Extract from a N.Z. Doctor's Letter to his Daughter

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume VIII, Issue 4, 1 October 1915, Page 174

Extract from a N.Z. Doctor's Letter to his Daughter

Hospital Ship, m the Mediterranean, August 19, 1915 Malta will bs m sight m an hour or two ; We have had a very hot day, almost stark calm, and the air saturated with moisture. Three hours on end dressing wounds with the horrible sickly odour -which belongs to these poor, torn, mangled fellows, is pretty hard work m this temperature ; but I think I can stand it as well as the others, and the nurses are grand, they have to do much more than we doctors ... A fight is hard to describe and harder still to realize, one can only give one's main impression and take it as a sample. My man who was evidently fairly cool and collected, though all of them, he said, were half mad, found himself a few yards below a ridg on which was some scrub, he had only a few fellows with him, he was shot through the shoulder and knocked over backwards, he saw Turks swarming down through the scrub. Just ihen one of his men put his hand on a heap of stones, and a mine blew up, a boot with a man's foot m it fell on him, and he said : " I felt sick and thought if I am to have any chance I must get out of this." He could see Turks bayoneting men close by, so he started to roll and scramble down, he got into a little ravine, where he found a young surgeon, surrounded with wounded. My man said to the surgeon, "You must get out of this, the Turks are just on us." The surgeon looked up and saw them coming and said : "If you can walk, get down

to the beach as fast as you can, I must stop ■with, my wounded." He turned white but went on with his dressings, and that is the last l saw of him, whether he was made prisoner or killed I don't know, but I am af:aid they were all killed. If ever a man deserved a medal he did, but they were all the same ; the surgeons, many of them boys just out from Hospital, were splendid. . . . Yesterday we had our first taste of bad weather . . . The boat's powers of rolling are really marvellous. During the morning we decided it was a sheer impossibility to do any dressings, after midday things were little better, but I thought I must have a buck at it, so I left my nurse who was dead sick, undisturbed, and got hold of one orderly who could stand and was not sick and together we went right through my ward ; it was a struggle, I can tell you. The swinging cots were writhing and creaking and groaning, the ports being all shut, the heat and smell were awful. Stooping over the men with 1< gs wide apart I dressed and bandaged for 2 hours on end and got through all the worst cases. My head was aching, and hands and legs trembling with the struggle ; but I got through with it. The floor was slippery with spilt food and vomit, and the whole scene was a mad orgy ; several cots broke from their stanchions, and the scene at meal times beggared description. Our nurses were all sick, but struggled about occasionally and did a little when they could.