Sara Macnaughtan - writer from Scotland - and Matilda Emily Clark - a nurse from England

Two very inspirational women of the First World War are Sarah Macnaughtan, a Scottish writer, and Matilda Emily Clark, an English nurse.  Their stories are amazing - please try to find time to read them as they are available as free downloads on the Internet.

Sarah B. Macnaughtan was born in Scotland on 26th October 1864. She was the daughter of Peter Macnaughtan and his wife Julia nee Blackman who had a large family.   According to her niece, Betty Salmon (nee Keays-Young) who was married to Lionel Salmon and who edited her war diaries after her death, Sarah was generous, witty, energetic, vivacious, charming and very religious.  Sarah had many interests from music, literature, art, shooting, big game hunting, riding, travel - she went to Canada, South America, South Africa, the Middle East and India - and 'adventure of every kind'. "As a girl she was unpunctual."  She was ambitious and clever but devoted to her family.  Her father, elder brother and a sister are mentioned in the summing up by Sarah's niece. 

Sarah was a writer, her first work being published in 1898.  When her parents died, Sarah left Scotland and moved to Kent.  She joined the Suffragettes, worked with the poor in London's East End, was a Red Cross volunteer during the Second Boer War and helped those who were suffering during the Balkan War.

At the age of 50, Sarah Macnaughtan volunteered with the Red Cross and went to Belgium on 20th September 1914 with Mabel St. Clair Stobart's Group, arriving in Antwerp on 22nd September.

On 10th October as the Germans drew ever closer after the fall of Antwerp, Mrs Stobart took her group back to England and Sarah joined Dr. Hector Monro's Flying Ambulance Unit.

"This evening Dr. Hector Munro came in from Ghent with his oddly-dressed ladies, and at first one was inclined to call them masqueraders in their knickerbockers and puttees and caps, but I believe they have done excellent work. It is a queer side of war to see young, pretty English girls in khaki and thick boots, coming in from the trenches, where they have been picking up wounded men within a hundred yards of the enemy's lines, and carrying them away on stretchers. Wonderful little Walküres in knickerbockers, I lift my hat to you!

Dr. Munro asked me to come on to his convoy, and I gladly did so: he sent home a lady whose nerves were gone, and I was put in her place."   We know that May Sinclair was sent back to England suffering from Shell Shock after six weeks in Belgium as Dr. Munro's Personal Assistant.

A few days later, Monro's Ambulance Unit reached Furnes and Sarah Macnaughtan was mentioned in British nurse Matilda Emily Clark's  "A War Nurse's Diary Sketches from A Belgian Field Hospital".  In October 1914 in a makeshift hospital in a Roman Catholic College in Furnes:  "In our ward there was a little elderly lady who quietly offered her services, and as she looked capable I sent her to clear away the evening meal and wipe down the tables.  She never bothered me again but quietly busied herself setting things in order.  Soon two big oil-lamps relieved the darkness and some large scissors that we had longer for lay to hand to rip the men's clothes off them.  The unassuming little helper had been out to buy them.  A few days after, when we had time to breathe, we were introduced.  It was Miss McNaughton, the writer of "A Lame Dog's Diary" and other books.

She was a delicate little woman, highly strung and nervous."  After helping the nurses out in the ward for several days, Miss McNaughton "procured a tiny room at the station and ran a soup-kitchen for the wounded.   Now, this sounds a homely and commonplace sort of occupation, but when you realise the circumstances you will know what courage it required." (pp. 31 - 33) 

The story of the English nurse's experiences as a nurse during the early days of the war is absolutely amazing.  She was at the fall of Antwerp and travelled in buses with some of the wounded British Martines. At one stage, she was obliged to return to London as it was felt unsafe for British civilians to remain in Belgium.  However, she was soon back in Belgium then France to continue nursing the wounded - both military and civilian.

Sarah died in London on 24th June 1916 exhausted after working as a volunteer orderly with the Red Cross in Belgium and Russia from the early days of the war. She was buried in Chart Sutton, a small village south of Maidstone in Kent.  Sarah's war diary was dedicated to all who fought in the conflict and in particular her own nephews - Captain Lionel Salmon, 1st Bn. the Welch Regiment, Captain Helier Percival, M.C., 9th Bn. the Welch Regiment, Captain Alan Young, 2nd Bn. the Welch Regiment,

Captain Colin Macnaughtan, 2nd Dragoon Guards and Lieutenant Richard Young, 9th Bn. the Welch Regiment.

Sarah McNaughton's "My War Experiences in Two Continents" is available as a download free on http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18364/18364-h/18364-h.htm

Matilda Emily Clark's "A War Nurse's Diary Sketches from a Belgian Field Hospital" is available as a download free on https://archive.org/stream/warnursesdiarysk00newy#page/n7/mode/2up

Sources:  

http://www.scarletfinders.co.uk

http://www.findmypast.co.uk

Sarah Macnaughtan's and the war nurse's books via the Internet.

and on Wikipedia

The photo is of Miss Sarah Macnaughton during WW1 from "A War Nurse's Diary" page 32

If anyone has any information about the nurse who wrote !A War Nurse's Diary Sketches from a Belgian Field Hospital" I would love to hear from them.

Amelia Earhart (1897 - 1937) - American pilot and writer - VAD in WW1

Amelia Mary Earhard was born in Atchison, Kansas, the elder of two daughters born to a German American - Samuel “Edwin” Stanton Earhart, a lawyer – and his wife “Amy” Otis Earhart, whose father was a Federal Judge. 

When she was ten years old, Amelia’s father tried to take his daughters for a ride in an aircraft but they declined.  Amelia kept a scrapbook with press cuttings of women who had successful careers in a world dominated by men.

Educated at home initially, Amelia enrolled in Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania but during the Christmas holidays in 1917 she visited her sister Grace Muriel in Toronto and saw some of the wounded Canadian soldiers returning from the war in Europe.  Amelia immediately volunteered to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment and after initial training from the Red Cross worked at the Spadina Mlitary Hospital in Toronto.

In November 1918 Amelia became ill with Spanish Flu and had to convalesce for a year before regaining her health.  During that time she lived in Massachusetts at her sister’s home where she read poetry, learnt to play the Banjo and studied mechanical engineering.

Amelia went to live with her parents in California in 1921 and during a visit to an airfield she had a ten minute flight in an aircraft which made her determined to learn to fly.   Her teacher was Netta Snook, the American woman pioneer aviator.

Following the solo flight of Charles Lindberg across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Phipps Guest wanted to try a similar solo flight but needed an experienced woman pilot to join her team.  Amelia was invited to go along as a passenger with the responsibility for keeping the flight log.  That flight propelled Amelia into the limelight and from then on, she continued to build on her flying experiences and also began promoting the emerging commercial air travel industry, becoming Vice President of National Airways.  In 1928, she was the first woman to fly solo across North America and back.

Amelia married George P. Putnam in 1931 and in 1932 she flew solo across the Atlantic.   In 1935 she became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu to Caifornia.  

After a fire in their home, George and Amelia moved to California and George became the head of the board of Paramount Pictures in Hollywood.

Amelia began planning a solo flight around the world in 1936 and in 1937, after a false start, accompanied by her navigator Fred Noonan, who was a Master Mariner as well as being an experienced flight navigator, she took off on 1st June from Oakland, heading initially for Miami.   They reached Lae in New Guinea on 29^th June 1937.   They set off on 2^nd July at midnight to fly across the Pacific Ocean, heading for Howland Island but they never arrived.  In spite of extensive searches no traces of the aircraft or of Amelia and Fred were found until a British pilot – Gerald Gallagher – found a skeleton in 1940 on the island.  Gallagher was convinced that it was Amelia.  The remains were sent to Fiji but were lost.

Until recently, there were many theories about the plane’s disappearance but the discovery of a metal panel on an uninhabited Pacific Island could provide a valuable clue to what happened.   The 3ft square metal panel was found in 1991 by a group of American aviation enthusiasts who recently made an exciting discovery.  Amelia’s aircraft was apparently modified before take off and an aluminium panel was fitted over a fuselage window.  Members of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery have matched the dimensions of the panel to the window on Earhart’s plane. Members of the Group plan to return to the island in 2015 to continue their search.

Sources:  Wikipedia and “The Times”, Friday, October 31^st 2014 pp 36 – 37.

Photo of Amelia Earhart in her VAD uniform - Google Images

Neta Snook(1896 - 1991) - American woman pilot

Neta Snook Southern was born on 14^th February 1896 in Illinois, America.   Neta’s interest in machinery began with her father’s encouragement to learn about the workings of his cars and how to drive them.   When her family moved to Iowa in 1915, Neta went to the State College to study mechanical drawing and farm machinery repair.   She wanted to learn to fly but her application to join the Curtiss Aviation School was turned down because, at that time, women were not admitted, so Netta joined the Davenport Flying School in Iowa.

