Description:This is the cover of the first issue of The "Southern" Cross, the magazine of the First World War military hospital based on the University campus at Edgbaston. In his Foreword, Lt-Colonel Marsh (Hospital Administrator) stated that the journal would ‘chronicle events which happen in the daily routine of the hospital – grave and gay’.<small><sup>1</sup></small> It mainly comprised institutional news, reviews of entertainment and sporting events, announcements and a variety of prose, verse and graphics often including humorous depictions of staff and comical representations of ward life. This provided a sense of collective significance for all those involved, that their ordeal would not be forgotten and that the magazine ‘will be found worthy of retention for reference in years to come’.
The tone of the magazine was set by Lt FJ Sawyer’s prefatory acrostic:
'So everyone who’s learnt to write – let him or her a screed indite;
Our guiding hand most surely will sift all the grist that comes to the mill.
Under the Censor who will shun all things that tend to cheer the Hun.
True wit and humour need not fear, for these to Germans are not dear.
Help, everyone, to make it go, and for a while forget the foe.'
Accordingly, much of the material is in the spirit of an official agenda, giving a general impression that the well-managed hospital was a relaxed and harmonious place.
From the inception in 1907 of the scheme to improvise military hospitals in case of need, the War Office guiding principle was that their central purpose would be ‘to get the disabled, physically and mentally, fit to fight again’.<small><sup>2</sup></small> To succeed in this mission the authorities strove to combine sympathetic measures to raise the morale of everyone involved with a rigorous efficiency. On one hand, as sites of healing informed with a culture of care-giving, the hospitals were clearly created to be environments for rest, recovery and rehabilitation; on the other, irrespective of the good faith of the healers and the comfort and support they supplied to the wounded, the ultimate objective could not be obscured: damaged men, who had survived an infernal madness at the front, were being repaired through the rational agency of a disciplined organisation to be returned to the trenches.
The magazine endeavours to bridge this divide, providing a space for injured soldiers to express their separate embattled identity, positioned between the War Zones and the Home Front. Although it was authorised and subject to censorship, the journal met a recognised need to have a safety valve for the feelings of the recovering soldiers. It gave them an opportunity to find relief from wartime pressures by giving vent to complaints, criticism, disillusion and frustrations, albeit within a context supervised by the hospital management.
<small>['The “Southern” Cross. The Journal of the 1st Southern General Hospital', Birmingham, edited by N. Pollock, monthly Vol.1 No.1 January 1916 – Vol.3 No.32 1919]</small>
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> F. Marsh, Foreword, The “Southern” Cross, Vol.1 No.1 January 1916, p.3
<sup>2</sup> P. Mitchell, Memoranda on Army General hospital Administration, (London, 1917)</small></font>