New technology is helping highlight the little-known contribution and sacrifice of women during the Great War.
More than 650 women who died during the war are commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission worldwide, and the organisation is using its new information panels to highlight some of the stories of those who gave their lives.
The commission’s 100th information panel, installed at Etaples Military Cemetery in France, reveals the stories of two female casualties of World War I – Nursing Sister Dorothea Crewdson and YMCA volunteer Bertha ‘Betty’ Stevenson.
During the war, the area around the small fishing port of Etaples – known to many British soldiers as ‘Eat Apples’ – became the largest British military base in the world, home to army training and reinforcement camps as well as hospitals.
Started in May 1915, Etaples Military Cemetery is now the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in France with almost 11,000 Commonwealth burials.
The cemetery’s new visitor information panel reveals the stories of both Nursing Sister Crewdson and YMCA volunteer Stevenson.
Dorothea Crewdson served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse and was transferred to Etaples in 1915. In the summer of 1918 Etaples was attacked by German aircraft, leaving Sister Crewdson injured.
She refused treatment so she could continue to care for her patients, earning her the Military Medal, but died in 1919 after contracting peritonitis.
In April 1917, Betty Stevenson was posted to Etaples as a YMCA driver, responsible for transporting relatives from England visiting the wounded in hospital, and was killed by an air raid in 1918 while helping French refugees.
She was given a military funeral and was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre avec Palme, for courage and devotion to duty.
Both women’s stories are featured through the QR Code (Quick Response Code) included on the commission’s information panel.
The QR code on the panel at Etaples also details the links between the site and some of the important literary figures of the war, including poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, and novelists C.S. Lewis and Vera Brittain.
Owen and Sassoon were both based at Etaples for periods of the war and refer to life at the camps in their correspondence and work.
C.S. Lewis, perhaps best known for the children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia, was wounded in April 1918 and treated in hospital at Etaples before returning to the UK.