Continuation of Five Months in France: [an account of wartime work with the French Red Cross and the Wounded Allies Fund, 1916]

Alwyne Edward MAUDE

Verlag: Stockholm: Br. Wahlströms, 1924

Beschreibung

Plain wrappers, 56pp., no separate title-page. Covers rather faded, small tear at top of spine. Anonymous, but inscribed under the title on p.[1], "by A.E.M.", i.e. Alwyne Edward Maude (1854-1945, who married in 1895, as his second wife, Louise Laurin, née Siljerstrôm, a Swede). Alwyne Maude, son of Col Sir George Ashley Maude KCB, had written a first instalment, undated and quite as rare as this one, entitled Five Months in France During the Great War. "I passed most of the year 1915, after I left Dunkirk [where he had set up his own 30-bed hospital], inspecting different French Hospitals on behalf of the French Red Cross," this one opens. "I was what was called a 'visiteur' and I saw a great many things of interest in different parts of France, and even made my way as far as Tunis." In February 1916 the French Red Cross invited him to open a hospital in Corfu to serve the retreating Serbians, and the following month, accompanied by his professionally qualified niece Dorothy (Dorothea Clara Maude, 1879-1959), daughter of his brother Ashley and a doctor in Oxford, he set off for Brindisi, from where, with much kit, they were carried by French destroyer to Corfu. Maude's account is vivid and personal, evidently based on a contemporary journal, and names names and records conversations, but is at the same time modestly matter-of-fact - they knock up an 80-bed hospital in no time, with two extra marquees holding 25 beds each, and build the road to it. He outlines in detail the problems they faced - the provision of clothes (all the men's clothes were burned the moment they arrived), the Serbs' feeding habits, the prevalence of TB, how to bury the dead. The work, however, takes its toll, and eventually, exhausted and ill, he returns to England - loudly singing the praises of the Serbs he has left behind. The First World War diaries of his niece Dorothy were the basis of a 2006 play, Marianne P. Fedunkiw's The Influence of Beauty. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 12M100072

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Continuation of Five Months in France: [an ...

Verlag: Stockholm: Br. Wahlströms

Erscheinungsdatum: 1924

Einband: Soft cover

Zustand: Very Good

Auflage: 1st Edition