2014 Event ______________________________________

Badapple Theatre Company - 21 June 2014
The Thankful Village Review
Fellowship Hall, Yarm

The Thankful Village; a village when all the men came back from World War I and therefore does not have a war memorial sounds interesting, but how can this be the subject of a successful play? Well Kate Bramley and her Badapple company certainly pulled it off.

The play is mainly set in the gentlemen’s smoking room at the White Horse, a coaching Inn in rural Thankful-In-The-Vale. It starts in August 1914 when the women in the Inn find out that their men have resolved to answer the call and sign up for the war. Edie and Nellie are servants who report to Mrs Victoria Proud the wife of the owner, who they call Queen Victoria because of her manner and approach to them. The first half is a mixture of comedy and a comment on the class structure at the time. There were references to Mrs Pankhurst and the suffragette movement which in reality ceased all protests between 1914 and 1918 as Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst considered that the threat posed by Germany was a danger to all humanity and that the British government needed the support of all citizens. Nellie, the scullery maid, wanted to play her part and applied to Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) . Pre-war nurses were required to be well educated, highly qualified, unmarried, between 25 and 35 years old and ladies of a ‘high social status’. With such exacting standards, it was hardly surprising that at the outbreak of war there were barely 300 regular members, but as the scale of the casualties soared these restrictions were quickly swept away to enable more than 10,000 reservists to join. Therefore, Nellie was initially turned down but was later called up, and off she went to Poperinghe near Ypres.

As the play was called The Thankful Village the audience knew that all the men would return but the second half started to take on a darker tone. It was felt by the all the 100 members of the audience as the clapping after the songs ceased. The twist at the end was tear jerking as all the men returned but Nellie was left behind having died in an attack on the field hospital where she worked.

The story is based on the lives of two remarkable women, Sister Edith Appleton who served in QAIMNS and sailed from Southampton on 9 October 1914. Her diaries were published by the Imperial War Museum in 2013 and called A Nurse at the Front: The First World War Diaries of Sister Edith Appleton. The second lady to inspire Kate was Staff Nurse Nellie Spindler also of the QAIMNS. From Wakefield, she was with the 44th Casualty Clearing Station then based near Brandhoek when she died on the 21st of August 1917, aged 26. That day, the Germans shelled the area around the 44th CCS at around 10 a.m., critically wounding Nellie, who was in bed at the time and who died within a few minutes. The CCS moved that same day to Lijssenthoek, and Nellie was buried there with full military honours and with the Last Post played over her grave. She was officially described as 'killed in action' by the War Office, and had only been on the Western Front since May 1917. According to the CWGC records she is one of only two female Great War casualties who are buried in Belgium. The other is Mabel Gladstone, also a nurse with the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, who is buried at Belgrade Cemetery near Namur.

In this play Kate Bramley wanted to remind us that it was not only men that gave their lives but women also. The nurse of QAIMNS treated all casualties the same, Germans and British were given the same care and attention, it did not matter what rank was held, they offered the same professional standard of care.

You could not leave the Fellowship Hall without being moved by the performance.

yarm1914 Events ________________ Left click on the event to find out more.

21 June 2014 - The Thankful Village - An original comedy drama
at The Fellowship Hall

2nd/3rd August - Re-enactment on Willey Flatts Field.

4th August - Candlelit Vigil.

13 September 2014 - Women of the Great War – a play and tell presentation by History Wardrobe plus a professional Soprano singing period songs during costume changes. The Royal British Legion will give a short talk on the history of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

Further events will be posted as they are finalised.
Please return soon for an update

Click on the photograph below to see 1914 related documents