The Other Anzacs (27 page)
Mabel and the doctor did not see each other again for some time, and when they did, he was astonished to see her alive, saying he’d been telling everyone that she had gone down with the ship. She was upset about this, and made more so by Colonel McGavin’s comments. ‘When one is treated like that, and to read statements in the paper as in last night’s, then I think, Miss Maclean, it is our duty to speak out and let the truth be known.’
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Hester Maclean informed Defence Minister James Allen but realised there was little point in pressing the matter to a public stoush. There had already been enough trouble and doubt generated, she reasoned. Instead, she focused on the professional attitude of the sisters involved. ‘It is amazing to think that after this sad experience, not one of the sisters wished to give up their work and all continued to serve for the remainder of the war.’ But they carried the memories of that day for the rest of their lives.
Lottie Le Gallais also had her memories. Not long after the
Marquette
tragedy, a letter she had written to her brother Leddie in July was returned to her. The envelope was stamped, ‘Reported killed. Return to sender’. Leddie had been killed at Shrapnel Valley at Gallipoli on 23 July, shot in the head, just days after she sailed from New Zealand. Now he lay hastily buried in the Shrapnel Valley cemetery. Lottie returned to Auckland Hospital, grieving for the brother she had so wanted to meet on the other side of the world. She kept Leddie’s last letter to her, written in April, as he prepared amid the rousing departure celebrations to sail for Gallipoli. ‘Dear Lottie—Am quite well. Goodbye. Goodbye again Leddra.’
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The letter was simple but precious. In the bottom right-hand corner, Leddie had scrawled a large ‘X’ for a kiss. In the other corner, Lottie pasted his death notice.
A bonfire in the distance, at an Australian Army camp, lit up the night sky over Cairo. It was New Year’s Eve 1915, but revelry was muted. Suffering from dysentery and jaundice, Lieutenant Harry Moffitt had been admitted to No. 1 Australian General Hospital, where Alice Ross King was based. He was weak but slowly recovering. Alice and Harry had declared their love for each other and become engaged. ‘I sat with him on the piazza until nearly ten, listening to the music and watching the big bonfire in the distance.’
1
It was a moment to treasure.
The next morning was the first time Alice had slept the New Year in since her sixteenth birthday. The first line of her diary entry for 1916— ‘Hold Thou my hand, the way is dark before me’—was from a popular hymn. Reflecting a sense of foreboding, Alice added: ‘I did not have my usual good omen for the New Year last night.’ Nonetheless, she and Harry were determined to make the most of their time together as he recovered. They were, Alice reassured herself, ‘still as much in love as ever’. Over the next few days they would take drives together and spend the nights after dinner on the piazza. The days together were ‘glorious’, she wrote. ‘Every day my love grows deeper.’
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Elsewhere in Cairo, Elsie Cook’s festive season had not started well. The matron at No. 2 Australian General Hospital had informed her that because she was married she would not be promoted to the rank of Sister. Though disappointed, Elsie wanted to celebrate Christmas and New Year even if Syd was still convalescing in England. But the Australian military authorities had other ideas for New Year’s Eve. It was rumoured that the Australians were threatening to burn down Shepheard’s Hotel and a few other places. With the so-called Battle of the Wazzir still fresh in everyone’s memory, the commanders banned leave for the Australians.
As the Cairo Citadel gun boomed, Elsie saw in the New Year praying in the Ghezireh Palace gardens, remembering the tragedy of 1915. She was reminded that on the previous New Year’s Eve she had watched the dawn from the deck of the
Kyarra
. ‘This is the old grotto in the gardens of Ghezireh Palace, where will the next year dawn, I wonder? On peace and Australia and St Moritz, I hope fervently. Here endeth poor old 1915.’ As she knelt in the stone grotto, she was certain that ‘everyone’s silent prayer for 1916 is the same, I’m sure’. Despite the no-leave order, Elsie was determined to attend a New Year’s Day party and dinner. ‘Well, we waylaid the colonel and got him to cancel the ultimatum as regards the Sisters and to tell [Matron] Gould so, and he did!’
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Elsie knew how to be persuasive.
That same New Year’s Day, Elsie Eglinton was sailing back to Egypt, newly promoted to Sister. She had been on transport duty to Australia with wounded soldiers. Among them had been ‘a poor blind boy’, Private Bertie Prentice, who was to disembark at Fremantle. ‘He is a dear boy and we all are very fond of him. He often has three afternoon teas given him in one day by different people, it amuses him very much. We are getting up a collection for him and are going to put it in the bank for him in WA as he does not want to accept it.’
4
With the Gallipoli campaign now over, Anzac nurses in Egypt prepared for relocation. Some, including Kath King and Elsie Cook, also sailed to Australia with wounded men. Others waited to follow the troops to France.
The New Year was just two days old when Kath King said goodbye to Gordon Carter at Cairo’s main railway station and, with her sister Wynne, also a nurse, boarded the
SS Ulysses
for Australia. Arriving in Sydney on 8 February 1916, they were met with ‘great cheering from all the ships, they all saluted us and blew their whistles’.
The two nurses were stunned to be greeted as heroines when they got home to Orange. ‘Father met us. Great excitement, crowds of visitors all day, ’ Kath wrote in her diary.
