22 April 2021
Aussie nurses, like other military compatriots, have a reputation for heroic stoicism in the face of appalling wartime conditions.
“I believe it to be awful in India. English nurses could not stand the heat and cholera … that is why they have sent Australians.’’
So said Sister Jessie Tomlins of the more than 500 Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) nurses serving in British hospitals in India between 1916 and 1919.
Their gallantry and dedication came to the fore during the carnage of the Gallipoli campaign.
More than 3,000 Australian civilian nurses volunteered for active service during World War I. Twenty-five died during their service.
Right from the first Allied landings at Gallipoli on 25 April, 1915, AANS nurses cared for hundreds of casualties in the hospital and transport ships anchored off-shore. Despite the constant threat of Turkish shelling or torpedoes, the exhausted nurses cleaned, bandaged, warmed, and comforted their patients, many of whom had horrific wounds or were suffering from gangrene and disease.
Barges and boats ferried the wounded soldiers to the HMHS Gascon, anchored off Anzac Cove. The troops were lying on the decks and in the confined wards below deck. By the night of 25 April, 557 wounded soldiers were on board.
“The wounded from the landing commenced to come on board at 9am and poured into the ship’s wards from barges and boats. The majority still had on their field dressing and a number of these were soaked through.
Two orderlies cut off the patients’ clothes and I started immediately with dressings. There were 76 patients in my ward and I did not finish until 2 am,’’ wrote Sister Ella Tucker.
Later she would write: “Every night there are two or three deaths, sometimes five or six; it’s just awful flying from one ward into another … each night is a nightmare, the patients' faces all look so pale with the flickering ship’s lights.’’
For the next nine months, soldiers were ferried to hospitals on the nearby Greek islands of Imbros and Lemnos, or transferred to Malta, Egypt, and Britain. Wards on the lower decks were crowded and poorly ventilated, and even simple nursing tasks were made difficult by the movement of the ship. Seasickness struck down nurses and patients alike.
Reflecting on her work in the hospital ship Sicilia off Gallipoli, Sister Lydia King wrote in her diary:
“I shall never forget the awful feeling of hopelessness on night duty. It was dreadful. I had two wards downstairs, each with more than 100 patients, and then I had small wards upstairs—altogether about 250 patients to look after, and one orderly and one Indian sweeper. Shall not describe their wounds, they were too awful.”
From its inception on Lemnos in August 1915 until January 1916, the 3rd Australian General Hospital treated 7,400 patients, of whom only 143 died.
Seven AANS nurses, Sisters Dorothy Cawood, Clara Deacon, Mary Jane Derrer, Alice Ross-King, Alicia Kelly, Rachael Pratt, and Pearl Corkhill, were awarded the Military Medal, "for acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire" while working in casualty clearing stations in France.
Noted wounded in action Lieutenant Harold Williams: “That these women worked their long hours among such surroundings without collapsing spoke volumes for their will power and sense of duty. The place reeked with the odours of blood, antiseptic dressings and unwashed bodies. The nurses saw soldiers in their most pitiful state – wounded, blood-stained, dirty, reeking of blood and filth.’’
Many Gallipoli nurses never recovered from the physical and emotional stress. Despite this, 5000 Australian nurses volunteered when World War II broke out and hundreds more put their hands up for Vietnam.
Annabelle Brayley, author of Our Vietnam Nurses, said almost every nurse who served in the Vietnam War she spoke to was suffering from PTSD.
In today’s Australian Defence Forces women work in over 200 roles, and receive the same training, salaries and opportunities as men.
Women have served in the Australian armed forces since 1899 but until the Second World War were restricted to the Australian Army Nursing Service.
To quote Flight Lieutenant Alex Hardingham, Nursing Officer, Joint Health Command, the First World War nurses “paved the way for nurses, and women in general, to be considered equal to men and professionals in their own right. The core duties of military nurses have not changed, and I do not think that my reason for becoming a nurse—to care for the sick and wounded—would have been any different to those who signed up to go to Lemnos, Egypt or board a hospital ship’’.
This Anzac Day (Sunday, April 25) we remember all our brave men and women who lost their lives to war-time service and we honour those who have served and continue to serve during times of war, conflict and peace-keeping operations.
Winner of last year’s ANMF (SA Branch) Humanitarian Action Award, Adelaide RN Jessica Vanderwal has volunteered in war-torn Afghanistan and Syria, providing emergency care.
“Hearing about those boobytrap stories that were often targeting children is horrible,’’ she says of Syria.
“It can seem futile what we do, but at the same time a drop in the ocean is at least a drop. Someone is benefitting, someone is surviving from what we do. Even if it’s just the one kid we save that day it’s worth it for that child.’’
Lest we forget.
Sources:
Australian War Memorial, Department of Defence, Department of Veterans’ Affairs