Brave nurses who sailed into hell

DOOMED: The HMTS Marquette. PHOTO/FILE

In memory of the nurses who served New Zealand in World War I, the Times-Age looks at some of the women from Wairarapa who sailed across the world and faced horrific sights of war

More than 400 New Zealand nurses volunteered for service and 50 members of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service set sail for the UK on April 8, 1915.

As casualties mounted at Gallipoli, two ships, the Maheno and the Marama, were used as hospital ships.

On one of those ships was Sister Edith McLeod, who trained and worked at Masterton Hospital.

Originally from Hawke's Bay, she spent more than four years serving and was a survivor of the the Marquette, which sank after being torpedoed by the Germans on October 23 in the Aegean Sea.

More than 160 people died.

In a newspaper report from the time, Palmerston doctor Captain AM Harrison recalled: "The next moment a huge bubbling where the fine steamer had been, and men and women bobbing up and down in the water for two hundred or three hundred yards around, among wreckage, and a constant calling out, shouting and wailing. It was frightful."

He rushed down to his station to find several nurses there putting their lifebelts on.

"Their behaviour was magnificent. I never saw anything like it, not the slightest trace of panic.

"Every one of them showed a spirit that would not have shamed the bravest troops in the whole world."

Some nurses were in a damaged lifeboat that filled with water and constantly overturned. Nurses and soldiers hung on to the boat for hours.

"Every now and then passengers would become exhausted and drop off dead and float about us for some time, supported by his lifebelt. It was awful."

Ten New Zealand nurses were lost in the disaster.

Edith served in Egypt, the Balkans and the Western Front and was discharged in 1920. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross in recognition of her "valuable nursing services in connection with the war". She died in 1971.

Sister Isla Brice, nee Stewart, was the daughter of Mrs Alex Stewart of Masterton, a "well-known Wairarapa resident." Isla was a private nurse who lived on Essex St and joined the NZANS in April, 1915, serving in the Middle East and on the Western Front. She was at the Egyptian Army Hospital, where she wrote a letter saying: "I am told that the Maoris and Egyptians are the best drilled soldiers in the world."

Isla was on the Maheno at one point, which transported sick and wounded soldiers between NZ and the UK.

She suffered from measles and influenza near the end of her service, and was discharged in June, 1919 and died in 1963 in Marton.

Sister Kathleen Welch was descended from two important pioneer families, the Kembles and Welches, from Wairarapa and the Hutt Valley.

She served for more than four years, returned and died in 1969.

Sister Charlotte Colenbrander, nee Matthews, was a nurse at Masterton Hospital and went to Cairo and was on the ships Marama and Essequibo. She served for more than three years and was discharged in May, 1919.

Sister Ada Scott, nee Whitta, trained at Masterton, left with 68 other nurses on the Maheno in July, 1916 for service at military hospitals in England.

-Information sourced from Archives New Zealand and the National Library of NZ Papers Past archive.