Bonzer Words!: Moonlight And Lanterns
Paula Wilson tells of an Australian nurse who tended severly wounded young men during the First World War.
Paula writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
During World War I over 2,260 Australian nurses served overseas, 2,139 of them with the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS). Ida O'Dwyer was one Melbourne nurse who enlisted in the AANS, and served on the battlefields of France.
Born in 1880, Ida trained as a nurse at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne. She graduated in 1902, the same year the AANS was formed. When she nursed at St Vincent's the hospital consisted of two terrace houses. The morgue was out back in the shadows of old gum trees, and nurses carried the dead there by moonlight and lantern. Possums found their way into the wards and under patients' beds.
All this was in no way adequate preparation for what Ida would encounter at a casualty clearing station on the Western Front. Where wards were in leaky tents with wooden boards covering the mud of the open fields. Where bombing raids and long range shelling lit up the night. Although no AANS nurses died during enemy attacks the threat was always present.
Sure at St Vincent's she once comforted an old man with a gangrenous toe, but what was that compared with comforting young soldiers whose limbs had been blown away. Or nursing men with gaping wounds in their chests knowing there was nothing to be done for them.
Ida joined the AANS in 1908 and when war was declared in 1914 signed up to serve on the war front. Her ship, the converted coastal vessel Kyarra, was part of the second convoy headed for England. But instead of arriving at their expected destination, they ended up on the shores of Egypt.
This delay was frustrating for Ida and her fellow nurses but eventually they made it to France. Upon arrival Ida was promoted to matron of a casualty clearing station at Gezaincourt. Where, during the battles of the Somme in 1916, it was not unusual for three to four trains to arrive daily, each carrying between 200 and 400 soldiers straight from the battlefield.
At the clearing station soldiers were classified, treated, fed, dressed and evacuated. Many did not make it. As matron Ida wrote letters to the families back home informing of the death of their loved ones and promising that the soldier's few possessions would be sent home.
During the winter the nurses also had to tend soldiers who contracted trench foot, pneumonia, dysentery and kidney diseases. These same illnesses also affected the nurses, in particular pneumonia.
From her experiences Ida wrote a report entitled A Descriptive Narrative account of the conditions of nursing in an Australian Casualty Clearing Station. It is a graphic description of army nursing and a vivid insight into, and reminder of, the workings of a clearing station during World War I.
For her devotion to duty while serving her country during war Ida was awarded the second class Royal Red Cross in 1917 followed a year later by the first class Royal Red Cross.
After the war ended many left the nursing profession because they had seen way too much pain and death. They went back to their homes and embarked on new careers. Some like Ida continued nursing, she accepted a position as matron of a hospital in India.
Eventually she returned to Melbourne, but again, instead of taking a position that would give her some respite from the effects of war, took charge of No 16 Australian Hospital at Macleod. Later she transferred to the Caulfield Military Hospital where she remained until her retirement in 1938.
© Paula Wilson
