Page 36 - Greystones Archaeological Historical Society

MRS LE BLOND’S WAR

achievement of the service to date: in one eight-day period, she
reported, a single convoy of twenty-five ambulances had
transported 11,000 wounded, and a total of 400,000 men had
been moved by British Ambulance Committee vehicles, ‘which
10
went to the very edge of the battlefield’.
Lizzie was in London on Armistice Day, 11 November 1918,
th
and from the windows of the BAC office witnessed the vast
crowds which spilled out onto the streets to celebrate the end of
four years of carnage and suffering. With no further need for her
fund-raising services, she accepted an invitation from the War
Office to lecture to troops awaiting demobilization, and
throughout the exceptionally severe winter of 1918-19 travelled
to various commands in Britain and France. Transport difficulties
were exacerbated by continuing coal restrictions,
accommodation was in short supply, malnutrition and the
influenza epidemic sapped morale, and the officers assigned to
manage the lecture programme had little experience of their role
or of lecturers’ requirements. The lanterns available for her use
were often unsatisfactory – one filling the hall with smoke and
fumes before breaking down completely, another burst into
flames in the course of her lecture. Attendance was compulsory,
and Lizzie worried that her audience might be restive, but won
the young men’s goodwill by permitting them to smoke during
her talk, and promising to hasten to her conclusion if they
11
indicated, by shuffling their feet loudly, that they were bored.
With her lecture tour at an end, Lizzie determined to make
what she herself described as a pilgrimage to the French
battlegrounds. Her first destination was Ypres, the site of some

10 On BAC fundraising efforts, see Sussex Agricultural Express, 23 November
1917; Hastings and St Leonard’s Observer, 15 December 1917; Kent and Sussex
Courier, 15 and 22 February 1918.
11 Day in, day out, pp 131-136.
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