During the First World War, civilian flights were banned in America and Neta worked for a time at the British Air Ministry in Elmira, New York, inspecting and testing aircraft before they were sent to the war zones of Europe.

IN 1920, Neta went to work as a flying instructor at the Kinner Airfield in Los Angeles, where she became the first woman to run a commercial airfield.

In 1921, Amelia Earhart and her father visited the airfield and, after a flight which inspired Amelia they asked Neta to teach Amelia to fly, which is how their friendship began.   Neta gave up flying to marry and have a family but after her famous pupil’s disappearance in 1937, she took up lecturing and wrote and published her autobiography.   In 1977 Neta flew a replica plane of Charles Lindberg’s “Spirit of St. Louis and in 1981 she was acclaimed as the oldest woman pilot in America.   Neta died on 23^rd March 1991 at her home on a ranch in California.

Marie Louise Hamilton Mack (1874 - 1935) - First Woman War Correspondent, Belgium 1914

With thanks to Dominic Sheridan for bringing Marie Louise Mack to my attention.

Louise was Australian - born in Hobart and educated in Sydney where she moved with her family. Louise went to London to work in 1901.  She was the first woman journalist to report first hand as a war correspondent from Belgium in 1914.

You can now read on-line the fascinating diary Louise kept when she was no longer able to send reports back to "The Evening News" in London by wire, due to the approaching German Army: "A Woman's Experiences in the Great War" which were published in aid of the Red Cross Belgian Refugee Fund:

https://archive.org/details/cu31924027844178

With thanks to the wonderful Gutenberg project which enables us to read these amazing stories.

Remembering all those who lost their lives when the S.S. "Marquette" was sunk on 23rd October 1915

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission List of Female Casualties of the First World War has a list of the nurses from Australia and New Zealand whose lives were lost when a German submarine sank the S.S. "Marquette"a troopship in the Aegean Sea near Salonika on 23rd October 1915.  They are commemorated on the Mikra Memorial in the Mikra British Cemetery, Kalamaria, Greece.

To read the full story, please see the link:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nzlscant/marquette.htm

Blanche Maupas (1883 - 1962) - France - The "Maupas Affair"

With many thanks to Phil Dawes the WW1 historian and researcher for this wonderful piece about Blanche Maupas.

Although not nearly as big as the Dreyfus Affair, the Maupas Affair was a ‘cause célebre’ in France in the years after WWI, thanks to the strenuous efforts of Mme. Blanche Maupas in fighting to clear her husband's name.  

Théophile Maupas was the schoolmaster in the village of Le Chefresne, Lower Normandy.  

His first wife had died of tuberculosis and he had a daughter, Suzanne, from that marriage and another daughter, Jeanne, with his second wife Blanche Maupas née Herpin.  

He had enlisted as a bandsman in the ‘Territorials’ in 1895 and had received some military training. When war broke out in August 1914 he was immediately called up. The 336th. Infantry regiment marched out of St. Lo in a big parade, with a brass band and carrying banners saying ‘A Berlin en quinze jours’ – ‘To Berlin in a fortnight’.  The regiment took part in several phases of open warfare in the Battle of the Marne.  The war soon became deadlocked.  After five winter months in the trenches Maupas was court-martialed, with others, for refusing to send his men 'over the top' at Souain in Champagne.

The charge of refusal to obey an order in the face of the enemy was laid by General Réveilhac against six corporals and eighteen of the youngest men arbitrarily chosen from the ranks.  The motivation was made clear: ‘pour encourager les autres’, for the sake of example.  The preceding weeks had been chaotic in the trenches with high death rates of officers and men and the chain of command in disarray. The ‘Top Brass’ was anxious to regain control, set an example and counteract serious incidents of mutiny in the French Army.  The original tribunal took under an hour to reach a unanimous decision that four corporals should be stripped of their military rank and executed.  

Corporal Théophile Maupas defended himself in court and explained why he had seen fit to disobey orders: “The orders were that I was to attack the enemy as soon as the bombardment finished, when the barbed wire would be broken.  In my section the wire was entirely unbroken. I therefore declined to lead my men to their certain deaths”. (At the hands of German machine gunners).  In effect, he signed his own death warrant by admitting that he had refused to send his men over the top. He also explained the reasons, viz.: the exhausted condition of his men; their low moral after many failed attacks; the high death and injury rate of the 21^st Company; that dead men were hanging on the unbroken wires and uncollected bodies littered No Man’s Land; that French shells were landing short, with the result that the German machine gun positions and the barbed wire, which was 8 to 10m. wide, remained unscathed.  

