status and sameness. They are also, as Jennifer Craik asserts, a technology for controlling the body and its conduct and for generating the particular characteristics of the self that are valued by the organisation.24 Baker’s decision to clothe recruits in spectacular scarlet regalia and military hats, rather than the white starched uniforms and veils of nurses, reveals his notion of the FANY as military first aiders rather v 82 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman

Figure 2.1  Edith Walton in the original FANY uniform, 1909. than primarily as nurses. He was undoubtedly inspired by the uniform worn by British forces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the 1850s, Britain had become associated with the colour red, as opposed to blue and white, for ­example –​the colours of France. Brightly coloured uniforms were thought both to aid unit cohesion by fostering esprit de corps and to demoralise the enemy who were just a short distance away. With the introduction of smokeless powder in the 1880s, which improved the accuracy of hitting moving targets, a less visible uniform was required that would camouflage the wearer against the backdrop of the landscape. In 1902, the army replaced the visually spectacular redcoats, which had proved to be climatically unsuited to extremes of temperature and had made easy targets of its wearers, with a service dress v 83 v

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Women of war for troops stationed in Europe of khaki (a Persian word meaning ‘earth’ or ‘dust’), which facilitated concealment. In 1910, Grace Ashley-​Smith, who, as we shall see in the next chapter, embarked upon a programme of reform to professionalise the Corps, including dispensing with riding side-​saddle in favour of riding astride, decided to change the colour and style of the ‘quaint’ uniform. A showy, colourful riding costume was no longer needed, and she substituted Baker’s ‘not very practical, short tight fiting [sic]’ and ‘very gaudy’ scarlet uniform with a looser-​fitting, more practicable, cheaper, utilitarian and what one FANY regarded as more ‘comfortable’ service khaki.25 This served to neutralise the perceived sexuality of its wearers: the woman in ‘no frills’, baggy, khaki gabardine or whipcord could never be taken for a ‘hussy’. As riding side-​saddle was no longer undertaken, the hemline of the floor-​length skirt was shortened to above the ankle, aiding mobility. Betty Hutchinson recalled that it was ‘fastened fore and aft with press studs. Underneath we wore riding breeches, which was a very good thing because the press studs were most unreliable, the idea being that we could leap onto horses, zip our skirts fore and aft and then we were adequately dressed for riding.’26 A tie was added to the outfit, as was a solar topee (a hard pith hat), and the newly designed jacket made in the Norfolk style included two breast-​pockets and two very large patch-​pockets, as Figure 2.2 illustrates. While external pouches in male clothing had begun to be replaced by pockets in the seventeenth century, the wish to preserve the line of women’s fashionable

Figure 2.2  FANYs in khaki uniform, 1914. Note the large patch-​ pockets, ties and solar topee helmets. v 84 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman dress generally precluded the inclusion of pockets.27 Thus their addition to the FANY uniform was both functional and gender-​atypical. The khaki uniform was therefore a radical departure from conventional feminine dress. There were further alterations to the FANY uniform necessitated by convenience and comfort. The ‘bush’, or ‘slouch’, hat –​a wide-​brimmed cloth hat with a feather, chinstrap and often one side of the brim pinned up  –​which had been widely worn during the South African War and which FANYs had occasionally adopted during 1913, was dispensed with. The solar topee helmet, which was too cumbersome to fit under the canvas roof of an ambulance and limited the driver’s field of vision, was replaced, following the FANY’s deployment on active service abroad, by soft bonnets, designed by Cristobel Nicolson, as seen in Figure 2.3. Drivers were kitted out with a long navy-​blue coat with red piping, and some members wore grey long-​haired goat-​skin jackets that were waterproof, and long, warm trench coats. Many began to improvise with their uniform, wearing trousers under their skirts. The climate and ambulance design necessitated other changes to the uniform: because of the mud and the cold, some took to wearing ‘puttees in orthodox military style’.28 And as vehicles had either no windscreen or one made of plastic, a security

Figure 2.3  FANYs of Unit 6, based in Amiens, wearing soft bonnets, 1917. v 85 v

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Women of war measure to ensure there was no reflection from the glass, drivers had very little protection from the elements. Members of the FANY in the Calais Convoy (Unit 3) who were driving for the British army discarded their goat-​skin jackets in favour of rabbit-​fur coats in the hard winter of 1917. Fur coats were later issued by the French army to FANY Units 7 and 9.  These all-​encompassing furs, which might appear to speak to the paradox of privilege and hardship, were, however, issued out of practical necessity, rather than worn for the sake of vanity or fashion. When fur, an indicator of high social class, was adopted by upper-​class women no comment was raised, no societal concerns unleashed. Yet as Angela Woollacott has shown, a munitions worker was censured in the press for using some of her earnings to purchase fur coats and high-​topped boots.29 When worn by working class ‘munitionettes’, fur was thus seen as a gaudy extravagance at variance with the mood of sacrifice and incongruous with their social status. By contrast, a photograph of FANYs in fur adorned the front page of the Daily Sketch in January 1917 and appeared in other publications, including Lady’s Pictorial and the Statesman in February 1917, as shown in Figure 2.4.30

Figure 2.4  FANYs in their fur coats, Calais, 1917. v 86 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman Norma Flowerdew Lowson pasted the front cover into her scrapbook and labelled the photo ‘Five Teddy Bears’.31 The photograph was not well received at London headquarters, however, prompting a flood of reprimands that attempted to dictate what members wore, somewhat unsuccessfully. Previous attempts by the secretary, Janette Lean, to impose ‘stricter rules’ on the material used for the uniform were also in vain, not least because, as Lilian Franklin pointed out, ‘it was difficult to legislate very much’ given that members provided their own uniforms. Lean had more success in her complaint about a cap, which was replaced.32 In her analysis of this group photograph, Laura Doan notes the ‘panache, tendency to swagger, and camaraderie’ that are in evidence, all traits more usually associated with men.33 For me, the photograph is reminiscent of images of Battle of Britain pilots dressed in their leather jackets and captured casually relaxing in front of their Spitfires, the machines central to their war service, awaiting the call to scramble. Similarly, FANYs would rush to their vehicles upon receiving the call –​‘Every driver dashes out of bed, into her clothes, and off to her car, as fast as her legs will carry her’  –​as seen in the newsreel The Care of Our Wounded.34 Strikingly, F.  Tennyson Jesse, a journalist for Vogue who visited FANY and VAD ambulance convoys in France, noted admiringly that ‘with their leather caps coming down to their brows and over their ears’, which lent them ‘an attractive air of manliness’, FANYs ‘looked like splendid young airmen, their clear, bold faces coming out from between the leather flaps’.35 The expedient adoption of fur coats was one of the many ways that the FANY altered its uniform in the first few years. Given that the obligatory dress of an organisation is, notes Paul Fussell, usually fixed and continuous, these frequent changes undoubtedly point to the Corps’s perceived need to express itself in a different way.36 And it was not just the uniform that was in flux:  as we shall see in the next chapter, the Corps itself was very unstable in this period and was on the brink of collapse, with large numbers of resignations amid accusations of Baker’s misgovernance, criticism of the behaviour of uniformed members in public and the change of leadership. It is striking that Ashley-​Smith adopted a uniform that distanced the Corps from its previous incarnation under Baker and from other voluntary civilian organisations, including the VADs, which had been established in 1909, or from more controversial women’s groups such as the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which would never have worn the colour of the king’s uniform while campaigning for citizenship rights. Khaki was chosen to align the FANY increasingly with the military. In the same way that v 87 v

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Women of war there are fashions in civilian clothing, there are trends in uniform: in this period, khaki was in vogue and Ashley-​Smith wanted the Corps to look as though it was part of the king’s forces. Civilians had for a long time worn clothing inspired by the services: since the Napoleonic era military dress had influenced male fashion, and by the outbreak of war, khaki was an established colour of men’s civilian attire.37 Similarly, women eager to wear the latest trends wore feminised adaptations of male uniform. As Scott Myerly notes, green velvet-​rifle dresses and hats were modelled on regimental uniforms; pelisses imitated the hussars’ uniform; the new colours of ‘Waterloo blue’ and ‘Alma brown’, the latter inspired by the campaign in the Crimea, became popular; and dresses derivative of dragoon’s livery, chunky shoes and leather belts were worn by women eager to be seen in the latest fashions.38 The FANY’s adoption of khaki was, then, about visually positioning the Corps alongside the military. The choice of colour, and the style and cut of the individual items constituting a uniform, are the result of prolonged consideration of the objectives of the organisation and the meanings of masculinity (or in this context femininity). Noting the meaningful rituals that surround the dressing of the body, fashion historian Jane Tynan asserts that khaki uniform essentially militarised civilians and was key to designing civilian bodies for war.39 Through the visual and material transformation achieved by donning khaki service dress, which lent credibility to a voluntary civilian women’s organisation, the FANY sought demonstrably to express its patriotism and citizenship, as well as to articulate war values. In adopting a khaki uniform, which represented a potent symbol of modernity and gender disruption, the FANY staked its claim to the masculine provinces of duty and service by visually aligning itself with the men in the armed forces, while recasting the uniformed body in feminine terms. Although they were ‘dressing down’, wearing khaki conferred status, was seen as modern and liberating, and gave the FANYs a superior sense of themselves as it presented them with an opportunity to exhibit their duty and patriotism. Edith Walton, who was uninterested in the scarlet uniform, was more taken by khaki and proudly asserted ‘we were called “lady soldiers” ’.40 As well as aligning the Corps with the army, khaki widened the discrepancy between normative feminine dress and FANY uniform. The uniform that the early recruits donned was distinctly different from that which women from affluent backgrounds typically wore. Female clothing was generally highly restrictive and not conducive to activity:  boned bodices were close-​fitting; collars were high; and skirts were long to the ground, straight and clinging, with distinct shackling or banding below v 88 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman the knee.41 In their handbook of fashion through the decades, Alan Mansfield and Phillis Cunnington note that the hobble skirt, introduced in 1909, was worn ‘by women agitating for freedom to ensure that they did not obtain too much’.42 The replacement of blouses and skirts with military clothing may be regarded as an indicator of women’s emancipation: it symbolised the casting off of restrictive ornamental feminine clothing –​which underscored the ideal that women were innately idle and decorative and to be located in the domestic sphere –​in favour of masculinised forms of dress, which offered the possibility of mobility and action outside the home. The wearing of clothing more typically associated with men was then ‘really a move from the private world into the public one’, as Janet Watson notes.43 The decision to clothe themselves in such masculine-​looking attire was in itself a form of agency. In contesting the notion that women were defined purely in relation to the home, uniforms were illustrative of female empowerment in transgressing patriarchal norms. Uniforms were also signifiers of modernity, in that they denoted a desire for less restrictive fashion, a quest for an active life in the public domain and a demand for entry into spaces hitherto beyond the bounds of propriety. The New Woman clothed in gender-​ atypical dress was simultaneously questioning tradition and envisaging a very different future. New modes of femininity, including that suggestive of what Jack Halberstam calls ‘female masculinity’, were thus made possible by the appropriation of menswear.44 Because of FANYs’ penchant for wearing male clothing and their occasional performances of manliness, it is perhaps tempting to infer something about their sexual identities. While, as we saw in Chapter 1, some of the members lamented being born female and prayed nightly that they would wake up male, the notion that donning martial uniform might signal particular subcultural codes would have been ‘entirely foreign’ to them.45 While there is a tendency among modern-​day observers to collapse the distinction between ‘gender inversion’ and sexuality, Laura Doan warns against attaching our own contemporary identity labels to historical subjects’ lives: ‘There is little evidence that [historical women] had the barest glimmer of our modern conceptualisations of “sexual identity” –​a construct perhaps well outside [their] psychosexual experience.’46 If their adoption of male clothing ought not to be read as an indicator of their sexual identities, what conclusions can we draw? Personal testimonies suggest convenience and practicality were motivating factors. Ashley-​Smith recorded that upon joining the Corps in 1910 she asked Baker if she might have a skirt made for riding astride –​‘a v 89 v

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Women of war great innovation but Captain agreed’ –​while Betty Hutchinson recalled asking for permission in 1915 to make alterations to the official FANY uniform: I became very tired of the press studs which held our skirts as skirts, but were undone for riding, so I had a coat made with a uniform top but cut to go under my knee on the horse and fall straight when walking. I asked for permission to wear it, over breeches of course, and was told I might as long as I took a skirt to put on if we went into the mess for tea!47

Although Hutchinson obtained permission to wear trousers under her long coat, she was expected to put on a khaki skirt over the top for ‘modesty’.48 While photographs show FANYs wearing trousers at camp, they never became part of the official uniform.49 The FANYs were not, then, rejecting feminine dress entirely in their championing of sartorial unorthodoxy. Furthermore, uniform was worn on occasion rather than all the time, so their transgressions were only ever transitory as they continued to wear highly feminine clothing when off duty. This was made evident by the inclusion in the FANY magazine of advertisements for suppliers manufacturing ‘A splendid assortment of Ladies Lingerie, Corsets and dressing gowns’.50 Even when dressed in uniform, members continued to wear feminine underwear:  Grace Ashley-​Smith recalled one early recruit who ‘insisted on wearing white drawers with frills under her khaki skirt’, which were often on display as she regularly fell off her horse.51 The frilly accoutrement, a vestige of traditional femininity, served to offset the masculine connotations of khaki while simultaneously enabling her to assert her individuality. A witty verse, written by a fellow FANY during the war and included in Ashley-​Smith’s memoir (suggesting that she was amused by it), reveals that she also wore feminine underwear beneath her khaki uniform: The Lieutenant of the Fanny [sic]     With the most elegant ankle, Shows the coquetry of woman     In the dainty little garter That peeps roguishly     From under her skirt.52

Ashley-​Smith also appeared in an advertisement reproduced in the Corps magazine in 1910 for Sandow’s corset makers, which ran the tagline ‘A New Corset for Active Women’. She is quoted as saying:  ‘I have worn your Corsets regularly while performing the various duties of this Corps, and am pleased to state that they preserve their shape and the outline of v 90 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman

Figure 2.5  Grace Ashley-​Smith in an advert for ‘Sandow’s Corset Co.’, 1910. the figure better than any other kind I have used.’53 Adverts were, notes Matthew Hilton, ‘an icon of the twentieth century’ and were another motif of modernity.54 By featuring members of the social elite and by emphasising the ways it would suit a potential purchaser, the style of the Sandow’s advert was more reminiscent of late Victorian advertising than v 91 v

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Women of war Edwardian adverts, in which products increasingly began to stand alone without references to the upper classes or personal gains.55 Nevertheless, the inclusion of Ashley-​Smith in an advertisement to sell corsets is an illustration that the uniformed woman was regarded by her contemporaries as an exemplar of modernity and that advertisers were alert to changing cultural mores, a marketing imperative. The FANY uniform, which evolved over time from spectacular scarlet to serviceable khaki, was then emblematic of gender modernity in that it was a major deviation from typical feminine clothing, looked distinctly martial and thereby aligned the FANY with the army, had masculine connotations, was functional, and enabled freedom of movement with its loose-​fit and raised hemline. Let us now examine how this modernly dressed woman was regarded in the print and pictorial media. FANYs in print: self-​representations and media depictions This distortion of gendered clothing, with its blurring effects, had the potential, of course, to provoke anxieties about femininity, and while recruits such as Edith Walton were proud to wear khaki and revelled in its implication of valour, others had concerns about the lack of decorum shown by some members while in uniform. This prompted seven members to leave the Corps in 1909: ‘I am sorry to say, unpleasant things are being said of certain members of the Corps, who appear in the streets late at night in their uniforms when not on duty. This alone makes it impossible for any lady to wish to belong, or to have her name connected with it.’56 That some women favoured uniform, a visible expression of duty and self-​worth, when off duty reveals the centrality of livery to their subjectivities. Service dress was, however, a symbol of the collective, so that even one uniformed member’s misdemeanours cast a shadow on the entire organisation’s moral respectability. In July 1910, there were further ‘upset’ and resignations following ‘a serious charge of behaving badly in uniform’. This resulted in Grace Ashley-​Smith expressing ‘very forcibly my opinions, and insist[ing] on a promise that no member should be allowed to sit on the box of our ambulance in uniform in the arms of a young man’.57 A  regulation was indeed introduced that ‘Members … whose conduct … while wearing the uniform of the Corps is proved to be detrimental to the good of the Corps, will be called upon to resign.’58 This insidious concern about their appearance and reputation was a consequence of their acculturation and conditioning: they were determined to abide by the rigid and ubiquitous Edwardian codes of etiquette in order v 92 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman to protect their individual reputations, which had been jeopardised by the ‘unladylike’ behaviour of a few members. It was not just FANYs who held concerns:  the public were often perturbed by the sight of liveried women. Awaiting a bus on the Tottenham Court Road, several FANYs were accosted by a large crowd of factory women who booed and shouted ‘You _​_​_​_​Suffragettes’.59 Boys threw snowballs and stones at them, compelling the women to shelter in doorways. Such hostile reactions were prompted by the mistaken belief that these aberrant women must have been agitating for the vote. While the WSPU did not in fact wear uniform, their sashes, scarves, badges and hats in the white, purple and green colours resembled a uniform of sorts and they had become increasingly militaristic.60 Sylvia Pankhurst records that ‘the spirit of the W.S.P.U. now became more and more that of a voluntary army at war’, in which ‘processions and pageantry … had a decided[ly] military flavour’:  one suffragette, Flora Drummond, who was nicknamed ‘The General’, would ride a horse at the front of a march wearing a military style uniform of ‘officer’s cap and epaulettes’.61 Such an account reveals why FANYs had on this occasion been (mis)taken for women campaigning for an extension of the franchise and, as a consequence, had missiles thrown at them and were booed and shouted at. When it became known that they were not suffragettes, the factory women, in a display of class deference, became suddenly silent, offered ‘shame-​faced “sorrys” ’ and quickly dispersed.62 But even when not being mistaken for political campaigners, prewar FANYs were openly ridiculed and subjected to mocking gibes and verbal rebukes. A  newspaper article noted they had ‘struggled against a certain amount of ridicule in England since they started’.63 Members clearly intuited the effect that their appearance had on others, as they populate their memoirs, written correspondence and the Corps magazine with examples. Riding multiple times a month, both side-​saddle and astride, through the streets and parks of London as a Corps meant that the public had plenty of opportunities to observe them. Many were bemused, or indeed amused, by the sight with which they were confronted:  a report in the FANY magazine mentioned ‘those who sneer and smile’, while Ashley-​Smith recollected being confronted by ‘jeers and sneers and laughter’ when dressed in uniform.64 Eva Greenall wrote to Baker in 1909, saying ‘The street parades are a matter of ridicule as we hear on all sides’, and that they were derided as ‘pariahs’.65 Accounts produced decades later also reveal that members were relentlessly ridiculed: a FANY whom Irene Ward consulted in preparation for v 93 v

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Women of war her 1955 book recalled: ‘we were stared at so much, that you simply had to have a sense of humour to carry on’.66 Their stoic endurance, ignoring insults and heckles, was perhaps a coping strategy: a test against which they proved themselves. Their motto, after all, was Arduis invicta:  ‘In difficulties unconquered’ or, more informally, ‘I cope’. Another FANY asserted, ‘when they first caught sight of us, [the public] just did not know what we were, and everybody stared in amazement, and it took some courage to walk or bus by ourselves. At times we felt like freaks!’67 Such comments, of requiring audacity to bear being the object of mockery, are reminiscent of the recollections of late-​nineteenth-​century advocates of rational dress, who note that ‘it took some courage’ and ‘nerves of iron’ to withstand ‘insults’ and ‘rude remarks’, ‘shouts and yells’, ‘[h]‌ooting and screeching’, and ‘shriek[ing] with laughter’ and that ‘[c]aps, stones, road refuse  –​anything was then flung’ at the woman clothed in mid-​ calf bloomers.68 New Women who braved wearing unconventional clothing, whether it was rational dress for cycling or masculinised items of attire such as uniform, signalled a challenge to contemporary notions of gender and thereby risked verbal abuse and even physical assault from a public that regarded them as strange and was troubled by their unorthodox sartorial decisions. Such encounters with hostility are much more likely to be recorded in FANY accounts than public indifference or even encouragement, and it is not known how common such incidents actually were. Nevertheless, the mockery was considered severe enough for their magazine to advise readers not to think ‘of what people’s opinions of you may be. One must realise that it does not matter what the crowd think. They may consider you rather clever, or an ignorant meddlesome fool.’69 This stoic stiffening of resolve sought to counter the derision that members must have experienced relatively regularly. If FANYs experienced verbal abuse and violence in London because they were perceived as having transgressed typical feminine appearance, venturing out of the capital was even more challenging. The FANY, like her discursive sister the New Woman, was largely an urban dweller, and the Corps was a purely London-​based organisation at this point: provincial society was infinitely more conservative. Winifred Mordaunt recalled arriving for summer camp to the ‘delighted cat-​calls of every little boy in Aldershot’, a town used to the sight of men in khaki following the establishment of a garrison in 1854. Tripping over, she spilt the contents of her suitcase: v 94 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman a confetti of hair pins, tooth-​brushes, underclothes, powder etc, showered the main street to the even greater joy of those loathsome little boys! I don’t blame them –​we must have been an astonishing sight, Solar topées, tight khaki tunics, long, long divided skirts (divided back & front by ‘pop’ fasteners) over khaki breeches and field-​boots & puttees & boots.70

Mordaunt acknowledged that their khaki-​ clad appearance made a striking visual impact. While the boys of Aldershot sniggered at the sight, others elsewhere were less amused. When Edith Walton travelled with another uniformed FANY to Brighton in 1909, she remembered that the owner of the hotel in which they wished to dine ‘looked at us very coldly’ and put them behind a screen at the end of the room to protect the sensibilities of the other diners. Upon their departure, she said somewhat pointedly ‘I’ll be very pleased to see you any time you are in Brighton, and please come in a skirt.’ A waiter was summoned to escort them down the back stairs to a side street.71 The frosty reception and spatial segregation were undoubtedly a consequence of the perceived deviance of their military costuming, as they were visibly posing a challenge to the dominant codes of feminine decorum. The staring and ridiculing may well have reduced over time as the public became used to the sight of uniformed FANYs:  one member recollected when going on the underground in her uniform that ‘no one paid more than cursory attention’.72 Outrage and then indifference transformed into fascination. Bannatyne recollected receiving attention, support and respect: ‘[T]‌he public took an interest and would stop us, asking about it and giving us encouragement when they knew what we were trying to do. I have even had sentries on duty and soldiers in the street, when they saw my pips, give me, or rather the uniform, a salute and very gravely I would return it.’73 Prejudice against uniformed women occupying public space was gradually being eroded by the fact that the FANY was increasingly figuring in newspapers, and its camp activities even featured in a cinema newsreel in 1913, as we shall see in the next chapter.74 One of the first articles to mention the FANY remarked on the ‘pretty sentinel’ and other ‘gaily-​ garbed’ members, who looked ‘dashing’ in their ‘picturesque uniforms’.75 Their attractive physical appearance was described in order to counteract the perceived masculinity of their clothing, reassuring readers that while they might take on the trappings of manliness they remained feminine women. As noted in the Introduction, Janet Lee sees ‘titillation’ as well as ‘anxiety and condescension’ in this article.76 This unease was much more v 95 v

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Women of war in evidence, however, in a 1910 Daily Mail article about the Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps. Established by former FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart, the Convoy Corps was officially accepted as a VAD in 1910 and went on to serve in the 1912 Balkan War as well as in the First World War. The article noted that a ‘well-​set-​up’ uniformed member ‘would assuredly have caused … an attack of the vapours or a scream and a faint’ on the part of those who ‘must have thought her an “unsexed female” ’, with her ‘confident carriage’, ‘salute instead of a handshake’, ‘a helmet on her head instead of a flower-​trimmed hat, and on her feet stout boots’.77 Such women ran the risk of being defeminised. As Susan Grayzel asserts, ‘women in uniform, and especially in khaki, further embodied the fear that the gulf between the sexes … was in danger of eroding, if not disappearing’.78 Indeed, the uniform so effectively masked one recruit’s gender that it caused a member of the public, who ‘express[ed] her indignation that women should do “such things” ’, to mistake her for a Boy Scout. Completing the narrative arc of the story, the female journalist reassured readers that the recruit was ‘gentle and womanly’ and that ‘under her helmet her hair is as soft and bright’ as that of any non-​ uniformed woman.79 The ‘innate’ femininity of the recruit thereby narrowly withstood the masculinising effects of the clothing. Articles about the uniformed FANY also referenced the contradictions inherent in young women adopting masculine garments and invoking the trappings of military life. Their camp in May 1913 generated much coverage. One journalist reassured readers that ‘As a body, they are not by any means the masculine-​looking women one would expect to find favouring such arduous duties. The average is slim, if not slight, and truly womanly.’80 A  number of journalists were clearly very taken with their appearance: ‘some of us thought the troopers looked their best in their khaki stable dress, red tie at throat, brushing the dew from their steeds … A  pretty picture these lady riders looked in their khaki uniform … something reminiscent of the prairies and healthy Canadian maidens about them … [These] British girls [were] models of health.’81 Another article noted the ‘picturesque procession of lady riders in khaki’, while one, headlined ‘Dimples and Khaki’, ‘admired the smart tunics and astride riding skirts’ worn by the FANY and quoted a ‘pretty patriot’ who said ‘you should see us in camp … Then we wear scout blouses with red ties instead of these tunics, and are really much more picturesque!’82 The Croydon Guardian, in an article headed ‘Women and Men Play the “War Game” ’, reported that FANYs ‘dressed in tight-​fitting khaki regimental coats, with peaked caps and loose astride skirts’ were at camp in nearby v 96 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman Norbury: ‘No women have so nearly approached the soldiers in physical fitness and technical knowledge.’ The journalist noted that the women had ridden from their headquarters in London and had pitched nine tents ‘without the help of any man’.83 Each article on the FANY notes the specifics of its uniform, and there is a keen appreciation for its members’ smart martial appearance and professionalism. An article published in 1908 notes an observer being enthralled by the ‘splendid’ sight of ‘girls so smart and enthusiastic’ in a ‘uniform [that] is workmanlike and attractive’, which it then went on to describe at length.84 A Daily Express article from July 1913 called them ‘sternly business-​like yeowomen … dressed in the severely useful sun-​helmet and khaki divided skirt’, observed their ‘strict discipline’, and noted that not knowing the password he was ‘fiercely challenged’ and held captive.85 Other articles commented that ‘The nurses [were] looking very smart and workmanlike in their khaki wideawake hats and white plumes, khaki tunics and skirts’, noting the ‘serviceable skirt, allowing ample freedom of movement’, ‘a businesslike uniform’, a ‘business-​like khaki uniform’ and a ‘workmanlike costume of khaki, as near of Tommy’s uniform as it can be, with its thick-​soled boots and business-​like leggings, its puggaree and its multiplicity of pockets’. The last continued, ‘you recognise that it belongs to a corps who look on their work as a very serious matter indeed, and who are out for real service in a very real cause’, and it branded them ‘competent and efficient’.86 One remarked on the ‘very notable fact that for the first time under official recognition women have been allowed to share in what may be called a male department of warfare!’, and wrote admiringly, ‘What strength and endurance and pluck such work demands from women.’87 With laudatory articles such as these praising the FANY’s appearance and efficiency, the media played a key role in shaping the public’s perception of this corps of modern, elite young women clothed in khaki. Technological advances in the press of the early twentieth century meant that descriptive text, such as the above examples about the ‘gallant Red Cross dames [who] wear khaki and ride astride’, was replaced with pictures of women in their military attire.88 Illustrated articles were a particularly effective way of documenting the activities of the Corps by dramatising camp life. Bannatyne recollected:  ‘it was not long before the Press started writing us up, and putting in photos of which there were plenty’; Ashley-​Smith writes of being ‘mobbed’ and ‘over-​run with photographers and reporters’; and Phyllis Morris, who joined in 1912, recollected that ‘[b]‌eing the only girls in khaki we were quite frequently surrounded by mobs! I was once!’89 The FANY recognised the value of v 97 v

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Women of war publicity in raising its profile and boosting recruitment, and was keen to increase press coverage of its activities. It benefited from the growth of the illustrated media and the exposure generated by a culture that viewed the female uniformed body as of public interest. The Sphere, one of the earliest photographic magazines, featured an article about the FANY camp in August 1912 entitled ‘What Women Are Doing’, and in May 1913, when twenty-​two women camped for two weeks, their activities were photographed and featured extensively in the illustrated press.90 The Daily Express, for example, included a picture of four of the uniformed women placing a wounded man on a stretcher, and a pictorial article in the Daily Mirror showed the khaki-​clad women engrossed in their work: pitching their tents with their bulldog in the foreground, undertaking first aid drill and unharnessing ambulance horses.91 Writing about First World War press photographs depicting male civilians conforming to military discipline, Jane Tynan notes that a popular discourse was constructed that aestheticised the wartime male body.92 Similarly, these prewar illustrated articles fetishised khaki-​clad women performing military manoeuvres in peacetime that were more commonly undertaken by men, feeding the public’s voyeuristic appetite for accounts of militarised women. A  particularly blunt example of this prurience is an article in Tatler about FANYs –​who, it noted, were ‘dressed in tight-​fitting khaki regimental coats, with peaked caps and loose astride skirts’  –​which appears next to a photograph of debutantes being presented at court in their highly feminine evening dresses.93 As media historian Glenn Wilkinson notes, decisions about the grouping of images on a page is never arbitrary and thus the juxtaposition of khaki and ballgowns was significant.94 It was largely because of their class background that they attracted publicity, and this in turn tempered any prejudices held against them. An organisation comprising working-​class women that was practising for war, encouraging the use of weapons and clothing its recruits in something akin to the king’s uniform would surely have been quashed as a dangerous threat to public safety. Having examined the positive representation of the FANY in the prewar period let us now consider First World War depictions of the uniformed woman. ‘An attack of khakiitis’: the uniformed woman in the First World War With the outbreak of the First World War and its evolving into a protracted conflict, more and more women from across the social v 98 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman spectrum volunteered to serve in organisations that required them to wear a uniform of sorts, such as overalls, as worn by munitions workers and Land Girls, and military style dress, as donned by ‘clippies’, female police officers and auxiliary organisations. The Evening News reported in January 1918 that there were forty-​two different types of uniform donned by women serving in organisations such as the Women’s Legion, Women’s Emergency Corps, Women’s Volunteer Reserve (WVR), Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF).95 As Barton Hacker and Margaret Vining note, ‘by wearing uniforms in voluntary organisations, women identified themselves with the same principles of military order and discipline as men’.96 Each of these organisations militarised women, training them in activities more typically associated with men and dressing them in martial clothing. Many of these units chose to adopt khaki uniforms, which became a key part of Britain’s visual culture during the First World War, signifying women’s changing role in the modern world. Khaki took on new meaning during the war: the Evening Standard called it the ‘royal robes of heroes’.97 Many wartime articles were supportive of the khaki-​ clad woman, regarding her martial dress and challenging war work as evidence of her modernity. War Budget Illustrated, for example, greatly admired the contribution of women in uniform during the war: ‘khaki is merely an outward sign of an inward experience. Women’s hearts are dyed khaki.’98 Another article proclaimed that in adopting it women ‘have shown themselves to be brave, bright and indomitable’, and that as such ‘the pure gold of New Womanhood emerged’.99 It was not just the media that wished to capture in print the woman in uniform; khaki-​clad women visited commercial studios and posed for photographers for pictorial keepsakes. Photographic portraiture was particularly common after the outbreak of the First World War: many young men having volunteered to fight and been kitted out in khaki wished to leave a visual record of themselves for their families before embarking on active service. These photographs are mostly formal, the sitter somewhat camera-​conscious and rarely smiling. Yet they are also a mode of self-​(re) presentation: several FANYs chose to be photographed holding gloves, a signifier of their important role as ambulance drivers in France during the war, and in their bonnets, a key part of the uniform, as Figure  2.6 shows. Molly O’Connell Bianconi, however –​also an ambulance driver, who joined the Corps in August 1917 aged twenty-​three –​opted for neither bonnet nor gloves, has highly stylised hair and appears to be wearing make-​up (Figure 2.7). v 99 v

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Women of war

Figure 2.6  Studio portrait of Gwendolyn Peyton Jones. While Bianconi’s flattering studio portrait suggests she did not feel defeminised, powerful cultural anxieties about the blurring of gender caused by women wearing masculinised clothing were unleashed in the early months of the war. Despite the rush to get into uniform, women serving in quasi-​military groups were still enough of a rarity on the streets of Britain in 1914. Grace Ashley-​Smith recalled one occasion where she was at risk of being arrested by an overzealous policeman for wearing an officer’s uniform, and her January 1915 wedding, at which the groom, bride and two bridesmaids all dressed in khaki, caused much bewilderment to the clergyman who presided. He was ‘confused … very much as to who was the bride’ and, ‘consumed with curiosity’, he ‘rattled v 100 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman

Figure 2.7  Studio portrait of Molly O’Connell Bianconi. through the service to gasp out, “Who are you, do tell me what your uniform is?” ’100 While Katherine Furse recalled that wearing her VAD uniform in the ‘first excitement’ when war broke out meant she travelled for free on public transport (‘this made us feel most unwarrantably superior to mere civilians in plain clothes’), novelist Naomi Jacob recollected that the uniformed woman, with the exception of the nurse, was considered ‘something strange, eccentric, and a fine target for jokes’.101 Similarly, the Marchioness of Londonderry recorded in her memoirs that the wearing of uniform ‘led indeed to some strange experiences. Some people were always rude to a woman in uniform … they were incredulous or laughed outright.’102 There was also considerable hostility articulated in the popular press toward the wearing of khaki by women undertaking military-​style activities early in the war. Journalists’ articles, and letters written by members of the public, were often deeply antagonistic, castigating women for their military aspirations, masculine appearance and manly conduct. F. Tennyson Jesse, who later wrote admiringly of female ambulance drivers in France, recalled her initial scepticism:  ‘We in v 101 v

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Women of war England grew so tired, in the early days of the war, of the fancy uniforms that burst out upon women. Every other girl one met had an attack of khakiitis.’103 She noted that war was perceived as ‘a game at which women were making silly asses of themselves and pretending to be men’, and that uniform was considered ‘fancy dress’.104 Similarly, Edith Barton and Marguerite Cody, in their laudatory account Eve in Khaki, wrote ‘at first, it must be confessed we had the “swaggering” type of khaki-​clad girl, her hat tilted at an acute angle and held by a chin strap, her “regimentals” complete with brass buttons and badges; and a mannish assurance that was by no means an attractive quality’.105 The uniformed woman was initially perceived as posing a threat to established gender norms:  by approximating an appearance and conduct more commonly associated with men she undermined the masculinity of the male soldier and negated her own femininity. As Alison Oram notes in her discussion of the media representation of women who passed as men, the cross-​dressing woman was the ‘focus for contemporary puzzling over gender’.106 The troubled preoccupation with changing gender relations was played out in the pages of the unambiguously Conservative Morning Post in July 1915 and has been widely discussed as a rich source of gender anxiety by a number of scholars including Janet Watson, Krisztina Robert and Jenny Gould.107 It is worth repeating here because the anonymous woman who unleashed the controversy had seen women drilling and riding dressed in khaki tunics, skirts and ties. It is possible that they were FANYs, given the equestrianism, and that one of the respondents in pushing back refers to the brave exploits of uniformed FANY Grace Ashley-​Smith. It was the khaki uniform that most agitated the original letter writer, whom Krisztina Robert calls an ‘anti-​modern critic’, and prompted her to write to the Editor. She castigated these cropped-​haired ‘poseuses’ who ‘looked exactly like men’ for ‘wearing a parody’ of the king’s uniform, which they were bringing ‘into contempt’ and making ‘ridiculous’.108 The masculine demeanour of these ‘ersatz men’109 was also troubling to the letter-​writer:  they ‘assumed mannish attitudes, stood with legs apart while they smote their riding boots with their whips, and looked like self-​conscious and not very attractive boys’. The khaki uniform impacted on the legibility of the female body that wore it. Conscious of the confusion wrought by such mannish attire, dangerously inverting appropriate gender norms involving a loss of femininity and a procuring of masculinity, the outraged observer recommended they instead wear ‘sunbonnets and print frocks’, which were more befitting to their gender, and make jam.110 In a later missive, she asserted that undertaking drill v 102 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman ‘will never make soldiers of them’ and observed again that uniform made them ‘ridiculous’.111 It was the letter-​writer’s provocative complaints specifically about uniform that particularly struck a chord with other readers who were antagonistic towards the modern woman. A  further fifteen letters were published over the next ten days under the heading ‘The King’s Uniform’. The ‘foolish’ and ‘ridiculous masquerades of women in khaki’ were noted by one ‘outrage[d]‌’ writer, while another noted that women were ‘dressing themselves like men and so burlesquing our sex’.112 Violet Markham, a pioneer in girls’ education, remarked that uniforms, which have become ‘the symbols of death and sacrifice’, ought not be ‘parodied’ by women ‘playing at soldiers’, as it struck ‘a wrong and jarring note’.113 Some correspondents were concerned by the ‘absurdity’ and ‘offensiveness’ of uniform worn by women who had ‘no just claim to it’, looked ‘mannish’ and were ‘somewhat childish’.114 Seven women wrote in to the Morning Post in defence of khaki-​clad women, noting that rather than ‘an imitation of a soldier’s garb’, the women’s uniform was ‘an emblem of service’, ‘an outward and visible sign of service’, ‘the symbol of true love and of country’ that showed them to be ‘as patriotic as their brothers’.115 ‘We are justly proud of those uniforms’, noted one correspondent, while another asserted that it gave the wearer a ‘feeling of strength and unity’.116 One woman referred to FANY Grace Ashley-​Smith’s exploits to counter the ‘ungenerously worded [original] letter’. Hearing about ‘a British officer left behind dying in a Belgian town during the German advance’, she ‘went back alone, faced the Germans, stayed with him til he died, and then buried him … at great personal risk, fully expecting to be sent as a prisoner to Germany; the Germans indeed threatened she should be’. Should this ‘poseuse’ have ‘stayed at home to make jam in a sun-​bonnet?’, asked the letter-​writer. ‘Do you imagine that dying Englishman thought the king’s uniform was made ridiculous when he saw the wearer coming back into danger in order that he might have a countrywoman beside him and English speech in his ear at the end?’117 As Jenny Gould asserts in her discussion of this correspondence, such letters reflected widely held prejudices.118 Indeed, similar concerns were voiced the following month in Lady’s Pictorial about the WVR, a quasi-​military organisation that was very similar to the FANY, in that its members were clothed in khaki; were often drawn from the upper classes; and were, according to its acting colonel, ‘hunting women, all hard as nails, and each brought up from girlhood to know and understand horses’.119 Also like the FANY, they practised drilling; received instruction in first aid, driving and canteen work; and used military vocabulary such v 103 v

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Women of war as ‘battalion’ and ‘private’ to describe the structure of their unit. It may well have been members of the Reserve (not the FANY) that the original letter-​writer to the Morning Post had observed. The masculinisation of young women, the inherently transgressive potential of donning male garb and the ridiculing of the king’s uniform by the Reserve animated the journalist: ‘it is regrettable that women should not see for themselves how ridiculous they make themselves and the whole country by masquerading in khaki uniforms and apeing the bearing of soldiers’. The implication is that these foolish and frivolous women failed to comprehend the gravity of wearing khaki and epitomised the very worst kind of modern femininity. The ‘sorry sight’ of khaki-​clad women, the author asserted, was ‘suggestive of comic-​opera, as any travesty of a soldier’s kit is bound to be when adapted to feminine requirements’, and as such they were ‘rendering it ridiculous by adopting it for themselves and playing at being soldiers’.120 Studies of women who disguise themselves as men in both historical and contemporary contexts in order to access new opportunities or for pleasure note the transgressive possibilities of cross-​ dressing.121 Indeed, the language used here is one of transgression:  in ‘apeing’ men, these women who were ‘masquerading’ as something that they were not, which was a ‘travesty’, were felt to have ruptured normative binary gender constructions. A year into the conflict, liveried women who appeared to be showing disrespect to the king’s uniform were still deemed not only to undermine the special status of soldiers, but also to pose a challenge to the ‘natural’ division between the sexes. The Daily Mail, which had in 1910 written about ‘unsexed females’, published an article in June 1916 referring to the uniformed woman, who was in ‘such a hurry to be like men’, as ‘hav[ing] earned the title “it” ’.122 The woman clad in military uniform during the First World War had a disruptive potential. As Gerard DeGroot observed, the ‘essential masculinity’ of khaki is called into question by the femininity of the wearer. Consequently, the khaki-​clad woman threatened war’s propensity to ‘reinforce the fundamentally masculine role of warrior and the feminine role of helpless maiden’.123 Yet despite this censure in print, there were a number of highly popular music hall entertainers who wore male military clothing on stage and regaled audiences with their playful humour and sartorial displays, the most popular undoubtedly Vesta Tilley.124 Neither the lengthy dispute in the Morning Post nor the article in Lady’s Pictorial about the sartorial transgressions of martial women explicitly referred to the FANY. One article did, however, unequivocally reference v 104 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman the Corps, and noted the criticisms it had faced. Entitled ‘Defence of “Base” Women: Their Work in France’, the heading played on the double meaning of the term ‘base’:  these women, who were often billeted in tented camps, were considered immoral and disreputable by many. The journalist W. Beach Thomas acknowledged the ‘very bitter criticism [that] has been directed from both sides of the Channel against British women working in France. Some people cannot see a woman in uniform –​I mean the sort of uniform that mimics the male –​without a splenetic outburst.’ He noted that the unseemly length of their skirts and their outsized hats and footwear had been criticised and that they had been ‘accused of saluting officers as if they were themselves real soldiers’, a ‘spectacle [that] is too strange to be acceptable or agreeable’.125 Yet Thomas was writing a ‘defence’ of the FANY, and noted ‘I will not trouble to defend the nurses. Their work speaks for themselves.’ He went on to note that ‘Our own yeomanry nurses in their khaki have done prodigies along the Belgian front.’ He also wrote admiringly of them elsewhere, applauding them for their ‘strength, endurance and pluck’, their ‘complete triumph’ and that they ‘deserve every compliment that can be paid them’.126 In a later article entitled ‘More about “Base” Women: Why They Are Needed’, he asserted ‘in case anyone suspects or dislikes any play upon the word “base” the pun was a favourite with Shakespeare’.127 Norma Lowson cut out the article and pasted it into her album alongside photographs of three FANY friends in uniform and a handwritten caption ‘Some examples of “Base” women’.128 While there was considerable hostility meted out to the generic uniformed woman, I have not found a single example of the FANY being the specific target of aggression in print, despite being the original ‘khaki girls’. The Boston Sunday Post, a Massachusetts publication, remarked on FANYs’ ‘natty military uniforms’, for example.129 Their small numbers, their select background and their work overseas, the subject of Chapters 4 and 5, acted as a buffer to the vitriolic comments in the press. They were continually praised for their contribution to the war effort and the media fixated on their visual appearance, each article describing in detail their uniform and focusing on their retention of femininity. An article in the Queen, for example, noted that members had their blouses made of ‘tussore silk in a palish shade of khaki’ and asserted ‘It is not too much to say that the uniform worn by the First-​Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps is one of the most becoming, as well as practical, of the numerous smart uniforms worn by women war-​workers.’ It went on to assert that ‘the caps worn by the F.A.N.Y.s are, to my thinking, in all ways superior to the hats worn by other women drivers …They have proved becoming v 105 v

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Women of war to almost any type of feature.’130 A  Daily Mirror article was similarly acclamatory: ‘radiantly beautiful –​a tall slim girl, with hair of spun gold and eyes of a deep and thoughtful blue. She was essentially feminine: silk stockings and suede shoes, of well-​matched tints, showed beneath her trim khaki skirt.’131 In such ways, the public were reassured that nothing much had changed, despite the wearing of military attire by socially elite women. While khaki could be flattering and softened by silk touches, it could also be enhanced by the application of make-​up. A 1916 Punch cartoon, for example, entitled ‘Our Amazon Corps “Standing Easy” ’, depicted eleven uniformed women wearing slouch hats, an item that FANYs wore on occasion, admiring themselves in compact mirrors, pouting and putting on lipstick:  war may have erupted but when given permission to relax, women’s primary concern, it was suggested, continued to be their appearance.132 This depiction, seen in Figure  2.8, emphasised the continuity of normative gender relations, working to smooth over anxieties about female masculinisation by representing the ‘true woman’ beneath the uniform. At the same time, of course, it embodied deep-​seated

Figure 2.8  ‘Our Amazon Corps “Standing Easy” ’, Punch, 26 April 1916. v 106 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman concerns about frivolous, vain women undertaking important and vital work in military settings. This trope persisted into the Second World War. Significant changes in the military and political situation, however, resulted in women increasingly being called upon to undertake war work. The war’s protracted nature, which induced conscription for men in January 1916 and led to the first official women’s service, the WAAC, being formally inaugurated in February 1917, meant that more and more men and women adopted military garb. Over 40,000 women served in the WAAC, wearing an army uniform that was a feminised version of the soldier’s. Such numbers resulted in servicewomen increasingly being regarded as making an important contribution to the war effort, and the tone of most articles changed:  the uniformed woman experienced less censure; had less frequently to defend herself; and was, according to Susan Grayzel, even ‘gradually and grudgingly’ accepted, slowly winning approval, albeit never regarded as being on a par with men.133 Initial anxieties were swept aside by a huge political will that desperately required womanpower. By the time the WAAC was established in 1917, the FANY had been in existence for ten years and had absorbed, and to an extent neutralised, along with other paramilitary uniformed women’s organisations such as the WVR, much of the hostility. That the FANY had achieved public acceptance and was held in high regard is evidenced by their inclusion in events celebrating women’s wartime work. In 1916, the Daily Mail sponsored an ‘Active Service Exhibition’ at Knightsbridge marking the varied contributions of the country. The Corps was proud to be invited to have its uniform on display to be viewed by the general public.134 Grace Ashley-​Smith was also selected to have her portrait in uniform included in an exhibition entitled Artists on Active Service. Despite FANYs’ efforts being commended, newspapers articles still appeared late into 1917 that were critical of women’s assumption of khaki. The Globe wrote of the war’s ‘new genus’, the emergence of the ‘swaggering, khaki-​clad girl’, noting her ‘mannish assurance that is by no means an attractive quality’ and quoting an officer who remarked ‘I don’t think they are the kind of girls men will want to marry … he will choose … the girl who is womanly.’ Not only were women defeminised by the adoption of khaki, but they also undermined the ‘essential’ masculinity of it: khaki was ‘sacred to those for whom it forms a shroud’, comprised ‘the honourable uniform of gallant gentlemen’ who returned wounded and constituted ‘the garb of the fighting man who goes out to war risking life for England, home and his women-​kind; and it should not be lightly donned’. The v 107 v

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Women of war implication was that uniform held a weighty significance, denoting manly courage and sacrifice, and when equated with the ‘weaker sex’, who were not deserving of its heroic and ‘honourable’ connotations, ‘the travesty is complete’. Noting the shortage of khaki for the truly deserving fighting man, the article went on to plead: ‘if uniforms must be worn by feminine war workers why not in shades of blues and greys?’135 Another connotation of khaki was the presumption that its female wearer had loose morals. As Lucy Noakes argues in an article about the sexualisation of the servicewoman, she was either perceived as a promiscuous heterosexual ‘sowing her wild oats’, whose incentive for enlisting was to meet soldiers, or as a ‘mannish’, ‘Amazonian’ lesbian, who was attracted to the opportunity to associate closely with other women, wear male clothing and behave in a manner more conventionally regarded as male.136 While these charges were certainly aimed at most units (and, indeed, recruitment to the WAAC was undoubtedly affected by malicious rumours until an official commission was sent to France to investigate and found that such gossip was unfounded), the FANY were not regarded in this way.137 They managed to navigate their way through a battlefield of gender politics without being targeted as either mannish or immoral. Undoubtedly it was their class status that helped them steer clear of such allegations. We shall return to this in Chapter 5. It was not until 1918, a year in which the WRNS and WRAF were founded and the WAAC, also granted royal patronage, changed its name to Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps (QMAAC), that a uniform was read not as an emblem of a woman’s gender transgression but, as Peg Scott noted in the Evening News, an ‘outward and visible display of her patriotism’.138 A poem entitled ‘Our New Army’ celebrated Scottish WAAC members: Now, maidens bright in bloom     March in the Women’s Army Corps Not tartan plaids but khaki frocks     Swing gaily through the crowded street, And khaki hats on curly locks     Match khaki hose on dainty feet. Our soldier maidens play their part     As their own kilted lads of yore.139

Similarly, Autocar magazine stated in 1920:  ‘The khaki-​clad feminine driver … was everywhere accepted as a natural and welcome sign of the times.’140 The war had very slowly normalised the woman in uniform. v 108 v

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Constructing the uniformed woman ‘My khaki amazed them’: FANYs on active service overseas Having considered the response of the British media and public to the uniformed FANYs, let us now examine the reception they received in Belgium and France during the war while serving as first aiders and ambulance drivers. Such reactions are recorded in newspaper articles, in FANY memoirs and also in picture form. They caught the attention of official war photographers, and their ambulance work is captured both in still images, as we shall see in Chapter 5, and in film footage.141 The official photographer who captured the shot in Figure 2.9 may have been motivated to take the picture by his amusement at the contrasting expressions of the laughing FANY undertaking mechanical repairs of her vehicle and the bemused members of the Chinese Labour Corps, low-​paid workers who performed unskilled manual work such as digging trenches, filling sandbags and repairing roads, one of whom has his hands on his hips as if unable to fathom the sight of the khaki-​overall-​wearing female

Figure 2.9  Chinese Labour Corps members watching with bemusement as Mary Richardson attends to her ambulance’s engine, St Omer, 1918. v 109 v

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Women of war mechanic.142 Another photograph taken moments later shows the Chinese Labour Corps men laughing also.143 Many accounts attest to the intriguing sight of khaki-​clad women: a newspaper article in War Budget Illustrated noted: ‘At first the French were startled to see British girls, clad in neat khaki uniform, acting as drivers. They were breaking the conventions with a vengeance. As a native said, “All the eyes of the town were upon them.” ’ The author reassured the newspaper’s British readers that, while dressed in the uniform of a soldier, each member was ‘looking every whit a woman’.144 Similarly, Betty Hutchinson asserted that the Belgians and the French ‘thought we were sort of strange people, hardly women’, and Pat Waddell recollected ‘The Parisians were very interested to see a girl dressed in khaki, and discussed each item of my uniform in the Metro quite loudly … “Mon Dieu!” they would exclaim. “Look then, she wears the big boots like a man.” ’145 Her robust footwear, which was such a contrast to the more typical dainty shoe usually worn by women, was not the only item that was regarded as masculine. She deemed her entire uniform ‘manly’ and recollected that it could have quite a profound impact on those not used to seeing liveried women: We were a never-​failing source of wonderment to the French inhabitants of the town. Our manly yeomanry uniform filled them with awe and admiration. I overheard a chemist saying to one of his clients as we were passing out of his shop, ‘Truly, until one hears their voices, one would say they were men.’ ‘There’s a compliment for us’, said I, to Struttie. ‘I didn’t know we had manly faces until this moment.’146

The gently comedic tone points to Waddell’s pleasure at being (mis)taken for a man: she is neither offended nor outraged at the error. As we saw in the last chapter, Waddell had ‘always wished’ that she had been a man when she was growing up, and the ‘manly’ uniform was a distinct enticement to joining the Corps.147 While photographs of FANYs wearing skirts and soft bonnets show absolutely unequivocally that these were women, one picture of members donning steel helmets issued to them by the French Army is certainly more ambiguous (Figure 2.10). As clothing was so distinctly gendered in this period, women who discarded skirts, donned breeches, wore khaki and cut their hair were automatically assumed to be men, despite the fact that they were not wearing overtly male clothing. One FANY’s accounts are replete with assertions of being misidentified in her uniform as a man. In a December 1914 newspaper article, Grace Ashley-​Smith records that she was in Ghent in October 1914 when it was overrun by German soldiers: ‘Today v 110 v

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Figure 2.10  FANYs of Unit 7 wearing French steel helmets on the Western Front, 1918. I went openly in my khaki. The Germans all looked wildly amazed when they caught sight of me; one man jumped violently. I think he thought me a British soldierman.’148 She repeatedly notes the effect her martial clothing had on German soldiers who were ‘rather astonished at my khaki uniform’ and ‘opened their eyes wide at my khaki’; ‘My khaki amazed them.’149 Her memoir also records the reactions of a British soldier who momentarily mistook her and her unit for ‘fellows’, and only realised his error when she responded. ‘I felt rather than saw the start of surprise and then his eyes peered into my face as he saluted. “I beg your pardon, I did not expect to find a lady!” ’ She then goes on to narrate how ‘suffering from the shock’ he stepped backwards, tripped over a kilometre stone and fell into a canal.150 These repeated acts of gender confusion are packaged for the reader as humorous incidents: while the military clothing might camouflage women’s bodies and lead to their being mistaken for men, the ‘true’ ‘nature’ of the woman underneath the khaki is quickly revealed, much to the surprise and delight of the British serviceman. The gender disruption is limited, temporary and, above all, a source of great amusement to the author and, she assumes, to her audience. In recording their amusement at being (mis)taken for men while in uniform, these memoirists permit the reader to be in on the joke: as Laura Doan notes, v 111 v

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Women of war such assertions induce ‘our recognition of an act of misrecognition’ and suggest an ‘understanding of the possibilities in pushing gender boundaries’. However, Doan argues that these entertaining tales of misidentification give little indication as to whether the women appreciated that some observers might associate masculinised forms of dress with sexual nonconformity or indeed that they were intentionally corroborating aspects of their sexual identities.151 While these postwar accounts offer up to the reading public humorous recollections of being seen as men, the Gazette magazine, which was sent to all serving FANYs during the war, was firm in its assertion of the need for uniformity. It noted that ‘for some months members have been more or less pleasing themselves … one costume in particular can only with a stretch of imagination be called a “uniform” at all!’ The adoption of non-​regulation fur coats is one example of FANYs fashioning a uniform that was warm, comfortable and practical. They also wore non-​regulation footwear, tunics and skirts, and headquarters reminded members that: khaki puttees and brown shoes, boots or long boots only were to be worn; tunics were to have four pockets; and the bottom of the skirt was to be exactly 10 inches from the ground.152 The skirt’s length was a matter of decorum and practicality: any longer and it would have impeded mobility and hampered the undertaking of ambulance-​driving; any shorter and it would have been considered indecent, and may have invited comment from establishment figures who were clearly wary of the female driver, as we shall see in Chapter  5. The FANYs were certainly aware of the controversy that surrounded the uniformed woman and sought to alleviate concerns about their martial appearance by reorienting discussion back to the service they provided: FANY Donnett Mary Paynter’s poem entitled ‘An Apology for What We Wear’ claims effectiveness, expediency and practicality as reasons for wearing uniform in order to quieten unease. Oh you who criticize the clothes Or lack of them, as worn By members of the female sex Who rise at early dawn And carry on throughout the day … We’re sorry if our garb offends We do not like your smile When you observe a skirt that reaches To the knees only of our breeches We do not wear for choice you see

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Constructing the uniformed woman These clothes utilitarian … So do not blame us overmuch We’re useful we believe …153

Conclusion Situated at the nexus of service, patriotism and war, the uniformed woman embodied the very contours of modernity. She was evidently self-​ assured, flouted convention, ignored societal disapproval, disregarded blatant hostility and defined herself through her sartorial choices. Consequently, attitudes toward her were complex and shifting, as this chapter has sought to show. Members of the FANY, the first women’s unit to wear military clothing, were invariably seen as objects of spectacle, scandal and subversion. The controversial decision to wear scarlet and later khaki livery exposed them to intense public scrutiny. Prewar members frequently experienced derision, taunts and insults, and, on occasion, even mild violence. They had objects thrown at them, were hidden away behind screens, were hurried out through back exits and were regarded as freaks, hussies, pariahs and agitators. They were viewed by bemused observers who gawped at them, as well as with intrigue by a fascinated public that consumed images of them in the popular press and on screen. In donning clothing that was so explicitly designed for combat FANYs challenged conventional gender norms and this positioned them at the vanguard of modernity. Indeed, before the war, they were perceived as modern and outlandish, women ahead of their time, posing a challenge to the status quo. Once war had commenced, and with the influx of women into uniform, FANYs were now in step with the times. Yet media criticism of the uniformed woman intensified, especially in the early months of the war, and the female wearer of khaki was roundly reproached and ridiculed for relinquishing femininity, perceived as ‘base’ and ‘mannish’. Her appropriation of clothing worn typically by men meant that she was regarded as subversive, defying established gender distinctions. The FANY, however, was never singled out for criticism and newspaper articles were without exception extremely positive, albeit often patronising and focused on appearance, praising the Corps for its efficiency. This highly favourable coverage was undoubtedly a result of its members’ class background. And FANYs revelled in the adoption of military uniform, which aligned them with the forces and distanced them from other women’s organisations; relished being (mis)taken for men; and enjoyed the respect and status that the v 113 v

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Women of war uniform bestowed:  as Grace Ashley-​Smith asserted in her narration of marching into the German headquarters after the fall of Ghent, ‘I swanked out through rows of Germans as if the earth was indeed mine, for being the only possessor of khaki, I felt I must live up to it!’154 Notes 1 Edith Colston, Gazette, 1967, 15–​16. 2 Hilary Green, Daughters of War (Sutton: Severn House, 2011), p. 1. 3 Margaret Douglas, ‘Women Volunteers:  Studland Bay’, Daily Mail, 10 September 1910. 4 Edward M. Spiers, ‘The Armed Forces’, in Chris Williams (ed.), A Companion to Nineteenth-​Century Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 79–​92 (p. 90). 5 Rudyard Kipling, ‘Tommy’ (1890), in The Barrack-​Room Ballads of Rudyard Kipling (Munslow: Hearthstone, 1995), pp. 33–​4. 6 Laura Ugolini, ‘The Illicit Consumption of Military Uniforms in Britain, 1914–​1918’, Journal of Design History, 24:2 (2011), 125–​38 (p. 132). 7 Lucy Noakes, ‘Playing at Being Soldiers? British Women and Military Uniform in the First World War’, in Jessica Meyer (ed.), British Popular Culture and the First World War (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 123–​45 (p. 144). 8 ‘Women and War:  First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps. Interview with the Founder’, Daily Graphic, 25 February 1909. 9 ‘Women in Khaki’, Lady’s Pictorial:  A Fashion and Society Paper for the Home, 21 August 1915; ‘ “Yeo-​Women”:  Inspiring Story of a Brave Band of Ministering Englishwomen’, Star, January 1915. 10 Krisztina Robert, ‘ “All that is best of the modern woman”? Representations of Female Military Auxiliaries in British Popular Culture, 1914–​1919’, in Meyer, British Popular Culture, pp. 71–​93 (p. 97). 11 Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik (eds), Thinking through Fashion:  A Guide to Key Theorists (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016). 12 Paul Fussell, Uniforms:  Why We Are What We Wear (London:  Houghton Mifflin, 2002); Jennifer Craik, Uniforms Exposed:  From Conformity to Transgression (Oxford: Berg, 2005). 13 Jane Tynan, British Army Uniform and the First World War:  Men in Khaki (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2013); Ugolini, ‘The Illicit Consumption of Military Uniforms’; Jenny Gould, ‘Women’s Military Services in First World War Britain’, in Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel and Margaret Collins Weitz (eds), Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 114–​25; Susan R. Grayzel, ‘ “The outward and visible sign of her patriotism”:  Women, Uniforms, and National Service during the First World War’, Twentieth Century British History, 8:2 (1997), 145–​64; Janet S.  K. Watson, ‘Khaki Girls, VADs and Tommy’s Sisters: Gender and Class in First World War Britain’, International

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Constructing the uniformed woman History Review, 19:1 (1997), 32–​51; Robert, ‘ “All that is best of the modern woman”?’; Noakes, ‘Playing at Being Soldiers?’. 14 Corinna Peniston-​ Bird, ‘Classifying the Body in the Second World War:  British Men in and out of Uniform’, Body & Society, 9 (2003), 31–​ 48; Corinna Peniston-​Bird, ‘The People’s War in Personal Testimony and Bronze: Sorority and the Memorial to the Women of World War II’, in Lucy Noakes and Juliette Pattinson (eds), British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 67–​87. 15 Angela Woollacott, ‘Dressed to Kill:  Clothes, Cultural Meaning and First World War Women Munitions Workers’, in Moira Donald and Linda Hurcombe (eds), Representations of Gender from Prehistory to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 198–​217 (p. 204). 16 See for example ibid., on munitions workers. 17 Cheryl Buckley, ‘ “De-​humanised females and Amazonians”: British Wartime Fashion and Its Representation in Home Chat, 1914–​1918’, Gender and History, 14:3 (2002), 516–​36. 18 Matthew Stephens, Hannah Snell: The Secret Life of a Female Marine, 1723–​92 (London:  Ship Street Press, 1997); Jo Stanley, Women and the Royal Navy, A  History of the Royal Navy (London:  I.B. Tauris, 1918), p.  24; Jo Stanley, Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates across the Ages (London: Pandora, 1995); Evelyn A. Schlatter, ‘Drag’s a Life:  Women, Gender and Cross-​Dressing in the Nineteenth-​Century West’, in Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage (eds), Writing the Range:  Race, Class and Culture in the Women’s West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), pp. 334–​48. 19 Irene Schuessler Poplin, ‘Nursing Uniforms:  Romantic Idea, Functional Attire, or Instrument of Social Change?’, Nursing History Review, 2 (1994), 153–​68. 20 Ibid., p. 165. 21 Irene Cooper Willis, Florence Nightingale:  A Biography (London:  George Allen and Unwin, 1931), p. 117. 22 Elizabeth Ewing, Women in Uniform (London: Batsford, 1975), pp. 42–​4. 23 Ibid., p. 47. 24 Jennifer Craik, ‘The Cultural Politics of the Uniform, Fashion Theory, 7:2 (2003), 127–​47 (p. 128). 25 Grace McDougall, ‘Prologue: The Start of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, McDougall, Box 3, Imperial War Museum, 46733; Grace McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies, 1914–​1919:  The Story of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, unpublished manuscript, Imperial War Museum, 16605, p. 3; Irene Ward, FANY Invicta: A History of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p. 31. 26 Betty Hutchinson, featured in BBC radio programme ‘The F.A.N.Y.s’, episode in the BBC series Home This Afternoon, broadcast 26 September 1967, British Library, ILP0168195.

