It has been a long time since I've posted, but I wanted to let you know I'm alive and well and plan to start blogging regularly again soon. Until then, I've received a request and want to post it asap. It's to do with Carola Douglas, a nurse I've written extensively about. Here's the request:


My name is Ben, and I'm an archiver for the Harbord Museum Archives. While researching one of our former students and honoured nursing sister Carola Douglas, we came across your 2012 blog post on her. What an incredible story. You mention that you received much of your information from Anna Douglas, a relative and family historian. We were wondering if you would mind sending us her email address? We plan on honouring Carola and her sacrifices at this upcoming remembrance day, and want to collaborate our research with Anna's.
Ben Heywood, Harbord Club

I also know that we have had other folks write to me regarding Carola. If you would like to connect with Ben, please email me at the address provided on my blog. Until next time, Debbie Marshall

Hello again after an absence of some months. I've moved to beautiful BC and will be writing regularly once again very soon. On this Remembrance Day, I wanted to once again encourage people to remember our Canadian nurses who gave their lives during the First World War. As my posts will attest, they were amazing women who served their country, and like the soldiers, often paid the ultimate price. Lest we forget.

Canadian Red Cross Headquarters, London

Many Canadian voluntary nurses (VADs) served at Canadian Red Cross Headquarters in London during the Great War. Mary MacLeod Moore, in her book The Maple Leaf's Red Cross, described the Canadian Red Cross headquarters this way:

"A day at the Headquarters of the Red Cross told a thrilling story to anyone with ears and eyes. The eagerness to be of use, the enthusiasm and the friendliness of these voluntary workers--for the great majority were voluntary workers--resulted in big things being done...The duties were not all interesting and inspiring. No work is that is done day in and day out...There were some who toiled from first to last, at a sacrifice of comfort and ease and luxury and time...No short and easy hours were allotted to the Red Cross workers. Early and late they were "one the job." Sometimes midnight found them working hard that none who trusted them might be disappointed. You went early in the morning and found the Chief Commissioner beginning his day by talking to officials over the telephone, seeing a constant stream of visitors, offering money, advice, help; reading cables from Canada about some important development or messages from France as to transport and supplies. You found Lady Drummond, in the midst of her workers, keeping her finger on all the departments of the Bureau, and in addition seeing soldiers and civilians bound on a variety of errands, and none was sent away unsatisfied...You saw a roomful of women filing information about wounded Canadians and writing letters to their people at home. [Note: this may have been the work that Aileen Powers-Peel was doing before her death.] You went into another and watched piles of letters being sorted and read, in which comforts were requested for sick and wounded men, or thanks were offered by the men themselves to the O.C. Parcels. You went into another room and women were packing quickly and skilfully these comforts and dainties to cheer up a man in hospital. You turned to the prisoners of War Department and there the workers were sorting letters from the prisoners to their staunch friends, and filing carefully on cards the details concerning them. Plans for their increased comfort were being considered and their families written to cheerfully..."

The Maple Leaf's Red Cross is well worth a read, if you are looking for information about the work of professional military nurses, VADs, and the Canadian Red Cross in general. It is available from Amazon in reprint form, or second hand (try Abebooks.com).

VAD Death at the End of the War

The February 1920 issue of The Red Cross Journal included the short mention of the death of a voluntary Red Cross nurse: "We regret to announce the deaths of....Miss Aileen Powers-Peel of the Canadian Imperial Detachment." Aileen was one of five Red Cross deaths that month and she doesn't seem to have merited any further information about her background or how she came to die, at the 31st of December 1918, at only 25 years of age. Everything about Aileen seems to be a mystery. Colleague Bill May brought her to my attention following one of his frequent visits to Great War memorials. He sent me this photo, which piqued my interest and got me digging for more information:

Aileen Powers-Peel was born in Toronto in 1894. While there are almost no details of her early life easily available, it is known that she belonged to the Church of England and her parents were likely Allen and Annie Peel of Kent County, Ontario. During the war, Aileen did secretarial work for Canadian Red Cross Headquarters and was also qualified as a "chauffeuse" (driver). She appears to have taken some leave in April 1918, to return to Canada on the ship Mauretania. Her destination at that time was Ottawa, Ontario. Her next of kin at her death was Mrs. Cook, 31 Centre Street, Galt, Ontario. This was likely her sister. Aileen is buried at the Brookwood Military Cemetery, in Surrey, United Kingdom. If you know more about this nurse please write to me c/o this blog.

