Jack and Eve: Two Women In Love and At War
Vera (Jack) Holme and Evalina (Eve) Haverfield were a lesbian couple who were prominent in the Suffragette movement before WW1 and during the war served with the Scottish Women’s Hospital (SWH) in Serbia and Romania. Initially the British War Office refused the services of women volunteers, but the Serbs and the Russians accepted them eagerly. Thus Jack and Eve and their SWH comrades served in two little-known theatres of war, in two terrible retreats in horrifying conditions and continual danger.
Above all this is an heroic war story about an oddly assorted couple – Jack was a chorus girl and Eve was an upper-class army officer’s wife – but it also says a great deal about the women’s suffrage movement and about lesbian identity in the early 20th century. A fine combination of exciting narrative and social commentary.
