British volunteers in First World War Italy – part one

Blog series Untold lives

Coffee for the troops!

In 1915 the widow Evelyn Gordon-Watson travelled to war-torn Italy to support the soldiers of the Entente Powers. Her letters home tell the story of her efforts, while suffering through air raids, illness, and the German advance.

The first letters in the collection Evelyn sent to her sister, Mabel Hartley, and date from 1916 when Evelyn worked at the Posto di Ristoro canteen at San Giovanni di Manzano railway station. The volunteers at the canteen cared for soldiers transported by train from the front line while they waited to move on to barracks, camps and hospitals. Evelyn and her colleagues supplied warm drinks and snacks for the soldiers, together with basic medical support. The troops were often stranded at the station for many hours, even overnight, and the canteen included a small number of beds.

The correspondence in the collection includes letters from Christobel, Evelyn’s daughter. In 1916 Christobel was preparing to help by gaining experience volunteering in a hospital, and by early 1917 cheerful postcards record her journey to join her mother at the canteen.

However, the trip was certainly not a holiday. A letter from Christobel to her aunt, written on 29 Apr 1917, was interrupted by a nearby air-raid: ‘The whole place is shaking as these guns are going off now – the search lights are glorious and the shrapnel is simply brilliant... I can hear a very aggressive aeroplane now and am devoutly hoping it’s one of ours‘ (Add MS 89734/1/2; ff. 36-37).

And, as the summer ended, the colder weather and basic, rural conditions meant the soldiers began suffering from frostbite and other ailments. The volunteers were not immune, as Christobel politely describes to her aunt in August: 'I’ve been sick and sad and sorry for myself with what is here an almost universal complaint – that which at home you get when you’ve eaten too many ripe plums’ (Add MS 89734/1/3 f. 7).

Sadly the volunteers had to abandon San Giovanni in November 1917 due to the German advance. They left in haste and kept the news from family until after the fact: ‘When we wrote to say we had started earlier on our holiday etc. it was only to relieve your mind – we left because of the retreat and our dear Baracca was burnt by the authorities’ (Add MS 89734/1/3; f. 73v).

This setback did not stop the Gordon-Watsons though, and they found new roles in May 1918 at Istrana. This brought new challenges and rewards, some of which will be explored in part two.