Recognition of a Groundbreaking Nursing Sister

I have good news to report in today's post. An Edmonton school is to be named after Roberta MacAdams, a nursing sister who enlisted in the Canadian Army Medical Corps during the First World War. MacAdams served at the Ontario Military Hospital in Orpington, Kent. In 1917, she was elected to the Alberta legislature as a soldier's representative. In doing so, she became one of the first two women elected to a legislature anywhere in what was then the British Empire (Louise McKinney was voted into the Alberta legislature during the same election). Roberta would advocate for pensions and benefits for soldiers and nurses and would table the first private member's bill ever brought forward by a woman in the British Empire. It was a piece of legislation incorporating the Next of Kin Association, an organization dedicated to the families of veterans. It is especially fitting that MacAdams' name has been chosen for a public school, since she was superintendent of domestic science in the Edmonton School Board in the years just before the war. I am ecstatic that this honour has been paid to Roberta. She is truly one of Alberta's "unsung heroes." Hopefully her story will also create more interest in the nurses of the First World War.

The Forgotten: Lenna Mae Jenner

There are few records with which we can trace the life of Nursing Sister Lenna Mae Jenner. What we do know—according to her military service file—was that she was born on November 17, 1889 in Brookfield, Nova Scotia to British-born John Jenner and his wife Mary (nee MacIntyre). She had two older siblings, Hugh and Ada.

A Hard-Working Family
John Jenner was ordained as a Baptist minister in Brookfield, Queen’s County, Nova Scotia in 1889, the year that his daughter Lenna was born. In 1891, he graduated from Acadia College. John earned an MA from Newton Seminary, Massachusetts in 1893. According to the 1900 American census, the Jenners were living in Springfield, where John was serving West Merrick Baptist Church. In October 1901, the family moved to Halifax, where he accepted a call to North Baptist Church.

No one in the family followed John into the ministry. However, his children did inherit his commitment to hard work. Hugh became a bookkeeper and sometime between 1910 and 1914, Lenna Mae enrolled in nursing school. She may have attended the two year program at the Victoria General Hospital School of Nursing in Halifax where students were taught everything from making beds to preparing patients for the operating room.

War Changes Everything
The First World War began in August 1914. That fall, Hugh Jenner joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force and was posted overseas. In April 1917, Lenna began working in a military hospital in Canada. The Canadian Nurse and Hospital Review of March 1918 reported that “Nursing Sisters Coates and Jenner, of the Station Hospital are leaving for the Military Hospital, Kentville, N. S.” There were many “station hospitals” in Canada, but Lenna may have served in the one in Halifax. The military hospital in Kentville was at the Aldershot training camp. It was probably from there that Lenna Mae was posted overseas in June 1918.

Lenna’s pre-posting medical declared that her health was good. This, despite the fact that she had already been working for fourteen months and her most recent assignment had been at a camp where roughly 7,000 soldiers were trained at any one time. In Kentville, she worked 12-hour-days and was exposed to illnesses such as tuberculosis and influenza.

Casualty of War
In Britain, Lenna was assigned to work at the West Cliff Canadian Eye and Ear Hospital in Folkestone. In October 1918, just two months after her arrival overseas, she complained to the Matron-in-Chief “of loss of strength and weight also of pain in the left side on exertion.” Lenna was sent to a private nursing home in London. From there she was admitted to Clarence House, North Finchley, for an abdominal operation for “tubercular peritonitis.” She died of septicemia on December 12, two months after she first became ill.

The medical team was probably not paying adequate attention to Lenna’s symptoms, according to historian and nurse Katherine Dewar. “The peritoneum is the covering of the abdominal cavity and I would assume that the patient had TB somewhere else in her body and it spread via the blood stream (septicemia) to the peritoneum…I would say that someone was already run down from chronic illness when this occurred.” Lenna likely contracted tuberculosis in the crowded conditions at Aldershot Camp, or in the demanding confines of the Eye and Ear Hospital.

No Tribute to the Female Fallen
Family members were always invited to provide an appropriate quote or saying to adorn the military headstones of their loved ones. There is no such quote on Lenna Mae Jenner’s headstone. In life and in death, indifference seems to have marked the way that others treated the life and service of this brave nursing sister.

Sisters Sewing to Save Soldiers

According to David Parsons of the WWI-Listserve, Capt. Cluny Macpherso, RAMC, a physician from St John's Newfoundland was at St Omer the end of April 1915. At that time, he met with Professors Baker and Watson, who had been sent from the Imperial Chemistry College to learn what gas was used against allied forces and what measures could be taken to protect from future attacks. Capt. Macpherson asked an unnamed nurse at a CCS nearby to sew together material with an eye piece. This was the first "hood mask." It was tested in the chemistry room in the local school and adopted with variations for the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). By the end of 1915, more than 2 million hood masks had been sent to France before the box respirator was introduced in early 1916. It would be nice to know the nurse's name and how much input had in the design of this mask. We remember her none the less--she made a vital contribution to keeping soldiers safe from the impact of this terrible weapon.

