What is Bandage Rolling?

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 was familiar with were bandaids.

How do your roll those?

When we got proficient at using up all the bandaids at home, 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 bandaids.

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 bandaid–but that came from 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.

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. She and a young woman dressed in similar layers of fine silk, giggled together. Claire smoothed her hands down what she’d come to regard as her uniform: a white shirtwaist tucked into a black skirt and sensible shoes.

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.

The pace was leisurely, the conversation tedious: new officers ordering expensive tailored uniforms; questions about the coming season; would silk be hard to procure? Before she’d finished the fifth bandage roll, Claire knew she’d not return. Her notebook listed one question: “Do Sylvia’s friends have any meaningful ways to spend their time?”

Their frivolity galled her when she thought about Peter daily risking his life to fly flimsy wooden bi-planes.

At the other end of the spectrum, the hearty suffragettes were determined to help the war effort any way possible. A dozen women of varying ages rolled the immense pile of muslin in an hour, all the while debating how to get the vote before war’s end. Far more educated than Sylvia’s set, they applauded Claire for holding a job.

The rolled gauze, of course, made it easier to wrap around a limb or, worse, a head from the many horrific wounds suffered at the front.

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

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