[Later evidence emerged that an acting General believed that the distance between the trenches at Souain was a mere 25m. when in fact it was up to 150m.  It was possible that violent March winds had caused the shells to fall short but testimony was submitted that General Réveilhac had previously threatened to shell his own trenches to force out recalcitrant men]. 

The four corporals, all with Normandy connections, were shot at 1300 hours rather than at dawn in front of the assembled 336^th. Infantry Regiment at Chalons-sur-Marne.  The executions were carried out hurriedly and the ‘stripping of rank’ was ignored. After their executions the soldiers were buried in unmarked graves. Pressure from relatives and others after the war saw them reinterred in the French war cemetery at Suippes. 

Blanche Maupas was familiar with the dire situation in the trenches as Théophile had written to her regularly giving some of the details. After his arrest he wrote to her: “I have done nothing to reproach myself for, I am neither a thief nor a murderer. I have not sullied the reputation or the honour of another person. I can walk with my head held high”. 

Blanche was not told about the death, or the reason for it, for nine days. The news came as a terrible shock. She could have hidden in shame as others in her position understandably did. Instead, believing that her husband had been unjustly executed, she spent many years fighting local officials, the military authorities and petitioning the League of Nations in order to clear her his name. She also fought to have the right to a war pension and to have the right to continue teaching in the village school where she had replaced her husband when he went to war.

  

Blanche was assisted by a group of well-wishers and a Teachers’ Union representative but she also suffered at the hands of the inevitable gossips and trouble-makers. Blanche wrong-footed officials by presenting her business card which announced that she was a schoolteacher and the widow of Corporal Maupas, an executed man.  

She made progress with the local officials thanks to her well-run campaign, but the military authorities ‘stonewalled’ her request for a review of the judgment and ignored her bulky dossier of evidence for many years. She felt obliged to go over their heads to the League of Nations.  Some people thought that she was obsessive but she had to be both obsessive and persistent to go through so many years of petitions and endless meetings, ignoring the numerous setbacks along the way.  All this at the same time as she was looking after her children and being a successful Head Teacher in a number of schools in the Manche area.

Her persistence paid off.  Sixteen years after the war at a special League of Nations Court a judgment over-ruled the decision of the 1915 military tribunal. The ‘decimation’ of soldiers initially ordered by General Réveilhac was condemned by the League of Nations as being ‘flagrantly illegal’.  The Court accepted that Corporal Théophile Maupas did not willingly disobey an order. The decision was based on: 

  The fact that the order was unrealisable in practice;

  that the men were weakened by a long stay in the trenches; 

  that they were discouraged by the failures of previous attacks;

  that they were very demoralised by the high number of losses of their comrades.

The Court made a further important ruling: '… an order to sacrifice his life cannot be forced on someone when it surpasses the limits of human capability to comply with it’. 

Nineteen years after the initial court martial the highest military court in France finally overturned the 1915 decision.  Unfortunately Corporal Maupas was not alive to benefit from these rulings.  

During the years of waiting for the League of Nations to act Blanche had successfully fought to have her husband’s name added to the names on the war memorials at Le Chefresne and at Sartilly, her husband’s native town.  

In June 1923 the municipal council of Sartilly, with the approval of the Anciens Combattants, gave Blanche Maupas permission to have his body reinterred in the communal cemetery. In early August 1923 Blanche travelled to the military cemetery at Suippes in Champagne to collect her husband’s remains.  He was reburied at Sartilly on 9^th. August 1923 with an ‘unending cortege’ in attendance. Her efforts and those of the Anciens Combattants of the commune led to the construction of a monument. 

The Monument to the Corporals of Souain was unveiled on 20 September 1925. It consists of a bronze bas-relief set into a block of dark granite. The inscription reads : 'Souain - aux Caporaux Maupas, Lechat, Girard, Le Foulon 17 Mars 1915'. The bas-relief depicts a background of four soldiers standing tall and dignified, but blindfolded and awaiting execution. A young woman personifying Justice is kneeling and weeping in the foreground and a set of scales is knocked over in front of her. 

Corporal Maupas lies beneath the monument and Blanche Maupas, who died in 1962, occupies the grave immediately to the left of the monument. 

