}
Sending comforts to the troops
‘I have been doing a bit for the soldiers I have knitted 20 pairs of socks’
Letter to James Fuller Eberle from Mrs Pullin, widow of a Crimean War soldier, December 1915
Knitting socks and scarves for the troops and the wounded was one way that women could feel they were helping the war effort. The British Red Cross Society published a booklet of instructions and patterns for sewing shirts, operating gowns and bed jackets for War Hospital use, and knitting patterns for cardigans, socks, gloves and body belts for hospital or front line use.
It wasn’t just women who were knitting comforts for the troops. In September 1914 General Sampson-Way visited Henbury School and gave out ‘wool for the girls to make knitted belts and socks for the soldiers’.
Such gifts were shared out: Private Harry Patch of the 7th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry remembered that in his gunner’s team ‘if you got a pair of socks, and somebody else had a pair with holes in, they’d chuck them away and they’d have the new ones’.
Knitting socks and scarves for the troops and the wounded was one way that women could feel they were helping the war effort. The British Red Cross Society published a booklet of instructions and patterns for sewing shirts, operating gowns and bed jackets for War Hospital use, and knitting patterns for cardigans, socks, gloves and body belts for hospital or front line use.
It wasn’t just women who were knitting comforts for the troops. In September 1914 General Sampson-Way visited Henbury School and gave out ‘wool for the girls to make knitted belts and socks for the soldiers’.
Such gifts were shared out: Private Harry Patch of the 7th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry remembered that in his gunner’s team ‘if you got a pair of socks, and somebody else had a pair with holes in, they’d chuck them away and they’d have the new ones’.