Sources:
The Life and Tragedy of Alexandra Feodorovna, pages 190 to 197, by Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, 1928
The account:
... The Empress never thought of her health. She braced herself to do more than ordinary human strength could manage. She seemed indefatigable, and her suite could scarcely keep up with her. ...
... At Tsarskoe Selo the Empress continued to work with the same feverish energy. She thought out a whole programme of work based on her experiences of the last war, but greatly changed and improved. She desired to adapt as many palaces as possible for hospital work, feeling that all available space was likely to be needed. The Petroffsky Palace at Moscow had already been turned into a hospital, the "Poteshny" was soon to follow. The Nicholas Palace, the former home of the Grand Duchess Serge, was a sklad. At Tsarskoe Selo, the Catherine Palace, where all the fêtes used to be given, was to be a hospital for officers. In the existing Court hospital the Empress and her daughters began their practical training. Princess Hedroits, a well-known surgeon, was at the head of the hospital. The Empress thought her daughters too young to nurse, and agreed to their request only on the understanding that they and she should go through a course of training. All three went through the usual probationer's course and could be seen every morning working at the hospital. Her Majesty was deft and very quick-handed, and brought to the work, what was far more precious to the patient, her understanding of suffering and her capacity for comfort. Neither mother nor daughters ever shirked the most fatiguing and difficult task. The Grand Duchess Tatiana showed special aptitude for the work. It had a scientific interest for her, apart from its human side.
Both young girls were very enthusiastic, and when they had passed their examinations insisted on going on with their hospital duties. The Empress did the same. It gave her moral satisfaction to feel that she was really working for the wounded, and her work made her forget the anxieties and sorrows that pressed on her. ...
Her soothing influence helped many a wounded man through the agonising moments before an operation, and many a dying soldier passed away happier for her presence. The humblest in her hospital, when he called for the Tsaritsa, would see her at his side. Sometimes she had only just come home when a message from her hospital would tell her that a specially bad case called for her. She would seize the first free moment to rush back to the hospital in her car. She visited the other hospitals at Tsarskoe Selo constantly, and those in St. Petersburg about once a week in that year. ...
Such sad cases always awakened the Empress's sympathy. There were several such unknown, solitary men, from obscure line regiments, who died in her hospital whose last hours were comforted by the Empress. She lost her shyness in her nurses' dress. She felt she was one of many, and to all in the hospital she showed herself in her true light and as her home circle knew her.
Many princesses wore nurses' dresses during the war, and in many cases the feeling that dictated this was admired and understood. To the general public, in Russia, however, and particularly to the uneducated mind, this was not the case. The Empress was advised not to wear nurses' dress when she went about the country during the war. She was unknown in the towns, and the people did not recognise her when she came without the usual apparel, and so the effect on the public of the Imperial visit was lost. ...
...
At the end of 1914 and the beginning of the following year the Empress again had a moment of great popularity. Even people who were not in sympathy with her admitted this: for instance, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, S. D. Sazonoff, spoke of it to me on one occasion when I was lunching at the Foreign Office in 1915. The Empress travelled about, she was seen in public, her work became known. "One must take things personally in hand," she had written to Princess Louis [Victoria] on March 23rd, 1915.
Neither the Red Cross nor the Commissariat could cope with the ever-growing demands of the hospitals for linen and supplies. The Empress arranged for her sklads to co-operate with these institutions, particularly in helping small military hospitals, close to the fighting line. She had sklads at Petrograd, Moscow, Odessa, and Vinnitza, and a whole line of lesser sklads in small towns near the front. Their sphere of activity became very wide. Supply trains and single carriages attached to empty ambulance trains took hospital material from the main sklads up to the fighting line. Automobile squads had been formed in Poland in connection with these trains, most of them being run by members of the great Polish families, who put their private cars at the disposal of the sklads. They did excellent work all through the war. The needs of the moment were what guided the Empress and her assistants. At the head of the Moscow sklad, which directed the whole work, was M. Nicholas de Meck, always called by the Empress "Uncle Meck," and his nephew V. V. Meck. The Petrograd sklads were organised by Princess E. N. Obolensky; Count Apraxine, the Empress's gentleman-in-waiting, was continually going with the trains to the front, to see how everything was working. To villages where there were no baths, the Empress had bath cars sent out, attached to the supply trains. These the soldiers greatly appreciated; they called these cars the "disinsection" cars — an apt mispronunciation of the word! In the winter warm clothing was supplied, as well as linen. In 1915, when the armies were more stationary, she arranged to send field churches. The country in which the fighting was taking place was Catholic, and there were few Orthodox churches. Priests went out with these portable churches, and were a great comfort to many dying men, unable to get into touch with the regimental priests.
New ideas were always working themselves out in the Empress's brain. The days were too short for her. ...
... She looked through the papers her secretary sent her till late at night, and began to work at them again, early in the morning, before going to her hospital. There was sometimes no chance for the Household to see her, except at lunch, and she usually had her ladies on business at that time.
It was evident that such feverish activity could not be kept up long by a woman so delicate as the Empress. Only sheer will-power kept her going during the first five months of the war. She fell ill in December 1914. Heart trouble reappeared, caused by the long standing and the real, hard physical work to which she was, naturally, unaccustomed, and by the motoring, which had always disagreed with her. Added to this was the mental strain of continual contact with suffering, in which she was always spending herself whole-heartedly in helping and comforting others. She roused herself at the time of her friend Mme. Vyrouboff's illness in January 1915, but afterwards had a serious setback, and could not leave the Palace for several weeks. She went on intermittently with her hospital work, being loth to give it up entirely, but she could stand it less and less. She hated to admit that she was beaten by her health, but in 1916 she was completely worn out.
The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna wrote to her sister that she was determined not to be "a mere doll." Every official in her trains near the fighting line could telegraph to her personally, reporting his movements and appealing to her in cases of difficulty. If action had to be taken promptly, the Empress telegraphed herself, stating the case and asking for the necessary measures to be taken as soon as possible. She hated formality and red tape, and she felt that the interests of the wounded should always come before everything else. Personal sympathies or antipathies did not influence her in her work.
Above: Alexandra with some of her patients.
Above: Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden.
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