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Women of war 27 Rebecca Unsworth, ‘Hands Deep in History: Pockets in Men and Women’s Dress in Western Europe c. 1480–​1630’, Costume, 51:2 (2017), 148–​70; Barbara Burman, ‘Pocketing the Difference:  Gender and Pockets in Nineteenth Century Britain’, Gender and History, 14:3 (2002), 447–​69. 28 ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps: How Ladies Can Render Assistance in the Event of Invasion’, Surrey Comet, 10 May 1917. 29 Woollacott, ‘Dressed to Kill’. See C. Ring, ‘Working Class Extravagance: An Apology’, Common Cause, 28 January 1916. 30 ‘British Heroines at the Front: Women who Share the Cold and Dangers of Tommy’s Life’, Daily Sketch, 25 January 1917; Lady’s Pictorial, 3 February 1917; Statesman, February 1917. 31 Norma Lowson, scrapbook, FANY HQ. 32 Minutes of FANY Board of Officers meeting, 17 November 1916, McDougall file, FANY HQ. 33 Laura Doan, ‘Topsy-​Turvydom: Gender Inversion, Sapphism and the Great War’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 12:4 (2006), 517–​42 (p. 528). 34 The Care of Our Wounded, film, Ministry of Information/​ Topical Film Company (1918), Imperial War Museum, 162. 35 F. Tennyson Jesse, The Sword of Deborah:  First Hand Impressions of the British Women’s Army in France (London: Richard Clay & Sons, 1918), p. 70; F. Tennyson Jesse, ‘A Night with a Convoy: An Account of the Work of the English Voluntary Aid Detachment in France’, Vogue, 1 September 1918, 72. 36 Fussell, Uniforms, p. 194. 37 Ugolini, ‘The Illicit Consumption of Military Uniforms’, p. 126. 38 Scott Myerly, British Military Spectacle:  From the Napoleonic Wars to the Crimea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 149–​50. 39 Tynan, British Army Uniform and the First World War. 40 Gazette, 1967. 41 Alan Mansfield and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Twentieth Century, 1900–​1950 (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), pp. 19–​55. 42 Ibid., p. 56. 43 Janet S. K. Watson, Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory, and the First World War in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 56. 44 Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 1998). 45 Doan, ‘Topsy-​Turvydom’, p. 525. 46 Ibid., p. 521. 47 McDougall, ‘Prologue’; Betty Hutchinson, ‘My FANY Life’, p. 15, Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 48 Hutchinson, ‘My FANY Life’, p. 1. 49 Album of Bourne End Camp, 6–​15 July 1912, Walton file, FANY HQ. 50 ‘Thomas Wallis and Co. Ltd’, Women and War, 2 (July 1910), 17. 51 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 5.

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Constructing the uniformed woman 52 Ibid., p. 208. Similarly, a French doctor thanked ‘[t]‌he English ladies whose coquettish dress became quickly popular’; ‘Translation of Dr Lardennois’ Farewell Letter to the Staff ’, McDougall, Imperial War Museum, 16605. 53 ‘Sandow’s Corset’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 48. 54 Matthew Hilton, ‘Advertising, the Modernist Aesthetic of the Marketplace? The Cultural Relationship between the Tobacco Manufacturer and the “Mass” of Consumers in Britain, 1870–​1940’, in Martin Daunton and Bernhard Rieger (eds), Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late Victorian Era to World War II (Oxford: Berg, 2001), pp. 45–​69 (p. 51). 55 Ibid., pp. 53–​4. 56 Letter from Eva Greenall to Captain Baker, 21 June 1909, Women/​FANY/​ ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 57 McDougall, ‘Prologue’. 58 Point 11, ‘Regulations’, p. 3, undated [c. 1911], FANY HQ. 59 Cited in Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 27. 60 Wendy Parkins, ‘The Epidemic of Purple, White and Green’: Fashion and the Suffragette Movement in Britain, 1908–​14’, in Wendy Parkins (ed.), Fashioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender and Citizenship (Oxford: Berg, 2002). 61 E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Gay & Hancock, 1911), pp. 265–​6. 62 Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 27. 63 W. Beach Thomas, ‘ “Yeowomen”: A Triumph of Hospital Organisation’, Daily Mail, 2 December 1915. 64 Women and War, 5 (November 1910), 74; McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 13. 65 Letter from Eva Greenall to Captain Baker, 21 June 1909; Thomas, ‘Yeowomen’. 66 Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 26. 67 Ibid., p. 32. 68 Kitty Buckman and Irene Marshall, cited in Katrina Jungnickel, ‘“One needs to be very brave to stand all that”: Cycling, Rational Dress and the Struggle for Citizenship in Late Nineteenth Century Britain’, Geoforum, 64 (2015), 362–​71 (pp. 362, 366). 69 Women and War, 2 (July 1910), 23. 70 Winifred Mordaunt, ‘F.A.N.Y. 1910’ (written in 1962), FANY HQ. Reproduced in Gazette, spring 1962, 18–​19. 71 Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 26 (emphasis in original). 72 Pat Washington, ‘Background’, Liddle Collection, WO/​130. 73 Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 32. 74 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 10. 75 ‘Women and War’, Daily Graphic, 25 February 1909. 76 Janet Lee, War Girls: The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 23. 77 Douglas, ‘Women Volunteers’.

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Women of war 78 Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), p. 224. 79 Douglas, ‘Women Volunteers’. 80 ‘FANY Press Cuttings 1914–​1918’, undated [May 1913?], FANY HQ. 81 ‘Mounted Nurses: Women’s Ambulance Corps at Pirbright’, Pall Mall Gazette, 18 July 1913. 82 ‘Red Cross Women in Camp’, undated, Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​ 057; ‘Dimples and Khaki:  The Ladies Mounted Ambulance Corps Mobilised’, Daily Sketch, undated [1913]; ‘FANY Press Cuttings 1914–​1918’, FANY HQ. 83 ‘Norbury:  Whitsuntide Camp. Women and Men Play the “War Game” ’, Croydon Guardian, undated [May  1913]. Very similar text is used by the Sphere, 17 May 1913; and the Daily Mail, 12 May 1913, Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 84 F. Cordeux-​Rhys, ‘The Mounted Nurses of the Girls Yeomanry Corps’, First Aid, August (1908), 19. 85 ‘Yeowomen in Camp: Strict Discipline for the Feminine Troops’, Daily Express, undated [July 1913]. 86 Morning Post, 13 May 1913; ‘Nursing Yeomanry Corps:  Englishwomen’s Sympathy’, Daily Telegraph, 23 January 1914; ‘Women in War:  Mounted Ambulance Corps for Ulster’, Standard, 21 July 1914; Thomas, ‘Yeowomen’; ‘Yeo-​Women’, Star. The Daily Call, on 8 May 1915, used the same title and words for its article on wartime nursing. 87 Thomas, ‘Yeowomen’. 88 ‘FANY Press Cuttings 1914–​1918’. 89 Ward, FANY Invicta, pp. 32, 36; Grace McDougall, ‘Brief Resumé of Corps’ Work’, Gazette, August 1916, 8–​ 12 (p.  8); Phyllis E. Thompson, ‘More Glimpses of Early F.A.N.Y. Days’, Gazette, spring 1962, 20–​1. 90 Articles featured in the Daily Graphic on 12 May 1913; in the Daily Mail, The Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express on 13 May; and in the Sphere and Croydon Guardian on 17 May. 91 ‘Yeowomen Helping the Wounded’, Daily Express, 1 May 1913, 5; ‘Nurses in Camp: Tents which Are Lit with Electric Light’, Daily Mirror, 13 May 1913, 13. 92 Jane Tynan, ‘The Lure of Discipline: Military Aesthetics and the Making of the First World War Civilian Soldier’, Journal of Photography and Culture, 2:2 (2009), 135–​52. 93 ‘A Women’s Nursing Yeomanry Corps at Work’, Tatler, May 1913. 94 Glenn R. Wilkinson, ‘At the Coal‐Face of History:  Personal Reflections on Using Newspapers as a Source’, Media History, 3:1–​2 (1995), 211–​25 (p. 218). 95 Peg Scott, ‘The Age of Uniform’, Evening News, 24 January 1918. 96 Barton Hacker and Margaret Vining, ‘Cutting a New Pattern:  Uniforms and Women’s Mobilization for War, 1854–​1919’, Textile History 41:1 (2010), 108–​43.

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Constructing the uniformed woman 97 ‘Women Urge Khaki Campaign’, Evening Standard, 26 August 1914. 98 War Budget Illustrated, 4 November 1915. 99 ‘The FANY Girls: Indomitables in the Battle Area’, War Budget Illustrated, 30 March 1916. 100 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, pp. 83, 59. 101 Katherine Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates:  The Story of Forty Five Years, 1875–​1920 (London: Peter Davies, 1940), p. 302; Naomi Jacob, Me in War-​ Time (London: Hutchinson, 1940), p. 208. 102 Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry, Retrospect (London: Frederick Muller, 1938), p. 128. 103 Jesse, The Sword of Deborah, pp. 12–​13. 104 Ibid., p. 13. 105 Edith M. Barton and Marguerite Cody, Eve in Khaki: The Story of the Women’s Army at Home and Abroad (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1918), p. 43. 106 Alison Oram, Her Husband Was a Woman! Women’s Gender-​Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture (London: Routledge: 2007), p. 37. 107 Watson, Fighting Different Wars, p.  17; Robert, ‘ “All that is best of the modern woman”?’, p. 102; Gould, ‘Women’s Military Services in First World War Britain’, p. 120. 108 Robert, ‘ “All that is best of the, modern woman”?’, p. 98. 109 This is a term used by Alison Oram in her discussion of women who attempted to be (mis)taken for men. Oram, Her Husband Was a Woman!, p. 37. 110 ‘A Woman’, letter to the Editor, Morning Post, 16 July 1915. 111 ‘A Woman’ letter to the Editor, Morning Post, 21 July 1915. 112 ‘Another Woman’, Morning Post, 19 July 1915; ‘Matron’, Morning Post, 19 July 1915. 113 Violet Markham, Morning Post, 22 July 1915. 114 ‘A Man’, Morning Post, 22 July 1915; ‘Civilian’, Morning Post, 21 July 1915; May Rickett, Morning Post, 20 July 1915; Clare Smith, Morning Post, 21 July 1915. 115 E. B. Jayne, Morning Post, 26 July 1915; Isabel Hampden Margesson, Morning Post, 19 July 1915; ‘Yet Another Woman’, Morning Post, 21 July 1915. 116 ‘A Uniformed Woman’, Morning Post, 20 July 1915; ‘Another Woman’, Morning Post, 20 July 1915. 117 ‘An Englishwoman’, Morning Post, 20 July 1915. This derisory comment about sunbonnets prompted a defensive response from a homemaker calling herself ‘A Stitch in the Background’, Morning Post, 22 July 1915. 118 Gould, ‘Women’s Military Services in First World War Britain’, p. 120. 119 Daily Graphic, 22 July 1916. 120 ‘Women in Khaki’. 121 Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests:  Cross-​ Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1992); Norah Vincent, Self-​Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man (New  York:  Penguin, 2006); Julie Wheelwright,

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Women of war Amazons and Military Maids: Women who Dressed as Men in the Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness (London: Pandora, 1990); Halberstam, Female Masculinity, especially the chapter entitled ‘Drag Kings:  Masculinity and Performance’, pp. 231–​66. 122 ‘Women in a Hurry by One of Them’, Daily Mail, 24 June 1916. 123 Gerard DeGroot, The First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), p. 157. 124 Sara Maitland, Vesta Tilley (London: Virago, 1986). 125 W. Beach Thomas, ‘Defence of “Base” Women: Their Work in France’, Daily Mail, 16 July 1915. 126 Thomas, ‘Yeowomen’. 127 W. Beach Thomas, ‘More about “Base” Women:  Why They Are Needed’, Daily Mail, 17 October 1916. 128 Lowson album, FANY HQ. 129 ‘A Peaceful Charge by “Good Angel” of Battlefield’, Boston Sunday Post, 29 November 1914. 130 Queen, 25 August 1917. 131 Paul Bewsher, ‘The Future of the Real War Girl. Will She Ever Return to a Life of Pleasure?’, Daily Mirror, 4 April 1919. That Ashley-​Smith had cut out and kept the article along with many other newspaper clippings about the Corps and donated them to the Imperial War Museum (McDougall, Box 2, Imperial War Museum, 46733) suggests that she, at least, believed this article to be about the FANY. 132 The clipping is also held in a box at FANY HQ, which implies that a First World War member kept the article and thought it was about the FANY. It is also included in Lynette Beardwood’s booklet on the First World War FANY, F.A.N.Y. at the Western Front: War Tales 1914–​1919 (London: FANY, 1997). 133 Diana Shaw, ‘The Forgotten Army of Women: Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), pp. 365–​79 (p. 365); Grayzel, ‘The outward and visible sign of her patriotism’, pp. 161, 148. 134 Gazette, May 1916, 1. 135 ‘The Khaki Girl’, Globe, 19 September 1917 (emphasis added). 136 Lucy Noakes, ‘ “A disgrace to the country they belong to”: The Sexualisation of Female Soldiers in First World War Britain’, Revue: Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English Speaking World, 6:4 (2008), 11–​26. 137 Lucy Noakes, Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907–​ 1948 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 75–​81. 138 Scott, ‘The Age of Uniform’. 139 Barton and Cody, Eve in Khaki, preface. 140 ‘Postwar Chivalry on the Road’, Autocar, 31 January 1920. 141 The Care of Our Wounded. 142 Gregory James, The Chinese Labour Corps (1916–​1920) (Hong Kong: Bayview Educational, 2013).

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Constructing the uniformed woman 143 Muriel Thompson photograph album, Thompson file, FANY HQ. 144 ‘The FANY Girls’. 145 Hutchinson, ‘The F.A.N.Y.s’; Pat Beauchamp [Pat Waddell], Fanny Goes to War (London: John Murray, 1919), p. 80. 146 Ibid., p. 16. 147 Ibid., p. 261. 148 Grace Ashley-​ Smith, ‘The Fringe of the Storm:  An Englishwoman’s Experiences at the Front’, T.P.’s Weekly, 26 December 1914. 149 Ibid.; McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p.  39; ‘A Woman in War:  Interview with Mrs McDougall, First Aid Yeomanry Corps’, Lady’s Pictorial, 8 April 1915. 150 Grace McDougall, A Nurse at the War: Nursing Adventures in Belgium and France (New York: McBride, 1917), p. 168. 151 Doan, ‘Topsy-​Turvydom’, pp. 523, 532. 152 Gazette, September/​October 1916, 1–​2. 153 Donnett Mary Paynter, ‘An Apology for What We Wear’, in handwritten book of poetry, Norah Cluff file, FANY HQ. 154 Ashley-​Smith, ‘The Fringe of the Storm’.

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‘Determined women full of initiative and vision’: The professionalisation of a voluntary women’s corps Within a fortnight of her death in August 1910, letters headed ‘Are there no Florence Nightingales left?’ were sent to twelve leading newspapers advertising a horse ride from London to Edinburgh aiming to boost recruitment to a struggling women’s organisation that had been formed three years earlier and was on the brink of collapse.1 An article appearing in the Daily Sketch noted that the ‘Women’s Long March’ would ‘show the country that there is still the making of more Florence Nightingales in this great empire’.2 Edward Baker, the founder of the FANY, planned for female members to travel forty miles daily by horse in winter for ten consecutive days. He recognised that in the event of an invasion on the Scottish coast, railways would be put out of action, motor cars would be unavailable, and troops and medical personnel would be required to go by road to shore up defences and establish dressing stations. Like Nightingale, who stoically withstood difficult circumstances in Scutari to do her duty, members of his organisation, a band of mounted first aiders, would, he argued, willingly tolerate the discomforts of a difficult journey in order ‘to prove our efficiency in time of need’. The expedition would indeed be physically demanding. Baker’s military friends believed that women were incapable of withstanding the rigours of such an arduous expedition. Yet he had a ‘firm belief in the pluck and endurance of the members’, and wanted to prove that they could tolerate hardship, convinced that their weekly riding drills had given them ‘a fine physique’ and that they were not to be dismissed as ‘mere fair-​weather soldiers’.3 The ride, he asserted in the newspaper articles, was ‘no vain display, no idle trifling, but a great and noble movement of fit women to aid in the defence of the country’.4 The horse ride, much like the drills, displays and exercises that they undertook in public, was proposed to exhibit the merit of modern, martial femininity. v 122 v

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The professionalisation of the corps The ride is indicative of the complex and contradictory nature of the Corps. On the one hand, riding and dispensing first aid were safely entrenched within established understandings of elite femininity as decorous, leisured and compassionate. Yet the journey would be arduous and it was proposed as a military exercise to prepare women for war. Such ambiguities parallel the Corps’s intended function, social divisions and power politics. With regard to its purpose, as we have discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, Baker’s notion of mounted women clothed in a martial uniform galloping onto the distinctly masculine terrain of a bloody and corpse-​ridden battlefield was highly modern, and yet they were to provide feminine relief, emotional sustenance and medical care in the mould of Florence Nightingale. Incongruities are also to be found in the social divide between the originator of the planned horse ride and creator of the Corps, a man who had been a policeman and worked in a meat-​packing company at Smithfield market, and the women members who were to undertake the journey, among whom were some titled aristocrats and women of considerable wealth. Such class differences were undoubtedly at the root of tensions that existed between Baker and his female members that led to mass resignations and eventually to his ousting from the Corps that he had created, as we shall see. And the complexities of Baker’s proposed horse ride are also revealing of the wider power dynamics operating within the Corps. It never took place, shelved by Grace Ashley-​Smith, a recent recruit who considered his idea ‘wildly unpractical’, believing it was unwise to travel so far in November; would take too much of a toll on both horses and riders; and, with members each being asked to pay £20 (equivalent today to about £2,300) towards expenses, too costly.5 The abandonment of Baker’s horse ride was just one of many ways Ashley-​Smith made her mark on the Corps. She embarked upon a programme of reform to professionalise the unit, which included dispensing with riding side-​saddle in favour of astride, changing the colour and style of the uniform, and implementing regular training and tests of proficiency. Her memoir is replete with statements such as ‘I convinced’, ‘I pointed out’, ‘I arranged’, ‘I insisted’, ‘I proposed’, ‘I laid out’, attesting to her agency, and she contributed huge amounts of her own personal wealth to finance the activities of the Corps. She was instrumental in transforming an amateur group of mounted first aiders into a small professional body with a distinct modern identity that could be mobilised in time of war to transport the wounded. The FANY are part of a broader narrative about the incursions upper-​ and middle-​class women made into the public realm from the middle v 123 v

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Women of war of the nineteenth century into the interwar period, a development that was central to notions of modernity and the New Woman. Such women were able to vote in municipal elections and a few asserted and developed their organisational competencies by taking up public office serving the community in parish, district, borough, town and county councils as members, aldermen, mayors and chairs; on school boards; and as factory inspectors, Poor Law guardians and magistrates. Charitable bodies, interest groups, religious associations, imperial societies and self-​help clubs proliferated, giving women direct experience of public organisation. While female activism is often perceived as revolving around the single issue of the vote, women participated in political pressure groups lobbying to extend women’s wider legal rights and demanding reform in the realms of education, sanitation, working conditions, public health and prisons.6 Indeed, their participation in voluntary bodies was critical to the emergence of the welfare state.7 Female agency in the public sphere has generated a wealth of scholarship over the last thirty years:  particularly noteworthy is the work of Patricia Hollis on women in local government, Jane Lewis on prominent social activists, Helen Jones and Ruth Livesey on factory inspectors, Gillian Scott on the Women’s Co-​ Operative Guild, Helen Glew on public service employees, Anne Logan on Justices of the Peace, Helen Jones on women’s lobbying around social policy issues affecting women and families, Helen McCarthy on female diplomats, and Louise Jackson on the Metropolitan Women Police.8 As Karen Hunt notes, women’s involvement in voluntary societies gave them ‘skills and networks that enabled them to move further into the public world’.9 While female social campaigners have generated considerable interest, historians have largely ignored women with less reformist attitudes. As Julie Gottlieb and Clarisse Berthezène note in their analysis of women and the Conservative Party, their ‘presumed reactionary views and their complicity with the patriarchal establishment’ have until recently discouraged scrutiny.10 Some scholars, such as Maggie Andrews, Lorna Gibson and Cordelia Moyse, have urged the adoption of a broader understanding of feminism, or indeed a redefinition that incorporates women who joined organisations such as the Women’s Institute (a secular group formed in 1915) and the Mothers’ Union (established in 1876 by Mary Sumner for laywomen in the Anglican Church) so that they can be included within the history of the women’s movement.11 Catriona Beaumont, by contrast, cautions against altering our understandings of feminism or reconceptualising such conservative groups as feminist and instead recommends revision of the term ‘women’s movement’ so that it is v 124 v

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The professionalisation of the corps divorced from its exclusive association with feminism and encompasses a wider range of women’s groups.12 As Barbara Caine notes, the ‘border regions’ of women’s history must encompass socially and politically conservative women, and by venturing into this ‘problematic territory’ will extend the frontiers of feminist history.13 If we accept Beaumont’s viewpoint, then we might include the FANY within the broader women’s movement given that the Corps was a female cultural space that gave its members considerable agency, despite it taking its direction, at least initially, from a male commanding officer. Indeed, Grace Ashley-​Smith refers a number of times to the FANY as a ‘women’s movement’.14 While not actively campaigning to extend women’s rights as Victorian and Edwardian reformers had done, by imagining a more extended role for women in a future war and implicitly, if not explicitly, claiming their right to fulfil the obligations of citizenship, understood in its broadest sense of social participation, FANYs were pioneers in the realm of the military. And unlike most other female organisations, the Corps did not adopt a maternal model of citizenship nor try to inculcate members with an image of womanhood that was domestic, but instead recognised that women could perform an active role in conflict. Another way in which middle-​ class women became increasingly prominent in the public domain, explicitly signifying the phenomenon of modernity with its inherent possibilities and perils, and fuelling anxieties about the New Woman, was through undertaking waged labour in socially defined workplaces. Careers opened up for women in nursing and teaching in the Victorian period and, in the early twentieth century, in civil service, telephony, policing, law and social work.15 Each of these ‘white bloused’ occupations underwent a process of professionalisation. Early sociological studies of professions largely neglected these areas and focused instead on law, medicine and the Church, which were highly resistant to the entry of women.16 Various ‘traits’ were identified that marked their distinctiveness. Fundamental to the recognition of what constitutes a ‘profession’ is the provision of initial training to impart specialised knowledge and to drive up standards, the entry restriction of new members in order to occupy a monopolistic position and retain selectivity, registration of members, the expectation of adherence to a professional code of conduct, regular testing of competency to verify credentials, a shared preference to succeed, self-​regulation, removal from the profession of those who do not adhere to expected standards, and an altruistic commitment to serve others rather than a desire for personal reward. While the sociology of the professions largely v 125 v

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Women of war ignored the history of women’s participation in the labour market until the publication of Anne Witz’s ground-​breaking study Professions and Patriarchy in 1992, female professionals have since garnered scholarly attention. Witz’s examination of the gendered divisions of labour within the health profession showed how the mid-​nineteenth-​century restructuring of medicine brought together (male) physicians, surgeons and apothecaries who safeguarded their occupational status and, by engaging in ‘demarcationary closure’ through ‘credentialism’, excluded (female) midwives and nurses.17 Endeavours to increase the status of midwifery and nursing as professions, what Witz calls a ‘gendered strategy of inclusionary usurpation’, were subsequently protracted and for a long time unsuccessful, as June Hannam and Celia Davies, among others, have shown.18 Yet the model of professionalisation outlined above also fits various case studies of occupations that have a gender tag of ‘women’s work’, such as nursing, teaching and social work, as each demarcated their area of expertise, refined their knowledge through training and regulated admittance with stringent entrance criteria. Furthermore, as Penelope Corfield has claimed, the ‘professional virtues of service, commitment, expertise and vocational dedication’ were not ‘inimical’ to women.19 Women factory inspectors, nurses and police, notes Anne Summers, deployed a ‘domestic-​service paradigm’ in the construction of their professional identities.20 Moreover, while professionals are generally presumed to be financially recompensed for their time and skill, historians of women have recently opened up the term to include women’s voluntary endeavours. Anne Logan, for example, notes in her study of unpaid female magistrates that the definition of professions can be broadened and should not be restricted to ‘a narrow gendered category of highly paid occupations dominated by men’.21 Similarly, Rhonda Anne Semple has examined missionary women’s efforts to expand their range of professional activities in China and India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.22 While it may seem an overstatement to attribute the term ‘professional’ to the FANY, a voluntary group of amateurs who met for just a few hours a week to train, it did implement all of the traits identified above in its pursuit of becoming a more professional outfit, as we shall see. Similar to the way that the female professionalisation project raised the efficiency and status of paid midwives, teachers, nurses and social workers, the voluntary FANY Corps was transformed into a competent, skilful, efficient and modern women’s organisation by its adoption of rigorous training, ongoing testing, a shared work ethic, a code of behaviour, self-​policing, dismissal of those who failed to achieve v 126 v

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The professionalisation of the corps the set standards, restrictive recruitment, registration of members and the philanthropic wish to serve. This chapter foregrounds female professionalisation in the FANY through an examination of two case studies of New Women who were ‘determined … [and] full of initiative and vision’: Mabel St Clair Stobart, who posed a number of challenges to Baker’s chaotic governance, demanded improvements that would turn the Corps into a more professional organisation and subsequently resigned to set up a rival women’s Corps, and Grace Ashley-​Smith, who sought to work from within to professionalise the FANY (making changes to the Corps’s recruitment, training, uniform, discipline and activities, as well as founding a magazine) and eventually ousted Baker, taking over command herself, and readying the Corps for active service during the Irish Home Rule Crisis.23 Both left substantial written records on which this chapter draws: Stobart published a number of books, including an autobiography and two accounts of female militarism, and magazine articles (as well as novels, plays, musical scores and books on spiritualism), while Ashley-​Smith kept a log book and a regimental order book and letters, edited a magazine, and wrote an (unpublished) account of her time with the FANY (as well as publishing a novel and a record of her wartime experiences with the Corps). In addition, the chapter utilises Corps ephemera, including minutes of meetings, regulations and written correspondence, as well as newspaper articles, in order to examine how female members transformed the unit from one that was premised upon the part-​modern, part-​premodern romantic whims of its male founder into a more professional and decidedly modern women’s equestrian and first aid movement that was in a state of war-​readiness. ‘No hope of reform from within’: Mabel St Clair Stobart and early usurpatory challenges to Baker’s authority, 1909–​1910 As we have seen, Edward Baker had fashioned, first in his imagination and then in reality, a novel, uniformed women’s organisation that was centred upon military discipline, imperial service and physical activities. This overt expression of elite female culture appealed to many socially privileged Edwardian women and it was initially successful, attracting over 100 members. However, its success proved to be short-​lived, as the Corps plunged into a succession of crises, at the centre of which were female members’ markedly different attitudes to Baker’s on how the organisation ought to be governed. Letters, and the minutes of FANY meetings in v 127 v

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Women of war 1909, reveal his weakening grip on the unit that he had founded eighteen months previously. On 8 May, twelve officers met with Baker ‘to investigate certain complaints and also to deliberate as to the future of the Corps’. Their concerns were partly financial, and they demanded to examine the accounts. Convinced of the need for a collective process of leadership that was not invested in one (male) individual, some female members, including Lieutenant Eva Greenall, insisted Baker form a Council of Officers to run the Corps with him. The minutes reveal that Baker agreed to meet with senior officers monthly, and with all officers four times a year. This appeased Greenall, who pledged her support, ‘expressed regret if she had hurt Capt. Baker’s feelings’ and asserted that her demands were ‘intended for the good of the Corps’. Mabel St Clair Stobart, a lieutenant in the FANY who had been one of Baker’s earliest recruits, reiterated for the sake of the minutes the agreed change to authority: ‘it is now understood that in future the Corps be governed by Capt. Baker and a Council of Officers’.24 Yet despite these assurances, tension continued and things came to a head the next month following a fundraising event attended by Margot Asquith, the Prime Minister’s wife.25 Stobart, who wrote two plays that were performed at the fundraiser, refused to give Baker the cheque for £180 and demanded in July 1909 that a Provisional Finance Committee be appointed to take over the fiscal management of the Corps.26 While not aristocratic, Stobart was well positioned to question and issue orders to a man socially beneath her, imbued with the confidence endowed upon her by her upbringing and life experiences: she was the daughter of a merchant; was herself a published author; had been married and had two sons; had endured challenging conditions, remarking ‘I myself am an old campaigner in Africa’; had managed household and business finances; had run a successful general store in South Africa following her husband’s financial losses; had been widowed and remarried; and, aged in her late forties, was considerably older than other members.27 Indeed, Baker complained to a friend that he wished he had not permitted ‘elderly women’ to join his unit.28 In spite of her age, Stobart personified the New Woman:  assertive, intelligent, fiscally astute, career-​minded and independent. Indeed, she referred to herself as a ‘modern woman’ in her 1916 account of her work in Serbia.29 Twenty years later, she remarked in her autobiography, ‘I could not help being a feminist, for I knew from personal experience that women could do things of which tradition had supposed they were incapable.’30 And in her 1913 book War and Women, which included an advertisement on the back page for Helena Swanwick’s book The Future of the Women’s Movement, she asserted ‘I was –​though v 128 v

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The professionalisation of the corps not a militant suffragist –​a believer in the political enfranchisement of women!’31 Believing that suffragists were too preoccupied with the end goal of the parliamentary vote, she felt that an important incremental and concrete step to prove women’s capabilities was at local level and, accordingly, she stood for election to London County Council to represent Westminster. She also felt strongly that women had to demonstrate they could handle the heavy obligations of citizenship and was keen to see women take up its burdens as well as its rewards: ‘if women deserved to share in the government of the country, it seemed plain to me that they must share in the responsibility of defending the country’.32 She argued against the constraining parameters of separate-​spheres ideology, what she called the ‘ “sphere of home” argument’: ‘the word “home” has now for woman an imperial and world-​wide import … A  woman’s horizon is no longer bounded by her own back-​parlour and the parish hall, but by Atlantic and Pacific oceans. [T]‌hey now regard “home” in the larger sense of Country and of Empire … The modern woman has an instinct that there is a large sphere of work open to her in the Territorial service of her country.’33 Such self-​assured members as Stobart adopted what Anne Witz calls a ‘strategy of usurpation’ to challenge Baker’s monopolistic power, insisting on the formation of and their inclusion within a Finance Committee and a Governing Council, as well as the drawing up of a constitution that formalised the governance structure.34 With his leadership questioned, he bowed to pressure and complied, implementing each request. Conflict continued, however, as there were increasing unease and uncertainty concerning the direction in which Baker was taking them. Stobart crops up again in the archive the following month, leading opposition to Baker’s draft constitution in a general meeting.35 After lengthy discussions at a select meeting of officers two days later, on 21 July 1909, the terms of the charter were finally agreed upon.36 The formal registration at Stationers’ Hall on 27 July 1909 of the Corps’s title and badge (a Maltese Cross, symbolising sacrifice, surrounded by a circle, representing unity in service) meant that the FANY became the first women’s voluntary organisation. But while thirty-​three members had signed the declaration of allegiance accepting the constitution, eighteen had refused to ratify it. Even some of those who acquiesced were not content: Isabel Wicks, who gave her assent, wrote to Baker informing him that she was ‘somewhat surprised and puzzled’ to be asked to make a signed declaration, having verbally affirmed her allegiance in the presence of a witness the previous month.37 One of those who would not endorse the v 129 v

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Women of war constitution was Stobart. In her autobiography, she was politely dismissive of Baker’s self-​attributed military title, calling him ‘Mr B, who styled himself Captain B’. ‘I don’t want to be unloyal or ungrateful’, she wrote, ‘but frankly the aims and efforts of the promoter, though well-​meaning, were absurdly unpractical … snatching the wounded from under the cannons’ mouths … and would have led nowhere except to derision’.38 She left the FANY in 1909 to establish her own organisation, the Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps. While dropping some of Baker’s more radical ideas on the grounds of their unfeasibility, she conceded that he was making ‘a move in the right direction’, and she took many elements of her experience with the FANY and incorporated them into the new unit: members paid the same entrance fee of 10s plus hefty annual subscriptions of between £3 and £4; qualified nurses were recruited; they rode horses; and they attended summer camps at which ‘no feminine vanities’ were permitted and during which they slept on straw mattresses in tents, dug latrines and drew their water.39 She supplemented these aspects of Baker’s original ideas with several of her own: each detachment was to include a female carpenter, telegraphist and dispenser ‘so that they may be prepared for any emergency’; female doctors were to be actively recruited; they adopted a ‘workmanlike’ uniform of grey-​green tunic, divided skirt and pith helmet, the ‘plainness and severity’ of which, noted Daily Mail journalist Margaret Douglas, ‘should attract only women of serious purpose  –​no glamour of scarlet or gold to allure the woman volunteer’; and they received weekly instruction at the London Scottish Drill Hall in Westminster in first aid, ambulance-​driving, cycling, map-​ reading, stretcher-​bearing and signalling, as well as housewifery, cooking and laundry.40 The media was effectively utilised to publicise their activities, and within six months her unit had fifty recruits, some of whom had been former members of the FANY.41 The highly professional status of this amateur women’s organisation was underscored by its acceptance in 1910 as a VAD and its merging with the British Red Cross in 1913. The FANY, on the other hand, was reducing in size, and seemed anything but a professional corps of well-​trained women. There had been an avalanche of resignations in June and July 1909:  in addition to Stobart taking many members with her to form a rival corps, Lady Ernestine Hunt also left around this time; Flora Sandes a short time later; Lieutenant Edith Benjamin offered Baker an ultimatum that either he must resign or she would (he had ‘no intention of doing so’); and eight members, including Lieutenant Eva Greenall, wrote a letter of resignation in late June complaining about poor organisation and lack of v 130 v

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The professionalisation of the corps useful work and proper instruction, considering the Corps a waste of their time and money.42 This was just six weeks after Greenall had been ‘willing to give him all the assistance she could’.43 The depletion of the Corps’s numbers gained wide exposure:  the British Journal of Nursing, for example, reported to its readers in July 1909 that the ‘whole of Troop A’, twelve members in total, had resigned, noting ‘there has been considerable dissatisfaction felt by the Troop for some little time in regards to the management of the affairs of the Corps’.44 Reflecting decades later on the stream of resignations, FANY Edith Walton, who was still a member nearly seventy years later, noted that it was ‘over finance really because they thought that Captain Baker was taking money from them for training as officers and they weren’t getting any training at all. So they just fell out.’45 The desire that had motivated them to respond to Baker’s call at a time when the country was questioning its military preparedness had ebbed away, and many felt that he was exploiting their affluence. Baker was determined to prevent the establishment of rival FANY groups and met with the Corps’s solicitors, instructing them to inform Stobart and Hunt that because the title ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’ and the badge had been registered at Stationers’ Hall the previous week, they were not permitted to use the name, insignia or constitution.46 Stobart also had to account for the money raised at the fundraising event. After four months of negotiations between the Corps’s solicitors and Stobart’s lawyers, Baker was advised to accept half the proceeds in order to prevent the ‘ridicule’ that publicity brought about by litigation would undoubtedly cause.47 Meanwhile, £180 (comparable to nearly £21,000 today) had been deposited into the account of Stobart’s newly formed Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps. The embarrassing incident alienated some members: Isabel Wicks wrote to Baker in November 1909, saying that she was ‘utterly disheartened with the whole affair’ and that although she had intended to ask him for an application form for a new recruit –​‘an officer’s wife who has ridden much in India and in S. Africa’ –​ she felt that ‘under the present circumstances I cannot honestly advise any lady to join your Corps’. She also complained of two wasted evenings when she had travelled to headquarters to meet his daughter to discuss Corps business. Katie Baker had not kept either appointment. ‘I submit, sir, with all due respect, that such treatment as this is sufficient to dampen the enthusiasm of the most eager recruit.’48 Even stalwart members were questioning their continued association with the Corps. Concerns about Baker’s handling of funds continued over the next twelve months. A  journalist from Truth, a periodical known for its v 131 v

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Women of war exposure of fraud, visited headquarters in June 1910, hinting at financial mismanagement and suggesting that Baker should disclose his accounts so that the public could see he was not running the Corps for his personal gain.49 And in September 1910, Wicks wrote demanding an explanation from Baker as to why there was no money to pay for a wagon to practise ambulance drills when, by her reckoning, there was over £3 in the kitty (about £350 today).50 She recognised that he ‘evidently resented’ her intrusion into fiscal matters but wanted to draw his attention to the fact that ‘there is still some [grumbling] in the Corps though it is not as bad as it was’.51 An attempt to try and quash ongoing unease was the opening up of audited accounts to any member who wished to see them, as ‘wrong opinions had been formed through insufficient knowledge’.52 It was during this upheaval that the Corps magazine published a slightly misquoted line from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to describe Baker: ‘I know the Gentleman to be of worth and worthy of estimation.’53 These internal tensions were triggered by female members’ negative perceptions of Baker’s handling of the unit that he founded and their differing views of how the Corps ought to be governed. Thus, although this was an organisation conceived and run by a man, the women he recruited, who came from a higher social background than he, and who undoubtedly had a sense of privilege and entitlement as well as self-​ assurance, were not hesitant in making their frustrations known. And they did so in eloquent and articulate ways. Wicks, who kept up a lengthy correspondence with Baker outlining her frustrations with the Corps, wrote for example of the ‘most trying of all duties –​waiting for orders which do not come’: I am not unappreciative of those most helpful and instructive lessons in signalling which Serg. Major so kindly gave me. But I feel rather like a musician who on joining an orchestra gets a couple of excellent lessons on the violin (for which he is grateful) –​but has no opportunity of joining in the concertos and symphonies to which he looked forward, and which are described to him as about to take place.54

Baker had failed to deliver on what he had promised the women who had paid handsomely to join his unit. The women who enrolled in the Corps did not passively consume Baker’s limited vision of modernity. They asserted their agency, a quintessential characteristic of the modern woman, by registering their disapproval, questioning his governance and, in most instances, leaving the organisation. As Stobart concluded, ‘there was no hope of reform v 132 v

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The professionalisation of the corps from within’.55 As a result, the Corps was on the brink of collapse and, after the second mass departure within a couple of months, membership shrank in 1910 to about a dozen women. It looked as if the FANY would go the same way as the Women’s Volunteer Medical Staff Corps, a unit established in 1894 by Ethel Stokes and Mrs K. Hetherley, which had folded after a year. Like the FANY, this Corps was highly progressive and pushed the bounds of convention by clothing its recruits in a uniform of straw hat and baggy ‘knickerbocker’ trousers, training them in the use of muskets, drill, basic medicine and camping. It generated negative publicity and were ridiculed in both poetic and cartoon form.56 The FANY was, by contrast, able to weather the storm. This was in no small part down to the energy and enterprise of one member. While Stobart had felt that there was no possibility of further restructuring the Corps and resigned, Grace Ashley-​Smith, who also roundly disagreed with many of Baker’s ideas, sought to work from within, reorganising and increasingly professionalising the Corps, building on the work of her female predecessors, manoeuvring the male founder to the margins and taking over the leadership herself. ‘A newcomer laying down the law’: the transformation of the Corps under Grace Ashley-​Smith, 1910–​1914 In 1962, seventy-​five-​year-​old Grace McDougall (née Ashley-​Smith), who had joined the Corps in January 1910 aged twenty-​three, attracted by the equestrian nature of the organisation, noted that ‘The Fany is as much [a]‌part of my youth as my own children are part of my body.’57 Here, and in the next two chapters, we shall see why this was the case. While the Corps came to mean so much to her, her initial sense was decidedly ambivalent:  ‘my own impressions of my early days with the F.A.N.Y. were far from favourable’.58 Like Stobart, she was dismissive of the founder whose humble social background was so different from her own and regarded him as an upstart: in her unpublished memoir, submitted to the Imperial War Museum in 1938, she rather contemptuously calls him ‘Mr Baker’ (rather than Sergeant-​Major or his self-​attributed rank of Captain), and in the accompanying letter she puts parentheses around ‘Captain’ to denote the honorary title. She was critical of his leadership qualities and was undoubtedly aware of his poor financial and organisational management skills, which had precipitated so many previous members to resign. His ideas, she noted, ‘were not very clear’, and ‘the work was rather vaguely described’. She was also fairly derogatory v 133 v

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Women of war about the ‘quaint uniform’ that he had designed, which was ‘not practical, and very gaudy’, and she secured Baker’s consent to purchase a more functional divided skirt when she joined.59 At her first riding parade, she was mystified by the poor horse(wo)manship of existing members of Baker’s mounted Corps: the other five women in attendance each refused to ride a ‘dear little grey’ that they dismissed as ‘unmanageable’, and later ‘congratulated’ her on her ability to control it. They did little more than ride ‘round and round at a slow walk’, and one member, who had offered to give her riding tips, promptly fell off when they moved into a gentle trot, and did so twice more. ‘I left that parade in a thoughtful mood’, she recollected, and put her dogged determination to persevere with the failing unit down to an innate Scottish frugality:  she was unwilling to forgo the Guinea she had paid in subscribing to the Corps and the investment of purchasing the uniform.60 Her bewilderment continued:  she thought it needlessly alarming to expect novice riders to hack through the busy streets of central London or for new members without any prior instruction to drive a two-​horse ambulance wagon in the congested capital. She ‘expressed very strongly’ to Baker her ‘dissatisfaction’ with being sent in uniform to serve as an usher handing out programmes to working-​class women at an East End factory dance.61 She also questioned Baker’s criteria for promotion, which had more to do with payment of a fee than merit and long service. Asked to pay £10 (equivalent to over £1,100 today) to be made up from trooper to lieutenant, she refused, as she had only been a member for a couple of months and ‘pointed out then, as I have frequently done since’ that promotion should be earned having passed examinations.62 She recollected that after a period of initial ‘excitement … the movement died out’, and Baker asked for her ‘to help him’ improve the Corps and make it ready for future national service.63 Thus, instead of resigning from what she felt was a poorly managed organisation, as so many other women had previously done, Ashley-​ Smith accepted Baker’s offer. Taking charge of the Corps’s professional identity, she set immediately to work transforming its membership, training, work ethic, discipline and publicity, and ‘spent the next few months fighting for my own way in the office’.64 Recruitment had continued to be a problem since the mass resignations in the summer of 1909. Isabel Wicks, for example, thanked Baker for her promotion but pointedly noted ‘I would rather be a plain trooper in a more flourishing corps. Can we not get more recruits?’65 As Chief of Staff, Ashley-​Smith prepared enrolment information and, determined to preserve the Corps’s select membership, ‘hunted round v 134 v

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The professionalisation of the corps for recruits and pestered all my friends to join’.66 Mary Runciman, who was one such friend (who enlisted in 1915), recalled in an oral history interview: ‘She enthused me, she made me join. I was only too willing.’67 Recognising the need for visibility to attract affluent women to the Corps, Ashley-​Smith drove an ambulance wagon around Knightsbridge and relocated the headquarters to South Kensington. She also ‘weede[d]‌out others’ who she felt were unsuitable, including one who had ‘peroxide hair, very fat and hearty’ and who regularly fell off her horse displaying her underwear:  ‘she had to go; no women’s movement could have survived these white frilly drawers on parade’.68 She recognised that, to be taken seriously, the Corps needed to comprise well-​disciplined horsewomen who displayed competency and skill. She ‘insisted’ that they ride astride in public; dismissed the use of side-​saddles, noting they ‘would have been utterly useless’; and changed the uniform, which had been designed for side-​saddle equestrianism:  ‘Soon I  had the girls in khaki astride skirts with tunics to match.’69 The functional, looser-​fitting outfit with a shorter hemline aided mobility and, as we have seen, the colour visually aligned them with the army and extended to them the prestige of His Majesty’s professional army. She also ‘quietly dropt’ (sic) from the FANY programme the section about riding onto battlefields, which had been Baker’s initial vision, and the proposed horse ride, with which we commenced this chapter.70 Having dispensed with several of Baker’s more quixotic ideas in a quest to professionalise the Corps, she introduced many initiatives of her own. She wrote out an exacting training programme based on the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) manual, arranged for instruction by RAMC personnel on stretcher-​bearing, bandaging, morse and semaphore signalling, organised weekly riding and ambulance drill with an officer in the Nineteenth Hussars, and introduced riding tests. These included demonstrating an ability to make turns and circles to the left and right at both trot and canter, inclines in both directions while cantering, and clearing a three-​foot obstacle.71 The minutes of a Council meeting from July 1911 in Ashley-​Smith’s looping handwriting note a new regulation that ‘Troopers not qualifying in their riding in three months be asked to resign’ and that ‘[a]‌ny member absenting herself from drills … be struck off the roll’.72 In implementing regular riding and ambulance drills, Ashley-​Smith sought to instil pride in the unit, as well as increase its professionalism. ‘Drill, in some mysterious way, is a great inculcator of esprit de corps, and a real part of Service life’, noted Vera Laughton Mathews, who joined the newly established WRNS in 1917. ‘You belong, you are no longer merely v 135 v

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Women of war an individual but a unit in something greater than yourself, and you hold your head higher.’73 Another of Ashley-​Smith’s endeavours to develop loyalty in the Corps and ‘to bring them in[to] closer contact with each other’ was, in November 1910, to form a rifle club, following the lead of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, which had done the same in 1909.74 Not all members liked the direction in which Ashley-​Smith was taking the FANY, however. Muriel Moyle, for example, instructed her solicitor in early 1911 to write to headquarters: ‘owing to the change which has been brought about to your Corps as originally conceived by the introduction of such additional matters as wrestling, shooting, tilting at the ring and stirrup lifting, she feels so out of sympathy with such a movement that she is constrained to resign’.75 Moyle lamented the replacement of Baker’s more genteel activities, such as riding side-​saddle, with Ashley-​Smith’s more modern pursuits, such as grappling, firing weapons, attempting to insert a jousting lance through a small metal ring while galloping and trying to tip another rider off their saddle by flipping their stirrup up. Such boisterous ‘masculine’ recreations alienated her and she too left the Corps. While the introduction of such activities met with a mixed response, the regular weekend and longer summer camps that Ashley-​ Smith organised were universally popular. Much like the men of the Territorial Force, part-​time volunteers who were jokingly called ‘Saturday soldiers’, FANYs relished the weekend camps:  one enthused to a journalist present at their camp of summer 1913 that ‘The life here is just topping’; “ ‘I simply love it” shouted a[nother] city girl.’ Edith Walton recalled that they were ‘most enjoyable’ and Phyllis Morris recollected, ‘What fun we had, besides very hard work …We prided ourselves in being able to put up a bell tent in, I think three minutes! Four of us!’76 Unaccustomed as they were to arduous manual chores and physical hardship, Ashley-​Smith insisted that these privileged women do their own tent-​pitching, sleep on the ground in a large marquee, chop their own firewood, rise early, cook their own food and draw the water they required. The Pall Mall Gazette reported ‘a wealthy gentleman’ saying ‘My daughter has never carried buckets of water about like that before.’77 The self-​sufficiency skills that Ashley-​Smith’s new training regime had instilled in members were put into practice with considerable enthusiasm at camp, and their success augmented their sense of self-​worth. One FANY was quoted in a 1913 newspaper article, proudly asserting, ‘We practice on real soldiers. Most ambulance societies use dummies or their own members at lifting drill, and lifting a woman, of course, is a very different thing from lifting a v 136 v

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The professionalisation of the corps man.’78 They also enjoyed participating in physical activities such as jumping contests, crossing rivers with their kit, swimming, and doing stretching exercises such as the side plank and backward rolls. More gruelling were the night-​time hikes carrying their stretchers. As Winifred Mordaunt wrote in a short account written over fifty years later, ‘Mac’s [i.e. Ashley-​Smith’s] favourite exercise was “night rides” to “encourage endurance” and to toughen us. Hour after hour, mile after endless mile … with Mac at the head of the column … Rows and rows of little faces getting whiter and whiter as the dawn broke’, and culminating in the ‘agonising pulling off of breeches … and anointing the sores with butter stolen from the Q.M.’s [quartermaster’s] stores’.79 As well as training for war, Ashley-​Smith wanted these weekend camps to increase sorority and enhance esprit de corps. Fancy dress was adopted most evenings and they sang, drank beer and cider, and played parlour games. This was an all-​female environment in which they were free to step outside conventions that had imposed restrictions on their behaviour. Ashley-​ Smith recollected in the late 1920s: ‘we laughed til the tears poured off our faces … [T]‌o see the girls try to hoist them [male soldiers pretending to be wounded] up [onto the horses] was too funny … Everyone loved the camps, we had a heavenly time, lots of real hard work and discomfort, but unfailing cheerfulness and fun and good fellowship.’80 The combination of fun activities, instructive training and practical demonstrations of their skills were a key part of Ashley-​Smith’s professionalisation project. And she was prepared personally to finance several of the camps, the costs of which were ‘heavy’: on one occasion she paid £20 towards the horse bill (roughly £2,300 today).81 Ashley-​ Smith’s admission restrictions to preserve selectivity, her desire to enhance standards by imparting specialist knowledge through a rigorous training, her introduction of assessments to check competency, her exclusion of those who did not reach the agreed threshold, her keeping of records and her formal registration of members adhered to many of the distinctive characteristics identified by sociologists of the professions. Whereas Baker had quickly reached 100 members, attempted to enrol working-​class women and aimed for 1,000 recruits (at which time he would bestow upon himself the honorary title of Colonel), Ashley-​Smith valued the proficiency of a select membership more highly than its size. Indeed, her 1912 log book stated that there were just twenty-​ two members, twelve of whom had joined from January 1911 onward.82 Further defining traits of the professions that were in evidence in the Corps during Ashley-​Smith’s tenure as Chief of Staff include the adoption v 137 v

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Women of war of a code of conduct through which members were held to account, the policing of each other, the collective aspiration of achievement and the desire to do one’s duty rather than derive personal reward. Determined to weed out women who did not take their service seriously, Ashley-​Smith wrote to members in 1910 reminding them that ‘It is not a Corps of shirkers, but of workers. Those who look upon the training of the Corps as a pleasant pastime, are advised to think twice before offering themselves at headquarters as recruits.’83 As Winifred Mordaunt recollected in 1962, Ashley-​Smith was ‘a true Spartan and a good disciplinarian’.84 She strove to improve discipline and expected high standards of behaviour from members wearing the uniform of the Corps, as we saw in the previous chapter. When several of ‘my recruits came to me with resignations’ in 1910 ‘upset’ by the actions of a member who had got ‘carried away by her feelings and the charms of a sergeant of Cadets’, she ‘expressed very forcibly my opinions’ to Baker and ‘insisted’ that a regulation be passed.85 She recollected ‘I was severely censured in consequence … I carried my point but made an enemy.’86 Ashley-​Smith recognised the importance of demonstrating their moral fitness for citizenship and knew that even the merest hints of impropriety would have a damaging effect on their reputation –​which members valued extremely highly –​and would confirm critics’ misogynist attitudes toward uniformed women. While not one of the defining characteristics of professions sketched by sociologists, the importance of visibility, and the attendant publicity, were absolutely key to raising the professional profile of the Corps and were something of which Ashley-​Smith was keenly aware. Thus a crucial part of her efforts was to demonstrate the Corps’s fitness for service. It was ‘my suggestion the Corps should send’ a wreath to the funeral of Edward VII in May 1910, and she herself paid £3 (comparable to about £350 today) toward the cost of a red-​and-​white Maltese Cross-​shaped garland, going to Buckingham Palace along with Baker’s daughter Katie to deliver it.87 She negotiated their presence in uniform at the Derby on Epsom Downs in June 1910 to provide first aid to racegoers, which became an annual duty, as well as at the Royal Naval and Military Tournament. In May 1911 she participated in the Festival of Empire at Crystal Palace, an event held to celebrate the coronation of George V. Men disguised as Zulu warriors engaged in a mock battle while she and fellow FANY Lilian Franklin, dressed in the original scarlet uniform, galloped onto the battlefield to ‘the wild applause of thousands of spectators’.88 Thus, despite changing Baker’s original uniform and dropping his scheme of riding side-​saddle onto the battlefield, she cannily acknowledged the romantic appeal that v 138 v

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The professionalisation of the corps had initially attracted so many women to the Corps and demonstrated in public his novel idea. Their camps also generated a lot of coverage about ‘What Women Are Doing’, and Ashley-​Smith harnessed that media interest.89 It was at her invitation that journalists attended the May 1913 camp, and there were numerous photographs of women engaging in physical activities, such as those in Figures 3.1–​3.3, showing them to be fit, healthy and strong.90 Such representations of robust women chimed with eugenic concerns that had begun in the late nineteenth century but were also positively modern and encapsulated their contemporaneousness: a ‘Novel Women’s Corps in Camp’ was how the Standard reported on them.91 News of their activities even traversed the Atlantic:  a photograph of five mounted FANYs galloping toward the camera appeared eighteen months later in newspapers in a number of American states including Ohio, Utah, Iowa, Texas, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wyoming.92 The Corps’s novelty was also underscored by its use of new technologies:  one British national newspaper reported on ‘Nurses

Figure 3.1  ‘Girl “Yeowomen” at Work and Play’, War Budget Illustrated, 30 March 1916. v 139 v

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Women of war

Figure 3.2  FANY carrying a stretcher at camp, Daily Sketch, 20 July 1914.

