No place for ladies

[Zainab_M]

Enjoy this interesting read ..


In the line of duty

Helen Rappaport and Christine Kelly evoke the harsh lives of the forgotten women in the Crimean campaign in No Place for Ladies ..

When, in February 1854, the first British soldiers left for the Crimean peninsula to fight the Russian army, hundreds of women accompanied them. "Poorly dressed" and "laden like packhorses", these women embarked on a journey from which most would never return. They died of starvation, cholera or exhaustion. Most of them were the wives of ordinary soldiers who had to endure the harsh life in army barracks, sharing everything with some 30 men, including the wooden tubs which were used both as urinals and for laundry.

No Place for Ladies tells the haunting stories of these mostly forgotten women, drawing the reader into the lives of extreme hardship, devotion and devastation. Helen Rappaport paints a vivid picture of these women who, unlike their husbands, did not even have hammocks but had to sleep on blankets or pallets. Babies were born in the deadly Crimean winter in holes dug in the frozen ground. Flung into the midst of the brutality of war, these women saw maggots in rotting wounds and the daily threat of death. They were all living, as one wrote home, "in a state that few of our paupers in England would endure".

The women of Britain's French allies were much better off. The cantinières were uniformed, trained and paid to provide drinks, food and first aid to the soldiers. By contrast, British army regulations forbade the employment of women which meant that they were at the mercy of the commanders. It was only when reports about the disastrous conditions of the war zone were published in newspapers back home that the first paid British women arrived - Florence Nightingale and her nurses were sent to tend the wounded.

Rappaport gives Nightingale her part in the story but places her in context with all the other women who endured the Crimean war and helped soldiers where they could. There was, for example, the formidable Mary Seacole, a black Jamaican nurse and herbalist who travelled to the war zone at her own expense when she was not allowed to join Nightingale's recruits. Seacole opened the "The British Hotel" outside Balaklava to feed and look after sick soldiers, becoming a "doctress, nurse and mother to the troops".

Without the help of these women many more men would have died. But of the 275,000 Crimean medals, not a single one was given to the wives and nurses.

No Place for Ladies is not simply an account of these horrific and sometimes heroic stories, it also addresses the voyeurism of wars, or what Rappaport calls "the compulsion to watch". Army wives clambered up the hills in their "long unwieldy dresses" to see the bloody battles of Alma, Balaklava and Inkermann; some even strolled across the battlefields with the curiosity of people sightseeing among the ruins of antiquity. As the Crimean war became the main news topic in Britain, "lady tourists" travelled across Europe in order to watch the "sights" of the famous battles and the continuous siege of Sevastopol through their opera glasses from the safety of private yachts and steamers.

One of the most intriguing women was Fanny Duberly, who unlike the ordinary army wives was afforded the status of "lady" as she was married to the paymaster of the 8th Hussars. She was courageous, a passionate horsewoman and loved the thrill of it all, writing to her sister while the shells were whizzing through the air: "This life is full of charm for me. You have an adventure, a danger, an excitement, every hour." Whenever there was a battle Duberly tried to watch it from behind the frontlines - a habit that earned her the nickname "Vulture'.

Her journal - published for the first time since 1856 - brings alive the story of one of the few women who stayed in the Crimea until the very end. When many women were left behind in Bulgaria during the last leg of the journey, Fanny smuggled herself on to a boat with the soldiers. She was convinced she would receive a Crimean medal for her presence throughout the war and was piqued when other "ladies" arrived in case they usurped her place as as the heroine of the war.

Christine Kelly's decision to supplement the daily journal entries with excerpts of Duberly's letters to her family in England makes this book a mesmerising read. Duberly had always intended to publish the journal - which is a sanitised version of the events and her life - but it is in the letters that she emerges as witty, opinionated and gossipy. She criticised the management of the food supplies and the incompetence of her husband's superiors, called the prime minister "that cunning old dodger", and another officer's wife "stupid little ass".

Kelly introduces each chapter with a vignette which sets the scene and provides essential historical background information for the events described in the journal. But it is only through Rappaport's book and the destinies of the other army wives that we also learn about Duberly's self-obsession. In an attempt to present herself as the lone heroine of the Crimean war, Duberly rarely mentioned other women in her journal and thus completely erased the sacrifices and hardships of the other army wives. She was one of 14 wives attached to her husband's regiment, and although women and babies were starving and dying next to her, she was more worried that the steward "never even blacks my boots" or about the welfare of her horse, Bob.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

[N. Truth Seeker]

Very interesting read.  And what a striking example of gender discrimination.  How the bravery of some such courageous women were ignored!