The Other Anzacs (36 page)
Further north, at Amiens, the 700-bed No. 1 New Zealand Stationary Hospital occupied a girls’ school and part of a convent. A convoy of 350 wounded men arrived one day in mid-September. Three operating tables were occupied night and day. For most of that time an orderly sat almost continuously sharpening scalpels. Another orderly packed and sterilised drums of dressings, towels and bowls, while a third continually removed splints and instruments for re-sterilising and padding. A sterile-clad corporal passed everything required with forceps, no one else being allowed to touch the tables. The surgeons, working superhuman shifts, carried on until they could no longer handle a scalpel.
New Zealand Sister Ida Willis was on duty at the hospital when a German prisoner was admitted with gas gangrene. His arm was grossly swollen from shoulder to wrist, a hopeless case, or so it appeared. ‘The surgeon slashed the arm in deep gashes, swiftly put on large dressings, shaking his head, while the patient was removed into isolation, ’ she related.
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Astonishingly, he made a complete recovery.
Just as had occurred at Gallipoli, the sisters were faced with the strange dilemma of caring for enemy wounded. Often, it was not easy to reconcile their humanitarian obligation with their feelings. ‘You did your work without a vestige of sentiment, just for duty’s sake, ’ as one Australian matron put it. ‘Fritz made a good patient, but I am sure he had not the fine sensibilities of our own British boy.’
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Like the surgeons, assistants and orderlies, the sisters worked for twenty-four to thirty-six hours at a stretch, pausing only for meals and coffee. Sitting in a chair and dozing for an hour during the night, or lying on a rug with a pillow on the floor, was often their only rest.
Sometimes, because of the pressure of work, theatre staff wore the same garments in six or more operations.
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Soiled instruments and dressings were dropped into special containers and quickly removed from the theatre. So were amputated limbs. The wounds were ghastly. Heads of shells eight centimetres across were found embedded in men’s backs, arms and legs. A sister at No. 1 New Zealand Stationary Hospital, who wrote to
Kai Tiaki
in New Zealand, had endured more than she ever wanted to. ‘We are losing a lot of our New Zealand boys, at present we have numbers in here, ’ she wrote. ‘The convoys the last three days have been most terrible—gas gangrene cases are too awful for words, and the trouble is so advanced before we get them. I never want to see another amputation while I live.’
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That day, the operating theatre did not stop until 3 a.m.
Meanwhile, at No. 1 Australian General Hospital in Rouen, Major Prior sent Alice Ross King a note saying he had some information about Harry. Her hopes rose. The major had a list of the names of 5th Division troops who’d been taken prisoner at Fromelles. Alice was grasping for any evidence that might promise to bring Harry back. His name was not on the list, but she still wanted to believe there was a chance.
So many men dead, and so many missing, presumed dead. If there was no report of a man’s burial, there was always a chance he might still be alive, perhaps a prisoner of war. To such faint hopes the bereaved would cling, Alice Ross King among them. But at least there was someone she could turn to for help—Vera Deakin, daughter of the former Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin. She had been in London when the war began. On returning to Australia, she joined the Red Cross and began studying nursing. Impatient to play a bigger role, she went to Cairo and, in October 1915, founded the Australian Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau.
The bureau was devoted to finding information on behalf of the relatives of Australian soldiers lost at Gallipoli. In 1916 it shifted operations to London. The Army did not view Vera’s work favourably because grieving relatives, unsatisfied with military explanations, came to regard the bureau as more helpful. In her anguish over Harry, Alice wrote to Vera, hoping she could shed some light on his fate. On 28 October 1916, Vera replied.
Dear Madam,
With reference to your inquiry for Lt. Harry L. Moffitt, Adjutant 53rd Battalion, AIF, we beg to inform you that we have received the following unofficial report from a man in the battalion. Informant states that on July 19th about 6 p.m. he was killed by a shell in No Man’s Land, about 100 yards from the trenches, while leading an attack. The same shell killed Colonel Norris and Major Sampson. Colonel Norris’ body was recovered, but he does not know if Lieut. Moffitt’s was also recovered and if so where it was buried.
We are still making further inquiries and shall let you know if we hear anything further.
Yours faithfully,
V.D.
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Vera was as good as her word, writing to Alice again just six days later to inform her of a further report on Harry. A member of the 53rd Battalion had told one of the bureau’s researchers that Harry had been killed when he went out to bring in Colonel Norris. Vera assured Alice ‘of our deepest sympathy’. A fortnight later, she wrote again with another eyewitness account of Harry’s death. At Alice’s request her friend Major Prior wrote to Vera, pointing out that there was no record of a burial or of Harry’s body being found.
There is just the remotest possibility that Lt Moffitt was taken prisoner after having been wounded as it is definitely stated by an eyewitness that he was struck in the head by a Machine Gun Bullet, but as the Battalion had to retire very shortly afterwards, nothing further was seen of him.
The abovementioned Sister who was Lt Moffitt’s fiancee, will be very glad if you can add his name to your list of enquiries and so verify (or otherwise) this last hope concerning him.
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Crossing this note in the mail, a letter from Vera arrived two days before Christmas. Inside was the information Alice did not want to hear: Harry Moffitt’s name was on an official German death list, dated 4 November 1916.
Dear Madam,
We regret to inform you that the name of Lt. HARRY L. MOFFITT 53rd Batt A.I.F. has appeared on a German death list under date Nov 4th. This does not necessarily mean that he died a Prisoner.