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Figure 3.3  FANYs participating in a jumping contest at camp, Daily Mirror, 20 July 1914. in Camp: Tents which Are Lit with Electric Light’.93 Accompanying text often focused on domestic themes, reassuring readers that in spite of their military pretensions and their desire to ‘Play the “War Game” ’, they were still women.94 Reports noted that their tents, ‘models of neatness and cleanliness’, were decorated with flowers, for example.95 Such positive write-​ups of the FANY under canvas lured new members who were intrigued by this innovative women’s organisation. Pat Waddell, for example, saw a photograph in the Daily Mirror and joined the Corps, feeling that ‘It would be a rag to go into camp with a lot of other girls.’96 In addition to photographs, the FANY camp also featured in a cinematic film. Ashley-​Smith herself was recorded galloping an ambulance wagon around a field. She recollected:  ‘One of the photographers not realising his danger stood winding away til I  was almost on him, and at the New Gallery later we saw him on the film seizing his camera and bolting.’97 Ashley-​Smith was adept at ensuring the Corps generated maximum positive publicity. As we shall see in Chapters 4 and 5, she gave v 141 v

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Women of war interviews, wrote articles, and published an anonymous account of her experiences during the First World War to raise both the profile of the Corps and income for it. Such activities are indicative of traits possessed by the New Woman. She had first experimented with publishing in 1910, with limited success, when she founded, edited and personally funded a monthly magazine called Women and War. We shall now explore this publication as another indicator of Ashley-​Smith’s attempts to professionalise the Corps. ‘With revolvers in their hands’: (re)constructing the FANY in Women and War Like Robert Baden-​Powell’s manual Scouting for Boys, which was crucial to crafting the Boy Scouts’ professional identity, Ashley-​Smith’s magazine played a role, albeit a short-​lived one, in fostering the FANY’s distinctive ethos.98 It was produced to a high standard and was printed on quality paper with a colourful front cover. It included factual articles on horsemanship and first aid, and fictional tales about colonial wars; exemplified key elements of Edwardian imperialism (including respect for the monarchy, armed forces and the Church, a staunch patriotism and a celebration of historical British figures); inserted extracts from newspaper coverage of the Corps; reported on its activities; and detailed the monthly training timetable. Women and War folded after five editions despite repeated exhortations to members to purchase the publication and the generation of some income from businesses advertising their products and services  –​some relevant to members (for example, A.  Savigear, riding school; Thomas and Sons, ladies’ sporting tailors; Oliver and Southwood, dressmakers), and others less obviously so (The Frontiersman Scotch whisky; Henry John Webb, poultry, rabbit and provisions salesman; J.  Evershed, printers and lithographers). Printing and publishing expenses had totalled over £12 a month (equivalent to nearly £1,400 today) and the income was only a quarter of that.99 Despite its ultimate failure, the Corps’s production of its own magazine can be seen as another of Ashley-​Smith’s endeavours to turn the unit into a more professional organisation. A fictive piece of writing entitled ‘The Rescue’ published in the July issue served to show how military opposition could be overcome by the Corps’s skilled undertaking of their duty. A  unit of Hussars is outnumbered by thousands of ‘savages’, ‘natives’ and ‘wild hill-​men’. While reinforcements are impeded and fail to arrive, the women of the ‘Nursing v 142 v

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The professionalisation of the corps Yeomanry got through by trick’, undaunted by the dangers posed by the hostile landscape. The colonel exclaims, aghast, ‘My God! We don’t want women here!’, and is then promptly shot. ‘[T]‌wo khaki-​clad girls’ spring from their mounts, ‘hoist’ the ‘prostrate Colonel’ onto the neck of one horse and his aide onto the back of the other, and gallop away so that they can receive medical assistance. The colonel is grateful that his life has been saved by members of the FANY, who have proved their worth and justified their presence in the battle zone: when hearing the name of their organisation he retitles them ‘1st Aid _​_​Angels’.100 The changing attitude of an ordinary soldier is similarly narrated in a gently comedic tale written by Ashley-​Smith. Muldoon, a working-​class private in the British army, possibly intended to be Irish, is highly sceptical of Secretary of State ‘Mr ’Aldane … puttin’ women-​soldiers into the barracks … [and] mak[ing] cavalry as well as infantry out of women-​folks’. He admonishes, ‘Mark my words, a woman’s rightful place is in the ’ome, and for women to take to drillin’ an’ ridin’ in khaki skirts an’ tunics means the downfall of the British army.’ Muldoon is adamant that ‘if ever we ’ave to take our place to defend the honour of our beloved country, either them or me won’t be there’. By lampooning his conviction that women ought to be sequestered in the private domain and that their donning of military uniform would bring about the ruin of the armed forces, and possibly wider society, Ashley-​Smith mocked all those who held similarly antiquated views. Muldoon is won round by their lucid explanation of their first aid role, prompting a humble volte face: ‘if she couldn’t do anything to ease my pain, God knows she could put ’er arms around my neck an’ bid me good-​bye!’101 The fictional Muldoon would no doubt have been shocked by other more martial activities of the Corps. In addition to establishing a rifle club, Ashley-​Smith used the magazine to promote the importance of women learning to master weaponry. The July publication went as far as trying to carve out a place for women in combat. Women ought not to rely on ‘one of the stronger sex’ and should instead learn how to load and fire a gun, so that if ambushed, ‘two of them with revolvers in their hands could keep the foe at bay whilst their comrades continued calmly to succour the helpless’. The need to practise with guns is couched here in reassuring terms, in that confidence with arms would enable them to defend themselves in order to continue administering nursing care. However, the article also envisaged a more offensive use of weapons whereby women might act as auxiliaries to soldiers, handing them loaded rifles or, ‘better still’, taking their place ‘lying down side-​by-​side’ with male combatants v 143 v

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Women of war and themselves firing guns.102 Such progressive ideas downplayed gender differences and pushed hard against the bounds of established roles for women to carve out new modern ones that were both radical and warlike, challenging the cultural taboo on women using arms. This was followed in the next issue with an article heralding women’s capabilities, which amply matched those of men’s –​‘women have entered into competition with men in every field where nerve, courage and endurance are required’  –​observing that women excel on the hunting field, in the water and on the shooting range: ‘Steadiness of hand, and a keen eye … A woman is as likely to possess these qualifications as a man.’103 Their activities are cast utilising the language of gender parity rather than gender difference and separate spheres, which is perhaps surprising given that they had been brought up under late Victorian notions of female subservience and the dominance of men. The October edition included articles on miniature rifle-​shooting and markswomen at Bisley, and ran adverts for the Birmingham Small Arms Company promoting them as ‘The Rifles for Ladies!’104 The emphasis on weaponry in the magazine is illustrative of Ashley-​Smith’s desire to turn the Corps in a new direction, away from Baker’s romantic notions of aristocratic young ladies riding side-​saddle in spectacular scarlet. She was determined that her recruits, clad in khaki and trained in the use of arms as well as first aid, would be an asset to fighting forces in the event of an invasion. And in so doing, she fashioned new emancipatory discourses about elite femininity. Members could also read about heroic women such as ‘Mother Ross’, who under various monikers had passed as a soldier and had been active in campaigns between 1693 and 1706. Or the (unnamed) daughter of Sir John Cochrane, who twice disguised herself in order to rob the mail that contained her father’s death warrant following his sentence of hanging for his participation in Argyle’s rebellion, a Protestant rising to tie down monarchist forces in Scotland to enable Monmouth’s army to attack London in an attempt to overthrow Roman Catholic King James II/​VII.105 Such articles about exemplary martial women who challenged convention served to raise members’ aspirations by affirming what women could achieve with courage and perspicacity. There are then multiple examples of progressiveness within Ashley-​ Smith’s magazine. Yet like Baker’s proposed horse ride, which was contradictory, Women and War contained ambiguous messages, and there are glimpses of an inherent conservatism that paint the FANY with decidedly antifeminist brushstrokes. In a September 1910 article entitled ‘Shakespearian Meditations’, the Corps is described using a modified v 144 v

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The professionalisation of the corps quote from King Lear that accentuates their subordination, submission and servitude to the state: ‘their voices were ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman’.106 By contrast, under the subheading ‘Shakespeare on Suffragettes’, a line from The Taming of the Shrew was reproduced: ‘I am ashamed that women are so simple to offer war where they should kneel for peace, or seek for rule, supremacy and sway, when they are bound to serve, love and obey.’107 Thus at a time when the ‘Woman’s Question’ was paramount, Women and War was by no means used as a platform from which to espouse female enfranchisement. Such statements suggest that Ashley-​Smith condemned the activities of the WSPU, which violated the boundaries of gender by waging a ‘sex war’ on the nation in the pursuit of political power. Given her progressive attitudes to women’s capabilities this is surprising. Moreover, the militant activities of the WSPU (which are widely thought to have commenced in 1905 with Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney’s ejection from a Liberal Party meeting at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and which had escalated in June 1908 when Mary Leigh and Edith New began smashing windows in protest against ever harsher sentences meted out to protesters) had been suspended since February 1910 while a cross-​party committee drafted a Women’s Suffrage Bill. It was only later that year that militancy escalated: the unleashing of extreme violence against suffragettes (deployed while breaking up their meeting following the announcement of a surprise second general election in November 1910) led to a resumption of the smashing of windows of political and commercial properties, as well as the escalation of violent tactics from 1911, including arson, vandalism and the detonation of small bombs.108 It is peculiar then that Ashley-​Smith was hostile toward suffragettes, not only for their unwomanliness (given the Corps’s own activities) but also because their militant actions had ceased eight months previously. Such constructions illuminate the challenges of claiming the FANY as feminists: a modern appearance was by no means an assurance of modern ideas. In her biography of ex-​FANY Flora Sandes, Louise Miller makes repeated (unsubstantiated) assertions about members’ politics:  ‘the women attracted to Baker’s pioneering group were a diverse collection of middle-​class and upper-​class suffragists’, ‘many of them were Suffragettes’, ‘supporters of suffrage’ with ‘strong links to the suffrage movement’.109 Similarly, Jean McLachlan who joined the Corps over thirty years later noted in her account that Baker’s family attributed the ‘split’ in 1910 to ‘the question of women’s suffrage.’110 There is little evidence to corroborate these statements, however. The only members with an interest in v 145 v

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Women of war suffrage appear to have been Mabel St Clair Stobart, as we have seen, and four women who joined during the First World War: Muriel Thompson, a motor racer who drove Emmeline Pankhurst around during her speaking tour (whom we shall come across in Chapter 5); Phyllis Lovell, a prominent suffragette who became one of the first policewomen in Birkenhead in 1917 before joining the FANY that October and later publishing a novel; Donnett Mary Paynter, who wrote a poem that is reproduced in Chapter 5; and Enid Bagnold, who was interested in women’s rights, ‘worshipped Mrs Pankhurst and became a muddled badly-​arguing socialist’ (despite her determination to marry someone of high social standing who could furnish her lavish lifestyle –​she refused a marriage proposal from a mere lieutenant, the prospect of which was ‘as frightening as rape’, and became Lady Jones upon her marriage to the chairman of Reuters), joining the Corps in late 1918, as we shall see in Chapter 4.111 The scant records left by individuals and by the Corps do not suggest they advocated the extension of the franchise to women. Rather, they were, at best, indifferent to suffrage: the passing of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which enfranchised just a few FANYs who were over thirty –​and only those who had worked for the British during the war –​went unremarked in the Corps magazine, while in the decades after the war some members were explicitly hostile and sought to distance themselves from women campaigning for political representation.112 An unnamed FANY told Irene Ward, in preparation for her 1955 book FANY Invicta, that ‘the suffragettes were causing a lot of trouble at that time’, and in an interview in the 1970s, First World War FANY Betty Hutchinson recalled ‘seething all the time’ and feeling ‘so embittered’ about suffragettes, who she felt were ‘a fearsome collection of stupid people’.113 Such comments tell us as much about the moment in which the accounts were constructed, as it does about the historical past. Conducted against the backdrop of Second Wave Feminism, Hutchinson’s recollection of resentment toward the suffragettes was undoubtedly amplified by her feelings about contemporary feminists. Prewar FANYs generally ignored the political implications of their service and they drew distinctions between the rights to serve and to vote. It was the outbreak of war, not the awarding of the franchise to women, that was yearned for, presenting an opportunity to fulfil their citizenship duties. This antipathy toward the campaign for women’s political advancement sits uneasily beside their own advocacy of extending women’s military involvement. But as Anne Summers argues, the franchise was just one of multiple models of citizenship: the performance of military nursing was another way women v 146 v

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The professionalisation of the corps could fulfil such demands.114 Similarly, Susan Grayzel noted that the WVR, a unit comprising women from select backgrounds, differentiated itself from suffrage militants and instead aligned itself with ‘a different kind of politics, one based on military service’.115 Moreover, a number of prominent female reformers and pioneers in other fields were similarly hostile toward the campaign for the enfranchisement of women. Florence Nightingale (nursing), Beatrice Webb (housing, poor law, food), Octavia Hill (housing), Gertrude Bell (travel) and Violet Markham (education), who was also against women adopting khaki, as we saw in the previous chapter, were all early opponents of suffrage and strongly disapproved of female assertiveness.116 Similarly, other women’s organisations, such as the National Council of Women (established in 1895) and the Catholic Women’s League (formed in 1906), eschewed feminism as too radical, while female sporting pioneers in cricket, cycling, golf and tennis were rarely politically active. The FANYs were not alone then in their rejection of female suffrage and this political conservatism ought not to undermine their status as radical pioneers. Thus, while the publication of her own magazine was evidence of Ashley-​Smith’s professionalisation project and of her very modernity, it contained rather conflicting messages:  the Corps was depicted as both pacifistic and hawkish, at once conservative and radical, and concurrently hostile to extending women’s political rights while celebrating historic women’s martial achievements and being in favour of widening women’s roles in future wars. This complex mix of progressive and traditional elements, simultaneously conformist and reformist, gets to the heart of the fascinating complexity surrounding the organisation. Another contradiction is the divergent gender and class identities of the members from their founder’s, and we shall now explore Baker’s removal, a further step on Ashley-​Smith’s path to professionalisation. ‘A Piccadilly ’ore on a commode’: the ousting of Baker Having been ‘given a free hand’ by Baker to make alterations to the Corps’s recruitment, training, discipline, publicity and governance, Ashley-​Smith rapidly put her stamp on the unit, professionalising this amateur group of women volunteers. Although ‘at first it was uphill work’, she noted ‘we soon got going’.117 Baker, who had displayed no leadership skills at all, was receptive to her innovative ideas and responded positively, writing to inform her that ‘the suggestions you make are very good.’118 Despite his support, Ashley-​Smith resolved to remove him from his own organisation v 147 v

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Women of war and, as her son noted, ‘faced with a bunch of well-​off incorrigibly independent ladies, [Baker] was out of his depth completely’.119 The FANYs were undoubtedly uncomfortable with Baker’s continued involvement. Ashley-​Smith described him as ‘bluff and hearty’, and his oldest son, Ted, recollected being told by his father that he looked like ‘a Piccadilly ’ore on a commode’ when learning to ride a bicycle.120 As FANY medical officer Anne Riches noted in 2008, this was ‘not a comparison to be levelled at nicely brought up young ladies’.121 Although his Corps attracted aristocratic young women, Baker evidently did not share their social background and, with his coarse language and unrefined manners, was surely something of an embarrassment to some of its members. According to Edith Walton, Ashley-​Smith ‘felt we ought to have someone more educated’.122 This was clearly a polite way of saying that she wanted someone from a higher social class than a man who had worked for a market meat firm. Accordingly, at a Council meeting that Ashley-​Smith called in July 1911, attended by Baker, Franklin, Walton and Wicks, she proposed a resolution to replace the founder with C.  Francis Cecil Ricardo.123 Born in 1852, Ricardo joined the Grenadier Guards aged twenty, rose through the ranks and was promoted to lieutenant-​colonel in February 1897. In 1899 he became Honorary Secretary of the Royal Naval and Military Tournament, was given a temporary rank of colonel, drilled the FANY from 1908 and retired from the army in 1909. He was felt to have the requisite credentials for commanding an elite women’s military organisation. Several months later, the resolution had not been implemented so Ashley-​Smith bypassed Baker and invited Ricardo to inspect the Corps in early January 1912: just nine members were present and she described it in the log book as a ‘shocking affair, riding and driving awful’.124 At a meeting a week later on 13 January, Ricardo ‘asked decisively if he were or were not Commanding Officer of the F.A.N.Y.C. Mr Baker said he was.’ When Ricardo asked the founder what his role was, he responded that he was ‘quite content to be out of it’.125 However, Baker tried to exact revenge upon Ashley-​Smith before his departure:  because she had been away from London for ten weeks he sought to use a regulation that she herself had drafted the previous year about non-​attendance to remove her from the Corps. Although it was pointed out to Baker that his daughter had ‘absolutely neglected her duties for eighteen months’, he ‘maintained doggedly’ that Katie was not subject to the rules and regulations of the Corps that he had founded.126 Nevertheless, the name ‘Baker’ was struck off the roll in the FANY log book accompanied by the words ‘good riddance’, although Ashley-​Smith noted that Katie refused ‘to acknowledge being kicked out’.127 Both Bakers v 148 v

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The professionalisation of the corps disappear from the FANY record altogether in January 1912, and in her ‘Foreword’ for FANY Invicta, H.R.H. Princess Alice, the Corps’s Honorary Commandant, omits Baker entirely: ‘From the year 1907 when those few determined women full of initiative and vision formed the Corps …’.128 Similarly, Edith Walton attributes the FANY success to Ashley-​Smith, not Baker, noting that she was ‘really the live wire … full of ideas and vitality … always out for something, for some new scheme … of course we would have never got anywhere without her before the war’.129 (And as we shall see in Chapters 4 and 5, she was also instrumental in ensuring the FANY were utilised fully during the First World War.) Having successfully removed the founder, Ashley-​Smith took on the position of secretary, responsible for publicity and recruitment. She continued to try to raise standards by drafting a new set of regulations in January 1912 that included requiring London members to be present at a minimum of twelve ambulance and twelve mounted drills a year, attend annual summer camp and be examined on first aid within a year of enlisting if they did not already hold a certificate. Conscious of her part in Baker’s downfall, she moved to ensure that no such mutiny would unseat her. A new regulation stated: ‘members attempting to stir up other members to revolt, makin [sic] mischief or causing discontent, will be dealt with summarily. If holding any rank in the Corps, they will forfeit that rank, if troopers, they will forfeit seniority. They may be dismissed from the Corps at the discretion of the Commanding Officer.’130 These ‘particulars’ were announced, along with the name of the new Commanding Officer and the change of address, in advertisements accompanying an application form for which she paid £11 (comparable to over £1,200 today) to be placed in leading newspapers including the Morning Post, Daily Telegraph, Standard and Daily Mail.131 Her use of the media to underline the more professional direction in which the Corps was headed was itself decidedly modern. The ending of Baker’s connection with the FANY, an example of female agency at work within the unit and another illustration of the professionalisation project at play, was undoubtedly a relief. As a busy man with other priorities, Ricardo had little input, and it fell to Ashley-​Smith to manage the Corps. That she was successful in getting ‘results’ that ‘justified’ her rapid elevation to the position of Commanding Officer in all but name enabled her to ‘win … over’ other members of longer standing, including Lilian Franklin and Edith Walton, both of whom had joined in February 1909, and Isabel Wicks, who became a member that October, all of whom at first ‘quite naturally resented a newcomer laying down the law’.132 At this point, the Corps was being run out of Ashley-​Smith’s v 149 v

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Women of war home in South Kensington. Following a period of absence, she returned to find that the Corps had failed to find new premises for its headquarters or to make arrangements for winter drill. Frustrated by the lack of initiative and momentum displayed by other core members, she submitted her resignation in September 1912. Her fellow FANYs, of whom she conceded ‘there were very few!’, requested she withdraw her notice, and this backing served further to consolidate her position.133 From this time, she noted, ‘the Corps began to make real progress’.134 Under her leadership, the Corps became increasingly more professional, which impressed various branches of the armed forces that invited it to participate in events. Consequently, the FANY took up a position alongside male military personnel. At its 1914 camp for example, the FANY was invited to attend church parade at the Guards’ Camp –​‘the first women ever to attend that’ –​and Ashley-​Smith recorded that she was: thrilled and bursting with pride to be there at last with the FANY, the Grenadiers on one side, the Coldstreams opposite, the Scots Guard on our right, and the Irish Guards alongside. There are certain supreme moments in everyone’s life, that was one of mine. It was worth all the labour and slogging, and self-​denial and discouragement –​all the ups and downs, all the jeers and the laughter –​to be there at last –​part of the army –​yes and with the best of it.135

This male endorsement was perceived as evidence of their having been admitted into the military arena by those they regarded as their peers. Another illustration of this validation was attendance at field days with the First Division of the British army, something with which ‘no other woman has ever been so privileged before’; accordingly, ‘from that day we considered ourselves really part of the British Army’.136 Having spent months training in horsemanship and first aid, Ashley-​ Smith was eager to demonstrate the FANY’s abilities in a suitable cause to cement its professional identity. Like the soldier who can only fully assume the status such a label confers by engaging in a real combat situation and putting his training to the test, the Corps sought an opportunity to put itself on trial. With the Balkan Crisis erupting in 1912, the FANY had such an opportunity. Ashley-​Smith elicited permission from Colonel Ricardo to take a small unit of four FANYs to the Balkans. This was abandoned when she sustained an accident, as ‘there was no one else to carry it out’.137 That the Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps, the unit founded by ex-​FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart, saw active service in the Balkan War of 1912 with the Bulgarians, and had the prestige of v 150 v

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The professionalisation of the corps being the first women’s corps on duty overseas, must have been particularly galling. The FANY was soon given another opportunity to prove its worth, however, in a cause that greatly affected Britain. ‘It’s all the same to me as long as I’m there for the show’: opportunities presented by Irish Home Rule The introduction of the third Irish Home Rule Bill in 1912 by the Liberal Government, which advocated devolved self-​governance from Dublin, aroused bitter resentment, both in Ulster, where a large Protestant community with a fierce tradition of Unionism feared Catholic domination if Dublin was to wield power, and in southern Ireland, albeit to a much lesser extent.138 The Ulster Unionist Council established the Ulster Volunteer Force in January 1913 and, along with Orange Order lodges and rifle clubs, it provided paramilitary training and prepared to arm recruits, of which there were soon about 90,000.139 It also sought to persuade the British public of the need to defeat Home Rule by any means possible, including militarily. On the Nationalist side, the Irish Volunteers, Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Féin also equipped themselves ready for the fight. The Irish Question was part of a broader crisis of nationalism that was confronting Britain both at home and in the Empire. Many were concerned that the ceding of power that Irish Home Rule would prompt might spread throughout the Empire and lead to further severances that would undermine its unity, as well as Britain’s capacity to defend itself in the context of the growing threat from Germany. Accordingly, the question of Home Rule aroused the hostility of the Tories in Westminster, who in 1912 changed their name to the Conservative and Unionist Party; the aristocracy; staunch imperialists, who advocated Britain’s need to improve its conflict-​preparedness; and also those who were instrumental in establishing uniformed paramilitary boys’ and girls’ organisations.140 Katherine Furse, who was a member of a VAD, formed a band of volunteer nurses into the Ulster Hospital Corps. Her memoir recorded that she was ‘quick to see a patriotic use for our training’. With hindsight, she reflected ‘I did not analyse situations carefully and “loyalty to country” was a term which had always appealed very strongly to me, but as I  look back now I  see that my main motive in wanting to help Ulster was my wish to put my Red Cross work into practice.’141 She travelled to counties Derry and Donegal and felt ‘the thrill of being in the thick of preparations’.142 Similarly, another of the sympathisers who gave support to those opposing Home Rule was Grace Ashley-​Smith, v 151 v

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Women of war whose views owed much to the broader currents of imperialism circulating at this time. In June 1913, she wrote to Sir Edward Carson, one of the FANY patrons, volunteering the services of the Corps.143 A southern Irish Protestant barrister who secured one of the Trinity College Dublin seats, he had, in 1910, been elected leader of the Irish Unionists. After inspections of the FANY by senior officers of  Carson’s army, her offer was provisionally accepted and they were asked to serve with the Ulster Ambulance. The FANYs would have been among women of their own class, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of female Unionists, at least initially, were drawn from the social elite: local women’s Unionist associations were headed by aristocratic women, and twenty-​three of the fifty-​nine members of the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council at the inaugural Executive Committee in January 1911 were titled Ulsterwomen.144 The Council, presided over by the Second Duchess of Abercorn, helped support the activities of a large women’s nursing corps of about 5,000 that was formed as part of the Ulster Volunteer Force.145 Large nursing units were established in areas where Unionists were in a real minority, such as Cavan and Monaghan, in order that there be more Unionists in uniform on parade. The FANY offer was thus appealing, as its members would serve to bolster the Unionist presence. But the Corps also had much to gain: Ashley-​Smith’s memoirs reveal her enthusiasm at achieving success with her offer of assistance, which afforded the FANY an opportunity finally to provide medical assistance in a real military campaign. She travelled to Belfast at Easter 1914 with another member, Cecily Mordaunt, and revelled in the secrecy of passwords, signs and clandestine drill halls.146 It was thus the opportunity to put their training into practice, rather than politics, that was the prime motivation. Indeed, a letter was even sent by the Corps in November 1913 to the opposing side, presumably to keep its options open: we understand that you are nationalists and as the nationalist party has often declared in speeches and newspapers that if the Germans come across they will be welcomed with open arms by the nationalists we shd be glad to know what attitude you wd be prepared to take if there were a war between Germany and Gt Britain. Also, the nationalist leaders in the past have heaped abuse on the British Army, and the British flag and they cheered the British defeats during the Boer War.147

Given their trepidation toward the more militant manifestations of nationalism, the Corps requested a ‘written declaration’ that they did not ‘share these extreme sentiments’. The response, if there was one, has not v 152 v

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The professionalisation of the corps survived. Notwithstanding this approach to those in support of Home Rule, the FANY rallied behind the Unionists. Some individual FANYs had little interest in the political situation. When asked by fellow FANY Margaret Cole-​Hamilton ‘which side are you on?’, Pat Waddell deflected the question: ‘which are you?’ To the response ‘Ulster, of course’, Waddell asserted more confidently ‘I’m with you … it’s all the same to me as long as I’m there for the show.’148 At the other end of the political spectrum, some Irish members supported Home Rule, and the FANY offer to Carson prompted them to resign. Ashley-​Smith recollected:  ‘unfortunately, we had five ardent Sinn Feiners in the ranks and still more unfortunately they were in the foreground of every press photograph and appeared all over the country as “Off to fight for Ulster!” ’149 Although in 1913 Sinn Féin was a small organisation without a single Member of Parliament and was not yet committed to militancy, when she submitted her manuscript to the Imperial War Museum in 1938, it had increased in size and activism and she was keen to distance herself and the Corps from it.150 The FANY certainly benefited from good press coverage, which raised its profile. The Daily Express included on its front page an image of four FANYs with the title ‘Nurses for Ulster’s Arms’.151 The Illustrated Chronicle ran an article noting they would ‘act as nurses in the event of civil war breaking out in Ireland … [and] will be drafted into the affected districts’.152 In a London Weekly Budget article titled ‘Will Ulster Fight? These Ladies, at Least, Are Ready to Take the Field’ (Figure 3.4), the FANY was described as consisting of thirty-​five ‘gentlewomen’, and Ashley-​Smith was photographed not in Corps uniform but in riding clothes, alongside two ladies, a marchioness and a dowager pictured in tiaras and plumes.153 Underscoring their links with the aristocracy and aligning themselves with the Conservatives in supporting the common goal of maintaining the legislative union between Britain and Ireland positioned the FANY as non-​threatening, respectable women who could be relied upon to do their patriotic duty. It was equally reassuring that they distanced themselves from women campaigning for the extension of the franchise, which would not have ingratiated them with many senior Ulster Unionists, including the Duchess of Abercorn, who were anti-​ suffrage. Other newspapers downplayed the nursing aspect of their role and focused more on transportation, positioning the Corps as a truly modern phenomenon: ‘Hitherto women’s work in war has been confined to nursing the sick and wounded. But there is a body of women in London who, in the event of a civil war in Ireland, will act for the Ulster Volunteers as a v 153 v

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Figure 3.4  ‘Will Ulster Fight? These Ladies, at Least, Are Ready to Take the Field’, London Weekly Budget, 2 November 1913. mounted ambulance corps.’154 The Corps raised £100 (equivalent today to about £11,300) and began collecting bandages, splints and shirts in readiness for active service, but to no avail.155 A letter from the Secretary of the Unionist Headquarters’ Medical Board noted that while ‘Your Corps is of such good material that I would love to have it over’, he recognised that ‘the military people are looking rather askance at the idea … [they] v 154 v

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The professionalisation of the corps do not view with much favour the idea of ladies exposing themselves in a travelling ambulance’.156 They were not alone: Weekly Welcome reported that the prewar Corps had received ‘severe criticism’, with ‘many military men holding that the battlefield would never see a mounted section of women nurses’.157 This came as a bitter disappointment. However, events in Ireland were soon eclipsed by the looming crisis on the Continent and further opportunities to be on active service, and it is to this we now turn. Conclusion ‘The oddest fact’ about the FANY, notes Hugh Popham at the beginning of his popular account of the Corps, is that ‘at a time when women were fighting hard for political and professional recognition, it should have been founded by a man’.158 To this paradox we might add the rather puzzling detail concerning the ordinary class background of the instigator of a Corps of elite women. And stranger still is their ‘strategy of usurpation’, wresting control over governance and activities and eventually removing him from his own organisation. The two case studies of New Women under examination here, Mabel St Clair Stobart and Grace Ashley-​Smith, have enabled us to explore these contradictions. In narrating a tale of modernisation through the female professionalisation project, this chapter has revealed the conflict and tension that accompanied their repeated endeavours to transform the Corps. Both women come across in their self-​authored accounts as capable, self-​possessed, commanding personalities. Their tenacity, ambition, iron determination, unassailable self-​confidence and ability to organise and inspire were key to their success, but whereas Stobart left to found her own amateur women’s first aid organisation frustrated by Baker’s incompetence, Ashley-​Smith grasped the opportunity presented by a weak male leader to exercise real influence, staked a claim to professional status and carved out a niche for herself as Commanding Officer. As Irene Ward noted in her account of the FANYs, ‘to recognize chances and seize them is an attribute of leadership’, and Ashley-​Smith certainly had a ‘flair’ for ‘seeing where there were openings for the FANYs to operate’.159 As a consequence of her professionalisation strategies, members acquired discipline, organisational skills and greater expertise in equestrianism and first aid, and they gained experience in fundraising, speaking in public and keeping financial accounts. That the Corps not only survived this turbulent initial period, but went on to become the longest-​established uniformed voluntary organisation for women, is undoubtedly due to the ‘determination’, v 155 v

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Women of war ‘initiative and vision’, as well as energy and enterprise, of Grace Ashley-​ Smith. We will now see how this very modern woman negotiated first her own way and then that of the Corps to the battle zone during the First World War. Notes 1 The article appeared in the Daily Mirror, Morning Post, Daily Mail and Standard on 23 August 1910; was published the following day in the Daily News, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph and Daily Sketch; and featured in the Daily Graphic on 25 August and in The Sunday Times on 28 August. 2 ‘Women’s Long March’, Daily Sketch, 24 August 1910. See also ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, The Road, October 1910. 3 ‘Proposed Route March’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 44; ‘ “Women and War” Test Ride Fund’, Women and War, 5 (November 1910), 74. 4 Various newspapers, 23 August 1910. 5 Grace McDougall, ‘Brief Resumé of Corps’ Work’, Gazette, August 1916, 8–​ 12; Grace McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies, 1914–​1919:  The Story of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Imperial War Museum, 16605, p. 4; Grace McDougall, ‘Prologue: The Start of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, p.  3, McDougall, Box 3, Imperial War Museum, 46733. Interestingly, six Scottish suffragettes, wearing clothing resembling a uniform, marched from Edinburgh to London with a horse-​drawn wagon to deliver a petition to the Prime Minister in November 1912; ‘Suffragettes’ Long March’, The Times, 18 November 1912. 6 Ann Oakley, Women, Peace and Welfare:  A Suppressed History of Social Reform, 1880–​1920 (Bristol: Polity Press, 2018). 7 Seth Koven and Sonya Michel (eds), Mothers of a New World:  Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (London:  Routledge, 1993); Jane Lewis, ‘Gender, the Family and Women’s Agency in the Building of “Welfare States”: The British Case’, Social History, 19:1 (1994), 37–​55. 8 Patricia Hollis, Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government, 1865–​1914 (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1987); Jane Lewis, Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England (Aldershot:  Edward Elgar, 1991); Helen Jones, ‘Women Health Workers:  The Case of the First Women Factory Inspectors in Britain’, Social History of Medicine, 1:2 (1988), 165–​81; Ruth Livesey, ‘The Politics of Work:  Feminism, Professionalisation and Women Inspectors of Factories and Workshops’, Women’s History Review, 13:2 (2004), 233–​62; Gillian Scott, Feminism and the Politics of Working Women:  The Women’s Co-​Operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War (London: UCL Press, 1998); Helen Glew, Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation:  Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council, 1900–​ 35 (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2016); Anne Logan, ‘In Search

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The professionalisation of the corps of Equal Citizenship:  The Campaign for Women Magistrates in England and Wales, 1910–​1939’, Women’s History Review, 16:4 (2007), 501–​18; Helen Jones, Women in British Public Life, 1914–​50: Gender, Power and Social Policy (Harlow: Pearson, 2000); Helen McCarthy, Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Louise A. Jackson, ‘Care or Control? The Metropolitan Women Police and Child Welfare, 1919–​1969’, Historical Journal, 46 (2003), 623–​48. 9 Karen Hunt, ‘Women as Citizens:  Changing the Polity’, in Deborah Simonton (ed.), The Routledge History of Women in Europe since 1700 (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 216–​58 (p. 237). 10 Julie Gottlieb and Clarisse Berthezène, Rethinking Right-​Wing Women: Gender and the Conservative Party, 1880s to the Present (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2018), p. 2. 11 Maggie Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism: The Women’s Institute as a Social Movement (London:  Lawrence and Wishart, 1997); Lorna Gibson, Beyond Jerusalem:  Music in the Women’s Institute, 1919–​ 1969 (London: Routledge, 2008); Cordelia Moyse, A History of the Mothers’ Union: Women, Anglicanism and Globalisation, 1876–​2008 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009). 12 Catriona Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens: Domesticity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1928–​64 (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 3. 13 Barbara Caine, English Feminism:  1780–​1980 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 12. 14 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, pp. 3, 5. 15 Gillian Sutherland, In Search of the New Woman: Middle-​Class Women and Work in Britain, 1870–​1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Lee Holcombe, Victorian Ladies at Work:  Middle Class Working Women in England and Wales, 1850–​1914 (Newton Abbot:  David and Charles, 1973); Brian Abel-​Smith, A History of the Nursing Profession (London: Heinemann, 1960); Catriona Blake, The Charge of the Parasols:  Women’s Entry into the Medical Profession (London:  Women’s Press, 1990); Alison Oram, Women Teachers and Feminist Politics, 1900–​39 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); Louise A. Jackson, Women Police:  Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2006); Meta Zimmeck, ‘Strategies and Stratagems for the Employment of Women in the British Civil Service, 1919–​1939’, Historical Journal, 27:4 (1984), 901–​24; Judith Bourne, ‘Helena Normanton and the Opening of the Bar to Women’ (Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College London, 2014). 16 A. M. Carr-​Saunders and P. A. Wilson, The Professions (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1933); Philip Elliott, The Sociology of the Professions (London:  Macmillan, 1972); Robert Dingwall and Philip Lewis (eds), The Sociology of the Professions: Lawyers, Doctors and Others (London: Macmillan, 1983); Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society:  England since 1880 (London: Routledge, 1989).

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Women of war 17 Anne Witz, Professions and Patriarchy (London:  Routledge, 1992), pp. 72, 34, 62. 18 Ibid., p.  48; June Hannam, ‘Rosalind Paget:  The Midwife, the Women’s Movement and Reform before 1914’, in Hilary Marland and Anne Marie Rafferty (eds), Midwives, Society and Childbirth:  Debates and Controversies in the Modern Period (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 81–​101; Celia Davies, Gender and the Professional Predicament in Nursing (Buckingham:  Open University Press, 1995). 19 Penelope Corfield, Power and the Professions in Britain, 1700–​ 1850 (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 188. 20 Anne Summers, ‘Public Functions, Private Premises:  Female Professional Identity and the Domestic-​Service Paradigm in Britain, c. 1850–​1930’, in Billie Melman (ed.), Borderlines:  Gender and Identities in War and Peace, 1870–​1930 (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 353–​76. 21 Anne Logan, ‘Professionalism and the Impact of England’s First Women Justices, 1920–​1950’, Historical Journal, 49:3 (2006), 833–​50 (p. 850). 22 Rhonda Anne Semple, Missionary Women:  Gender, Professionalism and the Victorian Idea of Christian Mission (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003). 23 Irene Ward, FANY Invicta:  A History of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p. 13. 24 Minutes of General Council of Officers, 8 May 1909, Women/​FANY/​‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 25 Matinée programme, 2  p.m., Friday 4 June 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 26 Mabel Annie Stobart, Miracles and Adventures:  An Autobiography (London: Rider, 1935), p. 360; minutes from the general meetings of 2 and 5 July 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 27 Mabel Annie Stobart, War and Women:  From Experience in the Balkans and Elsewhere (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913), p. 196; ‘A Dorset Woman at War: Mabel Stobart and the Retreat from Serbia’, pamphlet to accompany Dorset County Museum exhibition, 31 May–​15 November 2014, p. 2., https://​ issuu.com/​dorsetcountymuseum/​docs/​dwaw_​003/​2 (accessed 23 November 2018). See also Angela K. Smith, ‘ “The woman who dared”: Major Mabel St Clair Stobart’, in Alison S. Fell and Ingrid Sharp (eds), The Women’s Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives, 1914–​19 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 158–​74. 28 Thanks to Lynette Beardwood, FANY HQ, for this information. 29 Mabel Annie Stobart, The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916), p. vii. 30 Stobart, Miracles and Adventures, p. 83. 31 Stobart, War and Women, p. 5 (emphasis in original). 32 Ibid. (emphasis in original). There has long been a connection between military service and citizenship. The Latey Committee on the Age of Majority

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The professionalisation of the corps between 1965 and 1967, for example, considered all the possible ages at which a young person might be enfranchised, and agreed on eighteen, the age at which a man could be mobilised (and thus die) for his country; https://​ parliament.uk/​about/​ l iving-​ heritage/​ t ransformingsociety/ ​private-​l ives/​ relationships/​collections1/​parliament-​and-​the-​1960s/​latey-​age-​of-​majority-​ report/​ (accessed 27 December 2019). Thanks to Kate Bradley for this information. 33 Stobart, War and Women, pp. 212, 219–​20 (p. 218; emphasis in original). 34 Witz, Professions and Patriarchy, p. 48. 35 Minutes of general meeting, 19 July 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 36 Minutes of meeting of officers, 21 July 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 37 Letter from Wicks to Baker, 29 November 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 38 Stobart, Miracles and Adventures, p. 84. 39 Stobart, War and Women, p. 11; ‘A Dorset Woman at War’, p. 4; ‘Women in War: Convoy Corps’ Week in Camp’, Daily Mail, 9 August 1910. 40 ‘How Women are Preparing to Help in War: Training for the “Voluntary Aid Detachments”. The Work of an Auxiliary Corps’, Daily Mail, 12 March 1910; ‘Nurses in Camp’, Daily Mail, 1 September 1910; Margaret Douglas, ‘Women Volunteers: Studland Bay’, Daily Mail, 10 September 1910. 41 ‘Women’s Field Day: Uniform Corps at Ambulance Practice’, Daily Mail, 30 May 1910; ‘Women in War: Convoy Corps’ Week in Camp’. 42 Letter from Staff Sergeant-​Major Osborne to Miss E. Benjamin, 10 June 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection; letter to Capt. Baker, 21 June 1909, signed by Eva Greenall and her sister Muriel, Waldron, Eyeles, Cutler, Lewin, Colyer and Wilson. Their resignation letter was also minuted in a council meeting of senior officers on 21 June 1909; ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 43 Minutes of General Council of Officers, 8 May 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 44 ‘Nursing Echoes’, British Journal of Nursing, 3 July 1909. 45 Edith Colston, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, May 1973, Colston file, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 46 Minutes of the meeting of the Governing Council and the Finance Committee, 5 August 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 47 Letter to Baker, signature of solicitor indecipherable, 3 November 1909, and minutes of the meeting of the Governing Council, 16 November 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 48 Letter from Isabel Wicks to Baker, 3 November 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 49 Letter from Baker to the Editor of Truth, 13 June 1910, letter from Sidney Paternoster to Baker, 15 June 1910, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 50 Letter from Wicks to Baker, 21 September 1910, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 51 Letter from Wicks to Sergeant-​Major, 25 September 1910, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection.

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Women of war 52 Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 45. 53 II.iv.43–​ 4. ‘Shakespearian Mediations’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 37. 54 Letter from Wicks to Baker, 29 November 1909, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 55 Stobart, Miracles and Adventures, p. 84. 56 See ‘Donna Quixote’, Punch, 28 April 1894. 57 Letter from Grace McDougall to Maud MacLellan, 27 April 1962, McDougall file, FANY HQ. 58 McDougall, ‘Prologue’, p. 1. 59 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 3. 60 Ibid., p. 4. 61 McDougall, ‘Prologue’, p. 2. 62 Ibid. 63 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 3. 64 Ibid., p. 4. 65 Letter from Wicks to Baker, 19 February 1910, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 66 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 5. 67 Mary Runciman, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, March 1975, Runciman file, Liddle Collection, TR/​06/​60. 68 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 5. 69 Ibid., p. 4. 70 Ibid., p. 4. 71 Regulations, undated [after 1910], FANY HQ. 72 Regimental Order Book, 6 July 1911, FANY HQ. 73 Vera Laughton Mathews, Blue Tapestry (London: Hollis & Carter, 1948), p. 17. 74 McDougall ‘Prologue’, p. 3. 75 Letter from W. A. S. Hellyar and Co. Solicitors to Baker, 9 January 1911, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 76 ‘Mounted Nurses: Women’s Ambulance Corps at Pirbright’, Pall Mall Gazette, 18 July 1913; Gazette 1967; Phyllis E. Thompson, ‘More Glimpses of Early F.A.N.Y. Days’, Gazette, spring 1962, 20–​1. 77 ‘Mounted Nurses’. 78 ‘Dimples and Khaki:  The Ladies Mounted Ambulance Corps Mobilised’, Daily Sketch, undated [1913]. 79 Winifred Mordaunt, ‘F.A.N.Y. 1910’ (1962), FANY HQ, reproduced in Gazette, spring 1962, 18–​19. 80 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 11. 81 McDougall, ‘Prologue’, p. 3. 82 FANY log book, FANY HQ. 83 ‘The Editor’s Page’, Women and War, 2 (July 1910), p. 30. 84 Mordaunt, ‘F.A.N.Y. 1910’. 85 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 6. 86 Ibid., pp. 3, 6.

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The professionalisation of the corps 87 McDougall, ‘Prologue’, p. 2. 88 She recollected that an ‘admiring and rather drunken gentleman forced his way to us at the end of one performance. He hiccupped at me, “I’m half Scotch myself ’, to which I tartly replied, “and the other half soda”.’ McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, pp. 4–​5. 89 ‘What Women Are Doing’, Sphere, 3 August 1912. 90 See, for example, photographs and newspaper clippings in Betty Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 91 ‘Nursing “Yeomen”: Novel Women’s Corps in Camp at Pirbright’, Standard, 10 July 1913. See Ina Zweiniger-​Bargielowska, Managing the Body: Beauty, Health, and Fitness in Britain, 1800–​1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. pp. 105–​48. 92 ‘English Women as Mounted Nurses’, Xenia Daily Gazette, 18 November 1914; Manti Messenger, 20 November 1914; Algona Courier, 20 November 1914; Hearne Democrat, 20 November 1914; Decatur Daily, 21 November 1914; Carbondale Daily Free Press, 23 November 1914; Fort Wayne News, 26 November 1914; Bessemer Herald, 28 November 1914; Pinedale Roundup, 17 December 1914. 93 ‘Nurses in Camp: Tents which Are Lit with Electric Light’, Daily Mirror, 13 May 1913. 94 ‘Norbury:  Whitsuntide Camp. Women and Men Play the “War Game” ’, Croydon Guardian, undated [May 1913]; ‘FANY Press Cuttings 1914–​1918’, FANY HQ. 95 Daily Mirror, 13 May 1913; ‘Mounted Nurses’. 96 Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War: An Englishwoman in the F.A.N.Y. (Burgess Hill: Diggory Press, 2005), p. 2. 97 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 10. 98 Robert Baden-​Powell, Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship (London: C. A. Pearson, 1908). 99 Women and War, 1 (June 1910); Women and War, 4 (October 1910); McDougall, ‘Prologue’. 100 ‘ “The Rescue” by Non-​Com’, Women and War, 2 (July 1910), 25–​6. 101 ‘Why Private Muldoon Changed His Mind by the Chief of Staff ’, Women and War, 1 (June 1910), 12–​13. 102 ‘The Training of Women to War’, Women and War, 2 (July 1910), 28. 103 ‘Rifle Shooting for Women’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 41. 104 Women and War, 4 (October 1910). 105 ‘A Woman Chelsea Pensioner’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 36; ‘To Save Her Father from the Axe’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 38; A. Kennedy, ‘Rebellion, Government and the Scottish Response to Argyll’s Rising of 1685’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 36:1 (2016), 40–​59. 106 V.iii.285–​6. ‘Shakespearian Meditations’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 37.

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Women of war 107 V.ii.170–​3. ‘Shakespeare on Suffragettes’, Women and War, 3 (September 1910), 38. 108 Krista Cowman, ‘What Was Suffragette Militancy? An Exploration of the British Example’, in Irma Sulkunen, Seija-​Leena Nevala-​Nurmi and Pirjo Markkola (eds), Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship: International Perspectives on Parliamentary Reforms (Newcastle upon Tyne:  Cambridge Scholars, 2009), pp. 299–​322. 109 Louise Miller, A Fine Brother:  The Life of Captain Flora Sandes (Richmond: Alma, 2012), pp. 35, 39, 16. 110 J. D. McLachlan, typescript (1945), ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 111 P. M. Lovell, We Never Thought of That (London:  William Heinemann, 1950); Enid Bagnold, Enid Bagnold’s Autobiography (from 1889) (London: Heinemann, 1969), pp. 32, 56. 112 ‘The qualification shall be enjoyed not only by sailors, soldiers, airmen, merchant seamen, pilots and fishermen, but by persons serving abroad.’ It specifically mentions ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry working for the British’. ‘The New Register: Votes of Fighting Men Abroad. Ambulance and Canteen Workers’, The Times, 23 March 1918. 113 Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 27; Betty Hutchinson, interviewed by Peter Liddle, June 1972, Hutchinson file, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 114 Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens:  British Women as Military Nurses, 1854–​1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), p. 236. 115 Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), p. 196. 116 Lewis, Women and Social Action. 117 ‘Adventures of Women’s Corps Pioneer’, Star, undated, in McDougall, Box 2, Imperial War Museum, 46733. 118 Letter from Baker to Ashley-​Smith, 9 March 1910, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 119 Desmond McDougall, War and Grace: One Woman’s Time at the Trenches (Whitley Bay: UK Book Publishing, 2015), p. 12. 120 McDougall, ‘Prologue’, p. 3; Hugh Popham, F.A.N.Y.: The Story of the Women’s Transport Service, 1907–​1984 (London: Leo Cooper, 1984), p. 3. 121 Anne Riches, ‘ “First anywhere”:  The Story of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, Transactions:  Medical Society of London, 121:33 (2008), 33–​53 (p. 35). 122 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 123 Regimental Order Book, 6 July 1911, FANY HQ. 124 FANY log book, 6 January 1912, FANY HQ. 125 FANY log book, 13 January 1912, FANY HQ. 126 FANY log book, 13 January 1912, FANY HQ. 127 Grace Ashley-​Smith, log book, 3 January 1912, Liddle Collection.

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The professionalisation of the corps 128 Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 13. By contrast, Baker’s role is remembered by FANY headquarters. He is mentioned on the website, and the Captain E. C. Baker Silver Plate, donated by his grandsons, is awarded annually for outstanding service. 129 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 130 Typed sheet of ‘Regulations’, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 131 McDougall, letter to curator of Imperial War Museum, McDougall, Box 3, Imperial War Museum, 46733; FANY log book, FANY HQ. 132 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 5. 133 Ibid., p. 6. 134 McDougall, ‘Brief Resumé of Corps’ Work’, p. 8. 135 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 13. 136 McDougall, ibid. See also McDougall, ‘Brief Resumé of Corps’ Work’, p. 9. 137 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 6. 138 While Ulster is regarded as a stronghold of Unionism, it was not a solid Unionist block:  seventeen Unionist and sixteen Home Rule and Liberal candidates were returned in the general election of December 1910, for example. 139 Timothy Bowman, Carson’s Army:  The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910–​22 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). 140 The exception is Erskin Childers, the author of The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service Recently Achieved. A Novel Illustrating the Possibility of a German Invasion of England (London: Smith, Elder, 1903). 141 Katherine Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates:  The Story of Forty Five Years, 1875–​1920 (London: Peter Davies, 1940), p. 296. 142 Ibid., p. 297. 143 Letter from Ashley-​Smith to Rt Hon. Sir Edward Carson, 11 June 1913, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 144 Diane Urquhart (ed.), The Minutes of the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council and Executive Committee, 1911–​1940 (Dublin:  Women’s History Project, 2001), p. xiii. 145 Diane Urquhart, Women in Ulster Politics, 1890–​1940: A History Not Yet Told (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000), pp. 46–​84. 146 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, pp. 8–​9. 147 Copy of letter to M.  C. O’Hea, 17 November 1913, FANY log book, FANY HQ. 148 Pat Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (London: John Murray, 1919), p. 5. 149 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 9. 150 Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History 1800–​2000 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003); James McConnel, ‘ “Après la guerre”:  John Redmond, the Irish Volunteers and Armed Constitutionalism, 1913–​1915’, English Historical Review, 131:553 (2016), 1445–​70. 151 Daily Express, 27 September 1913.

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Women of war 152 ‘At Pirbright to Act as Nurses in the Event of Civil War Breaking Out in Ireland’, Illustrated Chronicle, 3 October 1913. 153 ‘Will Ulster Fight? These Ladies, at Least, Are Ready to Take the Field’, London Weekly Budget, 2 November 1913. 154 ‘Women in War:  Mounted Ambulance Corps for Ulster’, clipping from unnamed newspaper, undated [October/​November 1913] in Mary Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 155 The equipment that was amassed was used during the First World War instead, but the money went unspent, Ashley-​Smith failing to persuade the joint account holder, Mrs Clement-​Smith, to let her use the funds. McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 60. 156 Lt Col. Davis, IMS, letter, 21 March 1914, quoted in ibid. 157 ‘British Nurse Defies the German Staff: Amazing Exploits of Mrs McDougall in Belgium’, Weekly Welcome, 27 March 1915. 158 Popham, F.A.N.Y., p. 1. 159 Ward, FANY Invicta, p. 34.

