The Other Anzacs (50 page)
I shall never forget it, the expressions on those dear boys’ faces as they come pouring in with their frightened, anxious, hunted look, combined with the suffering of fear, pain, and shock. Those who could see led queues of bandaged blind, each one placing his hands on another’s shoulders, and thus feeling the way. Very soon every available space under cover is packed, and not only inside but outside as well. I leave my wounded men and go over to the gas side, where Matron soon joins in to help, also another Sister and as many orderlies as can . . . and there we go on hour after hour, putting cocaine in these poor smarting eyes, then sodi-bicarb pads and a bandage.
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Orders were given for the nurses to stay as long as the place itself was not being shelled. The Germans effectively had the casualty clearing station caught inside a horseshoe. That night, after the British began to check the German advance, a colonel told Anne’s tent-mate how close they had come to being taken prisoner.
Little changed over the next month; not even Christmas Eve brought a halt to the big guns’ firing. At 2.30 a.m. on New Year’s Eve the sound of close shelling suddenly awakened Anne, and she quickly detected ‘a faint sweetish scent like pineapple’. The Germans were sending over gas shells, and Anne was told to have her respirator ready. ‘I jumped up, as did most of us, and got dressed, shivered and shook and coughed, and I thought I never should manipulate that mask.’
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With relief she signed out 1917 with ‘Mafeesh’ (Egyptian Arabic for ‘all gone’).
Besides the threat of Fritz, there was the bitter cold, ice and snow. After two months Anne’s strength gave out. She was sent to the sick sisters’ quarters at Abbeville and then to the warmer climate of Cannes. She would not return to the Western Front. Instead, she went to nurse in England. As she left France there were more than 100, 000 men in hospitals—almost double the numbers of 1916. More than 1.6 million sick and wounded had been admitted to hospitals during 1917. The year’s campaigns at Arras, Messines, Bullecourt, Passchendaele and Cambrai had cost the French, British, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian forces dearly.
Performing surgery on wounded troops required anaesthesia. Even during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 the demand for anaesthetists was so acute that at one casualty clearing station the padre spent most of his time in the operating theatre administering anaesthesia. In her diary, Alice Ross King recorded in August 1916 that the commanding officer at No. 1 Australian General Hospital in Rouen, known to her from the early days of the war, had taught her to give anaesthetics. This, Alice noted, saved ‘one [medical officer] in our hut . . . Most of the big dressings in my ward have to be done over chloroform. I am giving chloroform most of the mornings.’
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At a hospital in Cannes in late 1916, Elsie Cook also gave anaesthesia using Novocain—a drug that numbs the body but does not cause loss of consciousness. One surgical episode, using Novocain for an amputation, stayed in Elsie’s memory. ‘So uncanny to see the man sitting smiling and talking all the time his leg was being sawed off. Leg buried this afternoon.’
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She continued giving anaesthetics.
In late 1917, British medical authorities followed the Canadian Armed Forces’ lead of using nurses to administer anaesthetics, which had been their practice since 1915. The Americans also used nurse anaesthetists after entering the war. Nine Australians, including Elsie Tranter, and seven New Zealand nurses completed the training. At No. 10 Casualty Clearing Station near Dunkirk, New Zealander Margaret Davies noted that she and two other New Zealand sisters ‘gave all the anaesthetics’ and ‘the surgeons seemed quite satisfied’. She was ‘just loving the work’, but the German air raids meant disturbed nights and taking cover in dugouts.
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She was later attached as an anaesthetist to a surgical team and moved north with the casualty clearing stations, attending to a ‘continuous stream’ of wounded.
Three years of war and numerous offensives had failed to break the stalemate. The Allies had spent 1917 bludgeoning themselves on the German defences but had little to show for it. That was about to change as the war entered a decisive phase. On 21 March 1918, the Germans attempted to break the deadlock with Operation Michael. With Russia collapsing in revolution in the east, the Germans were able to release crack battalions of highly trained troops from the eastern front and prepare an all-out offensive across the old Somme battlefields that they hoped would win them the war before American troops reached Europe in force. The fear for the British was that their armies were dangerously under strength, and thus vulnerable.
The thunderous attack opened with an unprecedented 6600-gun barrage followed by trench mortars, flame throwers and a lethal gas attack. Diving deep into a weakened sector of the front held by the British 3rd and 5th Armies, from south of Saint-Quentin to Arras, the Germans reached Villers-Bretonneux, some fifty kilometres to the west and near the crucial Allied communications centre of Amiens. In just four hours they fired one million shells. Nothing above ground stood a chance in the inferno. Even survival underground was problematic. Men in dugouts ten metres below the surface watched in horror as rafters cracked and the earth heaved. The Germans’ astonishing advance destroyed the 5th Army. Overwhelmed, the British began a retreat that ended ten days later at Amiens.
Nellie Crommelin was at a French temporary hospital at Villers-Cotterets when the offensive began. The Germans were soon within nine kilometres of the town. ‘I was awakened in the night by the cannonade of the big guns and I felt it in my bones—the approach of some new danger. At 4 a.m. it reached its most violent force and everybody in their beds asked themselves the same question. All day long we hear the rumble in the forest, look at each other and sigh, or hold our breath for a moment—when a specially violent concussion shakes us.’