A Poignant Letter to the Editor

A letter to the editor sent to the Vancouver Sun on April 6, 1919 raises questions that many of us still ask today about the failure to remember the nurses of the First World War:

"Many persons are expressing regrets that so far apparently no effort has been made to arrange for a public welcome to our returning overseas nurses. Since the war first sounded its clarion call to arms many of our local daughters have gone overseas to help in the great work of healing and bringing back to life those men who went near to the "Great Divide" inthe interests of the cause of the Empire. None, least of all the soldiers themselves, will gainsay the tremendous part played by those "ministering angels" to whose devoted service many thousands of men today owe their lives and limbs.

Many of those nurses have already returned home. Some will never come back having given their lives in the great common cause. Those who have returned, beyond the greeting of personal friends have received no public welcome and no public recognition of their services.

The same may be said of the many brave girls who for many months have been driving ambulances near the firing lines, daily in risk of their lives, but never for one moment giving a thought of their own safety, but as true Britishers "doing their bit" for humanity's sake.

Surely it is time that at least the various women's organizations of the city should come to some arrangement whereby a proper and fitting public welcome could be arranged for every brave returning woman worker who has rendered such unselfish service for our great Empire.

Everybody is out to welcome returning soldiers, and surely it should not be said in the years to come that the work of nurses and other war workers was allowed to pass unrecognized.

May I appeal to the women of the city to see that ever one of these brave women rece3ives a hearty public "welcome home?""

Signed "Beatrice"

This is a photo of Rena McLean, provided courtesy of Katherine Dewar. In future blog posts I hope to add more photos of Rena.

Heroic PEI Nursing Sisters in WWI

Book Review

Those Splendid Girls by Katherine Dewar explores the lives and work of the 115 nursing sisters of Prince Edward Island who served overseas during the First World War. During a visit to a local archive, Dewar read a 1919 article describing Island nursing sisters coming home from the war. It was on page eight of the newspaper, while images of returning soldiers were displayed on page one. “I concluded that nurses had got short shrift!” recalls Dewar, a former professor of nursing. Her book seeks to correct that imbalance.

Those Splendid Girls describes the lives of women like Rena McLean of Souris, PEI. Born into an upper class family, McLean graduated from the Newport Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1908. Like many who served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, McLean was the cream of the crop—Head Nurse in the operating room of the Henry Hayward Memorial Hospital in Massachusetts. She was accepted into the CAMC early in the war and sent overseas in September 1914. Rena served in England, France, Salonika and on hospital ships. Sadly, like so many of the soldiers serving overseas, Rena would lose her life—drowned after a German torpedo ripped through the hospital ship Llandovery Castle on June 27, 1918.

Dewar doesn’t just report the facts about the nurses—she brings them to life with anecdotes gathered from family archives across PEI, photographs never seen before, quotes from the nurses themselves, and well-researched contextual material. Some of the stories are painful to read. Enroute home to Halifax, Nurse McLean writes “this may be my last trip over…” Before her return journey to England, she buys a flashlight “It will come in handy if we are torpedoed,” she tells her father.

Dewar provides a list of the decorations awarded to nurses, an extensive bibliography, and short bios of all the women who served, including those who enlisted in American and British nursing corps. The materials she gathered from families is invaluable. (When I researched Rena McLean for this blog, I wasn't able to locate these kinds of records--Dewar's work has added invaluable information about this courageous nurse.) She also explores why the nurses did not receive the hero’s welcome they deserved and why they are forgotten in our histories of the First World War. Dewar believes that sexism and the fact that nurses seldom died during the war (although over 70 Canadian women in various corps did lose their lives) meant that few historians thought their stories worthy of exploration. The women themselves also “saw no glory in war—nothing heroic,” writes Dewar. “At the end of the war, they packed away their diaries, their photo albums, and other memorabilia and buried their memories.”

It is fortunate for us that Dewar took the time to unpack those artifacts and bring these heroic women’s stories back into the light for all of us to learn from and enjoy. Those Splendid Girls is published by Island Studies Press and is available for $27.95. Reviewed by Debbie Marshall.

