The_Poppy_March_2012.pdf - The Western Front Association

‘A Madame la Duchesse de Sutherland, Homage respectueux et très
reconnaissant d’un simple soldat,’ by Victor Tardieu
‘Bourbourg, 1915’ by Victor Tardieu
suddenly to become an insistent duty, perfectly easy to
carry out.’
She also found herself seeking the men’s rosaries from
the purses in which they carried them because they wanted
to hold them in their hands. Their small hospital had to take
all the wounded who were brought to them because there
were already 700 in the military hospital and the smaller Red
Cross ambulances were full. She is full of praise for the nuns
and her staff:
What a blessing our ambulance was to Namur,’ she writes;
‘no one until these awful things happen can conceive of the
untold value of fully trained and disciplined British nurses.
The nuns were of great use to us, for they helped in every
possible tender way, and provided food for the wounded.
The hospital was disestablished after the German
Occupation of Belgium but it would be re-established in
November 1914 at the Hotel Belle Vue at Malo-les-Bains,
Dunkirk, as an evacuation hospital with the capability of
providing 70-100 beds for sick or wounded. No.9 Red Cross
hospital became a Tent Unit at Bourbourg in July 1915 and
was known as ‘The Camp in the Oatfield,’ immortalised in
the vivid paintings of Victor Tardieu, a French soldier who
had fought in the trenches. He painted canvasses ‘en plein
air,’ depicting life in the tented camp at Bourbourg in bright,
vivid colours.
Many of these paintings were dedicated to the Duchess
by Tardieu: ‘A Madame la Duchesse de Sutherland, Homage
respectueux et très reconnaissant d’un simple soldat,’ is the
dedication for one of the paintings.
Later that year, No.9 Red Cross Hospital closed in
preparation for a move to Calais where it opened on 12th
January 1916 as a hospital for British wounded initially for
one hundred beds but later increased to one hundred and
twenty.
The Visitors’ Book for No.9 Red Cross Hospital contains
the signatures of a huge variety of prestigious visitors
including the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, the President
of the Canadian Red Cross Society and by personnel from
the international Ambulance Units from America and
Australia. On 14th July 1917 King George V, accompanied
by Queen Mary and Prince Edward visited the hospital and
signed the Visitor’s Book.
In 1915/16 Lady Randolph Churchill wrote an article
‘Amongst the Wounded’ in a series entitled ‘Our Women
Heroes’ which was about women working for the Red Cross
at home and overseas. She praises the Duchess of Sutherland
for her work as ‘Directress in station to all matters of supplies
and pecuniary import in her hospital.’
In March 1918 No.9 Red Cross Hospital moved to
Longueness, near St Omer, followed by another move in
September 1918 to 20th November 1918.
The constant change of locations of the hospitals was
recorded by a nurse who was an avid post-card collector
and managed to acquire a postcard of every place in which
she worked. Her name was Uma Tomlin Hunter who came
from a military family in Northumberland. She was born in
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1886 and in April 1915 she enrolled
as a VAD in Northumberland and was sent to France to serve
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