THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF MODERN HEROISM 167
Technological changes and the concept of total war had made these consid-
erations necessary. On 4 March 1918 the supplement to theLondon Gazette
carried the following citation for three recipients of the Military Medal:
‘For bravery, coolness, and conspicuous devotion displayed in the perform-
ances of their duties on occasions when the Casualty Clearing Station had
been under hostile shell fire and bombed by enemy aircraft.’^6 This cita-
tion is entirely normal except for one minor detail: the persons cited were
Acting Sister Maud Alice Abraham, Civil Hospital Reserve, Sister Florence
Broome, Civil Hospital Reserve, and Sister Anna Georgina Boyd, Queen
Anne’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (Reserve). For the first time in
British history, women were winning military gallantry decorations.
The need for manpower drained the resources of the nation. The women
of Britain stepped in to fill the gap. Of course, the vestiges of Victorian
propriety did not allow them to be placed in a combat role, but they could
and did fill the roles of drivers, clerks, and nurses. While they were not
carrying weapons, some of their duties did carry risks:
Soon after 10 o’clock this morning he began putting over high explosive.
Everyone had to put on tin-hats and carry on. He kept it up all the
morning, with vicious screams. They burst on two sides of us, not fifty
yards away – no direct hits on to us but streams of shrapnel, which were
quite hot when you picked them up. No one was hurt, which was lucky,
and they came everywhere, even through our Canvas Huts in our quarters.
Luckily we were so frantically busy that it was easier to pay less attention
to it.^7
By 1917 over 100,000 women had volunteered to fill positions in the service
branches.^8 They, too, could display courage in the face of the enemy:
The nurses’ rest hut was blown in, one sister being killed outright and
two mortally wounded; amidst the horror of it all shone the glory of
greater courage. Light-duty patients risked their lives to drag the orderlies
from the burning huts – 32 of them died in the attempt. They spoke,
too, of the Ambulance Girls – ‘the pluckiest of the lot’ – out in the thick
of it, picking up the wounded.^9
These uniformed women were uniformly anonymous unless they left behind
an illegal diary or personal memoir; they could not count on anyone actually
mentioning them by name unless that name was already well-known. Even
acknowledged heroines remained nameless in print:
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