Memorial Stones to Ainslie St. Clair Dagg and Miriam Eastman Baker

A kind reader from overseas, has sent me two photos of the gravestones of Ainslie St. Clair Dagg and Miriam Eastman Baker. She writes:

"I have been back [at Cliveden] today (I walk there on most days) and took photos of [Ainslie's] and Miriam Eastman Baker's gravestones. I attach the photos for your use or for anyone else would like a copy. It is a beautiful resting place there and from the research I have done this hospital was a special place and must have provided comfort for thousands."

Thanks for sharing these wonderful photos of the resting places of Dagg and Baker. We remember them!

VAD L268--Update on Dorothy Pearson Twist

Yesterday I wrote a short blog about Dorothy Pearson Twist. Little did I know, but there was a Red Cross service card enroute to me with more details about this remarkable VAD's life. Not all voluntary nurses nursed! Many did clerical work as well. That was the case for Dorothy. What is even more interesting is that the clerical work she did was in an area of tremendous importance to many soldiers--in particular, prisoner's of war. Beginning in May 1916, VADL268 as she was known, was secretary to Lady Evelyn Grant Duff, head of the "Berne Bread Bureau," a voluntary organization providing much needed bread to prisoners of war in Germany. As John Lewis-Stempel writes in his book The War Behind the Wire: The Life, Death and Glory of British Prisoners of War:

“The blessedly white bread in the Red Cross ration was mainly courtesy of the redoubtable Lady Evelyn Grant Duff, who arranged shipments of flour from Marseilles to Switzerland, where it was baked into loaves. Known to POWs as ‘Swiss Dodgers’, Lady Evelyn’s moist, white loaves were delivered into Germany by road and rail. By 1917 her “Berne bread Bureau’ was packing 15,000 loaves a day and had been supplemented by a Copenhagen Bureau to supply camps in the north of Germany. In summer, when bread tended to go mouldy quickly, the bakeries substituted hard biscuits or rusks for Lady Evelyn’s baps.”

Twist must have been committed to this work; she went on to work with the Prisoner of War Committee from February 1917 to August 1917. At that point, perhaps out of the growing need for nurses to care for flu victims, the VAD was transferred to the Frensham Hill Military Hospital, Farnham. Sadly, she came down with pneumonia and died at the hospital on September 26, 1918.

A Forgotten VAD: Dorothy Pearson Twist

In an excellent article entitled "Filling the Gaps, Canadian Voluntary Nurses, the 1917 Halifax Explosion, and the Influenza Epidemic of 1918," scholar Linda Quiney says that there were approximately 2000 Canadian VADs who served in during the Great War, of which 500 served overseas. (There were 23,000 British VADs.) "VAD" stands for Voluntary Aid Detachment--these were groups of voluntary nurses (usually with very limited training) who worked for the Red Cross during the Great War. These nurses came to be known individually as "VADs."

In her article, Quiney describes several Canadian VADs who died during and just after the Great War. One of the Canadian VADs who gave her life was Dorothy Pearson Twist. Dorothy died September 26, 1918 in Aldershot, England. According to the British 1911 census, she was born in Prescott, Lancashire. Her father Pearson Gill Twist was a “woolen manufacturer’s agent”. At sixteen in 1911, Dorothy was working as a “pupil school teacher.” Her father was 52, her mother 42. She had an older brother Geoffrey (23), older sister named Phyllis (21), younger brother Hugh (11) and a younger sister Cicely (9). They were living in Prescott, Lancashire at 15 Station Road. Dorothy was born in that same place. The family immigrated to Canada in 1913 to Shawnigan Lake, BC, where Dorothy's father worked as a realty clerk. Sometime during the Great War, Dorothy signed up as a Canadian VAD and was sent overseas. Little is known about the circumstances of her death, except that she died at Aldershot, the location of a Canadian military base during the war. I have written to the British Red Cross to learn more about Dorothy; when I receive more information, I will post it on this site.

Hello again. I haven't been blogging lately as I have been immersed in doing WWI-related research and preparing to participate in an upcoming conference on the First World War. However, as I will be away on August 4, the 100th anniversary of the war, I wanted to be sure to post a brief blog and photograph in recognition of this anniversary. A fellow researcher, Bill May, has sent me a photograph of a grave of an "unknown nursing sister" of the First World War. He found the grave during a visit to Normandy. It is unusual to find such graves. Unlike the soldiers, nurses who died during the war are much easier to identify, locate, and bury in marked graves. So, there is no grave to the "unknown nurse" as there is (by necessity) to the unknown soldier. However, in today's blog, I would like to dedicate this image of the "unknown nurse" to all the nurses, from both sides of the conflict, who gave their lives and are now almost entirely forgotten. On this site, and on a growing number of sites, we are trying to reverse that trend and say "we remember you." We remember your service, your sacrifice, your willingness to be there for men who suffered, recovered or died. In a global conflict with devastating consequences, you were there to bring some order, kindness and sanity. We remember you.

The Death of a Royal Red Cross Nurse: Rena McLean

According to her military records, Rena Maude McLean was born on June 14, 1880 in Souris, P.E.I. (although family records indicate her birth was 1879). She was the daughter of John McLean—a businessman and Conservative politician—and Matilda Jane Jury.

Adele Townshend, in an article by in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, writes that Rena McLean was nicknamed Bird by her family. McLean attended Mount Allison ladies’ college in Sackville, New Brunswick between 1891 and 1892, and graduated from the Halifax Ladies’ College in 1896. She studied nursing at the Newport Hospital in Newport, Rhode Island, graduating in 1908. “She was head nurse in the operating room at the Henry Heywood Memorial Hospital in Gardner, Massachusetts,” writes Townshend, “when she enlisted for service in World War I and was appointed to the Canadian Army Medical Corps on 28 Sept. 1914.”

McLean left for Britain on October 7, 1914. Her military records describe her as 5’ 3” tall, weighing 133 pounds, with light brown hair, and hazel eyes. She listed her religious faith as Presbyterian. On November 8, 1914 she went to France with No.2 Canadian Stationary based in Le Touquet. She spent ten days with No.12 British Stationary Hospital at Rouen in October and November 1915, joining the Duchess of Connaught’s Canadian Red Cross Hospital in Taplow, England on November 30 of that year.

The quality of her nursing and her dedication was reflected in the fact that in June 1916 she was awarded the Royal Red Cross Second Class one of the highest honours awarded to nurses during the Great War.

On June 8, 1916, she was assigned to transport duty for one month. She returned to Taplow in July and stayed there until November, at which time she was transferred to Salonica, Greece, in October 1916 for service with No.1 Canadian Stationary Hospital. Conditions there were very poor, as Maureen Duffus writes in her book Battlefront Nurses: “Nothing, however, could fully protect them from the other enemies: the Macedonian climate—freezing winds, torrential rains in winter—and the notorious virulent mosquitoes breeding in Salonika’s many swamps in the hot, humid summers. Malaria and dystentery accounted for thousands of patients at military hospitals throughout the war.”

Rena returned to England on August 17, 1917. In November, she was posted to No. 16 Canadian General Hospital in Orpington, Kent. In February 1918 Rena undertook transport duty again aboard the Araguaya. A month later, she was back No.16 General Hospital. In March 1918, she was posted to the Llandovery Castle, which carried Canadian wounded to Halifax.

According to Adele Townshend, “Rena McLean had been an attractive, fun-loving woman, kind and caring. As her last letter, written on board the Llandovery Castle on 16 June, illustrates, she had kept her morale high in spite of the years spent in some of the worst areas of the war. ‘Here we are once more approaching Halifax, but still as far from home as ever. . . . This trip more than half our patients are amputation cases and would make you heartsick only they are so cheerful and happy themselves. . . . This may be my last trip over and, if it is, that means that I don’t get home until dear knows when, for as soon as I get to England I am going to put in for France and once there it will be hard enough to get away.’”

Rena McLean is remembered in plaques to her memory in St James United Church in Souris, in Mount Allison’s Memorial Library, and in the X-ray laboratory at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown.

Remembering Minnie Follette

"Unflinchingly and calmly, as steady and collected as if on parade, without a complaint or a single sign of emotion, our fourteen devoted nursing sisters faced the terrible ordeal of certain death--only a matter of minutes--as our lifeboat neared that mad whirlpool of waters where all human power was helpless."
(Extract from Sergeant A. Knight's story of the destruction of the Llandovery Castle.)

Today I’m writing about Minnie Asenalte Follette—an experienced, heroic nurse who was one of the 14 Canadian women who died at sea while on hospital duty aboard HMS Llandovery Castle.As I have mentioned in previous posts, the nurses on this ship were all women who had seen long service overseas. Several had enlisted with the 1st Canadian Contingent and begun their service in September 1914.

Minnie Asenalte Follette was born November 11, 1884 in Nova Scotia. She was the daughter of Oscar and Lydia Follette (nee Hatfield.) Oscar was a master mariner. Her parents were Methodists.

