5th June, 2024 in Military, Women in History

‘I held his hand, he grasped it gratefully’

By Victoria Panton Bacon

‘I remember one particularly badly injured pilot amongst the others being brought in. Because of his multiple injuries he was taken straight to the consultant surgeon for examination and treatment, but he was still conscious as he was taken to surgery. There was nothing anyone could say to him – he knew, and we knew, he would be lucky to survive. As I walked by the side of his trolley, I held his hand, and he grasped it gratefully. Sympathetic words would have been out of place.’

If all else failed to save this man’s life, we can be certain that his passing was calmed by his hand being held; he knew he was not alone and he knew someone cared. The holding of a hand might, on the surface, seem like a small gesture but for this pilot it would have been hugely significant, comforting and strengthening in his last moments. 

The opening words are those of Clarice Jacques, who served as a nurse throughout the whole of the Second World War, including in France during the weeks after D-Day as the country was being liberated. Holding hands, mopping brows, bandaging wounds and cleaning sores were just some of the duties of thousands of nurses throughout the whole of the War, behind so many battlefields helping to relieve pain, whilst delivering much needed relief and reassurance to thousands of servicemen; in many cases giving peace and gentleness in final moments. 

As we commemorate D-Day, 6th June 1944, it is right that we think of the 160,000 young men who stormed Normandy’s five beaches – arriving on boats, by plane and tanks – to begin the liberation of France, whose people had, by that day, been living under the stranglehold of German occupation for almost four years. It was massive invasion – it was the largest ever amphibious invasion of its size in history and, despite it being as well planned and executed as such an operation ever could be, it was nonetheless chaotic, and the outcome unpredictable for all who were part of it.  Sadly, over four thousand Allies did lose their lives that day, and hundreds more were injured (the attrition rate for the Germans was higher) – but the campaign to liberate France continued until, finally, on 25th August, with the freedom of Paris, France once again could call herself her own. 

However, whilst we salute the courage of the men on the frontline, we should also think of the army of women behind them, the nurses; hundreds of women – like Clarice – who were there for the servicemen, whatever their need. Clarice’s nursing in France was as a member of a Mobile Field Hospital (MBH) unit. These units were basically temporary hospitals, contained within large marquee style tents – incorporating wards for the injured, an ‘operations room’ and accommodation for the nurses. Clarice’s wartime memory is written up in Remarkable Women of the Second World War, in which she describes how the MFH’s were set up, and the many inevitable challenges they encountered; such as the difficulty in maintaining hygiene not least because they were there in the heat of the summer. She said ‘flies and mosquitoes bit viciously, and soon we were coping with outbreaks of diarrhoea among men from the airfields, and some of the staff.’

Clarice’s story is important too because it takes beyond D-Day, to other parts of France behind the beaches, where the battle for liberation was equally hard fought and where the skills and strength of the nurses was as vitally needed as it was on 6th June. Clarice’s recollection of the War particularly reflects on the Battle of the Falaise Gap; an eleven-day battle that began on 12th August, just south of the city of Caen, over an area of around 50 square miles. This battle was decisively won by the Allies; by its end hundreds of German troops still in the area were trapped inside, over 10,000 lost their lives.  It paved the way for the Allies to enter Paris in the days that followed however, for Clarice, and her nursing friends, the memory of what she saw and how they cared for the many allied troops who were fearfully injured during this battle never left her.  She spoke of caring for men who fought at Falaise as ‘very sobering’, saying: 

‘The Falaise Gap had been almost sealed on 20th August, trapping most of the German army left in Normandy. Our Commanding Officer went to the area and when he came back, he described the chaos.  He said there were mangled bodies and tanks everywhere.  We were told it was not fit for us to see.  In every age war has been savage and horrible; only now the concentration of the slain was greater than ever.’

 Clarice’s story is about how she nursed towards the end of the campaign to liberate France, in 1944. However, women – the nurses – were there throughout, including on D-Day itself, because amongst the troops on the beaches, some 160,000 men from America, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand there was one woman. She was Martha Gellhorn – wife of Ernest Hemingway and an American war correspondent from New York, who had managed to travel to Europe on a munitions ship. Gellhorn arrived first in Liverpool, and then gained passage on a hospital ship bound for Normandy, telling the captain she was planning to file stories about nurses. Below is an excerpt of her report (published in Collier’s magazine in 1944):

‘Then we saw the coast of France. As we closed in, there was one LCT [landing craft, tank] near us, with washing hung up on a line, and between the loud explosions of mines being detonated on the beach, one could hear dance music coming from its radio. There were barrage balloons, looking like comic toy elephants, bouncing in the high wind above the massed ships, and you could hear invisible planes flying behind the grey ceiling of cloud. Troops were unloading from big ships to heavy barges or to light craft, and on the shore, moving up brown roads that scarred the hillside, our tanks clanked slowly and steadily forward.

Then we stopped noticing the invasion, the ships, the ominous beach, because the first wounded had arrived. An LCT drew alongside our ship, pitching in the waves. A boy in a steel helmet shouted up to the crew at the aft rail, and a wooden box looking like a lidless coffin was lowered on a pulley, and with the greatest difficulty, bracing themselves against the movement of their boat, the men on the LCT laid a stretcher inside the box. The box was raised to our deck, and out of it was lifted someone who was closer to being a child than a man, dead-white and seemingly dying. The first wounded man to be brought to that ship for safety and care was a German prisoner.‘

However, before Gellhorn even began to think of writing, she simply did what she needed to do, which was care, assist and comfort injured men who she found all around her, after her own landing on Omaha Beach. Martha Gellhorn, I am sure, held the hands of suffering men; and they would have been grateful too.