Page 30 - Greystones Archaeological Historical Society

MRS LE BLOND’S WAR

he replied: “Artillery!”’ What they heard, Lizzie firmly believed,
were the first guns of the Great War. There was no time to be
lost, and by 11.45 pm – just a quarter of a hour before civilian
traffic was due to cease with the beginning of French
mobilization – Lizzie’s train moved slowly out of Basle station for
what would normally have been a journey of eight hours. In fact,
th
it took two days to reach Paris, and it was on 4 August, while
Lizzie was still there, that Britain declared war on Germany. Two
days later she was back in London, where she found ‘everything,
2
or so it seemed, just as usual.’

During the autumn of 1914, as young men flocked to enlist in
a war expected to be over by Christmas, women sought to make
their own contribution, and Lizzie, with her usual energy, was
th
quick to volunteer her services. On 19 September she was one
of the speakers at a ‘very successful’ recruiting meeting held in
Tunbridge Wells, and produced a recruiting pamphlet which was
subsequently translated into Italian. She also served for several
months on the committee of the Rotherhithe branch of the
Tipperary Club, a nationwide organisation set up to provide
support, instruction and entertainment to the wives of newly-
enlisted men, visiting and lecturing there on several occasions.
3
Anxious to play a more active role, she also applied for a post at
a British Red Cross hospital, but was rejected on the grounds of
age. Shortly afterwards, however, reading a newspaper report
on the lack of nursing staff in French hospitals, she determined
to see if she could find work across the Channel. With
remarkably little difficulty, she made her way to Dieppe and,

2 Account of Lizzie’s homeward journey from Mrs Aubrey Le Blond, Day in, day
out, 1928, pp 180-186. Lizzie was mistaken in her belief that she had heard ‘the
first guns of the Great War’: the first shots were, in fact, fired over six hundred
miles away, on 29 July 1914, by Austro-Hungarian naval vessels shelling Belgrade,
the Serbian capital.
3 Kent and Sussex Courier, 25 Sept 1914; Ladies’ Alpine Club Report, 1916.
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