MISS VIOLETTA THURSTAN
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XVI
MISS VIOLETTA THURSTAN
Miss Violetta Thurstan has had a career as varied and adventurous as any nurse during the war, and she has certainly used to full advantage the great opportunities which have come to her.
Trained at the London Hospital, Miss Thurstan was fully qualified to take up responsible work when war broke out, and in August, 1914, she was sent to Brussels in charge of a contingent of nurses from the St. John Ambulance Association. Arriving just before the capture of the city, she witnessed the historical entry into Brussels of the German army. Some days later, when the German authorities asked for volunteers to nurse at a little town called Marcelline, near Charleroi, Miss Thurstan offered to go, and took two nurses with her, leaving the remainder of her contingent in Brussels hospitals.
At Marcelline Miss Thurstan was in charge of a hospital under the German military command, where she nursed Belgian, French, and German wounded for some weeks under very trying conditions, aggravated by the brutality of the German system of discipline even as regards her own wounded. After a period of work, Miss Thurstan was granted leave of absence from the Marcelline hospital in order to look after the nurses she had left in and near Brussels. She had some exciting adventures, particularly when trying to find a nurse in an outlying village, where she actually got into the German lines and became involved in an outpost action. By this time the Germans had decided that no English nurses were to be allowed to continue nursing in Belgium; so instead of returning, as she had expected, to the hospital at Marcelline, Miss Thurstan was obliged to spend some weeks of painful and anxious suspense waiting in Brussels, not knowing what fate was in store for her nurses and herself. Finally, together with about one hundred other nurses from different contingents, and some medical men, she was taken by train through Germany to the Danish frontier. During the journey the nurses were subjected to constant insult and humiliation. At Copenhagen, however, these unpleasant experiences were made up for by a cordial reception.
Miss Thurstan was about to return to England when she heard of the great need for trained nurses in Russia, and, after obtaining permission from England to offer her services to the Russian Red Cross, she travelled on from Copenhagen to Petrograd. Miss Thurstan started work at once. After nursing for a time in base hospitals and learning some Russian, she joined a flying ambulance column of motor cars, which moved from place to place at the front. One of the base hospitals in which she was quartered was at Warsaw, where, in spite of the great difference between Russian and English hospital methods, Miss Thurstan managed to adapt herself to the conditions. She was then sent on to Lodz, where she had many adventures in the bombardment. Some idea of the work may be gathered from the fact that in the Russian retreat from Lodz over 18,000 wounded were evacuated in four days, during which time the nurses worked practically without rest and under terrible conditions.
Miss Thurstan’s life with the workers of the motor ambulance unit was remarkable. They were always on the move, and only just behind the front trenches, using any available building as a hospital. At one place they worked in a theatre attached to a hunting-box belonging to the ex-Tsar, and of the work there Miss Thurstan wrote: “The scenery had never been taken down after the last dramatic performance, and wounded men lay everywhere between the wings and drop-scenes. The auditorium was packed so closely that you could hardly get between the men as they lay on the floor.” At another dressing station, established near the trenches, 750 patients passed through the hands of the small unit in little over twenty-four hours.
Miss Thurstan was shortly afterwards wounded when attending to soldiers in the trenches; and as pleurisy developed later she had to give up work for a time and come home to England. Before leaving Russia she was awarded the medal of St. George “for courage and devotion.”