VOLUNTEER SISTERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12067, 24 July 1917, Page 4

VOLUNTEER SISTERS.

WORK IN SALONIKA. Mr S. G. Raymond, the honorary logal adviser of the New Zealand Volunteer Sisterhood, has received from Volunteer Sister Mildred Stephens a. letter acknowledging a, contribution which she with other Volunteer Sisters received from friends in Christchurch, and stating that she, wishes to thank those who had kindly contributed the money :

She sav,s: —" Since, joining the X.Z.V.S. in December, 1910, I have been very busy with Avar -work. The day after I arrived at Alexandria, February 7. 1010. 1 commenced work at. a. canteen established on the docks by the Countess Carnarvon, principally for the benefit of the New Zealand and Australian troops who were then embarking and disembarking in large number?:.. T managed this canteenfor six months. In August Sister Kerr and T joined the Scottish Woinon's Hospital. Serbian Unit, under Dr Bennett. We arrived at Salonika, before the unit had left England. so we offered our .services to the Scottish Womcjrs Hospital Trench Unit in Salonika. We were, gladly accepted. The hospital was overcrowded with French and Serbs, ill with malaria and dysentery, and understaffed, as many of the staff were ill with these sameVlleases. We worked there during the month ot August, then ouv unit having arrived, we went v.p country with it. pitching our camp and field hospital of 9CO h.-.U within sight and sound of rho .shell fire. We were soon full up with badly wounded Serbs, fetched by our ambulances from the dressing stations in the mountains, and for four months we nursed wounded Serbian soldiers, more than 700 passing through tho hospital in that time. "In December, as the enemy had been driven back, it was decided to send an ambulance or dressing station some eighty miles further forward with a column of motor ambulances attached to it, T was selected as one of the personnel of this unit, and I .spent six weeks with the ambulance. We had to endure some very severe, weather there, snow and bitter frost, and with no moans whatever of artificial heat. We were camping on the battlefields from which the" enemy had been driven and surrounded by trenches and all the debris of war. even the unburicd bodies of Bnlgar soldiers. Wc buried a number of these ourselves.

" At the end of the sis- weeks I was recalled to the base hospital, and after ten days there Sister Kerr and I were sent to a ruined village to establish a small camp for the relief of the .starving and sick Macedonian women and children. This work we are doing for the Serbian Relief Fund. Dr Bennett having lent UK for that purposes, until our services are required in the hospital. "It is very interesting work. We feed an average- of 150 children night and morning, and Sister Kerr has cared for the sick. We are now establishing a hospital here to receive the sick from this village and other villages around. Tho Bulgars have left everything in ruins and taken everything from the people. We are practically in the fighting zone and can watch the shells falling and hear the gun& all the time. Wo have been terribly bombed twice hy enemy aeroplanes, but' they have left us alone these last few days. " Wo heard from Miss Rout that she had gone to Syria. She has indeed worked hard, and.l think everyone must feel now that her work has been a good one. For my part, tho only rest I have had since I arrived in Egypt has been tho four days on the hospital ship crossing to Salonika, and I can see there is plenty of work to be done until the war is finished and even after in this country."