Wikimedia Commons
If you’ve read as many WWI books and war-based fiction as I have, you may be wondering “what IS bandage rolling?”
Why were women always rolling bandages and what did it have to do with war?
As a child in 20th century America, the only bandages I knew were Band-Aids.
How do your roll those?
When we got too “proficient” at using up all the Band-Aids, my mother started buying rolls of gauze and tape for us to use instead.
It was harder–the white tape always stuck to itself if you didn’t manage it well and homemade bandages weren’t anywhere as neat as Band-Aids.
Red Cross bandage rolling 1914 (Wikimedia Commons)
You also had to wrap a lot of it around a limb to stop the bleeding.
Eventually, we learned how to cut a piece and make a pad and then tape it on–like a Band-Aid–but we only learned that technique after much trial and error.
I never once wondered how the gauze strips were rolled up until I wrote a novel about World War I and wondered how that was done.
How to roll bandages
Here’s the description from my novel, with commentary from the skeptical heroine:
Setting a hat on her head like her mother and with her mind alert to potential story ideas, Claire joined Sylvia and her smart set of friends to roll bandages for the war effort.
The half-dozen women gathered around a long polished table in a sumptuous dining room hung with portraits of ancestors. Claire would have liked to inspect the paintings, but she’d come for a purpose. “Show me what to do.”
“Wash your hands in the basin, stand at the end of the table and roll away,” Sylvia said.
Four inches wide and the length of the banquet table, the soft white gauze-thin muslin rolled up easily. Claire wound the cloth as tight as possible, the strip slowly moving down the table in her direction.
She tied off the three-inch thick cylinder with a piece of twine and started on the next long piece of muslin. Sylvia and her four friends worked at the table: two cutting the fabric into lengths, two laying it straight on the table and one joining Claire to roll.
A dozen women of varying ages rolled the immense pile of muslin in an hour.
Why a roll and not a strip?
The rolled gauze, of course, made it easier to wrap around a limb or, worse, a head.
Even Scarlett knew how to roll bandages.
Gauze wouldn’t cling to the open wound as much, though bandages were often made from a variety of fabric–including strips torn from petticoats if need be.
It was something constructive women could do, the bandages were always needed and some groups would pray as they rolled.
Today, the rolling is done by automatic machine and as a result, far more effective, sterile and consistent in size.
Does it carry as much love and concern?
Obviously not, but unfortunately, will always be just as necessary.
Tweetables
What IS bandage rolling? Click to Tweet
What Scarlett O’Hara has in common with the Red Cross: bandage rolling. Click to Tweet
How did women roll bandages in WWI? Click to Tweet
As a small girl I remember watching my grandmother knit bandages. I believe she started doing this during WWII and continued long after it was over, as this was probably late 60’s or early 70’s that I am recalling. A search on the internet shows that knitted (or crocheted) bandages are still needed by lepers today. Perhaps we should resurrect this endeavor and show the love of Christ to needy people around the world?