On the contrary, we think that the Germans found his paybook and identification disc, or even his dead body, and have in this way let us know that he is dead.
Should any further reports be received, we shall at once communicate with you.
Yours faithfully,
V.D.
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The letter played on Alice’s mind over Christmas. For five months she had been on an emotional rollercoaster. Christmas could not have been sadder. Her patients, though, were looking forward to Christmas Day, and the sisters made sure the occasion was festive. The Red Cross gave every patient a present and provided turkey, ham, plum pudding and fruit. Best of all, each patient had a bottle of beer or stout and an after-dinner smoke. In Alice’s ward, chestnuts roasted and popped on a fire. ‘The long hut was a picture at 2.30, empty bottles on each locker, nut shells and the evidence of feasting everywhere, while the men exhausted by the slight excitement had all gone off to sleep, ’ she recorded.
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Later, Alice had the duty of censoring their letters, noting the wistful pathos of the oft-repeated remark to mothers or wives about the dinner, ‘I wish I could have saved some for you.’ Many wrote quite truthfully, she decided, that it was the best meal they had ever eaten. On Boxing Day, Alice replied to Vera Deakin.
Dear Miss Deakin,
I cannot tell you how grateful I am for the trouble you have taken in sending the news gathered about Lieut. Harry Moffitt. The last news convinces me that what I suspected was true. I heard from one man that he was wounded and not killed.
I think he might have been picked up by the German Red Cross, altho’, as you say, they may have taken the name from paybook etc.
I know you will let me know if any more news turns up—which is unlikely I’m afraid.
Again thanking you with all my heart.
Yours very sincerely
Alice Ross King
Sister
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On New Year’s Eve, Alice saw the old year out remembering her last New Year’s Eve with Harry when they sat on the piazza in Cairo, watching the flames of a bonfire in the night sky. The past year had been tragic, and she hoped that 1917 would be different. She wanted a ray of hope as she watched the first day of the year dawn. ‘The end of the New Year showed a brightening in the sky but it was very distant.’
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In the first week of January 1917, Vera Deakin wrote again to say that a sergeant in the 53rd Battalion ‘says that Lt. Moffitt was killed by a bullet— probably a sniper’s, a few seconds after Colonel Norris’. Vera sent the same information to Major Prior. A week later he wrote back to thank her. ‘This information concerning the late Lieut. Harry L. Moffitt, whilst not very cheering, will most certainly allay the fears of Sister Ross King that he was a prisoner in Germany. It is indeed consoling to know that he died a true hero for King and Country.’
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In early January Alice was promoted to night superintendent, but the work was uninteresting, ‘chiefly going round in the cold and wind and rain collecting reports’. Emergency operations for haemorrhages and leg amputations often saw her in the rudimentary theatre at night. She went out seldom, feeling tired and seedy, but ‘chiefly sick at heart’. Watching other sisters when their sweethearts visited was difficult. ‘If I had not lost Harry how different things would be. Still I must go dumbly on, but the pain is awful.’
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Alice was no longer the carefree spirit she had been in her first eighteen months at the war. She had seen too much. And now her future seemed bleak. It was the pluck of the patients that buoyed her. ‘One old boy with two eyes blown out and face badly cut’ was having his wounds dressed. Managing a grin, he said to her, ‘Will you give me a drop of Cheer-up fluid after this is done?’ Alice thought they were all ‘very brave’, but she was nonetheless bitter at the personal toll the war was taking on men like him and on her, too.
In her work she tried to keep standards high. She spoke to a nurse who had been hard on the patients. ‘I heard a man moaning pitifully and went to the ward to find her half asleep. When I asked about the patient in pain she said she did not believe the man had pain. He is an operation who I took the other night and he is on the D. I. [dangerously ill] list. I looked at the man and he most evidently had pain.’
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To help mend her fraying nerves, Alice was given a pass to England for a fortnight. In London, she saw the musical
Chu Chin Chow
. Written by Australian Oscar Asche, it had opened a year earlier and was regarded as a must-see by all the Anzac sisters. The play would run in London’s West End until 1921, setting a record that would last nearly forty years. The break was welcome, but as soon as she was back in France thoughts of Harry returned. She had been hoping for a letter from his mother but was disappointed to find none waiting. ‘Feeling Harry’s loss more than I have ever done before, I do not know how I can continue.’
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But she did not have time to dwell, for the war was getting closer to the hospitals. Despite retreating, the Germans were mounting air raids, and their bombs fell close to No. 1 General Hospital, shaking the building.
Sister Laura James knew what the air raids were like. Having joined the Imperial Military Nursing Service in August 1914, she was now in charge at No. 37 Field Ambulance, twelve kilometres from Arras. In February 1917, it was in ruins from the German onslaught. The Field Ambulance was based at an old chateau, where a small operating theatre and hospital had been set up. There were only two or three such hospitals, each with a small staff of sisters, and they were much closer to the firing line than the casualty clearing stations. ‘The one of which I am in charge, is for severe abdominals, chest wounds, or head injuries only. Our ward linen has been frozen in the tubs at the laundry for a month, indeed, some for six weeks!’ As she wrote, the guns were busy. All day the shelling nearby continued. ‘Whilst I have been writing this, the force of the explosions has shaken this chateau considerably. At night the sky is lit up by each flash, and when an explosion sounds more than usually near, it gives one a horrid little quaking feeling.’
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