The Friends Relief Service
Edith Snellgrove served with the Friends Relief Service (FRS) in Walcheren, Holland and Berlin and wrote a memoir of her time in the FRS. Michael Snellgrove and Christa Appleton, her son and daughter, read two short extracts at the inauguration service.
Walcheren 1944 I was sent in 1944 with a Friends Relief Service Team to Holland. We worked on the island of Walcheren, a saucer-shaped island at the mouth of the Scheldt. It had been so heavily fortified by the Germans that the allies decided that the only way to regain it was to bomb the sea dykes in five places and flood the land, thus driving out the entrenched German troops. They warned the Dutch by leaflet but few fled. Instead, they drove as many of their cattle as possible into the Town Hall square in Middelburg, the central town, which was partly above sea level. Most of the population squeezed into the upper floors and attics of their homes. For a year they existed in this way, moving when necessary using ladders and boats, or in some cases wading at low water.
When we arrived in Walcheren it was bitterly cold. We were billeted with a pastor in his top room. There was no heat. However, the churches had some heating and local people dried their washing there.
The insanitary conditions had lead to an epidemic of scabies and head lice. We supplied benzyl-benzoate and helped to bath and treat people and distributed supplies of clothing, supplementary food and medical supplies. The verges were bare, mud-covered and mined, and, when the team needed a longer route, it was a case of ‘men in front, women behind’!
The local people had been cut off socially for so long they were desperately anxious to learn all they could about the rest of the world, about literature and education.
We wore Quaker grey uniforms and used a variety of transport – bikes, lorries and an ambulance.
There were six or seven of us – Fred Cornelissen (organiser/liaison officer), Ted Harris (transport), who married one of the team from Denmark, Hetty Tinkler (who later married George McGigen, also in the team), Gwen Rosalind, Ross Price and myself.
Among other relief work we were asked to set up, again, a destroyed nursery school and to help with a programme to immunise against diphtheria, typhoid and paratyphoid.
As the dykes were repaired and the land began to be drained, the emergency lessened. Other teams were operating and we felt we could leave the many friends we had made and move to relieve other needs.
Extract read by Christa Appleton.
Berlin 1945–48
At last we got to Germany, and to my delight, I was sent to Berlin, a city I knew well from the year I spent there as an ‘au pair’ girl.
I should explain that our team consisted at first of five FRS workers and two Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) men. The latter took over the unpopular job of keeping our elderly vehicles on the road. The FAU had a very good training course for car maintenance and we were glad to have John Seed and Brian with us.
I cannot remember if we had a leader at first until John Bourke arrived from another FRS team and became our leader. There were several changes in the team. The following were with us, at one time or another – Kathleen Gough from England, Bob from America. Margaret Watts from Australia, Hugh Maw from England, a young French girl and myself. Possibly Kathleen Gough was acting leader at first – later on, the job fell to me after John Bourke had gone. There was also Mary Jewell, whom I already knew from England.
John Gray, Christopher Alexander and Doig were three carefully chosen young men seconded to our team from FAU for three months. They were a tremendous help at Karolingerplatz.
I should explain that there is a good reason why I am so hazy about the leadership. We were all over twenty-seven and had held responsible jobs. We were left very happily to do the tasks most suited to our abilities. This also meant that we all wanted to pass our work over into German hands, and only to step in where we saw a need.
Our particular team was engaged in clothing and food distribution, which we put largely in the hands of German social workers. They were all very weak and hungry, and it was sad to see the teachers struggling to open small tins and making everything from Pemmican, hard biscuits etc. into soups. The packs included a ‘mashing’ of tea and a bar of chocolate. This food was given to schoolchildren, old people and nursing mothers. Clothing distribution had its problems, too, footwear was much needed in the snow of 1945–6. Some families had only one pair of shoes for their children, who therefore had to take it in turns to go to school. We eagerly awaited a promised consignment from Denmark. At last it arrived in sacks – but alas in single shoes not tied together in pairs! We spent hours trying to match them and, of course, found ourselves left with odd ones. If ever you give shoes, please remember this sad story!
I had the interesting and worthwhile job of giving talks to many German Women’s organisations, telling them of life in England in the war and post-war years. They had been kept very short of news from the outside world. Just as many people in England were indoctrinated to think that all Germans were wicked villains, they believed the same of the English people. I had visited prisoner of war camps in England, and could assure them that the POWs were very well treated, received the same rations as the British army and many invitations to English homes on Sundays, where they were only too happy to help with the gardening, etc. Many friendships developed thereby which last to this day.
I left Berlin on Jan 8th 1948, taking home with me the two children to whom Pastor Rudolf Weckerling had introduced me, Christa was aged ten and Michael eight. Their father, pastor Friedhelm Jung, was arrested like many other pastors of the confessing church, for not paying his collection money into Hitler’s church.
He was then sent into the German army and later was taken prisoner by the Russians; he died in a prisoner of war camp in Russia. Their mother died about the same time (1943) in Germany; my husband was killed at sea serving in the Royal Navy in the same year. They were all in their early thirties, and all this helped to be a bond between Christa and Michael and myself.
This was the greatest experience of my life and means more to me than all the other experiences put together. I managed to take them to Great Britain under a National Children’s Home scheme, and later adopt them.
Extract read by Michael Snellgrove.
Michael adds: Pastor Rudolf Weckerling, of the confessional church, my favourite uncle, now 101 a friend of Bishop Bell, said, movingly, that ‘Edith Snellgrove’s life always meant, for me, a sign of hope after murder, death and destruction of the times.’
Comments
Full 20 page memoir is in friends house libery she had so many experiences including in italy kissing the popes ring! she was a wonderful mum for us and gifted in many languages we were most blessed michael gratitude abundant
By umsnell@yahoo.co.uk on 25th April 2013 - 16:10
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