Writing History on the Page and Screen: Mediating Conflict through Britain’s First World War Ambulance Trains

Abstract

This article examines how different forms of writing mediate the past. In doing so, I focus on two ostensibly distinct types of authorship: the light that writing projected on-screen, and the life-writings found in letters and diaries. Between 1914 and 1919 in Britain, cinema and personal testimonies intervened in historiography in apparent opposition to one another. It is easy for us now to assume that state-censored, propagandistic movies narrated the state’s version of the First World War, while secret, illegal accounts written by personnel on the Western Front line described actuality (while letter writing was permitted – subject to censorship – all serving personnel were banned from keeping diaries). However, a study of British ambulance trains reveals that films and life-writings have a shared vocabulary, which complicates the two media’s connections to history and to one another. I argue that by interrogating the motifs congruent on the screen and the page, and by reading films and testimonies in tandem, we can rediscover effaced narratives about wartime conditions and marginalised peoples.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Daily Express, ‘Official War Films’, January 18, 1916, 2.

2. Henry Newbold, ‘The War Films’, The Times, October 14, 1916, 7.

3. The Bioscope, ‘Civilians, Fall In!’ May 24, 1917, 717–19.

4. Under the Red Cross (Excel, UK, 1914); John and the Ambulance (Monofilm, UK and France, 1914); Red Cross Pluck (Ethyle Batley, Burlingham Standard, UK, 1915). None of these fiction films survives so or is available for viewing.

5. The FAU was a Quaker organisation established in 1914 to support the British Expeditionary Force. In the FAU, conscientious objectors contributed to the war effort while ensuring the preservation of life. Geoffrey Winthrop Young, A Story of the Work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit October 1914–February 1915, 1915.

6. For example, Railway Gazette, ‘The London and South-Western Ambulance Train’, August 29, 1914, 336–8 and Railway Gazette, ‘Life and Work on an Ambulance Train’, February 2, 1918, 131–2.

7. The Wonderful Organisation of the RAMC (British Topical Committee for War Films, UK, 1916); Behind the Lines with Our French Ally (Pathé Frères, UK, 1917); The Military Power of France (Gaumont Pathé, UK, 1917). In total, there is an extant canon of nine ambulance train films that also includes New Zealand Ambulance (New Zealand, c. 1917); Latest US Ambulance Train (Gaumont Pathé, UK, 1917); Care of Our Wounded (Gaumont Pathé, UK, 1918); Red Cross Ambulance Train Used by Germans for Ammunition (UK, 1918); Hospital Offered by the Americans in France (Gaumont Pathé, France, 1920).

8. Surgeon-General Sir T. Longmore, A Manual of Ambulance Transport (London: Harrison and Sons, 1893), 349. Government records show AT did figure in contingency plans at the outbreak of war in Europe. However, state authorities assumed railway conveyances would be used only to transport the wounded between British ports and London hospitals. Edwin A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War Vol. I: Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements (London: Selwyn and Blount Ltd, 1921), 199.

9. ‘Ambulance Trains’, The British Medical Journal 1, no. 3260 (June 23, 1923): 1061.

10. Colonel G.A. Moore, The Birth and Early Days of Our Ambulance Trains in France, August 1914 (London: John Bale, Sons and Danielsson Ltd, 1922), 5.

11. Ibid.

12. John S. Haller Jr., Battlefield Medicine: A History of the Military Ambulance through the Napoleonic Wars through World War 1 (Carbondale and Edwardville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011), 181.

13. Plumridge, Hospital Ships and Ambulance Trains, 115. Caregiving trains were also common in Britain, although these more typically were of the ‘naval’ rather than ‘army’ variety. To my knowledge, there are no extant films featuring these vehicles. Naval ambulance trains in Britain ran between the five principle ports at Edinburgh, Hull, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Chatham. See Edwin A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War Vol. II: Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements (London: Selwyn and Blount Ltd, 1921).

14. John F. Plumridge, Hospital Ships and Ambulance Trains (London: Seeley, Service and Co., 1975), 90.

15. Ibid.

16. H. Massac Buist, ‘Ambulance Work at the Front’, British Medical Journal 2, no. 2806 (1914): 642.

17. Sir Theodore Fox, A Boy with the BEF: Recollections of 1918, 1919, 15.

18. Ibid.

19. E.M. McCarthy, The Work of the Nursing Sisters with British Ambulance Trains and Station Units in France in 1914, 1919, 2.

