How did the nurses get enlisted into the war
In the First World War, nurses were recruited from both the nursing service and the civilian profession and served as an integral part of the Australian Imperial Forces. At least 2139 nurses served abroad between 1914 and 1919, and a further 423 worked in military hospitals in Australia, while 29 died on active service.
A lot of women volunteered to join the VAD's (Voluntary Aid Detachment) and FANY's (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.) VAD's came from a variety of backgrounds - cooks, domestic servants, laundry workers etc. Their medical training was basic but the fact that they went to the war zone meant that they could comfort badly injured soldiers and give them basic medical treatment even if they were originally not allowed to give injections.
A lot of women volunteered to join the VAD's (Voluntary Aid Detachment) and FANY's (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.) VAD's came from a variety of backgrounds - cooks, domestic servants, laundry workers etc. Their medical training was basic but the fact that they went to the war zone meant that they could comfort badly injured soldiers and give them basic medical treatment even if they were originally not allowed to give injections.
life style of nurses
Nurses of WWI worked from sun up to sun down, and barely got any sleep. However, this did not bother many nurses. The conditions were cold and sometimes rainy. The sounds of the battlefield could be heard in the nurses’ living quarters.5 An American nurse wrote a detailed description of her morning and nights on the front lines:
It is a marvelous life; and strangely enough, despite all the tragedy, I call it a healthy one. One works, and when that is over one sleeps enough to keep in condition, and that is absolutely all, except a cold sponge bath (no bath-tubs here), and a cologne rubdown in the morning, and the walk to and from the Hospital. In the morning now it is bitter cold and misty and half dark, and one gets weird glimpses of departing regiments, and white-capped old market-women, and pointed gables across the gloom; and at night the splendid stars, and now a great lustrous moon, and every day and night the boom, boom of the cannon which sounds very awesome these days. That is all I know of the world I live in.
Nurses sometimes shared rooms with civilians while serving in the war. In some nurses case, they write about night’s spent in Belgian woman’s home while serving overseas:
It was now getting very late, and we were told nothing could be done till the morning, so we gratefully accepted the offer of one bed from a kind Belgian woman. We spent a sleepless night. The guns sounded so close and shook the house
An anonymous nurse also wrote about the food in a passage of her diary:
Food was getting beautifully less and less, meat very occasional, and we lived for the most part on beans and potatoes and soup made of the same, flavored with many frying's in the frying-pan.
It is a marvelous life; and strangely enough, despite all the tragedy, I call it a healthy one. One works, and when that is over one sleeps enough to keep in condition, and that is absolutely all, except a cold sponge bath (no bath-tubs here), and a cologne rubdown in the morning, and the walk to and from the Hospital. In the morning now it is bitter cold and misty and half dark, and one gets weird glimpses of departing regiments, and white-capped old market-women, and pointed gables across the gloom; and at night the splendid stars, and now a great lustrous moon, and every day and night the boom, boom of the cannon which sounds very awesome these days. That is all I know of the world I live in.
Nurses sometimes shared rooms with civilians while serving in the war. In some nurses case, they write about night’s spent in Belgian woman’s home while serving overseas:
It was now getting very late, and we were told nothing could be done till the morning, so we gratefully accepted the offer of one bed from a kind Belgian woman. We spent a sleepless night. The guns sounded so close and shook the house
An anonymous nurse also wrote about the food in a passage of her diary:
Food was getting beautifully less and less, meat very occasional, and we lived for the most part on beans and potatoes and soup made of the same, flavored with many frying's in the frying-pan.
How the Nurses felt
Nurses had a lot of mixed emotions while serving over seas and a lot of these feelings were put into diary entries, poems etc.
A nurse Gertrude Doherty, from WA, wrote to her cousin Muriel in Sydney:
We look forward to our letters on mail day. Of course we can never make our letters sound as cheerful as yours. I am sure you will understand why when I tell you that we are surrounded by sadness and sorrow all the time ... do you know, Muriel, that as many as 72 operations have been performed in one day in our hospital alone ... you could not imagine how dirty the poor beggars are, never able to get a wash, mud and dirt ground in and nearly all of them alive with vermin.
They feel ashamed being so dirty, we always tell them that if they came down any cleaner we would not think they had been in it at all.
In this letter Gertrude Doherty talks about how they feel so ashamed to be dirty like its something that they're not used to and something that is difficult to deal with. How every day they deal with beggars every day and how they deal with so many.
Things like this was how the nurses felt throughout the war and there are a lot more examples.
A nurse Gertrude Doherty, from WA, wrote to her cousin Muriel in Sydney:
We look forward to our letters on mail day. Of course we can never make our letters sound as cheerful as yours. I am sure you will understand why when I tell you that we are surrounded by sadness and sorrow all the time ... do you know, Muriel, that as many as 72 operations have been performed in one day in our hospital alone ... you could not imagine how dirty the poor beggars are, never able to get a wash, mud and dirt ground in and nearly all of them alive with vermin.
They feel ashamed being so dirty, we always tell them that if they came down any cleaner we would not think they had been in it at all.
In this letter Gertrude Doherty talks about how they feel so ashamed to be dirty like its something that they're not used to and something that is difficult to deal with. How every day they deal with beggars every day and how they deal with so many.
Things like this was how the nurses felt throughout the war and there are a lot more examples.