A NEW ZEALAND HOSPITAL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4474, 15 February 1917, Page 6

A NEW ZEALAND HOSPITAL.

■ —** " 1 “ TRIBUTE BY A BRITISH CHAPLAIN. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Assn) LONDON, Feb. 15. Rev. H. K. Bros, chaplain to the 17th Hussars in France, after spending three weeks as a patient in the New Zealand stationary hospital at Amiens, writes to the Oxford Times: “The New Zealand. Contingents are not always in the firing line, and so it comes about that the majority of wounded in the hospital at Amiens are British. The hospital is the Convent of the Holy Family, and is situated close to the railway station, in fact, it is rather too close, because the railway station is the object of frequent air raids, and a bomb aimed at tlie station may easily fall on the hospital. The staff consists of a matron, eight medical men. and twelve nurses, with orderlies, together with three chaplains; and a more efficient and capable staff it would be impossible to find. . New Zealand has indeed given of her best in the medical profession. During the month of August the staff was‘taxed to the utmost of its powers, and frequently 150 wounded would come in daily from the casualty clearing stations. Durihg the first few weeks of the great advance in the late summer, one of the surgeons was operating continuously for three days and three nights, so great was the number ot serious cases. To -such devotion many will owe it that they are not crippled for life. Of the nursing sisters 1 must say a word. Sympathetic, kind, efficient, they seem to fulfil what one has always regarded as the pattern of a perfect nurse.. Nothing seems to be able to destroy their capacity for cheerfulness and unfailing attention to everv detail which can make their' patients more comfortable and contented. Anyone who has had the fortune to be nursed in the New Zealand' hospital will, I feel sure, recognise that I am not over-painting the picture of what these devoted women of this very virile colony are doing. It is because, perhaps, we do not realise what a depth of gratitude we English owe to the devoted work of the New Zealand medical and nursing profession that I have thought well to piece together this short account of their work in France.”