Happy - though Wounded - a foreword

There were a couple of 'spin-off' publications from the Gazette, and in one of them, 'Happy - though Wounded,' there are two explanatory introductions, one from the Literary Editor Ward Muir, and the other from the Art Editor Noel Irving. As they are so comprehensive, it's certainly worth repeating them here to add to the background of both the hospital and the Gazette. The first has been abridged, in order to prevent the reader losing the will to live.

A Foreword by the Literary Editor
Ward Muir, L.Cpl. R.A.M.C. (T.)

A word as to the personalities of the contributors to "Happy - though Wounded." The book is a compilation from the pages of that remarkable magazine The Gazette of the 3rd London General Hospital. This little monthly was started in October 1915 by Lt. Col. H. E. Bruce Porter, the actual editing and management of it being done by myself. At 4d. per month, The Gazette presently attained a notable circulation. Five thousand a month, which is what my colleague Sergt. Noel Irving sells - he has taken over the editing and management of Vol. II - is surprising when you reflect that we have never attempted to put the magazine on the bookstalls; you cannot buy it except at the hospital or from a few helpful shops in the Wandsworth neighbourhood. The success is largely to the credit of a group of a dozen or so artists who enlisted as orderlies under Col. Bruce Porter. (And by the way, not only were most of them over military age but also nominally unfit, and instead of bemoaning their inability to get into khaki they found out a way to do so; and this long before compulsory service was dreamt of). Our Commanding Officer has as far as possible employed at the 3rd London, each orderly for the job most suited to his particular talents. Private - afterwards Sergeant - afterwards Lieutenant - Derwent Wood, who came here to give himself to humble ward work like the rest of us, but who happened to be a sculptor by profession, was soon making plaster face-masks; was given, thus, the chance to organize a department of his own where facial disfigurements are built up and the most terrible unsightliness made presentable by means of the sculptor's art. So with Sergeant Irving. Author and artist, he is, also, an expert in the designing of beautiful lettering. A useless trade in hospital? Not at all. Go about the wards and the corridors and you will see scores of poster notices announcing this or that. They are Sergt. Irving's lettering. We endure no slovenly notice-boards here. The expert is in our midst, and the Powers that Be have had the wisdom to commandeer his expertise.

Similarly with The Gazette. The magazine was the Colonel's idea; it had been ably supported, also, by Miss Holden, R.R.C., our Matron, and by other officers; but in pursuance of his usual policy the Colonel planned to make it not a mere dry official organ; the Tommies' wards were to give their help as well as the Orderlies' Canteen and the Officers' Mess. I myself, as editor, was sent to search through the wards for promising contributors. One of the first whom I discovered was Sergeant Treacher, of the H.A.C. He wrote for The Gazette a number of spritely skits and shrewd descriptions of the hospital - in which he was twice a sojourner. He finished one manuscript only a few minutes before being taken to the operating theatre for a most serious operation from which, as he well knew, he might not recover. Fortunately the story ends happily, for the Sergeant, after being at death's door, recovered, and wrote many more jokes for The Gazette.

Private (now Sergeant) Vernon Lorimer, an Australian who had been through the horrors of Gallipoli as a field-ambulance stretcher-bearer, was another 'find' amongst the patients. During his long stay here, though often in considerable pain, he wrote and sketched incessantly. As soon as he was able to get about on crutches he hobbled almost daily to our editorial sanctum with fresh ideas for fun and frolic. Perhaps the most brilliant contributor to Vol.I of The Gazette was Pte. Stephen Baghot de la Bere, who at that time was a 3rd London orderly but afterwards transferred to the Artists Rifles and subsequently gained a commission. His pictorial satires on hospital life, in which the ward-orderly is always represented as a downtrodden slave and the Sister as a ferocious slave-driver, are alluded to by our art editor. But de la Bere's articles and imaginary interviews were hardly less sparkling.

Of lady members of the staff our most faithful contributor on the literary side has been Miss H. M. Nightingale, a V.A.D. who has had a glimpse of nearly every department of the hospital, thanks to the peripatetic nature of her duties as one of our squad of postwomen. Another lady versifier, Miss Eardley Wilmot, the author of the famous song "Little Grey Home in the West," who was a probationer at the 3rd London, likewise promised to be an important contributor, but was unfortunately called away to work abroad. A third poet, Captain Stedman, one of our patients, who was terribly wounded in the head, made the supreme sacrifice. After a prolonged struggle for life he died in hospital, and his charming rondeau, "Songbirds of France," is the only monument which here remains of a gentle and gallant spirit of fine abilities and fastidious literary taste.

I would also like to record my thanks to Messrs. James Spicer and Sons, for their handsome help in the matter of paper supply for this book, and therefore, for the Benevolent Fund. The prosperity of the 3rd London General Hospital, and of its Benevolent Fund, is a subject every detail of which is of interest to us. Are we wrong to surmise that it may prove of interest to the world at large?