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‘Here we were, girls of the twentieth century’: Active service in the First World War

[S]‌he was doing all kinds of horrible things. She remembered cleaning out the ambulance at the end of the day, blood and fluids and waste. Remembered, too, the mutilations, the charred skeletons, the ruined villages, limbs poking through mud and earth. Buckets of filthy swabs and pus-​soaked bandages and the terrible oozing wounds of the poor boys … [Her brother Hugh] had come across her once during the horror of the Somme, at an advanced dressing station not very far behind the firing line. He was confused at the sight of her. She seemed to be in the wrong place  –​she belonged in the drawing room at Hampstead or in an evening gown, flirting and teasing some helpless man … Izzie was dressed in some kind of uniform beneath a dirty apron, blood smeared across one cheek, carrying something foul in an enamel pail.1

Kate Atkinson’s novel A God in Ruins explicitly confronts the paradox of an upper-​class woman who is jettisoned into unforgiving situations. Izzy, a member of the FANY, substitutes her elegant ballgowns, London salon and playful coquettish manner for a khaki uniform, French hospital and nursing expertise. Women from monied backgrounds, like the fictionalised Izzy, ignored attempts to thwart their desire to perform patriotic war work, engineered their way onto terrain previously reserved for men utilising their own financial resources and contrived a role for themselves close to the trenches of northern France, disregarding the perils of warfare. They were the social group best able to achieve what they desired. As nurse Kate Finzi recorded in her diary, ‘No wonder everyone who can afford to be is in France … It is the Real Thing; one is no longer a looker-​on, but a moving factor of things.’2 About 25,000 British women saw service abroad, eager to be active participants, rather than passive observers, in their generation’s great adventure. One of the first organisations to be operational was the FANY, v 165 v

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Women of war which had to overcome numerous obstacles to deploy overseas and later extend its role. In total, 406 FANYs are listed in the Historical Register as having undertaken active service overseas between 1914 and 1920.3 While members were not riding side-​saddle onto the battlefield to tend to soldiers’ injuries as Edward Baker had initially conceived, FANYs organised into units were implementing their training behind the lines in northern France, as these two chapters on the First World War show.4 Their work evolved over time, extending outward from staffing hospitals and convalescent camps for the Belgian Army in Calais from autumn 1914 to include working for the French and British in their capacity as nurses, first aiders, canteen workers and driver-​mechanics: from January 1916 they drove ambulances for the British army out of bases in Calais and St Omer; for the Belgian army out of Hoogstadt, very close to the front from summer 1916; for the French army throughout northern France after August 1917; and, following the Armistice, also in Germany and Belgium. While performing roles that other British women carried out, their employment with the Belgian army also meant that they had the opportunity to undertake activities that members of VADs, QAIMNS, TFNS and WAAC were not permitted to do, such as go up to the front-​ line trenches to dispense first aid provisions and gifts. If the Corps had presented prewar, adventurous, affluent women with the opportunity to free themselves from prescriptive gender norms, as we saw in previous chapters, the war offered such women a real chance of liberty, as unlike other women’s units all members were mobilised overseas.5 Recent studies of the ways in which the war opened up a host of new prospects for women and accordingly reshaped constructions of femininity note the close link between modernity and the First World War. The work of historian Krisztina Robert and literary scholar Angela K. Smith is particularly notable.6 Certainly, the war, with its modernising possibilities, afforded FANYs the opportunity to insert themselves into the distinctly masculine terrain of ‘the Front’, as we shall see in the first half of the chapter, pushing against conventional gendered expectations and forging modern modes of femininity. Given that nursing, the subject of the second half of this chapter, was regarded as an acceptable occupation for elite women, the volunteer FANY first aiders, in serving as orderlies in hospitals, might be seen as operating firmly within traditional discourses of femininity. They also engaged in other appropriately feminine work, largely shaped by a conservative view that prioritised domesticity and care-​giving: they established and ran canteens for the troops, fundraised, acted as hostesses to visiting v 166 v

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Active service in the First World War VIPs, entertained patients with sports and concerts, and wrote letters to prisoners of war. But while much of what the FANY did was safely entrenched within established norms, the fact that its nursing work was undertaken in the devastating milieu of modern warfare, overseas and near the fighting (as opposed to peacetime Britain), meant it had radical connotations. In furnishing women with the opportunity to go abroad and undertake useful work that served their country in a time of war, the Corps can be regarded as a model of modern, military femininity. Its voluntary status enabled it to circumvent British army stipulations (which constrained female members of other units) that no women could be stationed in the vicinity of the front. Consequently, FANYs on occasion endured shelling, were caught up in one of the earliest gas attacks, could be posted close to the front line and regularly visited the trenches. Given that wars are generally represented as fought to safeguard women (and children), their modernity was apparent through their (albeit intermittent) proximity to danger. Moreover, their work tending to soldiers whose bodies and minds had been devastated by a new kind of industrialised warfare that utilised novel forms of technology such as trench mortars, machine guns, barbed wire and gas, required the FANYs to develop their nursing skills quickly, and to innovate. They were fighting modern weapons without the use of pharmaceuticals such as penicillin and antibiotics, which had yet to be developed. They might also be seen as modern for engaging in the physically demanding task of stretcher-​ bearing, a task that previously only men undertook. It is thus the novel possibilities presented by the setting overseas, in the vicinity of danger, in dealing with the consequences of industrialised warfare and in reversing established gender relations by carrying fragile men on stretchers, that gives their conventional nursing work a modern twist. This thread of incongruous contradiction, which we explored in the previous three chapters, is pulled through the analysis here. As Angela K.  Smith notes with regard to the military nurse, ‘she is a new woman hiding behind the trappings of the old’.7 The earliest example of female self-​militarisation, in which members dressed in regimental uniform and prepared for war situations, the FANY was the first women’s military organisation to have a presence in Flanders; the first to staff a Regimental Aid Post a mile from the front line; and, as we shall see in the next chapter, the first women’s ambulance convoy to drive for the British army, as well as the Belgian and French armies, and the only British unit whose members were sworn in as soldiers of the Belgian army. Moreover, the Corps had the highest v 167 v

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Women of war number of awards bestowed on any women’s unit, and the most highly decorated woman of the war was one of its members, Grace McDougall (née Ashley-​Smith). As War Budget Illustrated asserted in 1916, ‘The first place amongst the pioneers must be given to the Fany girls … They have entered every door of opportunity opened to them. And some that they opened for themselves’.8 Yet despite their war record, FANYs are surprisingly absent from most accounts of women’s wartime work, and even studies of British women’s military nursing ignore them. The latter are largely populist in tone, overly laudatory and lacking in rigorous analysis.9 Scholarly medical histories of the war have tended to focus more on male soldierly wounding, disablement and impairment than the women who provided the medical treatment. In the work of Ana Carden-​Coyne, Deborah Cohen, Jeffrey Reznick, Leo van Bergen, Wendy Gagen and Julie Anderson, much of which foregrounds the impact on embodied masculinities of injuries sustained in a brutal war of attrition, there are only rare glimpses of female medical personnel. When they do appear, they are generally depicted as either idealistic volunteers with little training whose amateur administrations often impeded recovery, or professional martinets who were callous, unfeeling and caused pain. As Carden-​Coyne notes in a discussion of the inversion of conventional gender relations brought about by qualified female physical therapists undertaking remedial massage on the bodies of wounded soldiers, these ‘female tormentors’ were ‘brutal women’ who ‘inflicted pain upon patients to a degree that was, at times, scandalous’.10 In response to such criticisms, Christine Hallett sought to show ‘how nurses cared’ and, by doing so, to ‘plug a gap’ in the literature.11 Drawing on letters and diaries of professional nurses from Britain, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, Hallett asserts that in undertaking healing work they were ‘containers of trauma’, creating ‘safe boundaries within which healing could occur’, restoring men’s broken bodies and making them ‘whole’ again.12 A  nurse herself, as well as a historian, Hallett chose to concentrate on those who held professional nursing qualifications, using their hastily scribbled diaries, which, albeit never intended for publication, convey effectively the immediacy of their experiences.13 Recent scholarship in the emerging discipline of nursing history has generally centred on the trained professional nurse: this is in order to ‘rectify the focus’ that has to date been on VADs, who are in the ‘foreground of the public imagination’ and to whom greater prestige has been conferred.14 The work on professional nurses is in itself a political v 168 v

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Active service in the First World War intervention in the continued and present history of nursing professionalisation that we touched upon in the previous chapter and that occludes the work of the FANY. Jane Brooks and Christine Hallett, both registered nurses, make just one passing reference to the FANY in One Hundred Years of Wartime Nursing Practices, 1854–​1953.15 The untrained first aid volunteers who joined the VADs and the FANY are, thus, largely outside the scope of these nursing studies.16 This chapter, which utilises published and unpublished memoirs of trained medical professionals and volunteer first aiders, as well as letters and articles in the nursing and national press, addresses this collective amnesia about the FANY by restoring its nursing practice during the First World War to the historical record. It begins with an examination of the wartime role of socially elite women foregrounding the highly modern figure of the volunteer first aider and examines the frustrations felt by trained professionals toward these ‘mock’ nurses.17 It then considers as another indicator of modernity the rush to colours by such women who ignored establishment opposition and made their own way out to the front, self-​financed and with little medical expertise, to set up hospitals. It moves on to discuss the nursing work they undertook, which resulted from a modern conflict that utilised new weapons of war and necessitated new skills, some of which subverted convention, and the publicity they generated by ‘Nursing at the Front’.18 Each aspect is evidence of their modernity, something that FANYs themselves were very conscious of. As Grace Ashley-​Smith recorded in her wartime memoir: Here we were, girls of the twentieth century in this atmosphere of storm and war living what surely few women ever dreamt in their wildest fancies until this war began. This was life! My ears tingled; I breathed in long, deep breaths. Had I spoken a sort of wild war song would have come from my lips. The Highland blood in me bubbled and frothed; I wanted to run for miles –​to race, to climb –​action at all costs.19

‘The best of the modern woman’: elite women and the First World War While hundreds of thousands of women had worked prior to the war, they had generally been concentrated in parts of the labour market that were low-​status, low-​paid and considered, dismissively, ‘women’s work’. The First World War opened up a wide range of employment opportunities for women, enabling them to undertake roles that had previously been tagged ‘male’, as scholars such as Gail Braybon, Angela Woollacott, Sharon Ouditt, Deborah Thom and Susan Grayzel have persuasively v 169 v

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Women of war argued.20 While many scholars are, as Braybon makes explicit, ‘mostly concerned with the position of working class women’, who formed the majority of the work force before, during and after the war, and despite the ‘enormous gulf ’ between women who had chosen to undertake war work and those for whom it was a financial imperative, the war enabled women from all classes to be let ‘out of the cage’.21 The war also ushered in a new pool of ‘green’ (albeit unpaid) labour from among affluent women, and it is this socially elite minority that experienced possibly the greatest changes. As Sylvia Pankhurst noted, ‘for women of means, undreamed of activities, opportunities, positions, opened on the horizon. The War brought a vast unlocking of their energies.’22 Throughout the four years of war, a range of paramilitary organisations were established under the patronage of aristocratic women, and many from privileged backgrounds voluntarily enlisted. As Edith Barton and Marguerite Cody noted in their 1918 book Eve in Khaki, ‘a fascinating type of modern femininity’ had been moulded by the exigencies of war, permitting ‘the best of the modern woman’.23 Lady Londonderry, the head of one such khaki-​wearing unit, the WVR, which trained along military lines and included dispatch riders, motorists and trench-​diggers, also noted that ‘the war had revolutionised the position of women’ but felt compelled to note that members were still ‘womanly women and not second-​class men’.24 Her need to offer reassurances that these female paramilitaries remained feminine suggests that the opportunities presented by the war to privileged women had the potential to flex hitherto rigid gender boundaries. In her memoirs, written in 1938, she derided the ‘male-​females’ and the ‘she-​men’ that the war had unleashed.25 We shall return to this perceived gender ambiguity in the next chapter when we examine the ambulance driving undertaken by the FANY. Of all the types of work available to women during the First World War in industry, transport, agriculture and the auxiliary services, nursing was the most socially acceptable for women from privileged backgrounds. It did pose a challenge to conventional gender roles as it was thought to draw on women’s ‘natural’ capacity for caring and was an extension of their tending to parents, husbands and children, and of their philanthropic actions in the community. ‘The conditioning of Edwardian women’, asserts Hilary Blodgett, ‘inculcated the traditional service to others and self-​abnegation, not self-​gratification’.26 Nursing fulfilled that altruistic endeavour. And it was ‘heavy with symbolic value’, as Susan Grayzel notes.27 Such allegorical allusions are referenced in one of the most iconic representations of the First World War, v 170 v

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Active service in the First World War Alonzo Earl Foringer’s The Greatest Mother in the World (1918). This image, which was first produced in the United States, was reproduced on postcards and posters and used widely to raise funds for the Red Cross in Britain. It depicts a Red Cross nurse with a beatific expression adorned in flowing white robes, with her arms wrapped protectively around a stretcher carrying a child-​sized, blind and maimed British soldier swaddled in his army blanket, as if she were the Madonna cradling her baby (or, indeed, her crucified son). With its religious iconography, it cemented into popular myth the notion of the angelic nurse.28 In total, about 85,000 women served during the First World War as nurses: while qualified professionals enlisted in QAIMNS and the TFNS, untrained amateurs, drawn largely from the social elite, who could afford to offer their services without financial recompense, joined the reserves of both organisations and also VADs. Despite the seemingly antimodern and traditional associations presented by the celebration of maternal nurturing, and the nun-​like garb of starched headdress, white veil and crisp white apron, the figure of the volunteer nurse was in fact a thoroughly modern one. Timing was key:  the wider context of the war made the role of nursing the soldier hero ‘increasingly popular among those in pursuit of modern identities’.29 She was widely celebrated throughout the war as a romantic, appropriately feminine, modern figure. As Barbara McLaren noted in her celebratory 1917 book Women of the War, it was to the volunteer nurse that ‘the crown of women’s war service’ belonged.30 She populated the pages of wartime literary fiction:  Alice and Claude Askew’s Nurse, published in 1916, is just one such example. Elizabeth, with ‘her small face’, which was ‘curiously attractive’, had ‘taken very kindly to hospital work’ even though she was ‘by no means a born nurse’.31 She relished the opportunity to escape her frivolous, privileged life and do something worthwhile and deserving of respect: I shall be of little use at last … I shall be something more than a mere rich girl –​a girl with heaps and heaps of money … I shall be a nursing sister … Nurse Elizabeth, that is what I am now –​Nurse Elizabeth. I have put all the pomps and vanities behind me, thank god, and I shall be judged from to-​day on my own merits. I have ceased to be that miserable unhappy creature, a mere dollar princess.

Serving in a British field hospital in Belgium, Elizabeth was ‘raised above other women’, as ‘it had been decided for her by destiny that she was to witness scenes and sights denied to the ordinary woman  –​that she v 171 v

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Women of war was to come very close to the blood-​red tracks of war; for her the perils of bombardment’.32 By stoically enduring being stationed close to the fighting, frequent shelling and witnessing the horrors that modern warfare could inflict on fragile bodies, Elizabeth surpassed gendered and classed expectations. The socially elite young woman, like Elizabeth, who offered her services voluntarily as a first aider had much in common with the other modern archetype of the times, the volunteer soldier, whatever his background. If he was the epitome of manliness, proving his masculinity by his readiness to sacrifice his life for his country, then the volunteer nurse was his female equivalent, if not his equal –​the very quintessence of modern femininity.33 While he embodied the manly ideals of valour, heroism, fearlessness and fortitude, she personified the ‘innate’ feminine virtues of care, compassion, goodness and submission. The adoption of new modes of hypermasculinity by the volunteer soldier was thus paralleled by women taking on the extremely feminine role of nursing. And while these gendered attributes were timeless, they were also very much of the time. Like him, she was thrust into the war zone with little training to prepare her for the horrors with which she was soon to be confronted. And similar to the pre-​conscript soldier, she was met with huge social approbation, having made the finest response to the country’s call. She was the earliest female recruit to the British war effort, the first to publicise her adventures in the press and in book form,34 and so dominant was her position in the popular imagination that she was often the figure chosen to represent women’s wartime service on memorials, rather than the arguably more masculine ‘munitionette’, land girl or WAAC. Unlike the overalled industrial worker, or uniformed police woman, agricultural labourer or auxiliary servicewoman who succeeded her, or indeed the suffragette who preceded her, the volunteer nurse was reassuringly feminine in both appearance and conduct, upheld conventional gender norms, did not proffer a challenge to patriarchal authority and did not risk being regarded as an ‘unsexed female’.35 And, unlike her trained sister, the volunteer nurse had neither professional status nor a career ambition, undertaking the role without financial recompense purely for the duration for patriotic purposes. While the professional nurse had been the New Woman of the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods, taking up a skilled career and having financial independence, by the time war broke out, she had been eclipsed by the young amateur. Thus, the volunteer nurse assumed the qualified nurse’s place as the archetypal modern New Woman and was v 172 v

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Active service in the First World War favourably juxtaposed with her: as a result of their training, professional nurses tended to be older and were regarded, by some volunteers at least, as overly serious, strict disciplinarians. Aware that her comments were being recorded and would be placed on public record at the Imperial War Museum, FANY Mary Marshall repeatedly spoke of qualified nurses as women of a different generation:  they were ‘much older’, a ‘real old fashioned martinet of a nurse’, ‘funny old thing’, ‘a bit odd’, ‘we used to rather laugh at them … didn’t think much’ of them, ‘our trained nurses were very sniffy at some of the things as you can imagine’.36 By contrast, volunteer first aiders were frequently represented as the personification of a modern generation: enthusiastic, fervent young women in possession of a sunny temperament, with all its allusions to youthfulness, that was conducive to caring for wounded soldiers. Dr Flora Murray observed in her memoir of her time running the Women’s Hospital Corps in Paris and Wimereux that ‘they brought laughter into the wards. Their very aspect was cheering … Their gaiety was infectious.’37 Journalists also reiterated this trope: an article in the Daily Call, for example, noted that ‘the Yeomanry nurse has sadder experiences crowded into one week of her hospital nursing than may occur to a nurse who does a year of ordinary hospital work’, and yet she was successful in ‘keeping cheery and smiling’ and ‘distract[ing] [her] patients from their manifold worries and anxieties’, which the journalist noted was ‘the chief business’ of nurses.38 Articles repeatedly called the amateur first aiders ‘nurses’, a term used throughout the nineteenth century to refer to a woman undertaking a range of tasks despite having no formal training. In spite of nearly thirty years of campaigning, nursing remained unregulated in 1914 with no State registration defining who was qualified.39 This liberal use of the term ‘nurse’ annoyed many women who had chosen nursing as a career and had spent years training to attain professional qualifications. Violetta Thurstan, for example, contrasted ‘nurses so-​ called’ in her memoir published in 1915 with qualified professionals who had ‘given up the best years of their life to learning the principles that underlie this most exacting of professions’.40 While Dr Flora Murray wrote positively of the ‘splendid band’ of ‘gently nurtured, expensively, but ineffectively educated’ volunteers who ‘la[id] aside their habits of ease and pleasure’, many trained nurses were perturbed by the influx of young, enthusiastic, socially privileged amateurs with little training who were donning the same uniform as they and undermining their status by diluting their skill and undercutting their salaries.41 Thurstan was critical of women with ‘a few bandaging v 173 v

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Women of war classes’ who used ‘influence and bluff ’ to get positions, donned uniform and ‘call[ed] themselves Sister Rose or Sister Mabel’, and was indignant that this was happening ‘even now, in this twentieth century’.42 Before the war, she had written to the British Journal of Nursing noting that in the voluntary women’s organisations (such as the VADs and FANY) there was too much focus on the ‘military’ side of things:  ‘though flagging, signalling, riding &c, are doubtless very attractive, it certainly has given a large section of the public the idea that members are rather “playing at soldiers” than training in first aid work’.43 Qualified nurse Kate Finzi remarked in her memoir published in 1916 that it was ‘ridiculous’ that ‘unlicensed’ women with ‘theoretical’ knowledge only ‘played at work’ establishing hospitals that they were ‘unfitted to run’, and noted that they were ‘more of a hindrance than a help’, while trained doctors and nurses ‘find themselves somewhat shelved’. She continued, ‘for what are a number of first-​aid lectures or stretcher drills as compared with the real hospital training? … Is anything but the best good enough for our fighting men?’44 A  survey of wartime nursing publications shows that such frustrations were widely felt. As early as summer 1914, complaints began appearing in the British Journal of Nursing and the Nursing Times of ‘encroachment’ by volunteers with ‘express training’.45 Volunteers are continually referred to as untrained, unskilled amateurs. Julia Roberts notes that annoyance pivots on four issues:  their diluted status, class antagonism, supervisory burden and concern over postwar unemployment brought about by the flood of untrained volunteers.46 Devonshire House, the headquarters of the Red Cross during the war and the place from which the VADs were administered, received many letters of complaint from volunteer first aiders, while contemporary accounts, including Vera Brittain’s, which has acquired an illustrious significance, are replete with tales of resentment and antagonism expressed by trained nurses towards them.47 This has subsequently led to a myth of the ‘bullying martinet’ and the put-​upon VAD, notes Christine Hallett.48 Grace Ashley-​Smith documented the reception she received from professional nurses en route to Belgium in early September 1914: ‘My fellow traveller nurses contented themselves by making spiteful remarks about my khaki uniform and untrained people … [O]‌ne nurse was very peeved. She asked me what I thought I was there for –​and made cutting remarks about interference and “cheek”.’49 Similarly, Katherine Furse reflected on her time with the VADs, noting that while volunteers were ‘content’ and ‘enthusiastic’ to ‘supplement and not to compete with professional skill’, they were widely considered ‘anathema as amateur untrained upstarts v 174 v

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Active service in the First World War who might want to push in and take the place of those who had devoted years to training as nurses’. In not inviting matrons of training schools to advise on the instruction given to VADs before the war, the British Red Cross Society had, she asserted, ‘set the profession against us’.50 The seeds of this discord between amateur first aiders and professional nurses were indeed sown before the war. An article in the FANY magazine Woman and War in 1910 about the function of the Corps confirms that friction predated 1914. Edward Baker wrote that there was ‘a great deal of misconception’ about his unit, and sought to reassure trained professionals that ‘the work of the Field Nurses will go on as it has always done. [The FANY] does not desire to take the place of any existing force.’51 In her account published in 1913, former FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart similarly sought to assuage professional concerns about the volunteer nurse, who she noted ‘should be regarded not so much as a nurse, [but] as a first aider’. She regarded it as ‘grotesque’ and ‘absurd’ to think that attending ‘a few lectures on first aid and home nursing’ and the occasional day spent in an out-​patients’ department could ‘qualify’ a woman in the same way as ‘three years of continuous training’ for the status and uniform of a nurse. ‘Amateurs and volunteers are better excluded’ from hospital wards, the remit of the trained nurse, whereas their training in map-​reading, cooking, ambulance-​driving and horse-​ riding, all ‘subjects extraneous to nursing’, prepared them for convoying the wounded to base hospitals.52 Despite these placatory comments from the heads of voluntary organisations before the war, the frustration felt by trained professionals was inflamed during the conflict as more and more volunteers intruded into the realm of qualified nursing personnel. An example of the burning resentment felt by professional nurses toward the Corps can be seen in an article in the Nursing Mirror published in August 1915. It lambasted FANYs who were ‘attired in bloomers and paragraphed as “nurses” ’ and stated that their qualifications amounted to preparation of ‘a few months’ for handling the wounded. The ‘preposterous ignorance of war implied in this ambition seems to have extended also to their conception of the delicate and complex processes involved in giving first aid to wounded men’. Titled ‘Decorations for Mock Heroines’, the article castigated three FANYs, on whom the Belgian King Albert had bestowed medals, for their ‘breach of discipline’ in ‘refus[ing] to retire when ordered back’, which ‘in our judgement’ ought to have resulted in ‘dismissal from the corps’. It acerbically noted that ‘the heroism of these individuals appears to consist in the fact that they did not scream or run away when they found themselves, by their own act, uselessly v 175 v

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Women of war and improperly exposed to danger’. The ‘humblest’ Red Cross worker washing crockery in a makeshift hospital was ‘more worthy’ of being decorated for her service than ‘women who have yet to learn that the secret of being useful in war, as in peace, is to keep in the background and obey orders’.53 What the author saw as FANYs’ disobedience might equally be regarded as a refusal to be patronised and protected by male officers and a determination to dispense their duty as first aiders. These were both hallmarks of the New Woman, which underscores their very modernity and contrasts them with the obedient women who were content to remain on the sidelines. Indeed, it was that very resolve to be in the thick of the action that motivated the women of the FANY who, in pursuit of modern identities, made strident claims to participate in the war following its outbreak. ‘Boiling over with our desire to put into practice what we had learnt’: the rush to colours As war looked increasingly likely, socially elite women who had spent months and even years practising bandaging willed for war to come so that they might put their training to good use and test their skills. Katherine Furse, who was to lead the first VAD unit into France in October 1914, remembered vividly over twenty five years later: the excitement in which we had been indulging for some four years; the glamour of the chance to put what we had learnt into practice; the glamour of feeling important and superior and the glamour of assisting H.M. Forces … When war seemed to be imminent, we were boiling over with our desire to put into practice what we had learnt.54

As well as the altruistic gratification of doing one’s duty, being useful, and utilising one’s training and new skills for the benefit of others, the war enabled privileged women such as Furse to express their own needs and experience the thrill that had so often been lacking in their lives as a result of their stifling upbringing. Furse couches her delight at prospective war service in terms of ‘excitement’, ‘desire’ and ‘glamour’. She reassures her readers that while she did not wish men to become ill or sustain injuries requiring medical treatment, ‘if they had to be’ then she wanted to be involved in administering the care, as the VAD had been ‘visualising the effects of war’ for over four years. Many young women, like men, saw war as romantic and exciting, as something to be anticipated, an opportunity to prove oneself, rather than something to be avoided, and had little idea v 176 v

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Active service in the First World War of what was in store.55 Looking back with the benefit of hindsight having spent two years being confronted with the reality of total war, which had taken the lives of both of her brothers, Grace Ashley-​Smith lamented ‘To me in the past War had meant romance and heroic deeds, not the awful hell of agony it is.’56 When war was declared, many among the country’s youth were swept up in a wave of jingoism and high spirits, subscribing to the notion that the conflict would be ‘over by Christmas’ and, eager not to miss out on their generation’s grand adventure (‘the bigness of the Great Game in which we are to play our parts’), willingly volunteered.57 In Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves noted that ‘only a very short war was expected –​ two or three months at the very outside –​I thought it might last just long enough to delay my going to Oxford in October’.58 Nearly 300,000 men enlisted in the first month of war alone.59 As Alice and Claude Askew note in their novel Nurse, ‘There was a sudden call to arms  –​a grand rally of the manhood of the nation –​a girding of loins … the springing to birth of a khaki army.’60 Another example of the overblown rhetoric that was typical of its time was Grace Ashley-​Smith’s remark in her wartime memoir that she felt enormous ‘pride’ in ‘my men’ who ‘went out gaily to fight for me and all the women of the Empire’.61 The immediate response of many untrained women was to volunteer their services in the summer of 1914 by enrolling in nursing classes, ‘feverishly practising their bandaging’, as a way to show their solidarity with men and to prove their usefulness. Violetta Thurstan, a nurse appointed by the Red Cross to evaluate applications, recalled in her diary that there was an ‘endless procession’ of women ‘besieging’ the War Office and the Red Cross, ‘anxious for adventure and clamouring “to go to the front at once” ’.62 ‘The desire of our hearts is to do something … The modern woman does not want to be protected’, wrote fifty-​year old-​suffragist and author May Sinclair in her wartime diary.63 She recollected that one of her ‘vivid and adventurous’ ‘schemes’ was to be a part of a detachment of ‘stalwart Amazons in Khaki breeches’, who would ‘dash out on to the battle-​field’, ‘leap’ onto horses whose riders had ‘dropped from their saddles’ having been wounded and killed, collect the injured and return with them ‘slung over’ their saddles. They would also supply ‘remounts’, partnering up riderless horses and unseated cavalry.64 Such a scheme strikingly resembled the original objective of the FANY, an idea with which they themselves had since dispensed. As we shall see, Sinclair met Ashley-​Smith several times when they were in occupied Belgium and may have borrowed the notion from her. v 177 v

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Women of war For existing members of the VAD and FANY, with plentiful training and multiple certificates but no real nursing experience, the war was indeed a welcome arrival. Grace Ashley-​Smith recorded in her memoir her elation upon hearing of the news, saying out loud: ‘ “Thank God it’s come now”. My inmost thought was that it had come whilst I was young enough to be in it.’65 In many ways, women’s eagerness to participate mirrored men’s ‘rush to colours’. A ‘nursing fever’, parallel to the khaki one that broke out, might be diagnosed as having infected a large proportion of socially elite women. As journalist F.  Tennyson Jesse noted with reference to VADs and FANYs, ‘it is as natural for women to want to get to the war as men’.66 But while male volunteers were enthusiastically enlisted as soldiers, and men such as Dr Hector Munro, ‘without one car, or the least little nut or cog of a chassis to his name’, could ‘impose himself upon a Government as the Commandant of a Motor Field Ambulance!’ and take a group of thirteen volunteers to Belgium in September 1914, women’s offers to provide similar overseas ancillary support were routinely rejected.67 As two FANYs noted in an interwar article published in the Cavalry Journal, the British establishment ‘expressed the opinion that women’s corps, with the exception of [professional] nurses, could never be employed with success on active service’.68 Some aristocratic women capitalised upon the initial confusion and utilised their wealth and social connections to cross the Channel independently. Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, for example, left Britain on 8 August, just four days after the declaration of war against Germany, to join a branch of the French Red Cross.69 Those who sought official permission by approaching the British authorities were frequently snubbed. On 25 September 1914 May Sinclair recorded in her diary, subsequently published in 1915, ‘six weeks struggling with something we imagined to be Red Tape … the War Office kicked us out twice, and the Admiralty once … The British Red Cross kicked us steadily all the time … progress to the Front was frustrated by Lord Kitchener.’ However, ‘the lure of the battlefield’ kept her ‘dancing’ around the various organisations, determined to overcome opposition.70 Ex-​FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart, whose Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps had seen active service in the Balkan War, offered a newly formed unit, the Women’s National Service League, to the War Office, and was rebuffed.71 Despite having no medical training herself, she later set up a hospital, staffed entirely by trained women –​what Sinclair, who was rejected because she was not a nurse or doctor, admiringly called ‘a Feminist Show’.72 Likewise Vera Laughton Mathews, who later joined the WRNS when it formed in 1918 and led it during the Second World War, v 178 v

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Active service in the First World War was told by the Admiralty, an exclusively male service with no female administrators, ‘We don’t want any petticoats here.’73 Even professionally trained medical personnel were turned away by the patriarchal military medical authorities, who wished to exclude women: Dr Elsie Inglis, who went on to found the Scottish Women’s Hospital Units, fourteen of which deployed over 1,000 women in six countries, was advised by a representative of the RAMC: ‘my good lady, go home and sit still’.74 The FANY received a similar response. Lilian Franklin, who ran the FANY with Grace Ashley-​Smith following the ousting of Baker, was turned down by the Army Medical Services when she volunteered members of the Corps as unpaid orderlies in military hospitals. A  letter declining the offer noted:  ‘the fact of the matter is that owing to the unselfish patriotism of the women of England we have got more hospitals than we know what to do with’.75 Judging the front to be an inappropriate location for women and believing that the war would be over by Christmas, the British military medical authorities sought to limit the number of women going overseas. There was a widespread concern about the ‘moral consequences’, as Jenny Gould put it, of permitting women to be militarised and live in the vicinity of men.76 Such considerations deterred the establishment from accepting the assistance of women and making use of womanpower in the staffing of hospitals close to the battlefields. Even those who had joined officially sanctioned VADs prior to the war found that the establishment was slow to utilise them. With increasing frustration at not being deployed, Katherine Furse wrote to a friend whose husband worked in a senior position in the War Office, noting that women had ‘trained three and four years … [yet still been] given nothing active to do. Do the authorities realise that we have given up three days a week regularly to training, hospital experience, cooking, hygiene, & sanitation, camping, stretcher work[?]‌’.77 None of these assertive and strong-​willed women was dissuaded by the diffident scepticism of the establishment: on their own initiative, and using their own contacts and funds, they circumvented official processes and travelled across the Channel to set up hospital units, or joined existing ones in order to be of use in providing vital first aid. The FANY members were similarly undeterred by the rejection of their offer, and persevered, determined to go to the Continent and put into practice their training: they held sewing parties and began gathering their equipment together in case authorisation came through to enable them to travel to Belgium. Nevertheless, these were ‘weary and dispiriting days’, wrote Pat Waddell.78 Grace Ashley-​Smith was on the outbound v 179 v

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Women of war voyage to South Africa to visit her sister when war was announced. She cabled ahead to arrange her immediate passage back to Britain, spending just four hours ashore in Cape Town, and arrived back on 5 September 1914. In his biography of his mother, Desmond McDougall relates how she straightaway set about persuading the military medical authorities that she could be of use and attaining permission to travel. Utilising the social capital that she possessed as a result of her affluent upbringing, she made an appointment to meet with Sir Arthur Sloggett, the Director-​ General of the Army Medical Services, someone to whom the Corps had been recommended following a successful first aid demonstration at a prewar camp. Although he reiterated that the Corps was not needed, he relented when she asked to go alone, presuming she would find it impossible to acquire a passport, a Channel permit and authorisation from the Red Cross to travel on their transport with a group of professional nurses. She went next to the Red Cross, where she ‘badgered’ the ‘sour-​ faced’ secretary to sign her completed form, and on to the Passport Office where, in a characteristic display of boldness, she somewhat impudently procured a passport and permit by surreptitiously moving her application form to the top of the pile, and then she returned to the Red Cross with her papers to get an embarkation permit signed and stamped.79 Her son notes that ‘The episode was typical of Grace’s attitude throughout the war to red tape or awkward situations. She would seldom, if ever, take no for an answer.’80 On 10 September 1914, she arrived in Ostend dressed in FANY uniform, having travelled ‘at my own expense, to arrange things according to my own ideas, with no instructions from any Commanding Officer!’81 In the strongly worded prologue to her unpublished manuscript submitted to the Imperial War Museum in 1938, she depicts herself as self-​sufficient, with initiative and great enterprise, and determined to overcome establishment opposition –​all the characteristics of a modern woman confident of her abilities and adamant about inserting herself within the war effort. Her departure for the Continent occurred several weeks before the first VADs went out on active service on 19 October.82 In her anonymised memoir Nursing Adventures, written in 1916, she frequently plays upon her status as a forerunner. Three times in the first five pages she notes that she was the only British woman in Belgium.83 And in the next few pages, she develops this theme further by deliberately drawing for the reader an image of herself as fearless. For example, when she and three Belgian soldiers were being shelled, she responded to their terror by laughing. ‘ “You are not afraid?” one man asked, and seemed to wonder when v 180 v

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Active service in the First World War I laughed. “You are brave” said another.’84 Janet Lee interprets this repetition of being ‘alone’, not as part of Ashley-​Smith’s construction of herself as a pioneer but, rather, as evidence of her deploying familiar motifs as a rhetorical device in her self-​depiction as a ‘vulnerable heroine’, which she juxtaposed with tales of adventure and bravery.85 Undoubtedly needed in order to secure a publishing contract, especially to sit alongside titles such as Prisoner of War, In German Hands and Forced to Fight in a series entitled ‘Soldiers’ Tales of the Great War’, this pacey account of fearlessness and audacity, which is infused with a powerful sense of patriotism and zeal, is a particularly vivid self-​representation of a feisty woman who had negotiated her own way to the front and singlehandedly made it possible for her colleagues to join her in order to continue the work she had commenced.86 But it is the trail-​blazing status of both herself and her Corps that underpins these tales of daring:  they were ‘pioneers of women’s work’, ‘ready for the pioneer job in front’.87 There was a huge shortage of trained nurses, and the Belgian military medical authorities enthusiastically accepted any assistance. Thus, despite no official training and little previous experience, Ashley-​Smith set to work at a field hospital on the Boulevard Leopold in Antwerp, treating soldiers’ wounds sustained at the Battle of the Marne (6–​10 September 1914). While, at first, she admitted with uncharacteristic self-​deprecation ‘I was clumsy and unskilful’, she quickly learnt and increasingly became emotionally resilient. When an English nurse ‘ran away sobbing’ from a soldier with a bullet-​ridden diaphragm, Ashley-​Smith tells how she ‘slipped up and took her place’, thereby depicting herself as both more proficient and more practical than a trained professional. She reflected that she was well suited to the work, as ‘mentally and physically I could endure tremendous strain’.88 She had ‘come tearless and dry-​eyed from many a pitiful sight’, including witnessing a ‘charred and blackened body’ and ‘a tiny waxen form with a cruel bayonet thrust through its tender flesh’.89 The bayonetted baby was an alleged atrocity widely reported in the British press, and adorned propaganda posters, serving to demonise Germans soldiers. Her reference to this barbarism is a rhetorical device that would have appealed to her wartime readers. Her emotionless response to the horrors she was witnessing, perhaps necessary as a way of protecting herself, as Santanu Das notes, was an expectation of qualified nurses.90 Christine Hallett calls their control of emotion ‘self-​ containment’, while Yvonne McEwen regards it as evidence of their professionalism.91 It was this unflappability, as well as her organisational skills and authoritarian nature, that quickly resulted in her being put v 181 v

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Women of war in charge of two wards, as well as of the qualified nurses who had been working there for weeks.92 This aroused considerable resentment:  she recollected that letters were published in the Nursing Mirror and Nursing Times, ‘criticizing me for being matron of a hospital with no training; one paper was catty, the other kind but there was no one else to do the work’.93 Having secured offers from the Belgians for the FANY to staff a large hospital, Ashley-​Smith summoned members of the Corps to join her. They, like her, were clamouring to put into practice their training in first aid: as Mary Marshall recalled, they all ‘wanted to get out there and do something’.94 In preparation for her departure, Marshall acquired a passport, the size of an A3 sheet of paper, which included a photograph of her in FANY uniform with a solar topee helmet, signed by the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and dated 5 October 1914. This document encapsulates the very modernity of the Corps, picturing a young woman dressed in military-​style clothing who is authorised to go overseas by a Cabinet member to undertake important war work. But as Cecily Mordaunt noted in her written account, ‘unfortunately just as the very moment of setting out the boats were stopped.’95 The fall of Antwerp on 9 October 1914, and Ghent two days later, had disrupted their plans. May Sinclair records this period in A Journal of Impressions in Belgium published in 1915, and in it she describes her numerous encounters with Ashley-​Smith (as well as her meetings with former FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart and the ‘Women of Pervyse’, Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm, who ran their own dressing station). Sinclair remarks that she had changed out of her FANY uniform into the white linen of the Belgian Red Cross and that she ‘found [Ashley-​Smith] in charge of the ward. Absolutely unperturbed by the news [of the German occupation], she went on superintending the disposal of a table of surgical instruments. She would not consent to come with us at first.’96 Refusing to leave Antwerp, Ashley-​Smith then decided to return to occupied Ghent, something that Sinclair repeatedly notes was her own intention: ‘my obsession that first of all put the idea into her head … My malady was contagious and she had caught it.’97 By the time A Journal of Impressions in Belgium had been published, Ashley-​Smith had featured in a number of newspaper articles about her exploits, so Sinclair’s claiming of ‘responsibility’ for the plan is striking. Yet she writes of Ashley-​Smith admiringly, noting that ‘she keeps on saying very quietly and simply that she is going, and explaining the reasons why she should go rather than anybody else … Miss Ashley-​ Smith is fertile and ingenious in argument … Miss Ashley-​Smith says, if only she had a horse … This girl’s courage and self-​devotion …’.98 Such v 182 v

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Active service in the First World War remarks seem very much in keeping with the character that the FANY constructs of herself in her two memoirs. However, less recognisable are her ‘quietness and simplicity’, which Sinclair remarks upon three times.99 The head of the FANY clearly made a great impression on Sinclair, as she ends her ‘Postscript’ with the following words: ‘And Miss Ashley-​Smith (who is now Mrs McDougall) –​her escape from Ghent (when she had no more to do there) was as heroic as her return. Since then she has gone back to the Front and done splendid service in her own corps, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.’100 Grace Ashley-​Smith’s own account of what happened after the fall of Antwerp and Ghent fills in the gaps in Sinclair’s tale, deploys numerous classic devices commonly found in wartime accounts and is in itself a very striking illustration of modernity. Weaving throughout her story the tropes of gender, class and national identity, she recounts that she fearlessly returned alone –​those themes again –​to Ghent to nurse a dying British officer, was trapped behind enemy lines and required the protection of the enemy to be able to return to Britain. She boldly marched into the German headquarters in khaki uniform and, with the confidence and arrogance afforded her by her class background, imperiously announced her nationality and occupation, noted she had dispatched her duty and that now her charge was dead she wished to go home. Refusing her request, they informed her she would be taken to Germany. Undaunted, she ‘pressed the point’, asserting that she would not nurse German soldiers and that they would have to coerce her in order to get her to Germany, as ‘for myself, I was going to England’. Told to report back the following morning, which she had no intention of doing, she exchanged salutes and, as we saw at the end of Chapter 2, ‘swanked out through rows of Germans as if the earth was indeed mine, for being the only possessor of khaki, I felt I must live up to it!’101 Such vivid prose was an essential element of the character she constructed in text. A further example of her bold and uncompromising personality is found in a letter to her mother that she wrote, rather recklessly, while awaiting repatriation: ‘I am going to try and blow up their aerodrome with dynamite … I  suppose if this falls into their hands I  shall be shot!’102 Ashley-​Smith chose a narrative style that fitted with the romantic war rhetoric popular at this time among readers, casting herself as a ‘warrior-​nurse’. While she did not participate in activities that could be regarded as terrorism, she did hide a British officer from the Germans and she also disguised herself as a Belgian woman to facilitate access both to a German military hospital and to a cemetery in order to acquire a list of regimental numbers v 183 v

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Women of war and names of British wounded and dead. She procured a lift and was driven across the border into Holland, and returned to Britain with the valuable information. In such ways, emboldened by her class identity, Ashley-​Smith not only engineered her own way to Flanders but also secured her safe passage home. Recognising the publicity potential of her exploits in Belgium, Ashley-​ Smith promoted her heroic adventures for the benefit of the Corps, its work and also herself. Articles trumpeting ‘The Real Nurse’, the ‘Little Sister in Khaki’, her audacious ‘defiance’, and her ‘thrilling’ and ‘amazing exploits’ sought to quench the public’s thirst for exciting stories about the war.103 She was also sufficiently savvy to begin raising funds to purchase first aid supplies:  one nationwide appeal requested blankets, scarves and socks and, with Christmas a month away, 5,000 plum puddings.104 Throughout the war, she made guest appearances speaking at various events and raised money to continue the work of the Corps. She thus used her novel status as a woman at the front to draw attention to her activities and to publicise her work and that of the Corps, both through her writing and by making personal appearances. She was not alone in doing this: Knocker and Chisholm relied on fundraising to support their dressing station at Pervyse and ex-​FANY Mabel St Clair Stobart wrote numerous accounts, while May Sinclair served as secretary to Dr Hector Munro’s Flying Ambulance Corps, ‘toss[ing] off articles for the daily papers, to make a little money for the Corps’.105 Undaunted by her near arrest and determined to return immediately to the Continent with her Corps, Ashley-​Smith procured at her own expense a Unic ambulance chassis for £500 (equivalent today to about £56,600) fitted with a van body.106 At this point, according to Ashley-​Smith decades later, the British army had fewer than a dozen motor ambulances.107 Again, she is not reticent in trumpeting her own contributions: ‘It was only the possession of this car that made it possible for us to establish the first regimental aid post ever run by women –​and to secure the work on the front which appealed so strongly to many people.’108 Not only money but personal contacts were yet again deployed: Sir Arthur Sloggett, who had facilitated Ashley-​Smith’s departure for Belgium the previous month, engineered for her to meet with a Red Cross official and secured transport of the Corps to France. On 26 October, just a week after the first VADs had left for Boulogne to establish a rest station, the Corps’s log book records that a contingent of FANYs ‘disregarded … [the] wise counsel of parents’ and set out for France, without knowing how they could be of service and with just £12 of Corps money (comparable to about £1,360 v 184 v

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Active service in the First World War today).109 Jokingly referred to as ‘The Band of Hope’, it comprised Grace Ashley-​Smith, Lilian Franklin, Edith Walton, Mary Marshall, Violet O’Neill Power and trained nurse Isabel Wicks, as well as one of Ashley-​ Smith’s brothers, two male orderlies and three infirmary nurses. Over the coming months and years, over 400 women made the most of the social capital they had inherited by way of their backgrounds and, in a period before nursing was regulated, paid their own way to France to undertake active service with the Corps. Pat Waddell, one of the old ‘regulars’ who had joined up before the war and had spent evenings and weekends attending lectures on first aid, practising bandaging and volunteering in local hospitals in preparation for service in a potential conflict, recollected: ‘we began to classify the new girls as they came out’. They created a hierarchy of war experience based on length of service and risk to life (just as men did) and used the language of male military conscription to differentiate ‘jokingly’ between ‘ “Kitchener’s” Army’ (the enthusiastic early volunteers who responded to the country’s call), ‘Derby Scheme’ (which was the last attempt in October 1915 to comb out sufficient numbers of civilian men who had not volunteered to enlist in the forces, so as to avoid the necessity of implementing conscription by permitting men in badged, starred or reserved occupations to declare their intent for future military service) and ‘Conscripts’ (who came after 1916 as if they had been drafted).110 Writing of those labelled ‘ “Kitchener’s” Army’, Ashley-​Smith noted that ‘The 1914 Fany were a d—​n good lot.’111 A ‘great many … clamoured to come out to us’, some of whom had previously been members but, having ‘no confidence in our ability to get work’, had subsequently joined the VAD in their haste to get abroad.112 The VAD was certainly ‘inundated’ with ‘a flood of applicants’ and an ‘endless stream’ of ‘cocksure and insistent women’ who wanted to be sent to the front.113 One such woman was Cecily Mordaunt. Following the disappointment of not sailing to Belgium, she embarked on an intensive month’s training in a VAD hospital in Leamington with the express intention of going overseas as soon as possible.114 She subsequently missed her opportunity to go to France as part of the ‘Band of Hope’ and made her own way to the Continent with her friend Norma Lowson. Having the confidence and the means to travel independently across the Channel to where the fighting was taking place so that she could join up with the Corps is indicative of her very modernity. With the two women dressed in dark-​blue cloaks and bonnets purchased especially for travelling, she joked in her written account of her experiences that it made Lowson resemble the v 185 v

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Women of war Dickensian character Sarah Gamp.115 Photographs of Lowson, who joined on 18 September 1914, show her departing for France clothed in a voluminous smock called a ‘duster’ and a large hat with a scarf over the crown and tied under the chin, an outfit popular with female motor-​drivers.116 Such clothing visibly attested to their class status. The departure for the Continent was often regarded as when ‘all the adventures began’.117 Sheila Mason, who joined in August 1917, wrote of her arrival in France in the third person, as if this was a period separate and distinct: this was ‘the beginning of a new life, and she stepped ashore with her heart full of high hopes … very conscious of the newness of her khaki’.118 Similarly, Phyllis Puckle ‘well remember[ed] how thrilled & excited we all were, in our new uniforms (mine, actually was second hand)’ as she and five other new members left for France on 10 August 1918.119 Enid Bagnold, another very late ‘Conscript’ who arrived abroad just before the Armistice, had spent two years as a VAD working in a hospital in Woolwich, meeting the trains full of wounded soldiers who had been ‘simply picked off the battlefields … just as they were, their bandages soaked in blood’, and had seen ‘legs in buckets outside the theatre door’. Yet although she had beheld such horrors the war still retained a certain glamour for her and she was curious about witnessing the action first-​hand in France, not least to garner material for a novel. ‘Everybody wanted to go [to France] I suppose. I mean we all wanted experience of this great bloody new war as had been, you know, one didn’t imagine war was going to happen at all ever again.’120 In her analysis of the diaries kept by women who navigated their way to the front, Harriet Blodgett notes that they were motivated by a desire to escape the ‘cotton-​wool confinement’ of their privileged lifestyles and ‘their heroic desires to live up to their highest ideal of themselves’, and to partake of ‘reality’.121 Yet such bold initiative by wealthy young women was widely condemned: they were lambasted as ‘seekers after sensation’, having ‘no exceptional qualifications except their influence’, and made themselves an ‘inconvenient presence too near the front’.122 Helen Fraser, in her 1918 book Women and War Work, for example, was dismissive of ‘ladies who insisted on rushing off to France after taking a ten day’s [sic] course in first aid’, while qualified nurse Violetta Thurstan, who became matron of a hospital in 1914 in Charleroi, and in 1917 published A Text Book of War Nursing, was pleased that ‘The day when every private person rushed out to France to open a hospital for the wounded is over. The star of the unauthorised nurse has also now fortunately set.’123 Similarly, the British Journal of Nursing, which criticised the FANY for v 186 v

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Active service in the First World War having ‘in the first days of the war, contrived to get out to the firing line’, noted that ‘Things are better managed now.’124 While journalist Elizabeth Robins was less critical, questioning pointedly ‘did no young men go for sensation?’, most newspapers reproved women’s motives and used the term ‘limelighters’ to refer to the pleasure-​seeking women who ‘forced their way across the Channel for the sake of talking and being talked about’, had a ‘thirst for the picturesque’ and were ‘on the cruise for adventure’.125 Ashley-​Smith felt the need to distinguish herself from ‘war tourists’ and from women who were accused of merely ‘playing at war’:  she was scathing about volunteer first aiders ‘in weird and wonderful costumes’ who, like her, had travelled to Belgium shortly after the outbreak of the war in search of glamour, who drank tea and laughed as if they were a ‘tourist party attending a funeral’ and who did not wish to get on with the dirty work at hand. She was dismissive of ‘a bevy of fair lady helpers’, one of whom was deployed, because of her attractiveness, to ‘hold the patients’ hands and head and fondle them to take his mind off the pain of his dressings’ while others assisted passively by holding bowls of swabs or dirty dressings, ‘not one of [whom] was allowed to touch the dressings and bandages prepared for use. This was my work.’126 Representing herself in this way served to distinguish the ‘limelighters’ who selfishly sought glamour from what she regarded as her more noble altruistic motivation of the desire to be useful. As the war evolved into a protracted conflict and more and more women sought to be of use to their country, the Corps increased hugely in size. Yet it still retained its selectivity:  new recruits included Ladies Olivia Buchan and Constance Baird; Henrietta Fraser, who was the daughter of the Laird of Tornaveen and the cousin of Sir Douglas Haig who commanded the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front; and Rachel Moseley, whose family owned the Manchester Guardian.127 And it was not just young women who joined the Corps looking for excitement: Nora Morton, for example, was forty-​four when she joined in January 1918, Florence Hay joined in September 1917 aged forty-​ nine, and the Historical Register records Emmeline Paxton Heake’s age when she joined in July 1918 as ‘over fifty’.128 We cannot therefore dismiss women’s desire to go abroad and serve the country as youthful naivety:  older women could be as susceptible to romantic notions regarding the war as their younger counterparts. And marital status was also no bar to the desire to serve:  several members were married or, like Grace Ashley-​Smith, who became McDougall in January 1915, wed during the war and continued their voluntary service. The FANY, v 187 v

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Women of war an independent corps answerable to no-​one, was more progressive in its thinking regarding the marital status of its members than the officially sanctioned VADs, which at least initially preserved a conservative view of married women’s primary responsibility to the home by requiring their members to be single. Thus, women of a wide range of ages, both single and married, overcame establishment opposition and engineered their way to France, determined to play their part in the war effort. Once established abroad, however, the nursing roles they subsequently carved out for themselves, as we shall now see, were in the most part safely entrenched within established notions of femininity. The ‘legitimate sphere of nursing the wounded’: performing gendered labour in northern France Within two days of the arrival of the first contingent, Grace Ashley-​Smith acquired a disused convent school in Calais through contacts she had made while working in Antwerp. In addition to securing a hospital using her social influence, she spent her own money covering, for the first two months, all the operational and equipment costs of the FANY base, the Hôpital Lamarck, which provided nursing care for Belgian soldiers. Upon receipt of the school, members had to undertake hard scullery work to sanitise it, as it was ‘dirty and decayed-​looking’.129 This would not have been a part of their everyday experience before their arrival in France and, in cleaning and cooking, FANYs were undertaking chores more usually undertaken by domestic servants. Ashley-​Smith noted with a characteristic eye for hyperbole that these were ‘girls who until then had lived carefree lives, gently bred, high-​spirited girls who [had] heard the call of War and sprung to answer’.130 They stoically endured these privations, converting large classrooms into surgical wards for wounded Belgian soldiers and a medical one for those suffering from typhoid. The FANYs were living in extremely basic conditions in an upstairs classroom, night-​ time staff tumbling into the beds recently vacated by the day shift. Ashley-​ Smith noted: ‘the hospital, our base, was a little more luxurious than the trenches … Comfort was a mere detail –​a forgotten trifle belonging to a previous existence; and never a grumble betrayed that any of us noticed its absence.’131 The primitive conditions, much like the time spent at camp before the war, were regarded as the price for their being on active duty overseas, perhaps even were embraced as part of the reward, ‘prov[ing] to men that women can share men’s dangers and privations and hardships and yet remain women’.132 Accounts show that they had to break the ice with a v 188 v

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Active service in the First World War hammer before washing; the water was contaminated and had to be boiled before use; and, as Cecily Mordaunt recollected, ‘the sanitary arrangements consisted of an open drain in the yard out-​side, almost indescribable’.133 The appalling sanitary conditions had an adverse effect on members’ health, and disease rampaged through the ranks. ‘We were all ill in turn’, noted Ashley-​Smith, ‘one after another suffered from severe dysentery’.134 This bacterial infection is passed on when food or water contaminated by faecal matter is consumed. She herself had it, jotting in her diary, ‘I have constant dysentery’; ‘I have diarrhoea and have to spend half the day finding places!’135 One FANY, Eveline Shaw, died from this debilitating disease in the summer of 1918.136 Many contracted illnesses such as measles, and bacterial infections including staphylococcus, and the FANY magazine routinely recorded which members were ill with flu, colds and septic fingers. The fatigue and general sense of feeling at a low ebb were undoubtedly results of the long, twelve-​hour shifts. ‘[F]‌orsak[ing] the comfort of the drawing room for the rigors of the military hospital’, these privileged women undertook orderly duties that were mostly menial and unskilled: they made beds; dispensed medicine; fed and watered patients; took temperatures; emptied bed pans; and cleaned up faeces, pus, blood, vomit and urine.137 As trained nurse Kate Finzi observed, ‘there is no romance in the work of a hospital, no jaunts to battlefields bearing cups of water to the dying, no soothing of pillows and holding the hands of patients; but ten to twelve hours each day occupied in the accomplishment of tasks so menial that one would hesitate to ask a servant to perform them’.138 FANYs’ accounts record these elite women’s responses to performing mundane and low-​skilled medical tasks that would have previously been inconceivable:  cutting toe-​nails and bathing feet were things that Grace Ashley-​Smith ‘loathe[d]’ and made her ‘glum’.139 Phyllis Thompson recalled the unpleasant task of changing the dressings  –​ ‘most of them were horrible’ –​and remembered extracting ‘buckets of pus’ from the back of one patient who had shrapnel wounds.140 Betty Hutchinson recollected ‘I could not stand the awful syringe that was used to clean wounds and fainted five times one morning.’141 Mary Marshall wrote to her family bemoaning her daily task of taking and charting ‘32 temperatures and about 22 pulses’, complained of a patient who deliberately wet the bed rather than ask for a commode (‘He’s the limit … I loathe him’) and repeatedly lamented night duty: ‘I shall be v. bucked to go off this night duty as I don’t like it at all’; ‘I loathe it. I count the hours of the time I  shall come off ’; ‘horribly bored with night duty. It is the abomination of desolation.’142 Cecily Mordaunt noted that her ‘greatest v 189 v

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Women of war trial’ was the bed bath. Those with temperatures over 103ºF required sponging down every four hours: ‘I must have given about five hundred blanket baths altogether in that ward.’143 Not only were these privileged women unused to performing such menial tasks, but they were also confronted for the first time with male nakedness. Few young women had had dealings with men’s bodies, propriety preventing even trained women from seeing and touching them. Yet the war brought about a need for large numbers of female first aiders who were called upon to perform orderly duties that, as Ana Carden-​ Coyne notes, occasioned ‘new interactions with men and with male body parts as never before’.144 Grace Ashley-​Smith recollected ‘many of the wounds were in the thigh and buttocks’.145 An early patient of hers while she was in Belgium was ‘laid face downwards on a table; he was shot through the buttocks’.146 Any concerns that readers might have had about her seeing and touching a man’s bottom were possibly assuaged by the fact that the makeshift hospital was set up in the sacristy of a convent church, and passages of her memoir reveal that she, like many FANYs, had a strong religious conviction, often attending mass at 5.30 a.m.147 When an interviewer asked how Edith Walton coped, given her ‘sheltered upbringing’, with the ‘intimate work’ undertaken at Lamarck necessitated by attending to her patients’ bodies, she responded ‘very well indeed. I  think we were too young really or too inexperienced to realise perhaps the seriousness of it really. I don’t think it affected us a great deal.’148 Most women quickly became accustomed to the sights, smells and sounds of the hospital ward, and retained very positive recollections. This was despite the fact that they were undertaking such routine tasks, a consequence of Lamarck’s distance from the fighting, which, according to Walton, meant they did not get any severely wounded patients.149 One FANY, who had married and had joined her husband on his military expedition to the Belgian Congo, wrote to the Gazette in summer 1916: ‘I look back with much pleasure to those happy months which I spent at dear old Lamarck and many times I have had “Nostalgie du Front” and have longed to be back with my old comrades.’150 Similarly, Mordaunt recollected that it was: extremely interesting, but very hard indeed; and the responsibilities were very heavy for the untrained … Though the work was so hard no one could possibly have complained that the typhoid ward was dull:  indeed we had many a laugh over our troubles and trials; or over the remarks made by the delirious patients!151

