When writing a novel you’re either a plotter or a panster.
If you’re a plotter, you plan your novel.
· You construct a chapter plan.
· You do extensive research to ‘build the world’ of your novel and make settings and details as accurate as possible.
· You develop depth to your characters, knowing the details of their back story and why they make the decisions they do, even if you don’t use all those details in the story.
If you’re a panster, you begin with an idea and let it flow.
I’m a plotter. To the point where I often have to force myself to stop planning and researching and get back to writing.
When I was planning my characters, I knew that I wanted one of the characters to pay tribute to the incredible journey so many Australian women took when they joined the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS).
And so, the character of Nancy Malcolm was born. Nancy is the best friend of my historical lead character Elizabeth Porteous.
She is the youngest of four siblings and the only girl. Growing up with three brothers, she learned how to stand up for herself and bucked against their ‘protective’ tendencies, always striving to prove she could do anything they could do.
I’m in love with her as a character and when I haven’t written about her in a few days, I miss her.
Depending on which historic texts you read, between 2,000 to 3,000 Australian women served as nurses during World War I.
Most joined the Australian Army Nursing Service, although some joined British nursing services, with a small number travelling to campaign areas and simply helping out wherever they could.
In the lead up to World War I, women studying nursing in Australia were required to train in a hospital for a period of at least three years. Many were required to ‘train’ for a fourth year, especially if they trained in smaller hospitals.
In addition to ‘passing’ their hospital training they were required to pass theoretical examinations and practical ‘invalid cookery’, a skill that would come in handy when trying to rebuild the strength of soldiers knocked down by illness.
In 1912 Queensland established the Nurses Registration Board, the first of its kind in Australia, registering qualified general, midwifery and mental health nurses.
Registered nurses were given preferential employment in hospitals.
Before the war, Australian nurses were used to working long hours, on average they clocked 56 hours per week and took home £103 per year, just over half of the salary of a teacher.
Their evidence-based Florence Nightingale nursing training with a strong evidence focus had order at its backbone.
Order was something that was found sorely lacking in many arenas of World War I, especially as nurses served closer and closer to the frontline.
Australian Army nurses served in the shadow of the pyramids in Egypt, on hospital ships off the coast of the Dardanelles, in the tents of Lemnos Island throughout army hospitals in India, Italy and France. They also served in the nerve-racking casualty clearing stations close to the frontline.
The order demanded by hospitals at home fell away to the chaos of war.
Australian War Nurses: A Horrific Game of Numbers
In 1915 one military nurse with some untrained orderlies took responsibility for a ward of 200 patients. One Australian army hospital, with only 53 trained nurses, looked after nearly 1,000 patients.
And for the very first time, these women were given the responsibility of managing a team of men. The nurses were provided with orderlies to assist with some of the heavy lifting.
In the years prior to the war, male nurses were very rare with the exception of the mental health field. So, when the war broke out, there were no qualified male orderlies.
This new shift of power certainly caused some conflict and issues regarding status and obeying orders.
However, many nurses trained the orderlies in basic nursing techniques so they could provide greater assistance.
The Hell of Lemnos Island
While each nursing arena provided its own set of challenges, the Third Australian General Hospital on Lemnos Island in Greece remains one of the most primitive of the campaign.
Indeed, in the first few weeks, the nurses lacked accommodation, food and water. They cared for soldiers in the open and slept next to them on the ground.
“We kept ourselves alive by the Red Cross issue of Ideal Milk, tins of coffee au lait, Huntley and Palmer biscuits. We, in turn, kept our patients alive by the same means.”
- Staff Nurse Nellie Pike
The shortages also saw them improvising medical equipment in order to care for the masses of casualties flowing in from Gallipoli.
As they saw their Aussie boys, each with a face that reminded them of their brother or friend from their home town, they tore their own clothes to make dressings, bandages and wash cloths.
Many nurses were struck down by illness following the inability to adequately sterilise or even wash their hands properly due to poor water supplies.
Unsafe Seas
Hospital and transport ships provided their own challenges. More than 100 Australian nurses worked on board ships off the Turkish coast, sometimes less than one mile from the beach.
“Our boat got in the line of fire when the Turks were trying to get the range of one of our war boats. Bullets flew thick and fast.
“Only one man was struck, though there were some narrow escapes.”
- Florence Spalding on hospital ship Neuralia
The order of hospitals back in Australia was replaced by the chaos of war.
“Everyone has to work very hard and would still have to work hard if the staff was doubled.”
To France
In France, winter brought the plight of frostbite. For some nurses, it felt like too much. If it wasn’t enough that their boys were being shot up, they would now lose their limbs to the cold.
Casualty clearing stations just three miles behind the firing line were under constant threat of shelling.
While on duty nurses stayed with their patients, off duty nurses had taken to spending hours sleeping in the darkness of the trees and paddocks away from the tents as they were bombed each night.
“They sat in dark fields with tin hats and gas masks on. Bombs were falling nearby, and anti-aircraft shells were whistling over their heads and making them duck, though they knew them to be in their defence.”
- From Australian Women at War, Patsy Adam-Smith
Advancements in Nursing and Medicine
Throughout incredibly trying conditions nurses were also given opportunities to pioneer advancements in medicine and learn new skills.
For the first time Australian and New Zealand nurses were trained in anaesthetics. New Zealand nurses went on to have an incredible impact in surgical wartime nursing while Australian nurses were forbidden to practice it, yet another reminder of their ‘place’ as women.
They brought once in a lifetime experience home with them and continued to care for returned soldiers.
In Brisbane alone, there were two general hospitals, three auxiliary hospitals, three specialty hospitals for tuberculosis, infectious diseases and venereal disease, a Detail Camp at Enoggera Barracks to receive convalescent soldiers returning.
In addition, the Red Cross established four convalescent homes.
When nurses returned home it took some getting used to returning to the order of hospital operation in Australia.
Little were they to know that their skills would be instrumental in an upcoming pandemic and be called on again in an all new war years later.
Sources:
Harris, Kirsty (2014) New horizons: Australian nurses at work in World War I, Science Direct.
Harris, Kirsty (2011) More Than Bombs and Bandages, Australian Army nurses at work in World War I, Big Sky Publishing
Adam-Smith, Patsy (1984) Australian Women at War, Thomas Nelson Australia
Comments