Discover the story of Emma Duffin, a Unitarian from Belfast who served as a voluntary nurse during the First World War. Thanks to her detailed Diaries we have a fascinating insight into her experiences. ‘Their Sister in Both Senses’ is written by Trevor Parkhill and the recording has been made with the support of The Hibbert Trust. The article originally appeared in the Unitarian publication Faith and Freedom. You can listen to the podcast on the Hibbert Trust SoundCloud channel, which also includes a recording about Unitarians in WWI, written and read by Alan Ruston.

Emma Duffin ‘Their Sister in Both Senses’: https://soundcloud.com/user-415732446/emma-duffin-their-sister-in-both-senses

 

Or there is a video version of the recording on UKUnitarianTV’s YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/kB01CbbkRzE

 

A big thank you to Kate for doing this.

The text of the original article (and Alan Ruston’s articles about Unitarians and the First World War) can be read on the Faith and Freedom Great War Project website here:

‘Their Sister in Both Senses’ can be read here:

The Diaries of Emma Duffin are a moving and eloquent account of her experiences in the war.

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With the centenary of the end of the First World War in mind one of the things I read this morning in church was the poem ‘Aftermath’ by Siegfried Sassoon, written in 1919:

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Have you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same – and War’s a bloody game…
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz –
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench –
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?’

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack –
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads -those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.