Violetta Thurstan (1879–1978)

Anna Violet "Violetta" Thurstan was born in Ore, today a suburb of of Hastings in East Sussex, England, the eldest child of Edward Paget Thurstan, a doctor, and his wife Anna. The family moved often and Violetta, was educated at boarding schools, including a German Catholic school and the Ladies' College, Guernsey. In 1897, she trained as a nurse at the London Hospital in Whitechapel. From 1905 to 1914 she worked at the Bristol Royal Infirmary while studying languages, history and geography. Eventually, she earned a degree in modern languages and fine art from the University of St. Andrews. At the start of World War I, she was sent as the eader of a group of nurses to a hospital in Charleroi, Belgium. There they were overrun by the German Army and sent to Copenhagen. From there, Violetta travelled north through Sweden and Finland to reach Russia, where she joined a flying column, or mobile medical unit. She tended the wounded in Łódź and Warsaw before being wounded herself by shrapnel and ill with pleurisy. Unable to work, she wrote her first book, Field Hospital and Flying Column, published in 1915. During her convalescence in England, she gave lectures in various cities about her experiences. By the end of 1915 she was back in Russia as a representative of the National Union of Trained Nurses (NUTN) to support refugees on the Eastern front. She described this experience in her book The People who Run: the Tragedy of the Refugees in Russia. In 1916, she was posted near the front lines in Koksijde, Belgium to manage a dressing station. Her efforts in evacuating wounded soldiers from Koksijde under fire earned her the Military Medal from King George V. She also received decorations from Russia, Belgium, Serbia, and other countries. She published A Textbook of War Nursing in 1917. Her last posting of WWI was as matron of a field hospital in Macedonia near the Salonika front, which she left only after contracting malaria. On recovery, she was appointed to the Women's Royal Air Force as an administrator. Many years later, she wrote about this period of her life as The Hounds of War Unleashed (1978). After the war, Violetta took courses in weaving, dyeing and other textile arts in Sweden, Italy, France and Germany. Around 1923, she was appointed to oversee Bedouin women making carpets in refugee camps run by the British in the Libyan desert In 1930, she published Use of Vegetable Dyes for Beginners, which is still a well-regarded text. She was back in England when her book A Short History of Decorative Textiles and Tapestries was issued in 1934, followed by Weaving Patterns of Yesterday and Today. In 1937, she went Spain to serve as a nurse in the Civil War, and worked for the release of prisoners in Almería. When World War II began, she obtained a commission in the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRENs) after lying about her age. She took part in the post-war Catholic Relief Programme in 1945 and worked with displaced people and prisoners of war in Italy, Egypt and Austria. Later in life, she wrote two novels, the semi-autobiographical Stormy Petrel (1964) and The Foolish Virgin (1966). She continued to be involved in textile arts and at age 94 was made a Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen.