Page 31 - Greystones Archaeological Historical Society

GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 8

despite her lack of nursing experience, was taken on as an
orderly at the College Military Hospital, a large, improvised
establishment, set up to deal with the influx of wounded following
the first Battle of the Marne. Her first assignment was in a ward
full of German prisoners. Later she was moved to a fifty-bed ward
at another hospital and, with the arrival of more trained medical
staff, was allocated ‘trifling jobs’, such as making beds, washing
patients and helping them with their meals, administering
medicines, taking temperatures and sterilizing instruments.
Infinitely patient, on one occasion she was reported to have re-
arranged a wounded man’s arm fifty-two times in an effort to
make him comfortable. Unlike some of the ‘very starchy’ English
nurses, she was able to establish an easy rapport with the
wounded French poilus, sympathising with their dislike of
regimentation, listening to their tales of army and home life,
writing letters for them, organising concerts, reading to them and
supplying them with books and papers. Although her ‘indifferent’
French was, she admitted, unequal to the challenge of
translating the jokes in Punch, she was able to supply her
patients with French versions of The Riddle of the Sands and
The Scarlet Pimpernel, reserving the latter, a particular favourite,
4
for those depressed after operations.
Despite the demands of hospital work, with the already heavy
influx of casualties swelled during 1916 by the battles of Verdun
and the Somme, Lizzie still managed to enjoy a busy social life
at Dieppe. Her companions during her leisure breaks included
English and French officers stationed in the vicinity, among
whom she found her distant cousin and a former High Sheriff of
Co Carlow, Major Sir Richard Pierce Butler of the Remount
Department, who showed her the horses which were awaiting

4 On Lizzie’s nursing career, see Day in, day out, pp 188-193, and reminiscences of
Mabel Pattinson (nee Capper) in ‘In memorian: Mrs Aubrey Le Blond’, Ladies’
Alpine Club Report, 1935, pp 5-20, pp 18-19.
27