QARANC

» Site Map

» Home Page

Historical Info

» Find Friends - Search Old Service and Genealogy Records

» History

» QAIMNS for India

» QAIMNS First World War

» Territorial Force Nursing Service TFNS

» WW1 Soldiers Medical Records

» Field Ambulance No.4

» The Battle of Arras 1917

» The German Advance

» Warlencourt Casualty Clearing Station World War One

» NO 32 CCS Brandhoek - The Battle of Passchendaele

» Chain of Evacuation of Wounded Soldiers

» Allied Advance - Hundred Days Offensive

» Life After War

» Auxiliary Hospitals

» War Graves Nurses




» Book of Remembrance

» Example of Mentioned in Despatches Letter

» Love Stories

» Autograph Book World War One

» World War 1 Letters

» Service Scrapbooks

» QA World War Two

» Africa Second World War

» War Diaries of Sisters

» D Day Normandy Landings

» Belsen Concentration Camp

» Italian Sailor POW Camps India World War Two

» VE Day

» Voluntary Aid Detachment

» National Service

» Korean War

» Gulf War

» Op Telic

» Op Gritrock

» Royal Red Cross Decoration

» Colonels In Chief

» Chief Nursing Officer Army

» Director Army Nursing Services (DANS)

» Colonel Commandant

» Matrons In Chief (QAIMNS)

Follow us on Twitter:
Follow qaranchistory on Twitter


» Grey and Scarlet Corps March

» Order of Precedence

» Motto

» QA Memorial National Arboretum

» NMA Heroes Square Paving Stone

» NMA Nursing Memorial

» Memorial Window

» Stained Glass Window

» Army Medical Services Monument

» Recruitment Posters

» QA Association

» Standard

» QA and AMS Prayer and Hymn

» Books

» Museums



Former Army Hospitals

UK

» Army Chest Unit

» Cowglen Glasgow

» CMH Aldershot

» Colchester

» Craiglockhart

» DKMH Catterick

» Duke of Connaught Unit Northern Ireland

» Endell Street

» First Eastern General Hospital Trinity College Cambridge

» Ghosts

» Hospital Ghosts

» Haslar

» King George Military Hospital Stamford Street London

» QA Centre

» QAMH Millbank

» QEMH Woolwich

» Medical Reception Station Brunei and MRS Kuching Borneo Malaysia

» Military Maternity Hospital Woolwich

» Musgrave Park Belfast

» Netley

» Royal Chelsea Hospital

» Royal Herbert

» Royal Brighton Pavilion Indian Hospital

» School of Physiotherapy

» Station Hospital Ranikhet

» Station Hospital Suez

» Tidworth

» Ghost Hunt at Tidworth Garrison Barracks

» Wheatley


France

» Ambulance Trains

» Hospital Barges

» Ambulance Flotilla

» Hospital Ships


Germany

» Berlin

» Hamburg

» Hannover

» Hostert

» Iserlohn

» Munster

» Rinteln

» Wuppertal


Cyprus

» TPMH RAF Akrotiri

» Dhekelia

» Nicosia


Egypt

» Alexandria


China

» Shanghai


Hong Kong

» Bowen Road

» Mount Kellett

» Wylie Road Kings Park


Malaya

» Kamunting

» Kinrara

» Kluang

» Penang

» Singapore

» Tanglin

» Terendak


Overseas Old British Military Hospitals

» Belize

» Falklands

» Gibraltar

» Kaduna

» Klagenfurt

» BMH Malta

» Nairobi

» Nepal


Middle East

» Benghazi

» Tripoli



Field Hospitals

» Camp Bastion Field Hospital and Medical Treatment Facility MTF Helmand Territory Southern Afghanistan

» TA Field Hospitals and Field Ambulances

Field Ambulance No.4 in France World War One


Sister Kate Luard QAIMNSR is posted in April 1915 during the First World War to Field Ambulance No.4 in France - Battle of Festubert Diary Extracts


Katherine Evelyn Luard was born in 1872. After training as a nurse at the prestigious nurse-training school of King's College Hospital, London, she offered her skills to the Army Nursing Service and served for two years in South Africa during the Second Anglo-Boer War.

On August 6, 1914, two days after the British Government declared war on Germany, Kate enlisted in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. During her first year in France and Belgium she served on the ambulance trains until, on April 2, 1915, she received movement orders to report to the Officer Commanding at No.4 Field Ambulance. This brought her close to the front line and she referred to this as 'life at the back of the front'. Here she also worked in an Advanced Dressing Station.

Field Ambulance No.4  World War One France Sister Kate Luard QAIMNSR



A Field Ambulance was a mobile front line medical unit for treating the wounded before they were moved to a casualty clearing station. It would include stretcher bearers, nursing orderlies, tented wards, operating theatre, cookhouse, wash rooms and a horsed or motor ambulance. The field ambulances set up and supplied Advanced Dressing Stations which were basic care points providing only limited medical treatment and had no holding capacity. The wounded were brought here from Regimental Aid Posts which were only a few metres behind the front line in small spaces such as a support or reserve trench.





Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.



PTSD assistance dog Lynne book


My PTSD assistance dog, Lynne, and I have written a book about how she helps me with my military Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety, and depression. I talk about my time in the QAs and the coping strategies I now use to be in my best health.

Along the way, I have had help from various military charities, such as Help for Heroes and The Not Forgotten Association and royalties from this book will go to them and other charities like Bravehound, who paired me with my four-legged best friend.

I talk openly about the death of my son by suicide and the help I got from psychotherapy and counselling and grief charities like The Compassionate Friends.

The author, Damien Lewis, said of Lynne:

"A powerful account of what one dog means to one man on his road to recovery. Both heart-warming and life-affirming. Bravo Chris and Lynne. Bravo Bravehound."

Download.

Buy the Paperback.


QARANC Poppy Pin Badge Royal British Legion RBL
This beautiful QARANC Poppy Pin Badge is available from the Royal British Legion Poppy Shop.




For those searching military records, for information on a former nurse of the QAIMNS, QARANC, Royal Red Cross, VAD and other nursing organisations or other military Corps and Regiments, please try Genes Reunited where you can search for ancestors from military records, census, birth, marriages and death certificates as well as over 673 million family trees. At GenesReunited it is free to build your family tree online and is one of the quickest and easiest ways to discover your family history and accessing army service records.

More Information.




Another genealogy website which gives you access to military records and allows you to build a family tree is Find My Past which has a free trial.








During her entire time as a nursing sister in France 1914-1918 Kate sent letters, whenever time permitted, to her family at home and the following are extracts from those she wrote during April and May 1915.

Please note that although Field Ambulance No.4 was stationed at Festubert the dates of the actual Battle of Festubert were 15-27 May 1915. It followed the Battle of Aubers Ridge and was part of the Second Battle of Artois. Field Ambulance No.4 was situated at Festubert and evacuated as Kate describes further below on May 22nd to a position further back from the front line, we do not have more information about the unit's movements.

April 2nd, 1915. Good Friday.

So hell became heaven and here I am at railhead waiting for a motor ambulance to take me and my baggage there.

11 A.M. Had an interesting drive here through a village packed with men billeted in barns and empty houses--the usual aeroplane buzzing overhead, and a large motor ambulance convoy by the wayside. We are in the town itself, and the building is labelled No.4 Field Ambulance Dressing Station for Officers.

Still Good Friday, 10pm. (Kate spends a luxurious night in a château where generals and officers are usually billeted.)


April 3rd. Easter Eve, 10 P.M.

Have been on duty all day. They [the wounded] are nearly all evacuated in a few days, so you are always getting a fresh lot in.

I found my own new billet this morning before going on duty; it is a very old little house over a shop in a street off the big Place. It is a sort of attic, and I am not dead sure whether it is clean on top and lively underneath, but time will show.

Kate Luard QAIMNSR


Wednesday, April 7th. In bed, 10.30 P.M.

We are busy all day admitting and evacuating officers. A very nice Brigade-Major came in, in the night, with a shell wound in the shoulder. This morning a great jagged piece was dug out, with only a local anaesthetic, he stuck it like a brick, humming a tune when it became unbearable and gripping on to my hand.

I was off at 5pm and went to Beuvry, the village two and a half miles away that was shelled last week; it is about half-way to the trenches from here. Met and passed an unending stream of khaki, the men marching back from their four days in the trenches, and all steadily trudging on with the same coating of mud from head to foot, packs and rifles carried anyhow, and the Trench Look which can never be described, and which is grim to the last degree. Each lot had a tail of limping stragglers. They said they'd had a very "rough" night last night - pouring rain - water up to their knees, and standing to all night expecting an attack which didn't come off; but some mines had been exploded meant for their trench but luckily they only got smothered instead of blown to bits.


Saturday, April 10th . 10.30pm.

It is difficult to settle down to sleep to-night: the sky is lit up with flashes and star shells, and every now and then a big bang shakes the house, above the almost continuous thud, thudding, and barking of the machine-guns and the crackling of rifle firing; they are bringing in more to-day, both here and at the hospice.


Friday, April 16th,

This afternoon I saw a soldier's funeral, which I have never seen before. He was shot in the head yesterday, and makes the four hundred and eleventh British soldier buried in this cemetery. The French gravedigger told me there was another to be buried this afternoon. It was very impressive and moving, the Union Jack on the coffin (a thin wooden box) on the waggon, and a firing party, and about a hundred men and three officers and the Padre. It was a clear blue sky and sunny afternoon. The graves are dug trenchwise, very close together, practically all in one continuous grave, each with a marked cross.


Monday, April 26th. 11 P.M.

We have been admitting, cutting the clothes off, dressing and evacuating a good many to-day. There is a great noise going on to-night, snapping and popping, and crackling of rifle firing and machine guns, with the roar of our 9.2's [9.2 inch Howitzer guns] every few minutes.


Friday, May 7th, I a.m.

The noise is worse than anywhere in London. The din that a column of horse-drawn, bolt-rattling waggons make over cobbles is literally deafening. And the big motor-lorries taking the "munitions of war" up are almost as bad. These processions alternate with marching troops, clattering horses and French engines all day, and very often all night, and in the middle of it there are the guns. To-night the rifle fire is crackling.

10 p.m.-a pitch-dark night, raining a little, and only one topic-the Attack tomorrow morning.

The first R.A.M.C. [Royal Army Medical Corps] barge has come up, and is lying in the canal ready to take on the cases of wounds of lung and abdomen, to save the jolting of road and railway.

Saturday, May 8th

4 a.m.-the 9.2's are just beginning to talk. I have been cutting dressings all night.

10.30 p.m.-Der Tag [the day] was a wash out, but it is to begin at 1.15 to-night. (It didn't!) The tension is more up than ever.

Sunday, May 9th 1.30 a.m.

The Lions [French guns] are roaring in full blast and lighting up the sky. 5.25 a.m.-It has begun. It is awful-continuous and earthquaking. It began before 5 with a fearful pounding from the French on our right, and hasn't left off since. Had a busy night, and in every spare second getting ready for the rush.

Monday, May 10th

9.30 a.m.-We have had a night of it. Every field ambulance, barge, clearing hospital and train are blocked with them [the wounded]. … went down to the barge. It was packed with all the worst cases-dying, bleeding and groaning. After five hours we had three-fourths of them out of their blood soaked clothes, dressed, fed, haemorrhage stopped, hands and faces washed, and some asleep. Two died and more were dying.

Wednesday May 12th

6.30 p.m. My little room is crammed with enormous lilac, white and purple, from our wee garden, which I am going to take to our graves tomorrow in jam tins.

Thursday, May 13th

11 a.m.-Can't face the graves today; have had an awful night. I found the boy who brought his officer in on Sunday night, crying this morning over the still figure under a brown blanket on a stretcher.

Friday, May 14th

1.30 a.m. The sky on the battle line tonight is the weirdest sight; our guns are very busy, and they are making yellow flashes like huge sheets of summer lightening. Then the star-shells rise, burst, and light up a huge area, while a big searchlight plays slowly on the clouds.

5 a.m.-Daylight-soaking wet, and no more shells since 2 a.m. There is an officer in tonight with a wound in the hand and shoulder from a shell which killed eleven of his men.

Saturday, 11.30 a.m. May 15th

Tension up again like last Saturday. Another TAG is happening tomorrow.

Sunday, 11.30 a.m. May 16th

They began coming in at 3.30 and by 8 a.m. the place was full to bursting. We managed to get all the stretcher cases to bed, and as many of the others as we had beds for. There are hundreds more to come in, and the seriously wounded generally get brought in last, because they can't get up and run, but have to hide in trenches and shell holes. They were all sopping wet with blood or mud or both.

Monday, May 17th. 10 a.m

Another night of horrors. It was a long whirl of stretchers, and pitiful heaps on them. The sergeant stayed up helping till 3, and a boy from the kitchen stayed up all night on his own, helping.

Saturday, May 22nd

The order came to the A.D.M.S. [Acting Director of Medical Services] to evacuate the whole of the Field Ambulances, and within about two hours this was done. Everybody got the patients ready, fixed up their dressings and splints, gave them all morphia, and got them on their stretchers. The din of our guns, which were bombarding heavily, and the German guns, which were bombarding us at a great pace, and the whistle and bang of shells that came over while this was going on, was a din to remember.

Kate receives orders to join an ambulance train on Wednesday, May 26th, but these orders were then cancelled and she is posted for duty at a base hospital.

To read about Kate's time on the ambulance trains 1914-15 go to www.kateluard.co.uk and click on Blog for entries which were posted on the same day as the events of 100 years ago.

Read our review of Unknown Warriors The Letters of Kate Luard RRC and Bar.









