Height: 9cm (3.5in)
Silver. In the form of a spherical flaming grenade with with wick rising from the flambeau finial from a fuel reservoir within. The body engraved the RAMC badge motto ‘In Arduis Fidelis’ (Faithful in Adversity), with the inscription ‘Officers Mess / 24th General Hospital / Etaples / The Great War / Dents Made Armistice Eve / 1918’. Maker’s mark of A. & J. Zimmerman. Ltd. Hallmarked 1914.
Vera Brittain (1893-1970) served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at No 24 General Hospital, Étaples, and wrote about the experience in her memoir ‘Testament of Youth’ in the chapter entitled ‘Between the Sandhills and the Sea’. It was one of nine major hospitals almost entirely comprised of huts and tents, that were established close to the major complex of infantry training camps. The hospitals were hit by bombs from German aircraft in 1918 due to their proximity to the Boulogne to Paris railway and the training area. Vera experienced over a month of night-time air raids which left her exhausted and ‘more frightened than I had ever been in my life’. She left Étaples before the worst bombing raids of May, June and August 1918 when patients and nurses were killed in No 24 General and neighbouring hospitals.