Fed: No greater joy than to serve the Anzacs, say nurses

AAP General News (Australia)
04-29-2009
Fed: No greater joy than to serve the Anzacs, say nurses

By Doug Conway, Senior Correspondent

SYDNEY, April 29 AAP - Like the gallant Anzacs whose wounds they treated, they were
all volunteers, they suffered sickness and extreme hardship and they were even bombed.

The first Australian nurses of World War One had no tents or quarters to begin with, either.

They worked in the open air and slept in the open alongside snakes, centipedes, scorpions
and moles.

They were so poorly equipped they had to tear up their own clothing to use as dressings.

Some came down with dysentery as a result of the poor sanitation they had to endure.

And they faced danger from Turkish aerial bombardment of an adjacent port site on Christmas
Day and Boxing Day, 1915.

Yet these brave and selfless nurses have been largely forgotten, along with the Greek
island of Lemnos where they worked in such dire conditions.

They are being remembered as usual in Greece this week, after all the traditional Anzac
Day commemorations have died down, because Greece does not like to steal the thunder from
events at Gallipoli.

Many Australians are not aware that Lemnos, 100 kms from Gallipoli, was the staging
post for the Anzac troops who stormed ashore on the Turkish beach at dawn on April 25,
1915.

The British War Office, in its wisdom, later decided to use the island also as a hospital
base to treat slightly wounded soldiers so they could be shipped back to the fighting
in double-quick time.

But the planning for this operation was every bit as woeful as the abortive Gallipoli
campaign itself, which cost 11,400 Anzac lives in eight months.

When 150 Australian nurses arrived on Lemnos in August, 1915, there was virtually no
equipment or supplies for them to work with, not even tents.

They had to make do with what they had in their own kit bags.

"It was a shambles," said Peter Rees, author of a book recording the little-known episode
entitled The Other Anzacs, Nurses at War 1914-1918.

"The plan broke down immediately because there were so many casualties and the conditions
were so primitive - no tents, suitable buildings or supplies.

"There were was little water, poor sanitation, no adequate clothing, and the nurses
themselves started coming down with dysentery.

"The nurses in Lemnos experienced the worst conditions nurses could face anywhere in
the Great War."

Before long the lightly wounded soldiers were being sent to Egypt, while Lemnos was
receiving soldiers with horrible wounds, diggers who had lost limbs and had their bodies
blown apart.

Some had to have amputations.

By mid-October, after just two months, the nurses on Lemnos had treated some 4,000 soldiers.

"It is just too awful," matron Grace Wilson wrote in her diary.

"One could never describe the scenes - could only wish all I knew to be killed outright."

Given the circumstances, it comes as no surprise to learn that many died there.

Lemnos is the final resting place for almost 230 Anzacs.

They are buried in two separate cemeteries, 148 Australians in one and 76 New Zealanders
in the other.

Lemnos eventually got tents and other supplies, but Rees said adequate facilities "never
really came".

By the time an official report found the conditions there were appalling, it was just
two months before the eventual decision to cut losses and pull troops out of Gallipoli.

"It was a hasty War Office decision (to establish a medical base on Lemnos), so it's
very much a British military cock-up, in the best tradition of British hierarchy failures,"

said Rees.

A mighty armada of 200 ships carrying 30,000 soldiers sailed out of Lemnos.

"It was a big operation which has been overlooked in the great sweep of history," he said.

The nurses seemed to bear no grudges for the rough hand they were dealt.

"They spoke affectionately of their experience, tough though it was," said Rees.

"It was a great challenge for them, and the profession of nursing was lifted so much
by their contribution.

"They wanted to be there. It was a great adventure, not only for men but for women."

The pride and professionalism of the nurses is perhaps best summed up by the diary
entry of Nell Pike of Sydney.

"I can imagine no greater joy," she wrote, "than to be working under the canvas so
close to the gallant men of Anzac."

AAP dc/it/

KEYWORD: ANZAC NURSES

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