Letter from Miss Lyne Woodrow to her parents in Boulogne, 1014
(With kind permission of …NRS reference: GD433/2/260/3/1)

Transcript: 

….  We are daily expecting to move further to the front. We have been quite in the thick of things already. Yesterday we were all sent for in a great hurry to help at one of the big hospitals and the state of the men beggars description – the shrapnel wounds are just awful, and are in all sorts of horrible places, but the men are wonderful. 

… we have a lot of bed baths to give, and while washing the feet of one man I was told that they had not been done for seven weeks!

Shirts and socks are very badly wanted. The Matron of No. 7 Stationary Hospital here would be most awfully glad to get any clothing. The men have practically none, for as they come in off the trains we have literally to cut their clothes off; they are so soaked in blood and dirt, and then they are burnt. It is pitiful to see the trains come in with the wounded. They seem to be constantly coming in filled to over-flowing.

… We are all quite well here, and very happy at being really at work. We have all our own stores and are a fully equipped Unit, and a recognised part of the British Expeditionary Force. 

… We are billeted at the Hotel de Paris in rooms leading, for the most part, out of one another, and with two beds in each. … We have to pay for our own washing, and provide our own teas. We also have to wait entirely upon ourselves in the matter of bed-making, boot-cleaning etc. Then again we are forbidden to use ordinary water for our teeth unless we first boil it. I therefore have had to buy a little spirit stove for the purpose.