LOOKING BACK
by Roger Guttridge
Violet’s wars: the story of a Dorset heroine
Miss Cross inspecting ATS recruits . Images taken from a Scrapbook by Violet Cross, 1942-1946. From the Keep Military Museum Archive
The outstanding story of a humble Dorset woman who nursed soldiers in two world wars, and outwitted the Nazis, is told by Roger Guttridge Few, if any, can match the extraordinary record of Hazelbury Bryan’s Violet Cross, a heroine of not one but both world wars. She twice gave the Germans the slip, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government for her outstanding nursing work at Verdun, the slaughter house, which saw French casualties exceed 400,000. This was a rare honour for a woman. Violet, a vicar’s daughter who was born and raised at Sturminster Marshall, was 24 in 1916 when she volunteered to help in the field hospitals in 14
France, which were flooded with wounded soldiers. “It seemed to me that here was an opportunity of getting to know another country and of making my own known to them,” she later recalled. “Perhaps there would be fewer wars if we all knew each other better.” She was appointed Matron of a field hospital at Verdun and faced enormous challenges. “We were all understaffed and under-equipped, and during the last big attacks of 1918 we were dealing with 700 arrivals and 700 evacuations a day,” she said. ”I have seen men queued up on stretchers for three days
and three nights waiting for admission to the operating theatres.” Outstanding heroism “Many boys, whose limbs were amputated in the morning, offered to go on stretchers on the floor the same evening to give their beds to the newcomers. If that isn’t courage, I don’t know what is,” she wrote. Violet stayed in France for another three years after the First World War, nursing prisoners-of-war who were too sick to return home. Meanwhile, her father, the Rev. James Cross, had retired after 54 years as Vicar of Sturminster
get in touch with Roger: roger.guttridge@btinternet.com
