Posted on

First World War: News from Old Scholars December 1915

From Bootham magazine, December 1915

“A. BUTTERWORTH (Captain) [Bootham: 1910] remembered on the Peninsula last December how he used to look forward to the School Christmas holidays. ” How well I can see it all again, the old Minster from the Art Room windows…. The only thing I can’t see is the new swimming bath; here one has hard work to get water for a shave”; so he sends a donation to
the bath from “somewhere in Gallipoli.””

“J. C. S. MACGREGOR [Bootham: 1910-14] sent F.A.U. greetings from the most un-Christmaslike surroundings and the most deplorable weather.”

“E. RUSSELL SANDERS [Bootham: 1903] served in France for fifteen months with the Northumberland Hussars (Imperial Yeomanry). He was somewhere in Flanders when he wrote in December. He has evidently learned amidst the discomfort of feet wet and cold for weeks “a great patience, and that if you only wait the worst is bound to pass.” He is captivated by the beauty of some of the nights and early dawns. And if he feels a bit blue and fed up, there’s the grand old song, ” Goals for the eager and fights for the fearless.” “

Posted on

First World War: Friends Ambulance Unit update, March 1915

“The Friends’ Ambulance Unit has now completed four months’ work at the front. During the whole time it has continued to work in the same area in Flanders and Northern France; and its headquarters remain still where they were first established at Dunkirk. The original party that went out from England has been more than trebled in size, and there is still no slackening in the demand for men to do the additional work that is continually opening out. Before Christmas the unit’s main achievement was the organisation of a system of seven ambulance stations on the front, which carried among them in a few weeks over ten thousand wounded men, mostly from aid posts just behind the trenches, to hospitaux d’evacuation in the rear. Since Christmas the biggest development of the work has consisted in a large scale attempt to cope with an epidemic of disease among the refugees and civilian population still living in the very front of the fighting zone in Flanders. Besides the work of two hospitals, which have an accommodation of over two hundred beds, various preventive measures have been taken; six thousand five hundred civilians have been inoculated against typhoid ; a pure water supply has been provided in various towns and villages; and now every house in the district is being visited and, if necessary, disinfected. Much of this work is done within range of the German guns. The unit also has two hospitals in Dunkirk, one of which, it is hoped, will vary rapidly expand.”

From ‘Bootham’ magazine, March 1915