When reports reached Paris of the heavy fighting in the north and of the great rush of wounded to Boulogne, the English hospitals in that city made up a party of surgeons and nurses and sent them to give any additional aid which might be required. Three doctors from ‘Claridge’s’ were of the party. When they reached Boulogne they found the hospitals and stations seriously overcrowded, and approximately three thousand casualties were coming in daily. The authorities, however, refused all outside help. They said that they had ample staff and needed no volunteers; and it was even supposed that orders were given to refuse civilians access to the hospitals.
The women doctors made friends with the matron of one of the hospitals, who told them that she had orders not to take any doctors round; but as they were women and in uniform, they would probably pass as nurses, and therefore she would show them some of the wards. They found the accommodation had been stretched to the uttermost. Instead of four hundred patients there were eight hundred. Rows of stretchers filled the corridors, and the orderlies were stepping over the men in their efforts to pass water or food among them. The dressings could not be overtaken. The men were unwashed, and in many cases their dressings had not been changed for days, owing to want of staff. They lay in Boulogne for two or three days, and were then transferred to England. Everywhere there was overcrowding, and it was evident that more hospitals were needed.
The next day the officer in charge of one of the hospitals, finding himself hopelessly short-handed, asked for the temporary assistance of two women surgeons. Dr. Rosalie Jobson and Dr. Marjorie Blandy were accordingly lent to him by the Corps. They became attached to his staff and remained serving under the R.A.M.C. in this post for six months. During this time the Corps maintained them, the Army accepting their services gratis.
Acting on instructions from Paris, Dr. Gazdar called at the headquarters of the Army Medical Service, and found that the Women’s Hospital Corps was well known. She stated that the Corps proposed to establish another hospital in Boulogne, and asked whether it would be welcome to the authorities.
In reply, she was told:
‘If you had a place here, we should certainly use you. We know all about your work in Paris.’
She then returned to Paris, where preparations were already being made for the second hospital. The French Red Cross was willing that the Unit should divide and extend its sphere of work, so long as it bore the expense itself. And M. Falcouz offered them all assistance in obtaining transport for the heavy luggage and permission to move the ambulances, which Mlle Block and Miss Grey were anxious should go with them.
On the 1st of November Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray left for Boulogne, to find a house for the new hospital and get it ready for occupation.
The company in the very crowded railway carriage in which they travelled included a lady and gentleman who had fled from Lille and who were going to Calais. Madame had what she called ‘un petit panier’ on her knee, and very politely hoped it would not inconvenience her fellow-passengers. The panier measured twenty-eight by thirty-six inches and contained two dainty little dogs. These howled whenever Madame left the compartment, and she left it frequently, for she was stout and the carriage was airless. When they howled, Monsieur beat on the lid of the panier and called them bêtes and infâmes.
In one corner a French woman who had been nursing in a hospital for the wounded recounted her experiences. She related how a German had lain in the hospital, with both hands helpless; and how the nurses had always attended to him last; how she herself, when she did anything for him, always said: