With the distance of time comes a degree of perspective, which I suppose is why the old exam boards setting history papers operated the 30 year rule. That is any conflict that was less than 30 years ago could not be studied at ‘O’ level.
So while I could study the Corn Laws, Gladstone and Disraeli and the cause of the First World War, the events of the Blitz, D Day and Hiroshima were off limits. Having said that, anything more recent would have proved a resource issue in my secondary modern school in south east London. Back in 1966 one of the set text books which was still in use, offered the pious hope that Signor Mussolini would heed international opinion and stop the bombing campaign on Abyssinia, Herr Hitler would be satisfied with his military reoccupation of the Rhineland and the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the Imperial Japanese army would soon cease.
All of which means 1ssues of patriotism and perceived cowardly behaviour in the Great War can now be judged with a level of dispassionate interest. Here in Chorlton in the January of 1915 the issue of the Red Cross hospitals and the role of young men as medical orderlies provoked the accusation that some men of fighting age were shirking their responsibilities.
For one correspondent to the Manchester Guardian it was not enough that these young men were missing from the Front it was also that the Red Cross issue uniform so resembled that of the regular army that it was allowing these medical orderlies to be mistaken for soldiers.
Given that so many of our young men were entering the forces such an accusation was bound to stir up strong feelings, especially as the war hadn’t ended by the Christmas of 1914, and there was an ever mounting set of casualties.
What is remarkable is that the community did not fall for such jingoism. The popular response seems to have been a calm reasoned response. In letters to the Manchester Guardian both medical orderlies and those running the Red Cross hospitals sought to refute the accusations and argue that there was a natural progression from volunteer orderly to enlistment in the medical corps of the army, which was borne out by the military records of some of the Red Cross staff.
After all the duties of the Red Cross orderly were long and were fitted in alongside work commitments. As Frank Dawson wrote “We give our time and deny ourselves many a night’s rest after which many of us have to start a day’s work, and many are only waiting for the call from the Government to help to do their share in mitigating the pain and suffering of those who are fighting.”*
Of course more research has to be done into popular attitudes to the war here in Chorlton, but in the early months of 1915 it seems that the community were prepared to accept that in a time of war there were different forms of commitment.
*The Manchester Guardian, February 22 1915.
Picture, silver cup, presented to the Wesleyan Church by the Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan Schools Hospital, Christmas 1917 by kind permission of Philip Lloyd
So while I could study the Corn Laws, Gladstone and Disraeli and the cause of the First World War, the events of the Blitz, D Day and Hiroshima were off limits. Having said that, anything more recent would have proved a resource issue in my secondary modern school in south east London. Back in 1966 one of the set text books which was still in use, offered the pious hope that Signor Mussolini would heed international opinion and stop the bombing campaign on Abyssinia, Herr Hitler would be satisfied with his military reoccupation of the Rhineland and the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the Imperial Japanese army would soon cease.
All of which means 1ssues of patriotism and perceived cowardly behaviour in the Great War can now be judged with a level of dispassionate interest. Here in Chorlton in the January of 1915 the issue of the Red Cross hospitals and the role of young men as medical orderlies provoked the accusation that some men of fighting age were shirking their responsibilities.
For one correspondent to the Manchester Guardian it was not enough that these young men were missing from the Front it was also that the Red Cross issue uniform so resembled that of the regular army that it was allowing these medical orderlies to be mistaken for soldiers.
Given that so many of our young men were entering the forces such an accusation was bound to stir up strong feelings, especially as the war hadn’t ended by the Christmas of 1914, and there was an ever mounting set of casualties.
What is remarkable is that the community did not fall for such jingoism. The popular response seems to have been a calm reasoned response. In letters to the Manchester Guardian both medical orderlies and those running the Red Cross hospitals sought to refute the accusations and argue that there was a natural progression from volunteer orderly to enlistment in the medical corps of the army, which was borne out by the military records of some of the Red Cross staff.
After all the duties of the Red Cross orderly were long and were fitted in alongside work commitments. As Frank Dawson wrote “We give our time and deny ourselves many a night’s rest after which many of us have to start a day’s work, and many are only waiting for the call from the Government to help to do their share in mitigating the pain and suffering of those who are fighting.”*
Of course more research has to be done into popular attitudes to the war here in Chorlton, but in the early months of 1915 it seems that the community were prepared to accept that in a time of war there were different forms of commitment.
*The Manchester Guardian, February 22 1915.
Picture, silver cup, presented to the Wesleyan Church by the Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan Schools Hospital, Christmas 1917 by kind permission of Philip Lloyd
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