The Other Anzacs (52 page)

In the midst of this, Nellie wrote how she was caught in a bombing raid one evening. Visiting a seamstress in town, she heard the Gothas overhead. It was too late to run from the house into the street because she knew she would be in greater danger.

I descended the stairs with a beating heart and creepey [
sic
] feeling down my back. I turned the light as low as possible and tried to occupy myself with tidying up in the little kitchen, but I was too scared to move almost. Bang! One-two very quickly three and four a few seconds later and the house seemed to rock. The panes splintered into fragments all the ornaments fell off the shelves and tables upstairs.

I was hurled against the wall, no damage. I didn’t feel very happy and I certainly wasn’t brave for my knees suddenly changed to rubber and crumpled up stupidly. Other bombs fell all around, some near, some further away, and finally I heard the droning less distinctly and decided to make a run for the hospital.

With shaky hands I locked the door and the gate leading into the street and just turned from the latter when I heard the noise approaching again this time very low.

I couldn’t go back, it was too risky and too dark to see the key hole. No. I must go on. With a drunkards gait I kept close to the walls and longed for a steel helmet. One after another that dreadful rain of bombs fell and just as I turned the corner there was a terrific explosion. I fell into the shelter of an iron doorway just in time to escape the shower of tiles, glass, plaster etc which fell all around me.

In my hand I carried those big yellow leather bags given us by the French Australian League and I covered my head with that each time I heard the whistle of a bomb or saw the trail of light which followed its decent [
sic
]. It was the most horrible thing I have ever experienced and I really thought I should be killed. How I escaped I really do not know. Nearly an hour I remained in the streets taking shot runs from the shelter of one friendly doorway to another whenever the avions seemed to move away and the noise of their engines less distinct.
⁷

Not long after, Nellie was given leave to recover in Marseille.

In early June a letter from Syd Cook to Elsie arrived from the front with the news that he expected to finally get leave. He planned to travel to London to meet his father, Sir Joseph, who had just arrived. The letter raised a difficult dilemma for Elsie—whether to ask for leave herself to meet Syd in London, or stay where she was needed. Her conscience was troubled, but ‘Although I shouldn’t, I asked for leave to go to England tomorrow—don’t know what Fraser will do, poor little thing, as with both of us it’s like hell.’
⁸

She worked until midnight, then got her things ready to leave early the next morning. ‘Simply felt very mean leaving Fraser and the hospital at such time as this, but must go as Syd hasn’t had leave for a year.’
⁹
They had two weeks together, during which they went to a performance of
Chu Chin Chow
and holidayed amid the picturesque firths and lochs of Scotland.

With the Germans focusing on Paris in one last desperate offensive, the Second Battle of the Marne began. The Germans established a bridgehead across the river before their attack was blunted by British divisions from the north. Just as the Marne had proved the high-water mark of German success in 1914, so it was now. But for the next few weeks their assault continued, and Elsie returned to work in the midst of it. ‘Air raid tonight, the Boshe [
sic
] dropped a bomb about 100 yards from our sleeping quarters, but only knocked down a tree—made a big hole, ’ she noted in mid-July.
¹⁰

Orders came to evacuate as many patients as possible, as every bed would soon be needed. ‘So every one who can possibly travel is being sent off—poor broken legs taken down out of apparatus and put in plaster or splints of voyage and sent off this evening and thro’ the night.’
¹¹
The next day Elsie was relieved that a French-American attack around Soissons and Château-Thierry had started successfully. Wounded Americans and Frenchmen flooded in. Every bed and stretcher was soon full, and those who could not find a bed lay on stretchers on the floors. Tents were hastily erected and soon packed with the worst cases. Time to attend to them was at a premium.

After we finished our work we went into one tent and found it full of wounded who hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for three days. Another tent—our old sleeping quarters—were full of cases who couldn’t live long—weren’t even operated on. In our old room lay a German officer and private, side by side and at one rank in illness and captivity. We made cocoa and with bread, took it around—it was eagerly swallowed.
¹²

Among the wounded was an American ‘with the worst fractured femur’ Elsie had ever seen. Amputation was likely. She wrote to the mother of a ‘nice little Scotch officer’ who was very ill with a leg amputated, an arm broken and several other wounds.

By 17 July, it was apparent to the German High Command that the offensive had failed. American forces were arriving in France at the rate of 300, 000 a month, while German reinforcements and resources were at breaking point. The arrival of the Americans had boosted British and French morale and delivered a body blow to the Germans.

