The Other Anzacs (43 page)
Friendships and relationships between sisters and soldiers were valued as much for the moment as for the future, especially when the future could be snuffed out in a second. Sisters and soldiers alike were young and in the prime of life. It was natural that attractions should develop. But the sisters also had a professional duty. On occasions, though, the distinction was blurred.
Fanny Speedy was working at Brockenhurst Hospital in England, where New Zealand troops wounded in France were sent. She noted in her diary that she would miss eight of the men who left to go home on the hospital ship
Maheno
. One in particular, Cargill, had been there the longest. ‘Have been rather amused to find that the romance I fancied was growing could only have been in my imagination for he is already engaged.’
7
Some friendships developed into discreet liaisons, perhaps like the one New Zealander Erle Crawford was referring to when he recorded cryptically in his diary that he had ‘met Sister Whitta in Red Cross store room’.
8
An insight into the bonds between soldiers and nurses, and the emotions sometimes unsuspectingly aroused in the men, can be found in an anonymous letter mailed to the sisters living at Villa Marguerite in Dieppe in November 1917. Among the recipients was Elsie Tranter, who recorded the text in her diary:
Dear Sisters in seclusion sweet
Who live in Villa Marguerite
Whose time is given to good deeds
In ministering to heroes needs,
Who unsuspecting of all ill
Your daily task of love fulfil
Beware! Lest you should start a fire
In hearts which thought not to aspire
To charms like yours. Each martial breast
Whilst convalescing is at rest
From warlike thoughts, and open lies
Exposed to Cupid’s darts. Keen eyes
Which undismayed looked oft on Death
Unflinching, have withstood the breath
Of battles’ fiercest strain, now full
Abashed when challenged by the call
Of eye to eye. You know your power,
How great the strength of woman’s dower
Be careful if ye would be wise!
For if you’re not there may arise
Disaster dread. Nor place much trust
In men who promise when they must
Fulfil but only when they can
And have in show the faults of man.
Remember for each Marguerite
There is at least one Faust to me.
9
Elsie Tranter knew both sides of the situation, for she was also engaged to a Digger. She had to put that to one side as she nursed the wounded. For the men lying in the beds, often dependent on the nurses to feed them, and in some cases for their very survival, the relationship was special. A South African soldier tried to capture it with a verse he sent Elsie in August 1917:
To Sister
Tommy is back for a lie in bed
To be patched and settled, nursed and fed,
Safe for a time from the distant storm,
Berthed in hospital smug and warm.
Sister has taken him under her wing,
She’s a white capped, slender slip of a thing.
She has frank eyes and capable hands,
Sister is merry and fond of chaff.
But she knows when to pity and when to laugh.
She helps him through with his bit of pain,
And makes him feel his old self again,
She washes and brushes and makes him smart
Till the sight of him gladdens her orderly heart.
And Tommy’s a good little boy once more
Though he stands six feet on the well scrubbed floor.
Special favours she grants to none.
She loves and mothers them every one.
And parts from her boys with real regret.
They don’t say much but they won’t forget.
10
Earlier that year, after crossing the English Channel to Boulogne, Elsie Tranter travelled to Etaples to work at No. 26 British General Hospital. Her new matron had a succinct message about fraternisation for Elsie and the other sisters joining the staff. ‘We left matron with a jingle of
“don’ts
for nurses” in our ears and feeling that if we met a boy pal and talked with him we would be about due for 6 months in the clink and if we walked with him it would mean sudden death. Of course it was not really as bad as that.’
11
Sometimes, though, the affections of the bedridden patients were real, as May Tilton learned at No. 1 War Hospital, in Birmingham, in February 1916. ‘A fine, hefty Canadian told me all about his ranch, and said he’d be doing a cowboy act when this “dust up” was over if I did not consent to his proposals, for he sure meant to collect me and to take me over there as his “souvenir of the war”—and not to forget it. He refused to accept the fact that I was already promised to an Aussie. “Poof!” he said. “All’s fair in love and war. Just wait and see.”’ His mother wrote to May, saying she was waiting to welcome her. ‘He went back to France and gave his life, ’ May lamented.
12
Nurses in France who were to be married usually did so in England. When Elsie Eglinton arrived in France to join the quarantine camp outside Marseilles, there was a surprise gift waiting for her: a heavy tartan rug sent by the
Ionian
’s third engineer, George Mackay, whom she had got to know while sailing back and forth in the Mediterranean. When the
Ionian
docked in Marseilles, Matron Gould gave Elsie the afternoon off. She and George went to Marseilles and had tea, and Elsie gave him two beautifully carved emu eggs. The reunion was so memorable that Elsie coyly noted, ‘A lovely thing happened today.’
13
And it wasn’t just that she had been Mentioned in Despatches ‘for gallant and distinguished services in the field’ while working on hospital ships.
Later in 1916, Elsie was granted leave to travel to England. By the middle of the month, the
Ionian
had returned to London and George arranged to see her in Hertfordshire. Demurely, she noted, ‘Mr Mackay came down to see me and brought me a beautiful ring.’
