es of the trenches. Here, as
soon as the soldiers were wounded, they could be brought for immediate
treatment. A young private had received a severe lip wound. Unskilful
army medical handling had left it gangrened, and it had swollen. His
face was on the way to being marred for life. Mrs. Knocker treated him
every few hours for ten days--and brought him back to normal. A man
came in with his hand a pulp from splintered shell. The glove he had
been wearing was driven into the red flesh. Mrs. Knocker worked over his
hand for half an hour, picking out the shredded glove bit by bit.
Except for a short walk in the early morning and another after dark,
these women lived immured in their dressing station, which they moved
from the cellar to a half-wrecked house. They lived in the smell of
straw, blood and antiseptic. The Germans have thrown shells into the
wrecked village almost every day. Some days shelling has been vigorous.
The churchyard is choked with dead. The fields are dotted with hummocks
where men and horses lie buried. Just as I was sailing for America in
March, 1915, the house where the women live and work was shelled. They
came to La Panne, but later Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm returned to
Pervyse to go on with their work, which is famous throughout the Belgian
army.
As regiment after regiment serves its turn in the trenches of Pervyse it
passes under the hands of these women. "The women of Pervyse" are known
alike to generals, colonels and privates who held steady at Liege and
who have struggled on ever since. For many months these nurses have
endured the noise of shell fire and the smells of the dead and the
stricken. The King of the Belgians has with his own hands pinned upon
them the Order of Leopold II. The King himself wears the Order of
Leopold I. They have eased and saved many hundreds of his men.
"No place for a woman," remarked a distinguished Englishman after a
flying visit to their home.
"By the law of probabilities, your corps will be wiped out sooner or
later," said a war correspondent.
Meantime the women will go on with their cool, expert work. The only way
to stop them is to stop the war.
HOW WAR SEEMS TO A WOMAN
(BY MRS. ARTHUR GLEASON)
Life at the front is not organized like a business office, with sharply
defined duties for each worker. War is raw and chaotic, and you take
hold wherever you can lock your grip. We women that joined the Belgian
army and spent a year at
|