Somme FAU witness on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 has story of Quaker witness in first world war
A feature based on five diaries written at the battlefront of the Somme by Quaker William Farley Rutter of Shaftsbury in Dorset was broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme on 7 August.
The feature highlighted the work of Quakers working with the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in 1916 and focused on the ambulance trains that took wounded soldiers from the front.
The diaries, which contain a record of Rutter’s work with the FAU over four years, are held in the Library of Friends House in London and extracts were read on the programme. Over the five years of the war ‘train number 17’ made 376 trips and transported some 136,000 wounded me.
Contributors to the feature included Marigold Bentley, who talked of the contribution made members of the FAU, and ninety-two-year-old Peter Rutter, the oldest of William Farley Rutter’s children, who recalled the ‘cast iron faith’ of his father, who would ‘read the Bible for an hour in silence’ before attending Meeting for Worship on Sunday.
The Sunday programme is available on BBC iplayer.
