Emily Horton discovers the extraordinary story of two women who went to war and saved thousands of lives on the front line
Elsie and Mairi Go To War
Can you imagine your 18-year-old self running off to the fighting in Syria to “do your bit” and look after the wounded? Out in a foreign and hostile land, working around the clock to look after the dying, witnessing the carnage of war and not even being paid for it? Hell, no, I hear you cry. You would have to be fearless, certainly, selfless beyond reproach and it goes without saying, slightly mad, too.
One hundred years ago, after finishing at St Katherine's School in Hook Heath, Woking, this is exactly what Mairi Chisholm did. Along with her motorcycling chum, Elsie Knocker (originally from Marlborough), the two ladies decided to head over to the Western Front in Belgium, risking their lives to become the great humanitarian aid workers of their day.
Their story is amazing especially given the strictures on women’s lives at that time; but sadly, it is not widely known.
Dr Diane Atkinson has taken up their cause and written a book to share their escapades with a modern audience.
“They are incredible. There is nobody to touch them, there is no one like them,” she tells me passionately.
“They are a bigger story than Edith Cavell [the British nurse executed by the Germans for helping British prisoners escape] because they actually worked on the frontline. Edith was such a propaganda tool used by the Government that she seems to stand for every woman who did anything in the First World War, which I think is really unfair on everyone else,” Diane protests.
Elsie and Mairi Go To War book
To understand a little of the freedom that enabled them to become the Florence Nightingales of the Great War, you need only to look at the wealthy backgrounds they came from.
Mairi was born in 1896 in Datchet, near Windsor, into a rich merchant family, which occasionally mixed in royal circles. On one occasion, King Edward VII visited the family with his mistress Mrs Keppel to play cards.
She was also a tomboy who was passionate about motorcycles. Given a racing model in her late teens, it allowed her to compete with The Gypsy Motorbike Club around Hampshire and Dorset, where she met the divorced, 30-year-old Elsie Knocker. Strong-willed, Elsie had – somewhat unusually for the time – obtained a divorce from her philandering husband after fleeing him with their son.
The two ladies, despite their difference in age, discovered they shared a love of adventure. Weekend motorcycle meets took them all over the country, even attempting the steep incline of Leith Hill at the top of the Surrey Hills.
When war was declared, they wanted to be part of the action and headed to Belgium. The Allies, overwhelmed with wounded, were grateful for any practical help they could get, and so the women set up their own first-aid post and soup kitchen in the ruined town of Pervyse, just 100 yards from the Western Front.
“They broke all sorts of boundaries,” says Diane. “They went out to war unpaid and unbidden in this great spirit of voluntarism and despite the danger, refused to move – that's the thing that marked them out.”
Elsie had some first-aid training and Mairi none at all, but this did not deter them and Elsie soon realised the danger posed to newly injured soldiers by shock.
‘It’s a bad plan when a man is suffering from shock and is taken over these roads for a serious operation. He cannot withstand the strain. I like them to have a good rest before they go on,’ she wrote in her diary.
“They were totally overwhelmed but they just got on with it,” says Diane.
“They had a couple of Belgian orderlies, who would help them with patients but they were overwhelmed. But they never thought about coming back, they just wanted to be there and carry on.”
Indeed, when Mairi’s father arrived under instructions from his wife to bring his daughter home, she refused to leave.
“The conditions they were living in were terrible. Shortage of money was a constant strain. There was no proper water supply; all the water they had came in barrels from England. They lived on a strange diet of what people could bring them and send them over from England. You or I wouldn't have lasted more than five minutes I'm sure!” Diane exclaims.
Early on, they were caught up in hand-to-hand fighting and narrowly escaped a bayonet charge by the Germans. The sound of the blades being plunged into men's 'innards' would haunt Mairi for years to come.
At night, when the shells would fall quiet, the women would venture out to rescue the wounded from no-man's-land and haul them back to their shell-pocked house to administer care and food. A cheery atmosphere, sing-songs and dancing around a salvaged piano no doubt contributed to their recovery.
Coping with the horrors of war and the stresses of life at the frontline, Elsie and Mairi banished the stereotypes of women as unable to cope outside the home. They were unsung pioneers of their time and as Diane affirms, they simply were “incredible”.
Elsie & Mairi Go To War, by Diane Atkinson, published by Arrow Books; dianeatkinson.co.uk
