Barry Foster, of The Folly at Settle, highlights an exhibition that considers the effects of the First World War on the people of our area

I love the Imperial War Museum photograph (Q 8895) of 14 Queen Alexandra nurses wearing stately headgear and tunics, starched white and spotless, sitting in a row on a riverbank, fishing.

Wielding full-length rods and parasols, they are focused on the water, desperate for a catch.

The photograph was taken on the canalised River Aa, which connected the First World War battlefields of Flanders with Dunkirk. Those nurses are perched on the roof of a specially converted barge marked with a white cross, gently carrying the wounded back to the Channel.

The Folly at Settle is halfway through its programme of exhibitions commemorating the First World War, revealing the effects of conflict on the people of our area.

1916 is a terrible year to revisit because of the horror of battlefields such as Thiepval Wood on the Somme, where many local soldiers have their graves.

Heavy artillery and machine guns firing 600 high-speed bullets a minute meant the scale of injuries was horrific.

Fighting took place on heavily-manured agricultural land so wounds rapidly became infected. Lice spread typhus and trench fever.

The grim reality of the trenches is rightly part of the Folly exhibition, but is balanced by stories of the mighty efforts made by the armed services, voluntary organisations and thousands of courageous individuals to save the lives of the injured.

A mock-up of a Regimental Field Station displays original surgical instruments and medicines of the time, revealing the hopeless task facing medical teams.

Improvements were made in blood storage, antiseptics, and equipment, with tangible effects. In 1914 80 per cent of men with a broken leg died; by 1916, thanks to the introduction of a splint designed by surgeon Hugh Owen Thomas, 93 per cent survived.

Close to the front line, Field Stations offered emergency first aid and assessment. Stretcher-bearers carried those who needed further treatment a mile through shell-blasted countryside to an Advanced Dressing Station for injections and emergency operations.

Horse-drawn ambulances and motor lorries carried them on to a Casualty Clearing Station, where tents and huts formed a fully-staffed hospital.

Many patients were able to return to the front from here, but others had to be evacuated 60 miles to the coast with its Base Hospitals, or a ship home. Roads were shattered by shells and military traffic. Hospital trains, a third of a mile long, were well-equipped and staffed but slowly jolted around noisy sidings, pushed aside by trains carrying troops and ammunition.

Coal barges were converted into ambulances barges with 30 hospital beds, an operating table, a kitchen and accommodation for nurses, orderlies and cooks. At the height of the war there were five flotillas of six barges, pulled in pairs by steam tugs.

The nurses in the photograph were enjoying a fishing competition at Watten, a well-deserved break. The wounded had to be lowered through hatches down to the hull. Barge decks were often slippery and nurses had to crawl on all fours to avoid a soaking. Below deck the residue of gas on soldiers’ uniforms caused vomiting, sore eyes and breathing difficulties; there were often lice on the uniforms too.

Other photographs show the anglers enjoying a picnic tea on deck. Sadly, freshly-caught fish does not appear to be on offer.

l Chronicles of Courage runs until October 30 at The Folly - www.ncbpt.org.uk/folly