Over the years schools and streets have been named after Blanche and Théophile. The names of the four corporals have been added to all the lists and monuments from which they were initially omitted.  Films, plays and television programmes have been made on the subject and books written. 

In the year 2000, for the millennium, the war memorial at Le Chefresne was refurbished and in 2003 Maupas was further honoured in Le Chefresne when the square in front of the Mairie was named ‘Place Théophile Maupas’.  In 2007 a monument was built opposite the town hall in Suippes where the original court martial took place. It portrays the execution of the four corporals.  

Phil Dawes

Oct. 2010 updated October 2014

WW1 Forces Sweetheart - Gertie Gitana (1887 - 1957)

The name"Gertie Gitana" (though I hadn't a clue how to spell it!) has been going round in my head for the past few days, so I had to look her up.  Mum used to talk about Gertie.

Gertie was born Gertrude MariaAstbury in Longport, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, UK on 28th December 1887. Her father, Gulielmi Astbury, worked as a Foreman in a pottery.  Her mother, Lavinie Kilkenny Astbury, was a teacher at St. Peter’s Roman Catholic School in Cobridge,  When Gertie was three years old, the family moved to live in Hanley.

The story goes that Gertie was spotted singing in the street by a talent scout from Tompkinson’s Royal Gypsy Children’s Troupe, and was signed up to sing with them.

Gertie’s professional career began in 1898 when she was eight years old at The Tivoli theatre in Barrow-in Furness, Lancashire.  She had a significant billing at The Argyle Theatre in Birkenhead, Wirral in 1898, before making her first appearance at a London theatre in 1900.  Shen she was seventeen, Gertie topped the bill at The Ardwick Empire in Manchester.

Her stage name - Gertie Gitana- is believed to have been taken from the Spanish or French word for Gypsy - possibly because of Gertie's dark good looks.

Gertie had an illustrious career as a musical hall star, drawing crowds and at the height of her career, receiving in excess of £100 a week.  Gertie's signature tune was"Nellie Dean" and during WW1 she entertained the wounded in hospitals around the country, gaining the nick-name "the Forces Sweethert".  In 1928, Gertie married the music hall entertainer Don Ross (1903 - 1980), who was her leading man in the musical comedy "Dear Louise".

Two musical shows were specially written for her 'Nellie Dean' and 'Dear Louise'.   Gertie also appeared in a Royal Command Performance.

Don started the road show "Thanks For The Memory" for his wife.

Gertie gave  her final performance at the Empress Theatre in Brixton in 1938.  She died in 1957 and was buried in Welford Road cemetery in Wigston Magna, Leicestershire.  Don, who founded the British Music Hall Society and was its first Chairman, died in 1980.

Her name lives on on Cockney rhyming slang - Gertie Gitana - banana

Gertie is reputed to have financed her brother, George Astbury, who was a cycle dealer and builder of G.A. cycles at 42, Great Cambridge Road, London, N.17

Frederick Street in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent  was  renamed Gitana Street in her memory

On Princes Street, Edinburgh (up near the galleries), there is a bench which just says: "In loving remembrance of Gertie Gitana Music Hall Artiste "There's an old mill by the stream, Nellie Dean."

One of Gertie's successful songs was

“Never Mind”

'So he wants you to forget him,' says a grey haired man in tears

As he reads his daughter's letter still a girl of tender years

'He has left you for another who has crept into his heart

Forget him and forgive him 'twould be better so to part'

Then to his breast he takes her head as tenderly to her he said,

Chorus: 'Though your heart may ache awhile, never mind

Though your face may lose it's smile, never mind

For there's sunshine after rain, and then gladness follows pain

You'll be happy once again, never mind.'

'In his love he may have faltered as his letter seems to say

There will be a bright tomorrow, darkest clouds will fly away

Time will be the wonder worker, though it's hard I know to part

He may tire of his new love and creep back into your heart

Love like pride must have it's fall, true love will conquer after all.

Chorus: 'Though your heart may ache awhile, never mind

Though your face may lose it's smile, never mind

For there's sunshine after rain, and then gladness follows pain

You'll be happy once again, never mind.'

Written and composed by Harry Dent and Tom Goldbourne

Performed by Gertie Gitana (1887-1957)

Source:  Wikipedia, Find my Past, Google Images and
http://www.thepotteries.org/did_you/008.htm
http://voices-of-variety.com/don-ross-and-thanks-for-the-memory/