N.Z. HOSPITAL WORKER

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24555, 2 May 1945, Page 3

N.Z. HOSPITAL WORKER

MISS M. THURSTON

VISITS TO SERVICEMENIN BRITAIN From Our Own Correspondent LONDON, February 16. A bomber crashed in an English field on its return from a raid over Germany. An hour later the pilot, a Now Zealander, badly wounded and in pain, was in hospital. When be awoke next day. after an uneasy sleep, his thoughts were of his mother and father. He was worried, for he knew that reports of his crash and injuries would cause them anxiety, and that official reports, being necessarily terse and formal, would bring little comfort. . , , While these thoughts yet weighed upon his mind a grey-haired woman, with an air of calm motherliness, came quietly but firmly to his bedside. Her presence puzzled him, for she was not m uniform and he wondered who sbp might be. He did not know it then, but later he was to learn that he was but one of many New Zealander? to meet her in those same circumstances of pain and mental uneasiness. Miss Mabel Thurston brought to him that morning as to so many other wounded and sick New Zealanders, a touch, of home and sympathetic understanding. Within a few minutes she had introduced herself, promised to cable and to write to his mother and father, and to reassure them that he was all

right; she had left him writing paper and a pencil, some New Zealand comforts, and promised to write to him and return within a few weeks to see how he was progressing. Visits like these have been made by Miss Thurston to hospitals throughout Britain from the earliest days of the war. With the exception of one period two years ago, when she herself became ill from overwork, she has travelled an average of 1000 miles a month to see New Zealanders; and she has written a small mountain of letters to them and to their parents. Her work—although Miss Thurston does not regard it as work—began irt the last months of 1939. Matron of the Christchurch Hospital from 1908 until 1915, matron-in-chief of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service in England from 1915 to 1919, and later matron at Rotorua, Trentham, Hanmer Springs, and Pukeora until she retired in 1929, Miss Thurston wai; elected to the committee of the New Zealand War Services’ Association when it was formed in the early days of this war. Her work during the last war was recognised with the awards of C.B.E. and R.R.C. |n the early days of the war Miss Thurston made • her visits by train, carrying heavy loads of comforts and making long, weary journeys. A car, however, was provided for her by the . association, and with Mrs A. Bauchop, formerly of Hawke’s Bay, as her driver, she loaded it up in London with Comforts and went out to the country districts and the military hospitals, Later, when Mrs Bauchop was obliged to retire to the country for health reasons, Miss Betty Forsyth, of Waverley, who had driven an ambulance for the London County Council throughout the Battle of Britain and the bombings, took over her work. In addition to visiting New Zealand airmen, Miss Thurston has been to every hospital where New Zealand sailors have been patients. Every week she receives frota R.N.Z.A.F. headquarters and from the naval affairs officer a complete list of k the men under medical care and the name of the hospital in which they are. A letter and a parcel are sent immediately to each on his arrival, and Miss Thurston particularly asks if they have any requests to make. Every week she maps out a programme of visiting, and at. the weekend she writes letters, / and there are now many parents in New Zealand who know her handwriting. Miss Thurston has now visited hundreds of New Zealanders in hospitals all over Britain during the five and a half years of war, and to see her coming down the bright, clean wards, bringing with her cheerfulness, motherlmess, tact, firmness, sympathy, and a touch of home has meant to th&se sick and wounded New Zealanders—many still in their ’teens—far more than they can express in words.