Kurzbeschreibung
This is the remarkable story of two brave and charismatic women, the only women to nurse on the Front line in the First World War. Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisolm were decorated with seventeen medals for bravery and self-sacrifice.
Synopsis
Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm were the most famous women of the First World War. Elsie was a thirty year-old divorcee and single mother, Mairi was eighteen and living at home. They met at a motorcycle club in Bournemouth, and were racing in rallies and trials between 1912 and 1914: Elsie in her bottle-green leathers designed by messrs. Dunhill while Mairi, a brilliant mechanic, borrowed her brother's overalls. When war broke out in August they roared off to London 'to do their bit'. There they met the suffragette, nudist and vegetarian Dr Hector Munro who enrolled them into his Flying Ambulance Corps. Within a month they were on the Western Front in Belgium driving ambulances to take wounded soldiers from the battlefield to distant military hospitals. Frustrated by the number of men dying of shock in the back of their vehicles, they set up their own first-aid post a hundred yards away from the Front in the village of Pervyse, near Ypres.Elsie and Mairi risked their lives many times to save men, were shot at by snipers, and lived under heavy bombardment for months at a time. News of their courage and expertise spread and the 'Angels of Pervyse' became celebrities.
Journalists and photographers told their story, posing them among the ruins leaning casually against their sandbagged door. Royals and VIPs often visited them. When there was a lull in the fighting they would tour the United Kingdom on their motorbike with sidecar to raise money to run the post, starring in fund-raising events hosted by famous actresses of the day.Elsie and Mairi and their cats, dogs and chickens stayed in Pervyse through four winters and three summers until they were nearly killed by arsenic gas in the spring of 1918. The only women to nurse on the Front line in any of the several theatres of the First World War, Elsie and Mairi were decorated with seventeen medals for bravery and self-sacrifice. It was the time of their lives, they were at the height of their looks and powers. Adjusting to peacetime life after four extraordinary years was more challenging than the war itself.