20. Leonard Wiseman Horner, Private Papers of L.W. Horner, 1915–1918, August 5, 1915.

21. Virginia Berridge, ‘Health and Medicine’ in The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950 Volume 3: Social Agencies and Institutions, ed. F.M.L. Thompson (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1990), 208.

22. D’arcy Power, ‘The Medical Institutions of London’, British Medical Journal 2, no. 1803 (1896): 141–6.

23. ‘General and Stationary Hospitals’, British Medical Journal 1, no. 2873 (1916): 141.

24. A Train Errant: Being the Experiences of a Voluntary Unit in France, and an Anthology from their Magazine (Hertford, UK: Simson and Co. Limited, 1919), 2.

25. The Railway News, ‘The London and South-Western Ambulance Train’, August 29, 1914, 336–8.

26. Fox, A Boy with the BEF, 15.

27. A Train Errant, 4.

28. F. Morgan, The Private Papers of Miss F. Morgan 1916–1918, June 3, 1916.

29. ‘The Way Home of the Wounded Man’, British Medical Journal 2, no. 2811 (1914): 851.

30. Royal Army Medical Corps, Guide to Hospital Spaces, c. 1914–1918.

31. Margaret Allan Brander, Private Papers of Miss M.A. Brander, Volume 1, 1914–1915, March 15, 1915.

32. Yvonne McEwen, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’: British and Irish Nurses in the Great War (Dunfermaline: Cualann Press Limited, 2006), 61.

33. Brander, The Private Papers of Miss M.A. Brander, May 2, 1915.

34. Anonymous, Letters from No. 26 Ambulance Train, December 1918–1919, 3.

35. Horner, The Private Papers of L.W. Horner, October 31, 1915.

36. Fox, A Boy with the BEF, 22.

37. Ibid., 24.

38. Horner, The Private Papers of L.W. Horner, December 20, 1915.

39. Young, A Story of the Work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, 4.

40. Brander, The Private Papers of Miss M.A. Brander, August 17, 1915.

41. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, vol. II, 571.

42. Morgan, The Private Papers of Miss F. Morgan, July 1, 1916.

43. Fox, A Boy With The BEF, 23.

44. Friends’ Ambulance Unit, No. 16 Ambulance Train Logbook 1915–1919, June 30–July 1, 1916.

45. Emily Jean Hardstone, While the World Sleeps, 1917, 1.

46. The Illustrated London News, ‘The Camera as War-Correspondent: Notes by Photography’, December 4, 1916, 720.

47. The Illustrated London News, ‘The Camera as Recorder: News by Photography’, March 4, 1916, 297; The Illustrated London News, ‘The Camera in Three Continents: War News by Photography’, March 11, 1916, 328.

48. The Bioscope, ‘Gaumont Company Limited’ advertisement, February 25, 1915, 704.

49. Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World War (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 45.

50. Luke McKernan, ‘Propaganda, Patriotism and Profit: Charles Urban and British Official War Films in America during the First World War’, Film History 14 (2002): 369.

51. Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, 31.

52. The Times, ‘Our Duty towards the Cinema’, April 6, 1915, 11.

53. Philip M. Taylor, British Democracy in the Twentieth Century: Selling Propaganda (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 27.

54. Topical Films comprised Barker Motion Photography; the British & Colonial Kinematograph Company; Éclair Film; Gaumont; Jury’s Imperial Pictures; Kineto; and Topical Film. See The Bioscope, ‘Official Pictures of the British Army in France’, January 6, 1916, 89.

55. The Times, ‘Films of Our Army in France’, December 20, 1915, 6.

56. The Manchester Guardian, ‘British Army War Films’, January 13, 1916, 8.

57. For example, in The Wonderful Organisation of the RAMC (British Topical Committee for War Films, UK, 1916), Care of Our Wounded (Gaumont Pathé, UK, 1918) and Topical Budget – Ambulance for Horses (War Office, UK, 1917).