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Active service in the First World War Many of the men suffered hallucinations, and Marshall, who ‘hate[d]‌’ working with the typhoid patients at Lamarck and wanted to return to nursing the wounded, noted that one man was ‘honestly stark-​staring mad’.152 Ashley-​ Smith recorded that a hallucinating patient ‘raised his great fist and threatened me … [He] hit out at me’, while trained nurse Isabel Wicks, under whose charge the Lamarck FANYs worked, recollected that a veteran of the siege at Antwerp ‘would go over and over his experiences’, on one occasion holding by the throat a FANY whom he mistook for an enemy soldier.153 Many of the men they nursed had debilitating emotional wounds, their nerves unravelled by shellshock, mental breakdown and neuroses.154 Ashley-​Smith recalled attending to three men with ‘trigger finger’ who had attempted to give themselves a ‘Blighty wound’ so that they would be discharged and sent back home to recuperate.155 Many typhoid patients also suffered from a range of other diseases, including meningitis, pleurisy, bronchitis, typhus and frostbite, and there were deaths daily.156 Confronted with such diverse illnesses and injuries and so many patients (over 4,000 Belgian soldiers were cared for before Lamarck’s closure in October 1916) FANYs considerably developed their nursing skills. Marshall’s frequent letters to family are a rich source chronicling her hospital experience:  she describes in detail the patients and their wounds, ailments and treatments, the nursing ward chores, and surgical duties. She celebrated the undertaking of her ‘maiden enema with great success’, recognised that she was acquiring nursing skills through hands-​ on practical experience (‘I do love nursing … only the worst of it is the more I learn the less I seem to know’157) and noted her enjoyment of surgical work (‘I always help in the theatre when I can –​I love it’158). Their growing skills, expertise and professionalism in treating men’s physical and emotional wounds can be juxtaposed with the vulnerability and fragility of male patients and the potential emasculation from disablement, the loss of limbs, bodily scarring and shellshock. The treatment of Belgian soldiers by FANY first aiders thus occasioned a shift in gender and class relations: in this context patients were not ‘hysterical’ upper-​ and middle-​class women diagnosed with neurasthenia by male medical practitioners, but were male, frequently working-​class and treated by women from socially exclusive backgrounds. As volunteers, FANYs drew no pay and had to self-​finance their work. Members were entirely dependent upon their families for allowances that were then spent on lodging, food, clothing and uniform, and fundraising enabled them to purchase hospital supplies such as beds, v 191 v

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Women of war linen, blankets and bandages. They were proactive in exploiting the press and soliciting column inches:  Margaret Cole-​Hamilton, for example, wrote to the Standard requesting donations for Lamarck hospital from readers, pointedly noting that a FANY-​run convalescent home for twenty patients recovering from typhoid at St Inglevert had to be closed down in March 1915 because of lack of funds.159 In February 1916 the Daily Express featured on their front page a report on the ‘fine record’ of the Corps that they accompanied with an appeal for money and equipment ‘to assist in carrying on and increasing the scope of the good work’.160 And the Standard reproduced excerpts from a fundraising lecture held at Kensington Town Hall the same month. The Corps’s innovative use of fundraising and the media, testament to its embrace of novel new techniques, is tempered by its choice of speaker, a senior military figure who played upon essentialist definitions of femininity and served as a stark reminder of the Corps’s conservativism. Before the war, noted Col. Lord C. Hamilton, women (‘gentle creatures … put on earth to be a joy to mankind and a blessing to the universe at large’) were ‘somewhat self-​indulgent, and gave too much thought to pleasure’. But with the coming of war they had ‘swept aside all selfishness’ and ‘had suddenly remembered their place on earth, and … shown themselves loving and helping in every way in tending the wounded and the suffering.’161 Perhaps the choice of speaker was a savvy attempt to generate greater income communicating a message they knew would be well received by a west London audience. As Grace Ashley-​Smith noted, ‘God knows, we want help for the wounded, not kudos for ourselves’.162 Yet their nursing work did generate admiration, and this was across the social spectrum:  the Queen, a magazine read by upper-​class women, reported on the FANY, as did publications with a largely working-​class readership.163 Home Chat, for example, featured an article on ‘Nursing at the Front’, while the Workers’ Paper chronicled the service of FANYs, noting they had ‘borne their part’ in the ‘legitimate sphere of nursing the wounded’.164 Class divisions were seemingly put aside for the duration of this total war, which was being fought, in large part, by working-​class men to uphold the gender order. With the success of FANYs at Lamarck, further opportunities opened up to work with the Belgian army. A  convalescent home for twenty patients recovering from typhoid was founded at St Inglevert, seven miles from Lamarck and staffed between January and March 1915 by Cecily Mordaunt and Evelyn Laidlay. They nursed, cooked, cleaned and entertained the male patients in their care. From August 1915, Margaret v 192 v

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Active service in the First World War Cole-​Hamilton, Cristobel Nicolson and nurse Phyllis Lovell formed FANY Unit 2 at Camp du Ruchard, providing nursing care and running a canteen for 700 Belgians recuperating from typhoid. Like the nursing they undertook, the canteen work reinforced gender conventions as made evident by Grace Ashley-​Smith: ‘Stand at the counter pouring out tea and coffee, giving them cake and chocolate, hearing their stories, listening to the experiences they have undergone, admiring the pictures of their wives and babies … [and] bring[ing] sunshine into the lives of hundreds of gallant soldiers.’165 They played games such as bagatelle, draughts, dominoes, chess and cards, as well as rounders with the men, creating ‘comfort and comradeship and an atmosphere of home’; taught English to the Belgian patients; and entertained troops by hosting parties and putting on concerts.166 In 1916 FANYs staffed an emergency canteen at Fontinettes feeding British soldiers, and in December 1916 Ida Lewis and Margaret Cole-​Hamilton were asked by the Young Men’s Christian Association to provide refreshments to 4,000 British soldiers in a ‘drear and desolate spot’ as they headed south from Ypres.167 In the four months they were staffing their ‘Dundee Hut’, named after the Scottish city in which the donor lived, they organised lectures; equipped the hut with magazines, books and games; and helped arrange visits by Lena Ashwell, one of the more famous travelling troop entertainers who went out to the Front. The FANYs themselves put on recitals and comedic sketches: a troop of Unit 3 FANYs calling themselves the ‘Fanytastiks’ entertained soldiers in Calais, while some of the St Omer FANYs of Unit 8 formed the ‘Kippers’ (a nod to the accolade that the Corps was ‘neither fish, flesh nor fowl but damned good red herring’).168 They also undertook fundraising, operated a mobile bath and became ‘godmothers’ to prisoners of war in Germany, writing letters to ‘cheer them up and send[ing] them little gifts occasionally’.169 While such gendered work had not originally been conceived as part of the Corps’s remit, it was enthusiastically accepted, as it extended their role beyond the realm of nursing into other aspects of feminine wartime service and facilitated their ‘way to the firing line’.170 It is to a discussion of their nursing work, which necessitated the development of new skills and on occasion put them in a position of extreme danger that challenged conventional gender norms, to which we now turn. ‘Char women of the battlefield’: FANYs on the front line Sited over fifty miles away from the main fighting in Ypres, the FANY base in Calais was at a safe distance. However, members made ‘excursions to v 193 v

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Women of war the front’ to deliver supplies, including cigarettes, food, clothing and first aid kits, directly to men in the trenches.171 For most, this feminine role of visiting and taking provisions, which had echoes of the philanthropic duties that women of their class had always undertaken, was seen as the highlight of their service and was key to their motivation for coming to France in the first place. Muriel Thompson recorded ‘Great excitement –​ am going to The Front to-​morrow’.172 The sense of exhilaration, a heady mix of elation and edginess at being close to the fighting and having such an authentic experience, is captured by Pat Waddell in an article entitled ‘A Journey to the Front’, published in a Cumberland newspaper and reproduced in an abridged form in the FANY magazine: ‘The boom of the cannon was now louder and though one felt a bit nervy, there was a glorious feeling of excitement quenched all too soon by the scenes in which we now found ourselves.’173 In interview, decades after the war, Edith Walton was much less dramatic: ‘We went up in the front line but to go up to give comforts to the men. There was no actual firing going on. It was quiet when we went up.’174 Similarly, Mary Runciman downplayed the experience, noting that she ‘kept in the background of course’.175 Betty Hutchinson recollected nearly fifty years after the war that they used to ‘go up once or twice a week’ taking donated gifts. When the radio interviewer asked her ‘Up to where?’, she responded in a very matter of fact way: ‘Up to the line, front line’. In response to being asked what it was like, she recalled ‘Oh it was ghastly. We went along a sort of embankment where the men were entrenched and as a great treat we were allowed to look over the battlement and there were miles and miles and miles of nothingness, just water with the odd tree sticking up and infrequently the odd sniper.’176 In a written account, she noted: we peeped out with our own eyes showing between the hay and saw over the German lines. It was quite dark but every few minutes one side or the other sent up rockets or light bombs and one saw the whole country by its red light. There was a dismal expanse of flood … the land of the dead.177

Whereas most women were safe on the home front, FANYs who were positioned in proximity to the fighting were able to witness first-​hand the devastation of the war. This made for exciting reading, and newspapers lapped up tales of FANYs at the front. Photographs such as Figure 4.2 were carefully staged. Mordaunt participated in a film with three other FANYs who carried a Belgian soldier on a stretcher ‘along a damp and muddy trench while the soldiers fired terrible volleys (got-​up effect!) at an entirely imaginary foe!’178 She pasted the image into her scrapbook, v 194 v

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Figure 4.1  FANYs in the dug-​out in Calais, 1916. labelling it ‘the faked photo taken in the sham trenches near Gravelines for the cinematograph, January 1915’. She called it ‘regular tomfoolery’ and it made her ‘want to see the real front more than ever’. In June 1915, she ‘got [her] wish and went up to the Front’.179 The British army forbade women from being stationed near the front, a regulation that nurse Violetta Thurston regarded as ‘a chivalrous one to women’.180 Being independent of the military and medical authorities, the FANY was, however, able to circumvent this directive. Runcimann acknowledged: ‘It ought not to have been allowed but we got there.’181 And they recognised the modernity of their position: ‘It was a strange reflection that this was the twentieth century and Dorothy Sayer and I, two English girls, alone up here watching a battle’, wrote Grace Ashley-​Smith.182 v 195 v

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Figure 4.2  Staged photograph of FANYs in a front-​line trench, Tatler, 13 January 1915. v 196 v

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Active service in the First World War There was official outrage at the presence of FANYs so close to the fighting.  Betty Hutchinson recollected:  ‘as usual then, the British wanted to know –​“how the …? who the …? women near the Line …!!!” Arguments, passes shown, the Intelligence Officer came to see if we were spies, but FANY luck held; he knew Lewis in her private life.’183 While their gender may have caused consternation when they ventured to the front-​line trenches, their class offered reassurance:  Ida Lewis and the officer had moved in the same social circles before the war. By 1916, however, the practice of permitting FANYs to get up to the front-​line trenches had ended.184 Another consequence of the Corps’s voluntary status, enabling it to bypass British army stipulations that hamstrung professionally trained nurses and to witness the front first-​hand, was its posting to either a Regimental Aid Post (RAP) or an Advanced Dressing Station. Three FANYs, one of whom was Walton, were posted in autumn 1914 to an RAP in Oostkerk, a primitive dug-​out very close behind the front line between Pervyse and Dixmunde, assisting a Belgian battalion doctor and male orderlies to attend to wounded soldiers who had been brought in from no-​man’s land. F. Tennyson Jesse, a journalist for Vogue, noted that for twenty-​four hours without respite the FANYs were ‘up to their knees in blood’: amputating limbs; tying up blood vessels and creating and suturing skin flaps to cushion the bone; and bandaging stumps.185 The conditions were so primitive that they slept on bundles of straw, their folded tunics serving as pillows, and dressed in ‘shirts and breeches, our long field boots ready to hand’.186 There were also FANYs posted to Advanced Dressing Stations, which were larger and more sophisticated medical posts staffed by surgeons, assistants and orderlies and located a couple of miles further back from the trenches. Walton recollected being posted ‘up at the front’ at Ramscapelle where men arrived with shrapnel wounds, while the Gazette reported on Doris Russell Allen and Rachel Moseley’s work just three miles behind the line at Chânteuil-​La-​Fosse.187 Being so close to the fighting, members were confronted first-​hand with horrific injuries that soldiers had acquired as a consequence of the intensifying industrialisation of modern warfare. Machine guns had rapidly increased in firepower, in both range and accuracy, and the development of high explosives meant that bullets blasted and shrapnel shredded men’s bodies to devastating effect. Grace Ashley-​Smith quickly realised that ‘war was no romantic heroic epic, only this dreary reality of gaping wounds and quivering flesh’.188 As a result of this brutal modern warfare, about 21 per cent of Belgian, 27 per cent of British and 54 per cent v 197 v

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Women of war of French troops were wounded during the course of the conflict.189 As the war evolved into a protracted war of attrition, the shortage of trained professional nurses meant that the authorities were compelled, begrudgingly, to rely on increasing numbers of volunteers who offered their services without the expectation of reimbursement. It was their class background, then, that recommended them, and that was deemed by many commentators as preparing them: journalist Elizabeth Robins, for example, noted in 1915 that ‘girls gently bred can bear the horrors of the operating theatre and make themselves as serviceable as men’.190 In dispensing first aid to mutilated men, FANYs were cleaning up the aftermath of battle like domestic servants and, as Jane Marcus notes, ‘young, healthy, well-​educated women became the char-​women of the battlefield’.191 The basic first aid training they had received and the practice of bandaging healthy friends’ limbs had not prepared them for the physical wounds that soldiers had acquired and with which they were confronted. Neither had their privileged backgrounds, as Sharon Ouditt notes: ‘The complexity and ambiguity of these women’s experiences was largely owing to the violent clash between the conservative ideologies that enabled them to get out to the war and the failure of those ideologies to mediate or account for the trauma that later beset them.’192 Sadie Bonnell, who had joined in December 1917 aged twenty-​nine and was posted to a unit based at St Omer, recalled being handed a severed arm:  ‘Really, I didn’t know quite what I was expected to do. I mean the arm had already lost its body.’193 Some of the soldiers they treated came straight from the trenches still encrusted in mud. As Angela Smith notes, deploying poet and wartime nurse Mary Borden’s term the ‘second battlefield’, ‘their condition on arrival seemed to transform the clinical hospital wards into a kind of second battlefield with the doctors and nurses becoming the new protagonists in a war against disease, death and deformity’.194 As well as nursing physical and emotional wounds, illnesses and diseases, FANYs also had to cope with the after-​effects of a barbaric new technology of war. Chlorine gas was first used on French and Algerian troops based on the Ypres Salient on 22 April 1915. Gassed soldiers first experienced a pungent, acrid stench that irritated throats, stung eyes and left a metallic taste in the mouth. As the toxic cloud blanketed them in green gloom, visibility was reduced to just a few feet and the corrosive gas burned their eyes and the lining of their bronchial tubes. This resulted in loss of sight –​as so poignantly depicted in John Singer Sargent’s painting Gassed (1919) –​headaches, extreme nausea, hacking coughs and acute chest pain. Those who ingested the chlorine gas coughed up litres of v 198 v

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Active service in the First World War greenish yellowy liquid and many died over the course of the next forty-​ eight hours.195 This was the situation facing two FANYs attached to a Belgian regiment providing nursing care and running a mobile canteen in May during the second Battle of Ypres. Awakened at 3 a.m. by British guns, Hutchinson and Lewis became aware of a pungent smell, and upon looking out of the window of their billet saw ‘a sight that neither of us will ever forget’. Out of ‘a green haze that hung over everything’ came a line of about thirty British men ‘tottering, stumbling, gasping’. They prepared a salt-​water mixture for the soldiers to incite vomiting; ‘a heavy liquid was the result’. Knowing that black coffee relieved the symptoms of asthma, they also got the primus stoves ‘going as hard as they could lick’. They applied artificial respiration for nearly twenty minutes to one man and revived another who exclaimed ‘Gawd it’s a woman.’ The gas also affected the two FANYs: ‘I noticed [Hutchinson’s] face was blue and swollen and her eyes appeared to be twice their natural size. My own eyes gave me considerable pain.’196 They mobilised the accoutrements of femininity, making impromptu gas masks from the three months’ supply of cotton wool and ‘Mr Southall’s conveniences for ladies’ that they had taken with them to use when menstruating. They cut the pads in half, wrapped them in gauze and scented them with Rimmel’s toilet vinegar, a facial cleanser. These ‘makeshifts proved satisfactory’ and they made some for the soldiers.197 Confronted with a new medical challenge, they innovated, devising treatments that developed the extent of their practice.198 They were summoned to General Headquarters and, in front of a room of generals that Hutchinson thought may have included Haig, were asked about the gas attack and the effectiveness of the official masks. ‘We were the first people to have arrived with absolutely first-​hand information about the gas masks. Very bad indeed and we told them so.’199 She went on to explain to them their innovation, but ‘being nicely brought up Edwardian girls we were too shy to say what we had really used and it became “specially medicated cotton wool” ’. This episode was recounted in a fundraising leaflet, as it perfectly encapsulated the reason why money was so desperately needed to help the Corps alleviate the horrors that British soldiers were facing, while striking a gently comedic note.200 As well as being vulnerable to getting caught up in gas attacks, FANYs could also find themselves subject to enemy shelling. Nearly 200 bombing raids took place on Calais, where most of the units were based. Lamarck was frequently attacked by Zeppelin, and FANYs often worked through aerial bombardments while the ambulance camp, which was located in the ‘unhealthiest spot’, was ‘raided practically every night’.201 v 199 v

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Women of war Ashley-​Smith’s eardrum was nearly perforated by one shell explosion, and a bomb dropped into the middle of the FANY camp that, without exploding, buried itself deep into the ground. When the British authorities were informed they dismissed the damage as having been caused by rats. The French took it more seriously and located the shell. It was hollowed out, presented to the Corps and kept as a ‘treasured souvenir’.202 Photographs show members dwarfed by the enormous shell. It featured as the centrepiece of the FANY section –​part of that showcasing the work of the Red Cross –​in the Women War Workers Exhibition held between 9 October and 20 November 1918, along with photographs, decorations and medals awarded to members, and FANY buttons and badges.203 Being stationed near the front and in proximity to danger was part of FANYs’ very modern experience of going to war. So too were the menial domestic chores, the routine orderly duties and the devastating injuries with which they were confronted, all work that conformed to normative gender roles. Another way in which they can be regarded as modern was through undertaking work that reversed established gendered norms, and it is to this which we now turn. ‘Do they think their soft white hands can carry a stretcher?’: challenging established gender norms While much of the Corps’s war service fitted neatly with gendered expectations, other aspects were less conforming to convention. For example, members performed tasks that demanded physical strength, an attribute more commonly associated with men. Ashley-​Smith’s memoir is teeming with examples of her physicality: she ‘leapt down’ into a trench where a wounded man was sheltering and, with his arm around her neck, ‘pulled and pushed and struggled’ until they clambered out; she heaved a sandbag into place to help erect a wall and ‘slung [six stretchers] upon the roof of the car’; she restrained a ‘big, strong man’ who ‘struggled and twisted’; and she evacuated three floors of patients, carrying stretchers down stairs for two-​and-​a-​half hours.204 ‘I was strong, very strong’ she asserts.205 In such ways, she constructs herself as a modern young woman of war. Perceptions about female physicality, or lack thereof, led to ‘steady opposition’ to women lifting or carrying stretchers, and they were ‘hampered by every conceivable discouragement and difficulty’.206 When the first group of FANYs were in Folkestone awaiting embarkation in October 1914, their first aid skills were put to the test immediately as v 200 v

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Active service in the First World War some wounded Belgian soldiers arrived. This fitted with the recognisable stereotype of the nurse as ‘ministering angel’ tending to her patients in a hospital ward, and a photograph of Isabel Wicks bandaging a soldier appeared in the Daily Mirror. The task of carrying stretchers did not, and raised awkward questions about gender relations. When they volunteered their services as stretcher-​bearers, Ashley-​Smith overheard a colonel make a snide comment: ‘Dear Ladies, do they think their soft white hands can carry a stretcher?’ ‘[W]‌hite with anger’, she marshalled the women and they ably undertook the physically demanding task, something for which they had long trained.207 In her memoir published in 1916, Ashley-​ Smith reiterated that with appropriate instruction women were capable of carrying stretchers for lengthy periods of time, over long distances and down steps: she informed her readers that one woman and one male orderly had hauled over thirty stretchers down three flights of stairs and along military hospital corridors for ninety minutes, while four women had carried a man for a mile-​and-​a-​half ‘without undue fatigue’.208

Figure 4.3  Two FANYs carrying a wounded Belgian soldier, Daily Mirror, 16 December 1914. v 201 v

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Women of war The FANYs’ robust displays of physical strength, stamina and emotional fortitude clearly fascinated journalists, who were in need of uplifting stories about interesting war service to fill their pages. Photographs and articles revealed to the reading public this very modern aspect of female war work. In December 1914, the Daily Mirror featured a picture of two FANYs carrying a wounded Belgian soldier and made no comment about the physically demanding nature of the work (Figure 4.3), and in January 1915 the Daily Call reported on the ‘inspiring story’ of the FANY. ‘The corps has been well named, for truly these women do yeomen service, performing their own stretcher-​bearing (exceptionally tiring work, as all who have tried it will bear witness!)’209 Some commentators explicitly countered criticisms: Elizabeth Robins’s article entitled ‘Stretcher-​Bearing for Women’ in the Daily Mail noted that ‘not every able-​bodied young woman is fitted to be a nurse’. Women who have ‘played tennis, cricket, golf; hunted, rowed, climbed mountains’ and have ‘physical strength, steady nerve and endurance’ were more suited to stretcher-​bearing. Referring to the poster ‘Is Your Best Boy Wearing Khaki?’, which posited that women’s main role was encouraging men to volunteer, she asserted that rather than exclaiming ‘Go!’, women who were undertaking war work and sharing with men the ‘hardships and danger’ were now demanding ‘Come!’210 Seeking to capitalise on Robins’s positive journalism and to carve out new modern wartime roles for the Corps, Ashley-​Smith wrote an article that appeared the following month in the Daily Mail asking ‘why waste strong men as hospital orderlies?’ She asserted that ‘the physical power of the average woman is quite equal to carrying a man on a stretcher the short distances needed’. She went on to note of the Corps that ‘none of these women, whose ages range from nineteen to fifty, has suffered physically in consequence’. Neither age nor gender was a bar to women’s capacity to lift male soldiers: the new woman of war was robust and physically strong. ‘Why not set free at once several hundred sturdy young men whose relatives proudly think they are “doing their bit”?’ The implication was clearly that these A1 physically fit men were shirking rather than fulfilling their patriotic duty. She asserted that the FANY had undertaken training of similar length to that of RAMC men of two or three months, and had the additional advantage of biology: women are ‘more fitted by nature for such work, for a woman is naturally gentle!’ Having deployed essentialist arguments to make her case, she then admonished the RAMC, saying they ought to ‘move with the times’ and ‘send their young strong men to places where they will not send women’. She acknowledged that ‘the horrors of war are very terrible’, that men return ‘with minds v 202 v

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Figure 4.4  Two FANYs carrying a wounded soldier in a staged photograph. unhinged’ and that ‘women may not be fit to witness these scenes’. But unlike other women, FANYs, she noted, were able mentally and physically to withstand the trauma:  ‘there are women who have looked on war’s hellish torments and are still working quietly and still sane’. She ended by asserting that ‘when there is a large number of capable, healthy, self-​reliant women available it is almost a crime not to use them’.211 Her article was published at a time when the manpower crisis was becoming acute and arguments were circulating about the need to ‘comb out’ men from non-​essential civilian work. The National Registration Act had been passed in July 1915, requiring men aged between fifteen and sixty-​ five to register their trade. Given that her proposal suggested releasing men to undertake front-​line duty, it is unsurprising that it was received v 203 v

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Women of war favourably by many figures in authority: a colonel, for example, wrote to the Editor the following week, ‘strongly endors[ing]’ it.212 In carrying weak, fragile, incapacitated men who were ‘brought in broken and torn and shattered’ with ‘weakness and suffering’, FANYs reversed established gender relations, in which active men were thought to possess muscularity and vigour and women were regarded as delicate, passive and in need of male support.213 F. Tennyson Jesse admired the ‘strong Fannies’ and ‘sturdy girls’ who were ably undertaking such hard physical work.214 But while she gloried in women’s new capabilities and was seemingly untroubled by the potentially defeminising aspects of their manual work, she lamented the emasculating effects of war, asserting there was ‘something profoundly shocking about the sight of a man lying flat and helpless … a thing wrong in essence … an outrage … something wrong and unnatural’.215 We shall return to Jesse’s journalism in the following chapter. Conclusion The First World War offered elite women remarkable latitude, and many, monopolising the responsibilities of citizenship, manoeuvred themselves, at their own initiative and by their own means, onto new terrain located in the nearly exclusively masculine sphere of military medicine. Their aspiration to get as close to the front as possible was not motivated by feminism, or a desire to widen women’s societal roles or challenge convention. Rather, it was to quench their thirst for personal adventure, as well as sate their appetite to utilise their training in first aid, home nursing and transportation of the wounded. They sought involvement in the war experience because they felt they could be a vital cog in the larger machinery of the British war effort. The Corps’s first contribution was in the running of hospitals, first aid posts and canteens, as well as fundraising, hosting visiting VIPs, entertaining recovering patients and supplying ‘comforts’ to the troops. Such work was safely entrenched within conventional gender norms. Yet there were subversive undertones to the work they undertook occasioned by the modernising context of the war: the brutal warfare that was unleashed, deploying new forms of technology, required them to endure the gruesome work of a very modern type of nursing; they ignored British army regulations that prohibited women from working in RAPs and Advanced Dressing Stations and were sometimes under bombardment; and they undertook the arduous physical labour of stretcher-​carrying, an activity that did not fit into v 204 v

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Active service in the First World War traditional discourses of femininity. New modes of female modernity were thus forged overseas. The Corps also wished to expand beyond their remit as first aiders in order to utilise their training in motorised transportation, and Ashley-​Smith began arguing for even less gender-​typical wartime work, as we shall see in the next chapter. Notes 1 Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), pp. 33, 150. 2 Kate Finzi, Eighteen Months in the War Zone: A Record of a Woman’s Work on the Western Front (London: Cassell, 1916), p. 53. 3 ‘Historical Register of First World War FANYs’, FANY HQ. 4 Unit 1:  Lamarck hospital in Calais nursing Belgian soldiers, October 1914–​ October 1916 and a convalescent home at St Inglevert, near Calais, January–​ March 1915. From January 1917 to March 1918 the French hospital at Port-​à-​Binson near Rheims became known as Unit 1. Unit 2: Camp du Ruchard, a convalescent camp in the Loire for Belgians, August 1915–​June 1917 and a canteen for the Belgian army at a hospital in Soligny-​la-​Trappe, June 1917–​January 1918. Unit 3: British ambulance convoy at Calais from January 1916, canteens for British soldiers at Fontinettes and from December 1916 a ‘Dundee Hut’. Unit 4: driving convoy for a Belgian hospital based at Hoogstadt (tented) field hospital, July 1916–​January 1917. Unit 5: Belgian driving convoy based at Calais railway station from January 1917 and at Brussels after the Armistice. Unit 6: French army ambulance convoy based at Amiens from August 1917 for six weeks, then Villars-​ Cottêret, Chateau-​Thierry, Bar-​le-​Duc and Metz. Unit 7: French army ambulance convoy based at Epernay from late November 1917, and Sezanne, Nancy and Strasbourg until September 1919. Unit 8: driving ambulances alongside VADs for the British Second Army based at St Omer from January 1918, and the RAF base at Marquise airfield near Calais and later Cologne. Unit 9: driving convoy attached to the French army based at Châlons from April 1918. Unit 10: French army ambulance convoy based at Saint-​Dizier and Metz. Unit 11:  ambulance driving for the French army based at Vitry-​le-​François. Unit 12: post-​Armistice ambulance unit driving for the French army based at Nancy and Compiègne. There was no Unit 13. Unit 14: driving for the French army based in Pointoise in 1919. With thanks to Lynette Beardwood for the information. 5 The Corps retained a skeleton staff in Britain  –​usually just the secretary, Janette Lean, who herself spent time on active service –​supplemented by those on leave. 6 Krisztina Robert, ‘“All that is best of the modern woman”? Representations of Female Military Auxiliaries in British Popular Culture, 1914–​1919’, in Jessica Meyer (ed.), British Popular Culture and the First World War (Leiden:  Brill, 2008), pp. 71–​93; Angela K. Smith, The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism and the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

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Women of war 7 Smith, The Second Battlefield, p. 91. 8 ‘The FANY Girls: Indomitables in the Battle Area’, War Budget Illustrated, 30 March 1916. 9 Ian Hay, One Hundred Years of Army Nursing: The Story of the British Army Nursing Services from the Time of Florence Nightingale to the Present Day (London:  Cassell, 1953); Juliet Piggott, Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (London: Leo Cooper, 1975); Eric Taylor, Wartime Nurse: One Hundred Years from the Crimea to Korea, 1854–​1954 (Oxford:  Isis, 2002); Eric Gruber von Arni and Gary Searle, Sub Cruce Candida:  A Celebration of One Hundred Years of Army Nursing, 1902–​2002 (Peterhead:  QARANC Association 2002). 10 Ana Carden-​Coyne, ‘Painful Bodies and Brutal Women: Remedial Massage, Gender Relations and Cultural Agency in Military Hospitals, 1914–​ 18’, Journal of War & Culture Studies, 1:2 (2008), 139–​58 (pp. 140, 139). 11 Christine E. Hallett, Containing Trauma: Nursing Work in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 1, xi. 12 Ibid., pp. 225, 3. 13 Hallett has written elsewhere about volunteer nurses’ writings. See, for example, Christine E. Hallett, Nurse Writers of the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). 14 Christine E. Hallett and Alison S. Fell, ‘Introduction’, in Alison S. Fell and Christine E. Hallett (eds), First World War Nursing:  New Perspectives (London:  Routledge, 2013), pp. 1–​14 (p.  4); Christine E. Hallett, Veiled Warriors:  Allied Nurses of the First World War (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2014), p.  2. For work on volunteers, see Linda J. Quiney, ‘Assistant Angels:  Canadian Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurses in the Great War’, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 15:1 (1998), 189–​206. 15 Jane Brooks and Christine E. Hallett (eds), One Hundred Years of Wartime Nursing Practices, 1854–​ 1953 (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2015), p. 3. 16 There is, however, an abundance of published VAD testimonies. See, for example, Olive Dent, A VAD in France (London: Grant Richards, 1917); R. E. Leake [Mollie Skinner], Letters of a V.A.D. (London: Andrew Melrose, 1918); E. M. Delafield, The War Workers (London: William Heinemann, 1918). 17 ‘Decorations for Mock Heroines’, Nursing Mirror, 24 August 1915. 18 ‘Nursing at the Front’, Home Chat, 2 September 1916. 19 Grace McDougall, A Nurse at the War:  Nursing Adventures in Belgium and France (New York: McBride, 1917), p. 132. 20 Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (London:  Croom Helm, 1981); Angela Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend:  Munitions Workers in the Great War (Berkeley: University of California, 1994); Sharon Ouditt, Fighting Forces, Writing Women:  Identity and Ideology in the First World War (London: Routledge, 1994); Deborah Thom, Nice Girls and Rude

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Active service in the First World War Girls: Women Workers in World War I (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998); Susan R. Grayzel, Women and the First World War (Harlow: Longman, 2002). 21 Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War, pp. 11, 163; Gail Braybon and Penny Summerfield, Out of the Cage: Women’s Experiences in Two World Wars (London: Pandora Press, 1987). 22 Sylvia Pankhurst, The Home Front (London: Hutchinson, 1932), p. 38. 23 Edith Barton and Marguerite Cody, Eve in Khaki: The Story of the Women’s Army at Home and Abroad (London:  Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1918), pp. 42, 18. 24 ‘Women’s Volunteer Reserve’, Kent and Sussex Courier, 3 March 1916. 25 Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry, Retrospect (London:  Frederick Muller, 1938), p. 113. 26 Harriet Blodgett, ‘What Price Change? The Great War and Englishwomen’s Diaries’, Turn-​of-​the-​Century Women, 2:1 (1985), 18–​29 (p. 22). 27 Susan R. Grayzel, Women and the First World War (Harlow:  Longman, 2002), p. 38. 28 For the French context, see Margaret H. Darrow, ‘French Volunteer Nursing and the Myth of War Experience in World War I’, American Historical Review, 101:1 (1996), 80–​106. 29 Robert, ‘ “All that is best of the modern woman”?’, p. 107. 30 Barbara McLaren, Women of the War (London:  Hodder and Stoughton, 1917), p. 136. 31 Alice and Claude Askew, Nurse (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916), p. 1. 32 Ibid., pp. 43–​4. 33 Alison Fell, ‘Afterword’, in Alison S. Fell and Christine E. Hallett (eds), First World War Nursing: New Perspectives, pp. 173–​92. 34 See for example Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, Six Weeks at the War (London: The Times, 1914). 35 Margaret Douglas, ‘Women Volunteers:  Studland Bay’, Daily Mail, 10 September 1910. 36 Mary Devas Wilkinson, interviewed by Margaret A.  Brooks, 25 July 1974, Imperial War Museum, 486. 37 Flora Murray, Women as Army Surgeons:  Being the History of the Women’s Hospital Corps in Paris, Wimereux and Endell Street, September 1914–​October 1919 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920). 38 ‘ “Yeo-​Women”: Inspiring Story of a Brave Band of Ministering Englishwomen’, Daily Call, 8 January 1915. 39 The struggle for registration commenced in 1887 when Ethel Gordon Fenwick hosted the inaugural meeting of the British Nursing Association in her home. The College of Nursing was established in 1916 by nurse leaders keen to protect their professional status, and in 1919 the Nurses Registration Act was passed. Not all had been in favour of registration, however: Florence Nightingale had been steadfastly against it. See Brian Abel-​Smith, A History

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Women of war of the Nursing Profession (London: Heinemann, 1960); Anne Witz, Professions and Patriarchy (London: Routledge, 1992). 40 Violetta Thurstan, Field Hospital and Flying Column: Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium and Russia (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915), p. 4. 41 Murray, Women as Army Surgeons, pp. 198–​9. 42 Thurstan, Field Hospital and Flying Column, pp. 4–​5. 43 Violetta Thurstan, ‘The British Red Cross Society’, British Journal of Nursing, 24 January 1914. 44 Finzi, Eighteen Months in the War Zone, pp.  51, 18–​19, 62 (emphasis in original). 45 ‘Professional Review’, British Journal of Nursing, 28 November 1914; ‘The VAD Member: What She Ought to Be and Is’, Nursing Times, 28 November 1914; British Journal of Nursing, 4 July 1914, 22. 46 Julia Roberts, ‘British Nurses at War 1914–​1918: Ancillary Personnel and the Battle for Registration’, Nursing Research, 45:3 (1996), 167–​72. 47 Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth:  An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–​1925 (London: Gollancz, 1933). 48 Hallett, Veiled Warriors, pp. 2–​3. 49 Grace McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies, 1914–​1919:  The Story of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, unpublished manuscript, Imperial War Museum, 16605, pp. 24, 28. 50 Katherine Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates:  The Story of Forty Five Years, 1875–​1920 (London: Peter Davies, 1940), p. 299. 51 Edward Baker, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’, Woman and War, 1 (June 1910), 4–​5. 52 Mabel Annie Stobart, War and Women: From Experience in the Balkans and Elsewhere (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913), pp. 12–​14. 53 ‘Decorations for Mock Heroines’. 54 Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates, pp. 299, 298. 55 A. J.  A. Morris, The Scaremongers:  The Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896–​1914 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984). 56 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 55. 57 Finzi, Eighteen Months in the War Zone, p. 8. 58 Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That (London: Cape, 1929), p. 99. 59 Adrian Gregory notes that most of this ‘rush’ came not immediately but rather near the end of the month, as by 22 August only about 100,000 men had joined up. Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 32. 60 Askew and Askew, Nurse, p. 40. 61 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 21 (emphasis in original). 62 Thurstan, Field Hospital and Flying Column, pp. 2–​3. 63 May Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (London:  Hutchinson, 1915), pp. 21, 204 (emphasis in original).

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Active service in the First World War 64 Ibid., p. 2. 65 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 17 (emphasis in original). 66 F. Tennyson Jesse, The Sword of Deborah: First Hand Impressions of the British Women’s Army in France (London: Richard Clay & Sons, 1918), p. 71. 67 Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium, pp. 1–​3. 68 A. H. Gamwell and P. Beauchamp Waddell, ‘The FANY’, Cavalry Journal, 11:41 (July 1921), 272–​7 (p. 274). 69 Sutherland, Six Weeks at the War. 70 Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium, pp. 1–​3. 71 Mabel Annie Stobart, Miracles and Adventures:  An Autobiography (London: Rider, 1935). 72 Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium, p. 151. Sinclair, a suffragist, had tried and failed to join Stobart, ‘as she will have none but trained women in her hospital’. 73 Vera Laughton Mathews, Blue Tapestry (London: Hollis & Carter, 1948), p. 12. 74 Margot Lawrence, Shadow of Swords:  A Biography of Elsie Inglis (London: Michael Joseph, 1971), p. 98; Leah Leneman, In the Service of Life: The Story of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (Edinburgh:  Mercat Press, 1994), p.  2; Audrey Fawcett Cahill, Between the Lines:  Diaries and Letters from Elsie Inglis’s Russian Unit (Edinburgh:  Pentland, 1999), pp. 1, 3. Doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, both of whom had survived bruising encounters with the Home Office as militant suffragists, decided against approaching the War Office, presuming they would be highly dismissive of their proposals, and instead approached the French Embassy, raised £2,000 (equivalent today to about £227,000) within a fortnight and in mid-​September established a military hospital at Hôtel Claridge in Paris under the auspices of the Women’s Hospital Corps. Murray, Women as Army Surgeons, pp. 4–​5. 75 Letter from Charles Deneford to Lilian Franklin, 13 August 1914, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 76 Jenny Gould, ‘Women’s Military Services in First World War Britain’, in Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel and Margaret Collins Weitz (eds), Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 114–​25 (p. 118). 77 Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates, p. 301. 78 Pat Beauchamp, Fanny Went to War (London: Routledge, 1940), p. 11. 79 Desmond McDougall, War and Grace:  One Woman’s Time at the Trenches (Whitley Bay: UK Book Publishing, 2015), pp. 37–​8. 80 Ibid., p. 38. 81 Grace McDougall, ‘Prologue: The Start of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, p. 14, McDougall Box 3, Imperial War Museum, 46733. 82 For an account of VAD work, see Thekla Bowser, The Story of British V.A.D. Work in the Great War (London: Andrew Melrose, n.d).

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Women of war 83 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, pp. 2, 4, 5. 84 Ibid., pp. 6–​8. 85 Janet Lee, ‘A Nurse and a Soldier: Gender, Class and National Identity in the First World War Adventures of Grace McDougall and Flora Sandes’, Women’s History Review, 15:1 (2006), 83–​103 (p. 89). 86 André Warnod, Prisoner of War (London:  William Heinemann, 1916); Charles Hennebois, In German Hands:  The Diary of a Severely Wounded Prisoner (London:  William Heinemann, 1916); Erich Erichsen, Forced to Fight: The Tale of a Schleswig Dane (London: William Heinemann, 1916). 87 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, pp. 183, 199. 88 Ibid., pp. 14–​15, 17. 89 Ibid., pp. 31, 17–​18. 90 Santanu Das, Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 91 Hallett, Containing Trauma; Yvonne McEwen, It’s a Long Way to Tipperary: British and Irish Nurses in the Great War (Dunfermline: Cualann Press, 2006). 92 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 2. 93 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 56. 94 Wilkinson, Imperial War Museum, 486. 95 Cecily Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’, FANY HQ. 96 Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium, p. 262. See also pp. 207, 272, 281–​301,  313–​14. 97 Ibid., p. 302n, p. 297. 98 Ibid., pp. 299, 298, 299, 302n. 99 Ibid., pp. 297, 299, 300. 100 Ibid., ‘Postscript’, p. iii. 101 Grace McDougall, Nursing Adventures: A F.A.N.Y. in France (London: William Heinemann, 1917), p. 74; Grace Ashley-​Smith, ‘The Fringe of the Storm: An Englishwoman’s Experiences at the Front’, T.P.’s Weekly, 26 December 1914. 102 Letter dated 14 October 1914, cited by Roy Terry, ‘McDougall [née Smith], Grace Alexandra’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi.org/​ 10.1093/​ref:odnb/​59610 (accessed 5 December 2019). 103 ‘The Real Nurse’, Evening Sun, undated [1914], in McDougall, Box 3, Imperial War Museum, 46733; ‘Little Sister in Khaki: Lady’s Thrilling Despatch from the War Area’, Western Morning News, 29 October 1914; Ashley-​Smith, ‘The Fringe of the Storm’; ‘British Nurse Defies the German Staff: Amazing Exploits of Mrs McDougall in Belgium’, Weekly Welcome, 27 March 1915. 104 ‘Comforts for the Belgians’, Daily Express, 25 November 1914. 105 Elsie, Baroness de T’Serclaes [née Knocker], Flanders and Other Fields: Memoirs of the Baroness de T’Serclaes, Military Medal (London: George G. Harrap, 1964); Mrs [Mabel] St Clair Stobart, ‘A Woman in the Midst of the War: The Remarkable Recital of a Woman Twice Sentenced to be Shot,

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Active service in the First World War and who Went through the History-​Making Scenes of Louvain, Brussels and Antwerp’, Ladies Home Journal, 32:1 (January 1915), 5–​6, 43–​4; Sinclair, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium, p. 4. 106 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 44. 107 Letter from Grace McDougall to Maud MacLellan, 27 April 1962, McDougall file, FANY HQ. 108 McDougall, ‘Prologue’, p. 15. 109 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 82; Edith Colston, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, May 1973, Colston file, Liddle Collection, WO/​097. 110 Pat Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (London: John Murray, 1919), p. 161. For the Derby Scheme, and its broader context, see Juliette Pattinson, ‘ “Shirkers”, “Scrimjacks” and “Scrimshanks”? British Civilian Masculinity and Reserved Occupations, 1914–​1945’, Gender and History, 28:3 (2016), 709–​27. 111 Letter from Grace McDougall to Maud MacLellan, 27 April 1962, McDougall file, FANY HQ. 112 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 94. 113 Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates, p. 328. 114 Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’. 115 Ibid. 116 Norma Lowson, photograph album, FANY HQ. 117 Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’. 118 S. M. Mason, ‘A Memory’, 1916 Calais Convoy file, FANY HQ. 119 Phyllis Puckle, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, 1973, Puckle file, Liddle Collection, WO/​097. 120 Enid Bagnold, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, 1978, Jones file, Liddle Collection, WO/​078. 121 Blodgett, ‘What Price Change?’, p. 22. 122 Finzi, Eighteen Months in the War Zone, p. 52; Elizabeth Robins, ‘Stretcher-​ Bearing for Women’, Daily Mail, 18 August 1915. 123 Helen Fraser, Women and War Work (New  York:  G. Arnold Shaw, 1918), p. 56; Violetta Thurstan, A Text Book of War Nursing (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), p. 28. 124 British Journal of Nursing, 11 August 1917. 125 Robins, ‘Stretcher-​Bearing for Women’; W.  Beach Thomas, ‘Defence of “Base” Women: Their Work in France’, Daily Mail, 16 July 1915. 126 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 60. 127 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, pp. 419–​23. 128 ‘Historical Register of First World War FANYs’, FANY HQ. 129 Isabel Wicks, letter to FANY Headquarters, FANY HQ. 130 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 53. 131 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, pp. 99–​100. 132 Ibid., p. 78.

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Women of war 133 Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’. 134 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 99. 135 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, pp. 69–​70. 136 Gazette, August 1918; Evelyn Shaw file, FANY HQ. 137 Christine E.  Hallett, ‘Emotional Nursing:  Involvement, Engagement and Detachment in the Writings of First World War Nurses and Volunteers’, in Fell and Hallett, First World War Nursing, pp. 87–​102 (p. 87). 138 Finzi, Eighteen Months in the War Zone, p. 52. 139 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 27. 140 Phyllis E. Thompson, ‘More Glimpses of Early F.A.N.Y. Days’, Gazette, spring 1962,  20–​1. 141 Betty Hutchinson, ‘My FANY life’, p. 2, Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 142 Mary Marshall’s letters to family, 6 January, 21 January, 3 December 1915, Marshall Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A (emphasis in original). 143 Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’. 144 Coyne, ‘Painful Bodies and Brutal Women’, p. 153. 145 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 26. 146 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 13. 147 One FANY wrote to her father saying ‘To-​day (Whitsun Day) a lot of us girls got up early to go to church’, while Cecily Mordaunt noted getting up at 4.45 a.m. on Christmas Day to walk to the British church a mile-​and-​a-​half away. ‘The English Church in Calais’, Church Times, 1 June 1917; Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’. 148 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 149 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 150 Margaret Tombeur, letter dated 24 August 1916, Colston file, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 151 Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’. 152 Marshall’s letters to family, 22 July, 21 January 1915, Marshall Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 153 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 105; Isabel Wicks, ‘The Typhoid Wards of Hopital Lamarck’, Gazette, June 1916. 154 Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–​1980 (London: Virago, 1987). 155 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 70. 156 Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’. 157 Marshall, letter to her mother, 18 January 1916, Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 158 Marshall, letter to her mother, 27 March 1917, Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 159 Standard, 21 April 1915.

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Active service in the First World War 160 ‘Women and their work:  Fine record of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Daily Express, 29 February 1916. 161 ‘Work of Women in the War’, Standard, 17 February 1916. 162 McDougall, War and Grace, p. 177. 163 Queen, 3 March 1917; ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, Queen, 15 February  1919. 164 ‘Nursing at the Front’; ‘An English Nursing Unit in France’, Workers’ Paper, June 1915. 165 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, pp. 189–​91. 166 Ibid., p. 183. 167 Gazette, March 1917, pp. 6–​7. 168 Gazette, April 1920. 169 Gazette, October 1915; Gazette, December 1915, 4; McDougall, A Nurse at the War, pp. 189, 190. 170 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 194. 171 Ibid., p. 1. 172 Muriel Thompson, ‘Base Notes’, February 1915, pp. 14, 16, Thompson file, FANY HQ. 173 Pat Waddell, ‘A Journey to the Front’, Gazette, July 1916, 7. 174 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 175 Mary Runciman, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, March 1975, Runciman file, Liddle Collection, TR/​06/​60. 176 Betty Hutchinson, featured in BBC radio programme ‘The F.A.N.Y.s’, episode in the BBC series Home This Afternoon, broadcast 26 September 1967, British Library, ILP0168195. 177 Hutchinson file, FANY HQ. 178 Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’. 179 Ibid. 180 Thurstan, A Text Book of War Nursing, p. 22. 181 Runciman, Liddle Collection, TR/​06/​60. 182 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 71. 183 Betty Hutchinson, postwar account cited in Lynette Beardwood, F.A.N.Y. at the Western Front: War Tales 1914–​1919 (London: FANY, 1997), p. 11. 184 This was because FANY Unit 3 came under Red Cross control on 1 January 1916 when they began driving officially for the British, as we shall see in the next chapter, and were thus subject to their restrictions. 185 F. Tennyson Jesse, ‘The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry: A Personal Impression of the FANY Camps in France  –​Girls who Are Doing Yeoman Service’, Vogue, May 1918, 54. 186 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 64. 187 Colston, Liddle Collection, WO/​018; Gazette, June–​August 1918, 8. 188 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 132. 189 Figures are of course hugely contested. Moreover, many of those who died (and who are not included in these figures) would have first received

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Women of war medical treatment. Of 365,000 Belgians enlisted, 77,422 were wounded, a further 122,987 were hospitalised suffering from various illnesses and 40,000 died, according to Tom Simoens, ‘Belgian Soldiers’, in 1914–​1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, https://​encyclopedia.1914–​1918-​online.net/​article/​belgian_​soldiers (accessed 13 June 2019). Elsewhere he puts the figure at 51,000 dead; Tom Simoens, ‘De Eerste Wereldoorlog:  Totale oorlog en militaire patstelling’, in Luc de Vos, Tom Simoens, Dave Warnier and Franky Bostyn (eds), 14–​18 Oorlog in België (Antwerp: Davidsfonds Uitgeverij, 2014), pp. 523–​9 (pp. 523–​4). Jay Winter puts the Belgian casualty figures as 44,686 wounded and 38,716 dead; The Great War and the British People (Houndmills: Palgrave, 1985). Of 7,891,000 French men mobilised, 4,266,000 were wounded and 1,327,000 died, according to Winter. Of 723,000 soldiers mobilised by Britain and Ireland, Winter notes that 723,000 died and 1,676,037 were wounded (pp.  73–​5). Looking specifically at soldiers born in Britain, Joanna Bourke notes that between 12 and 17 per cent were wounded each year from October 1915 until September 1918, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion, 1996), p. 33. Thanks to Mario Draper for this information. 190 Robins, ‘Stretcher-​Bearing for Women’. 191 Jane Marcus, ‘Afterword. Corpus/​ Corps/​ Corpse:  Writing the Body in/​ at War’, in Helen Zenna Smith, Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War (New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1989), pp. 241–​300 (p. 245). 192 Ouditt, Fighting Forces, p. 36. 193 Independent, 9 November 1988. 194 Smith, The Second Battlefield, p.  70; Mary Borden, The Forbidden Zone (London: William Heinemann, 1929), p. 15. 195 Jonathan Tucker, War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-​ Qaeda (New York: Pantheon, 2006), pp. 13–​15. 196 Ida M. Lewis, ‘Our Battery: Part IV’, Gazette, April 1917, 6–​10 (p. 9). 197 Betty Hutchinson, ‘My FANY life’, p. 9, Hutchinson file, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 198 For a discussion of trained nurses tending to gassed soldiers, see Christine E. Hallett, ‘ “This Fiendish Mode of Warfare”: Nursing the Victims of Gas Poisoning in the First World War’, in Brooks and Hallett, One Hundred Years of Wartime Nursing Practices, pp. 81–​100. 199 Hutchinson, ‘The F.A.N.Y.s’. 200 Fundraising leaflet, 1915. Lynette Beardwood, ‘War Tales 1914–​1919’, www. fany.org.uk/​history/​wwi/​overview (accessed 19 September 2018). 201 Gamwell and Beauchamp Waddell, ‘The FANY’, p. 276; Jesse, ‘The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’. 202 Gamwell and Waddell, ‘The FANY’, p. 276.

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Active service in the First World War 203 Mary Marshall, ‘War Record of Mary Devas Marshall’, Marshall Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 204 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, pp. 5, 34, 29, 14, 43. 205 Ibid., p. 55. 206 Robins, ‘Stretcher-​Bearing for Women’. 207 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 47. 208 Ibid., p. 104; McDougall, ‘Brief Resumé of Corps’ Work’, p. 10. 209 ‘Yeo-​Women’. 210 Robins, ‘Stretcher-​Bearing for Women’. 211 Grace McDougall, ‘Women as Stretcher Bearers’, Daily Mail, 7 September 1915. 212 Col. W.  M. Willis-​ Swan, ‘Women as Stretcher Bearers’, Daily Mail, 15 September 1915. 213 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 2. 214 Jesse, ‘The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’. 215 Jesse, The Sword of Deborah, p. 67. See also F. Tennyson Jesse, ‘A Night with a Convoy: An Account of the Work of the English Voluntary Aid Detachment in France’, Vogue, 1 September 1918, 72.

