Landships II

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Ladies in uniform

LincolnTanker · Commander in Chief

RE: Ladies in uniform, and let us not forget the Munitionettes

kieffer · Commander in Chief

RE: Ladies in uniform

LincolnTanker · Commander in Chief

Hi Kieffer, thats one heck of a lot of hand granades.�

I came across this quote at www.ww1-art.com

On September 26th 1918 alone, in order to break through the German front in Champagne, 1�375�000 75-mm shells were fired, representing a third of the entire stockpile of this calibre for 1914. One last figure: during the Great War, losses due to artillery fire rose to 67% of total casualties. The figure had previously stood at around 15%.�

Imagine the cost and the time required to produce and deliver that amount of shells for only one days use!

Anyway enough deviating away from your Topic subject, here's some pics.

-- Edited by LincolnTanker on Thursday 3rd of June 2010 06:52:18 PM

-- Edited by LincolnTanker on Thursday 3rd of June 2010 06:54:10 PM

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Hi Chris,

deviating is fine, and great pictures again!
This is Flora Sandes. An English lady who went to Serbia as a nurse but some way or another she joined the fighting ranks. Twice wounded, and carreered from sergeant-major till lieutenant. And got decorated too. She stayed in Serbia, married a Russianofficer and went back to the UK after the second world war.

regards, Kieffer

Rectalgia · Legend

What a remarkable woman - and definitely no "shrinking violet". Here is her book, written early in her career:

http://www.archive.org/stream/englishwomanserg00sanduoft#page/n3/mode/2up.

She was finally awarded Serbia's highest military decoration, the King George Medal.

[Edit] Here is a nice crisp picture of her, marked "Sgt Maj", in London, but I am not sufficiently familiar with the uniform nor of her career to tell if that is the actual rank of the uniform - http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.26204/.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Friday 4th of June 2010 04:28:53 AM

kieffer · Commander in Chief

this is Mrs. Winterbottom from Boston, Massachusetts. Her husband was a British officer.
Somehow she must have followed him because in 1914 she 's in Antwerpen, with her own car. She drove around for the British Field Hospital.
She followed the Belgian troops to the Yser and began a recreation tent.
Soldiers nicknamed her "Miss Cacao" for her free chocolate drinks. And she got a rank too: erewachtmeester. 'Ere' (adjective from 'eer) means honourable. Wachtmeester (literally guard-master) is sergeant. I think it's an artillery rank or military police.
And ordinary police too, at least in Germany.
The I on her Belgian 'muts' stands for the 1e Legerdivisie. The star on her lapel is for 'ere onderluitenant' the rank given to her after the war. Miss Cacao went back to the US in 1919. She is wearing the 'frontstrepen' on her arm. Important for Belgian soldiers, their pension or payment when invalidated was related to the frontstreep, which you got after a certain amount of days in active duty. I am not that good in uniforms but the tasseled cap is called Veldmuts(field cap), or Politiemuts. The tassel is very typical, maintained till 1940.

regards, Kieffer

Rectalgia · Legend

And we shouldn't forget the Russians. From greatwardifferent and The New York Times Mid-week Pictorial:

http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/Women_Warriors/Mid-week Pictorial - Women Warriors 001.jpg (Ctrl + works to increase magnification on most/many browsers).

kieffer · Commander in Chief

no, these too we must not forget! The Women's Battallion,aka The battallion of Death, very loyal to the tsar and apparantly the last defence, as the battallion was still in Petersburg in the palace when things went a totally different direction.
Commander(es) Madame Botchkareva seated second right, and her staff.

Kieffer

kieffer · Commander in Chief

kieffer wrote:

She is wearing the 'frontstrepen' on her arm. Important for Belgian soldiers, their pension or payment when invalidated was related to the frontstreep, which you got after a certain amount of days in active duty. I am not that good in uniforms but the tasseled cap is called Veldmuts(field cap), or Politiemuts. The tassel is very typical, maintained till 1940.

regards, Kieffer

A correction and an addition:
I think I wasn't accurate about the cap: the official name is Bonnet de Police Portefeuille, introduced in 1916. Flemish/Dutch they're called Politiemuts, nicknamed 'scheepje', 'schuitje' which means little boat. In German 'Schiffchen'.
The words 'kwartiermuts', 'veldmuts' and others are frequently used for several kinds of soft head gear(without a peak). If 'Veldmuts' was an official army typification, this I don't know.

The 'frontstrepen': a maximum of 8 was issued to all men on active duty during the whole war. A similar looking stripe worn on the rightshoulder was for injuries.

Kieffer

�

Rob · Legend

There's a superb book out at the minute titled 'Elsie and Mairi go to war', about two very adventurous women (especially when you bear in mind where they met in pre-WW1 Britain - at a motorcycle club!) who drove a motor ambulance, as well as using motorcycles (they were later donated motorcycles by the Douglas motorcycle company of Bristol), often in dangers way.

ChrisG, where did you get that superb image of the VAD's on the hospital barge?

