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ENDSLEIGH PALACE HOTEL AS MILITARY HOSPITAL

In this second part, I am now turning to my exploration inside the building that was converted from the very smart Endsleigh Palace Hotel into a Red Cross Military Hospital in the London of 1915.   It has recently become the Student Union for University College London (UCL).  What would be left of the original building as the injured officer C S Lewis would have seen it?  Or would everything from the First World War era have been removed or painted over?  And what state was Lewis in when he arrived there, at that point not world famous but just an ‘Everyman’, an injured soldier trying to survive, although perhaps not heal so well he’d be sent back to the Front Line in France?  Meanwhile there were still lots of Everyman editions of classic books for him to read…

MY TOUR OF THE BUILDING

Fortunately I had phoned ahead to make sure that it was OK for me as an alumna of UCL to tour the building, so I had no problem with the uniformed security guard inside the entrance. 

On his left was a shop with the usual student union goods for sale, including sweatshirts and hoodies, 

and to the right was Gordon’s Café, the student union place for hot drinks and sandwiches, crisps, and all the usual chocolate and snack bars without which enduring the next lecture, for most, would feel an impossibility. 

I decided to take advantage of this facility and so had a quick early lunch, all the time feeling like a middle-aged imposter amongst all the young faces.

 I did feel as though I was on a secret mission and that at any moment the security guard would change his mind and haul me out!  Although that’s probably taking ‘imposter syndrome’ a bit far.

I tried to concentrate on the building’s interior, but so far there was nothing very inspiring under all the white paint.  Definitely a utilitarian ‘health and safety’ vibe up to this point.

 But it was more important to me to see the upper floors where Lewis would have stayed.  There was a very small lift. so I thought I would go to the top floor first and work my way down by the stairs, looking in at each floor as I went.  Would the lift have been there in Lewis’ day? Quite possibly, as there were several lifts back then, including one that was large enough for stretcher cases.

EARLY FIELD HOSPITAL TREATMENT IN FRANCE

But just to backtrack a bit, Lewis had already needed hospital treatment before the more severe wounds that brought him back to England.

CSL had written to his great friend Arthur Greeves on 2 February 1918 that he had been admitted to No 10 British Red Cross Hospital at Le Tréport in France.  This was with a bout of Pyrexia or ‘trench fever’, and he was very glad to be away from the Front Line [1].   He then reassured his father that the illness wasn’t much worse than ‘flu [2].  In his next letter to Arthur, he mentions reading Boswell on Johnson and the Everyman copy he bought in Oxford.

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How he longs to ramble in the bookshops in ‘The Broad’ in Oxford! (Presumably he’s referring to Blackwell’s, but perhaps also Thornton’s which I remember before it closed in 2002).  He has ordered the Everyman copy of ‘The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini’ from a bookshop in London. 

He describes to his father Le Tréport as a little fishing village with cliffs and a grey sea.  He was still in the hospital on the 18th of February because, after recovering once, he then had a relapse.  He asks his father to get him a cheap edition of Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ which he’s wanted to read for a time [3]

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To Arthur Greeves he writes that he is hoping for another relapse so he can stay in the hospital, but it probably won’t happen because “the gods hate me” [4].  One is tempted to think “Be careful what you wish for.”  He recommends a bookshop called ‘Ovenell’s’ on Broad Street, Oxford, where they do a good job of binding books.  He sings the praises of his Everyman version of Cellini, the thinness and crispness of the paper and the ideal size of the font and margins.

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We can tell that Lewis liked a physical copy of a book that fed his senses as well as his mind.  He’s not impressed with the “piles of trash” in the hospital library but has settled on George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ for bedtime reading [5]. He is also reading and speaking as much French as he can.

LEWIS’ WOUNDS

Lewis did his best to reassure his father that he was safe when he was returned to the Front.  But then a note arrived in Belfast for his ‘Papy’ and not in Lewis’s hand, the sort of note every parent of a soldier was dreading. It was dated 16 April 1918 and said ‘Jack’ had been “slightly wounded” and was in hospital again.  The address was the Liverpool Merchants Mobile Hospital in Étaples.  As part of the Somerset Light Infantry at the Battle of Arras, centred on Riez de Vinage, Lewis was wounded in the chest, hand and leg on the 15th April.

What were these field hospitals like?

First the wounded would be taken to a Clearing Station before being moved to a base hospital.  The wounded had a label tied to their coat with details of their injuries.  Those in danger had a red border round the label.  They also were given a small bag for any belongings [6].  Lewis complains in a letter to his father about having his uniform cut off him, which he thought was excessive but seemed common practice [7]. 

An article in The British Nursing Journal gives a summary of conditions in the Étaples field hospitals, from a report by Miss Swift, Matron-in-Chief under the Joint War Committee in 1915:

“At Étaples, St John’s Brigade Hospital, which is well-arranged in huts, with a perfect equipment, theatre, electrical department, and every modern appliance.  The wards are large and airy.  Also the Liverpool Merchants’ Hospital, which is beautifully equipped and arranged…”  [8]

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There is also an article in the British Nursing Journal that describes a train journey on the ‘Rapide’ passing Étaples with a view of the immense field hospital and the new ‘game’ played by the passengers of flinging cigarettes and newspapers, chocolate and other gifts out of the windows for the medics and patients there [9].

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Ironically, Lewis’ wounds were caused by his own side, a case of “friendly fire”, from a shell burst.  His brother Warren visited him, worried that the wounds were severe, so was greatly relieved to find Jack in relatively good spirits.  He found out that Jack had narrowly escaped death – the sergeant next to him had been killed.   After losing consciousness for a while, Jack had managed to crawl back to safety and was carried the rest of the way by stretcher bearers [10]. 

