- from ‘the War Budget’ June 29th 1916
- 'Touring the Trenches'
a Woman's View of War and War Workers
women at work for the war effort
“The most wonderful thing in France is the part taken by women in the war," says Mrs. Crampacker, an American lady who has "done" the Western Front, and gives the following impressions of her tour: — "One always has had a notion that the French are by nature frivolous. They are doing all the work of France to-day that they can find to do. None but women are seen working on the land anywhere. I found this true of England too.
"Through the courtesy, of the Minister of Munitions I was permitted to go through the munition factories, and was told that privilege had not been extended previously to any woman. Workers in the factories I saw were in the proportion of sixty-seven women, ten boys, and twenty-three men unfit for military service for every hundred workers.
"The women work at forge and lathe as well as in the simpler parts of shell making. They work in two twelve-hour shifts, and the output is going on without ceasing.
Battle in the Air
"At Rheims the most interesting of my experiences was the spectacle of a battle between a French aviator and two German warplanes. First, the planes would circle and manoeuvre and there would be a great flash of fire. Instantly the plane firing would be lost in a great cloud of black smoke. This seemed to be used to conceal and protect it for another manoeuvre.
“The oddest sensation was ,to hear the report of the gun long after the shot. The three battled and strove for several minutes above us, and at last the Germans made off toward their lines. They told me that the operator in one of them had been wounded, but none of the planes fell.
"At the mouth of the communication trench we first entered were two soldiers with hand grenades and a sharp-shooter with his rifle. They .showed us marks of the damage done by a shell which had struck near by not long before our arrival, wounding one of the men on guard. Walking through the trenches we found the men sitting about. It did not seem a bit like war. Everybody was hidden. There was no fighting and charging, nothing in sight but the bare fields and the ditches in them, with men concealed all but their caps.
"One of the officers of the party with which I went through the trenches had a cute little dachshund which had been found in a German trench and captured when the French charged and took it. I never shall forget how I watched that dog run along in the shallow part of the trench, and how I wished I was only as small and built as close to the ground as he was.
"When I was taken in an automobile into the city of Rheims I found the cathedral just as wonderful as it had been described."
Heart-Breaking Sights
"There are a thousand sights daily to break one's heart, I saw one three-year-old child among a thousand other orphans. Her father, a Belgian, fleeing with the little girl in his arms, was killed by a shell. He clutched her tighter when he fell and held her prisoner for nearly two days though he was dead. She was found and rescued.
"There are sixty-five thousand maimed men in the hospitals, which are all over France, made from buildings of every sort. Some of them I saw in Brittany are mere shelters. The organisation which provides them with supplies is truly wonderful, and everybody works with all his or her heart, for there are reminders all about of how much every one's help is needed.
"Teaching the soldiers blinded in 'battle various occupations has run to all sorts of things. I saw a famous fencing master giving lessons to blind soldiers and he said that some of them had become wonderful experts with the foils. They have only their ears and sense of touch to depend on. Anything to take their minds off their terrible misfortune in the purpose of giving them any amusement or occupation in which they take the least interest. Many of them are learning to write very rapidly on typewriters from dictation.
"On the battlefield of the Marne, nine miles behind the actual front, I saw the women ploughing among the graves, wheat waving and only the flags that marked the gravemounds to tell what had happened there eighteen months ago. The graves of the Germans are marked with a black cross and the number found on their uniforms. The French and British graves are marked with a white cross and the name, if known."
women at work for the war effort