14
Elsie was engaged. Not long after, her joy was muted when she read in the morning paper that one of her old friends, a soldier, had been killed in action in France. ‘It seems like yesterday to me that he was a little boy playing with his wooden dolls.’
15
She did not want to leave No. 2 General Hospital in Wimereaux, but in April 1917 she was sent to England with pneumonia. Recovered, she went to No. 2 Australian Auxiliary Hospital at Southall. Four months later, Elsie and George Mackay married in London, after which she left the Army Nursing Service, as the regulations required, and worked for the Red Cross. Elsie noted that two of her friends and cabin mates on the
Kyarra
, Olive Haynes and Pete Peters, were coming to London to be married, ‘so I shall not be lonely then’.
Less than three months after her marriage, the
Ionian
was torpedoed and several men drowned, but George Mackay survived the sinking and remained in the service. In April 1918, Elsie returned to Australia alone. She wondered how she would settle down ‘especially when I think of the dangers my husband and our dear boys are facing . . . It will be like lying down to rest on a bed of pins and needles, don’t be surprised if I come away back [to Europe] again.’
16
At No. 2 Australian General Hospital in Boulogne, Olive Haynes was officially engaged to 2nd Lieutenant Pat Dooley, a law graduate from Melbourne University who was now an orderly. The moment they met the previous year, they had clicked. Everyone admired the platinum engagement ring with three diamonds that Pat had sent from London. He wrote to Olive that he was about to go to France with the 22nd Battalion and hoped to see her. ‘Still, even if I don’t, I’m the luckiest guy on earth to have such a great woman waiting and working for me to blow back, ’ he added.
17
Olive wrote to her parents in Adelaide to ease their concerns about whether Pat, who planned to become a clergyman, would be able to provide for her. As an Anglican cleric himself, her father probably had his own reasons for his doubts. Olive desperately wanted them to understand that it would be all right. She told them that as soon as Pat could get leave they would marry.
I know you all think we shouldn’t, but you must see from our point of view. Mine is that, if anything happened to Pat, I would never forgive myself for not having done what he wanted, and you just have to face things out here. You see, I know a bit of what they have to go through and how awful it is up there, and we see so many go out and never come back. It is with us all the time—and then Pat just wants it so, and he wants to get me out of this joint, out of the rotten old Military, and he knows we can’t go on forever and how the Military treat you when you are of no further use to them. Until you are down and out, you can go on and on.
18
By August, leave was proving hard to get. Olive, in particular, was showing signs of frustration and rebelliousness. When Evelyn Conyers visited Boulogne, Olive wrote sarcastically to her mother, ‘Old Conyers . . . is over here today, nosing around. I wouldn’t mind her job—sitting up in M. Headquarters in London most of the time and just touring France occasionally, watching other people work.’ The Australian Director of Medical Services, General Neville Howse, did not escape her ire. ‘General Howse was here the other day and we were all ready to bail him up about leave, but he must have got wind of it, because he kept well away—unless he was well-surrounded by Matron and the [officer commanding].’
19
Pat managed to scrounge some time away from the front, found a bike at St Omer and rode sixty kilometres to Boulogne to see Olive. He could only stay for two hours, and as she was on duty, her friend Ruth Earl offered to take her place while she ‘imsheed’, or took time off unofficially. Pat had just two hours, and they managed dinner in town. Pat wrote when he got back to the division, hoping she thought it was worth it. ‘Though we didn’t have time for a heart-to-heart talk—nor perhaps the necessary mood, I think we’re brought closer together, and have one more to add to our few but dear memories. Perhaps I have my own way of being in love—but then I have my own way of doing pretty well everything, and I can’t help it!’
20
Pat asked the chaplain to find out whether it was possible for them to be married in France by an AIF chaplain—‘or by the cove at the C. of E. [Church of England] in Boulogne’. Pat thought it should be possible, but did not know what formalities were necessary. ‘Must the banns be read for three Sundays?’
21
Just as Olive’s friend Pete Peters was leaving for London to marry, Pat was wounded in the chest at Broodseinde. He was sent to the Anglo-American Hospital, near Boulogne. Olive was thankful that he was out of the action for a while. Indeed, she thought it was ‘great’ that he had been wounded. The boys, she noted, were having an awful time, and were up to their waists in mud as they advanced. ‘Pat was lying in a shell hole for hours before he was carried in, and some of them have been in shell holes for days.’
22
For some, injury could be a mercy.
Pat was in hospital for five weeks, then sent to London to be boarded for Australia. Olive, meanwhile, was transferred to No. 3 Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Dartford, Kent. As November drew to a close Pat posted the banns at Oxford, where they married on 11 December 1917, at St Peter le Bailey church. They returned to their hotel for the wedding breakfast, Olive noting that there was ‘no wedding cake, of course’. Her brother Dal, who had farewelled her when she left Adelaide in November 1914 and was now a gunner, was Pat’s best man. Olive watched as Dal kissed her bridesmaid, fellow Adelaide nurse Muriel Eddy, ‘with great gusto in the Vestry’. The newlyweds honeymooned in Bournemouth and waited to return to Australia in 1918. Their war was almost over.
