From the archive: The Friends’ Ambulance Unit
Janet Scott continues her selection from the archives of the Friend published during the first world war. The Friends’ Ambulance Unit, set up in late 1914, had now established itself as a permanent feature of Quaker witness
In 1916 T Edmund Harvey, a prominent Quaker MP, was asked to visit the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU) in France and Belgium and to take a message of goodwill from Friends to members of the Unit. His account of the trip was published in the Friend on 6 October. These extracts are taken from his report:
I reached Headquarters at dusk, after a day’s journey from the port, by trains, which would scarcely have taken a couple of hours in time of peace. Fortunately I was able to see the Unit both in its old quarters and also, before I left, in the new building hard by, which now provides far roomier and more suitable accommodation. The change from the crowded and dingy rooms at the Kursaal is a great improvement in every way. The new dining-room is lofty and spacious, while adjoining it another large room serves for reading and recreation in the evening; deck chairs, papers and small tables making the place comfortable and attractive. Round about in adjoining streets various branches of the work go on; the transport office, the different motor garages and repairs shops, the motor stores, and the general stores, while six minutes’ walk away is the Hôpital Alexandra, in a little compound of its own, overlooking the large grassy expanse which separates this suburb from the canals and fortifications which surround the old town on every side. The male staff of the Hospital live upon the spot, and are therefore a good deal isolated from other members of the Unit, but the human interest of the hospital work is great and appeals strongly to many who have undertaken it.
The patients consisted of sick French soldiers, who were brought by FAU cars from the station and elsewhere, injured dockworkers from the port, where serious accidents constantly happened, and sick or wounded men from the British navy or naval air service. T Edmund Harvey noted: ‘One is struck by the cheerfulness of the bright clean wards, under the skilled supervision of the Unit’s trained nurses, aided by V.A.D. [Voluntary Aid Detachment] helpers…’
Garages and motors
The motor work of the Unit, T Edmund Harvey reported, occupied the largest number of members. He wrote:
…during my visit the garages were humming with work, and for part of the time night shifts were arranged in order to speed on the repairing of certain cars needed for the recently started convoy south of the Somme, and the overhauling of others for the new convoy which has now been formed to alternate with the one which works in Belgium. With so large a membership at Headquarters many other men are necessarily employed on office duties, in the stores, and as orderlies in the house and kitchen, and the cheerful and zealous way in which this dull and often laborious work is done is very encouraging to see. One of the newer branches of work is the Recreation Room near the port, which is immensely appreciated both by the dock workers and other service men…
The recreation room, he reported, was ‘in constant use for letter-writing and the piano is rarely idle’. He writes, also, that the hall was ‘thronged by a crowd of some 700 men’ on the night when it was opened by the FAU concert party. FAU members, he observed, had won themselves fame as ‘The Faullies’. He wrote that on Sunday evenings a simple mission service was held by members of the FAU in the institute in the town:
I was able to attend one of these services, as well as the little meetings for worship which are held at Headquarters and at the Hotel Alexandra, and also the Adult School which is attended by some twenty or thirty men. Practically the whole of the members of the Unit come to the short meeting for worship which has recently started before lunch on Sunday, and at 7:30 every morning a certain number meet regularly for reading and a brief time of quiet prayer. One hesitates to enumerate these meetings, because those who value them most would be the last to wish to treat them as though any such outward standard could be a gauge of religious life, yet it is well that Friends at home should know that these opportunities for Quaker worship are there and are appreciated…
…The newcomer is struck by the freedom and comradeship characteristic of the Unit’s activities. Where else would it be possible to see an officer voluntarily resigning his post of honour and the symbols of office on his uniform and taking up quietly another task as an ordinary member of the Unit? As a whole, officers and members feel that they are friends and fellow-workers, and in a hundred little ways this is shown in the daily life of the men, both at Headquarters and elsewhere.
FAU work at out-stations
T Edmund Harvey wrote about his visits to various out-stations where groups of FAU men were working:
…to Madam O’Gormon’s delightful barge on its quiet canal, where sick and wounded civilians are lovingly tended in an atmosphere of kindliness and goodwill; to the farm hard by where help is being given in getting in the harvest; to two French hospitals where several of our cars and orderlies are stationed to help the wounded soldiers, and, not least, to the motor convoy working at an advanced post near the lines. I spent a night with the happy family of drivers and orderlies who live here in a homely little shanty among the sand dunes which has been built up bit by bit at different times and is now quite as neat and dry as a ship’s cabin, though in winter it has been a very different sight, surrounded by a little sea of mud and water, for the land is low lying. As the evening went by, one car after another was summoned away on duty, one or two going to posts of danger, drivers and orderlies passing out quietly and quickly to their work. I was able to visit one of these outposts, half a mile from the German trenches. Close at hand was the spot where F. G. Taylor gave up his life: that very morning a large six-inch shell had crashed through the next room to that in which our two men on duty were waiting. Happily it did not explode, or the whole house would have shared the fate of one or two ruined houses on the opposite side of the street which later that afternoon were demolished by other shells. The members of the convoy take it in turns to relieve each other at this most difficult post, as the strain is considerable when there is severe bombardment.
The future
On his last evening at headquarters T Edmund Harvey attended a large gathering of members of the Unit and reported that they were able to discuss ‘some of the possibilities of future work for the Unit when the war is over’:
…a large number are eager to do what they can in reconstructive efforts for the civilian population when this looked-for time at last comes. It was hard work to say farewell to all my old and new friends, and I left cheered by their comradeship and the thought of the great work they are doing…
My journey home fortunately gave me the opportunity of meeting one of the four hospital trains which the Unit now staff… [No. 5 train] was drawn up at a harbour station, and in the pouring rain the heavy load of wounded soldiers was being unloaded with skill and care and taken away by the R.A.M.C. [Royal Army Medical Corps] orderlies to the hospital boat. The medical officer in charge of the train, a man of long experience, spoke to me warmly of our men; “keen and efficient” he told me he had found them, and this was no small praise from a cautious Scot.
Several of the men, he reflected, told him of the ‘great satisfaction they felt in their work’ despite the monotony and ‘heavy physical strain’ that it often involved:
…they realise that they are making all the while a real personal contribution to the alleviation of human suffering, into which they are able to bring something of that spirit of fellowship which is the inspiration of so much of the work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit.
‘From the archive’ is researched and selected by Janet Scott. See: www.thefriend.org/archive
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