Kate Luard, as the Gas Shells Fall Again

Another single-barreled post for today, a century back, and thus an excellent time to recognize one of this project’s central writers. I first knew Kate Luard only as the anonymous “Nursing Sister,” a source I had stumbled upon in looking for new (to me) writers active during the early days of the war, while I “waited” for the diary-keeping poets to reach France. But, just as in life, she quickly made herself indispensable through her constancy and competence. Her compelling writing–precise, acute, emotionally restrained, yet never dry or cold–and her consistent output over four long years of war–detailed letters to her large family, eventually published in two volumes–have earned her the role of primary representative, here, of the medical professionals working on the Western Front. She also speaks for a silent cohort, namely the tens of thousands who died in clearing stations and hospitals behind the lines, but the qualifications are unnecessary: she is one of the most complete and most trustworthy eyewitnesses to the war. Trustworthy, that is, not merely in the sense of being factually accurate, but in the sense of being worthy of a reader’s faith in her stylistic and lexical choices.

For this we owe thanks not only to Luard herself, but also to her family–the brothers and sisters who corresponded with her during the war as well as their descendants, particularly her great-niece Caroline Stevens and her great-nephew Tim Luard, who transcribed and edited new letters and saw a revised edition of her letters into the press. Some of these can be found, with helpful map links, on the Essex Record Office blog, where some originals are held, and today’s letter, among many others, is posted on the Unknown Warriors blog, which also has family photos and other illustrations, a short biography, and additional links and background information. For all this, my sincere thanks!

And as for today’s letter, it marks a return of a particular form of nastiness that the soldiers have been largely spared since the initial German assault in March. Luard’s steady correspondence is all the more remarkable when we are reminded just how horrible her work is, how much misery and suffering this war entails. She is professionally cheerful, usually, and she is not writing a private diary (still less confessional poetry), but that doesn’t mean that her letters don’t serve another purpose that writing does for so many combat soldiers: to exert some sort of control over painful and frightening experiences.

April 18th 1918

…the enemy made a great bid for Villers-Bretonneux early yesterday morning, beginning with a terrific drenching with gas shells.

We had over 500 gassed men in and every spot of every floor was covered with them, coughing, spitting & crying with the pain in their eyes. All hands were piped to cope & it went on all night. They have to be stripped as their clothes are soaked with gas and their bodies washed down with chloride of lime, their eyes and mouths swabbed with Bicarb of Soda & drinks & clothing given … You give them jam tins to be sick in and go round with Soda Bicarb in large pails. The worst are in a special ward having continuous oxygen, but some are drowning in their own secretions in spite of it. It is devilish. Two trains are now evacuating all fit to be put on them.

It is pouring with rain, and the ground is a slithering quagmire.^[1]

The war is moving, but it is no less cruel. It seems natural, by now, that in the wake of the gas will come the quagmire…