Page:Women Wanted.djvu/154

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WOMEN WANTED

set up the tent hospital there. Then she was called to Salonica. It was at Salonica that she commanded the famous transport flying column of motor-ambulances that went over precipitous mountain roads right up to the fighting line to get the wounded. She was in charge of a motor-ambulance unit with the Serbian army at Monastir when in March, 1917, at the time of the regular evening bombardment by the enemy, she was struck by a shell. They buried her like a soldier and she lies at rest with the Croix de Guerre for bravery on her breast out there at the front of the conflict.

Violetta Thurston, you might think, if you met her, a little English schoolgirl who has just seen London for the first time. Then by her eyes you would know that she is more, by the wide, almost startled look in what were meant to be calm, peaceful, English eyes. Violetta Thurston is the little English nurse decorated by both Russia and Belgium who in these last years has lived a life that thrills with the adventures of war. She went out at the head of twenty-six nurses from the National Union of Trained Nurses who were at work in Brussels when the Germans arrived. They improvised their hospital in the fire-station. At last the English nurses were all expelled by German order and sent to Dunkirk. There Miss Thurston connected with the Russian Red Cross.

She has written a book, "Field Hospital and Flying Column," on her experiences in Russia. There were four days at Lodz that she neither washed nor