From the archive: Winter and rough weather
Janet Scott continues her series of selections from the world war one archive of the Friend
1917 began with a severe winter. At Sidcot, the Quaker school in North Somerset, the thermometer registered three degrees Fahrenheit. It was the coldest it had been for twenty-two years and provided an opportunity for a bit of fun for the students, as the Friend reported in its pages in the issue of 16 March:
This has been accompanied by snow, and some afternoons of good tobogganing have been enjoyed.
At another famous Quaker school, Ackworth in Yorkshire, readers of the magazine were informed:
… the exceptional skating facilities have been some recompense for the absence of (hockey and football) matche… The broad expanse of Hemsworth Dam and the Mill Dam afforded excellent opportunities for many delightful hours on the ice.
The Friend, in its edition of 20 April, carried a report from Russia of life there.. A Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) worker based at Mogotovo spoke of the conditions they had experienced:
We have lately had more snow-storms and the frost is still as much as ever…Travelling now is a bit risky if the distance be great or if the way lie through the forest… When there is a big snowstorm, they toll the large bell of the church near by, far into the night, in order that it may help anyone to find their way if they have lost it.
Conditions in France were also severe. A report in the magazine on 2 March provided readers with an insight into the difficulties faced by Friends who were there. A FWVRC worker at the Maternity Home in Challons wrote:
The cold has really been terrible. Even in our little kitchen, where there is a fire all day, there are icicles all round inside, and frozen water all the time on the floors. We have not known how to keep the babies warm, and on the coldest day of all we reached out maximum of 32 degrees! At that epoch, also, the whole of the domestic staff went off duty, saying they felt ill; the chimneys all refused to draw and could not be swept because of the ice on the roof; and the flues, long on their last legs, gave out altogether.
The Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in France reported, on 9 February, that the barge hospital was frozen into the canal and the staff had been making full use of the opportunities for skating.
Funds for the FAU
In Dunkirk the FAU had been busy. One of its responsibilities had been, at short notice, to care for the seventy-seven survivors of a shipwreck. A letter of appreciation, from the directors of the shipping line, was included in the magazine in the issue of 2 February:
Captain Craven, of our ss. Port Nicholson, which was mined and sunk approaching Dunkirk, has informed us of the very great assistance rendered to him and the members of the crew by the Friends’ Ambulance Unit at Dunkirk.
We wish to express our high appreciation of the ready kindness shown by those concerned. All members of the crew have told us that ‘more could not have been done’ for them.
As a small recognition of your valuable assistance we have pleasure in enclosing cheque for fifty guineas as a donation to your funds.
The members of the FAU, which had been active since late 1914, were all volunteers. Nobody received a salary and this did place a strain on some volunteers. A letter from Arnold S Rowntree, published in the Friend of 16 February, made a special appeal to help alleviate this strain:
Many months ago it came to our knowledge that there were several members of the Unit who would find themselves in difficulties in trying to meet their necessary private expenses from week to week. Accordingly a few Friends privately raised a special fund to meet this need, and with the help of a responsible officer in each section of the Unit, I have done my best to administer it. As the war drags on, the need for such assistance increases.
No help has been more gratifying to me than that coming from some young Friends who have been conditionally exempted from service, and who accordingly have been glad to subscribe out of the salaries they are still able to draw, towards the help of those who for many months have received no salary at all.
Friends before Tribunals
Tribunals for conscientious objectors continued to administer the law inconsistently. An insight into the experience of Friends who had chosen not to fight was reflected in the Friend on 16 February. Ashton Watts, reported about on his experience in manchester:M
The Tribunal would not hear anything about remaining at Saffron Walden, and when I said I was teaching without salary, and pointed out that my fellow schoolmate who had not passed his Matric. was now paid £75 per year and board because of the shortage of teachers, their reply was, ‘That does not matter, you chose teaching because you liked it, you must sacrifice…’
After some discussion he persuaded them to let him work with the Friends War Victims Relief Committee. Wilfred A Green, at his first Tribunal, was given exemption conditional on him joining the FAU:
However, when they were asked if they would sanction his doing educational work under the FAU they refused the request and said he must undertake ambulance work abroad.
He went to the Westminster Appeal Tribunal. It decided he should do work of national importance and:
... expressed a wish for him to go on with duties he was performing at the Kensington War Hospital Supply Depot (making and designing splints and surgical appliances).
But the chairman of the local Tribunal, who was also President of the Depot, decided against this:
... believing that a wounded soldier would refuse to wear a splint in the making of which [the] appellant had had a hand!
Wilfred Green ended up working on the land!
A prison sermon
The Friend, on 9 Feburary, printed an account of a sermon preached before 850 prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs chapel. The usual chaplain was absent and the young man replacing him said:
The world has nothing to congratulate itself upon in its systems of government; they had all been failures. The world was weary and craving, nay, crying out for some other mode or system. Let them try Christ’s method, Christ’s touch of Love. It was the direct opposite to that they had tried. It would banish all hatreds, cause all bloodshed to cease. It would conclude all wars and ring in the brotherhood of man.’
He got no further. With one accord the conscientious objectors said ‘Amen’, and stamped their feet. The demonstration was unique. It was startling and dramatic, but it was very inspiring. It quite upset the preacher, who from then, with a few lame platitudes, finished rather abruptly.
A medal for an ‘Alien’
The Friend during the war covered a wide variety of subjects and it is often possible to discover, in its columns, unexpected insights. In the issue of 16 February, for example, The Emergency Committee for Helping Aliens reported that at one of the internment camps an ‘enemy alien’ had been recognised for an action he had performed before the beginning of the war:
the Commandant publicly handed the American State Medal for Bravery to Emil Boehme, in the presence of several English officers and the representatives of the other prisoners. Boehme, as first Quartermaster of the American steamer Kroonland, had saved ninety-eight persons from the burning steamer Volturno on 9th and 10th October 1913. In performing the heroic deed he went to work with great courage, circumspection and skill, and contempt of danger to his own life. He was in charge of the rescue boat.
‘From the archive’ is compiled by Janet Scott.
