The Other Anzacs (28 page)

To better use limited resources, the Allies decided to integrate their armies more closely. This meant that the operations of the Anzac hospitals and casualty clearing stations ostensibly came under the direct control of British General Headquarters. However, as they were still regarded as ‘imperial’, a degree of difference from British establishments was accepted. The new policy saw the sisters of the Australian and New Zealand Army Nursing Services working at times in various British and Canadian medical units. Three Australian general hospitals, three Australian casualty clearing stations, and No. 1 New Zealand Stationary Hospital were also established on the Western Front.

The question of whether nurses should be attached to casualty clearing stations was hotly debated in military and medical circles. Colonel George Barber, the Deputy Director of Medical Services, and Colonel Wilfred Giblin, a surgeon, strongly opposed the idea. Working at such stations was the closest nurses got to the front line. It was argued that the risk of death or injury to nurses was too great, and that they might be made prisoners of war. The nurses themselves were not of one mind. Some thought the services of a highly trained nurse were wasted at a casualty clearing station, while others strongly believed the contrary. Medical staff working with Australian Army nurses in other theatres of war were generally in favour.

According to the official Australian military medical historian, Colonel A.G. Butler, the presence of trained female nurses on the Western Front changed the military status of casualty clearing stations from clearing houses to forward centres for ‘scientific treatment’ of the wounded. They were generally located in pairs on or near railway lines, as close to the front as was safe and practicable, with encampments and cemeteries close by. Troops were taken to the clearing stations if medical officers at dressing stations on the battlefield decided they needed emergency surgery and evacuation. The stations enabled the wounded to get lifesaving treatment far earlier than if they had had to wait to be taken to hospital. The sisters staffed resuscitation wards, where, Butler wrote, men were sent ‘whose spark of life flickered—often to extinction. But if [the system’s] tragedies were many and poignant, its triumphs were often dramatic, and success was surprisingly frequent, even among seemingly moribund men.’
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Over the next two and a half years the sisters were integral members of the stations’ surgical teams.

On 24 March 1916 Alice Ross King received her orders to sail to France. She and her fellow nurses from No. 1 Australian General Hospital waited on the pier at Alexandria, weighed down with the booty from a final shopping spree. One nurse had a canary in a cage. A captain was told to make sure all the nurses were on board the hospital ship
Braemar Castle
. ‘Not knowing the AANS he told us to form a double row to “number off ”, ’ Alice recounted. ‘He wanted 120. Each time he got a different number. He was terribly worried. Finally our big [commanding officer] Col De Crespigny came down the gangway to see what was the matter. In his tired voice he called out, “Sisters! Form a fairly straight line. Left turn! Get on board.” “Oh! Sir, ” said Matron, “they are not all here.” “Then they’ll be left behind, ” said our CO. Our first hard lesson! We had always been fussed over [and] spoilt before, ’ Alice wrote, with a shade of overstatement.
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The
Braemar Castle
reached Marseilles in early April, but planning was in a shambles, and the sisters spent three days on board awaiting orders. Finally news came through that some would go to Le Havre and some to Rouen. Alice Ross King was detailed to Rouen, while another No. 1 Australian General Hospital nurse, Pearl Corkhill, was among those going to Le Havre. Sisters from the No. 2 hospital, including Olive Haynes, stayed at Moussot, near Marseilles, to re-establish the hospital there. It was to serve as a quarantine station to prevent infectious diseases being carried to the Western Front by soldiers transferred from the Middle East.

When the nurses from No. 1 hospital boarded the troop train heading north, they soon found there were neither compartments nor a toilet. Quickly assessing the lack of amenities, they decided that if they were to get through the journey ahead there was only one thing to do. As Pearl Corkhill explained, ‘Then we all scooted down to a little wine shop and bought drinks for the journey. The orderlies could not come so we bought stuff for them. It was rather funny to see us coming back loaded with bottles.’
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It was spring, and the scenery in the Rhône Valley was glorious. But the journey was uncomfortable, disjointed and long.

Large numbers of Australian troops, including most of the 1st Division going up the line, passed them, ‘cheering when they saw the Aussie sisters hanging out the windows’. One of the shuntings left them at Dijon for six hours, enabling the nurses to wash at the railway station. ‘There was no water on board, so you can imagine how we got on, ’ Pearl Corkhill remembered. ‘We used to wash ourselves with some eau-de-cologne or water out of a bottle poured on the end of a handkerchief. Of course we never got our clothes off.’

Reaching Rouen, normally an eight- to ten-hour journey, took three and a half days. Fifty of the nurses were then transferred to various hospitals; Alice Ross King and two others to a stationary hospital on the edge of the Forêt Verte. Accommodation was a tent, and to keep warm they were given two dirty brown blankets. ‘The matron was very imperial, ’ Alice noted. ‘Always talking about “you Australians” or “you colonials”.’
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It was a sign of things to come.

Staff Nurse Annie Shadforth was among a group of twenty nurses who went to Etaples and Boulogne. The trip to Etaples, on two troop trains, was disorganised. They were shunted off to a siding and left for several hours. Food was at a premium. As they finally headed towards Etaples, still hungry, a British Tommy ‘took pity on us and crawled along to one carriage with some bully beef and bread’.
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The sisters greatly appreciated this act of kindness. Arriving at No. 20 British General Hospital at Etaples, Annie felt homesick, but ‘when we got to one ward to find all Australian boys as patients we immediately felt at home.’