On 18 July the Allies attacked and advanced at Château-Thierry. The pressure on the hospital staff intensified. ‘Wounded pouring in daily and hourly. Baraques full and reception rooms full—they are waiting hours— the lesser cases—Germans, days to be operated on. Wards overflowing.’
¹³
By now there was no room inside the tents, and stretchers were placed on the ground outside. In the midst of this, Elsie received a letter from Syd ‘complaining of a scarcity of letters from me’. If she was feeling put out by his letter and her endurance was being tested by the never-ending convoys of the wounded, a ‘perfectly lovely’ parcel from her mother-in-law eased the situation, with ‘good things to eat—plum pudding and jam, camp pie, sugar and cheese’. It provided ‘such a party’.

The Germans were now steadily pulling back, and the Australian 1st Division, with Syd’s involvement, had taken the Menin Road. Despite the ‘excellent war news’ that the Germans had been driven back across the Marne and were still retreating, there was no let-up. On the last day of July, Elsie noted that the hospital was ‘very full and wounded still arriving’. There had been an air raid the previous night. ‘Another bomb dropped in the hospital park—another good tree spoilt, and our sleep disturbed.’ She and Fraser and another nurse discovered a dugout near their hut, built for three, and planned ‘to repair there on a real lively raid’. A few days later the Allies recaptured Soissons, but Elsie’s joy was dampened when, not long after, ‘the poor little Scotchman died and a Yorkshire boy’ also. Elsie attended the funeral, at which a ‘pathetic old guard of honour of ancient French territorials’ lined up to fire a volley over the graves. The news continued to improve: more towns and villages were recaptured from the Germans, and tens of thousands of prisoners of war and guns were taken.

On 2 June 1918, Pearl Corkhill arrived at No. 38 British Casualty Clearing Station at Longvillers, between Abbeville and Doullens, in the Somme. War work for her was not just a matter of nursing, but also of keeping track of her brother Norm, a lieutenant in the 30th Battalion in France, and her cousin Fred, who was in Flanders in the thick of the action. She was determined to look after their interests and keep them provided, where possible, with fresh clothes. They wrote to each other as much as they could. She had passed on news of Norm’s progress to her mother. There was a rumour that he had been wounded.

Got your letter yesterday telling me about the news you had heard of Norman. Now there is no need to take any notice of anything you hear, if anything happens to Norman I will cable to you anyhow. There is no need to go and worry yourself sick and imagine all the time that something is going to happen. Why I don’t even do that and I’ve got Fred up there as well, and I know far more what they are going through than you do, when they are in the lines and when they are out but it does not make things a bit better by worrying, so now you just leave it off and be a bit happy.
¹⁴

If the two boys were in the thick of it, so was Pearl. On 19 July the Germans raided the clearing station at night, dropping three bombs. One fell in the middle of the camp and destroyed the sterilising room. Pearl saw the panic among her patients. She ignored the alarm to take shelter and, with her orderly, dashed around the hospital putting the sick and wounded under their beds. She knew her actions would not have saved lives if a bomb had hit the wards, but she maintained that they gave the patients ‘that feeling of safety’.
¹⁵
Nine days later she was notified that she had been awarded the Military Medal for her coolness and presence of mind. The citation read: ‘For courage and devotion to duty on the occasion of an enemy air-raid. She continued to attend to the wounded without any regard to her own safety, though enemy aircraft were overhead. Her example was of the greatest value in allaying the alarm of the patients.’
¹⁶

With some modesty, Pearl wrote to her mother about it.

No doubt before you get this letter you will have heard of my good fortune. I suppose I may call it good fortune. I told you our hospital had been bombed one night while I’ve been on night duty, and I’m in charge of the place at night. Whatever night sister is on duty is in charge of the place. Well the CO recommended me for the Military Medal and today word came that I had been awarded the MM. Well the CO sent over a bottle of champagne and they all drank my health and now the MOs are giving me a dinner in honour of the event. I think it’s awfully nice of them. I can’t see what I’ve done to deserve it, but when I said that, the only answer I got was that lots had got it for far less, but the part I don’t like is having to face [King] George and [Queen] Mary to get the medal. It will cost me a new mess dress, but I suppose I should not grumble at that. I’m still wearing the one I left Australia in and it is about worn out now. Although I had received a few hints that I had been recommended, it came as a great surprise, especially as they are so quick about it, it generally takes much longer.
¹⁷

A few weeks later Pearl was promoted to Sister. Her Military Medal brought to eight the total number awarded to Australian nurses during the war—seven of them members of the Australian Army Nursing Service.

By August 1918, just as the Allies were beginning to gain the upper hand, a new enemy appeared. The so-called Spanish flu was indiscriminate and spread like wildfire. In the spring of 1918 large numbers of soldiers in the trenches became ill, complaining of sore throats, headaches and loss of appetite. Although it appeared to be highly infectious, recovery was rapid and doctors dubbed it ‘three-day fever’. In the British Expeditionary Force the flu first appeared in April 1918, and by May it was rampant in the British, French and German armies. It was noticed at the end of April at the various Allied bases in Rouen, Le Havre and Marseilles, and early in May at Boulogne and Calais.