LincolnTanker · Commander in Chief

Hi Rob, sorry I don't know where I got the photo from.

Looking through my photos to see if I can rememember where it came from I found this photo, the ambulance looks quite�authentic but the uniform maybe not so.��

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Hi Rob,

Mairi and Elsie were Mairi Chisholm and Elsie Knocker.
Mairi was Scottish, served as a motorcycle dispatch rider and joined a British medical team in 1914. She was 17 by then!
Miss Knocker was married to Belgian Baron t'Serclaes. She was a bit older, aged 30.
In november 1914 the both started a dressing station at Pervijze, close to the battleground. They stayed there till Spring 1918 after their station came under fire by German gas grenades. They were highly respected by the troops.
And by the home front too: their 3th ambulance was a gift from the people of Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham: a Wolseley.

regards, Kieffer

LincolnTanker · Commander in Chief

Dorothy Lawrence, tragic end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Lawrence

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Hi Chris,

yes, a very tragic end indeed.
The ladies in 'uniform' in this picture are South African, cheering Digger up a little bit en route to war in Durban

d_fernetti · Hero

No wonder the digger doesn't seem to be too excited.

Rectalgia · Legend

kieffer wrote:
...The ladies in 'uniform' in this picture are South African, cheering Digger up a little bit en route to war in Durban

Probably between May 1916 and November 1917 in that case. Australian troopships stopped using the Suez Canal route for something like that period due to the threat of enemy submarine activity in the Mediterranean. Durban would be the first port of call after leaving Australia (Melbourne or Fremantle). Apart from the Cape route, another alternative route was Panama and Nova Scotia. A long way to go for a stoush.

Rectalgia · Legend

Not in uniform - but below is a picture of her with a lot of uniforms. As it says in Iso Rae in �taples
It was not until 1918 that sixteen men were appointed as Australias official war artists for the First World War. No women were chosen. Yet there was an Australian woman artist who lived in France for the whole war, and who since 1915 quietly documented the activities of the �taples Army Base Camp. Her name was Iso Rae.
A number of her works are documented in the link. Here is one more, called Nocturne with tents Ah yes, all those white-washed stones lining the pathway. What army camp could be complete without those?

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Friday 2nd of July 2010 07:42:13 PM

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Rectalgia wrote:

�

Probably between May 1916 and November 1917 in that case. Australian troopships stopped using the Suez Canal route for something like that period due to the threat of enemy submarine activity in the Mediterranean.

Just a little trivia, as weather condition are near tropical here: the Suez Canal was the turning point in dressing. Sailors changed their navy blue outfit in white, or vice versa.

I don't know the number of troop ships lost by torpedos, but I read that big liners could rather easily avoid subs, being faster and able to outmanouver them. They even went on their own, independent of relative slow convoys. But that might be ww2 practise. But the Suez Canal, being a bottle neck and after that Gibraltar would be spots one better sailed around I think.

Rectalgia · Legend

kieffer wrote:

...You're right, let's not forget the Munitionettes. As I understood they did physical hard work, and especially in ammunition plants health precautions were poor. ...

Indeed, poorer than I thought since I had not appreciated the extent of "TNT poisoning". And to that can be added "Picric acid poisoning". There is some discussion of those matters on this site: Munitions Workers Died of Poisoning, During the war. It seems, following some quick Googling of medical references, that some effects could be long-lasting/chronic or only emerging after some years. One such reference Porphyrinuria in T.N.T. Poisoning, a 1942 reference.

Then add in in the occasional explosions (low probability but catastrophic when they happened) and the "usual" range of "industrial accidents" - Slip / Trip and Fall, Kinetic Events, Lifting / Turning etc. ... it becomes another tragedy in slow-motion.

Ah, this is so sad. I knew it was dangerous, but not that dangerous. Nor did they. On the positive side, the well-known complaints at munitions plants over the poor quality of the canteen food were maybe just because they were poisoned already, the food was good all along. Ah, you laugh or you cry or you try to laugh when you want to cry. This is why we all should "study war".

Other references consulted - Picric Acid Hazards (Laboratory) - or why you don't want to spill "insensitive" hot picric acid on a comcrete floor - and List of British Ordnance Terms (Wikipedia) - maybe that last one has been mentioned before? It is useful.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Sunday 8th of August 2010 06:58:09 AM

Ironsides · Legend

The Halifax explosion, the biggest bang since the big one in 1917.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

Cheers cry

kieffer · Commander in Chief

there was a big bang in France too, 1915 in a Belgian munition plant in Graville, near Le Havre.

Regards, Kieffer

Rectalgia · Legend

Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions#World_War_I_era lists some of the big ones, mostly unintended - munitions plants and transportation for the main part. But not all such incidents made it to the list, for instance the picric acid explosion at a plant in France, 1 May 1916 mentioned in that article on the hazards of picric acid I referenced earlier. The design of those plants is to minimise the potential for total destruction of course, but still people die in the containment areas when things go just "a little bit" wrong.