Further south, at the port of Le Havre, Pearl Corkhill was sent to No. 2 British General Hospital. There was nothing much to see but ships coming and going, and the weather was always rough and windy. Like Alice Ross King and Annie Shadforth, she could not wait to get back to ‘our own hospital and amongst our boys’.

Some of them came in here about a week ago, also some New Zealanders which [
sic
] are the same as the Australians to us and they look on us in the same way as the Australian lads do. When I saw our boys coming in I went and spoke to each one, as soon as they saw I was an Australian they were delighted, said in their wildest imaginations they never expected to be greeted by an Australian sister in this hospital. There are no boys like our boys. Even the Canadians are pleased to see us and look upon us as more like friends than the English, and the South Africans always give us a big broad smile.
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At Marseilles, Olive Haynes made her home in an army bell tent with ‘Pete’ Peters. Elsie Eglinton was in a tent nearby. Working alongside English sisters and Indian orderlies, they staffed a temporary hospital in a large château, but none of No. 2 Australian General Hospital’s staff was happy to be staying in the Mediterranean port. Olive and Pete’s first day’s rations consisted of a tin of bully beef and a loaf of bread. Without plates, they did as best they could. ‘We managed, too, I can tell you, as we were pretty hungry.’
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They considered themselves lucky to have a tin of raspberry jam. They soon found food ‘frightfully dear . . . I suppose it is on account of the war and they see us coming’. It made Olive homesick. ‘I haven’t seen a place anywhere, so far, that is a quarter as nice as Australia. I am not a bit keen on getting to England. It couldn’t be as nice. The boys all say the same— “Australia’ll do me.”’
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The boys also loved Olive’s gramophone. She had to promise it days ahead to the different huts and tents. ‘They start it going the minute they awake and never stop until they have to. I am going to try and get some more records when I next go into Marseilles.’
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The gramophone and her primus, on which she occasionally cooked an Irish stew, were Olive’s two most valued possessions. Olive and Pete grew accustomed to their tents and were initially unhappy about being ordered to move to a hut. But they soon realised they would be more comfortable, and began by pinning postcards and photos to the wall and making red curtains. A Tommy made them a table out of a box, and they covered it with an oilcloth. As well as the primus, they had plates and cups, and paid an Indian a rupee twice a week to scrub the floor. Olive went into town, bought some food, and invited four colleagues to a Good Friday supper. ‘We had cold ham and new potatoes and asparagus and cherry jam and bread and tea. It was a fine party (a payday one).’
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Good Friday and Easter passed quietly, but the first anniversary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli was approaching. Australians and New Zealanders everywhere were focused on the date that marked the birth of the Anzac legend. Memories were still fresh. The first official Anzac Day brought ceremonies and services around Australia. In Sydney, wounded soldiers from Gallipoli, attended by nurses, were driven through the streets in a convoy of cars. In London, more than 2000 Australian and New Zealand troops marched through the streets to the cheers of tens of thousands of people. The crowds answered sustained cries of ‘coo-ee’ from the Anzacs with a reciprocal ‘Ay!’ according to
Kai Tiaki
.
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A London newspaper headline dubbed them ‘THE KNIGHTS OF GALLIPOLI’. A sister from Wellington noted that the New Zealand High Commissioner in London arranged for ten of the country’s Army nurses to attend the Anzac Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey, at which the King and Queen were present. ‘It was a day never to be forgotten. The Londoners gave the boys a splendid welcome.’
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En route back to Egypt, Kath King noted, ‘Fancy Anzac Day, one whole year, what a lot has happened. We kept it up fairly. Had an Anzac menu for dinner.’
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At the Australian camp in Cairo, a sports day was held, followed by a concert at night. Sister Anne Donnell did not approve of the celebrations and instead went with several others to a memorial service in the Anzac Hostel in Cairo, conducted by the Bishop of Jerusalem. The large auditorium was packed, and the walls were a mass of flowers grouped in wreaths and crosses, with Allied flags hanging from the walls. An orchestra played the Dead March and the Last Post. Chaplains spoke, and Kipling’s Recessional was sung, its final line destined to live down the ages in Australia and New Zealand:

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Anne glanced up at the gallery and ‘saw one young laddie in khaki quite overcome . . . Yet, sad as it all was, one came away with the feeling of being drawn much nearer to those who had given their lives twelve months ago, and that they were the richer by far, and that their deeds will live and be a lesson for all time.’
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Sister May Tilton attended the same service. She found it ‘inexpressibly moving . . . Some of the men near me were sobbing. The landing of 1915 had been a much easier thing for them than this first service in commemoration of it. Most of them, broken in health, remembered only too vividly. During that short but touching address was one of life’s terrible moments when no man dared look into another man’s eyes.’
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A sombre procession of a thousand Australian soldiers behind ambulances full of flowers marched to the Cairo Cemetery, where wreaths were placed on the graves of 500 Australian sons.

At Le Havre, Pearl Corkhill and two of her colleagues were determined to commemorate the occasion.

So we bought cigarettes and matches and made up little parcels and tied them with red white and blue ribbon and wrote on the outside, ‘Anzac Day April 25th. From 3 Aust. Sisters’ and gave one to each of our boys (and the NZ we consider them ours also). They were pleased, they could scarcely thank us. Luckily we each had a green Australian gum leaf with Dardanelles 1915 on it, and we wore them on our capes. Of course they caused some comments from the other sisters here who hardly knew what Anzac day was. We knew and our boys knew so that was all we cared.
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