Minnie followed in her mother’s footsteps, training at the Victoria General Hospital School of Nursing, the first nursing school in Nova Scotia. Applicants had to be 20 years or older, provide a recommendation from a clergyman, and after the probationary period were paid the princely sum of $9 per month for their first year and $11 for their second. According to the synopsis of their program, “The instruction will include the general care of the sick, the managing of helpless patients in bed, changing bed and body linen, giving baths, keeping patients warm or cool, preventing and dressing bed sores, bandaging, applying of fomentations, poultices and minor dressings, the preparing and serving of food, the feeding of helpless patients and those who refuse food, the administering of enemata and use of the catheter, the observation of symptoms of delirium, stupor, shock, etc.” (from the VGHSN Annual Report 1907-1908, Mount Saint Vincent Archives). It was a limited curriculum for a woman who would one day treat the terrible wounds of the First World War. Follette graduated from the school in 1909. She was 5’5” and weighed 125 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair.

By 1911, Follette was working at No. 2 Army Medical Corps Military Hospital in Halifax. In 1912, she embarked on a special course of study in military nursing. After Follette’s death, her friend and fellow nurse Blanche Grant wrote to Follette’s parents and described how the two women served at the Typhoid Emergency Hospital at Christmas 1914 during the epidemic that was gripping Halifax at the time. Grant reported that Follette sent her many letters during the latter’s service in France.

Follette enlisted on September 24, 1914 and sailed with the First Canadian Contingent on October 3, 1914. After her arrival in Britain, she was assigned to No. 2 Canadian General Hospital on Salisbury Plain. In early 1915, she was transferred to 1st Canadian Casualty Clearing Station in France. She would serve there until March 1916. By that time, Minnie’s health had broken down from stress and the heavy load of nursing. In early April, she was admitted to No. 14 General Hospital in Wimereaux and eventually found herself in London, recovering from what the Military Medical Board called “nervous exhaustion.” She was ordered to take two months of sick leave. The board reported: “This nursing sister is suffering from the strain of constant duty with the 1st CEF for part of the time in a Casualty Clearing Station. She requires a considerable time of leave for complete recovery.” Follette would take two months to relax, recover, and play the tourist in Britain.

In May 1917, Follette was assigned to No. 9 Canadian Stationary Hospital in Bramshott. She served there for two months before being assigned to hospital ship duty with HMS Letitia. On August 1, at Chebucto Bay, Halifax, the ship sank. All aboard, including Follette, were saved from the wreck. After the incident, Follette was given 17 days furlough. Upon her return to Britain, she was assigned to No. 16 Canadian General Hospital, at Orpington, Kent. The earlier wreck does not seem to have fazed this daughter of a master mariner. At the end of March 1918, she volunteered to transfer to the hospital ship Llandovery Castle. According to an undated news clipping, “Miss Follette made a number of trips on the Llandovery Castle and was very popular with the men who returned on that ship, they speaking in glowing terms in the faithful way in which she attended to her duties.”

On June 27, 1918, the HMS Llandovery Castle, clearly marked as a hospital ship, was sunk by a German U-Boat which later rammed all lifeboats. Here is the record of what happened to the 14 nurses aboard:

Sergt. A. Knight, the non-commissioned officer of the C.A.M.C., who took charge of life-boat No. 5, into which the fourteen nurses were placed.

"Our boat," said Sergt. Knight, "was quickly loaded and lowered to the surface of the water. Then the crew of eight men and myself faced the difficulty of getting free from the ropes holding us to the ship's side. I broke two axes trying to cut ourselves away, but was unsuccessful.

"With the forward motion and choppy sea the boat all the time was pounding against the ship's side. To save the boat we tried to keep ourselves away by using the oars, and soon every one of the latter were broken.
"Finally the ropes became loose at the top and we commenced to drift away. We were carried towards the stern of the ship, when suddenly the poop-deck seemed to break away and sink. The suction drew us quickly into the vacuum, the boat tipped over sideways, and every occupant went under.

"I estimate we were together in the boat about eight minutes. In that whole time I did not hear a complaint or murmur from one of the sisters. There was not a cry for help or any outward evidence of fear. In the entire time I overheard only one remark when the matron, Nursing Sister M.M. Fraser, turned to me as we drifted helplessly towards the stern of the ship and asked:--

"Sergeant, do you think there is any hope for us?"

"I replied, 'No,' seeing myself our helplessness without oars and the sinking condition of the stern of the ship.
" A few seconds later we were drawn into the whirlpool of the submerged afterdeck, and the last I saw of the nursing sisters was as they were thrown over the side of the boat. All were wearing life-belts, and of the fourteen two were in their nightdress, the others in uniform.

"It was," concluded Sergt. Knight, "doubtful if any of them came to the surface again, although I myself sank and came up three times, finally clinging to a piece of wreckage and being eventually picked up by the captain's boat."

