The old Kirk in Kincardine O’Neil contains an intriguing memorial. It reads as follows:
HERE LIE THE ASHES OF
CAREY HENRIETTA MORDAUNT BAIRD FRASER
CROIX DE GUERRE LEGION D’HONNEUR
YOUNGER DAUGHTER OF
MAJOR FRANCIS FRASER OF TORNAVEEN
AND WIDOW OF GEORGE BYNG MARSHALL
BORN 22-5-1896 DIED 22-8-1979
Carey Henrietta Mordaunt Baird Fraser was born on 22 May 1896 at Tornaveen, in the parish of Kincardine O’Neil. She was the youngest of five children of Major Francis Fraser of Tornaveen and his wife Alexia Mary Beatrice de Dombal Flora MacDonald. She deserves to be better known in the parish of her birth.
Carey’s brother Lachlan and her elder sister Violet’s husband, Archibald Robertson-Glasgow, are both commemorated on the Kincardine O’Neil war memorial. Archibald was killed in an unsuccessful raid on enemy trenches near Béthune in November 1914. Shortly afterwards, Lachlan died in the trenches at Ypres in February 1915. He was 21 years of age. Another brother, Francis, serving as a Captain Adjutant with the 7thSeaforth Highlanders, was seriously wounded on the first day of the Battle of Loos, in September 1915, but he survived, was invalided home and, despite a serious injury, trained for further service in what was to become the RAF. Carey wrote frequently to Francis at this time, and most of the information we have about her experiences comes from her letters to him which he carefully preserved.
London 1917-18
Carey wanted to make her own contribution to the war effort. From about November 1917 at least, she was in London making desperate efforts (including faking her own birth certificate) to get into the war. She had turned 21 in May that year, which may have increased her freedom of action from parental control. But she was still a little too young for some of her desired objectives as regards war work, and not as free as she would have liked. She had no income and was perpetually short of funds, depending on brother Francis to keep her financially afloat.
Carey set her sights on becoming a driver. In 1917, the motor car (which had first made an appearance in the mid 1890s) was still a new-fangled thing. She was venturing into what was regarded by some as a hugely daring and glamorous activity; many people thought it entirely unsuitable for women. Carey took driving lessons, reporting to Francis that “I am getting on hoppingly, apparently I have no nerves….”.[1] Given the unreliability of vehicles, it was essential that professional drivers were also trained mechanics, and so she did a course in the workings of the internal combustion engine.
Meanwhile, in wartime London, Carey described herself as “Having quite a gay time in the intervals of labour”[2], despite two episodes of enemy bombing at Kew and Covent Garden. She dined out often, played cards for cash when she could, and frequented fashionable West End venues, with “tons of ‘invites’ ’’.[3] She enjoyed nights out on the town with Tom Nash, son of the Rector of Christ Church, Kincardine O’Neil, who was then training as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. He was to die of wounds within the year. At Christmas 1917, Carey came back to Tornaveen, claiming in a letter to Francis on Christmas Eve that she had been very quiet and well-behaved, but frankly admitting this had been “rather an effort……The Nashes come to dine tomorrow and Mummie & I go to swell the congregation”.[4]
France 1918
Having been rejected by the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and the French Red Cross who both found themselves unable to accept a faked birth certificate, Carey succeeded in getting this fictional document past the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, which she joined in early 1918. Coincidentally, the FANY owed their very existence in the war effort to the dogged determination of another unsung Aberdeenshire heroine, Grace McDougall. Carey was sent to Châlons-sur-Marne, as one of ten drivers in a recently-formed new Unit 9 of the organisation.
Absurd as it may now seem, Grace McDougall initially found it impossible, despite determined lobbying, to persuade the British Army that her organisation had a viable role to play. By the summer of 1917, members of the FANY had nonetheless established units along the Western Front, and were setting up and running hospitals, driving wounded and evacuees, servicing and repairing their own vehicles, often very close to enemy lines which is where they were most needed. When the War Office and British Red Cross moved to close most of these down, Grace enlisted with her staff in the transport corps of the Belgian army, who took a more enlightened view of the potential for women to do useful work in the theatre of war.
