The Other Anzacs (42 page)
That same day, ‘Hughie’ Hewish and ‘Joe’ Rowett were in the thick of the action at Broodseinde. Hughie and his ambulance unit were caught up in the fighting as they retrieved the wounded from the battlefield. He was killed, two months short of his twentieth birthday. Joe wrote at once to tell Elsie Eglinton the sad news. Ernest, she wrote home, ‘was one of God’s good men’.
May Tilton was assigned to theatre, where the staff worked the longest hours of any sisters. She went on duty at 8 p.m. and worked continuously during a ‘stunt’ until midday the following day, with ten minutes for supper at midnight and an hour for breakfast at 8 a.m. This brought her into contact with an American surgeon, Captain Philip Wilson, who had been working with the French Army since the war began, and more recently with the newly arrived Americans. He was quick and clever, and trusted May, telling her that in critical cases she should use a scalpel on the minor wounds, otherwise the patient would die. ‘I trembled at the knees, for it meant using the scalpel— work I had never done before. When I told him, he replied: “I could not have a better or more capable assistant than you have proved to be. Forget yourself and think only of our patient.” So I did, and we saved lots of lives.’
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That month, the theatre team performed 1500 operations.
A Canadian airman who knew May and her colleagues wrote to them after he was shot down. ‘We were bombed nightly, and I don’t know how you stick it like you do—the sleepless life, the reeking atmosphere, and everything. I say, “Three cheers and a tiger for our brave little sisters. ”We know and appreciate the work you do, and love you for your bravery and endurance.’
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Endurance meant many things. As May walked along the duckboards after coming off duty following yet another heavy night, a dud shell fell less than two metres away, burying itself deep between the tent ropes. Two orderlies walking behind her gasped that it had been a close shave. ‘Yes, ’ May replied, and walked on to her tent, wondering how she had escaped it. ‘Too dead tired to notice the guns, I ceased to be worried by them. We learned to fit them into the back of our subconscious minds and forget them.’
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But there are experiences that push beyond endurance and war weariness, that challenge one’s notion of fate. On 16 October 1917, May had just finished dinner and was waiting to go on duty when someone handed her a paper to read. Her first thought was the Casualty List.
The one name I feared to read was there under the big, black heading, ‘Killed’. [It was her fiancé.] An overpowering sense of desolation swept through me. I felt I could endure no more. That night I wrestled with myself all alone in my tent, unable to face the work in the theatre. My team were able to carry on without a sister, and, fortunately, I could be spared from working that night.
Next morning, Captain Wilson came and sat beside me, and talked of things that made me realise my own selfishness in forgetting for a moment the needs of our poor men, dependent on us. The comforting kindness and consideration of those about me helped me to restore my balance again. But something had happened to my head, which was all tight inside.
Over the years, May’s fiancé’s name has been lost to history, but to her he was ‘the one man in all the world’. They had made plans for the future.
Another of May’s friends, twenty-seven-year-old Percy Wells, was a driver with the 2nd Brigade Australian Field Artillery. Hearing of the death of May’s fiancé, he wrote to her. ‘I am coming down to see how you are looking and to persuade you to go home after this.’ But he never made it. He was killed taking ammunition to the front line on 30 October 1917 at Passchendaele. His body lay on the Menin Road for five days before it could be recovered. He was buried close to May’s cousin, Gallipoli veteran Sergeant Norman Ellsworth, who had died of wounds on 31 July that year when the Third Battle of Ypres had begun.
Not long before she read of her fiancé’s death, May had written that the war was cruel and senseless, ‘but we knew we had to stick it, and sacrifice precious lives to win it’. Stoical she may have been, but this loss, coming after the death of Norman and compounded by the death of her friend Percy, was a sacrifice too far. A few weeks later, No. 3 Clearing Station was converted into a convalescent camp. Matron sent May and Elsie Grant, who was keenly suffering the loss of her brother, to Cannes, in the south of France, for a rest. It was soon apparent that they needed more than a holiday.
When they returned to No. 3 Australian General Hospital at Abbeville in January 1918, ‘terrific headaches’ prevented May from sleeping. Boils appeared on her arms and wrists. Elsie Grant fell prey to a nervous condition that caused painful swelling in her face. Believed to be headed for a breakdown, they were detailed for transport duty back to Australia. May left knowing that wherever she went or whatever she did in future, the best part of her would always remain at Passchendaele, which had been captured by the Australians but with terrible losses. In eight weeks of fighting, there had been 38, 000 Australian casualties. Here lay many of the friends she loved best.
