The Roll of Honour

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XI, Issue 3, 1 July 1918, Page 115

The Roll of Honour

A great day, and a proud one, for the nurses of the Empire and her Allies, even though sad, was the occasion of the Memorial Service in St. Paul's Cathedral. In the different nurses' journals are graphic accounts, and in one an illustration of the nurses leaving the Cathedral, in which, plainly to be discerned, are some of the New Zealand sisters. One scarcely realised, I think, that so many as 350 British nurses, both fully qualified and V.A.D. nurses, had given up their lives in this great war in serving their King and Country. To that toll we must add the twenty nurses from South Africa who were lost in the last torpedoed transport, cabled last week. A New Zealand sisters writes an account of the ceremony as follows : — It was my privilege last Wednesday (April 10th) to attend the nurses' service in St. Paul's Cathedral. It was, without doubt, the most beautiful service I have

ever attended. The great Cathedral was one blaze of nurses' uniforms. There were four thousand persons present, and in the very front of all stood the " King's Own Coldstream Guards," with their bright red coats and large black busbies, while at the far end of the building stood a few wounded soldiers. The Australian girls lined the first rows (many rows deep), with their matron at their head. They were all in dark grey costumes, with brown facings and bronze-coloured stars and buttons. Then came the New Zealand girls—about forty of us — attired in dark grey frocks, with scarlet capes. Miss Thurston, the matron-in-chief, was at our head. On the opposite side were the naval nurses, who had a very smart appearance in navy -blue costumes, with gold stars ; and then came Miss Beecher, Matron-in-Chief, Q.A.1.M.N.5., with hundreds of Imperial girls behind her. The Territorial nurses were next, and then

followed Canadian, American, and South African nurses. The London general hospitals were all represented, as were all the British Red Cross and Order of St. John. Queen Alexandra, Princess Victoria, and many other members of the Royal Family were escorted up the aisle by the Archdeacon of London. The Lord Mayor's procession was a very memorable one to those of us who had never before been eye-witnesses of such a spectacle. The Coldstream Guards played some most beautiful music, and the voices of the choir boys echoed like silver bells around the great old building. All those who were present will, I am sure, never forget the singing of * O God, our Help in Ages Past," and " Eternal Father, strong to save." The Ven. E. E. Holmes, 8.D., Hon. Domestic Chaplain to Her Majesty, preached a very wonderful and deeply impressive sermon from the text, ; * Not one of them is forgotten." He is a grand old man, who was not afraid to speak his mind to that great crowd of people. The service finished with the " Dead March in Saul." There was just a hushed, breathless silence. To hear that majestic music, under such impressive conditions, in the beautiful old Cathedral rich u ith historic memories, was a revelation in itself. As the last sound of the music died away, the " Last Post " rang out clearly from the farthest corner of the great building, and it was then, indeed, many minutes before the hush was broken, and the sacred silence gave place to repressed sounds. The Queen and members of her party bowed in all directions as they walked quietly out, and if I never felt sufficiently proud of my uniform before, I certainly did on that day. Three hundred and fifty girls have given their lives in the service of their country, and the nursing service feels proud of every one of them. The Sermon. "Not one of them is forgotten before God." The Venerable E. E. Holmes, 8.D., preached from these words (St. Luke, xii, 6). Of those 350 nurses, he said, 300 of whom were killed and fifty of whom were drowned, not one was forgotten. Those seventy nurses of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service; those four heroic women from the Royal Naval Nursing Service (worthy nurses of a Sea King's