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Visitors continued for the next four days, ‘all making a great fuss of us. Terrible bore.’ That was just the start. Then there was ‘a blessed reception for us in Town Hall . . . It was packed and decorated, even the stairs, great speeches, poor Wynne and I felt most uncomfortable. We then had tea and were surrounded by people of all kinds and description.’
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It was a grand event, with flags and bunting decorating the hall, dignitaries everywhere, and crowds of local people. It made the Orange
Leader
’s front page, under the headline ‘OUR BRAVE NURSES’ . In his official welcome the mayor said the two sisters had been ‘doing such noble work for our soldiers and our Empire’ and had ‘toiled in the interests of you and me, and the good boys at the front . . . These nurses are as much wanted to assist the Empire as the boys in the trenches are to-day. With their assistance we have been able to send back to the front thousands and thousands, fit and well, after receiving their careful nursing.’
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The mayor added that when the troops landed at Gallipoli ‘our brave nurses were there to assist them’, and after the first assault, when thousands were taken to the hospital ships, ‘our good nurses were there to meet them’.
For Kath, being on a hospital ship at the Dardanelles was her duty. She and Wynne knew there was no glory in war, only death and pain far removed from the frivolity of this reception in their honour. They found the event difficult, but the people of the Orange district seemed to be in awe of their work. The visitors—including, as Kath put it, ‘half Manildra, I think’—did not let up over the next five days. A crowd turned out at 10 p.m. to see them depart for Sydney, where the entertainment continued at the swank Hotel Australia in Martin Place. Six weeks later, on 2 April, the sisters boarded the troopship
Euripides
and set sail for Egypt—no doubt relieved to put all the fuss behind them.
Somewhere in the Indian Ocean they passed Elsie Cook, on the way back to Australia on board the
Demosthenes
with thirteen ‘mental cases’ and 200 ‘undesirable’ troops. Elsie’s husband, Syd, was following on another ship to continue his convalescence. She was ‘wildly excited’ and did not sleep for two nights as her ship made its way up the Australian east coast for Sydney. She awoke at dawn on 22 April, looked out her porthole and ‘saw the sun rising on Sydney Heads!’ Her father-in-law, former Prime Minister Joseph Cook, came aboard at Woolloomooloo docks and gave her the news that Syd would arrive in ten days. Family members gathered at Elsie’s family home, Kassala, at Burwood for lunch. ‘Tongues wagging and questions asked etc. How very good it is to be home again!’
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But because she was married, the Australian Army Nursing Service would not let her go back to Egypt. While Syd recovered from his gunshot wound, an unhappy Elsie was placed on home service at No. 4 Australian General Hospital at Randwick. She knew that her nursing career in the Australian Army was over. But, as with Syd, nothing would stop her from returning to the war.
Meanwhile, in Cairo, No. 1 Australian General Hospital was preparing to close and move to France. Alice Ross King and Harry Moffitt tried at every opportunity to meet up in Cairo before they each left Egypt with their units. All through January they were inseparable as they travelled back and forth between Cairo and the Helouan Convalescent Depot, where he was now staying. They took the ferry to Sakara, where they hired donkeys to visit ancient tombs and lunched on boiled eggs and sardines.
The glow on the desert was glorious and we came across beautiful patches of desert wildflowers. Discharged the guide and the donkeys near the sphinx. It was moonlight. Had a love and a kiss and then dinner at a wee restaurant out there and motored in to Cairo in time to catch Harry’s 9 o’clock train to Helouan. A glorious day indeed.
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They would wander the bazaars of Cairo, drink coffee at old stalls, or sit on the piazza at Shepheard’s Hotel, ‘watching the crowd’. Although Harry was improving, some days he overdid things and tired quickly. Alice thought he still looked weak and sometimes shaky. A former suitor met her, with love on his mind. Alice wasn’t interested. ‘He asked me not to become engaged until Xmas time, as he will then know his own position. Felt thoroughly disgusted with him.’
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Once Harry had to come to Cairo on duty and Alice managed to spend the day with him, accompanying him in a horse-drawn gharry. Later they sat on the balcony at Shepheard’s Hotel, away from the hustle of the streets. They talked of their future, spellbound by a wondrous apricothued sunset. ‘When we’re married I’ll give you a dress that colour, ’ Harry told Alice.
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That night, he caught the 8 p.m. train to the Suez Canal and his unit. Alice noted that there was ‘much talk of the [hospital] Unit moving to France’.
For the Anzacs, the focus of the war shifted in late 1915, when the German High Command decided to push for victory on the Western Front, in France. Already, the Germans had staged a sustained attack on the fortress town of Verdun. After Gallipoli, with the help of recruiting at home, the AIF was reorganised and expanded from two to five infantry divisions, all of which were progressively transferred to France from March 1916. There would soon be 90, 000 AIF troops stationed in France and another 90, 000 training in England, leaving 25, 000 in the Middle East. New Zealand troops, after returning from Gallipoli, were also reorganised and reinforced into four brigades that comprised the New Zealand Division. They sailed for France in April 1916. Before the war ended, more than 46, 000 Australians and 12, 500 New Zealanders would die on the Western Front.