 But he was unconscious again by the time his uniform had been cut off by medical staff.

The BJN quotes Colonel Sir J Cantlie saying that “a soldier’s chances of recovery from wounds are usually determined by his treatment during the first half hour in which he is brought from the trenches.” [11]

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Lewis writes to his father that he was hit in the back of the left hand, just above the left knee and in the left side which meant he couldn’t lie on his side.  He eye was closed from dirt for a few days but thankfully recovered [12]. The shrapnel that went into his chest worked its way further in, but he was told it could stay there for the rest of his life if need be. 

A Nursing Sister on the Western Front, at the very place where Lewis was taken to a field hospital, fills in some of the detail and atmosphere for us in May 1918:

“You would like to know how we passed through this crisis.  I hardly know where to begin to tell you of that week, when, for the first time, we saw the war, we felt the war, and we lived at the war.  The impression that it left is a numbed, indescribable feeling, a depth of sorrow, an accumulation of fury that such things are possible; a heart-breaking pity for all who have suffered and an infinite regret that we could not do more.  I see the broken, bleeding men lying in long rows, with red-dyed bandages and whitening faces, waiting to be taken into the operating room.  Magnificent heroes, every man of them, both English and French.  I saw them being rushed into battle.  I saw them brought back on stretchers.  I saw some of them ‘die for their country’, always with the same high courage…. Every day the cannons became louder and the enemy came nearer, and the thunder of them seemed to become part of ourselves; it entered our brains, and because our heads did not open, it stayed there; and even yet there are days when I hear those awful crashes, an appalling sound.  We did not go to bed; we just lay down for half an hour, when we felt too exhausted to do any more.”  [13] 

This Nurse goes on to say that she watched so many men going up to the Front Line, who might die that night, she felt she had to smile for them:

“I had a curious feeling that I was smiling at men who were going to fight and die that night, and perhaps it was the last woman’s smile some of them would see….the frightfulness of the sacrifice of their young lives is sad, sad beyond words…  Have I not seen and heard real warriors going forth to battle?”

This helps to fill in some of the emotional impact of the battle lines and the difficulties of care for the wounded, detail that we do not see in Lewis’ letters.  Public school trained boys and soldiers did not show their emotion or vulnerability if they could possibly help it [14]. But the women who shared many of the same experiences with these male combatants can fill in some of the blanks for us.  The experiences of women as nurses in such dire circumstances went on to inform political and literary life, just as much as male experience. (One example that springs to mind is from the writing of Dorothy L Sayers – not only did her character Lord Peter Wimsey suffer shell-shock from his experience at the Front, but his sister Lady Mary spent time nursing in London in the War and got personally involved in political agitation there.)   Gilchrist argues: “Larger contexts than have so far been constructed in studying Lewis need to be considered in order to understand his experiences and his response to them.” [15]  I hope this is what I’m doing to some extent by introducing the perspectives in the British Nursing Journal into the picture.  Sometimes the nurses could speak when the men couldn’t.

But even for those wounded soldiers now ‘safely’ in a field hospital, the danger was by no means over.  There is a saying ‘Out of the frying pan, into the fire’.  Well, that certainly applies to the situation of any one being moved from the Front to the field hospitals at Étaples.   The field hospitals themselves were bombed!  Plus there was the dangerous sea crossing over to England.

Reference to the bombing of the field hospitals in Étaples was made by Bonar Law, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons.

He states that there were over 300 casualties [16]. 

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The German bombers returned a week later to cause “a martyrdom of women and wounded men and hospital attendants” on Corpus Christi day when the Allies had agreed not to do any bombing [17]. 

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In the House of Commons in June the numbers were given for the German attacks on our hospitals on the north coast of France from 15 May to 1 June 1918. The terrible total was that 248 had been killed and 593 wounded. [18]

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Many medical staff gave their lives in order to stay with their patients who could not be moved.  They were like sitting ducks for the bombers.  Lewis himself wrote to Arthur Greeves that he was more afraid in this situation in the field hospitals when he couldn’t walk than he was in the trenches [19].

Part 3 will deal with Lewis’ experience in the Endsleigh military hospital and the surrounding area during his stay.

NOTES

1]  CSL, Collected Letters, Vol 1, edited by Walter Hooper, p352.

2]  CSL, ibid., p354.

3]  ibid., p358.

4]  ibid.

5]  ibid., p360.

6]  “Take In” Day at a Casualty Clearing Station, The British Nursing Journal, Vol 55, Oct 30, 1915, p353.

7]  CSL, Collected Letters, Vol 1, 14 May 1918, p368.

8]  British Nursing Journal, Vol 55, 30 October 1915, p357.

9]  BNJ Vol 55, 18 September 1915, p230.

10]  CSL, Collected Letters, Vol !, 14 May 1918, p366.

11]  BNJ, Vol 60, 15 June 1918, p418.

12]  CSL, Collected Letters, Vol !, 4 May 1918, p367.

13]  BNJ, Vol 60, May 1918, p348.

14]  K J Gilchrist begins his book A Morning After War: C S Lewis and World War 1 (Peter Lang, New York, 2005, p1) in the very first paragraph by stating that Lewis “obscured facts about his war service and its lingering effects”, and that Prof Don King has also pointed this out concerning Lewis’ early poetry – the main reason for this being the trauma itself and the “renewal of trauma by remembering.” (ibid., p2).

15]  ibid., p6.

16]  BNJ, Vol 60, 1 June 1918, p382.

17]  BNJ, Vol 60, 30 May, 1918, p399.

18]  BNJ, Vol 60, 15 June, 1918, p419. 

19]  CSL, Collected Letters Vol 1, 23 May 1918, p370.