By the spring of 1918, the FANY had significantly extended their sphere of operations, and were doing work for the French, under the aegis of the French Red Cross, as well as the Belgians. The French Army provided them with board, lodgings, laundry and free travel. They were organised into “Sections Sanitaires”, each headed up by a French Lieutenant and a FANY officer.
Carey settled happily into a life of combined driving and vehicle maintenance with Unit 9. In a letter to her brother Francis she wrote “Am enjoying life no end. Is a great self satisfaction to turn into one’s ‘lavender’- scented camp-bed, as stiff as a plank feeling that a useful day’s work has been accomplished”. Living conditions were in fact somewhat spartan, characterised by cold and a lot of mud. “Food all right, no puddings”[1].
On 17 March 1918, a girls’ “champagne supper” was rudely interrupted by artillery fire, “so rushed out and saw a huge fire, another Scot and I went further, until we arrived on the spot, a boche plane on fire, & were just in time to help extricate the servicemen, then the last bomb blew up. I didn’t enjoy the experience particularly…I’ve kept bits of its radiator etc”[2].
Despite the hazardous operations the FANY were involved in, Carey was having the time of her life. “The roads are streaming with Camions & guns being sent up to the lines, such fun driving. One passes by the skin of one’s teeth & nearly gets cut in half when crossing over, the dust is fearful….Yes everything is couleur de rose even tho’ the glamour of cleaning and greasing has somewhat worn off”. And, as if this wasn’t enough excitement: “I also have ambitions in the flying line”.[3]
Whatever fun Carey may have extracted from her situation, she was in a very perilous place at a desperate time, when the Germans having made peace with Russia were turning to a determined push on the Western Front.
Légion d’Honneur & Croix de Guerre
On the night of 18/19 July 1918, Carey was driving wounded soldiers to hospital during a bombardment. A torpedo struck in front of her vehicle and the orderly beside her was killed. Shrapnel lodged in her chest, liver and thigh. Two francs in her breast pocket possibly saved her life. Carey’s conduct that night earned her France’s highest order of merit, the Légion d’Honneur, and also the Croix de Guerre, which were conferred on her almost immediately as she lay in her hospital bed. The accompanying citation (translated) reads:
Charged, on the night of 18 and 19 July with transporting the wounded, accomplished her mission under a violent bombardment. Suffering along the way two very serious injuries, her ambulance having been destroyed by the explosion of a torpedo, had the superb courage to walk the two hundred metres which separated her from the nearby hospital to notify the doctor on duty that she was bringing wounded to him. Having collapsed and been transported herself to the hospital to be operated on there, she insistently demanded not to be cared for until after the wounded for whom she was responsible.[4]
Carey enjoyed a period of well-deserved celebrity. Grace McDougall paid her a personal visit; she was promoted to the rank of Sergeant. Fifteen days after the event, when she was convalescing, Carey wrote her own account of the immediate aftermath of her hospitalisation which she clearly found a lot more interesting than the horrific events that put her there in the first place: “I was brought to hospital at midnight on the 18th Thursday, operated next morning. In the afternoon General Gouraud came, read my citation & pinned on me the Croix de Guerre with palm telling me at the same time that the citation had been sent to Clemenceau. Next afternoon he came back with the Légion d’Honneur & embraced me fondly…On Sunday Gouraud gave a little séance for his poilus & in the end my photo was turned on the screen (with decorations) & he read out my citation…& everyone got up & the poilus howled then our National Anthem was played & everyone cheered. I wish I had been there…”.[5]
After about three weeks in hospital and a short period of convalescence, Carey was granted unlimited leave. She travelled up to Tornaveen. Beatrice wrote to Francis from Tornaveen on 29 July 1918: “Mr Nash has just turned up as pleased as Punch over it, as he christened her & considers her one of his flock”.[6] On arrival, Carey was greeted with the sad news that her friend Tom Nash had been killed in action on 9 August.