58. British Army in France (Gaumont Pathé, UK, 1916).

59. The Bioscope, British Army in France and The Devil’s Bondman Gaumont advertisements, January 13, 1916.

60. The Times, ‘Front Line Films’, August 9, 1916, 3.

61. The Bioscope, ‘Official Pictures of the British Army in France’, January 6, 1916, 89.

62. The Bioscope, ‘The Official War Films’, February 6, 1916, 503.

63. The Times, ‘Films of Our Army in France’, 6.

64. The Times, ‘Films of Our Army in France’, 6.

65. Illustrated London News, “An Epic of Self-Sacrifice and Gallantry”: British War Films’, August 26, 1916, 240–1.

66. Another example of the link between cinema going and charity was the nationally recognised Cinema Day, which was held annually on 9 November to raise funds from admissions to pay for motor ambulances. See The Bioscope, ‘The Ambulance Fund’, January 6, 1916, 4.

67. ‘The Red Cross Film’, The Manchester Guardian, February 3, 1918, 5.

68. Horner, The Private Papers of L.W. Horner, March 20, 1916.

69. Michael Hammond argues that in First World War films ‘[t]here was a tension between the attraction of real action footage and the educative properties of experiencing first-hand what the boys at the front were going through’. Michael Hammond, The Big Picture Show: British Cinema Culture in the Great War, 1914–1918 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005), 101.

70. Care of Our Wounded (Gaumont Pathé, UK, 1918).

71. Pathé Old Negative Collection 15 (British Pathé, UK, 1915).

72. RAMC Medical Officer, quoted in McEwen, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, 62.

73. Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing: What it is, and What it is Not (New York: D Appleton and Company, 1860).

74. Christopher Lawrence, Medicine and the Making of Modern Britain, 1700–1920 (London: Routledge, 1994), 1969.

75. Berridge, ‘Health and Medicine’ in The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950, vol. 3, 208.

76. Brander, The Private Papers of M.A. Brander, vol. 1, August 17, 1915.

77. Ibid., May 2, 1915.

78. Ibid.

79. Lines of Communication (London: Wightman and Co., Ltd, 1919), 9.

80. A Train Errant, 5.

81. Ibid., 6.

82. Morgan, The Private Papers of Miss F. Morgan, May 26, 1916.

83. Ibid., May 29, 1916.

84. Ibid., May 25, 1916.

85. Horner, The Private Papers of L.W. Horner, September 26, 1917.

86. Ibid.

87. Fox, A Boy With The BEF, 26.

88. Ibid., 25.

89. A Train Errant, 4.

90. The Railway News, ‘Princess Christian Hospital Train’, April 17, 1915, 628.

91. The Railway News, ‘Midland Railway Ambulance Train for Service with the American Expeditionary Forces’, January 5, 1918, 7.

92. The Railway News, ‘The Canadian Northern Railway and the War’, May 15, 1915 784.

93. The Illustrated London News, ‘Benger’s Food’ advertisement, July 13, 1918, 51.

94. Ibid., 2.

95. Ibid., 4.

96. Benedict Anderson argues that the nation ‘is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’, which became ‘the legitimate international norm’ for conceiving of identity after the First World War. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 6 and 131.

97. Christine Gledhill, Reframing British Cinema 1918–1928: Between Restraint and Passion (London: British Film Institute, 2003), 2.

98. Horner, The Private Papers of L.W. Horner, December 12, 1915.

99. In her work on nurses on the Western Front, McEwan highlights a case whereby a staff nurse died of shell shock on active service. McEwan, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, 99.

100. Carolyn Steedman argues that unlike books, films and other published materials, the personal testimonies we discover in archives have ‘unintended reader[s]’. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 75.

101. Penny Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 11.

102. Hardstone, While the World Sleeps, 4.

103. The Bioscope, ‘Victory!’ November 14, 1918, 4.

104. The AT films, therefore, prefigured the extension of suffrage legislated in 1918, when 14 million British citizens were enfranchised. David Marquand, Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2008), 19.

105. Whiteness might also allude to privileged racial identity. On-screen, the topos frames white, British people within an inclusive culture that positions subaltern subjects as ‘other’, for example, in films such as From Trinidad to Serve the Empire (Topical Budget, UK, 1916) and With Indian Troops at the Front Part One (War Office, UK, 1916). Reading whiteness as a racial signifier in First World War media warrants further analysis; however, in this article, which is limited in scope to investigating AT, whiteness is considered in a medical context.

106. Young, A Story of the Work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, 4.

Additional information

Funding

This article was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.