The first wounded
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Jeremiah 8:18-22; Luke 10:30-37
Last month I went to a beautiful exhibition of paintings by John Lavery at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Lavery was born in Belfast but lived in Scotland from his teenage years. By the outbreak of the First World War he was in his late 50s, an established painter of portraits and play, picnics and tennis matches. But perhaps the most striking work on show on Edinburgh was the painting reproduced on the cover of the order of service, The First Wounded, London Hospital, August 1914. The patients are men returned from early fighting of the war on the Western Front in Europe, most likely from the British Expeditionary Force. The soldier in the foreground is clearly a Scot, still wearing the kilt of his uniform. He has received a blighty one – an injury requiring treatment back in Britain. The nurse portrayed is a real woman, Frances Grace Coombe, who was known as Sister Charlotte.
War involves injury to human bodies, and so medicine has gone hand-in-hand with war, often developing new techniques in treating the wounded, from field hospitals to centres for recuperation back home. Nursing too emerged as a profession in a time of war, in Crimea, from Florence Nightingale’s research and recommendations. There’s a gentleness to Sister Charlotte’s treatment of her patient in the Nightingale Ward of this painting, but we know that hospitals treating casualties of war are places of trauma, pain, life-changing injuries and sometimes death.
The need for care of the body is as old as humanity. We heard earlier from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. It was a time, probably the 6th Century BC, of spiralling troubles, of huge suffering of his people. The world seemed out of kilter. And so he fired out the questions:
Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Gilead was the area across the River Jordan from Israel, to the east, now in the country called Jordan. We might have Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in mind, whose grotesque country was called Gilead. Or the gentler town in Marilynne Robinson’s novel called Gilead. And I suspect both those novelists had this verse in mind when choosing the name Gilead for their fictions. As for balm, in Hebrew it is tsori, a resinous substance which probably came from a tree belonging to the genus Commiphora, akin to frankincense and myrrh, and which was believed to have medicinal properties.
In Jeremiah’s questions, we touch on the deepest fears of a whole people in times of trouble. How will we live without medicine, without treatment, with nobody who knows how to make things better?
These questions are not confined to the past. People are saying them daily, hourly, in war zones today – in Sudan, in Gaza and elsewhere. It is hard to imagine what it could be like to face a shift in hospitals there today – so few medicines; so much damage to equipment and the building’s fabric; so many staff experiencing bereavement; the constant fear of bombardment; and the enormity of the injuries and illness of those who find their way there. No-one knows better the devastation of war, on body and soul, than medical personnel.
In the war recorded by John Lavery, the First World War, 130 members of the University of St Andrews were killed in action – students, members of staff and graduates. Their names are carved into the apse, and we remember them today, with gratitude. But nearly 1000 served in total, not least from our Faculty of Medicine. For example, Percy Herring, Chandos Professor of Physiology, treated wounded forces personnel in Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow. Dr Reginald Barrow who graduated in 1914, served as an eye surgeon with the Indian Expeditionary Force. Adeline Campbell, who completed her Medicine degree at St Andrews in 1912, served as a surgeon with the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Serbia, treating wounded Prisoners of War, and later in a Military Hospital in Belgrade, treating soldiers from the Russian Army, Britain’s ally. Agnes Hodge, MA 1913, spent three years as a nurse in military hospitals in France. Mary Campbell Smith, MA 1899, served as Quartermaster of the Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital in Dundee throughout the war. And our very first women graduate, Agnes Blackadder, MA 1895, set up the radiography unit in the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Royaumont in France, treating French soldiers.
Our science laboratories were also part of the war effort. For example, our Chemistry labs saw research on anaesthetics and methods for treating tetanus and meningitis. Our colleagues, 110 years ago, were developing balm in this Gilead, and many were applying it, in the toughest of circumstances, in their Gileads. A Scottish colleague of Adeline Campbell in Serbia wrote:
Some of the patients [transferred from other hospitals] looked barely human, they were so wasted with fever, and all were terribly filthy and verminous. All had poisoned wounds…
We heard one of Jesus’ most famous stories earlier, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We usually concentrate on how he did not pass by on the other side. But today, our focus is on how he did help the man beaten and left half-dead. He poured wine on the man’s wounds, presumably as an antiseptic. Then he poured oil, perhaps olive oil, to bind the wounds, to soothe the pain. He bandaged his wounds – with what? He was no doctor. Some cloth he was carrying as wrapping, or even for trade, perhaps, which he ripped into strips. Luke, whom we believe was a doctor, is respectful: the Samaritan offers the best first aid and nursing care he could to the wounded man.
He also, of course, treats someone who was different from him, worshipping God in a different way, seen as someone who lived nearby in the Land but did not fully belong. And he saw the wounded man as a neighbour, a fellow-human being, a fellow child of God. Some of the most moving reflections on medicine in a time of war is when the same medical attention is given to enemies as to our own side. It happened in Afghanistan. A preacher here a few years ago, recalling his time as an RAF Chaplain in Helmand, spoke of the extraordinary dedication with which British Army Medics would sometimes treat injured fighters from the other side. And we see that in Lavery’s painting of German Wounded at Le Havre, in France. The men, of course, are indistinguishable from the British wounded in London, or Dover, in the painting above, coming off the train. There is no distinction in the wounds and the pain, the anguish and the loss of bereavement in Dundee or Dresden, Haifa or Hebron, Beirut or Beersheba, Moscow or Mariupol. Who is my neighbour? St Andrews staff and graduates in Medicine showed by their lives who their neighbours were: their fellow human-beings.
The final painting by Lavery in the order is The Cemetery, Etaples, from 1919. War was over, but we see in its rows of crosses just a few of the lives it cost. You can visit the cemetery today in northern France, maintained by The Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It holds over 11,000 dead. 658 are Germans. There is no distinction in the end between friend and enemy.
It is hard enough to be generous in spirit at the best of times. It is all too easy to lose empathy in a time of war. Neighbours, people who served us dinner and cleaned our hotel rooms on holiday, become our enemies. We de-humanize these fellow human beings. We see that today in Ukraine and Russia, the Middle East and Sudan. We see it also in polarised societies, in election campaigns and the echo chambers of social media. We may well believe that God is on our side. But the deeper sense of scripture is that God is for all. That he doesn’t give up on empathy.
We heard in Jeremiah, For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt.
Or the good Samaritan, who, when he saw the crumpled figure by the road, was moved with pity.
God accepts, God welcomes, God draws all humanity into his healing care. God offers balm to all. Students, staff and graduates of St Andrews heard that call 110 years ago – for King and country yes, but also for our common humanity, for suffering people whatever their uniform.
And so today we remember those who served and gave their lives as soldiers, sailors, in the air force. We honour their sacrifice. And we remember those who answered the wartime call to be with the suffering, in body and mind, to be moved with pity, to offer what balm they could, to care for the injured and ill. Students of Medicine, including those in chapel today, have a particular calling, but we are all invited to love our neighbour, whoever they are. There is balm in Gilead; there are physicians there; we are those physicians, we are those Samaritans; let us be moved with pity.
END