In their book "Motors and Motor Driving" from 1902 , S. F. Edge and Charles Jarrott give some useful advice when 'Going around corners' -
Always keep to your right side, remembering that in all probability you will find some other vehicle coming towards you from the opposite direction.
A very good rule to follow is that under ordinary circumstances the brakes should not be used with such violence as to cause the wheels to skid, or to occasion a jar to those driving in the carriage. If this is carefully observed the vehicle will last much longer.
In his excellent short book “And Life Went On” Joe Jeffrey outlines the effect the Civil War had on the small town of Montevallo, Missouri.
This extract describes how Union troop stragglers came through the town. -
"Great-grandmother Ball had a story she told my grandmother. In later years Union troop stragglers from the regiments came through one time. They had already stolen all her cows but two. She had a young baby--that was my grandmother--and needed the cow's milk. She also had a few chickens left for fresh eggs. They came through and drove her cows off. They also had other cattle they had rounded up. They took the few remaining chickens she had. They came in the house, took her lard, and her flour and butter and sugar that she had gone in a wagon over to Fort Scott to buy. So she went out and pleaded with the officer who was on a horse. She pleaded with him and told him she had a baby in the house and she had an old lady, she had an aunt and some cousins. He said, 'Well, lady if you can call your two cows by name and they will follow you back, you can have them.' She called them and they turned around and came toward her. 'Lady, you may have your cows back.' So I thought he must have had a heart after all. She never did lose those two cows to men coming through."
"She told stories of them coming in and pounding on the table for certain kinds of food. She and her relatives living with her would prepare the food and set it before them. Then as a pastime the soldiers would line them up against the wall and throw knives at them and the knives would go into the wall. But none of them lost their lives and their house wasn't burned like some."
"People weren't safe anywhere. And the people living with her weren't safe there with her, but their lives were spared. Seems almost like a miracle that they were because people in other places were more mistreated."
This extract comes from an excellent article “WAR WITHIN THE STATE” about Missouri in the Civil War, -
After the Battle of Pea Ridge, the Confederacy never achieved rule over Missouri and northern Arkansas. Regardless, the war continued. And while the men fought and died on the battlefields in Missouri and elsewhere, the women and children remained home, existing as best they could. Every male between sixteen and sixty had to fight--by choice or conscription. This left the women, young children and older people alone to make a living. Staying alive on farms was difficult and made worse by military confiscation of horses, food and clothing. A poor fate was made worse by the constant fear of seizure.
No one could remain neutral, for both sides considered neutrals as enemies. However, aiding one side meant possible death if the occupying army changed. For men who decided against joining the army, few options were left open. To remain home meant hiding whenever an army was nearby. Capture resulted in forced joining or being shot as a spy. Some decided to make war on their own, or as a private army with other cohorts. Still others realized the war was a perfect opportunity to embark on crime, in the guise of one army or another, but preying upon everyone.
Bill Wilson was one example of a bushwhacker who embarked on his own. His father was killed by Union troops moving through the area near Waynesville, Missouri. After this, Wilson roamed the wilds, cheerfully gunning down small Union patrols in revenge. The Union command at Rolla placed a price on his head, but he was never captured and lived in freedom long after the war.
Field Hospital and Flying Column
Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister
in Belgium & Russia
By
Violetta Thurstan
At first sight Brussels seemed to be en fête, flags were waving from every window, Boy Scouts were everywhere looking very important, and the whole population seemed to be in the streets. Nearly every one wore little coloured flags or ribbons—a favourite badge was the Belgian colours with the English and French intertwined. It did not seem possible that war could be so near, and yet if one looked closer one saw that many of [8]the flags giving such a gay appearance were Red Cross flags denoting that there an ambulance had been prepared for the wounded, and the Garde Civile in their picturesque uniform were constantly breaking up the huge crowds into smaller groups to avoid a demonstration.
The first thing to arrange was about the coming of my nurses, whether they were really needed and if so where they were to go. I heard from the authorities that it was highly probable that Brussels would be occupied by the Germans, and that it would be best to put off their coming, for a time at any rate. Private telegrams had long been stopped, but an official thought he might be able to get mine through, so I sent a long one asking that the nurses might not be sent till further notice. As a matter of fact it never arrived, and the next afternoon I heard that twenty-six nurses—instead of sixteen as was originally arranged—were already on their way. There were 15,000 beds in Brussels prepared for the reception of the wounded, and though there were not many wounded in the city just then, the nurses would certainly all be wanted soon if any of the [9]rumours were true that we heard on all sides, of heavy fighting in the neighbourhood, and severe losses inflicted on the gallant little Belgian Army.