Daughter from over the sea) ; those eight nurses who with their matron went down in the *' Glenart Castle"; those 183 V.A.D. nurses, "stormed at by shot and shell," bombed from above or torpedoed from below, the nurses of the Red Cross, nurses of the White Cross, their names were written in the golden obituary of their country's history ; not one of them was forgotten. Each had her own personal life ; each was known to someone ; by someone among the four to five thousand nurses in the Cathedral each would be recalled, as matron, sister, staff-nurse, nurse, or probationer ; each would be remembered in some English home, at some English school ; each had someone who loved her best of all, and not one would be forgotten Each as she dropped in her place would have cried, like the legendary lover as he sank in the waters and flung the flower to the loved one, " Forget me not I " Moreover, there was some spiritual telepathy between those who remained and those who had gone. It was well that we should gather together from all parts of the country, from the Colonies and the Dominions, and that the Empire's nurses should meet together in what had been called the parish Church of the British Empire ; English nurses, Irish, Scottish, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and also Serbian nurses. It was weJl that we should remember them before God, that we should think of them before England's great high altar, upon which was offered the one great Sacrifice which made all other sacrifices worthy of being offered ; that we should speak about the memorial in the crypt, which the Queen two years ago unveiled, to Florence Nightingale, the first woman and the first nurse to have a memorial in St. Paul's Cathedral. It was well that we should gather there to commemorate the passing of the nurses, to make our act of thanksgiving for those who had won their right to die because they had done their duty even unto the death. And if we had a message to send them, they had a message to send us. What was it ? ki Fill up the ranks ! Carry along ! " That was the message he would echo on from them to-day to the nurses gathered in the Cathedral. " You would not wish me," Archdeacon Holmes proceeded, "to punish you with praise or to insult you with flattery. lam not going to call you ministering angels. You are not angels. You are women. And because you are women, you are something far higher than angels. You are ordinary women. Some of you, like men and women in other departments of the State, have made your mistakes, have lowered the lofty ideal of the loftiest profession or vocation that a woman can take up. Often, full of excitement, and reaction from excitement, war weary, tired, sometimes suffering even more than the patient you are nursing, and full of failures — but — and it is a ' but ' that is written in great red capitals—as a body, grand women. But women who have taught us that women can be what God means them to be. But women who have had their chance and have taken it, as every one of the 50,000 and more nurses now serving at home and abroad, woald gladly have taken it ; women who in 1914, when windows and walls and posters and hoardings were placarded with the proclamation, ' The Women are wanted/ sprang — as a crowd

will spring apparently from nowhere at some street accident — to help all those marvellous war nurses who share the glory of the first few months of the war with the soldiers who will never be forgotten as long as a page of English history remains to the English people. " You are women, nurses ; women who have helped the men who have guarded the way to England with the bodies* of England's best. Of you it may be said, as it has been said of a sister Service : ' They tend the men ; they mend the men ; they help them to carry on, and they drop a little curtain over the woes they have undergone/ Women, some of you who have seen the vision of the Man, Christ Jesus, as He hung upon the Cross ; whose hearts, as those of our soldiers, are to-day in union with those five great wounds in the Crucified ; you, in nursing them, are nursing Him. And if you have seen the vision you have heard the rewarj : * Inasmuch as ye have dr ne it to the leest of these ye have done it unto Me/ Women, too, have shamed that She-Devil — -she is neither nurse nor woman — who handed the cup of cold water, sacred to the memory, to the lips of the dying British soldier, and then, deliberately, emptied it on to the ground. You, rather, remind us of the gallant French officer who, when a German officer put in the plea for kindly treatment on the ground that he was we anded, replied, ' In the eyes of a Frenchman a vounded man is sacred/ And, as true women, we salute you to-day as General Snu ts, once an honourable enemy, now an honoured friend, paid to the Third Army : 'We salute j-ou with a reverence which no words can tell/ and I seem

to see in the woH * reverence ' the whole future typo and form of the nursing profession. I pass it on to you as women and nurses — you can never separate the two ; just as it was said of Queen Vk-tt.ria th';t ' In everything she did as Queen she made herself felt as woman, and in everything she did as woman she made herself felt as Queen,* I pass it on to the matrons of all our hospitals at home and abroad, for on you will depend very largely what the future of the nursing in England will be. Matron, matronne, followers of the Mater Misericordia, so rule your hospital that you may never stand ashamed at the Great- Day of Assize. " I pass it on to the sisters and probationers, oach a madonna in her own right of womanhood ; each resolve from to-day, in memory of the faithful departed, to be a true follower of the all pure Lily Maid cf Nazareth. Yov see the greatness of it. It is a great work, willingly done and well, for the sake of the men who have done for us more thar words can tell ; a great work, faithfully, carefully done, but the whole will not be known till the war is properlv won. And it is because such a great work is ent rrsted to you by your country to-day that you meet here to say 'We will fill up the ranks. We will step into the place of those that have fallen ; we will show them that not one of them is forgotten.' ' Our readers will not have forgotten the roll of New Zealand Nurses who have lost their lives m the war. Their names are included in the Roll of Honour.