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Over the next five days the ‘roar and thunder of the cannon’ remained constant. Doors rattled, windows shook and houses trembled night and day as the fighting came nearer. Surrounding villages were evacuated, but Nellie remained defiant. ‘We shall remain with our men, proud to be amongst them, and if the Hun should come we hope our Red Cross and our work for
any that are wounded shall be our protection.’
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Allied intelligence had known beyond doubt that the Germans would mount the offensive, and that it would occur on the French and British sectors in the northwest of the front line. The only question was when. When the Germans had retired to the Hindenburg Line more than a year earlier, the casualty clearing stations and some stationary hospitals had moved forward. Now they would have to prepare to move back at short notice. Such a move was a complex matter, requiring anything from fifty to a hundred lorries to take all equipment, tents and personnel. This took time. When the attack came, it was clear that the British had miscalculated. The Germans’ main thrust was at the front held by the 5th Army, where emergency arrangements to protect clearing stations were weakest.
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Alice Ross King had started 1918 with a promotion to head sister at No. 1 General Hospital, Rouen. In March, she wrote with alarm that the Germans were breaking through, and British plans for the removal of the clearing stations had collapsed because of poor planning.
They have captured our CCS and all the good work the boys put in. The five Sisters were sent away early. I hear the boys saved most of the theatre equipment. We can hear the guns getting louder. The 5th Army broke—mostly Irish and Lancashires. They have been flooding into Rouen on any trucks. The trains are full and they are riding on top. They are walking into hospital with no tickets. One chap came into my ward. I said, ‘Where are you wounded?’ He showed me a broken blister on his hand. He said, ‘I’m not going to stay up there to be shot.’ The Sisters have orders to have a suitcase packed ready for evacuation. Things are very bad.
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They did not improve. The Germans advanced sixty kilometres in eight days, and the allies suffered 200, 000 casualties.
We hear the Aussies are in action. Round the town the POW are very cheeky. Command has cut their rations. We had a fatigue party of POW making a path outside my ward. When the orderly put the tin of slush from plates and tea dregs outside the kitchen door I saw them rush up and scoop the stuff up in their hands and eat it. They are starving but they still give cheek. They can hear the guns getting closer. No picnics in the woods these days. I’m frightened really.
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Until now, an indefatigable quality had enabled Alice to withstand the relentless grind of war. Now it was beginning to fail. She had good reason to be afraid.
After working in London, twenty-nine-year-old Sister Florence James-Wallace was one of three Australians sent to No. 61 British Casualty Clearing Station during the German March offensive. The station was in Ham, near Peronne, about ten minutes’ walk from the railway station, and a siding ran right up to the hospital. On night duty at about 3 a.m. on 21 March, she heard the engines of German planes overhead but could see nothing because of fog. An hour later ‘a terrific bombardment’ began. It reminded her of ‘continuous thunder rolling . . . Then I could distinguish shells screeching through the air and guns going off with a deafening crash, the whole place shook and trembled. I had never heard anything like it before, felt quite excited. The orderlies said, “It’s something big, Sister”.’
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When the medical officers appeared at 6:30 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., wearing tin hats and tearing around excitedly, it was clear that something was up. They began emptying wards and filling the hangars with walking patients. That night, exhausted from work, Florence ‘slept soundly, too tired to be disturbed by noise’. About 2 p.m. the next day, she was woken by the cry, ‘Girls! Get up quickly, you have to be dressed in 10 minutes.’ Matron followed up with, ‘Are you up, girls? The Germans are advancing, we have to leave everything. Train goes in 20 minutes, take what you can carry.’
The thirty-four sisters left carrying suitcases, boots, rugs and rucksacks. Troops, wagons, lorries, ambulances, gun carriages and pack-mules were all clattering down the road past the hospital as the guns crashed and shells whistled. Some medical officers met them as they tramped to the station, ‘feeling very disgusted at being sent off when we feel the patients need us’. Florence and her colleagues waited for the train. What followed fascinated her.
Crash! A shell bursts about 200 yards away. French and English soldiers rush to see where it fell, then another crash a little nearer. Our two guns continue to fire. Crash! Crash! An earsplitting sound seemingly beside us, black dust rises in the air just behind the station shed, some falls on our hats. The RTO hurls himself out of his office and shouts to us to run to the other side of the line, which the soldiers have already proceeded to do, we grab our suitcases, haversacks, rugs, etc., and struggle over the line, in a few seconds the platform only holds our pile of luggage. I don’t expect to see my collection of treasures any more. More shells fall round the station, we are told to walk down the line to meet the train. We proceed very hampered with our heavy suitcases, the men come to our rescue and help to carry them. Suddenly five Bosche [
sic
] planes come in sight. Our Archies [anti-aircraft guns] open up. We are told to go in the dugouts along the line, but very few do, most of us sit on our luggage and watch the fun. They seem to be trying to find our two big guns, they go again after dropping a few bombs.