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‘Gloried in her grotesque and spurious manhood’: Driving in the First World War

While the volunteer nurse is a vivid presence within the popular memory of the First World War, the female ambulance driver, who was symptomatic of the existence of a new kind of modern woman, has a much less secure place in the public’s cultural imagination. There are a few sightings of her in interwar fiction, however. Australian journalist and children’s author Evadne Price’s Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War (1930), which sought to capitalise on the success of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, features aristocratic Georgina Toshington (‘Tosh’), one of the ‘gently-​bred … refined women of decent education’ who drove the wounded in France during the war and did ‘the work of strong navvies on the cars in addition to the work of scullery maids under conditions that no professional scullery maid would tolerate for a day’.1 Numbering in the hundreds, socially elite ambulance drivers like the fictionalised Tosh served in a range of all-​female units, some established well before the war, such as the FANY and the VAD (the latter began transporting wounded in 1916), and others that started up once the war had commenced, such as the motor transport section of the Women’s Legion and the Hackett–​Lowther Ambulance Unit, created in 1916.2 A number of the Unit’s members were thought to have had relationships with women, and its founder, Barbara (‘Toupie’) Lowther, was allegedly the inspiration for Radclyffe Hall’s Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (1934).3 In this novel about a wartime ambulance driver, the war presents the title character with an opportunity to escape the narrow confines of her life and ‘set Miss Ogilvy free’. She knew that the war, bringing sorrows to millions, had brought her a kind of exquisite contentment, the contentment of work finely planned, well accomplished, and of brave deeds quietly done. She knew that out there on the battlefields of France, she had gloried in her grotesque and spurious manhood, forgetting at times that she was but a woman.4

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Driving in the First World War Ogilvy’s manliness is presented as problematic throughout the story. As a child she ‘saw herself as a queer little girl’, had ‘loathed sisters and dolls, preferring the stable-​boys as companions, preferring to play with footballs and tops, and occasional catapults … climbing the tallest beech trees … insisting … her real name was William not Wilhelmina … gloried in her strength, lifting weights, swinging clubs and developing muscles’, and was lent breeches because ‘so much did she long to be male’.5 Indeed, rather than occupying herself with appropriately feminine pursuits, ‘She would dearly have loved to share in their [men’s] sports, their business, their ideals and their wide-​flung interests.’ When war had broken out, Miss Ogilvy, aged fifty-​six, exclaims ‘ “My God! If only I were a man! … [If] only I had been born a man!” She wished to go up to the trenches. She wished to be actually under fire.’6 Consequently she forms an ambulance corps of English women who drive for the French army, ‘fearlessly thrusting right up to the trenches in search of the wounded and dying’. She cuts her hair, sports ‘queer little forage caps’, ‘manly trench-​boots’ and ‘short mannish tunics’, which results in ‘men resent[ing] this creature who copied their clothes’, and in ‘find[ing] herself ’ attains a measure of serenity.7 But awaiting repatriation to Britain following the Armistice, she feels a profound sense of loss, as made evident by the story’s opening sentence:  ‘Miss Ogilvy stood on the quay at Calais and surveyed the disbanding of her unit, the unit that together with the coming of war had completely altered the complexion of her life.’8 The story ends with her suicide. A similar plot, of a manly and conflicted chief protagonist who finds fulfilment during the war driving ambulances on the Western Front, is seen in Hall’s earlier publication, the much better known and now classic lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness (1928).9 Stephen Gordon, named by her father who desperately wanted a son, is ‘male in her make-​up’, ‘hated soft dresses and sashes, and ribbons’, preferring pocketed trousers in which ‘her legs felt so free and comfortable’, rides astride, fences, has a muscular physique (‘hard, boyish forearms’, ‘masculine hands’) and loves to drive her father’s Panhard motor car.10 At first, the war accentuates her womanhood, preventing her from serving: she felt appalled at the realization of her own grotesqueness; she was nothing but a freak abandoned on a kind of no-​man’s-​land at this moment of splendid national endeavour. England was calling her men into battle, her women to the bedsides of the wounded and dying, and between these two chivalrous, surging forces she, Stephen … of less use to her country … Stephen was

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Women of war obsessed by her one idea, which was, willy-​nilly, to get out to the front … In vain did she offer to form a[n ambulance] unit at her own expense; the reply was polite but always the same, a monotonous reply: England did not send women to the front-​line trenches.11

However, the ‘whirligig of war’ eventually presents Stephen, and her ‘less orthodox sisters’ who joined the Breakspeare Unit driving ambulances for the French army, with the opportunity of living a more rounded life in spite of the risk of ‘shell-​shock’ and ‘nerve strain’ from the long hours without respite. But with the unit’s disbanding, the sense of fulfilment and ‘oneness with life’ dissipates and the women ‘felt vaguely regretful’, not knowing what ‘the future might hold of trivial days filled with trivial actions’. One woman ‘who had long ago done with emotions  –​quite suddenly laid her arms on the table and her head on her arms, and she wept, and she wept’.12 In both of Hall’s stories, driving ambulances in northern France enables masculine women to evade the constraints of normative femininity by donning manly clothing, cropping their hair and performing work more commonly undertaken by men. This opportunity to flex conventional gender norms offers them a measure of happiness and contentment, but it is short-​lived. The female ambulance driver also makes an appearance in Enid Bagnold’s autobiographical novel The Happy Foreigner (1920). Based on her experiences driving in France with the FANY after the Armistice, the book makes several references to the gender ambiguity embodied by the khaki-​clad driver. The lead character, inventively called Fanny, is concerned that Julien, with whom she embarks upon a relationship, will ‘very likely … think in daylight –​“She is not a woman, but an English Amazon” ’. She designs a highly feminine ballgown because ‘it will be the first time he has seen me in the clothes of a woman’.13 At the gown fitting, the French dressmaker informs Fanny that the sight of an ambulance driver, a ‘great big girl dressed like you with her hands in her pockets and a pipe in her mouth … made an effect on me –​you can hardly believe how it startled me!’ As none of the British women in Fanny’s unit smokes a pipe, it was not one of them, but she knows of a Frenchwoman driver who ‘works with the men, shoulder to shoulder, eats with them, smokes with them, drinks with them, drives all night and all day, and they say she can change a tyre in two minutes’. She also notes the ‘terrible’ appearance of a female driver with cropped hair and ruddy complexion who wraps a piece of old ermine around her neck, and wears yellow checked stockings and knickerbockers.14 v 218 v

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Driving in the First World War The militarisation of women brought about by the war made fictionalised drivers such as Tosh, Miss Ogilvy, Stephen, Fanny and the women they worked alongside, as well as their real-​life counterparts, into what Laura Doan calls ‘temporary “men” in the topsy-​turvydom of war’.15 In undertaking work tagged as male that required physical strength and technological expertise; by wearing practical masculine clothing appropriate for the testing conditions and often cutting their hair, which was a sign of their lack of vanity; in adopting behaviour more typically seen as male, such as smoking and drinking and possessing a demeanour routinely labelled by contemporaries as a ‘swagger’; and by frequently adopting male nicknames, socially elite female driver-​mechanics came to be identified with a modern mode of femininity. As Sandra Gilbert asserts, albeit highly poetically, these ‘post-​ Victorian girls’ and ‘once-​ decorous daughters’, who ‘raced motorcars along foreign roads like adventurers exploring new lands’, ‘swooped over the wastelands of the war’, ‘their mobility’ transporting ‘immobilized heroes’.16 And whether driving ‘like bats out of hell’ when their ambulances were empty, or compelled to drive slowly and with precision when transporting wounded soldiers, they discovered in themselves both a propensity and a flair for a job that had previously been undertaken by working-​class, male servants.17 Certainly, this ‘sporty breed of action women’ required muscular strength to hand-​crank motor engines and to lift stretchers carrying wounded men into their ambulances and onto hospital trains.18 They also needed mechanical knowledge to change tyres, fix punctures and keep engines ticking over in the depths of winter, and had to possess technical skills to drive on roads littered with potholes, carcasses and corpses, becoming what Jane Marcus calls ‘experts at the geography of hell’.19 And their khaki uniforms lent them a mannish appearance that differentiated them sharply from the veiled nurses tending to their patients. As Doan notes, many drivers became ‘exceptionally strong, toughened, weather-​beaten and mechanically savvy –​in other words, masculinised’.20 In such ways, ambulance driving was ‘distinctly cross-​gendered’ and the figure of the female ambulance driver might be seen to embody Jack Halberstam’s (now somewhat controversial) concept of female masculinities, a ‘masculinity without men’, offering a fascinating potential for gender fluidity.21 Doan is not the only scholar to note this: in their discussions of critiques of volunteer women, especially the WVR, as ‘mannish’ opportunists, Janet Watson acknowledges the ‘gender ambiguity’ among the ‘former tomboys’ and ‘unwomanly’ ‘sporting women’ who drove ambulance wagons on the Western Front, while Lucy Noakes discusses how they were perceived as ‘mannish’, ‘Amazonian’ lesbians.22 v 219 v

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Women of war This chapter foregrounds the figure of the female ambulance driver. As with belonging to a paramilitary organisation, one that became increasingly more professional over time under female management, wearing a khaki uniform and negotiating its way to the war zone to administer first aid, driving was another key site of modernity for the Corps. It might be regarded as a modern form of female philanthropy. Ambulance driving was undertaken voluntarily without financial recompense and with well-​ meant intentions but with a highly modern twist: instead of social visiting or food donation, elite women were participating actively in the prosecution of war by convoying wounded soldiers, patching them up and returning them to the battlefields. Based neither in hospitals nor in the trenches, the FANY ambulance drivers occupied a liminal space, moving between the two terrains, traversing a ‘no-​(wo)man’s land’ that only they as elite women could navigate. They also occupied a ‘middle ground’ between, on the one hand, accepted voluntary initiatives such as knitting and nursing and, on the other, new forms of paid employment such as munitions, as Virginia Scharff asserts in her analysis of American women motorists.23 And unlike much of women’s work this was not segregated by sex: ambulance driving was a task that was undertaken by men also (celebrated examples include Ernest Hemingway, E. E. Cummings and Somerset Maugham) and female drivers worked alongside male orderlies and were transporting wounded men. Because acting as ambulance​ drivers and mechanics was an aspect of female war service that did not fit within the discourse of nurturing and care, attributes that women were thought innately to possess, no aspect of women’s wartime employment aroused greater censure, controversy and resistance, and yet also admiration, official recognition and press coverage. The chapter begins with an examination of the motor car as a symbol of modern femininity. It unpicks the censored accounts of FANYs’ letters home, reports published in the Corps’s magazine and newspaper articles, the embellished tales of daring told during the war to publicise the activities of the unit, and the retrospective accounts captured in print and on tape in order to reveal both the thoroughly modern pleasures and perils of driving and car maintenance. And it considers media attitudes toward female drivers and the establishment opposition they slowly eroded. The pot-​holed roads of northern France thus present a useful terrain, one that is both literal and contextual, in which to theorise the female driver-​ mechanic as a symbol of gender modernity. While the war enabled new configurations of female masculinity to be performed, providing a space where women could play around with their gender identities protected v 220 v

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Driving in the First World War by their class background, there is little evidence of a wish to overturn existing gender relations or of expressions of a long-​lasting transformation to their gendered subjectivities. They pushed the bounds of convention but stayed within its limits. ‘Would-​be men’: the motor car and the modern woman The early motor car might be considered a metaphor for modernity, in that it symbolised the future, technological complexity, acceleration and speed, mobility and travel, and fantasies of adventure and escape.24 And it was a modernity that was firmly associated with elite men. Initially, cars were limited to the wealthy because of the sheer expense. In 1908, the average cost of a car was £420, the equivalent today of nearly £50,000, but it could be as high as £1,000 (equal now to about £118,000). And with its emphasis on motion, velocity and machinery, which were all gendered male, the motor car was considered a potent symbol of masculinity.25 Starting the engine required cranking a handle, which was physically exhausting and could result in injury. Mechanical knowledge was needed, as cars were extremely unreliable, needed constant maintenance and frequently broke down: tyres, for example, often punctured and had to be fixed before continuing with the journey. Car maintenance was, and is still today, over a century later, a highly gendered act.26 Despite being firmly associated with masculinity, driving was open to reinscription in gendered terms. Novelist Mary Kennard wrote in her regular motoring column in 1902 that women ‘accustomed to the hunting field and with sufficient intelligence to take an interest in mechanical matters’ would transition effortlessly into excellent drivers. And she tried to break down women’s misgivings by likening her car to a horse: ‘She answers to the change speed as does a high mettled hunter to the touch of a spur.’27 Because female motorists confounded cultural stereotypes that imagined them as frail, dainty and what Julie Wosk terms ‘machine-​phobic’, the female driver can be regarded as a potent symbol of modernity.28 Driving, noted Margaret Walsh, enabled women to ‘move beyond the confines of domesticity and to contest gender stereotypes’.29 As an engine of social change, the motor car accelerated its female driver forward towards a future permitting women an expanded range of skills and roles that increased their mobility and, if not sending traditional gender roles into reverse, at the very least stalled them. Because the motor car was a means by which adventurous women could achieve equality, independence and freedom, they came to be v 221 v

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Women of war identified with a dangerous modern femininity.30 The first British woman to drive and to own a car was reported to be actress Minnie Palmer in 1897. Women drivers were a rarity, despite the success of the Ladies’ Automobile Club, which was founded in 1904 and had, within a few months, over 300 members. Car-​ driving women were perceived as posing a threat to established gender norms by acting in a manner more commonly associated with men. A  reader’s letter published in Autocar magazine in 1905 dismissed them as masculine in outlook and as ‘would-​ be men’, while a motoring column in The Times stated in 1907 that it was ‘difficult to reconcile the right practice of motor-​driving with the feminine lot and temperament’, and that there were concerns that ‘feminine nerves’ would make the female driver ‘liable to lapses’.31 The leading proponent of female driving in the Edwardian period was Dorothy Levitt, who also loved cycling, horse-​riding, hunting, shooting and fishing, and was the ‘most girlish of womanly women’, not ‘a big, strapping Amazon’.32 Born into a wealthy Jewish family of jewellers, Levitt (née Elizabeth Levi), undertook an apprenticeship as a mechanic and chauffeur; gave lessons to other prosperous women; was, in 1903, the first British woman to enter a competitive race; took part in hill climbs, endurance races and speed trials; recorded 79.75 m.p.h. in 1905 at Brighton speed trials; and set a new world record for women of 91 m.p.h. in 1906.33 In an attempt to popularise the activity among women, she gave lectures; wrote articles in the Daily Graphic; and in 1909 published a book entitled The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women who Motor or who Want to Motor, in which she wrote of ‘the intense pleasure’ of driving. She provided guidance on the choice and cost of purchasing a chassis and its (separately sold) accessories; advised on ‘the all-​important question of dress’; gave instructions on how to drive and perform roadside repairs; and recommended that female motorists carry a gun and a long-​handled looking glass, the latter to serve as a rear-​view mirror.34 Included in the manual are twenty-​four photographs of her, many of which show her wearing a voluminous smock called a ‘duster’ and a large, veiled hat that was popular with female drivers, and she is depicted peering at a car’s engine, removing a faulty spark plug, unscrewing the cap and checking the oil with a stick, and tightening nuts and bolts. As Wosk notes, ‘the images are more than illustrations: they are testimonials, visual proof of the author’s mechanical abilities’.35 Despite the publicity Levitt brought to motoring as ‘the champion lady motorist of the world’, driving remained in 1914 an activity tagged as male and, as such, there was a ‘prejudice against the woman driver’ that meant they had ‘an uphill fight’ and v 222 v

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Driving in the First World War ‘face[d]‌a good deal of opposition’.36 The FANY, which had been conceived as a mounted unit but which moved with the times and mechanised, replacing the horse with the motor car as its vehicle of choice to convey the wounded, certainly experienced hostility and resistance when it offered its services as trained ambulance drivers, as we shall see. Many of the women who joined the FANY during the First World War had already embraced the latest exciting technological invention. Enid Bagnold’s father had purchased a Cadillac in 1904 and she recollected that Sunday afternoons were spent polishing the brass of the horn, lamps and radiator, which instilled in her a love of machinery. Vehicles were clearly important to her, as she commences her autobiography by noting ‘I was born with the first motor cars.’37 Sadie Bonnell, an avid sportswoman who was particularly keen on cricket and diving, and, at 5´ 11´´, was taller than most other women (and men), had purchased her own motor car and began driving for the Canadian Army Service Corps. She received training in driving and car maintenance at the Red Cross depot at Devonshire House in Piccadilly, and joined the Corps in August 1917, aged twenty-​eight. Her one regret when she was approaching her centenary was that she could ‘no longer drive fast cars’.38 Phyllis Puckle, who at the age of twenty-​three had responded to an advertisement placed by the FANY in the summer of 1918, also embarked on two weeks’ training at Devonshire House, which she recollected ‘was thorough and ­practical –​ we were taught to change a tyre, and the knack of swinging a heavy engine without risking a broken wrist by a backfire, also the correct way to lift a stretcher with a wounded man on it and to load it into an ambulance’.39 Puckle had previously undertaken a six-​week course on motoring and car maintenance before driving her medical father about on his daily rounds. Although driving tests were not a mandatory requirement until 1935, Puckle was eager to be competent on the roads and sought to equip herself with expert guidance. While women such as Bagnold, Bonnell and Puckle, who joined the FANY late in the war, were all compelled to undergo formal instruction in driving and car maintenance, those who went to France earlier were not. Some members elected to enrol on courses, however. Mary Baxter Ellis, for example, defied severe parental opposition and registered at the Motor Supply Company School of Motoring, gaining a first-​class certificate and joining the Corps in August 1915.40 Others had received no formal instruction before driving in France and learnt on the job. Marian Gamwell, who drove ambulances for Dr Elsie Inglis’s Scottish Women’s Hospitals in France before travelling to Calais to join the FANY in May v 223 v

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Women of war 1915  ‘anxious to get nearer the front line’, had ‘none at all. No actual training’.41 Her mother had been one of the first women to have a car registered in her own name, and Gamwell learnt to drive when she was fifteen. Along with her sister Hope, who was a year younger and also joined the FANY, she would strip the engine and repair it. Her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography attests to her love of motoring and her pioneering status: Marian ‘was the first woman to drive a motor car in Dresden, the first to ride a motor bicycle in Athens, and the first to cycle in Majorca’.42 In addition to driving, she enjoyed sailing, and before the war had wanted to be a farmer or a veterinary surgeon. Frustrated that none of the agricultural colleges would admit women, she went to live in Canada, where ‘there were openings for girls to farm for themselves … [It was] just up my street … I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was really a most delightful experience and I was working very hard.’43 The opportunities presented by Empire gave Gamwell independence and made her more radical. Muriel Thompson was similarly ground-​ breaking in her endeavours before the war. The granddaughter of the laird of Pitmeddon, who became provost of Aberdeen and was returned as its Member of Parliament, Thompson, born in 1875, was one of the few women who took up driving as a competitive sport. She overcame resistance from the Brooklands Automobile Racing Club to compete against six other women in the inaugural Ladies’ Bracelet Handicap in July 1908, in which she averaged 50 m.p.h. in her winning car, ‘Pobble’, and went on to triumph in a second race against one other woman a month later.44 Following this second event, a ban was imposed preventing women from racing at Brooklands for another twenty years, and thus Thompson sought other outlets for her passion for driving. She served as a chauffeur to WSPU leader Emmeline Pankhurst on her 1909 tour and, attracted by the opportunity to drive ambulances in France, joined the FANY in early 1915, arranging for her Cadillac (‘Kangaroo’) to be shipped out to France in the August.45 While the adventurous women who joined the Corps in the first five years were largely attracted by its equine nature, Bagnold, Bonnell, Puckle, Baxter Ellis, the Gamwell sisters and Thompson, equally venturesome in character, enrolled in the FANY during the First World War in order to satisfy their desire to drive, a skill they already possessed. But while driving and car maintenance gave great delight to the modern woman, conferring an opportunity to undertake worthwhile war work and to demonstrate mastery of a masculine competence, they were both frustrating and hazardous, pushing them to the limit of their endurance, as we shall now explore. v 224 v

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Driving in the First World War ‘I wish my mother could see me now’: the pleasures and perils of driving at the front While on active service in France, FANYs drove an assorted range of vehicles. These were luxury motor cars of all makes and models that had been donated by wealthy individuals to the military, transformed into ambulances and customised to carry four stretchers.46 These included Ford, Unic, Crossley and Armstrong Whitworth models; Vulcan and Mors box lorries; and Napiers, Hotchkisses, Siddeley-​Deaseys, Vauxhalls, Wolseleys, Peugeots, Delaunay-​ Bellevilles, Berliots and Delahayes. Despite the masculine attributes of motoring, FANY accounts reveal that they invariably gendered their vehicles female. As FANY Enid Bagnold noted in her autobiography: ‘Cars have always been women but they were more particularly women then. There was a touch of keeping a mistress. Their waywardness was loved. If something went wrong it was the nature of a pretty woman to have faults.’47 FANYs often assigned female names to their motor cars. Waddell had a four-​cylinder Napier that was ‘battle-​ scarred’: ‘She had a fat comfortable look about her, and after I had had her for some time I felt “Susan” was the only name for her.’48 As well as ‘Susan’, there were ‘Ann’ the Hotchkiss, ‘Unity’ the Unic and ‘Flossie’ the Ford. The two exceptions were ‘Little Willie’, a Wyllis-​Overland lorry, and a Daimler converted into a motor bath called James: presumably assigning a feminine name to a vehicle that contained men’s naked bodies would have been unthinkable. FANYs afforded these vehicles great affection, writing about them with something akin to romantic love: ‘the joy of my heart’, ‘I adored that car’, the ‘object of her adoration’.49 A poem written about a motor bike and side car spoke of ‘dear Berylis!’, ‘cute Berylis!’, ‘I loved thee  –​how! Yes thee my Berylis!’50 They anthropomorphised them, accrediting them with personalities. Vehicles had ‘vagaries’, were regarded as disobedient, spirited and temperamental: ‘She certainly had a facetious way.’51 Berylis was ‘jealous’ of Flossie, whom ‘she thought was too bossy’ with her paintwork all ‘new and glossy’.52 Mary Marshall narrates the encounter between the two vehicles in a letter home: I don’t think Flossie and Berylis had ever met face to face before though they had heard a lot about each other. Flossie happened to be looking frightfully smart as she had been painted up and she had got a Belgian number painted on her … Berylis is not looking very smart … Flossie and Berylis eyed each other for a minute or two and then without any warning and with no outside help Berylis turned away [word illegible] down into the gutter! It was so absolutely natural and human. I’ve never seen anything so funny.53

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Women of war The tendency to humanise their vehicles is also seen in the way Enid Bagnold describes in her novel the cars in a garage awaiting repair, some with ‘fatal injuries, some squatting backwards upon their haunches, some inclined forwards upon their knees’.54 An equine analogy was often used. Miss Ogilvy, in Radclyffe Hall’s novel, strokes her vehicle ‘as though she were patting a well-​beloved horse’ and whispers to it, noting the shared sense of hopelessness as the unit is being disbanded as if it is to be put down: ‘Yes, I know how it feels.’55 FANYs also looked upon their vehicles as if they were horses: they referred to makes and models of cars as ‘the breed’, acknowledged they needed exercising as if they were out on the gallops (‘I should like to take her for a long run. She needs it as she is … better for long distance work than running around the town’) and lovingly cared for them as if they were being groomed (‘oil her, grease her, wash her tyres’).56 As well as revealing the ways that FANYs looked lovingly upon their vehicles, accounts show members’ great enthusiasm for driving: Marshall’s letters home for example were infused with her immense affection for taking the wheel, her improving skill and her growing understanding of car maintenance: I love driving and am getting on awfully smartly at backing. I like car work awfully. Some of our cars took some British Tommies over to Boulogne to a hospital ship on Friday. Three other cars went. I drove the Ford! Me in a convoy you know! It was screaming. The car went toppingly. To-​day she wasn’t going so well so tomorrow I am going to do a lot of work on her.57

Marshall delighted in her new ability to manoeuvre her heavy vehicle with skill and precision, reversing backwards along the narrow quay to offload her passenger cargo onto hospital ships and having the honour of transporting British soldiers, as well as enjoying the demands of car maintenance: she planned to spend an entire day undertaking mechanical repairs on her Ford ambulance. FANY drivers were responsible for undertaking all the maintenance of their vehicles and this was noted in several newspaper articles, which underscores the ways in which they were seen to be ahead of the times.58 News of such trailblazing behaviour travelled outside the Continent:  readers as far away as Wisconsin read in a section entitled ‘Of Interest to Women’ a one line tit-​bit, with no explanatory context, that ‘The girl drivers of the British First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps ambulances not only run but clean and repair their cars.’59 F.  Tennyson Jesse, a female journalist who went to France v 226 v

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Driving in the First World War to observe ambulance drivers, remarked ‘The girls do all the cleaning and oiling of the cars themselves, and all repairs with the exception of the very complicated cases.’60 Indeed, when the piston rod broke on the ambulance driven by Marian Gamwell, she spent a week undertaking the ‘big job’ of repairing it, impressing a male mechanic, who was ‘lost in admiration’.61 She recollected ‘we took a great pride’ in keeping the vehicles roadworthy.62 All women who drove in France knew how to look after their vehicles. Members’ log books attest to the new skills developed: Josephine Pennell, for example, originally a VAD who worked with FANY driver-​mechanics at St Omer and transferred to the Corps to become FANY no.  404 in 1919, noted in hers that she had changed the oil, tightened the water cap, readjusted the spark control, greased the springs, filled the new brake rod and greased the universal.63 She was dismissive of one FANY who ‘could not distinguish between the inlet and outlet valves, and called radial-​rods torques’.64 Similarly, Muriel Thompson records factually: ‘Clean, grease, and tighten nuts –​took off detachable rim, cleaned, pariffined [sic] and greased it and put it on again. Worked on car til 5pm’.65 The possession of expert knowledge of car maintenance is also made apparent in an anonymous poem entitled ‘With Apologies to Kipling’, which makes reference to a grease gun, differential, clutch and gears: I wish my mother could see me now With a grease gun under my car, Filling my differential, ere I start for the sea afar, On top of a sheet of frozen iron, in cold that would make you cry. I used to be in Society once Danced, hunted and flirted once! Had white hands and complexion once! Now I’m F.A.N.Y.! … We can travel our 80 miles a day, having coped with a slipping clutch And we don’t jam in our gears anymore Or signal for the tow rope –​ much. … Now we’re F.A.N.Y. That is what you must call us, we are the girls who have over four years at the business, felt it and smelt it, and seen.66

Having previously engaged in outdoor pursuits and attended society balls, the narrator of the verse was now covered in grease under the bonnet of a car enduring extreme temperatures. She is proud to explain her new affiliation, and ‘Now I’m F.A.N.Y.!’ is repeated throughout the rhyme, v 227 v

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Women of war imitating the refrains in Rudyard Kipling’s poetry. The form and language of the poem also has Kiplingesque qualities: the strong sense of voice and rhythm is reminiscent of his barrack-​room ballads ‘Tommy’ and ‘Back to the Army Again’, both of which are ‘spoken’ by an ordinary soldier using colloquial language.67 Kipling, an advocate of technology and motoring, was widely read during the First World War, not least because the Service Edition of his works was produced to aid accessibility. Ashley-​Smith was a keen fan and recalled that ‘Kipling helped through most of the war’, while Kate Finzi recorded in her memoir that she and her fellow trained nurses found ‘some measure of comfort in murmuring, as we fall asleep’ the words to Kipling’s ‘If ’.68 One reason the cars needed constant maintenance was that they travelled such long distances, as the poem makes clear. Marshall wrote proudly to her father of her driving endurance feat: ‘We did 250 miles in 23½ hours which wasn’t bad seeing we were not going all the time was it?’69 The working day was often long and exhausting. Two FANYs with the assistance of two female orderlies helped 409 wounded French soldiers board a hospital train, motored 125 miles to meet the train at its destination and then spent 8 hours conveying the patients to hospital. Their actions were evidently considered remarkable, as they featured on the front page of the Daily Express in February 1916.70 Violet O’Neill Power wrote to headquarters in 1917 reporting that on one occasion she had been on duty for thirty-​six hours, having got up at 5 a.m. and finally arriving back at her billets at 2 p.m. the next day, having worked in a hospital, driven to meet a train and unloaded stretchers.71 The FANY magazine reported that drivers rose as early as 3 a.m. to ensure they collected their patients on time and delivered them to waiting trains.72 Sleeping patterns were hugely disturbed by their wartime work and by sleeping in shared billets: Thompson noted upon her arrival in France in February 1915:  ‘Eight of us in one room and two small basins  –​Active Service! so we don’t mind’.73 FANYs shrugged off the spartan living conditions and were overjoyed to be a part of the adventure, the desire to serve, to share in men’s privations and the sense of comradeship sustaining them. Monica Cousins was recorded in an American newspaper as saying that, during the second Battle of the Marne in the summer of 1918, ‘we carried 17,000 wounded once in five days –​never got to bed at all’.74 Similarly, Trilby McDowall wrote in October 1918:  ‘we have had an enormous amount of work to do … In a fortnight I have only had four hours off duty, and for the last three nights we haven’t seen bed, any of us. Driven all day and all night without ceasing so you may guess we are all pretty v 228 v

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Driving in the First World War tired.’75 Journalist F. Tennyson Jesse, who went to France to observe the FANY at work, recounted a rumour that she heard where the women of one convoy ‘never took off their clothes but just kept them on with fragmentary rests’ over the course of a fortnight.76 And despite these exhausting work schedules they had little to sustain them, subsisting mainly on black bread, black coffee, horse meat and beans; consequently, as Mary Bushby Stubbs noted, ‘often we were hungry’.77 As well as high mileage, long days, little rest and limited diet, accounts record that they had to endure dreadful weather. Thompson wrote in her diary in January 1916 that ‘The weather was fiendish, gales and torrents of rain’, and, when stationed at St Omer two years later, ‘It was bitterly cold … thick snow everywhere and heavy more falling everywhere.’78 Not only did these circumstances pose a marked contrast to their society days before the war, but they made for very challenging driving conditions. Doris Russell Allen recorded in her diary that when ice prevented the wheels of one car from getting traction on a hill, a FANY, ‘having nothing else to use’, removed her petticoat, ‘which she always persists in wearing, presumably for some such occasion’, and placed it under the wheel.79 While driving may have had masculine connotations, feminine accoutrements could be used to good effect to overcome icy conditions. The state of the roads at any time of the year was another reason why the vehicles required continual maintenance. Heavily rutted tracks and pot-​holed roads, which in the pitch dark with no lights were especially difficult to navigate, caused damage to wheels, tyres, and both suspension and chassis, and precision driving in a low gear ‘crawling’ along at a very slow speed caused wear on the drive train and overheating issues.80 As a report noted in the Gazette, ‘the roads are in a dreadful condition for motor traffic’, while Marshall wrote home ‘The roads are the limit.’81 Frequently, ‘the awful sinking sizzle of a tyre’ could be heard, as Winifred Mordaunt records in her poem ‘A Black Day in the Life of a Convoy FANY’, and drivers would have either to manually jack the chassis to replace the punctured tyre with a spare or to stuff the tyres with grass in order to complete their journeys back to base where they could repair their vehicles.82 Writing in 1909, the celebrated driver Dorothy Levitt noted that the ‘motoriste’ is ‘really justified in feeling angry’ about a punctured tyre, and that while ‘it is possible for a woman to repair a tyre … not one woman in a thousand would want to ruin her hands in this way’.83 For FANYs on active service, there was no alternative. And it might happen repeatedly: Pennell, in a letter home, recorded with patient v 229 v

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Women of war

Figure 5.1  Ambulance drivers attending to their cars at St Omer, 28 February 1918. Members of the Chinese Labour Corps in the background. forbearance: ‘I have had 13 flat tyres since Monday last!’84 The sense of sheer frustration is very apparent in Ashley-​Smith’s memoir: For another three hours we struggled with an inner tube of which the valve leaked and all around us were inner tubes in various stages of senile decay, and in my heart I cursed my folly in having started with fewer than a dozen spares! But then, could one have foreseen three bursts and a wretched puncture?85

In addition to the physically demanding role of changing a tyre, starting the car was exceptionally difficult. Pat Waddell remembered the vehicles ‘groaning, back-​firing, spitting, refusing at all costs to start’.86 To fire up the engine, a starting handle had to be manually turned repeatedly anti-​clockwise, which Hutchinson recollected was difficult for a right-​handed person. The physically strenuous nature of this task is made apparent by Ashley-​Smith’s sardonic remark to Hutchinson that ‘at the hundred and first pull-​up she almost invariably starts’.87 It required great physicality, an attribute not commonly associated with women in this v 230 v

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Driving in the First World War period: Waddell recalled that FANYs ‘wound and wound until their arms ached and their backs almost gave out’, and that ‘it was no uncommon sight to see F.A.N.Y.s lying supine across the bonnets of their cars, completely winded by their efforts’.88 The difficulty of starting the engine was made worse in cold weather. They tried various methods to stop the engines freezing over during the night, including emptying the radiator fluid, using anti-​freeze mixture, laying heavy rugs on the bonnets and putting bottles of hot water on the engines, but all without success.89 Marshall, who often wrote to her father about car maintenance –​perhaps as it was a shared interest and was a way to connect –​explained in great detail how they had ‘come to [the] conclusion’ that ‘really the only way to have the cars on the road in time for the morning’s work’ was to have several FANYs taking it in turns to be on ‘night guard’, checking each car repeatedly: I was on one the other night with two others but it didn’t actually freeze so was a bit of a waste. However we started them only about 4 times in the night and had a supper about one o’clock but I nearly went to sleep driving on the early evac afterwards … I can’t say that they appeal to me … I can imagine it is pretty awful when you get a bad night.90

Thompson recollected in her diary one such freezing night: Did night guard, cold awful. Cranked the Vulcan [lorry] and three taxis every hour. Sat in cook-​house and boiled water to thaw the petrol filters of the Napiers in the intervals. The filters were full of water from the petrol and were frozen solid nearly every time. Started day at 5 am and was about six hours on the quay. It snowed hard towards morning. We are consoled by hearing that everyone else has burst their radiators and some, their cylinders. The girls are bricks, it is very hard work.91

As both accounts make clear, being on night duty did not exempt the women from driving the next day. In addition to being exhausting and laborious, starting an engine could be dangerous, as vehicles occasionally backfired, resulting in the driver being thrown over the mudguard or, as happened to Marian Gamwell in April 1916, breaking a wrist.92 Once the engines had finally started and they were on the road, driving could still be highly perilous. Gamwell’s younger sister Hope was traversing a railway line in her ambulance wagon and was halfway across when the gates came down either side of the road and trapped her inside as a train was approaching. An article entitled ‘A Railway Crossing Episode’ noted that ‘Instead of losing her head and her life she simply turned her wheels to the tracks and raced for all she was worth in front v 231 v

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Women of war of the train.’93 In another incident, railway tracks were the cause, rather than the prevention, of an accident when an ambulance’s wheels skidded on the steel at the harbour and the wagon ‘dived straight into the sea’ 30 feet below. Fortunately the canvas roof of the car was rolled up and the driver, Eva Money, was fished out.94 Another FANY, while driving in the dark without headlights, as was the requirement, was confronted by a horse careering across the bonnet of her Armstrong-​Whitworth ambulance, smashing a side lamp, a headlight and the windscreen, which was, unusually, made of glass (‘the luxury of a windscreen’).95 Margaret Hoole drove into live telegraph wires, her vehicle encircled in flames, and ‘she was so thrilled and excited that she turned around and drove into it again to make sure she had not imagined it all!’96 More seriously, FANY driver Christina Urquhart ran over a child who darted out in front of her vehicle; Mary Baxter Ellis ran into two men, killing one of them, which led to an investigation that cleared her of any wrongdoing; a shell burst close to Henrietta Fraser’s car, badly wounding her and killing the orderly in the seat beside her; and Marian Gamwell mentioned (very briefly and, frustratingly, without being questioned on it further by the interviewer) running over the Prince of Wales.97 A nasty accident happened at a particularly hazardous set of level crossings. Because it was only when on the track that a train could be observed, a sentry was always on duty as look-​out to guide drivers across. Surprised not to see the sentry there –​a result of the British taking over responsibility from the French for the crossing –​Pat Waddell saw with horror a train just a few feet away, the noisy engine of ‘Little Willie’ having drowned out the sound: ‘My blood froze … My mind worked like lightning. Odd that at the Court of Enquiry later they should suggest that I lost my head. I knew in a flash there could be no real escape. It was just a question of whether it would be better to be caught in the front or the rear.’ She tried to outrun it rather than flip the slow, heavy vehicle into reverse, but the train caught its rear, spinning it 180 degrees, killing a stretcher-​bearer and throwing her into the air, dragging her along the track and nearly severing her leg, which was later amputated. ‘Oddly enough, my first thought was of the car.’98 In an introduction to her memoir, the Director of Medical Services noted that ‘when grievously injured’, Waddell ‘sat quietly in the roadside’ and ‘smoked a cigarette.’99 Her memoir reveals why she was seemingly so nonchalant: ‘I wondered why I couldn’t cry, but somehow it seemed to have nothing to do with me at all. I was not the girl who had lost a leg. It was merely someone else I was hearing about. “Jolly bad luck on them”, I thought, “rotten not to be able to run about any v 232 v

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Driving in the First World War more”. I loved running.’100 While the 41,000 British male service amputees were supplied with two artificial limbs by the State, Waddell, a comparatively wealthy female volunteer outside the Forces, had to procure her own and cover the considerable expense of having it fitted.101 The Daily Sketch, a conservative publication, featured a photograph of Waddell dressed in a fur coat, and under the title ‘Penalty of Patriotism’ noted that ‘though she lost her leg in France driving wounded, [she] has to pay her own hospital fees in England’.102 In her memoir, she remarked upon the gender disparity: ‘Despite the fact that I had done a man’s job, I did not seem entitled to the care he would have had.’103 Within a year, she was back driving with her prosthetic leg. In addition to withstanding dangerous accidents, FANYs were also in considerable peril, by driving at night-​time and often on their own, from attempted assault from allied soldiers and civilians: Ashley-​Smith twice encountered men trying to board her vehicle, and she responded by cracking one over the head with a tyre lever.104 She subsequently advised members to carry a gun.105 Besides the prospect of danger, both mechanical and man-​made, FANYs also found themselves at risk from enemy shelling and German advances, given their close proximity to the front. Thompson recorded in her diary on 9 April 1918 during the German Spring Offensive that ‘The most terrible bombardment has been going on all day. The guns have never ceased, though it is midnight as I write –​we hear them very clearly and see the flashes in the sky.’ The following day she recorded ‘As we got back to Camp the bombardment grew louder  –​it is terrible to think of what is happening a few miles away.’ And on 11 April she wrote ‘All day the guns have been going furiously and all night. We have given a lot of ground and the Germans are in Armentieres.’106 The Corps’s location close to the conflict and its work with men who were engaged in the fighting meant that it was in a unique position to have up-​to-​date accurate information about the war’s progress in that area of northern France. Drivers of Unit 8, based at St Omer, endured near-​constant bombardment during the German advance. Similarly, members of Unit 7, in Epernay, reported that they ‘always have a hail storm of shrapnel all over the hut and garage, as the guns are all around us’.107 On 1 June, this convoy was told to leave Epernay as the Germans sought to capitalise on their momentum and pushed further into the Marne; Château-​Thierry, where Unit 6 had recently been stationed, was occupied. In addition to the risk of being overrun, being so near the German lines meant that getting lost while driving could be extremely dangerous. Ashley-​Smith v 233 v

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Women of war and Marguerite Moseley-​Williams missed their turning and were within 3 km of the German front line where they were shelled upon.108 Being positioned close to the fighting also meant that FANYs witnessed first-​hand the horrors of modern warfare as they collected wounded men who had come from the trenches still caked in congealed mud and blood.109 Patients sometimes screamed out in agony or related some of their horrific experiences as they were being driven by FANYs who, to some extent, became participants in and ‘co-​owners’ of the trauma, to use Dori Laub’s term.110 The impact on the drivers is made evident in Thompson’s lengthy diary entry that describes the aftermath of an explosion at an ammunition dump in Audricq at which four FANY drivers attended: A terrible day … We arrived at eleven; they never expected us so soon. It was terrible. Railway trucks full of burnt and blown up men. We took the fifteen worst. I helped with some of the stretchers. There were not enough bandages for all; their faces were skinless and awful. They were mad with pain, their puttees were charred and black, where they had any left. We got these poor awful things into the cars, and started. One kept calling, ‘Sister! Sister! I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it!’ and then he broke off and began to try to sing with half his mouth gone. I was fortunate –​my four were unconscious till we nearly reached Calais when they all began to cry out. I had a R.A.M.C. orderly with me. We drove those awful miles to Calais and luckily we could go at a fair pace as the road wasn’t bad and there were no fractures. Got to the hospital and had our men taken out; one was dead. Returned to Camp and cried. Played four terrific sets of tennis in the middle of which we saw an aeroplane fall into the sea. The pilot was all right. Went to a concert at the Ordnance place. After it was over we had coffee and sandwiches. I had prayed all the way to Audricq that my tyres should not puncture.111

Because of the speed with which they drove, the FANYs arrived at the site of the emergency earlier than anticipated. They took the most severe cases; assisted with lifting the stretchers into the ambulances; and began the ‘awful’ journey, with their vehicles loaded with men with devastating injuries to the body and acute burns to the head. No longer men, these ‘poor awful things’ had been made incomprehensible with pain, crying out in agony, their wounds left gaping open because of the shortage of essential first aid equipment, and in a state of disarray as some of their clothes had been blown off by the force of the explosion. One of her passengers died in the ambulance and by the following day the fourth man had also died. She retains her composure until she returns to base and becomes emotional. Her account is raw and harrowing. Yet she v 234 v

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Driving in the First World War tempers the bleakness, finding some relief amidst the horror in her ‘luck’ and ‘fortune’ in having passengers who were for the most part unconscious, and thus silent, and that none of them had broken bones, which would have required driving much more slowly. And while she records that she later went out to play tennis, which was interrupted by an aeroplane crash, attended a concert and enjoyed refreshments, she returns at the end of her entry to the traumatic events of the day, recollecting the strain in fervently hoping that her vehicle would not sustain a puncture, slowing her arrival. The link among war, trauma (for some, albeit not all) and modernity is generally overlooked in research into women’s service in the First World War, which focuses largely on progress. Yet as I noted in my Introduction, the possibilities of the modern are always haunted by perils. While driving severely wounded men who were crying out in pain was gruelling, possibly the most unpleasant job was driving, in eerie silence, the decomposing bodies of soldiers and the bloated corpses of those who had drowned in the canals to the mortuaries that were working at full capacity trying to get through the backlog. There are very few references within FANY accounts to these responsibilities:  Marian Gamwell mentioned briefly in her long interview with the Imperial War Museum in 1974 that members of the Chinese Labour Corps ‘were very apt to throw themselves into the canal. Well then it was our job to go and get them fished out and then we had to appear in court and say what we had found.’112 Hutchinson noted in a short report, written years after the war, ‘Though the blanket hid the poor, swollen figure, no blanket could hide the smell of the liquid that oozed from him.’ While the journey to the mortuary was short, it took a long time to clean and freshen her ambulance afterwards: ‘no easy task’.113 Authors of fiction are more forthcoming in evocatively describing the horrors:  as we saw at the beginning of the previous chapter, Kate Atkinson’s character Izzy in A God in Ruins ‘remembered cleaning out the ambulance at the end of the day, blood and fluids and waste … Buckets of filthy swabs and pus-​soaked bandages and the terrible oozing wounds of the poor boys’.114 Similarly, Evadne Price’s Smithy in Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War noted that ‘Cleaning an ambulance is the foulest and most disgusting job it is possible to imagine … The stench that comes as we open the doors each morning nearly knocks us down.’ The pungent smell, which emanates from ‘[p]‌ools of vomit’; urine and faeces, as the cars have been used as ‘temporary lavatories’; and the ‘stale stench of stinking trench feet and gangrenous wounds’ leaves her fighting a wave of nausea.115 v 235 v

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Women of war Very few FANY accounts explicitly chronicle the horrors of driving ambulances on the Western Front. Members were mostly stoically silent on this aspect of their work, possibly out of self-​preservation or because of censorship. However, there are glimpses of shock and disgust within FANY accounts if one looks closely: Ida Lewis, for example, recorded in a report published in the FANY magazine in 1917 ‘I can never forget the stark misery of feeling my wheels skidding in the pools of blood.’116 Similarly, Thompson asserted, ‘it was gruesome driving through pitch darkness with the dead man bumping about behind’.117 Thompson left France in the summer of 1918 for health reasons, having served for three-​and-​a-​half years:  she was ‘worn out’ and suffering from ‘Calais fever and am rotten and hate everyone’.118 There are other hints of exhaustion and stress: Sheila Mason, for example, wrote of driving through ‘a bleak and silent countryside’ in ‘a rattling, creaking, groaning ambulance. My nerves are wracked by each new sound in its loudly throbbing engine, my arms ache and my eyes are strained in vain endeavours to guide it on this road of ruts and holes.’119 As well as bodily aches and eyesight strain caused by the challenging driving conditions, FANYs suffered from ‘stretcher face’, a term they coined to refer to the harried look of drivers on barge duty. This was possibly the most exhausting job, as it involved attending to seriously wounded men who could not be transported back to Britain by train to the ports and then via hospital ship, which risked jolting them and causing unbearable pain. Instead they were conveyed smoothly by barge along the rivers and canals of northern France to the embarkation port, the stretchers being raised and lowered slowly by lift. Drivers would have to position their ambulances on the narrow canalside to await the barges and, having collected their passengers, drive very slowly along poorly maintained roads, ensuring they did not stall their engines or fall into a pot-​hole or ditch. Despite such trying circumstances, there are few signs of war-​ weariness in FANY accounts. Indeed, stoic endurance of the arduous elements of their work features in several poems, including the two below:  Mordaunt’s ‘A Black Day in the Life of a Convoy FANY’ and Donnett Mary Paynter’s ‘If ’, an unashamed imitation of Kipling’s poem of the same name: A wet, cold rain starts soaking, And the old car keeps on choking, Your hands and face are frozen raw and red, Three sparking-​plugs are missing, There’s another tyre a-​hissing,      Well—​ ! ’nuff said!120

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Driving in the First World War If you can wait, and not get tired of waiting When you are punctured, and have got no spare. If you know who took it, without hating And simply murmur ‘Bah! Mais c’est la guerre!’ … If you can see the tyre you’ve mended punctured And stoop to jack it, with a jack that’s dud. If you don’t mind when all your valves are sticking If you can laugh with water in your jet. If you can drive through torrents to St Omer And yet not curse the rain, or damn the wet … If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ work of grease caps done, Yours is a bus, and all the toil that’s in it. And what is more, you’ll be a FANY. Some!121

Coping was a central part of the FANY identity and was encapsulated within its motto, Arduis invicta, meaning ‘unconquered in hardships’. These two poems, as well as a number of memoirs, are constructed around what Janet Lee calls the ‘legend’.122 This is made explicit by Lewis: ‘Being FANYs of course nothing daunted us.’123 So powerful is this discourse both during the war and subsequently that there is little room for accounts that challenge it. Asked at the age of 100 how she had managed to endure the hardships of repeatedly ferrying wounded soldiers for long periods up to twenty-​four hours without breaks over rutted roads and railway tracks in an ambulance that had ineffective springs, a very basic plastic windscreen, no headlights, a soft roof, an erratic engine that was not self-​starting and tyres that continually punctured, Sadie Bonnell replied caustically: What another very silly question. Of course I  didn’t cope. Who did? But there was a job we had to get done … If I may say so, you do ask awfully silly questions. It wasn’t a matter of courage. I was there to do something useful … I was not frightened during those drives … I did not think about it. I enjoyed being out in France and, if it was dangerous, that did not seem to matter at the time.124

Bonnell constructs an account that is, superficially at least, at variance with the more typical FANY discourse of coping. So powerful is this dominant discourse, however, that despite stating that she did not cope Bonnell goes on to explain how she did. Indeed, she recognised she had little choice but to get on with the task at hand, stoically enduring circumstances not of her choosing. v 237 v

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Women of war The ambulance driver’s resilience, evident in Paynter’s poem and Bonnell’s response, is noted by Katherine Furse, who was appointed head of the first VAD unit to be sent to France and, following her resignation, the first Director of the WRNS. She noted that female drivers were ‘indefatigable’, tolerated ‘great strain’, undertook night work where they were infrequently alone with four male patients who were either in pain or dead, had occasionally to fend off ‘scamps’, and ‘faced every sort of discomfort and danger and always emerged grinning’. Accordingly, she ‘respect[ed] them immensely’, despite the fact that they were ‘much less easy to control’ than women undertaking other war service: ‘Whether this is because being able to manage a car gives them greater self-​dependence, or whether only very independent women volunteered to drive cars[,]‌ I found the self-​dependence of our motor drivers baffling at times.’125 The independence that Furse notes is perhaps an oblique reference to their gender ambiguity. As we shall see, many commentators noted the manliness of female ambulance drivers. ‘A natural and welcome sign of the times’: attitudes toward female ambulance drivers Women’s driving generated a lot of publicity, and press attitudes toward female drivers demonstrably changed over the course of little more than a decade. In 1907, as we have seen, it was considered ‘difficult to reconcile the right practice of motor-​driving with the feminine lot and temperament’, while in 1920 the khaki-​clad feminine driver … was everywhere accepted as a natural and welcome sign of the times’.126 It is debateable, however, whether there was such a transformation in attitudes, given the virulent backlash that occurred after the Armistice. It is more likely that the intolerance women in uniform faced was put aside for the duration once the war became fully ‘total’ after 1915, and was discouraged in the press because of the recognition of the State’s need for female labour. Nevertheless, this supposed transition from regarding driving as contrary to women’s nature to seeing it as something in accordance with it was seen as entirely prompted by the war. As Gladys de Havilland noted, ‘If there is any one outstanding feature of the conditions produced by the war, it is that the question of motor car driving for women has passed from a debateable subject to the mere orthodox.’127 An article about drivers of the WVR in the Kent and Sussex Courier in March 1916 noted the change in public opinion: ‘many who at first did not approve of them now recognised that they were performing most useful and valuable work … the early v 238 v

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Driving in the First World War prejudice against the woman driver was fast disappearing’. Much of this disapproval rested on the fact that the WVR, much like the FANY, was a paramilitary organisation that clothed its roughly 6,000 female members in martial dress and taught them to drill. Mrs J. G. Silcock, the Honorary Colonel of the Tunbridge Wells branch, stated in a meeting on the anniversary of its formation that ‘many objections have been raised both as to our training on military lines and as to the members being in khaki uniform’. Accordingly ‘their first duty was to convince the public that they were not trying to play at being soldiers’, a common refrain, as ‘[n]‌othing would be more repugnant’. They recognised ‘[t]hey could never be more than make-​believe men’, and reassured a disapproving public that they were ‘womanly women, and not second-​class men’ and were ‘striv[ing] to be first-​class women’. This was greeted with many ‘hear, hears’.128 Over time, there was increasing recognition of the important role that female ambulance drivers, whether in the WVR, VAD or FANY, played, and of the value of their work to the wider war effort. Yet concerns about their gender ambiguity rumbled on. An Evening News journalist begrudgingly praised members for their ‘excellent’ service but heavily criticised them for having ‘short cropped hair’ and a ‘mannish stride’, which he found ‘distasteful’, and noted that it would be preferable if they sported ‘more feminine garments’.129 The cutting of long hair, the crown of true womanhood, was perceived by conservatives as a signifier of cultural decline. A new mode of modern elite femininity evolved during the war as women increasingly took on roles outside the nursing profession. Even conservative newspapers such as The Times noted that nursing was ‘no longer’ women’s only wartime role. The New Woman had developed a ‘new skill’ that enabled her to extend her caring role from the ward into the field, conveying wounded soldiers ‘easily and swiftly and with the least possible agony of transit’, a task in which ‘she glories’.130 One way in which the challenge female ambulance drivers posed to configurations of gender was resolved was to reclassify the job, framing it as feminine. The Times, for example, noted ‘The work is hard … but it is women’s work, noble in character, and of immense importance to the empire.’131 These changing attitudes toward certain kinds of work prompted by women’s entry have been termed ‘frontlash’ by Sally Mitchell.132 The Corps generated a lot of attention, and much of the writing was supportive, regarding members’ martial dress and challenging war work as evidence of their modernity.133 As Barbara McLaren noted in her 1917 book Women of the War, ‘there is no more certain sign of the times than the sight of women in khaki uniforms and military badges driving’.134 v 239 v

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Women of war The Star observed that ‘feminine nerves are utterly displaced by feminine nerve’; War Budget Illustrated noted that ‘No wonder the Tommies are proud of the FANYs. They have shown themselves to be brave, bright and indomitable’; while The Times commented on their ‘enterprise and pluck’.135 Such articles, as well as those titled ‘British Women’s Stoicism’ and ‘Lady’s Courage and Endurance’, were generally condescending; exaggerating women’s skills; and, as Gail Braybon has argued more broadly about the press coverage of working-​class women workers, did them a ‘disservice’.136 What is strikingly apparent, however, is the absence of references in the media and in personal accounts of this time to women as ‘bad drivers’. Michael L. Berger asserts that it was not until after the First World War that women were typecast in such negative ways: prior to the war only wealthy women, who did not constitute a threat to the social order, could afford to drive, and it was with ownership becoming attainable to the middle classes in the 1920s that negative labels abounded.137 In addition to articles, FANYs featured in a cinematographic film. The Care of Our Wounded showed the journey that wounded soldiers took from the battlefield, collected by male stretcher-​bearers and taken to a forward dressing station, then driven by ambulance to a casualty clearing station and put onto a ship sailing back to Britain. Another group of wounded men are taken by hospital train, and female ambulance drivers are shown undertaking their work. One scene, with the intertitle ‘VAD ambulance drivers at a base. Cleaning their cars and changing a tyre’, shows women based in Etaples in June 1917 undertaking dirty and physically strenuous work. A later intertitle notes ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (F.A.N.Y.) with convoy of wounded at the quay’, and eleven uniformed FANYs are filmed standing, talking and smiling in front of an ambulance, two of whom are wearing driving goggles on their hats. Behind them, in stark contrast to the khaki-​clad drivers, stand three nurses in white aprons and veils. A  FANY, at the head of a line of ambulances, is also shown hand-​cranking an engine.138 The novelty of khaki-​clad women, based in France near the fighting, manually starting their cars, driving heavy vehicles in testing conditions and undertaking all the maintenance on their ambulances was emphasised by their inclusion in the equally modern techniques of the illustrated press and cinematographic film. It is not known how widely circulated this film was. Not all representations, however, appreciated women’s assumption of roles previously undertaken by men, and some were concerned about the concomitant loss of femininity. The female author of one article entitled v 240 v

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Driving in the First World War ‘Women Motor Drivers: Is It a Suitable Occupation?’ answered emphatically ‘From experience “No” it is not. It is essentially a man’s job.’ Any woman with the ‘slightest regard for her future health and any anticipation of happiness’ was warned not to trespass upon this ‘masculine province’ out of ‘a mistaken sense of duty, of misguided patriotism’. The ‘average woman’, it was noted, was physically unsuited for driving and would be unable to stand the ‘fearful strain’. Only those who were ‘abnormally healthy, strong as a man [and] immune from the many trivial but distressing ailments’ that overwhelmed most women would be able to withstand the ‘tremendous exertion’. The article complained of the ‘uncongenial attitude of the garage’ and the ‘alien companionship with mechanics and chauffeurs’, and went on to predict that ‘wearying manual labour’ would have a deleterious effect on a woman’s ‘outlook upon life’, ‘isolate her mental standing’, ‘rob her of much feminine charm’, ‘diminish’ her ‘youth and vitality’, and ‘instil into her mind bitterness that will eat from her heart all capacity for joy, steal away her youth and deprive her of the colour and sunlight of life’.139 Ambulance drivers’ ‘anxious parents’ tore out the page and posted it to their daughters stationed in France. In her memoir, Pat Waddell recalled the ‘shrieks of joy’ and ‘loud sobs’ of laughter as they read the ‘priceless article’ and ‘lapped it up with joy’.140 Their class backgrounds lent them the self-​confidence to challenge traditional assumptions about women’s capabilities, while their volunteer status meant they had more freedom than the military auxiliaries to undertake these roles. Writing about this incident, Janet Lee notes that in telling the story Waddell ‘constructs the FANY as women conscious of wartime gender negotiations who enjoyed their placement outside the norm’.141 Laura Doan takes a more critical stance, noting that the narration of the tale ‘smacks of manly bravado’ and posits that ‘it seems the women might protest too much. Might such playfulness mask the women’s own anxieties and concerns about the effects of mechanical labour on their sexed and gendered selves?’142 While the article’s predictions of doom were laughable, Waddell’s description of the women’s overly theatrical reactions leaves no room for apprehension, as Doan notes, or for anger and frustration. Their ability to respond to derision with humour is also seen in poetry, a cultural device several members deployed to assert their agency. A verse written by a FANY acknowledged the barriers they had faced when they commenced their work abroad, perceived as frivolous women who had engineered their way to France illicitly and were squandering precious supplies to fuel their vehicles: v 241 v

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Women of war They used to say we were rotten once! Joy-​riding out at the battle once! Wasting petrol and carbide once!143

The repetition of ‘once’ suggests this scornful attitude toward them was now in the past, while the exclamation marks serve to underscore the absurdity of those charges and also shows that they mattered. The female journalist who was so against women drivers was not alone in her concern about the defeminising effect of war work. Jesse, who, as we have seen, was dispatched to France to observe the work of female ambulance drivers, was adamant that if they wanted ‘sunny-​haired lassies in khaki touch’ she was not the right person for the brief. She made explicit that ‘I am not, and have never been, a feminist’, and aligned herself with anti-​suffragists who felt that women ought to be satisfied with influencing a man’s vote rather than having one themselves, and that more could be accomplished through ‘charm’.144 She railed against the outbreak of ‘khakiitis’ and noted that her own reaction, like that of many, was ‘to become rather self-​consciously proud of our femininity, of being “fluffy” ’. She ‘went without enthusiasm’ to France and ‘felt no particular interest in the work of the women over there’. However, upon spending time with the FANY drivers in Calais she underwent a ‘conversion’, ceasing to be a ‘mocker’, and was persuaded by the ‘outstanding’ ‘bands of girls … [who] had their fingers on the pulse of war’.145 Her articles and her memoir are infused with statements that suggest she saw them as modern young women. There was, she noted, ‘a very carefree atmosphere about the Fannies’. Writing in Vogue, a magazine committed to cultivating women’s fascination with clothing, Jesse admires their ‘amazing’ rejection of feminine appearance, applauds their lack of interest in how others perceive them and commends the FANY for their single-​minded focus on ambulance driving: It is a sort of splendid austerity, that pervades their look and outlook … and in their bodies expresses itself in a disregard for appearances that one would never have thought to find in human woman. It leaves you gasping. They come in, wind-​blown, reddened, hot with exertion … toss their caps down, brush their hair back from their brow in the one gesture that no woman has ever permitted herself or liked in a lover  –​and they don’t mind. It is amazing, that disregard for appearances.146

Jesse’s descriptions of FANYs differ remarkably from her much more feminine depictions of WAACs, a high proportion of whom were v 242 v

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Driving in the First World War working-​class. She wrote about FANYs in a language that was richly suggestive: their appearance and attitude left her reeling, breathless and captivated. These ‘sturdy girls’ who were ‘not pretty’ ‘made me feel in the beautiful way they shepherded me, that I was a silly useless female, and that they were grave chivalrous young men’.147 Liberated from the constraining parameters of performing femininity by being ‘too intent on what they are doing and car[ing] too little about themselves or what anyone may be thinking of them’, FANYs experience ‘blessed freedom’. With a hint of envy Jesse proclaims ‘This is what it is to be as free as a man.’148 And contrary to Ivy Sanders, who speculated in her article on the suitability of driving as an occupation for women that ‘a constant strain on the nerves’ would result in ‘disaster’ in ‘ninety nine cases out of a hundred’, Jesse, with first-​hand observation, concluded ‘there has not been a single case of strain from working the heavy ambulances’.149 Jesse’s articles were propaganda pieces designed to counter the prevailing negative stereotypes of these women and promote war work as something that could be exciting at a time when many areas that needed women’s labour were struggling to recruit. FANYs read these articles with delight:  like the account of the drivers’ reactions to the critical article by Sanders, we can also glimpse the response to Jesse’s journalism. Marshall wrote to her mother: ‘You must get hold of the late May “Vogue” –​There is an awfully amusing article with photographs of us … I should rather like to have a copy of it when I get home.’150 Jesse was not the only woman sent out to chronicle the work of female ambulance drivers in France. While Jesse’s accounts were textual, Olive Edis’s were photographic. She had been commissioned by the Women’s Work Committee of the newly conceived Imperial War Museum to live among uniformed women in 1919 and take ‘more intimate pictures [that were] more descriptive of their everyday life, than a man press photographer’. She was thus the first official British female war photographer sent to France. As Jane Carmichael notes, while the images taken by visiting official photographers for the popular press were generally light-​ hearted and spontaneous, depicting laughing, attractive women, which suggested they were exotic novelties, Edis, who stayed at the camp and was thus able to develop a rapport with them, took 171 photographs, most of which were meticulously staged, in a style that was more intimate and serious.151 In a short written account of her time with the female ambulance drivers, she noted that FANYs were ‘a very jolly type of good-​ class English girl … some of a decidedly sporting and masculine stamp –​ but so fresh and healthy and attractive’.152 v 243 v

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Women of war

Figure 5.2  Four FANYs of the Calais convoy pose by their car for Olive Edis in March 1919. Commanding Officer Lilian Franklin is on the left of the image. Note the FANY on the right has her hand on the starting handle. Both Edis and Jesse were enthralled by what they regarded as FANYs’ manliness, expressed through their strength, fitness, robustness, stoicism and appealing carefree appearance. Certainly, self-​confessed ‘tomboys’ such as Sadie Bonnell, Marian Gamwell and Pat Waddell were, in driving ambulances in northern France, able to break out of the claustrophobic mould of Edwardian domesticity; to trespass on male territory, adorned with military rank and uniform; to endure testing conditions; and to have experiences previously available only to men. As Ashley-​Smith noted, ‘This was true adventure. I chuckled to myself at the faces of the dear people at home could they see me now!’153 On one occasion, when she was accused of being a spy by a French sentry, had a gun pointed at her and was threatened with being shot, she and a fellow FANY ‘pulled out large khaki handkerchiefs and pretended to dry our imaginary tears, and laughed’.154 While they undertook mocking performances of v 244 v

