How a five-year-old played his part in the Great War effort
(Story date: Thursday, January 6, 2005)

Captain Magnus Work recalls how Orkney moss helped save the lives of countless soldiers on the front line. Report by Alan Hodge.

It was a fine afternoon in 1916, and five year-old Magnus Work was busy collecting sphagnum moss near Waulkmill Bay.

Eighty-eight years later, Magnus, now Captain Work, living in Kirkwall, remembers it well.

His father, Captain Andrew Work, of Heathfield, Kirkwall, then retired from the merchant navy, had been asked by the town council to organise the collection, storage and onward shipment of moss in the Kirkwall area.

Ninety-four-year-old Captain Magnus Work, who survived the notorious Russian and North Atlantic convoys during the Second World War, has been looking back to the days when moss grown in Orkney helped to save lives in the First World War.

Magnus’s father asked Mrs Katherine Heddle, of Daisybank, to contact friends and to set up parties prepared to collect moss and later, when it was dried, to assist with the removal of bits of grass and heather.

The plea for help had been made by the Red Cross which, with its countrywide organisation, had been designated by the government to set the ball rolling.

Areas where sphagnum moss grew were identified and county councils notified of what was clearly a national emergency.

Why? Well, it had become rather obvious that the conflict which had begun two years earlier was not going to end as quickly as politicians had hoped - which has a familiar ring.

With vast numbers of casualties - one clearing station alone near the front line dealing with as many as 750 cases of injury in a single day - the country’s stocks of cotton were in danger of failing to meet the demand for wound dressings. An alternative filling for cotton wool had had to be found.

The absorbent properties of dried moss made it eminently suitable. Furthermore, it grows wherever there are damp conditions and heather, and Orkney is well supplied with both.

Today, Magnus recalls the Boys’ Brigade, Girl Guides, the Scouts and other organisations all being involved.

Lorries were loaned by local firms such as P.C. Flett and R. Garden Ltd, not just to bring in the wet, dripping moss to Baikies Woodyard for preliminary drying, but also to transport volunteers to where the moss was to be collected.

In Stromness, where the collecting point was the parish church hall, the Rev K.J. Cameron was in charge of the operation.

The hall was open every afternoon during the week for cleaning the dried moss.

The Orcadian carried a report that Mrs Brown, of Oglaby, had taken her Junior Red Cross work party on a collecting trip to Birsay, while another work party had headed for Hoy, hunting for moss as far away as the Dwarfie Stane. Twenty-three bags of moss had come back from the island that day.

“Rows of benches were put in the backs of the lorries for women to be taken out to the country,” Magnus told The Orcadian.

“The plan was to have a collection every Wednesday and Saturday throughout the summer - and hope for a fine day.”

“Of course no-one had tractors then, and the farmers were most helpful, loading up the moss on horse-drawn carts, and conveying it to where the lorries were waiting to take it to Kirkwall.

“After Baikies, the moss was taken to bakeries and blacksmiths - anywhere that the drying process could be completed.

“Then it was delivered to the library in Laing Street where the women sat at a long table in the room on the left at the top of the stairs, where they picked out the grass and heather.”

Later, the operation included making up the actual dressings in bags of specified sizes, the smaller ones being in greatest demand.

The Girl Guides from 1917, who were among those who collected the sphagnum moss to make dressings for wounds.

The Orcadian, in June 1917, reported on an excursion of more than 30 ladies of the Orkney Sphagnum Society who went by Garden’s lorry to St Andrews where “moss of a clean and beautiful quality was found in large quantities.”

Two farmers, Mr D.S. Delday, of Garalanga, and Mr A. Delday, of Quoykea, had “generously supplied milk to the party and also carted the moss out of the hill to the main road.”

It was not all work however - the reports usually added that an excellent tea had been enjoyed as well.

Sometimes, the collections were so successful that more dried moss was waiting to be cleaned than the ladies at the library could cope with and it had to go to the Aberdeen War Dressings Unit for the process to be completed there.

A stirring exhortation to even greater efforts appearing in this paper in 1917, ended with: “In this county there are tons of moss, and if everyone will gather who can do so, what a harvest of healing there will be.”

Magnus said his father asked the North of Scotland Shipping Company if they would carry the moss free of charge but for some reason, somewhat unpatriotically they refused, although they did offer a flat rate for each bag, regardless of size.

Dressings made of locally-collected moss are packed ready for shipping by Magnus Work's father, Captain Leslie Work.

“My father immediately got old hessian bags split up and sewn together to make much bigger ones. I remember seeing our Model T Ford with the hood down, and piles of bags, six feet high, tied on to the back of the car on its way to the pier.

“The number of bags sent south was quite fantastic,” says Magnus. “The collection of moss went on until the end of the war.”

In Aberdeen, the moss was repacked into bags of varying sizes which were sent off to where they were needed.

The unit there had been sending out 22,000 dressings each month - one hospital in Leicester alone was receiving 4,000 per fortnight.

“Ladies in Kirkwall held whist drives during the autumn of 1917 and collected money to buy cotton and linen for making up the bags the dressings were made of.

“Filled with moss, they were packed in tea chests for the journey to Aberdeen. Virtually everyone had someone away in the war and everybody was helping the war effort in some way.”

Everybody, including the young Magnus.

For as well as collecting moss he was helping to gather eggs to sell for the Red Cross.

The war ended when Magnus was eight and in his memoirs, he has written of the Armistice: “There were many ships in Kirkwall Bay and that night there were ships’ hooters blowing, rockets being fired by the ships and noise everywhere; great excitement though we were not fully aware of all that it meant.”

What it did mean, of course was that even the handfuls of moss gathered by a very small boy played a part in Britain’s victory.

That was not the end of the story however, as sphagnum moss was needed in the Second World War too.

The former Mary Rendall - later married to Bill Hepburn and now living in Dundas Crescent, Kirkwall - remembers collecting moss with the Guides in the early years of the 1939-45 war, in the Orphir hills. Their Guider was Jenny Gourlay, whose father was manager of the gasworks.

“We went out in lorries and I recall getting my feet wet. We gathered a tremendous amount.”

This time Magnus Work was not available to lend a hand - as a naval lieutenant he was taking a more direct part in the war.