It was not long before the parish was getting on her nerves, and it must certainly have made quite a contrast with Châlons. Carey tried and failed to entice Francis to come up and provide moral support at a local event to be held in her honour at the Learney Hall in Torphins, which daunted her in a way that being under bombardment in Northern France apparently had not: “I wish you were here to hold my hand on Saturday. I dread the ordeal and would rather face another bomb and 3 days hell”.[7] The ‘ordeal’ took place on Saturday 5 October 1918, when Carey was presented with “an address enclosed in a silver casket”. The address was reported to be a beautiful piece of pen work executed by the Art Master at the Central School in Aberdeen. The presentation was followed by a social evening with music on the bagpipes, fiddle and piano.[8]
Armistice and later life
Undeterred by her experiences, and the extreme hazards and privations she knew she was returning to, Carey was intent on getting back to her unit in France. After a few days in London, she crossed to Le Havre on 17 October 1918. In Paris, she was introduced to President Poincaré and General Foch. After a short time in Dinan, she was back in Paris for the Armistice on 11 November and described the scene to Francis: “Everyone is putting out flags….Tonight we will all get drunk. Hurrah!”.[9] She danced till three in the morning.
Later that month, Carey’s unit proceeded to Strasbourg, where the FANY received sick and wounded prisoners released by the Germans – many in an advanced stage of starvation and emaciation. This process was a somewhat anxious one, presided over on the German side by soldiers armed with machine guns. Carey expected that it would be months before the FANY were disbanded, and was not looking forward to returning to post-war “normality”. In a letter to Francis she described the peace as “rather a mixed blessing”[10].
The sentiment Carey expressed that, for her, there were disadvantageous aspects to the peace, may seem surprising but it was not peculiar to Carey. Others in the corps felt that they were losing a way of life that had offered independence, something worthwhile to do, camaraderie and adventure, even though they were subject at the same time to considerable hardships and dangers, in the thick of terrible human suffering. It says a very great deal about the constrictions, frustrations and sheer boredom of many women’s lives pre-1914, that the end of a horrific war could be seen as a loss, even if it was also an enormous relief.
Carey was also one of a substantial number of FANY volunteers who wanted to stay on and take part in post-war civil relief work. In her promoted position of Sergeant, she was given her own new unit based at Compiègne, where the FANY contributed transport services in the cause of helping restore the “pays dévasté” ravaged by years of war.
On 14 December 1921, Carey married George Byng Marshall, son of George Marshall and the Hon. Sophie Byng of Hardres Court, Canterbury. George had served throughout the war as a Captain in the British Red Cross. He had met Carey in the course of their respective duties at Châlons in 1918, and he also was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Carey and George had two daughters: Sophie Carey born in 1922, and Georgina in 1928. They spent the inter-war years at Rapallo near Genoa, in a villa they renamed Tornaveen. Carey returned to Rapallo after the war, and lived the rest of her life there, leaving instructions that her mortal remains should be brought back and buried in the old Kirk at Kincardine O’Neil with her family, where they now rest.
Jean Abbot 2026
[1] Letter to Francis postmarked 9 December 1917
[2] Letter to Francis postmarked 10 December 1917
[3] Letter to Francis postmarked 10 December 1917
[4] Letter to Francis 24 December 1917
[5] Undated letter to Francis probably February 1918
[6] Letter to Francis 17 March 1918
[7] Letter to Francis 25 March 1918
[8] Translated from “L’Illustration” No. 3935 3 August 1918
[9] Letter to Francis 2 August 1918
[10] Beatrice letter to Francis 29 July 1918
[11] Letter to Francis 30 September 1918
[12] Aberdeen Weekly Journal 11 October 1918
[13] Letter to Francis 11 November 1918
[14] Letter to Francis 1 December 1918