Women in World War One—Medical Services—First Aid Nursing Yeomanry
Arduis Invicta—Unconquered in Adversity
Extracts from Pat Beauchamp Washington—Fanny Goes to War (1919)
CHAPTER II—FIRST IMPRESSIONS
In which the author briefly discusses the establishment of the FANY in Belgium after its offer of support was rejected by the British authorities; her work while in England waiting to join her comrades, and their duties in Lamarck Hospital in Calais; the transport of the wounded from hospital to port to hospital ships bound for Britain; the various types of accommodation the FANY were provided and details of their living conditions, food, the town, etc; she describes some of the ‘characters’ among the French orderlies, and the attitudes of the French citizens towards the uniformed FANY women.
Portrait of Mrs MacDougall [aka Grace McDougall or Grace Alexandra Smith or Grace Ashley-Smith], organising officer of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY).—source: Imperial War Museum
When war broke out in August 1914 Lieutenant Ashley Smith lost no time in offering the Corps' services to the War Office. To our intense disappointment these were refused. However, F.A.N.Y.'s are not easily daunted. The Belgian Army, at that time, had no organised medical corps in the field, and informed us they would be extremely grateful if we would take over a Hospital for them. Lieutenant Smith left for Antwerp in September 1914, and had arranged to take a house there for a Hospital when the town fell; her flight to Ghent where she stayed to the last with a dying English officer, until the Germans arrived, and her subsequent escape to Holland have been told elsewhere. (A F.A.N.Y. in France—Nursing Adventures.).
Lamarck Hospital—1914.—source: fany.org.uk
The Hospital we had given us was for Belgian Tommies, and called Lamarck, and had been a Convent school before the War. There were fifty beds for "blessés" and fifty for typhoid patients, which at that period no other Hospital in the place would take. It was an extremely virulent type of pneumonic typhoid. These cases were in a building apart from the main Hospital and across the yard. Dominating both buildings was the cathedral of Notre Dame, with its beautiful East window facing our yard.
Soldiers in the typhoid ward at Lamark Hospital in Calais, with which First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), Unit 1 was associated.—source: Imperial War Museum
Lucy B. Joynson, Co-Director at L'Hopital Lamark with Sister Marshall, served by the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), Unit 1, pushing a wounded soldier on a stretcher on wheels.—source: Imperial War Museum
Portraits of unidentified members of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry by an official British photographer.—image source: Imperial War Museum
…on the last day of that month [October, 1914] the first contingent of F.A.N.Y.'s left for active service, hardly any of them over twenty-one.