As the war ground away inexorably at the spirits of May Tilton, Elise Grant and Alice Ross King, the realisation had long settled on sisters and soldiers that they had little control over life. A splinter of shrapnel in the midst of a bombardment, a bayonet charge over the top, or the wraith-like fog of mustard gas, and life could be wrecked or ended in a moment. So many friends had died, and so many hearts had been broken. No one had escaped the relentless ravages of war. On the Western Front in 1917, there was little of the carefree optimism and joyous romanticism of those early days in Egypt in 1915.
But many still tried. Eggs arrived for the patients, often from young women in England who attached notes with their addresses. At No. 13 Stationary Hospital correspondences that started this way were soon known as ‘egg romances’. One patient was so upset when his ‘real girl’ failed to write that the Australian sisters suggested he get someone else to write and let her know he was very ill, with compound fractures of both arms, wounds in his head and chest, and his left eye gone. ‘No, ’ he said. ‘I am not going to chase any woman; they can chase me now.’
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He was soon doing well under the sisters’ care.
But they had more than their job to do. Hardest of all was writing to inform mothers of the death of a son. In 1917, this task fell to Ida O’Dwyer after the death at No. 3 Casualty Clearing Station of Private Donald Nicol, an eighteen-year-old from Bulli on the New South Wales south coast and a member of the 56th Battalion.
Mrs Nicol
Dear madam
I am writing to tell you about your son Pte D.B. Nicol 2453. He was brought into this hospital yesterday very collapsed and suffering from a very severe shell wound of both legs and shattered left arm. His condition was very low from shock and loss of blood, and though everything possible was done he did not rally at all and died in about 3 hours.
I am afraid it is not very much to tell you but it might be some comfort to you to know that he was in hospital where he had every care and attention and was relieved of all his pain.
He was buried this morning in a military cemetery at Nine Elms near Poperinghe and if there is anything further with regard to the grave that you wish to know you can write to the Officer in Charge G.R.U. War Office.
This unit is in charge of all the Soldiers’ Graves in France. All his small personal belongings will eventually be sent on to you as his next of Kin.
Remain yours faithfully
Ida O’Dwyer
Sister in Charge
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Ida shielded Mrs Nicol from the full extent of her son’s injuries. Besides the leg and arm wounds, his Army service file shows that he had also suffered a disfiguring gunshot wound to the mouth.
Nurses often had to fill the role of mothers, sisters and sweethearts. In an Acute hut of forty beds at No. 3 Australian General Hospital at Le Treport in Normandy, Anne Donnell had care of the badly injured from Bullecourt and Vimy Ridge in May 1917. Many had their loved ones come over from England to give what comfort they could before they died. This provided some relief for the nurses. But there were some patients who had no one.
. . . there was one dear laddie in a corner bed with terrible wounds in his back that my heart went out to, and his people had not yet come. There was no time to special [the patients], one just did what one could for each, and then it was, I thought, a case of the survival of the fittest. The days were gone before you knew, and you felt you had accomplished nothing. But this laddie in the corner, I thought, shall have some special care, and matron had brought him some lovely oranges that he fancied, so I quietly sat down and fed him and told him he would be mine until his mother came. He gave me the loveliest smile as he replied ‘and I’ll make you my special, ’ but quickly added, ‘You must forgive me, sister, I wouldn’t have said that under ordinary circumstances.’ Next morning when I went on duty, his bed was empty, just another one of the many there that made the supreme sacrifice. His parents arrived—too late to see him, but I was so thankful to be able to give them his last message of love.
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Later, Anne reflected on her role and what she represented to the wounded men.
It’s very terrible to see them coming in as they are, and it’s a blessing that one cannot stop to think or analyse things. I only know that I am not a mere nurse, but represent to them for the time being their dearest ones, and many a time I find myself going to the marquee flap to hide the tears that will gather, and ask for strength to control a distorted face, and go back.
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But their concern for the boys extended beyond this. What happened to them outside the hospitals, such as when they went on leave to London, also mattered. Inevitably prostitutes or factory and servant girls out for a good time targeted the boys around the Australian headquarters on Horseferry Road. Tev Davies’ forbearance was tested by what she saw.
It is such a shame, such fearful women one sees tailing onto Australian boys, then again water finds its level, still the boys have such a bad time in France that one cannot well blame them when these women are kind and friendly to them. The Authorities could not have chosen a worse place [for Australian HQ], I simply dread going down there every time, one sees these awful creatures with men who have done such good work in France, but are spoiling it all in just a few days.
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Grace Wilson, by now temporary Matron-in-Chief at AIF headquarters, saw it first hand.
Men came to the Sisters for safety among pressing temptations. In many instances they were kept from women they wished to avoid by spending time in the Sisters’ mess and by the Sisters going to dinner or to entertainments with them. Our men will have the society of women somehow. I think there was a big field of influence exercised here—that cannot very well be put into print.
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