Nurse Minnie Follette was one of those nurses. Her name is inscribed on the Halifax Memorial. (With thanks to Bruce MacDonald for his help.To see Bruce's blog: http://guysboroughgreatwarveterans.blogspot.ca/)

War Decorations for Nurses

On their website, The Canadian Great War Project has reprinted an article from the Toronto World of Wednesday, September 25, 1918, entitled Six Nurses Win Military Medal. I'd like to reprint an excerpt of that article here as a reminder of the kinds of bravery exhibited by many Canadian nurses during the First World War.


Six Nurses Win Military Medal
Decorated for Conspicuous Bravery During Air Raids of the Enemy
Other Honors Given
Officers Gain Bar to Military Cross for Exceptional Gallantry in Field

London, Sept. 24. Six Canadian nurses were tonight gazetted as having won the military medal for bravery during enemy raids. Matron Edith Campbell of Point Claire attended wounded sisters regardless of personal danger; Lenora Herrington of Napanee, remained on duty the entire night and her personal example of courage was largely responsible for the maintenance of discipline and efficiency. Lottie Urquhart , New Glasgow, N.S., when four bombs fell on her wards, attended the wounded with a courage and devotion which was an inspiring example. Janet Mary Williamson of Grenville, Quebec displayed exceptional coolness in a badly damaged ward, sustaining the patients and ensuring their evacuation. Meta Hodge of Hamilton and Eleanor Jean Thompson of Valleyfield, Quebec, although both injured by a falling beam, extinguished with great presence of mind, overturned oil stoves, later helping to remove the patients.

Back to the Front: Visiting the War Grave of Nursing Sister Agnes MacPherson

I've just returned from a tour of the battlefields and cemeteries of the First World War in Belgium and France. It was a moving, poignant tour, focusing on Canadian contributions during that terrible conflict and led by film maker and historian Norm Christie. In coming blog posts, I will share some of my experiences, especially as they related to Canadian nursing sisters who lost their lives while serving overseas. During the tour, I was fortunate to be able to visit Bagneux Cemetery, the burying place of the three Canadian nurses who died in the Doullens raid. The Bagneux cemetery is in a lonely spot overlooking a rolling countryside of farmer's fields and small forests. It is about one and a half miles southwest of Doullens. Bagneux is a small cemetery, with a low stone wall, and a simple cross of sacrifice.

I have previously written about two of the three nurses who died at Doullens--Dorothy Baldwin and Eden Pringle. Today I will profile the third, Nursing Sister Agnes MacPherson. Unlike Baldwin and Pringle, her stone simply provides her name and date of death and the fact that she served in the Canadian Army Nursing Service. However, as always, there is more to each of these women than the simple stone that marks their grave. MacPherson was born in Brandon, Manitoba, on March 2, 1891. Her Scottish-born parents were James and Helen MacPherson (nee Rae). James was a farmer. Agnes also had a younger sister named Christina and a younger brother named Alexander. In 1901, Helen and her children were living with her brother John Rae in Brandon. By 1911, however, the family were reunited and farming somewhere near or in Lakeland, Manitoba with Agnes' grandfather John MacPherson, one of the first farmers to establish himself in the district.

Agnes attended Amana School and when war broke out in 1914, she was studying nursing in Winnipeg. Agnes signed onto the CAMC on November 22, 1916. Although she lists her religion as Presbyterian on her attestation papers (not surprising, given that she was Scottish), 1901 census records reveal that her family were Brethren. In 1911, the census expanded that to "Plymouth Brethren," a conservative, low church, evangelical sect that originated in Ireland and grew out of Anglicanism (Wikipedia). During the war, some Plymouth Brethren members attempted to get conscientious objector status but were turned down since the church did not rigorously enforce pacifism among its members. However, Agnes' younger brother, born 1893, did not serve in the war--perhaps because of his beliefs. The fact that Agnes lists herself as Presbyterian on her attestation papers suggests that she had either converted to the faith, or didn't want anyone to know her connection with the pacifist controversies surrounding Brethren churches in general.She also might have felt that pacifist sympathies were very much in keeping with the healing work of nursing.

