On August 3rd or 4th, 1914, when war was declared, we were at Apple Porch. My sister Decima was with us, and I can remember her sitting in the garden drawing up on a piece of paper, headed “H. V. Esmond’s and Eva Moore’s Tour,” the details of her scheme for organising women’s work, so that it might be used to the best advantage in the coming struggle.
We went to London, and by the Saturday following the offices of the Women’s Emergency Corps were opened. Gertrude Kingston lent the Little Theatre, and it was there the work began. I was playing at the Vaudeville Theatre each evening, and working at the Little Theatre all day. Women enrolled in thousands; trained women were grouped into their proper classes, and untrained women were questioned as to what they “could do”. Weekly lists were sent to the War Office, containing full particulars as to the numbers of women we could supply for transport, cooks, interpreters, and so forth; and each week a letter was received in acknowledgment, saying that women “were not needed”. That was in 1914. Eighteen months later the Corps was found to be the “front door”, the place where women could be found to meet any emergency. It would be impossible to give one-tenth of the names of the women who worked for and with the Corps, women who gave time and money, brain and endurance, to the work. The Emergency Corps was the first body of women in this country regularly to meet the refugees from Belgium, find them hospitality, clothes, and food. It was the first organisation to make a definite attempt to supply British toys; it sent women, capable of teaching French, to most of the large training camps throughout the country. I remember we issued a small book, called French for Tommies, which was remarkably useful. The Corps sent thousands of blankets to Serbia, ran the first ambulances, organised canteens for the troops in France, provided cheap meals for workers, and a hundred other things which I cannot remember. When the cry for respirators was first raised, the Corps took a disused laundry, and supplied them in thousands; they were a pattern which was soon superseded, but that was the pattern supplied to us at the time.
When I went on tour, I undertook to enrol members in the provinces, and met with considerable success; and it was a year later, 1915, at Bournemouth, that I met Miss Marie Chisholm and Mrs. Knocker, who had been in Belgium with Dr. Munro, and who had the first Ambulance Corps out in Belgium and did such fine work in the early days of 1914. They were home on leave, to return when it was ended to their dressing-station on the Belgian front line. I was very interested in their work, and promised to do what I could to help. Through the kindness and generosity of the British public, I was able to send them money and many useful things. I should like to quote one instance—one of many—which shows how the public responded to any appeal. At Birmingham I heard from Miss Chisholm that the Belgian “Tommies” were suffering very badly from frost-bitten ears; the wind, coming over the inundated fields in front of the trenches, cut like a knife. “I would give anything,” she wrote, “for a thousand Balaclava helmets.” On the Thursday night, at the Birmingham theatre, I made my appeal, and in a week 500 had been sent to me, and 1000 followed in less than three weeks’ time. Sandbags, too, I was able to send out in thousands, through the interest and kindness of those who heard my appeals. It was through the Emergency Corps that I really first met them. Miss Chisholm had been my messenger in the very early days of the war, and, before I pass on to other matters, I want to say a last word about that organisation. It was the parent of practically all the other war societies. The Needlework Guilds formed their societies on the lines we had used; the various workrooms, in which women’s work was carried on, came to us to hear how it was done; the W.A.F. and W.A.A.C., and other semi-military organisations, were formed long after we had started the Women’s Volunteer Reserve. Much concern had been expressed at the bare idea of Women Volunteers; but Decima and Mrs. Haverfield stuck to their point, and Mrs. Haverfield carried on that branch finely. Nothing but a national necessity could have brought women together in such numbers, or spurred them on to work in the splendid way they did. The Corps was a “clearing house” for women’s work, and when women settled down into their proper spheres of usefulness, the Corps, having met the emergency, ceased as an active body to exist; but, before it did so, it had justified its existence a dozen times over.