The particular danger of picric acid is that it reacts with most metals (tin and aluminium being exceptions) to form exquisitely sensitive metallic salts which makes it a wolf in sheeps clothing. I say that because picric acid itself is quite stable (for an explosive) - being sometimes used for that property in shells and bombs designed to penetrate hardened and armoured structures before being set off. In the French incident, the hot acid reacted with calcium compounds in the concrete floor to make a small quantity of the calcium salt at the contact point and that more or less spontaneously detonated, setting off the rest.

Picric acid fillings must be amongst the most dangerous to be present in old unexploded munitions - the inert liners become compromised with natural degradation and the super-sensitive metallic salts might be formed with the steel casing or even the surrounding soil. It is then impossible to safely approach that munition. I guess dilution is the answer but the solubility of various salts will be variable. I think bomb disposal people are worth more than their pay.

Here is one in action, during WW1 - from More Fragments from France (the title is a little unfortunate, I grant you). The author is Capt. Bruce Bairnsfather (have I mentioned him before?) who is one of my personal heroes, being one of those commanders who allowed his men to participate in the "Christmas Truce" and for his continuing effectiveness in taking the mickey out of the top brass (needless to say, no OBE for him, not even an MBE, despite a distinguished career as a cartoonist and illustrator who did much for the war effort and morale in two wars).

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Rectalgia wrote:

But not all such incidents made it to the list
you're right, that list isn't complete. The Pays Bas...Delft is mentioned but not Leiden during the Napoleontic occupation. A gun powder boat exploded, causing many casualties but Napoleons brother, made king of Holland became very popular then, acting very human and concerned about what he considered as 'his' citizens by then.
�
The design of those plants is to minimise the potential for total destruction of course,
I read or heard that gun powder storages or arsenals were built in a way that the blast of an explosion would be 'directed' upwards, the base built very solid diminishing to the upper structure.

It is then impossible to safely approach that munition. I guess dilution is the answer but the solubility of various salts will be variable. I think bomb disposal people are worth more than their pay.
I think they freeze the stuff before dismantling. I am not an expert at all, but as a kid, growing up in a former war zone I've seen the disposal squads more than once! They were and still are life savers. Of course they did'nt let you near but you see and hear some, not to mention the bang of course. Bang, that is if somebody drops a huge weight on the earth. Sad accidents happened mostly by kids playing with ammunition, or experimenting. You just knew too much by warning tales of your parents and too little you were aware of the real danger. The problem was that ammunition wasn't only still laying around in bunkers, but the soil has its habits too. Dug explosives are 'coming up', and farmers plough their fields. The sea is bringing back stuff which was dumped too. The other main hazard were sea mines getting in nets of fishing trawlers. Very sad and nasty things happened, even many years later.
Kieffer

�

alfisherjr · Colonel

Interesting . . . but we're veering off the topic of women at war!

Al

Rectalgia · Legend

Well, here's another one - Alice Ross-King ARRC, MM (nee Alys King), joined the AIF in November 1914, much to the dismay of her mother who had already lost her other familily - her husband and two young sons - in Perth before the war. The write-up with the picture says some of it, more may be found here - Casualty Clearance (anzacday.org.au). In addition to the awards shown she qualified for the WW1 "trio" of Imperial service medals with the MID oak leaf emblem on her Victory Medal ribbon for her two mentions in dispatches.

Picture scanned by Jack Langford, British Medals Forum.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Monday 9th of August 2010 07:44:16 PM

kieffer · Commander in Chief

alfisherjr wrote:

Interesting . . . but we're veering off the topic of women at war!

Al

Sorry, I won't do that again. Some memories came up and this isn't the right place to put them down here, I do apologise for that.

�

Rectalgia · Legend

Women Frontsoldaten?

From the 1919 American publication History's Greatest War - three women found operating machine guns during the American advance. The text and pictures in the book are somewhat disconnected and I haven't found any other detail yet. Hindenburg line? The Brunhilde sector, no doubt. Okay, not much of a joke but does anyone have any information? Given the publication date there is quite a lot of allied hyperbole and anti-axis propaganda, the story may not be as straight-forward as it seems.

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Hi Steve,
I must look that up, but I read that there were quite a few examples of active fighting ladies in ww1.
On the way I found these: some health precautions were taken, at the other hand the lady? in the barrel, that can't be political correct I think.

Rectalgia · Legend

Better than her straddling it Kieffer - http://www.kbismarck.org/photos/cher1.jpg (and that's the sanitised version).

Mark Hansen · Legend

Ironsides wrote:

The Halifax explosion, the biggest bang since the big one in 1917.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

Cheers

�And the subject of an excellent book "Curse of the Narrows" ISBN-10: 0-8027-1510-9 or ISBN-13: 978-0-8027-1510-4.

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Rectalgia wrote:

Better than her straddling it Kieffer..

here's another Freudian, not a female, sorry for veering off...