It was impossible to arrange for the nurses to go straight to their work on arrival, so it was decided that they should go to a hotel for one night and be drafted to their various posts the next day. Anyhow, they could not arrive till the evening, so in the afternoon I went out to the barriers to see what resistance had been made against the possible German occupation of Brussels. It did not look very formidable—some barbed-wire entanglements, a great many stones lying about, and the Gardes Civiles in their quaint old-fashioned costume guarding various points. That was all.
Field Hospital and Flying Column
Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister
in Belgium & Russia
By
Violetta Thurstan
The work in the office was diversified by a trip to Faversham with some very keen and capable Voluntary Aid Detachment members, to help improvise a temporary hospital for some Territorials who had gone sick. And then my turn came for more active service. I was invited by the St. John Ambulance to take out a party of nurses to Belgium for service under the Belgian Red Cross Society.
Very little notice was possible, everything was arranged on Saturday afternoon of all [6]impossible afternoons to arrange anything in London, and we were to start for Brussels at eight o'clock on Tuesday morning.
On Monday afternoon I was interviewing my nurses, saying good-bye to friends—shopping in between—wildly trying to get everything I wanted at the eleventh hour, when suddenly a message came to say that the start would not be to-morrow after all. Great excitement—telephones—wires—interviews. It seemed that there was some hitch in the arrangements at Brussels, but at last it was decided by the St. John's Committee that I should go over alone the next day to see the Belgian Red Cross authorities before the rest of the party were sent off. The nurses were to follow the day after if it could be arranged, as having been all collected in London, it was very inconvenient for them to be kept waiting long.
Early Tuesday morning saw me at Charing Cross Station. There were not many people crossing—two well-known surgeons on their way to Belgium, Major Richardson with his war-dogs, and a few others. A nurse going to Antwerp, with myself, formed the only female contingent on board. It was asserted [7]that a submarine preceded us all the way to Ostend, but as I never get further than my berth on these occasions, I cannot vouch for the truth of this.
Ostend in the middle of August generally means a gay crowd of bathers, Cook's tourists tripping to Switzerland and so on; but our little party landed in silence, and anxious faces and ominous whispers met us on our arrival on Belgian soil. It was even said that the Germans were marching on Brussels, but this was contradicted afterwards as a sensational canard. The Red Cross on my luggage got me through the douane formalities without any trouble. I entered the almost empty train and we went to Brussels without stopping.
Field Hospital and Flying Column
Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister
in Belgium & Russia
By
Violetta Thurstan
A week later I had a telegram from the Red Cross summoning me to London.
London was a hive of ceaseless activity. Territorials were returning from their unfinished training, every South Coast train was crowded with Naval Reserve men who had been called up, every one was buying kits, getting medical comforts, and living at the Army and Navy Stores. Nurses trained [3]and untrained were besieging the War Office demanding to be sent to the front, Voluntary Aid Detachment members were feverishly practising their bandaging, working parties and ambulance classes were being organized, crowds without beginning and without end were surging up and down the pavements between Westminster and Charing Cross, wearing little flags, buying every half-hour edition of the papers and watching the stream of recruits at St. Martin's. All was excitement—no one knew what was going to happen. Then the bad news began to come through from Belgium, and every one steadied down and settled themselves to their task of waiting or working, whichever it might happen to be.
I was helping at the Red Cross Centre in Vincent Square, and all day long there came an endless procession of women wanting to help, some trained nurses, many—far too many—half-trained women; and a great many raw recruits, some anxious for adventure and clamouring "to go to the front at once," others willing and anxious to do the humblest service that would be of use in this time of crisis.
Surely after this lesson the Bill for the State Registration of Trained Nurses cannot be ignored or held up much longer. Even now in this twentieth century, girls of twenty-one, nurses so-called with six months' hospital training, somehow manage to get out to the front, blithely undertaking to do work that taxes to its very utmost the skill, endurance, and resource of the most highly trained women who have given up the best years of their life to learning the principles that underlie this most exacting of professions. For it is not only medical and surgical nursing that is learnt in a hospital ward, it is discipline, endurance, making the best of adverse circumstances, and above all the knowledge of mankind. These are the qualities that are needed at the front, and they cannot be imparted in a few bandaging classes or instructions in First Aid.
This is not a diatribe against members of Voluntary Aid Detachments. They do not, as a rule, pretend to be what they are not, and I have found them splendid workers in their own department. They are not half-trained nurses but fully trained ambulance [5]workers, ready to do probationer's work under the fully trained sisters, or if necessary to be wardmaid, laundress, charwoman, or cook, as the case may be. The difficulty does not lie with them, but with the women who have a few weeks' or months' training, who blossom out into full uniform and call themselves Sister Rose, or Sister Mabel, and are taken at their own valuation by a large section of the public, and manage through influence or bluff to get posts that should only be held by trained nurses, and generally end by bringing shame and disrepute upon the profession.
