Description
Object description
British driver served with First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in GB, Belgium and France, 1914-1919
Content description
REEL 1 Background in GB, 1892-1915: acting career; family background; learning to drive; outbreak of First World War, 8/1914; mechanical knowledge. Aspects of period as driver with First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in GB, 1914-1915: enlistment and initial training with First Aid Nursing Yeomanry; vehicle maintenance; age of yeomanry personnel; converting Model T Ford into mobile soup kitchen.
REEL 2 Continues: raising funds for soup kitchen; description of mobile soup kitchen. Recollections of period as driver with First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in Belgium and France, 1915-1919: attitude to going aboard; driving mobile soup kitchen from Calais, France to front line; helping to look after horses; narrow escape from shell; treating troops caught in gas attack at Ypres, Belgium, 1915.
REEL 3 Continues: protecting horses during gas attack; questioning about the gas attack at General Headquarters; duties as ambulance driver at Calais, France; hospital staff; removal of dirty boots and clothing from wounded patients; reaction to dealing with burns cases; attitude towards patients' wounds; visits to front line; daily routine.
REEL 4 Continues: three week period of inactivity; accommodation; character of rations; personnel and duties; driving ambulances containing seriously wounded men; attitude towards driving vehicles; story of arrest as suspected spies by Belgian military police; leave.
REEL 5 Continues: British civilians' knowledge of war; leave periods in GB; weather conditions; story of obtaining permission to drive army vehicle; vehicle inspection and maintenance; method of starting cars in cold weather, 1917.
REEL 6 Continues: occasion when bomb narrowly missed her ambulance; occasion when she had to evacuate elderly Belgian woman from farm; dangers of crossing railway tracks in ambulance; problems with pumps; relations between various medical services; recuperating from injury received from horse at time of Armistice, 11/11/1918; social activities; rules regarding married personnel; method of starting vehicles; opinion of types of vehicles used as ambulances.
REEL 7 Continues: first aid training received; performing basic first aid; patient carrying capacity of vehicles; prevalent illnesses; length of journeys and navigation; description of uniform worn; purchase of uniform; introduction of beret for driving; reasons why lorry driver wore solar topee; opinion of suitability of uniform.
REEL 8 Continues: use of overcoats in cold weather; relations between First Aid Nursing Yeomanry personnel and Australians and New Zealanders at Saint-Omer, France; protecting ambulances from cold weather conditions during overnight stops; degree of awareness of war situation; censorship of mail; conversations with wounded troops; morale amongst troops after Armistice, 11/1918; transporting psychological cases.
REEL 9 Continues: degree of off duty time; weather conditions; Christmas and birthday celebrations; relations with officers and civilians; obtaining fuel for vehicles; vehicle repairs; relations between drivers and army mechanics; morale amongst First Aid Nursing Yeomanry personnel; attitude towards war.
REEL 10 Continues: question of religion and spiritualism during war; reaction of First Aid Nursing Yeomanry personnel to deaths of loved ones; interest in palmistry; receiving post-war civilian Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE); nick names used; memories of colleagues and mascots; accommodation at Saint-Omer and Calais, France.
REEL 11 Continues: demobilisation, 1919; taking ambulance loads of nurses to visit battlefields after Armistice, 11/1918; return to civilian life and employment, 1919.