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Driving in the First World War stereotypical feminine behaviour, others seem to have found new forms of self-​expression by adopting male nicknames:  there was a Tommy, Chris, Moses, Bobs, Monty, Jimmie, Andy, Dick, Dicky and two Tonys. While some were simply shortened versions of their surnames (Moseley-​ Williams, Montagu, Richardson) or first names (Christabel, Antonia), such masculine identifications may have been adopted to align themselves with soldiers, or a conscious denial of femininity in order to refine their performances of manliness. While we might read the assuming of male nicknames, the cropping of hair, and the donning of overalls and trousers by FANYs who were performing the gendered role of driver-​ mechanic as examples of female masculinity, we ought not to confuse such gender variance with same-​sex desire. The inadequacy of labelling such women lesbians, thereby projecting current understandings onto the past and ahistoricising these behaviours in our eagerness to ‘fill in the blanks’, has been persuasively demonstrated by both Laura Doan and Alison Oram.155 Doan is struck by ‘how many masculine women completely lacked any kind of self awareness about matters related to sexual identity’ and has discredited the myth that a mannish appearance was understood during the war and in the early twenties as a signifier of lesbianism.156 As Oram notes, it was only after the 1928 obscenity trial of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness that masculine women were read in such ways.157 Certainly, FANYs’ masculinities were not pathologised. Overcoming resistance By the end of the war, FANYs were driving for the Belgian, French and British armies, but there was much resistance to overcome before they secured these ground-​breaking opportunities. The first to utilise their services were the Belgian hospital authorities, which were stretched to breaking point in 1914 and required the British to evacuate more than 12,000 soldiers.158 Needing transport, they informally approached the  FANY, requesting drivers and ambulances. Keen to be made use of, the FANY eagerly agreed and members of the Corps began driving for the Belgian army in 1914, ferrying wounded soldiers from advanced dressing stations and regimental first aid posts to casualty clearing stations and field hospitals, to meet trains or canal barges and take them on to military base hospitals. Despite the success of driving for the Belgian army, the British and French armed forces remained highly resistant to deploying women as drivers and repeatedly rejected FANY proposals to convey the wounded. This section examines those barriers and considers v 245 v

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Women of war how Ashley-​Smith overcame obstacles, virtually to monopolise Allied military ambulance driving in Calais. When the FANY offered its services voluntarily to the French army, it was declined on the spurious grounds of lack of toilet facilities. Ashley-​ Smith finally overcame French opposition by noting that they had long been driving their casualties and by reassuring them that the FANY was British, thereby enabling France to preserve national pride by not using French women in such a capacity. The success of Unit 6, the first convoy officially to drive for the French, and based from summer 1917 at Amiens for six weeks (and, subsequently, of Unit 7 at Epernay from November 1917, Unit 9 from December at Chalôns-​sur-​Marne, Unit 10 from summer 1918 at St Dizier and Unit 11 at Vitry-​le-​François from August 1918), was undoubtedly instrumental in alleviating antagonisms toward the deployment of French women, as by the end of the war the French army had relaxed its opposition and employed over 200. Like FANYs, they tended to come from privileged backgrounds and had previous experience of driving.159 The vehicles the French army gave the Corps to drive their wounded were old and in a poor state of repair, and French ambulance men in Amiens sabotaged the vehicles before handing them over. FANY mechanics often drew large crowds and there was much incredulity at their capabilities: a French driver ‘protested it was a hard job for a woman … to change a heavy tyre like that!’160 This scepticism was a common narrative trope: The Happy Foreigner, based on Enid Bagnold’s experiences with the FANY, records the cynicism of French chauffeurs who did not think women could handle the Rochet model: ‘That car is too heavy for your strength, mademoiselle. It is not a car for a lady.’ Refusing to give in and responding that she likes the make, one FANY attempts to start the engine, which backfires and hurts her wrist. Determined to prove that women can operate the vehicle, ‘she caught the handle with her injured hand and with a gasp, swung the Rochet into throbbing life’. The Frenchmen return to their work: ‘The women were accepted.’161 Having secured employment driving for the Belgian and French armies, the FANYs were ‘naturally anxious’ to also attend to the wounded of their compatriots and drive for the British army.162 The British establishment, however, strongly resisted FANY offers of voluntary assistance, concerned that employing independent women unaffiliated to the army in proximity to the battlefield would cause a scandal. As Marian Gamwell noted decades later, ‘The War Office were adamant that they didn’t require any drivers and they just wanted their own Army Nursing Service as far v 246 v

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Driving in the First World War as the nursing side of it went.’163 Yet they had relied on the FANY on an unauthorised basis in June 1915 when the Red Cross, unable to cope with the influx of casualties after the calamitous offensives at Aubers Ridge and Festubert in May 1915, approached the Corps asking for assistance. Attempts to formalise the agreement with the British were continually thwarted, however, as the army was fiercely opposed to deploying women in such a capacity. In July 1915, Ashley-​Smith submitted a written request that the FANY take over driving motor ambulances at Calais and thereby ‘set free many of the able-​bodied men’.164 She responded to criticisms that their deployment would be a scandalous novelty by noting they had been undertaking this work for the Belgians since October 1914 and that their class background and discipline had ensured there was no scandal. She records in the FANY magazine that the idea was ‘negatived as impracticable and quite impossible’, and she was informed that women would never drive for the British army in France.165 Such intransigence was underpinned by distinctly gendered assumptions:  women might have been tolerated as nurses and first aiders, as that was safely entrenched within conventional gender roles, but driving was outside the parameters of service deemed suitable for women. Moreover, if women were ever to be used as drivers, the VAD, which had been formed by the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John, was more likely to be chosen rather than an independent women’s organisation. Ashley-​Smith was undeterred by previous rejections and continued to pester the Red Cross and Army General Headquarters about the possibilities of a women’s ambulance convoy. Several months later she submitted a further application volunteering their services as replacements for male ambulance drivers, deploying various devices including appeals to common sense, fiscal management and patriotism, as well as reassurance, entreaty and threat. She recommended that all convoys ought to be “ ‘manned” by women [in order] to free up men to undertake the rougher work further afield that women perhaps cannot undertake’.166 She reassured the authorities that ‘[t]‌here is no danger and no untoward physical strain’, and asserted that ‘as British women they are anxious to serve under the British Government’.167 She threatened that if the British did not want to use them, they would approach others. As she said, ‘Red tape never cut any ice with me.’168 Ashley-​Smith’s perseverance in ignoring antagonism and rejection paid off. Recognising that they could save money by employing volunteers rather than male Red Cross workers, who were each paid 42s a week, the British army finally acquiesced. During negotiations, she fought v 247 v

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Women of war hard to ensure they would not be subsumed within the Red Cross or the VADs, and could retain their identity, uniform and independent status. Members signed a form of declaration and agreement with the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John, and were afforded protection under the Geneva Convention.169 Official sanction was finally given in December 1915, and on 1 January 1916 sixteen FANYs forming Unit 3 under the command of Lilian Franklin became the first women’s ambulance convoy formally to drive wounded British soldiers. Ashley-​Smith noted that she was ‘very elated’ and that 6 December 1915  ‘should be a historic date as it is the first convoy of women to drive for the British Army on active service. My conditions about uniform and the name F.A.N.Y were accepted but I had to fight for it … (It had cost me a lot of arguing to get that clause in!)’.170 Their deployment was an enormous boost and was celebrated in the FANY magazine as ‘the means of letting us get to the front’.171 When she arrived at the new camp to begin driving for the British in January 1916 Thompson wrote ‘We started the first woman’s M.A.C. [motor ambulance convoy] ever to work for the British Army … Lots of work but are all so very pleased to be here.’172 Satisfaction resulting from their pioneering status is also apparent in Waddell’s memoir: ‘you can imagine our excitement at the prospect. The very first women to drive British wounded officially. It was an epoch in women’s work in France and the forerunner of all the subsequent convoys.’173 As well as paving the way for later FANY units, Unit 3, which drove British wounded until the war ended, set a precedent for the VAD and other ambulance units that subsequently drove for the British. In a two-​year period, the FANY drivers carried nearly 140,000 cases for the British army.174 The relenting of the British authorities in permitting elite women to drive was undeniably due to the protracted nature of the war, the terrible loss of life and the extremely low ratio of combatant to non-​combatant men, rather than to any change in attitudes about women. It was in 1915, the year of the shell crisis and the subsequent nationalisation of munitions, that the conflict escalated into a total war. In her novel featuring female ambulance drivers, Evadne Price was highly critical of male authority figures ‘who called on women when the manpower supply gave out unexpectedly’.175 Given the shortage of male labour and the need to release all available men for combatant duties, it was expedient for womanpower to be deployed. With the passing of the Military Service Act in January 1916, the voluntary system of recruitment ended and made liable for call-​up single men and widowers without dependent children who were v 248 v

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Driving in the First World War aged between eighteen and forty-​one. Many Red Cross male ambulance drivers were called up and deployed on the front line in a combatant capacity. Some took exception to being substituted by women and, being ‘not very pleased at having to leave’, impeded the women’s work by tinkering with the engines before they departed.176 Despite overcoming British army resistance to using women as drivers, there were repeated attempts by the authorities to limit their assistance and curtail their independence: FANY accounts are replete with tales of hostility and obstructionism. A British captain in charge of workshops in St Omer was ‘horrified almost to mutiny, at the idea of women drivers’, but Unit 8 drivers won him round by ensuring that their cars were so thoroughly cleaned before he inspected them that ‘one could almost go underneath in evening dress without mishap’.177 Other units were less successful at surmounting impediments. Unit 6 drove for the French in summer 1917 transporting casualties to a large hospital located in the British sector in Amiens. The British authorities were irritated that they had not been consulted and ordered the FANY out of the British zone. In late September, six weeks after the formation of their convoy, Unit 6 left Amiens and recommenced their driving in Château-​Thierry, which was in an area under French governance: The trouble is that you ladies apparently were in the zone of British Armies without any permission from the British Authorities. This was discovered by the P.M. [Prime Minister] who refered [sic] the matter to the A.G. [Adjutant General] who wrote to the French about it. The French have apologised and have sent you away, as it is impossible to have English ladies working on their own for the French inside the British zone.178

On another occasion, the British wrote to the Belgian authorities stating that female drivers were not permitted to go out during night-​ time air raids and requested their support in implementing the policy. The Belgians marked the document ‘seen and approved’. Ashley-​Smith was outraged at the limitations imposed on the Corps’s work and scrawled ‘seen and not approved’ across it.179 Frustrated by the fact that an independent Corps not under British army control was undertaking all the driving of British, French and Belgian casualties for every hospital in Calais, the War Office, supported by the Red Cross, which had long been annoyed by the autonomous FANYs, sought to abolish them. They decreed that only British women working under their auspices could remain in France, and so while the authorised drivers for the British of Unit 3 were safe from closure, a second ambulance convoy that had been v 249 v

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Women of war established in Calais for the Belgians, Unit 5, was at risk. Ashley-​Smith heard that a Red Cross representative was being sent to close it down and promptly met with the Belgian Commander. Confronted with the likelihood of losing the invaluable services of the FANY, he decided to incorporate them into the Corps de Transport de Calais (Belge), and they were sworn in as soldats of the Belgian Army. Outmanoeuvring the Red Cross, which had no jurisdiction over Belgian soldiers, the FANY survived this attempt to dissolve it. The British tried again to limit their scope by threatening to withhold the necessary permit needed for Ashley-​Smith’s return from England to Calais unless she relinquished to the Red Cross the Belgian ambulance convoy. She circumvented the British a second time by approaching the French authorities and secured a permit: ‘obstacles blocked every step of the way –​officialdom, red tape, active enmity, all these had to be pushed aside … [R]‌ed tape is like barbed wire entanglements –​if you can’t cut it, get round it.’180 Most members appreciated her resolve. In a letter to her mother shortly before the end of the war Marshall noted: It is a thankless job you know working for the British  –​all kicks and no pence; however there is a great consolidation [sic] in having complete confidence and respect for one’s Head and in being proud of one’s own crowd. I  get  almost blithering now with spirit de corps [sic] but there is a most extraordinary bond between the people here –​of course we have our one or two exceptions but the real sort of Fanny here is almost unbeatable.181

Despite the opposition they faced throughout the war, the Belgian, French and British establishment bestowed 135 awards on the Corps, far higher than on any other women’s organisation.182 Ashley-​Smith alone was presented with ten medals for her work, ‘more than any other women ever received except the Queen, at least that’s what she always said proudly’, noted her daughter.183 The conferring of medals to FANYs was widely reported in the press both during the war and afterwards. Scrapbooks held at FANY headquarters, the Imperial War Museum and the Liddle Collection are filled with newspaper clippings reporting awards ‘for bravery in the field’ and ‘for gallantry and conspicuous devotion to duty’.184 Marshall’s name appeared in various newspapers, much to her delight: ‘Isn’t it a scream?’185 She wrote home about being given the Military Medal: ‘We feel of course, we don’t deserve it’, but went on to admit ‘we are most fearfully pleased as you may imagine’.186 Even the American press reported extensively on drivers’ accolades: Thompson’s photograph was featured particularly widely, Mary Bushby Stubbs’s Croix v 250 v

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Driving in the First World War de Guerre and Médaille Militaire were the subject of an illustrated article in a Colorado publication and Mrs Ashton-​Bennett’s Croix de Guerre for distinguished conduct under fire while driving was reported in an Iowan newspaper.187 Both the official commendations of their bravery and the global reporting of their receipt of prestigious war medals are further illustrations of FANYs’ modernity. By late 1918, they had given up nursing altogether and were solely driving. Accordingly, they stopped wearing the Red Cross badge sewn onto the sleeve of their tunic.188 While many drove their ambulances back to Britain following the disbanding of their units in May 1919, others remained in France, serving independently under the patronage of other organisations until 1920: they drove for the Reparations Committee; the Empire Leave Club in Cologne; the British Red Cross in Boulogne; the Belgian Military Automobile Service in Brussels and Paris; the French army Régions Liberées in Versailles; the French Red Cross Service des Blessés et Refugiés throughout eastern France; a British Officers’ convalescent home in Cap Martin; the Imperial War Graves Commission at St Omer, transporting the gardeners who were laying out the cemeteries, collecting and identifying the fragmented bits of bodies and taking them to be buried; and they drove prisoners of war back from Germany after the Armistice.189 As Joan Bowles recollected of this time: It seemed strange at first, never to hear the guns nor the humming of the Boche avions, to go down roads which were no longer under shellfire; life has lost some of its salt and there is a certain flatness in the runs now; no more orders for casques et masques, no more being told not to loiter at certain places, but also, mercifully, no more trains of suffering men.190

FANYs also provided a Guard of Honour at the disinterment of nurse Edith Cavell’s corpse, which was taken back to Britain for reburial. The last FANY to return to Britain was Puckle in 1922, having driven for the American Committee for the Devastated Regions of France. The war has widely been regarded as altering the course of women’s lives:  Harriet Blodgett notes that it was ‘actually Edwardian women’s gain … affording them an horrific impetus to action and self-​expression’, while Janet Watson asserts that it was ‘a transformative experience that shaped their self-​identities for the rest of their lives’.191 Some FANYs acknowledged decades after the war that it had acted as a catalyst for positive change: Cecily Mordaunt remarked that it ‘changed the aspect of life for so many of us’, while Phyllis Puckle, who found contentment in a continued life of service, noted ‘I look back on an active, varied, v 251 v

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Women of war and I  think useful life.’192 However, as the units were being disbanded in the aftermath of war, there was real uncertainty. One newspaper article, entitled ‘The Future of the Real War Girl: Will She Ever Return to a Life of Pleasure?’, noted that there must be thousands of women who had escaped a life of privileged monotony: ‘What will they do? What will they become?’193 These were the very questions that Marshall posed in her letters home after the Armistice. Initially she was optimistic, hoping that her wartime skills and experience would continue to garner respect and opportunities, and that her contacts would facilitate her finding work as a driver.194 Later letters speak to her growing awareness that her prewar social connections had been severed and record her increasing despair at the prospect of being demobilised, which brought with it a loss of role and status. This angst was undoubtedly felt by others. One woman, who by her own admission had lived a ‘life of emptiness’ in a ‘quiet and monotonous’ Scottish village before the war where ‘[t]‌here was nothing to do’, had, according to the journalist, ‘left comfort and a secluded life, and in hard and thankless work had found herself ’. Like the fictional Miss Ogilvy with whom we started this chapter, this FANY had found fulfilment in the meaningful war work she undertook with skill, but the prospect of returning to her previous existence left her feeling a sense of hopelessness about the ‘narrowness’ of her past leisured life and anxiety about the future: ‘How can I go back to it? … Was I of any use in Scotland …? I must travel. I must do work.’195 Conclusion With her cropped hair and masculine clothing, and undertaking work tagged as male, the female ambulance driver symbolised a way of being in the world that scholars have labelled modern. She held a disruptive power, a capacity to flex gender boundaries, destabilising clearly defined, antithetical male and female wartime roles, and called into question what men were fighting for:  she was not the woman back in Blighty ‘keeping the homes fires burning’, knitting comforts for the troops. Her very presence close to the front line in Sezanne, Chalons-​sur-​Marne, Amiens, Epernay, Hoogstadt, Marquise, St Dizier, Bar Le Duc, Ypres, St Omer and Calais threatened to undermine the previously rigid division between the Home Front, perceived at the time and subsequently as the preserve of women, the elderly and the physically unfit, and the battlefield, a purely masculine domain.196 Driving a motorised ambulance of incapacitated wounded men near to the front and undertaking for herself v 252 v

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Driving in the First World War the mechanical maintenance of her vehicle gave her freedom, mobility, responsibility, agency and authority. She was equipped with appropriate skills previously deemed masculine, such as physical strength, mechanical know-​how and bravery; wore practical clothing; and was undertaking an important role in the public domain. In multiple ways then, she was inherently transgressive and reconfigured what it meant to be a woman. But, as Laura Doan notes, ‘There is little evidence that these female drivers discovered in the act of motoring as part of their duties as ambulance drivers that they were free modern subjects.’197 And while FANYs were trespassing on male terrain and saw themselves as ‘pioneers of women’s work’, they were not consciously trying to take up arms, change the gender tags of war, strike a blow for women’s political rights or prove the value of women as a group in wartime.198 Instead, they sought to undertake a role that proved the usefulness of the Corps by actively aiding the war effort and provided individual members with a sense of fulfilment and adventure. Notes 1 Helen Zenna Smith [Evadne Price], Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War (London: A. E. Marriott, 1930), pp. 59–​60 (p. 50). While Price alleged that the novel was based on the wartime diaries of ambulance driver Winifred Young, presumably because claims to ‘authenticity’ were important in the literary marketplace, extensive research by Krisztina Robert trying to trace Young found no record of either her or her diary. Email from Krisztina Robert, 20 August 2019. See also Krisztina Robert, ‘Conflicting Stories: Literary Representations of Women’s Military Experience in World War I’, unpublished paper presented at the North American Conference on British Studies, Pasadena (2000). 2 ‘Englishwomen with the French Army: Miss Toupie Lowther’s Unit’, undated newspaper clipping, in Celia Meade file, Imperial War Museum, 12316. 3 Radclyffe Hall, Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (London: William Heinemann, 1934). 4 Radclyffe Hall, ‘Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Unpublished Version)’ in ‘The World’ and Other Unpublished Works by Radclyffe Hall, ed. Jana Funke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 171–​82 (p. 175). 5 Radclyffe Hall, ‘Appendix:  Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Published Version)’ in ‘The World’ and Other Unpublished Works, pp.  212–​225 (p.  214); Hall, ‘Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Unpublished Version)’, p. 172. 6 Hall, ‘Appendix: Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Published Version)’, p. 214. 7 Ibid., pp.  213, 216; Hall, ‘Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Unpublished Version)’, pp. 171, 174. 8 Hall, ‘Appendix: Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Published Version)’, p. 212.

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Women of war 9 Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928). 10 Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (London:  Barrie and Jenkins, 1976), pp. 271, 16, 49, 271. 11 Ibid., pp. 271, 274. 12 Ibid., pp. 275, 279, 290, 298. 13 Enid Bagnold, The Happy Foreigner (London:  Virago, 1987 [1920]), pp. 55,  132–​5. 14 Ibid., p. 131. 15 Laura Doan, ‘Topsy-​Turvydom: Gender Inversion, Sapphism and the Great War’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 12:4 (2006), 517–​42 (p. 534). 16 Sandra M. Gilbert, ‘Soldier’s Heart: Literary Men, Literary Women and the Great War’, in Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel and Margaret Collins Weitz (eds), Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 197–​226 (p. 214). 17 Janette Lean, ‘Two Days with the FANY Convoy’, Gazette, September 1916. 18 Doan, ‘Topsy-​Turvydom’, p. 519. 19 Jane Marcus, ‘Afterword. Corpus/​Corps/​Corpse: Writing the Body in/​at War’, in Helen Zenna Smith, Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War (New  York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1989), pp. 241–​300 (p. 244). 20 Laura Doan, ‘Primum Mobile: Women and Auto/​Mobility in the Era of the Great War’, Women: A Cultural Review, 17:1 (2006), 26–​41 (p. 28). 21 Doan, ‘Topsy-​ Turvydom’, p.  527; Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 1. 22 Janet S.  K. Watson, Fighting Different Wars:  Experience, Memory, and the First World War in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 114–​15; Lucy Noakes, ‘“A disgrace to the country they belong to”:  The Sexualisation of Female Soldiers in First World War Britain’, Revue: Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English Speaking World, 6:4 (2008),  11–​26. 23 Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 89. 24 Sean O’Connell, ‘Motoring and Modernity’, in Frances Carnevali and Julie-​ Marie Strange (eds), 20th Century Britain:  Economic, Cultural and Social Change (Pearson: Harlow, 2007), pp. 111–​26; Sean O’Connell, ‘Gender and the Car in Interwar Britain’, in Moira Donald and Linda Hurcombe (eds), Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 175–​91. 25 Sean O’Connell, The Car in British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring, 1896–​ 1939 (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 1998); David Thoms, Len Holden and Tim Claydon (eds), The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Aldgate, 1998). 26 This is an industry that is 99.96 per cent male. In 2013, the Guardian reported that there were about 200 female and 500,000 male mechanics; Deirdre

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Driving in the First World War Claffey, ‘Meet the Women Doing “Men’s Work” ’, Guardian, 26 April 2013. The number of British garages employing ‘a female mechanic’ has risen from just 4 per cent in 2011 to 9 per cent in March 2018; ‘Number of Female Mechanics Rises by 125%’, Automotive Management Online, www.am-​online. com/​news/​people-​news/​2018/​03/​02/​number-​of-​female-​mechanics-​rises-​by-​ 125 (accessed 7 December 2018). 27 Mrs Edward Kennard, ‘Motor Bicycling for Ladies’, Car Illustrated, 27 August 1902. 28 Julie Wosk, Women and the Machine:  Representations from the Spinning Wheel  to the Electronic Age (Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. xi. 29 Margaret Walsh, ‘Gendering Transport History:  Retrospect and Prospect’, Journal of Transport History, 23 (2002), 1–​8. 30 Kathleen Bell, ‘ “Poop Poop!”: An Early Case of Joy-​Riding by an Upper Class Amphibian’, in Thomas, Holden and Claydon, The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century, pp. 69–​83 (p. 73). 31 Autocar, 2 June 1905; and ‘From a Motorist’s Notebook’, The Times, 11 July 1907, both cited in O’Connell, The Car in British Society, p. 46. 32 C. Byng-​Hall, ‘Dorothy Levitt:  A Personal Sketch’, in Dorothy Levitt, The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women who Motor or who Want to Motor (London: John Lane, 1909), pp. 3–​12 (p. 4). 33 Ann Kramer, ‘Levitt, Dorothy Elizabeth’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi-​org.chain.kent.ac.uk/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​92721 (accessed 28 September 2018); Edward Douglas-​ Scott-​ Montagu, Third Baron of Beaulieu, Lost Causes of Motoring (London: Cassell, 1960), p. 207. 34 Levitt, The Woman and the Car, pp. 15, 23. 35 Wosk, Women and the Machine, p. 139. 36 ‘The Sensational Adventures of Dorothy Levitt, Champion Lady Motorist of the World’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 17 November 1906; ‘Women’s Volunteer Reserve’, Kent and Sussex Courier, 3 March 1916. 37 Enid Bagnold, Enid Bagnold’s Autobiography (from 1889) (London: Heinemann, 1969), p. 1. 38 Roy Terry, ‘Talbot [née Bonnell], Sara [Sadie]’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​53365 (accessed 5 December 2019); The Times, 9 September 1993; obituary of Sadie Talbot, Daily Telegraph, 13 September 1993; Independent, 11 September 1993; Sadie Bonnell file, Liddle Collection, WO/​114. 39 Phyllis Puckle file, Liddle Collection, WO/​097. 40 Lynette Beardwood, ‘Ellis, Mary Baxter’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​70523 (accessed 5 December 2019). 41 Marian Gamwell, interviewed by Margaret A.  Brooks, 5 November 1974, Imperial War Museum, 502.

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Women of war 42 Roy Terry, ‘Gamwell, (Antonia) Marian’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​67668 (accessed 5 December 2019). 43 Gamwell, Imperial War Museum, 502. 44 ‘Women Even in Motor-​Racing’, Illustrated London News, 11 July 1908. 45 ‘Brooklands Women:  Muriel Thompson’, www.brooklandsmuseum.com/​ explore/​our-​collection/​blog/​brooklands-​women-​muriel-​thompson (accessed 9 August 2018); Lynette Beardwood, ‘Thompson, Muriel Annie’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​68164 (accessed 5 December 2019). 46 John S. Haller Jr, Farmcarts to Fords:  A History of the Military Ambulance, 1790–​1925 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), p. 164. 47 Bagnold, Autobiography, p. 26. 48 Pat Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (London: John Murray, 1919), p. 136. 49 Ibid., pp. 136, 123; Puckle, Liddle Collection, WO/​097. 50 ‘To Berylis!’, handwritten book of poetry, Norah Cluff file, FANY HQ. 51 Miss Y.  Birbeck in Puckle, Liddle Collection, WO/​097; Betty Hutchinson, ‘Work with the British Calais Convoy’, p.  3, Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 52 ‘To Berylis!’, Cluff file, FANY HQ. 53 Mary Marshall, letter to her mother, 3 December 1915, Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 54 Bagnold, The Happy Foreigner, p. 43. 55 Hall, ‘Appendix: Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Published Version)’, p. 213. 56 Hutchinson, ‘Work with the British Calais Convoy’, p.  7; Marshall, letters to  her father, 20 June and 4 May 1915, Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 57 Marshall, letters to parents, 7 April, 4 May, 6 June 1915, Marshall Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 58 ‘Women at the Wheel’, Daily Graphic, 10 September 1915. 59 La Crosse Tribune and Leader Press, 12 May 1918; Racine Journal News, 27 May 1918. 60 F. Tennyson Jesse, The Sword of Deborah: First Hand Impressions of the British Women’s Army in France (London: Richard Clay & Sons, 1918), p. 27. 61 Grace McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies, 1914–​1919:  The Story of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, unpublished manuscript, Imperial War Museum, 16605, p. 105. 62 Gamwell, Imperial War Museum, 502. 63 Miss R. J. Pennell, log book, 1 April 1918, Imperial War Museum, 4446. 64 R. Josephine Tennent, Red Herrings of 1918 (Speldhurst: Midas, 1980), p. 5. 65 Muriel Thompson, ‘Base Notes’, 10 March 1915, p.  25, Thompson file, FANY HQ. 66 ‘With Apologies to Kipling’, handwritten book of poetry, Cluff file, FANY HQ. Reproduced as ‘F.A.N.Y.’ by ‘One of the Saints’, Gazette, March (1918), 3.

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Driving in the First World War 67 Rudyard Kipling, ‘Tommy’ and ‘Back to the Army Again’, in The Barrack-​ Room Ballads of Rudyard Kipling (Munslow: Hearthstone Publications, 1995), pp. 33–​4, 82–​4. With thanks to Howard Booth and Jan Montefiore for this information. 68 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 22; Kate Finzi, Eighteen Months in the War Zone: A Record of a Woman’s Work on the Western Front (London: Cassell, 1916), p. 127. 69 Marshall, letter to her father, 4 May 1915, Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 70 ‘Women and Their Work:  Fine Record of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Daily Express, 29 February 1916. 71 Violet O’Neill Power, FANY HQ. 72 Gazette, December 1915, p. 4. 73 Thompson, ‘Base Notes’, February 1915, p. 2, FANY HQ. 74 ‘About “FANY” Girls’, Madison Wisconsin State Journal, 25 September 1919. 75 Trilby McDowall, letter to her mother, 1 October 1918. Letter in author’s possession from personal correspondence. 76 Jesse, The Sword of Deborah, p. 25. 77 ‘About “FANY” Girls’. 78 Muriel Thompson, ‘Calais 1916’, 1 January 1916, Thompson file, FANY HQ; Muriel Thompson, diary, 3 January 1918, Thompson file, Liddle Collection, WO/​115. 79 Doris Russell Allen, 8 January 1918, FANY HQ. 80 G. de Lisle, in Puckle file, Liddle Collection, WO/​097. 81 Marshall, letter to her mother, 5 August 1918, Marshall, Box 3, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 82 Winifred Mordaunt, ‘A Black Day in the Life of a Convoy FANY’, in handwritten book of poetry, Cluff file, FANY HQ; Betty Hutchinson, ‘My FANY life’, p. 13, Hutchinson, Box 1, Liddle Collection, WO/​057. 83 Levitt, The Woman and the Car, pp. 27, 52. 84 Tennent, Red Herrings of 1918, p. 32. 85 Grace McDougall, A Nurse at the War:  Nursing Adventures in Belgium and France (New York: McBride, 1917), p. 172. 86 Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (1919), p. 191. 87 Hutchinson, ‘Work with the British Calais Convoy’. See also Betty Hutchinson, Imperial War Museum, 7712, p. 2. 88 Pat Beauchamp, Fanny Went to War (London:  Routledge, 1940), p.  151; Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (1919), p. 191. 89 Gamwell, Imperial War Museum, 502. 90 Marshall, letter to her father, 13 January 1918, Marshall, Box 3, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 91 Thompson diary, 5 February 1917, FANY HQ. 92 Gamwell, Imperial War Museum, 502.

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Women of war 93 ‘A Railway Crossing Episode’, Edith Colston file, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 94 Hutchinson, Imperial War Museum, 7712, p. 3. 95 E. H. Wilkinson, ‘More FANY Recollections’, Gazette, spring 1962, 23–​5. 96 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 191. 97 Marshall, letter, 29 September 1918, Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A; ‘About “FANY” Girls’; Gamwell, Imperial War Museum, 502. 98 See Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (1919), pp.  222–​33; and Beauchamp, Fanny Went to War, pp.  169–​76, for accounts of the accident and her recovery. 99 General H. M. Thompson, ‘Introduction’, in Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (1919), pp. vi–​vii. 100 Beauchamp, Fanny Went to War, p. 176. 101 11,600 arm amputees and 29,400 leg amputees; Mary Guyatt, ‘Better Legs: Artificial Limbs for British Veterans of the First World War’, Journal of Design History, 14:4 (2001), 307–​25 (p. 311). 102 ‘Penalty of Patriotism’, Daily Sketch, 27 July 1917. 103 Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (1919), p. 199. 104 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 274. 105 Ibid., p. 275. 106 Thompson diary, 9–​11 April 1918, FANY HQ. 107 Doris Russell Allen, Gazette, April–​May 1918. 108 Desmond McDougall, War and Grace: One Woman’s Time at the Trenches (Whitley Bay: UK Book Publishing, 2015), p. 230. 109 Ida M. Lewis, ‘Our Battery: Part IV’, Gazette, April 1917, 6–​10 (p. 9). 110 Dori Laub, ‘Bearing Witness: On the Vicissitudes of Listening’, in Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony:  Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 57–​74 (p. 57). 111 Thompson, ‘Calais 1916’, 25 April 1916, FANY HQ. 112 Gamwell, Imperial War Museum, 502. There was a widespread perception that the Chinese were mentally fragile. Surgeon Captain Frederick Strange, in an article in the Lancet, recorded that there could be as many as 100 mentally ill patients at any one time at the Chinese hospital in Noyelles, and noted ‘so many Chinese went mad in France’, but he could not account for why. F. C. Strange, ‘The Chinese Hospital in France, 1917–​1919’, Lancet, 195 (1920), pp. 990–​1. Dominiek Dendooven suggests that shellshock and culture shock combined to produce an overwhelming sense of alienation, while Gregory James has argued that it was a consequence of the rapid introduction to modern warfare. Dominiek Dendooven, ‘Asia in Flanders Fields: A Transnational History of Indians and Chinese on the Western Front, 1914–​ 1920’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kent/​Universiteit Antwerpen, 2018), pp. 215–​16; Gregory James, The Chinese Labour Corps (1916–​1920) (Hong Kong: Bayview Educational, 2013), p. 622. While some labourers did hang

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Driving in the First World War themselves, there are no references to any throwing themselves in the canal. Thanks to Dominiek Dendooven for this information. 113 Hutchinson, ‘Work with the British Calais Convoy’, p. 11. 114 Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), p. 33. 115 Smith, Not So Quiet …, pp. 59–​60. 116 Lewis, ‘Our Battery: Part IV’. 117 Thompson, ‘Calais 1916’, 16 March 1916, pp. 7–​8, FANY HQ. 118 Thompson, diary, 8 July 1918, FANY HQ. 119 S. M. Mason, ‘A Memory’, 1916 Calais Convoy file, FANY HQ. 120 Winnifred Mordaunt, ‘A Black Day in the Life of a Convoy FANY’, in Cluff file, FANY HQ. 121 Donnett Mary Paynter, ‘If ’, in Cluff file, FANY HQ. 122 Janet Lee, War Girls: The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 96. 123 Lewis, ‘Our Battery: Part IV’, quoted in Gladys de Havilland, The Woman’s Motor Manual: How to Obtain Employment in Government or Private Service as a Woman Driver (London: Temple Press, 1918), preface (unpaginated); undated article from unidentified newspaper, pasted into ‘FANY Press Cuttings 1914–​1918’, FANY HQ. 124 Independent, 11 September 1993; Daily Telegraph, 13 September 1993; Terry, ‘Talbot, Sara’; Independent, 9 November 1988. 125 Katherine Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates:  The Story of Forty Five Years, 1875–​1920 (London: Peter Davies, 1940), p. 320. 126 ‘From a Motorist’s Notebook’, The Times, 11 July 1907; ‘Postwar Chivalry on the Road’, Autocar, 31 January 1920. Both articles cited in O’Connell, The Car in British Society, p. 46. 127 De Havilland, The Woman’s Motor Manual, preface (unpaginated). 128 ‘Women’s Volunteer Reserve’. 129 Evening News, 13 June 1916. Reports on the WAAC are replete with similar refrains. 130 ‘The New Woman: An Historical Note’, The Times, 6 January 1916. 131 The Times, 20 April 1917. 132 Sally Mitchell, The New Girl:  Girls’ Culture in England, 1880–​ 1915 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 42. 133 For example, see the large photograph and whole-​page interview entitled ‘A Woman in War:  Interview with Mrs McDougall. First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, Lady’s Pictorial and also Gentlewoman, 3 April 1915. 134 Barbara McLaren, Women of the War (London:  Hodder and Stoughton, 1917), p. 136. 135 Star, 26 August 1918; ‘The FANY Girls: Indomitables in the Battle Area’, War Budget Illustrated, 30 March 1916; ‘Pluck of the “Fannies” ’, The Times, 12 July 1918.

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Women of war 136 ‘British Women’s Stoicism’, Observer, undated, clipping pasted into ‘FANY Press Cuttings 1914–​1918’, FANY HQ; ‘Lady’s Courage and Endurance’, South Wales Daily News, 26 November 1918; Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (London: Croom Helm, 1981), p. 190. 137 Michael L. Berger, ‘Woman Drivers! The Emergence of Folklore and Stereotypical Opinions Concerning Feminine Automotive Behaviour’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 9:3 (1986), 257–​63. 138 The Care of Our Wounded, Ministry of Information/​Topical Film Company (1918), Imperial War Museum, 162. 139 G. Ivy Sanders, ‘Women Motor Drivers: Is It a Suitable Occupation?’, clipping from unidentified, undated newspaper in Lowson scrapbook, FANY HQ. 140 Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (1919), p. 156. 141 Janet Lee, “I wish my mother could see me now”:  The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) and Negotiation of Gender and Class Relations, 1907–​ 1918’, National Women’s Studies Association Journal, 19:2 (2007), 138–​58 (p. 150). 142 Doan, ‘Primum Mobile’, p. 156. 143 ‘One of the Saints’, ‘F.A.N.Y.’. 144 Jesse, The Sword of Deborah, p. 11. 145 Ibid., pp. 13–​14. 146 F. Tennyson Jesse, ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry: A Personal Impression of the FANY Camps in France –​Girls who Are Doing Yeoman Service’, Vogue, May 1918, 54. 147 Ibid., pp.  54, 70; F. Tennyson Jesse, ‘A Night with a Convoy:  An Account of the Work of the English Voluntary Aid Detachment in France’, Vogue, 1 September 1918, 72. 148 Jesse, The Sword of Deborah, p. 29. 149 Sanders, ‘Women Motor Drivers’; Jesse, The Sword of Deborah, p. 27. 150 Marshall, letter to her mother, 6 June 1918, Marshall, Box 3, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A (emphasis in original). 151 Jane Carmichael, ‘Review article. Olive Edis:  Imperial War Museum Photographer in France and Belgium, March 1919’, 13 January 1989, in Miss O. Edis, ‘The Record of a Journey to Photograph the British Women’s Services Overseas Begun 2 March 1919’, Imperial War Museum, DD 89/​19/​1. 152 Edis, ‘The Record of a Journey’. 153 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 187. 154 Ibid., p. 175. 155 Laura Doan, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality and Women’s Experience of Modern War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 102; Alison Oram, Her Husband Was a Woman!: Women’s Gender Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture (London: Routledge: 2007). 156 Doan, ‘Topsy Turvydom’, p. 525.

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Driving in the First World War 157 Oram, Her Husband Was a Woman!, p. 3. 158 M. Tasnier and Raoul van Overstraeten, L’armée belge dans la Guerre Mondiale (Brussels: Henri Bertels, 1931), p. 320. Thanks to Mario Draper for this information. 159 Margaret Darrow, French Women and the First World War:  Stories of the Home Front (Oxford: Berg, 2000), p. 255. 160 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 268; McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 161. 161 Bagnold, The Happy Foreigner, pp. 44–​6. 162 Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (1919), p. 108. 163 Gamwell, Imperial War Museum, 502. 164 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 103. 165 McDougall, ‘Brief Resumé of Corps’ Work’, Gazette, August 1916, 8–​12 (p. 11). 166 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 202. 167 Ibid.; letter dated 15 October 1915, ‘Early Days’, Liddle Collection. 168 Hugh Popham, F.A.N.Y.: The Story of the Women’s Transport Service, 1907–​ 1984 (London: Leo Cooper, 1984), p. 26. 169 Hutchinson’s signed form dated 8 January 1916, FANY HQ. 170 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 109. 171 McDougall, ‘Brief Resumé of Corps’ Work’, p. 11. 172 Thompson, ‘Calais 1916’, 1 January 1916, Thompson file, FANY HQ. 173 Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (1919), p. 54. 174 Gazette Supplement, August–​September 1918. 175 Helen Zenna Smith [Evadne Price], Women of the Aftermath (London: John Long, 1931), p. 197. 176 Hutchinson, Imperial War Museum, 7712, p.  2. See also Hutchinson, ‘Work with the British Calais Convoy’. The WAACs and Women’s Legion also experienced sabotage of equipment by men who had previously worked there before ‘going up the line’. Diana Shaw, ‘The Forgotten Army of Women: Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon:  The First World War Experienced (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), pp. 365–​79 (p. 367). 177 Hutchinson, ‘My FANY life’, pp. 17–​18. 178 Letter to Grace McDougall from [illegible signature] (letter headed ‘General Headquarters British Armies in France’), 24 September 1917, McDougall file, FANY HQ. 179 McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies’, p. 177. 180 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, pp. 82, 198. 181 Marshall, letter to her mother, 21 October 1918, Marshall, Box 3, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 182 The Corps was awarded seventeen Military Medals, ten Mentions in Despatches, two O.B.E.s and two M.B.E.s, as well as the 1914–​15 General

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Women of war Service and Victory medals from the British; one Légion d’honneur, thirty-​two Croix de Guerre and one Croix de Guerre with Palm leaf from the French; and six Ordres de Merite Croix Civique, thirteen Ordres de la Reine Elisabeth, one Officier de l’Ordre la Couronne, one Ordre de Léopold I first class and six Ordres de Léopold I second class from the Belgians. National Archives, HS 7/​7. 183 Letter from Rona Dobson to Hugh Popham, 1 May 1985, McDougall file, FANY HQ. 184 Daily Mirror, 17 January 1919; Daily Express, 9 July 1918. 185 Marshall, letter, 27 November 1918, Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​077A. 186 Marshall, letter, 7 October 1918, Marshall, Box 6, Liddle Collection, WO/​ 077A. 187 See, for example, Warren Morning Chronicle, 8 September 1918; ‘Army Nurse Twice Decorated for Bravery’, Colorado Transcript, 24 April 1919; ‘Woman Wins Medal as Motor Driver’, Dubuque Telegraph-​Herald, 1 December 1918. 188 Edith Colston, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, May 1973, Liddle Collection, WO/​018. 189 ‘About “FANY” Girls’. In a letter to John Harris of the British Architectural Library dated 3 August 1977, the architect Wilfred von Berg wrote: ‘Another of my jobs was the cemetery at Etretat where incidentally I  had a delightful affair with a charming FANY driver who had brought me there.’ Commonwealth War Graves Commission Archive, CWGC/​1/​1/​7/​B/​56/​2. Thanks to Mark Connolly for the information. 190 Joan Bowles, FANY HQ. 191 Harriet Blodgett, ‘What Price Change? The Great War and Englishwomen’s Diaries’, Turn-​of-​the-​Century Women, 2:1 (1985), 18–​29 (p.  21); Watson, Fighting Different Wars, p. 264. 192 Cecily Mordaunt, ‘Six Months in France’, FANY HQ; Puckle, Liddle Collection, WO/​097. 193 Paul Bewsher, ‘The Future of the Real War Girl. Will She Ever Return to a Life of Pleasure?’, Daily Mirror, 4 April 1919. 194 De Havilland, The Woman’s Motor Manual. 195 Bewsher, ‘The Future of the Real War Girl’. 196 Yet the Home Front was also populated by large numbers of men of conscription age who have been erased from popular memory. Juliette Pattinson, ‘“Shirkers”, “Scrimjacks” and “Scrimshanks”? British Civilian Masculinity and Reserved Occupations, 1914–​45’, Gender and History, 28:3 (2016), 709–​27. 197 Doan, ‘Primum Mobile’, p. 133. 198 McDougall, A Nurse at the War, p. 199.

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Concluding thoughts

A Woman of War has presented the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry as a case study of gender modernity. The Edwardian recruit (in her desire to evade gendered constraints, embrace venturesome possibilities and don martial uniform), the wartime first aider (who audaciously navigated her own way to northern France to undertake service for the Belgian, French and British armies in a modern conflict that utilised new weapons of war and required new skills) and the ambulance driver (in her espousal of technology, mechanics and danger, and in charge of a vehicle that quite literally sped her toward liberation proffering mobility, velocity, action and adventure) all permit greater understandings of the modern. These sport-​playing, car-​driving, cigarette-​smoking, alcohol-​drinking, socially elite New Women, who were making sense of their place in a world that was undergoing huge transformations in literature, technological inventions, fashion, shifting attitudes and the onset of total war, and were responding to the limitless possibilities of modern life, flouted convention. They dared to stake their claim to spaces previously populated solely by men and to dress unconventionally in masculine-​inflected attire, and possessed the courage to resist public derision and hostility. In so doing, they fashioned new modes of femininity and forged modern identities for themselves. Drawing on a new evidential base, by examining the configuration of the FANY in text through an analysis of popular newspapers and magazines, as well as attitudes and practices through scrutiny of personal accounts and Corps ephemera, Women of War has shown that the FANY merits attention despite being relatively small and socially elite, because it was a highly visible organisation with an impact far greater than its numbers might suggest. It was the earliest quasi-​military female force to be formed and actively to prepare for service; the first to wear military v 263 v

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Women of war uniform as well as the first to adopt khaki; one of the first to go overseas on active service; the first to staff a Regimental Aid Post right behind the front line; the first women’s ambulance convoy to drive officially for the British army; the only British unit to be sworn in as soldiers of the Belgian army; the most highly decorated women’s corps of the First (and indeed in relation to its size also of the Second) World War; and, still in existence today with unbroken voluntary service, is not only one of the longest-​running organisations, having celebrated its centenary in 2007, but is the only all-​female military unit in Britain, all other women’s units having been absorbed into their male counterparts. As one British soldier surmised during the First World War, its acronym must surely have stood for ‘First ANYwhere’.1 Involvement in the FANY was seen as a transformative experience for members, whether they joined in 1907 or 1918, enabling them to evade the limitations imposed on women of their class and learn new skills previously undertaken largely by men. Privileged women joined the FANY as a means to personal fulfilment through service to their country and empire. But as well as the idea of duty, members took up voluntary work out of self-​interested motivations, such as the desire to spend time outside the domestic arena as a means to claim public space, engage in an interesting array of challenging leisure activities and socialise with other women who shared the same sense of adventure. Women gave their ambitions for personal fulfilment concrete expression by enrolling in the Corps, clothing their bodies in military uniform and undertaking martial activities that were physically strenuous. Personal testimonies reveal that they were alert to the possibilities offered to them to enhance their lives and that they revelled in the opportunities presented by the Corps. They discovered that sublimating their enthusiasm and energy and pushing the boundaries of gender opened up opportunities for freedom, adventure and travel. A thrilling sense of liberation that results from challenging convention pervades their written and oral accounts. In conferring on elite women a presence in the public domain, social independence, new skills and a status that was held in high esteem, and by furnishing them with quasi-​professional training, martial clothing and the opportunity to serve their country, the Corps enabled its members to construct a new, ‘transgressive’ and thoroughly modern mode of femininity. The organisation’s distinctive aims, achievements and self-​presentation highlight its contribution to alternative configurations of femininity in the twentieth century. The contemporary representation of the Corps was part of a press tradition that celebrated female trailblazers, from Edwardian motorists v 264 v

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Concluding thoughts (including Dorothy Levitt) to interwar aviators (such as Amy Johnson). Like such intrepid women, FANYs were depicted as harbingers of the future and were applauded for their pioneering audacity, and were shown embodying independence, athleticism, muscularity and skill. This opened up a significant discursive space for a reconfiguration of what it meant to be female. By crossing into terrain deemed masculine, FANYs redefined femininity as active, not passive; as bold, not timid; as strong, not fragile; as mature, not childlike; and that was distinctly modern. As Edith Barton and Marguerite Cody asserted in 1918, ‘some of the finest and most attractive specimens of the modern girl’ could be found among uniformed women, who ‘have not lost the charm of womanliness though they have donned khaki’, ‘prov[ing their] womanliness and worth over and over again’.2 Yet, as this quotation makes explicit, media depictions of the uniformed woman often simultaneously drew upon familiar tropes of femininity. Articles about the FANY celebrating their hardiness at camp, their bravery on active service and their mechanical expertise frequently commented on their attractive appearance and domestic behaviour. Readers of wartime Vogue, for example, were reassured of drivers’ ‘innate’ womanliness by comments that off duty ‘a certain schoolgirlish humour’ and ‘an impression of gaiety’ could be observed, and that they had decorated their huts to make them more homely, adorning them with pictures, bookshelves, cushions and chintz.3 This portrayal of the FANY is just one illustration that gender  –​a social construct shaped irrevocably by the context in which an individual is situated, and read through its representations, not solely in terms of roles, conventions and traditions –​is always contested and never secure, always being stretched, questioned, reconfigured, and both experienced and expressed through bodily performances. Another clear demonstration of this expression is the clothing of the body in martial uniform. Further examples explored in the course of the book are their riding (both side-​saddle and astride), driving and undertaking mechanical repairs, shooting, and lifting stretchers. Such illustrations enable us to gain key insights into what was truly innovative  –​and often paradoxical –​about this group of largely upper-​class British women who were radical in seeking to exploit opportunities for meaningful work but simultaneously held some highly antimodern and conservative views. This remarkable band of women redefined modern womanhood by presenting themselves as exemplary in their patriotism and support of the imperial project. Yet they did not completely reject traditional assumptions about gender roles, and also possessed sensibilities that were less modern. For v 265 v

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Women of war example, with the tensions in Ulster escalating, Grace Ashley-​Smith was quoted in the Morning Post as saying a woman’s ‘primary instincts are sympathy for suffering and a yearning to bind up and comfort the sufferer … It is a woman’s nature to succour the weak.’4 While acknowledging that women had a crucial contribution to make to the nation, she is here endorsing conventional gender roles. The Corps’s ideological stance also undermines claims to its progressiveness. Yet while individual members did not regard themselves as feminists and wished to distance themselves from the campaign for female suffrage, their cause nonetheless adhered to feminist principles in demanding independence, autonomy and the right to citizenship (a claim based on military service rather than political enfranchisement), and their repeated questioning and eventual ousting of their male founder. Their modernist ideals to forge a place for women close to the battlefield jars with their conservative attitudes, undoubtedly shaped by their class privilege. The Corps thus represents a modern form of womanhood, but one that was simultaneously deeply traditional in the views it held toward female enfranchisement, Irish Home Rule, imperialism and women’s innate ability to nurture. The FANY thus offers a multiplicity of interpretative possibilities: while there were numerous ways in which the Corps was progressive, it could also be reactionary and backward-​looking, overlaying the forging of a modern mode of womanhood with tradition and conservatism. It is this collision of conventional gender roles and extremely radical ones, of ambiguity and contradiction, that lies at the heart of Women of War. Their modernist tendencies were filtered through their conservative attitudes, and they rebelled against and simultaneously embraced the constraints of normative femininity. As well as pushing the parameters of gender, the work FANYs performed during their training and when operational in northern France constituted a violation of the norms of class. By erecting tents, chopping wood, carrying pails of water, cooking their own food, making beds, scrubbing floors, emptying bedpans, cleaning up others’ bodily fluids, undertaking mechanical repairs and changing tyres, members were undertaking chores more commonly associated with female domestic servants and male chauffeurs. These elite women’s class permitted them to sidestep questions of respectability that would have destabilised lower-​ middle-​class women’s reputations. Accordingly, such transgressions of class expectations were celebrated in the press. Their affluence enabled members to join a unit committed to preparing for martial service; purchase costly uniforms, and pay hefty subscriptions and fees; navigate their way overseas at their own expense; and self-​finance their activities for the v 266 v

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Concluding thoughts

Figure 6.1  FANY Molly O’Connell Bianconi. duration of the war. Their unsalaried status undoubtedly strengthened their sense of duty, of noblesse oblige. Their class background usually protected them from accusations of impropriety and afforded them a measure of respect and much autonomy. Indeed, it was their class identity that not only recommended them in the first place, enabled them to bend gender boundaries and assuage any concerns that might be had about uniformed women near the battlefield, but also protected them from unwanted attention. Driver-​mechanic Rachel Moseley, of v 267 v

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Women of war Unit 7, for example, found herself having to sleep in a cellar with three male orderlies. If such stories had been revealed to the press, a scandal would undoubtedly have ensued. Instead, years after the event, the tale is incorporated into the FANY legend as evidence of stoically coping with unforeseen circumstances, while simultaneously presented in a humorous way. Irene Ward writes that the FANY was ‘sitting bolt upright on her bed’ and was ‘feeling rather anxious, as the men by this time had removed their coats, puttees and boots, but to her intense relief there their preparations ceased’. However, her embarrassment was magnified as ‘she realized that the top of her boots did not meet her skirt, disclosing the fact that she was still wearing the pink pyjamas which in her hurry she had forgotten to cover’.5 Members’ role in the war had been large by account of their class and their wealth, which was the initial means by which they were able to purchase an ambulance and make themselves useful, but it was restricted by the limitations imposed by gendered expectations. Like women of other female organisations, they struggled to be permitted to contribute. They were snubbed by the British army and were continually buffeted by attempts to limit their activities. But in multiple displays of female agency they created their own opportunities, manoeuvring themselves into the war zone, taking over the running of hospitals and driving the wounded for the Belgian, French and British. The armoury in their battle to be accepted as useful military first aiders was paradoxically essentialised femininity. Thus by bringing into productive exchange discourses around gender, class and modernity, we have illuminated the characteristics and fascinating contradictions of these modern, elite women of war. Notes 1 Pat Beauchamp, Fanny Goes to War (London: John Murray, 1919), p. 90. 2 Edith M. Barton and Marguerite Cody, Eve in Khaki: The Story of the Women’s Army at Home and Abroad (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1918), pp. 57, 64, 44. 3 F. Tennyson Jesse, The Sword of Deborah: First Hand Impressions of the British Women’s Army in France (London: Richard Clay & Sons, 1918), p. 28. 4 ‘Ulster’s Need: Call for Ambulance Workers’, Morning Post, undated [1914], in ‘FANY Press Cuttings 1914–​1918’, FANY HQ. 5 Irene Ward, FANY Invicta:  A History of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p. 66.

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Bibliography

Primary sources British Library ‘The F.A.N.Y.s’, episode in the BBC radio series Home This Afternoon, broadcast 26 September 1967, ILP0168195.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission Archive Wilfred von Berg, letter to John Harris of the British Architectural Library, 3 August 1977, CWGC/​1/​1/​7/​B/​56/​2.

FANY HQ 1915 Belgian Convoy file, papers. 1916 Calais Convoy file, papers. Betty Hutchinson file, written accounts. Cecily Mordaunt diary, ‘Six months in France’. Chris Nicolson file, papers. Edith Walton file, album of camp. Ephemera, regulations, regimental order book, minutes of meetings. Evelyn Shaw file, memorial scrapbook. Gazette, 1915–​current. Grace McDougall file, minutes, letters, log book. Historical Register of First World War FANYs. Lamarck Early Belgian Army file, photograph album. Lilian Franklin file, papers. Muriel Thompson file, newspaper clippings, ‘Base Notes’ account.

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Bibliography Norah Cluff file, photograph albums, book of FANY poetry, newspaper articles. Norma Lowson, three scrapbooks of photographs, newspaper clippings. Sadie Bonnell file, photograph album, newspaper clippings. Women and War: Official Gazette of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps and Cadet Yeomanry, 1–​5 (June–​November 1910).

Imperial War Museum 81/​346, R. J. Tennent, Red Herrings of 1918. 89/​19/​1, Miss O.  Edis, ‘The Record of a Journey to Photograph the British Women’s Services Overseas Begun 2 March 1919’. 140, Olive Edis, private papers. 162, The Care of Our Wounded, Ministry of Information/​Topical Film Company (1918) 32-​minute film of journey wounded take from battlefield to hospital ship, featuring FANYs and VADs. 260, Ministry of Information/​Topical Film Company, J. B. McDowell, 3 July 1917, 3-​minute film of medals being awarded to FANY and VAD by General Sir Herbert Plumer. 486, Mary Devas Wilkinson, interviewed by Margaret A. Brooks, 25 July 1974. 502, Marian Gamwell, interviewed by Margaret A. Brooks, 5 November 1974. 2001-​01-​10, Muriel de Wend, private papers. 2768, Marian Gamwell, private papers. 4182, Grace McDougall, Nursing Adventures: A F.A.N.Y. in France. 4446, Josephine Pennell, private papers. 7712, Betty Hutchinson, private papers. 12316, Celia Meade, private papers. 16605, Grace McDougall, ‘Five Years with the Allies, 1914–​1919: The Story of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, unpublished manuscript. 46733, Grace McDougall, photocopies of extracts from diaries, photograph albums, news cuttings, pamphlets and other material relating to the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. LBY 13/​149, Desmond McDougall, ‘A Spirited Stubborn Woman: The Story of a Woman at War. A Biography of Grace McDougall, 1886–​1963, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corp’ (2012).

Liddle Collection Women/​FANY/​‘Early Days’, minutes, papers, letters. WW1/​Additional/​020, Mary McAlister, photographs. WW1/​TR/​06/​60, Mary Runciman, interview recording. WW1/​WO/​006, Mary Boyes, photographs, leaflets, papers.