Major A. Gordon, who was King’s Messenger to the King of the Belgians, proved himself a great friend to the “Women of Pervyse” and myself. It was through his efforts that I was able to pay my memorable visit to the Belgian trenches in 1918, and later I had the honour of receiving the Order de la Reine Elizabeth. All we five sisters worked for the war in all different branches at home and abroad, and we all received decorations: Decima, the Commander of the British Empire, Medallion de Reconnaissance, and Overseas Medals; Bertha, the O.B.E. for home service; Emily (Mrs. Pertwee), Le Palm d’Or, for Belgian work; Ada, the Allied and Overseas Medals for services with the French and British, in both France and Germany, also, through her efforts in endowing a room in the British Women’s Hospital for the totally disabled soldier, Star and Garter. Speaking of this brings back the memory of the wonderful day at Buckingham Palace, when the Committee of the British Women’s Hospital, founded by the Actresses’ Franchise League in 1914, were commanded by the Queen to present personally to her the £50,000 they had raised for that hospital. If I remember rightly, about 23 of us were there. The Queen, after the presentation, walked down the line and spoke to each one of us with her wonderful gracious manner, and to many referred to the pleasure she had received from seeing our various theatrical performances. Before the Queen entered the room, we were asked by Sir Derek Keppel to form ourselves in alphabetical order, and Lady Wyndham (Miss Mary Moore), my sister Decima, Lady Guggisberg, and myself (Mrs. H. V. Esmond) all promptly grouped ourselves under the M’s as Moores.
In the spring of 1918, when the Germans were making their last big advance, I was able to arrange to pay a flying visit to Belgium, to see the dressing-station at Pervyse. We had to pass Fumes, and found it in flames. The sight of that town being steadily bombarded, with the houses flaming against a brilliant sunset, was one of the most terrible but wonderful coloured things I have ever seen. We arrived at the H.Q. of the 2nd Division of the Belgian Army, to find the evening strafe in full swing. I can see now the Belgian Tommy as I saw him then, quite unconcerned by the guns, planting little flowers, Bachelor’s Buttons, outside the General’s hut. I wished that I could have shared his unconcern; I found the noise simply ear-splitting, and when a particularly noisy shell burst, and I asked the General if “it was going or coming”, he roared with laughter. I have never felt less amused than I did at that moment!
He sent us over to Pervyse in his car, to collect some papers which Mrs. Knocker, who was returning to England in a few days, needed. The dressing-station was a small and much-shelled house, on the very edge of the flooded land which lay between the Belgian trenches and the enemy—from the little house you could actually see the German sandbags. The dressing-station itself was anything but a “health resort”, and there is no question that these two women faced great danger with enormous fortitude.
Afterwards we motored to G.H.Q., where the staff were at dinner—or, rather tragically for us, where the staff had just finished dinner. I have the Menu still, signed by all who were present. It consisted of “Poached Eggs and Water Cress”, with Coffee to follow. We did not like to say we were “starving for want of food”, and so said we had dined. I was very glad to remember that in our car reposed a cooked chicken, which had been bought in Dunkirk. We—that is, Miss Chisholm, Mrs. Knocker (who had become by then Baroness T’Scerelles), her husband, and I—slept at a farmhouse some distance from H.Q. The only tolerably pleasant part of the night, which was noisy with the sound of shells, was the eating (with our fingers) of the cooked chicken. I do not think I have ever been so hungry in my life!
The following day I was taken to the trenches at Ramskeppelle. The men were very much astonished to see a woman in mufti. What struck me most was the beauty of the day, for the sun was shining, and birds singing, yet from behind us came the noise of the 15–inch guns, firing on the Germans, and back came the thunder of their replies. The sunshine, the birds, the beauty of the day—and war!
I stayed at Boulogne, on the way back, for the night, as the guest of Lady Hatfield at the Red Cross Hospital, and then returned home, bringing with me the Baroness, who was suffering from shock and the awful effects of gas. If it has seemed, or did seem at the time, that these two women had perhaps overmuch praise for what they did, I would ask you to remember that they worked in that exposed position, continually running grave risks, for three and a half years. It was the sustained effort that was so wonderful, which demanded our admiration, as well as the work which received the grateful thanks of the whole of the 2nd and 3rd Divisions of the Belgian Army.
To go back to the theatrical side of things. In 1914, the first week of the war, some 200 touring companies were taken “off the road”, and we—my husband and I—were advised to cancel our provincial dates at once. This we decided not to do, but to “carry on” as we had already arranged. The financial side was not very satisfactory, but I must say that the managers in the country appreciated our efforts; and, apart from that, we had the satisfaction of knowing that we were providing work for, at anyrate, a few artists and the staffs in the provincial theatres, at a time when work was very, very difficult to obtain.