New post apocalyptic military survival thriller

Former Royal Air Force Regiment Gunner Jason Harper witnesses a foreign jet fly over his Aberdeenshire home. It is spilling a strange yellow smoke. Minutes later, his wife, Pippa, telephones him, shouting that she needs him. They then get cut off. He sets straight out, unprepared for the nightmare that unfolds during his journey. Everyone seems to want to kill him.

Along the way, he pairs up with fellow survivor Imogen. But she enjoys killing the living dead far too much. Will she kill Jason in her blood thirst? Or will she hinder his journey through this zombie filled dystopian landscape to find his pregnant wife?

The Fence is the first in this series of post-apocalyptic military survival thrillers from the torturous mind of former British army nurse, now horror and science fiction novel writer, C.G. Buswell.

Download Now.

Buy the Paperback.


If you would like to contribute to this page, suggest changes or inclusions to this website or would like to send me a photograph then please e-mail me.








Free Book Operation wrath

Free Book.
The death of the Brotherhood will be avenged.
RAF gunner Jason Harper and a team of Special Air Service operators are enraged after the death of their brothers by a terrorist drone strike. They fly into south-eastern Yemen on a Black-op mission to gather intelligence and avenge the death of their comrades.
Can they infiltrate the Al-Queda insurgents' camp, stay undetected, and call down their own drone missile strike and get home safely?
Will they all survive to fight another day?
Operation Wrath is a free, fast-paced adventure prequel to the non-stop action The Fence series by military veteran author C.G. Buswell.
Download for free on any device and read today.





This website is not affiliated or endorsed by The Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC) or the Ministry of Defence.


» Contact

» Advertise

» QARANC Poppy Pin

» Poppy Lottery

» The Grey Lady Ghost of the Cambridge Military Hospital Novel - a Book by CG Buswell

» The Drummer Boy Novel

» Regimental Cap Badges Paintings


Read our posts on:

» Facebook

» Instagram

» Twitter


Offers

» Army Discounts

» Claim Uniform Washing Tax Rebate For Laundry

» Help For Heroes Discount Code

» Commemorative Cover BFPS 70th anniversary QARANC Association





Present Day

» Become An Army Nurse

» Junior Ranks

» Officer Ranks

» Abbreviations

» Nicknames

» Service Numbers

Ministry of Defence Hospital Units

» MDHU Derriford

» MDHU Frimley Park

» MDHU Northallerton

» MDHU Peterborough

» MDHU Portsmouth

» RCDM Birmingham

» Army Reserve QARANC


Photos

» Florence Nightingale Plaque

» Photographs


Uniform

» Why QA's Wear Grey

» Beret

» Army Medical Services Tartan

» First Time Nurses Wore Trousers AV Anti Vermin Battledress

» TRF Tactical Recognition Flash Badge

» Greatcoat TFNS

» Lapel Pin Badge

» Army School of Psychiatric Nursing Silver Badge

» Cap Badge

» Corps Belt

» ID Bracelet

» Silver War Badge WWI

» Officer's Cloak

» QAIMNSR Tippet

» QAIMNS and Reserve Uniform World War One

» Officer Medal

» Hospital Blues Uniform WW1


Events

» Armed Forces Day

» The Nurses General Dame Maud McCarthy Exhibition Oxford House London

» Edinburgh Fringe Stage Play I'll Tell You This for Nothing - My Mother the War Hero

» Match For Heroes

» Recreated WWI Ward

» Reunions

» Corps Day

» Freedom of Rushmoor

» Re-enactment Groups

» Military Events

» Remembrance

» AMS Carol Service

» QARANC Association Pilgrimage to Singapore and Malaysia 2009

» Doctors and Nurses at War

» War and Medicine Exhibition

» International Conference on Disaster and Military Medicine DiMiMED

» QA Uniform Exhibition Nothe Fort Weymouth


Famous QA's

» Dame Margot Turner

» Dame Maud McCarthy

» Lt Col Maureen Gara

» Military Medal Awards To QAs

» Moment of Truth TV Documentary

» Sean Beech

» Staff Nurse Ella Kate Cooke


Nursing

Nursing Jobs Vacancies UK

International Nurses Day

International Midwife Day


Info

» Search

» Site Map

» Contact

» Other Websites

» Walter Mitty Military Imposters

» The Abandoned Soldier



We are seeking help with some answers to questions sent by readers. These can be found on the Army Nursing page.



» Find QA's

» Jokes

» Merchandise

» Mugs

» Personalised Poster

» Poppy Badges

» Stamp

» Teddy Bears

» Pin Badges

» Wall Plaques

» Fridge Magnet


SHARE
© Site contents copyright QARANC.co.uk 2006 - 2024 All rights reserved.
Privacy/Disclaimer Policy