Betty, who was born in York,
joined the YMCA as a volunteer in France during WW1 at the age of nineteen. She
started off working in the YMCA Huts, and then became a driver.
In this extract from the
book written by her mother and aunt after her death in 1918 from her letters
and diaries, Betty talks about the funeral of a young soldier in a letter to
her mother. On the day in question, Betty was recovering from a bout of ‘flu. She was based near Etaples in
France.
A.P.O., S.11, B.E.F., 11th November 1917
“The other day I was out before breakfast to take two
relatives to a funeral. Officer’s
relatives. I’ve had to take
thousands to funerals but I’ve never felt so miserable as I did at this
one. It was a mother and such a
pretty daughter. I’d been driving
them up to the hospital for quite a long time. They thought the boy was getting better and then he suddenly
died. I could hardly bear the
funeral, and how they bore it, I can’t imagine. The cemetery is in a big sandy hollow in some pine woods,
just off the road, and on the other side is a big hutment consisting of the
mausoleum, the padre’s rooms, and the orderlies’ rooms. I sat in the car shivering, on the
coldest morning I’ve ever known, with very few clothes on as I’d dressed in
such a hurry, and watched it.
First came a piper (they always pipe the officers to
the cemetery), and you know what a piper makes one feel like. Then two buglers. Then a young padre with his white robes
all blowing about in the wind, showing trench boots and little glimpses of
khaki. Then the coffin covered by
a Union Jack on a two-wheeled cart, like a stretcher, with two men in front and
behind, wheeling it, and then my two poor relatives and a YMCA lady with
them. They walk very slowly, and
had to walk behind those pipes for at least ten minutes before they reached the
grave. I couldn’t see any more
then. The cemetery is always
full of soldiers, and they all stand at attention while the sad little procession
passes, and all traffic is stopped until they have passed. While the service was being read, one
of the orderlies cane up and spoke to me.
He saw how cold and miserable I was, and he deliberately set to work to
cheer me up. A nice Scotch boy with
a burr. “The push must go
on, you know”, he said.
He began discussing the various padres who took the
services – how some always hurried and hustled: “no religion about it,” and how
others made one feel that they meant each particular service that they read,
sometimes forty a day. He
cheered me up a lot, and then the Last Post went. Everyone stood to attention, the passers-by stopped, and the
men who had been lying about jumped up.
Then they all came back, and the padre bicycled away to breakfast with
his robes rolled up under his arm.
I was numb with cold and I didn’t get my breakfast
until 11 am. On the way
back, we called at the hospital and got the boy’s belongings – little notebooks
and trumperies – a pathetic little bunch of things, which the mother couldn’t
hold tight enough. I shall never
forget the Scotch lad – he was a true brick.”
Betty was killed in an air
raid on the night of 30th May 1918. She and her colleagues were on their way back to their
quarters after helping refugees at the railway station after their day’s work
was over. After the main
raid, a lone plane jettisoned its bombs in a field where the party had taken
cover. Betty was killed instantly
and two of her colleagues were injured.
Adam Scott, one of Betty’s
YMCA colleagues, in a letter to Betty’s mother after her death, remembered:
“During the retreat in May, when French women and children,
driven from their homes, were passing through Etaples in thousands, Betty was
one of the two ladies who, might after night, gave food and drink to these poor
refugees on the station, after her day’s work at the canteen was over, and it
was there she had been working until ten o’clock on the fatal night.”
Betty was buried with full
military honours, as an Officer of the British Army, at the British Military
Cemetery in Etaples, France. According to her colleague Olive Stewart-Moore,
the cemetery is in “a lovely spot, with the river and the sea, and the woods on
the other side.” Betty
received the French Croix de Guerre.
“01.06.18 Etaples
air-raid. Received telephone
message from Etaples saying that there had been a very bad air-raid the night
before – nearly all the hospitals in the Etaples area had suffered,
particularly the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade Hospital, Liverpool Merchants’
Hospital, 24, 26 and 56 General Hospitals. At the SJAB Hospital, one sister had been killed and five
wounded and a few others were suffering from shock. At No. 24 General Hospital, Miss Freshfield, VAD, had been
seriously wounded in the head, and one other Sister had been slightly
wounded. The
Matron-in-Chief, War Office and BRCS and DGMS have been informed.”
