Olive Webb 1930 – 2015

from Issue 83 Autumn 2015

Diary

Many residents of Melbourn will be sad to hear of the recent death of Olive Webb, a well known member of the village community. She was born on the 12th April 1930 in Royston, and as a young woman worked at the Spirella factory in Letchworth. Olive met her husband Derek through their membership of the St John Ambulance Brigade. Derek worked at Grange Farm in Melbourn and they settled in their house in New Road, next door to Derek’s brother Bob and his wife Chris. Olive lived in this house for 60 years until she moved to Derby to live with her daughter Jane and her family.

Olive was very well known in Melbourn due to her kind and outgoing personality. For many years she worked at the Post Office with Bob and Celia Child. She always had a smile and a cheery word for everyone.

Olive was great volunteer. She loved helping at the baby clinic in Orchard Road, where she would chat to young mothers, putting them at ease over a cup of tea. She was an active member of the over 60’s club and for many years took part in ‘The Melodians’, an amateur dramatic society in the village. She especially enjoyed performing in musicals.

Olive was a member of Melbourn Women’s Institute and regularly attended WI meetings and participated in many of their outings. She also enjoyed playing Darts and Carpet Bowls. Every Friday, Olive actively helped the hairdresser by washing Ladies hair at Vicarage Close.

Olive was a very good cook and liked nothing better than preparing food and making beautiful cakes. She was the first one to put on her apron and go in to the kitchen to make tea and wash up at local events.

We were all very sad to hear of her death and an impromptu tea was held to remember Olive at The Hub on the day of her funeral in Rugby on Monday the 27th April. A collection was held and £84.00 was raised from donations from the villagers who attended the tea. This will be used to purchase bulbs to be sown in the Parish Church grounds. A plaque celebrating her life will be placed with the bulbs to remember her contribution to the village. Olive was a wonderful character who will be greatly missed.

Laurence Crow

Laurence’s long and stubborn fight against prostate cancer came to an end on 3rd August when he died peacefully in Arthur Rank House Hospice in Cambridge.

For more years than we can any of us remember he had maintained a cheerful attitude towards the awful disease and never shied away from talking about his progress. He had endured several treatments and operations and it is a tribute to both him and his nursing staff that until recently he had been able to regularly attend services in Melbourn and Meldreth Churches.

Other people more qualified than myself will be able to tell of his early life and work and all I can say is that it was a privilege to have known him.

Our condolences go out to his wife Elizabeth and his children Simon, Oliver and Rebecca and their families. Colin Limming

Melbourn & Meldreth Women’s Group

The Group is for all women of any age. Meetings are held at 7.45 p.m. on the 4th Tuesday of each month, except in December and we vary our venues between Melbourn and Meldreth. We charge £1 on the night to cover expenses and there is an opportunity to make a donation to the chosen charity

continued from page 6 They called it Le Poste de Secours Anglais (British First Aid Post). “There were so many bodies - dead, dying, shockingly or slightly wounded - laid on the floor that it was difficult to walk without treading on them… Two small boys with a handcart took the dead to the burial-dump … When our ambulances drove in with a fresh load we would have to get down to the loathsome task of clearing the dead to make space for the living.” The two nurses were officially seconded to the Belgian garrison stationed in the area. Although no longer affiliated with the Red Cross, they managed to raise funds and had the cellar reinforced with concrete and a steel door fitted – donated by Harrods.

They spent nearly four years aiding the wounded in the Belgian sector, living with only basic food rations in treacherous conditions, with no sanitation or running water. Elsie provided most of the medical attention, while Mairi transported the injured, often under fire, to a base hospital 15 miles away.

The two women made many frontline rescues, in some cases physically carrying wounded soldiers to their first-aid station. In January 1915, they were awarded the Order of Leopold II, Knight’s Cross by King Albert I of Belgium. In 1916, following the rescue of a wounded German pilot in No Man’s Land, both women were awarded the British Military Medal, and made Officers, Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. They also received the Order of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium and the 1914 Star.

They had survived, heavy bombardment, sniper fire and many gas attacks, but the war ended for both women in March 1918, when they were seriously injured following a gas attack during a German offensive and had to return home. A change of policy At the start of 1915 following the devastating casualty rate, the War Office conceded to pressure to use VADs at Military hospitals at home. By early spring of that year VADs over the age of twenty-three with three months or more hospital experience were accepted to serve overseas near the Western and Eastern Front, the Middle East and Gallipoli, Turkey.

The military regarded VAD nurses as the lowest rung on the professional nurse’s ladder and at the beginning, they mainly served as domestic labour: cleaning floors, changing bed linen, swilling out bedpans or employed as ambulance drivers and cooks. As the war progressed and under the expert guidance of the trained nurses, they proved they were capable of dealing with serious cases and were eventually allowed to change dressings and administer drugs. They provided an invaluable source of bedside aid to the injured.

Upon their arrival, the nurses were greeted by the horrors of war – the conditions were appalling – some hospitals were simple tents or requisitioned squalid buildings. They would learn to deal with the horrific injuries from the battlefields. Poisonous gas, used for the first time, caused unprecedented suffering. The gas would kill by blistering the lungs and throat. Its effect on those fortunate to put on protective masks, however, was to produce terrible blisters all over the body as it soaked into their woollen uniforms. For the nurses it was equally deadly, as they breathed in the residue of the gas from their patients. “I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case - to say nothing of ten cases - of mustard gas in its early stages - could see the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great mustard-coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes … all sticky and stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke.” The nurses witnessed the living nightmare that many of the soldiers were experiencing. Multiple wounds from machine guns caused untold damage – fragments from shells which often created jagged wounds bled constantly and provided the ideal environment for infection. Men had lost arms, legs or feet, some were blinded, others suffering from shell shock. “No words can describe the awfulness of the wounds. Bullets are nothing. It is the shrapnel that tears through the flesh and cuts off limbs.” The soldiers were affected by the enduring grim and unsanitary conditions on the front line. ‘Trench foot’, the result of waterlogged trenches, while ‘trench fever’ was an unpleasant disease caused by body lice and ‘trench mouth’ left untreated caused the jaw to collapse. “… you could not imagine how dirty the poor beggars are, never able to get a wash, mud and dirt ground in and nearly all of them alive with vermin … they feel ashamed being so dirty.” The nurses were compelled to watch men die – they learned how to make them at peace with a last cigarette and a few kind words. “no equipment whatever … Just laid the men on the ground and gave them a drink. Very many badly shattered, nearly all stretcher cases … Tents were erected over them as quickly as possible … All we can do is feed them and dress their wounds … A good many died … It is just too awful, one could never describe the scenes, could only wish all I knew to be killed outright.” Artillery attacks were common – they caused so many devastating injuries and accounted for many deaths … “The thunder of the guns was terrific all day and night; the whole surrounding Districts were lit up by the flashes … We saw shrapnel bursting like balls of fire over our lines, and liquid fire spreading along. It was a terrible sight.”