Women on frontline
Ethel McCann served with Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse and was at a hospital in Camiers, France, when she got the news. She remembers waiting until soldiers “eventually died”, putting a screen around their beds and staying until their “pulse gave out”.
“It was horrible seeing them go out with a Union Jack over a stretcher.
“And it was Armistice Day, and the hooters were going and everybody was shouting, and to me it was so terrible seeing those boys. I think five died that one morning, Armistice morning, and it was so pathetic, because they were so young, and you know they had so much to live for, but that was war.”
Ruby Ord served with the Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps and Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps in Britain and France from 1917 to 1919. She was 22 and in Calais, France, on Armistice Day.
“You see because people think they’re fighting for something, it’s going to make everything better, and it doesn’t, war never makes anything better, it makes everything worse. I think this happened with the men, they were restless, you’ve had this peculiar life for four or more years some of them, and they couldn’t settle back into an ordinary routine life and job.”
Dolly Shepherd, 31, volunteered with the Women’s Emergency Corps and Women’s Volunteer Reserve in London between 1914 and 1917. She also served as driver mechanic with Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps at Queen Mary’s Camp in Calais.
“Do you know, strangely enough, we wept, because the silence was so awful. You see we’d been used to the noise of guns, all day long, all day long, all day long… it was so strange to have silence.”