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Bibliography WW1/​WO/​018, Edith Colston, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, May 1973, photographs, newspaper clippings. WW1/​ WO/​ 057, Betty Hutchinson, Boxes 1 and 2, newspaper clippings, photographs, personal written account. WW1/​WO/​077A, Mary Devas Marshall, Boxes 1, 3, 6 and 7, photographs, letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, ephemera such as passport, certificates, notebooks. WW1/​WO/​078, Enid Bagnold, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, 1978. WW1/​WO/​091, photographs. WW1/​WO/​097, Phyllis Puckle, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, 1973, written account, photographs. WW1/​WO/​114, Sara (Sadie) Marriott Talbot (née Bonnell), newspaper clippings. WW1/​WO/​115, Muriel Thompson, written account, diaries. WW1/​WO/​130, Pat Washington.

Trilby McDowall Archive Trilby McDowall, wartime letters home to family.

The National Archives, Kew HS 7. Records of Special Operations Executive: histories and war diaries.

Posters, cartoons and film ‘A Suffragette’s Home after a Hard Day’s Work’, poster (undated). ‘The Suffragette Not at Home’, poster (undated). ‘Taking It Out on Hubby’, poster (undated). ‘Modern Athletics –​a Diplotribicyclical Quartet’, Punch, 10 June 1882. ‘The Last New Fad: A Reaction from Asthetics’, Punch, 6 March 1886. ‘Donna Quixote’, Punch, 28 April 1894. ‘What a Charming Surprise …’, Punch, 15 June 1895. ‘The Force of Habit’, Punch, 3 August 1895. ‘Rational Costume’, Punch, 13 June 1896. ‘Fashion à la Shakespeare’, Punch, 11 September 1897. ‘In Dorsetshire’, Punch, 6 September 1899. Punch, 18 April 1917. Milling the Militants:  A Comical Absurdity, dir. Percy Stow (Clarendon Film Company, 1913).

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Bibliography Memoirs Bagnold, Enid, Enid Bagnold’s Autobiography (from 1889) (London: Heinemann, 1969). Bagnold, Enid, A Diary without Dates (London: Virago, 1978 [1918]). Beauchamp, Pat [Pat Waddell], Fanny Goes to War (London: John Murray, 1919). Beauchamp, Pat [Pat Waddell], Fanny Went to War (London: Routledge, 1940). Beauchamp, Pat [Pat Waddell], Fanny Goes to War:  An Englishwoman in the F.A.N.Y. (Burgess Hill: Diggory Press, 2005). Beauchamp, Pat [Pat Waddell], Eagles in Exile: Experiences of a F.A.N.Y. with the Polish Army in France and in Britain (London: Maxwell, Love, 1942). Borden, Mary, The Forbidden Zone (London: William Heinemann, 1929). Brittain, Vera, Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–​ 1925 (London: Gollancz, 1933). Delafield, E. M., The War Workers (London: William Heinemann, 1918). Dent, Olive, A VAD in France (London: Grant Richards, 1917). Erichsen, Erich, Forced to Fight: The Tale of a Schleswig Dane (London: William Heinemann, 1916). Finzi, Kate, Eighteen Months in the War Zone: A Record of a Woman’s Work on the Western Front (London: Cassell, 1916). Furse, Katherine, Hearts and Pomegranates: The Story of Forty Five Years, 1875–​ 1920 (London: Peter Davies, 1940). Graves, Robert, Goodbye to All That (London: Cape, 1929). Gwynne-​Vaughan, Helen, Service with the Army (London: Hutchinson, 1941). Hennebois, Charles, In German Hands: The Diary of a Severely Wounded Prisoner (London: William Heinemann, 1916). Jacob, Naomi, Me in War-​Time (London: Hutchinson, 1940). Jesse, F. Tennyson, The Sword of Deborah: First Hand Impressions of the British Women’s Army in France (London: Richard Clay & Sons, 1918). Laughton Mathews, Vera, Blue Tapestry (London: Hollis & Carter, 1948). Leake, R. E. [Mollie Skinner], Letters of a V.A.D. (London: Andrew Melrose, 1918). Londonderry, Edith, Marchioness of, Retrospect (London: Frederick Muller,  1938). McDougall, Grace, A Nurse at the War: Nursing Adventures in Belgium and France (New York: McBride, 1917). McDougall, Grace, Nursing Adventures: A F.A.N.Y. in France (London: William Heinemann, 1917). Murray, Flora, Women as Army Surgeons: Being the History of the Women’s Hospital Corps in Paris, Wimereux and Endell Street, September 1914–​October 1919 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920). Sandes, Flora, An English Woman-​Sergeant in the Serbian Army (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916). Sandes, Flora, The Autobiography of a Woman Soldier: A Brief Record of Adventure with the Serbian Army, 1916–​1919 (London: H. F. & G. Witherby, 1927). Sinclair, May, A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (London: Hutchinson, 1915).

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Bibliography Stobart, Mabel Annie, War and Women:  From Experience in the Balkans and Elsewhere (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913). Stobart, Mabel Annie, The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916). Stobart, Mabel Annie, Miracles and Adventures:  An Autobiography (London: Rider, 1935). Sutherland, Millicent, Duchess of, Six Weeks at the War (London: The Times, 1914). Tennent, R. Josephine, Red Herrings of 1918 (Tunbridge Wells: Midas, 1980). Thurstan, Violetta, Field Hospital and Flying Column:  Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium and Russia (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915). T’Serclaes, Elsie, Baroness de, Flanders and Other Fields: Memoirs of the Baroness de T’Serclaes, Military Medal (London: George G. Harrap, 1964). Vincent, Norah, Self-​ Made Man:  One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man (New York: Penguin, 2006). Warnod, André, Prisoner of War (London: William Heinemann, 1916).

Novels, plays and short stories Allen, Grant, The Woman who Did (London: John Lane, 1895). Askew, Alice and Claude Askew, Nurse (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916). Atkinson, Kate, A God in Ruins (New York: Little, Brown, 2015). Bagnold, Enid, National Velvet (London: William Heinemann, 1935). Bagnold, Enid, The Happy Foreigner (London: Virago, 1987 [1920]). Bell, Currer [Charlotte Brontë], Jane Eyre (London: Smith, Elder, 1847). Bingham, Charlotte, Goodnight Sweetheart (London: Bantam, 2008). Childers, Erskine, The Riddle of the Sands:  A Record of Secret Service Recently Achieved. A Novel Illustrating the Possibility of a German Invasion of England (London: Smith, Elder, 1903). Cleeve, Lucas [Adelina Kingscote], The Woman who Wouldn’t (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1895). Cross, Victoria [Vivian Cory], The Woman who Didn’t (London: John Lane, 1895). Dickens, Charles, Martin Chuzzlewit (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1843). Du Maurier, Guy, An Englishman’s Home: A Play in Three Acts (London: Harper & Brothers, 1909). Gadsby, June, The Glory Girls (London: Robert Hale, 2007). Green, Hilary, We’ll Meet Again (London: Hodder, 2005). Green, Hilary, Daughters of War (Sutton: Severn House, 2011). Green, Hilary, Passions of War (Sutton: Severn House, 2011). Green, Hilary, Harvest of War (Sutton: Severn House, 2012). Hall, Radclyffe, The Well of Loneliness (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928). Hall, Radclyffe, Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (London: William Heinemann, 1934). Hall, Radclyffe, The Well of Loneliness (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976).

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Bibliography Hall, Radclyffe, ‘Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Unpublished Draft)’, in Jana Funke (ed.), ‘The World’ and Other Unpublished Works by Radclyffe Hall, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 171–​82. Hall, Radclyffe, ‘Appendix:  Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (Published Version)’, in Jana Funke (ed.), ‘The World’ and Other Unpublished Works by Radclyffe Hall, ed. Jana Funke (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 212–​25. Harrod-​Eagles, Cynthia, The Fallen Kings (London: Sphere, 2009). Henty, G. A., ‘A Frontier Girl: A Tale of the Backwood Settlement’, Girl’s Realm (1900/​1), 169–​76. Le Queux, William, The Invasion of 1910, with a Full Account of the Siege of London (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1906). Lovell, P. M., We Never Thought of That (London: William Heinemann, 1950). McDougall, Grace, The Golden Bowl (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1926). Meade, L. T. [Elizabeth Thomasina], A Sister of the Red Cross (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1900). Pullein-​Thompson, Josephine, Diana Pullein-​Thompson and Christine Pullein Thompson, It Began with Picotee (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1946). Simmonds, Nina, The House of the Suffragette (London: Doherty, 1911). Smith, Helen Zenna [Evadne Price], Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War (London: A. E. Marriott, 1930). Smith, Helen Zenna [Evadne Price], Women of the Aftermath (London:  John Long, 1931).

Newspapers and magazines ‘British Women’s Stoicism’, Observer, undated. ‘Englishwomen with the French Army: Miss Toupie Lowther’s Unit’, undated. ‘The New Woman’, Church Weekly, 13 July 1900. ‘The Library’, Westminster Budget, 6 September 1901. The Hon. Mrs Evelyn Cecil, ‘The Needs of South Africa II: Female Emigration’, The Nineteenth Century, April 1902. Mrs Edward Kennard, ‘Motor Bicycling for Ladies’, Car Illustrated, 27 August 1902. Autocar, 2 June 1905. Mrs Humphrey, ‘The Restlessness of Modern Woman’, Isle of Thanet Gazette, 6 January 1906. William Le Queux, ‘The Invasion of 1910’, Daily Mail, daily from 14 March until 4 July 1906. ‘The Truth about Man by a Spinster’, Mainly about People, 21 April 1906. ‘The Sensational Adventures of Dorothy Levitt, Champion Lady Motorist of the World’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 17 November 1906. ‘From a Motorist’s Notebook’, The Times, 11 July 1907. ‘Women Even in Motor-​Racing’, Illustrated London News, 11 July 1908.

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Bibliography F. Cordeux-​Rhys, ‘The Mounted Nurses of the Girls Yeomanry Corps’, First Aid, August 1908, 19. ‘Lady Recruiting Agents’, Evening News, 6 February 1909. ‘Women and War:  First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps. Interview with the Founder’, Daily Graphic, 25 February 1909. ‘Women’s Active Part in War: “Sergeant Major” Baker Recruiting for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Oakland Tribune, 11 March 1909. ‘Women’s Militarism’, Medina Sentinel, 7 May 1909. ‘Nursing Echoes’, British Journal of Nursing, 3 July 1909. ‘England’s New Woman: A Woman of War’, Logansport Daily Reporter, 8 July 1909. ‘England’s New Woman:  A Woman of War’, San Antonio Light and Gazette, 8 July 1909. Manitowoc Daily Tribune, 13 July 1909. ‘England’s New Woman: A Woman of War’, New State Tribune, 15 July 1909. Jefferson Bee, 27 December 1909. ‘How Women are Preparing to Help in War:  Training for the “Voluntary Aid Detachments”. The Work of an Auxiliary Corps’, Daily Mail, 12 March 1910. ‘Women’s Field Day:  Uniform Corps at Ambulance Practice’, Daily Mail, 30 May 1910. ‘Women in War: Convoy Corps’ Week in Camp’, Daily Mail, 9 August 1910. Chronicle, 23 August 1910. Daily Mail, 23 August 1910. Daily Mirror, 23 August 1910. Morning Post, 23 August 1910. Standard, 23 August 1910. ‘Women’s Long March’, Daily Sketch, 24 August 1910. Daily Express, 24 August 1910. Daily News, 24 August 1910. Daily Telegraph, 24 August 1910. Daily Graphic, 25 August 1910. Sunday Times, 28 August 1910. ‘Nurses in Camp’, Daily Mail, 1 September 1910. Margaret Douglas, ‘Women Volunteers:  Studland Bay’, Daily Mail, 10 September 1910. ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, The Road, October 1910. ‘Riding Astride in the Row’, Mainly about People, 25 February 1911. ‘What Women Are Doing’, Sphere, 3 August 1912. ‘Suffragettes’ Long March’, The Times, 18 November 1912. ‘Amazons of Mercy: First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Standard, February 1913. ‘Yeowomen Helping the Wounded’, Daily Express, 1 May 1913. ‘A Women’s Nursing Yeomanry Corps at Work’, Tatler, May 1913. Daily Mail, 12 May 1913. Daily Graphic, 12 May 1913.

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Bibliography Daily Express, 13 May 1913. Daily Mail, 13 May 1913. ‘Nurses in Camp: Tents which Are Lit with Electric Light’, Daily Mirror, 13 May 1913. Morning Post, 13 May 1913. Daily Sketch, 13 May 1913. Daily Telegraph, 13 May 1913. The Times, 13 May 1913. Croydon Guardian, 17 May 1913. Sphere, 17 May 1913. ‘Norbury: Whitsuntide Camp. Women and Men Play the “War Game”’, Croydon Guardian, undated [May 1913]. ‘Nurses in Camp:  Tents which Are Lit with Electric Light’, Daily Mirror, 13 May 1913. ‘Nursing “Yeomen”:  Novel Women’s Corps in Camp at Pirbright’, Standard, 10 July 1913. ‘Mounted Nurses:  Women’s Ambulance Corps at Pirbright’, Pall Mall Gazette, 18 July 1913. ‘Yeowomen in Camp: Strict Discipline for the Feminine Troops’, Daily Express, undated [July 1913]. ‘Ladies’ Sport. Riding Astride: Becoming General’, Standard, 23 September 1913. Daily Express, 27 September 1913. ‘At Pirbright to Act as Nurses in the Event of Civil War Breaking Out in Ireland’, Illustrated Chronicle, 3 October 1913. ‘Will Ulster Fight? These Ladies, at Least, Are Ready to Take the Field’, London Weekly Budget, 2 November 1913. ‘Dimples and Khaki:  The Ladies Mounted Ambulance Corps Mobilised’, Daily Sketch, undated [1913]. ‘Ulster’s Need: Call for Ambulance Workers’, Morning Post, undated [1914]. ‘Women in War: Mounted Ambulance Corps for Ulster’, clipping from unnamed newspaper, undated [1914]. ‘Nursing Yeomanry Corps:  Englishwomen’s Sympathy’, Daily Telegraph, 23 January 1914. Violetta Thurstan, ‘The British Red Cross Society’, British Journal of Nursing, 24 January 1914. ‘Women in the Saddle: Disadvantages of Riding Astride’, Standard, 17 March 1914. ‘Women Smokers: Increase of the Cigarette Habit’, Standard, 17 March 1914. British Journal of Nursing, 4 July 1914. ‘Women in War: Mounted Ambulance Corps for Ulster’, Standard, 21 July 1914. ‘Women Urge Khaki Campaign’, Evening Standard, 26 August 1914. ‘Little Sister in Khaki:  Lady’s Thrilling Despatch from the War Area’, Western Morning News, 9 October 1914. ‘English Women as Mounted Nurses’, Xenia Daily Gazette, 18 November 1914.

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Bibliography Algona Courier, 20 November 1914. Hearne Democrat, 20 November 1914. Manti Messenger, 20 November 1914. Decatur Daily, 21 November 1914. Carbondale Daily Free Press, 23 November 1914. ‘Comforts for the Belgians’, Daily Express, 25 November 1914. Fort Wayne News, 26 November 1914. Bessemer Herald, 28 November 1914. ‘Professional Review’, British Journal of Nursing, 28 November 1914. ‘The VAD Member: What She Ought to Be and Is’, Nursing Times, 28 November 1914. ‘A Peaceful Charge by “Good Angel” of Battlefield, Boston Sunday Post, 29 November 1914. Pinedale Roundup, 17 December 1914. Grace Ashley-​Smith, ‘The Fringe of the Storm: An Englishwoman’s Experiences at the Front’, T.P.’s Weekly, 26 December 1914. ‘The Real Nurse’, Evening Sun, undated [1914]. Mrs [Mabel] St Clair Stobart, ‘A Woman in the Midst of the War: The Remarkable Recital of a Woman Twice Sentenced to be Shot, and who Went through the History-​Making Scenes of Louvain, Brussels and Antwerp’, Ladies Home Journal, 32:1 (January 1915), 5–​6, 43–​4. ‘“Yeo-​Women”: Inspiring Story of a Brave Band of Ministering Englishwomen’, Star, January 1915. ‘“Yeo-​Women”: Inspiring Story of a Brave Band of Ministering Englishwomen’, Daily Call, 8 January 1915. ‘British Nurse Defies the German Staff: Amazing Exploits of Mrs McDougall in Belgium’, Weekly Welcome, 27 March 1915. ‘A Woman in War: Interview with Mrs McDougall, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, Gentlewoman, 3 April 1915. ‘A Woman in War: Interview with Mrs McDougall, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, Lady’s Pictorial, 3 April 1915. Standard, 21 April 1915. ‘“Yeo-​Women”: Inspiring Story of a Brave Band of Ministering Englishwomen’, Daily Call, 8 May 1915. ‘An English Nursing Unit in France’, Workers’ Paper, June 1915. W. Beach Thomas, ‘Defence of “Base” Women: Their Work in France’, Daily Mail, 16 July 1915. ‘A Woman’, letter to the Editor, Morning Post, 16 July 1915. ‘Another Woman’, Morning Post, 19 July 1915. ‘The King’s Uniform’, Morning Post, 19 July 1915. ‘Matron’, Morning Post, 19 July 1915. Isabel Hampden Margesson, Morning Post, 19 July 1915. ‘Another Woman,’ Morning Post, 20 July 1915.

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Bibliography ‘An Englishwoman’, Morning Post, 20 July 1915. May Rickett, Morning Post, 20 July 1915. ‘A Uniformed Woman’, Morning Post, 20 July 1915. ‘Yet Another Woman’, Morning Post, 21 July 1915. ‘Civilian’, Morning Post, 21 July 1915. Clare Smith, Morning Post, 21 July 1915. ‘A Woman’, letter to the Editor, Morning Post, 21 July 1915. ‘A Man’, Morning Post, 22 July 1915. Violet Markham, Morning Post, 22 July 1915. ‘A Stitch in the Background’, Morning Post, 22 July 1915. E. B. Jayne, Morning Post, 26 July 1915. Elizabeth Robins, ‘Stretcher-​Bearing for Women’, Daily Mail, 18 August 1915. ‘Women in Khaki’, Lady’s Pictorial:  A Fashion and Society Paper for the Home, 21 August 1915. ‘Decorations for Mock Heroines’, Nursing Mirror, 24 August 1915. Grace McDougall, ‘Women as Stretcher Bearers’, Daily Mail, 7 September 1915. ‘Women at the Wheel’, Daily Graphic, 10 September 1915. Col. W. M. Willis-​Swan, ‘Women as Stretcher Bearers’, Daily Mail, 15 September 1915. War Budget Illustrated, 4 November 1915. W. Beach Thomas, ‘“Yeowomen”:  A Triumph of Hospital Organisation’, Daily Mail, 2 December 1915. C. Ring, ‘Working Class Extravagance: An Apology’, Common Cause, 28 January 1916. ‘The New Woman: An Historical Note’, The Times, 6 January 1916. ‘Work of Women in the War’, Standard, 17 February 1916. ‘Women and Their Work: Fine Record of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps’, Daily Express, 29 February 1916. ‘Women’s Volunteer Reserve’, Kent and Sussex Courier, 3 March 1916. ‘The FANY Girls:  Indomitables in the Battle Area’, War Budget Illustrated, 30 March 1916. Evening News, 13 June 1916. Isabel Wicks, ‘The Typhoid Wards of Hopital Lamarck’, Gazette, June 1916. ‘Women in a Hurry by One of Them’, Daily Mail, 24 June 1916. Pat Waddell, ‘A Journey to the Front’, Gazette, July 1916, 7. Daily Graphic, 22 July 1916. Janette Lean, ‘Two Days with the FANY Convoy’, Gazette, September 1916. ‘Nursing at the Front’, Home Chat, 2 September 1916. W. Beach Thomas, ‘More about “Base” Women:  Why They Are Needed’, Daily Mail, 17 October 1916. ‘British Heroines at the Front:  Women who Share the Cold and Dangers of Tommy’s Life’, Daily Sketch, 25 January 1917. Lady’s Pictorial, 3 February 1917.

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Bibliography ‘The Serbian “Jeanne d’Arc”: Sergeant-​Major Flora Sandes’, Tatler, 21 February 1917. Statesman, February 1917. Queen, 3 March 1917. Ida M. Lewis, ‘Our Battery: Part IV’, Gazette, April 1917, 6–​10. ‘Nursing Adventures’, Liverpool Courier, 10 April 1917. Evening Standard, 14 April 1917. The Times, 20 April 1917. ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps: How Ladies Can Render Assistance in the Event of Invasion’, Surrey Comet, 10 May 1917. ‘The English Church in Calais’, Church Times, 1 June 1917. ‘Women at the Front’, Gentlewoman, 21 July 1917. ‘Penalty of Patriotism’, Daily Sketch, 27 July 1917. ‘Nursing Adventures’, Yorkshire Observer, 1 August 1917. British Journal of Nursing, 11 August 1917. Queen, 25 August 1917. ‘The Khaki Girl’, Globe, 19 September 1917. Peg Scott, ‘The Age of Uniform’, Evening News, 24 January 1918. ‘One of the Saints’, ‘F.A.N.Y.’, Gazette, March 1918, 3. ‘The New Register:  Votes of Fighting Men Abroad. Ambulance and Canteen Workers’, The Times, 23 March 1918. Doris Russell Allen, Gazette, April–​May 1918. La Crosse Tribune and Leader Press, 12 May 1918. Racine Journal News, 27 May 1918. Daily Express, 9 July 1918. ‘Pluck of the “Fannies”’, Times, 12 July 1918. Star, 26 August 1918. Warren Morning Chronicle, 8 September 1918. F. Tennyson Jesse, ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, Vogue, 1 August (1918), 67. F. Tennyson Jesse, ‘The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry: A Personal Impression of the FANY Camps in France –​Girls who Are Doing Yeoman Service’, Vogue, May 1918, 54. F. Tennyson Jesse, ‘A Night with a Convoy: An Account of the Work of the English Voluntary Aid Detachment in France’, Vogue, 1 September 1918, 72. ‘Lady’s Courage and Endurance’, South Wales Daily News, 26 November 1918. ‘Woman Wins Medal as Motor Driver’, Dubuque Telegraph-​Herald, 1 December 1918. Daily Mirror, 17 January 1919. ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, Queen, 15 February 1919. Paul Bewsher, ‘The Future of the Real War Girl: Will She Ever Return to a Life of Pleasure?’, Daily Mirror, 4 April 1919. ‘Army Nurse Twice Decorated for Bravery’, Colorado Transcript, 24 April 1919. ‘About “FANY” Girls’, Madison Wisconsin State Journal, 25 September 1919. ‘Postwar Chivalry on the Road’, Autocar, 31 January 1920.

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Bibliography F. C. Strange, ‘The Chinese Hospital in France, 1917–​1919’, Lancet, 195 (1920), 990–​1. Rebecca West, New Statesman, 10 July 1920. A. H. Gamwell and P. Beauchamp Waddell, ‘The FANY’, Cavalry Journal, 11:41 (July 1921), 272–​7. Phyllis E. Thompson, ‘More Glimpses of Early F.A.N.Y. Days’, Gazette, spring 1962,  20–​1. E. H. Wilkinson, ‘More FANY Recollections’, Gazette, spring 1962, 23–​5. Independent, 9 November 1988. The Times, 9 September 1993. Independent, 11 September 1993. Obituary of Sadie Talbot, Daily Telegraph, 13 September 1993. Deirdre Claffey, ‘Meet the Women Doing “Men’s Work”’, Guardian, 26 April 2013. Simon Barnes, ‘Side-​Saddle Is Sexy:  It’s Safer and More Elegant than Riding Astride’, Spectator, 15 April 2017, 16.

Miscellaneous Baden-​Powell, Agnes, The Handbook for Girl Guides: How Girls Can Help Build the Empire (London: Thomas Nelson, 1912). Baden-​Powell, Agnes and Robert Baden-​Powell, Girl Guides:  A Suggestion for Character Training for Girls (London: Bishopsgate Press, 1901). Baden-​Powell, Robert, Scouting for Boys:  A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship (London: C. A. Pearson, 1908). Baker, Edward, ‘A Foreword by the C.O.’, Woman and War, 1 (June 1910), 3. Barton, Edith M. and Marguerite Cody, Eve in Khaki: The Story of the Women’s Army at Home and Abroad (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1918). Beardwood, Lynette, ‘Ellis, Mary Baxter’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​70523 (accessed 5 December 2019). Beardwood, Lynette, ‘Thompson, Muriel Annie’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​68164 (accessed 5 December 2019). Beardwood, Lynette, ‘War Tales 1914–​1919’, www.fany.org.uk/​history/​wwi/​overview (accessed 19 September 2018). Bowser, Thekla, The Story of British V.A.D. Work in the Great War (London: Andrew Melrose, n.d). ‘Brooklands Women: Muriel Thompson’, www.brooklandsmuseum.com/​explore/​ our-​collection/​blog/​brooklands-​women-​muriel-​thompson (accessed 9 August 2018). Byng-​Hall, C., ‘Dorothy Levitt: A Personal Sketch’, in Dorothy Levitt, The Woman and the Car:  A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women who Motor or who Want to Motor (London: John Lane, 1909).

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Bibliography Cook, Sir Edward, The Life of Florence Nightingale in Two Volumes, Vol. II: 1862–​ 1910 (London: Macmillan, 1913). De Havilland, Gladys, The Woman’s Motor Manual: How to Obtain Employment in Government or Private Service as a Woman Driver (London: Temple Press, 1918). ‘A Dorset Woman at War: Mabel Stobart and the Retreat from Serbia’, pamphlet to accompany Dorset County Museum exhibition, 31 May–​15 November 2014, https://​issuu.com/​dorsetcountymuseum/​ docs/​dwaw_​003/​2 (accessed 23 November 2018). Fraser, Helen, Women and War Work (New York: G. Arnold Shaw, 1918). Haldane, Elizabeth S., ‘Sick Nursing in the Territorial Army’, Contemporary Review, 94 (1 July 1908), 356–​63. Kipling, Rudyard, The Barrack-​Room Ballads of Rudyard Kipling (Munslow: Hearthstone, 1995). Kramer, Ann, ‘Levitt, Dorothy Elizabeth’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://​doi-​org.chain.kent.ac.uk/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​92721 (accessed 28 September 2018). Latey, John, ‘Report of the Committee on the Age of Majority’, https://​www. parliament.uk/​about/​living-​heritage/​transformingsociety/​private-​lives/​ relationships/​ c ollections1/ ​ p arliament- ​ a nd- ​ t he- ​ 1 960s/ ​ l atey- ​ a ge- ​ o f-​ majority-​report (accessed 5 December 2019). Levitt, Dorothy, The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women who Motor or who Want to Motor (London: John Lane, 1909). Loyd, A. K., An Outline History of the British Red Cross Society from Its Foundation in 1870 to the Outbreak of War in 1914 (London: BRCS, 1917). Maddison, Ivy, Riding Astride for Girls (London: Hutchinson, 1924). McLaren, Barbara, Women of the War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917). ‘Number of Female Mechanics Rises by 125%’, Automotive Management Online, www.am-​online.com/​news/​people-​news/​2018/​03/​02/​number-​of-​female-​ mechanics-​rises-​by-​125 (accessed 7 December 2018). O’Rell, Max [Léon Blouet], Her Royal Highness: Woman and His Majesty Cupid (New York: Abbey Press, 1901). Pankhurst, E. Sylvia, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Gay & Hancock, 1911). Pankhurst, Sylvia, The Home Front (London: Hutchinson, 1932). Robert, Krisztina, ‘Conflicting Stories:  Literary Representations of Women’s Military Experience in World War I’, unpublished paper presented at the North American Conference on British Studies, Pasadena (2000). Roberts, Frederick, A Nation in Arms: Speeches on the Requirements of the British Army Delivered by Field-​Marshal the Earl Roberts, V.C., K.G. (London: John Murray, 1907). Simoens, Tom, ‘Belgian Soldiers’, in 1914–​1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, https://​encyclopedia.1914-​1918-​online.net/​article/​ belgian_​soldiers (accessed 13 June 2019).

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Index

Note: page numbers in italics refer to figures. Amazons 8–​9, 10, 16, 60, 61, 79, 106, 108, 177, 218, 219, 222 ambulances 85, 92, 184, 223, 226, 232, 236, 237, 239, 240, 252, 268 accidents 19, 231–​2 ambulance drill 39, 49, 62, 98, 132, 135, 149, 175 ambulance drivers 2, 15, 19, 99, 101, 109, 130, 170, 175, 205, 216, 218, 219, 220, 223, 227, 230, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 246, 248, 252, 253, 263 male ambulance drivers 246, 247–​8, 249 negative press 238–​9, 240–​1, 242 positive press 238, 239–​40, 242–​4 ambulance units 61, 87, 136, 167, 199, 205, 219, 247, 248, 249–​50, 264 Breakspeare Unit (fictional) 218 Dr Hector Munro’s Flying Ambulance Corps 35, 178, 184 Hackett-​Lowther Ambulance Unit 216 Miss Ogilvy’s ambulance corps (fictional) 217–​18 St John Ambulance Brigade 44, 48

Ulster Ambulance 152 VAD ambulance convoy 240, 248 cleaning of 165, 227, 235 (motorised) ambulance driving 170, 219, 220, 246 (motorised) ambulance wagons 109, 112 (mounted) ambulance wagons 34, 61, 134, 135, 141 passengers 234 repairs of 109, 222, 226–​7, 229, 265, 266 appearance 7, 92, 93, 94, 96–​7, 106–​7, 113, 145 feminine 90, 92, 94, 95, 96, 105, 172, 265 hair 2, 9, 21, 62, 78, 84, 88, 95, 96, 99, 102, 106, 110, 135, 217, 218, 219, 239, 242, 245, 252 make-​up 99, 106 manly 78, 89, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 102, 108, 110, 112, 218, 219, 242–​3, 244, 245 see also clothing; uniform Arduis invicta 94, 237 aristocracy 1–​2, 50, 60, 61, 62, 79, 128, 144, 148, 151, 152, 153, 170, 178, 216

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Index coming out 59 debutantes 2, 98 Duchess of Abercorn 152, 153 Hunt, Lady Ernestine 46, 58, 130, 131 Marchioness of Londonderry 55, 101 ‘the Season’ 58 Sutherland, Millicent, Duchess of, 17, 178 see also Baird, Lady Constance; Buchan, Lady Olivia; Fraser, Henrietta army Army Medical Services 179, 180 Army Nursing Service 43, 246–​7 Belgian 166, 167, 192, 205n4, 245, 250, 264 British 27, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 86, 135, 143, 150, 166, 167, 171, 177, 184, 185, 195, 197, 204, 205n4, 246, 247, 248, 249, 264, 268 barriers imposed by 167, 178–​80, 195, 197, 204, 245–​8, 249–​50, 268 pre-​First World War 36, 43, 69n36, 83 South African War 34, 37, 82 support from 41, 51, 135, 148, 150 Canadian 223 French 20, 86, 110, 166, 205n4, 217, 218, 246, 251 German 110–​11, 114, 183, 194, 233–​4 Ashley-​Smith, Grace 3, 12–​13, 14, 16–​20, 24, 27n3, 52–​3, 61, 65, 66, 73n107, 84, 87–​8, 89–​92, 93, 97, 100–​1, 102, 103, 107, 110–​11, 113–​14, 120n131, 123, 125, 127, 127, 133–​42, 143, 145, 147–​9, 152, 153, 161n88, 164n155, 182–​3, 185, 187, 205, 228

First World War 14, 24, 168, 177, 179–​80, 181–​5, 187, 188–​9, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 197, 200, 201, 230, 233–​4, 244, 246, 247–​8, 249, 250 in the media 16, 90–​2, 107, 139, 142, 153, 182, 184, 202, 266 post-​war life 19–​20, 24 pre-​FANY life 2, 3, 52, 61, 65, 66 professionalisation of corps 12, 123, 127, 133–​42, 143, 147, 149–​50, 153–​6 taking command 147–​50, 153–​6, 179 writings 12–​13, 16–​20, 127, 152, 153, 155, 169, 174, 177, 178, 180–​1, 183–​4, 187, 188, 190, 200, 201 Golden Bowl, The 19–​20 non-​published post-​war manuscript 19, 133, 153, 180 Nursing Adventures 16–​19, 180–​1 Women and War 142–​7 see also McDougall, Grace Bagnold, Enid 12, 16, 20, 21–​3, 47, 53, 58–​9, 64, 146, 186, 218, 223, 224, 225, 226, 246 Baird, Lady Constance 187 Baker, Katie 40, 51, 53, 56, 131, 138, 148–​9 Baker, Sergeant-​Major Edward 11, 34–​5, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45–​6, 48, 49, 50, 53, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 66, 87, 89, 93, 122, 123, 127, 128, 132, 137, 144, 147, 148, 149, 155, 163n128, 166, 175, 179 background 148 challenges to 87, 123, 127–​33, 134–​5, 145, 147–​9 notion of Corps 35, 36, 37, 44, 45, 48, 51, 53, 82, 84, 123, 134, 135, 136, 138, 144

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Index battles Aubers Ridge 247 Festubert 247 Marne 181, 228 Omdurman 34, 37 Somme 165 Ypres 193, 198–​9 Belgium Antwerp 181, 182, 183, 188, 191 Brussels 205, 251 Charleroi 186 Dixmunde 197 Flanders 167, 184 Ghent 110–​11, 114, 182–​3 Ostend 180 Pervyse 182, 184, 197 Ypres 193, 198–​9 Bills and Acts of Parliament Illegal Drilling Act 69n36 Irish Home Rule Bill 151 Married Women’s Property Act 5 Military Service Act 248–​9 National Registration Act 203 Nurses Registration Act 207n39 Representation of the People Act 146 Restoration of Pre-​War Practices Act 5 Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 38 Women’s Suffrage Bill 145 Boys’ Brigade 39, 48, 69n36 Boy Scouts 24, 39, 40, 41, 69n35, 69n38, 142 Boys’ Life Brigade 39 British Red Cross Society 40, 44, 97, 130, 151, 171, 175, 176, 177, 180, 182, 184, 200, 213n184, 247–​8, 249, 250, 251 Devonshire House 174, 223 French Red Cross 178 Buchan, Lady Olivia 187

Cadet Yeomanry 39 Calais 24, 86, 166, 188, 193, 195, 199, 205n4, 217, 223, 234, 236, 242, 244, 246, 247, 249–​50, 252 camp 2, 11–​12, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 52, 59, 62, 66, 90, 94, 133, 149, 150, 179, 180, 188 Calais 199–​200, 205n4, 233, 234, 243, 248 Camp du Ruchard 193, 205n4 media coverage of 7, 12, 56, 61, 79, 95, 96–​8, 136–​7, 139–​41, 265 cars 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 63, 65, 87, 184, 200, 217, 220, 221–​6, 238, 244, 246 driving 63, 220, 222, 224, 225–​9, 231–​3, 238, 263 maintenance of 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227–​31, 236 ‘Pobble’ 14, 224 Catholic Boys’ Brigade 39 Catholic Women’s League 147 Chinese Labour Corps 109–​10, 230, 235, 258n112 Church Lads’ Brigade 39 Church Red Cross Brigade 40 class 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 36, 37, 45, 58, 60, 61, 79, 81, 93, 98, 108, 113, 123, 147, 148, 152, 155, 174, 183, 184, 186, 191, 192, 194, 197, 198, 221, 241, 247, 264, 266, 267, 268 leisured classes 10–​11, 45, 46, 61, 62, 123, 252 middle class 1, 3, 8, 45, 56, 58, 59, 62, 81, 125, 123, 145, 191, 240, 266 upper class 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 25, 45, 46, 50, 63, 64, 86, 92, 103, 123, 145, 165, 191, 192, 265 working class 25, 45, 59, 61, 79, 81, 86, 98, 134, 137, 140, 170, 191, 192, 219, 240, 243 see also aristocracy

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Index clothing 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 54, 61, 67, 78, 79, 80, 88–​9, 90, 104, 110, 111, 113, 156n5, 182, 186, 218, 219, 252, 253, 264, 265 ballgowns 34, 98, 165, 218 boots 20, 78, 86, 95, 96, 97, 102, 110, 112, 197, 217, 268 fashion 6, 25, 79, 80, 81, 86, 88, 89, 263 fur 86–​7, 112, 233 hats 52, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 88, 93, 96, 97, 99–​100, 102, 105, 106, 108, 133, 186, 222, 240 rational dress 1, 8, 94 restrictive 88, 89 trousers 65, 78, 85, 90, 133, 217, 245 underwear 90–​1, 135 see also appearance; uniform Commanding Officer 125, 180 Ashley-​Smith, Grace 2, 12, 127, 149, 155 Baker, Edward 49, 50, 56, 59, 122, 127, 128, 148, 149 Baxter Ellis, Mary 46 Franklin, Lilian 179, 244, 248 Princess Alice, Honorary Commandant 149 Ricardo, C. Francis Cecil 148–​9, 150 constitution 13, 129, 131 Doan, Laura 15, 87, 89, 111–​12, 219, 241, 245, 253 Dr Hector Munro’s Flying Ambulance Corps 35, 178, 184 Edwardian era 5, 10, 11, 13, 34, 36, 37, 39–​42, 57, 59, 62, 63, 66, 79, 91–​2, 125, 127, 142, 170, 172, 199, 222, 244, 251, 263, 264–​5 empire 5, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 56, 57, 122, 129, 138, 151, 177, 224, 239, 251, 263

femininity 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14–​15, 21, 26, 36, 45, 54, 62–​3, 64, 66, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 88, 89, 90, 92, 96, 102, 104, 105, 113, 122, 123, 144, 166, 167, 170, 172, 188, 192, 205, 218, 219, 220, 222, 239, 240, 242, 243, 245, 263, 264, 265, 266, 268 Angel in the Home 8 Cult of True Womanhood 8 female masculinity 64–​5, 77n186, 89, 220–​1, 245 masculine women 64–​5, 96, 102, 172, 217–​18, 219, 222, 243, 245 tomboys 63–​5 see also appearance; clothing; New Woman fencing 52, 62, 66 film 95 Care of Our Wounded, The 87, 240 first aid certificates 43, 44, 48, 49, 149, 178 training 2, 35, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 62, 135, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 182, 185, 198, 202, 204, 205, 264, 266 First World War 41, 65, 80, 98–​114 ambulance-​driving 15, 19, 216–​62 brutality 168, 197, 204 memoirs about 16–​18, 19, 21–​4, 31n76, 173, 174, 180–​1 mobilisation 5, 177–​8 mud 22, 85, 165, 194, 198, 234 nursing 165–​215 technology 167, 198, 204, 228, 263 total war 3, 5, 28n12, 36, 42, 79, 177, 192, 248, 263 trench experience 194, 196, 200 France Amiens 85, 205n4, 246, 249, 252 Audricq 234 Bar le Duc 205n4, 252

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Index France (cont.) Boulogne 184, 226, 251 Camp du Ruchard 193, 205n4 Cap Martin 251 Chalons-​sur-​Marne  252 Chânteuil-​La-​Fosse  197 Chateau-​Thierry  205n4 Epernay 205n4, 233, 246, 252 Etaples 240 Fontinettes 193, 205n4 Marquise 205n4, 252 Paris 58, 173, 209n74, 251 Sezanne 205n4, 252 St Dizier 205n4, 252 St Inglevert 192, 205n4 St Omer 109, 166, 193, 198, 205n4, 227, 229, 230, 233, 237, 249, 251, 252 Versailles 251 Vitry-​Le-​François 205n4, 246 Wimereux 173 see also Calais Franklin, Lilian 27n3, 48, 87, 138, 148, 149, 179, 185, 244, 248 Fraser, Henrietta 187, 232 Germany 38–​9, 58, 103, 151, 152, 166, 178, 183, 251 German soldiers 17, 103, 110–​11, 114, 181, 183, 194, 233–​4 German women 58 Girl Guides 40 Girls’ Guildry 40 Girls’ Life Brigade 40 Girls’ Nursing Yeomanry Corps 40 Hackett-​Lowther Ambulance Unit 216 Haldane, Elizabeth 43 Haldane, R. B. 37–​8, 41, 43 Hall, Radclyffe 216–​18, 226, 245 horses 8, 35, 49, 53, 54, 55, 59, 90, 93, 135, 137, 143, 182, 221, 223, 226, 229, 232

horse-​drawn vehicles 34, 51, 134, 156n5 horse ride London to Edinburgh 46, 122, 123, 135, 144 see also riding imperialism 3, 5, 10, 13, 27, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 46, 57, 66, 124, 27, 129, 142, 151, 152, 265, 266 Imperial War Museum 15, 19, 24, 120n131, 133, 153, 173, 180, 235, 243, 250 Irish Home Rule 13, 36, 127, 151–​5, 266 Irish Republican Brothers 151 Irish Volunteers 151 Jesse, F. Tennyson 87, 101–​2, 178, 197, 204, 226–​7, 229, 242–​3, 244 Jewish Lads’ Brigade 39 khaki 3, 5, 11, 17, 20, 24, 56, 61, 65, 75n151, 79, 80, 84, 85, 87–​8, 90, 92, 94–​109, 109–​12, 113, 114, 135, 143, 144, 147, 165, 170, 174, 177, 183, 184, 186, 202, 218, 219, 220, 238, 239, 240, 242, 244, 264, 265 khaki fever 17, 178 see also uniform Kipling, Rudyard 79, 227–​8, 236–​7 Lads’ Drill Association 39 Lamarck hospital 24, 188, 190, 191, 192, 199, 205n4 Lee, Janet 7, 14–​15, 17, 36, 49, 65, 95, 181, 237, 241 London Diocesan Church Lads’ Brigade 39 masculinity 3, 7, 11, 53–​4, 88, 95, 102 crisis of 7

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Index female masculinity 64, 89, 219, 220, 245 of khaki 95, 102, 104, 107 of modernity 6 of motor car 221, 245 of soldier 102, 172 McDougall, Desmond 19, 180 McDougall, Grace 24, 133, 161n88, 168, 183, 187 see also Ashley-​Smith,  Grace McDougall, Ronald 24 mechanics 64, 109, 166, 219, 220, 221, 222, 226, 227, 233, 241, 246, 253, 254n26, 263, 265, 266 medals 48, 51, 175, 200, 250–​1, 261n182 Croix de Guerre 250–​1, 262n182 Médaille Militaire 251 St John’s Medallion for First Aid 48 media 3, 6, 9, 16, 25, 56, 80, 98, 99, 102, 105, 113, 130, 240 cinema 5, 6, 95 FANY in media 12, 26, 42, 56, 61, 92–​8, 105, 109, 139, 149, 182, 192, 220, 265 film 87, 95, 240 newsreels 87, 95 see also newspapers members of the FANY corps Ashton-​Bennett, Mrs  251 Bannatyne, first name unknown 11, 57, 59, 95, 97 Baxter Ellis, Mary 27n3, 46, 49, 53, 223, 224, 232 Benjamin, Edith 130 Bonnell, Sadie 58, 63, 198, 223, 224, 237–​8, 244 Bowles, Joan 251 Cole-​Hamilton, Margaret 153, 192, 193 Gamwell, Hope 27n3, 224 Gamwell, Marian 27n3, 223, 224, 227, 231, 232, 235, 244, 246

Greenall, Eva 93, 128, 130–​1, 159n42 Hay, Florence 187 Hoole, Margaret 232 Hutchinson, Betty 27n3, 42, 52, 59, 84, 90, 110, 146, 189, 194, 197, 199, 230, 235 Laidlay, Evelyn 192 Lean, Janette 87, 205n5 Lewis, Ida 193, 197, 199, 236, 237 Lovell, Phyllis 146, 193 Marshall, Mary 24, 33n107, 35, 47, 48, 52, 59, 173, 182, 185, 189, 191, 225, 226, 228, 229, 231, 243, 250, 252 Mason, Sheila 186, 236 McDowell, Trilby 228–​9 Money, Eva 232 Mordaunt, Cecily 47, 58, 152, 182, 185, 189–​90, 192, 194, 212n147, 251 Mordaunt, Winifred 58, 94–​5, 137, 138, 229, 236 Morton, Nora 187 Moseley, Rachel 187, 197, 267–​8 Moseley-​Williams, Marguerite 234, 245 Moyle, Muriel 136 Nicolson Cristobel 85, 193 O’Connell Bianconi, Molly 99, 100, 101, 267 O’Neill Power, Violet 185, 228 Paxton Heake, Emmeline 187 Paynter, Donnett Mary 112–​13, 146, 236–​7, 238 Pennell, Josephine 227, 229–​30 Puckle, Phyllis 47, 58, 186, 223, 224, 251–​2 Robinson, first name unknown 46 Runciman, Mary 135, 194, 195 Russell Allan, Doris 197, 229 Sayer, Dorothy 195 Shaw, Eveline 189

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Index members of the FANY corps (cont.) Stubbs, Mary Bushby 229, 250–​1 Thompson, Phyllis 189 Urquhart, Christina 232 Wicks, Isabel 46, 129, 131, 132, 134, 148, 149–​50 see also Ashley-​Smith, Grace; Bagnold, Edith; Baird, Lady Constance; Baker, Katie; Baker, Sergeant-​Major Edward; Buchan, Lady Olivia; Franklin, Lilian; Fraser, Henrietta; Sandes, Flora; Thompson, Muriel; Waddell, Pat; Walton; Edith memoir 17, 18, 63, 90, 111, 133, 151, 169, 173, 174, 177, 178, 180, 190, 200, 201, 228, 230, 232, 233, 241, 233, 242, 248 Diary Without Dates, A 21, 23 Fanny Goes to War 31n76, 63, 233, 241, 248 Nursing Adventures: A FANY in France 16–​19, 90, 111, 123, 169, 177, 178, 180–​1, 190, 200, 201, 230 Testament of Youth 21, 174 memory 16, 19 cultural 20, 46 popular 19, 46, 216, 262n196 subjectivity 12, 17, 24, 64 Metropolitan Women Police 124 modernity 3–​16, 25, 27, 36, 37, 41, 49, 51, 55, 61, 64, 66, 79, 80, 81, 88, 89, 91, 92, 99, 113, 124, 125, 132, 147, 166, 167, 169, 176, 182, 183, 185, 195, 205, 220, 221, 235, 239, 251, 263, 268 dandy 6 flâneur 6 see also New Woman Mothers’ Union 124 motivation 35, 57, 66, 131, 152, 176, 186, 187, 194, 204

adventure 11, 41, 58, 62, 66, 165, 177, 187, 204, 253, 264 patriotism 88, 181, 233, 241, 247, 265 Murray, Dr Flora 173, 209n74 National Council of Women 147 National Service League 37, 178 National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War 44 newspapers 3, 4, 7–​8, 10, 15, 26, 32n76, 36, 56, 61, 93, 109, 110–​11, 113, 120 n31, 122, 127, 136–​7, 139, 142, 182, 194, 220, 226, 228, 250–​1, 252 Daily Mail 25, 38, 54, 58, 96, 104, 107, 130, 149, 202 New Woman 6, 8–​10, 12, 13, 15, 27, 37, 40, 48, 55, 63, 89, 94, 124, 125, 127, 142, 155, 167, 176, 202, 239 athletic 1, 20, 63, 66 career women 9, 128, 172 independent 1, 3, 8, 11, 22, 53, 63, 65, 66, 79, 128, 148, 178, 185, 188, 238 single woman 65 smoking 11, 219, 263 see also Amazon Nightingale, Florence 42–​3, 45–​6, 66, 82, 122, 123, 147, 207n39 novels Daughters of War 3, 27n3, 78 God in Ruins, A 165, 235 Golden Bowl, The 19–​20 Happy Foreigner, The 21–​3, 218, 246 Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself 216–​17, 226, 252 National Velvet 21, 53 Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War 22, 216, 235, 253n1 Nurse 171, 177 Well of Loneliness, The 217–​18, 245

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Index nurses amateurs 43, 123, 130, 147, 155, 168, 172, 173, 174, 175 Bowser, Thekla 44 Finzi, Kate 42, 165, 174, 189, 228 professionals 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 175 Thurstan, Violetta 173, 177, 186, 195 uniform 81–​2 VADs 21, 44, 47, 87, 96, 101, 130, 151, 174, 176, 178, 185, 186, 206n16, 216, 227, 238, 239, 240, 247, 248, 270n260 nursing Army Nursing Service 43, 246–​7 Kaiserswerth Deaconess Institute’s Nurse Training School 82 night duty 24, 189, 231 professionalisation 125–​6 registration 173, 207n39 in South African War 43, 46, 82 Officer Training Corps 39 patriotism 26, 40, 88, 108, 113, 142, 179, 181, 233, 241, 247, 265 philanthropy 44, 220 pioneer women Bell, Gertrude 147 Furse, Katherine 43–​4, 101, 151, 174, 176, 179, 238 Hill, Octavia 147 Inglis, Dr Elsie 179 Knocker, Elsie and Mairi Chisholm 182, 184 Markham, Violet 103, 147 Laughton Mathews, Vera 135–​6, 178–​9 Levitt, Dorothy 222, 229, 265 Webb, Beatrice 147 see also Nightingale, Florence

poetry 20, 31n58, 79, 108, 112–​13, 146, 225, 227, 228, 229, 236–​7, 238, 239, 241 pride 40, 57, 92, 103, 107, 135, 150, 177, 227, 240, 242, 246, 250 publicity 16, 25, 26, 56, 61, 96, 98, 113, 131, 134, 138, 139, 141, 142, 147, 149, 153, 169, 184, 220, 222, 238 advertisements 61, 90–​2, 128, 223 film 87, 95, 240 newsreels 87, 95 photographs 56, 86–​7, 98, 109–​10, 139, 141, 153, 196, 201, 203, 233, 250, 259n133 Edis, Olive 243–​4 Vogue 25, 87, 197, 242, 243, 265 see also media; newspapers Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service 43 Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service 43 Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps 108 recruitment 3, 42, 56–​7, 61, 98, 122, 149 regiments 50, 59 Cavalry 34, 35, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 59 Coldstream Guards 150 Eighth Hussars 50 Fourth Hussars 50 Grenadier Guards 148, 150 Irish Guards 150 London Rifle Brigade 59 London Roughriders 50 London Sharpshooters 50 Nineteenth Royal Hussars (Queen Alexandra’s Own) 50, 135 Northumberland Hussars 50 Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars 50

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Index regiments (cont.) Royal Engineers 58 Scots Guards 150 Second Serbian Infantry Regiment 14 Surrey Yeomanry 50 Twenty First Lancers 34 Ricardo, C. Francis Cecil 148–​9, 150 riding 1, 8, 12, 21, 34, 40, 48, 50–​6, 59, 62, 63, 66, 78, 84, 89–​90, 93, 96, 102, 122, 123, 134, 135, 136, 138, 142, 144, 148, 153, 166, 174, 175, 222, 265 astride/​cross-​saddle 1, 3, 11, 41, 52, 53, 54, 55–​6, 66, 67, 84, 89, 93, 96, 97, 98, 123, 135, 217, 265 Epsom Derby 52, 138 gymkhana 51, 54 hunting 50, 52, 54, 103, 144, 221, 222 London-​Edinburgh horse ride 46, 122, 123, 135, 144 riding schools 59 A. Savigear Riding School 142 Military Riding School 50 Regent’s Park Riding School 62 side-​saddle 1, 12, 35, 41, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 84, 93, 123, 135, 136, 138, 144, 166, 265 tournaments 11, 51, 138, 148 see also horses Royal Army Medical Corps 135 royal patronage to WAAC 108 royalty 81 Edward VII 46, 55, 58, 138 George V 55, 138 H.R.H. The Princess Alice 149 James II/​VII  144 Prince of Wales 58, 232 Victoria, Queen 6, 81 Wilhlem, Kaiser 55

Sandes, Flora 1, 3, 14, 18, 51, 63–​4, 65, 66, 130, 145 shooting 62, 63, 66, 136, 144, 222, 265 Sinn Fein 151, 153 smoking 5, 11, 219, 263 soldiers 21, 34, 51, 65, 79, 102, 110, 111, 143, 144, 150, 171, 172, 181, 191, 201, 202, 203, 228, 264 South African War 6, 34, 37, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 50, 82, 85 sports and games 3, 9, 51, 53–​4, 63, 64, 137, 167, 193, 217, 224, 263 St Clair Stobart, Mabel 1, 2, 3, 5, 13–​14, 17, 27n3, 31n72, 38, 57, 63, 66, 96, 127–​33, 146, 150, 155, 175, 178, 182, 184, 209n72 Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps 14, 96, 130, 131, 150–​1, 178 St Inglevert 192, 205n4 stretcher bearing 47, 98, 130, 135, 140, 174, 179, 194, 200–​5, 223, 240 subjectivity 12, 17, 24, 64 suffrage supporters 1, 4, 6, 10, 26, 36, 93, 129, 145–​7, 156n5, 172, 177, 209n72, 209n74, 266 Drummond, Flora 93 Kenney, Annie 145 Pankhurst, Christabel 145 Pankhurst, Emmeline 146, 224 Pankhurst, Sylvia 93, 170 technology 4, 6, 61, 82, 97, 167, 198, 204, 219, 221, 223, 228, 263 aeroplane 4, 234, 235 bicycle 4, 6, 8, 53, 64, 148, 224 camera 99, 139, 141 car 223 cinema 5, 6, 95 gun 143–​4, 222, 233, 244 motor bike 224, 225 printing press 61, 97

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Index Territorial Force Nursing Service 43, 45, 46, 166, 171 Thompson, Muriel xi, 2, 14, 23, 146, 194, 224, 227 tomboys 63–​5 see also masculinity, female masculinity training 1, 3, 11, 14, 24, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 62, 82, 99, 123, 125, 126, 127, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 142, 147, 150, 151, 152, 166, 168, 172–​5, 176, 178, 179, 181, 182, 185, 202, 204, 205, 223, 224, 239, 264, 266 see also first aid, training Ulster Hospital Corps 151 Ulster Volunteer Force 152 uniform 7, 61, 80–​2, 95, 98, 99, 112 fur coats 86–​7, 112, 233 hats 52, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 88, 93, 96, 97, 99–​100, 102, 105, 106, 108, 133, 186, 222, 240 manly 78, 89, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 102, 108, 110, 112, 218, 219, 242–​3, 244, 245 pockets 84–​5, 97, 112, 218 scarlet 1, 3, 11, 78, 82, 84, 88, 92, 113, 130, 138, 144 solar topee 84, 85, 95, 182 trousers 65, 78, 85, 90, 133, 217, 245 see also khaki units of the FANY Corps (1) 188–​91, 192, 205n4 (2) 193, 205n4 (3) 86, 193, 205n4, 213n184, 248, 249 (4) 205n4 (5) 205n4, 250 (6) 205n4, 233, 246, 249 (7) 111, 205n4, 233, 246, 268 (8) 85, 193, 205n4, 233, 249 (9) 205n4, 246

(10) 205n4, 246 (11) 205n4, 246 (12) 205n4 (13, did not exist) 205n4 (14) 205n4 Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) 21, 44, 47, 87, 96, 101, 130, 151, 174, 176, 178, 185, 186, 206n16, 216, 227, 238, 239, 240, 247, 248, 270n260 Waddell, Pat 16, 19, 31n76, 53, 55–​6, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 110, 141, 153, 179, 185, 194, 225, 230, 231, 232–​3, 241, 244, 248 Walton, Edith 47, 48, 51, 53, 59, 60, 62, 83, 88, 92, 95, 131, 136, 148, 149, 185, 190, 194, 197 wars Anglo-​Transvaal  War  44 Balkans Wars 14, 96, 150–​1, 178 Russo-​Japanese War  37, 44 Second World War x, 80, 107, 178, 264 see also First World War; South African War war workers Land Girl 99, 172 munitionette 99, 172 policewoman 99, 172 WAAC 99, 107, 108, 166, 172, 259n129 Women and War 142–​7 Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps 99, 108, 166, 172, 242–​3, 259n129, 261n176 Women’s Co-​operative Guild 124 Women’s Emergency Corps 99 Women’s Hospital Corps 173, 209n74 Women’s Institute 124 Women’s Legion 99, 216, 261n176 Women’s National Service League 178

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Index Women’s Royal Air Force 99 Women’s Royal Naval Service 99 Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps 14, 96, 130, 131, 150–​1, 178 Women’s Social and Political Union 87, 145, 224

Women’s Volunteer Medical Staff Corps 133 Women’s Volunteer Reserve 99, 104, 107, 147, 170, 219, 238, 239 Young Men’s Christian Association 193

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