Whatever the case, Agnes served at the #3 Canadian Stationary Hospital in the Citadel at Doullens, France. At some point, she received the Royal Red Cross medal for her service. During the raid on Doullens, McPherson was on duty in the operating room alongside Nurse Eden Pringle. At midnight on May 29, 1918, German planes bombed the main building--the ancient citadel in which the hospital was located. According to the unit diary:

"Three surgical teams were on duty that night but two had completed their operation and had gone for their midnight meal. The other team (Capt. E.E. Meek, C.A.M.C. and Lieut. A.P.H. Sage, M.O.R.C. U.S.A.) were finishing their operation and they, their patient, Sisters A McPherson and E.L. Pringle, the orderlies and stretcher bearers, were all victims of the bomb. During the work of rescue and in the endeavor to save the buildings from fitre, we received splendid assistance from three companies of French soldiers and from the English soldiers quartered in Doullens. With their timely aid we were able to save the west wing of the main buildings. The night was clear and bright. There should have been no difficulty in the airmen recognising it as a hospital. The plane is stated to have been at a height of about 6000 feet. The hospital is well marked with red crosses which airmen say are quite visible from the air. There is no doubt that the occupants of the aeroplane knew it was a hospital for when they came back and dropped bombs a second time, the flames clearly illuminated the red crosses on the buildings. This hospital, being in the Citadel, is surrounded on three sides by fields and on the fourth by a French hospital. There were no camps of troops or dumps of any description in the vicinity of the hospital."

British Matron in Chief McCarthy later wrote: "On arrival found that one huge triangle in the Citadel had been absolutely destroyed – part of it did not exist and the remainder of the roof had gone leaving only walls. The whole of the theatre and Xray appliances had been absolutely wiped out and the people working in the theatre were not recognisable."

Some might argue that the raid on Etaples, which also took the lives of medical staff (including nurses) and patients, might have been justified as it bordered the rail line and an immense training ground. However, Doullens had no military value and nothing could excuse the bombing of the hospital there.

It was very moving to visit the graves of the three Canadian nurses--Pringle, Baldwin, and MacPherson--who died at Doullens while attempting to do their healing work. As we move closer and closer to the anniversary of the start of the First World War, we must remember them and their selfless service.

Book Review: The Daughters of Mars

In The Daughters of Mars by Tom Keneally (Vintage: 2012), two Australian sisters--Sally and Naomi Durrance--join the Australian military nursing service and serve in the Dardanelles and on the Western Front during the First World War. The two women seem as different as chalk and cheese at the beginning of the book. After both receive nurses' training, Sally remains on the family dairy farm to nurse her ill mother and work at the local hospital while her older sister goes to work in more prestigious Sydney. Naomi is stylish, Sally lacks confidence and is shy and reserved.

There is a controversy over their mother's death; a worry that somehow one of the sisters--out of compassion and love--helped her along to her eternal rest. The two women, held together by this common event, eventually become fast friends. The book wonderfully describes the kind of lives that nurses of this period experienced. Like the soldiers, many nurses had never left their country. Now they visit the pyramids in Egypt and are made speechless by what they see. "Dear Papa," writes Sally, "How can I tell you of what Naomi and I have seen...?" Keneally helps the readers understand the many risks the women take. One of the ships they are on is torpedoed, a colleague is raped (something that is little discussed in Great War histories), their hospitals are frequently bombed into oblivion. Developments in medical science are explored (one doctor insists on wearing a mask when going from an infectious patient to visit others), along with post traumatic stress in both nurses and the men they care for, the problem of disease--dysentery, typhoid, etc., and the unrelenting quality of the war. Keneally brilliantly reveals how the war gradually wears the women down to the point that they become its victims, too.

The book does give some sense of hope; at the end of the book the war is over and life continues on, with some happiness and fulfillment for some of the characters in the book; but the scars remain. Highly recommended.

The Aftermath of War: Remembering Sadie St. Germain

Researcher Tony Murphy of Great Britain has kindly allowed me to post the story of Sadie St. Germain, which he put together with the help of members of the 'Canada at War' and 'Roots Chat' Forums. Her story is that of the most forgotten victims of the war--those who died a few years after the war from causes related to their wartime service.

Sadie St Germain was born July 21, 1884 in Hull, Quebec, Canada to Camille St Germain and Christine St Germain (nee McCallum). Her father was a Wood Contractor, born in France, and she had five siblings, Georgina, Elizabeth, Theodore, Bertha, Mable and, born later, another brother Milton.

No further personal details were discovered until 1905 when it appears that she emigrated to the U.S.A. and settled in Newburgh, New York as a lodger in a premises owned by an Eliza Rittenhouse. While there she trained as a nurse and recent research suggests that this could have been St. Luke’s Hospital, Newburgh, New York and apparently continued nursing in New York.

There is no indication as to when she returned to Canada but on 10th August 1916 she enlisted in the Canadian Army Medical Corps as a Nursing Sister with the Overseas Expeditionary Force and sailed on 16th August on the S.S. Ascania arriving in England about August 26.

We do not know where she was initially posted when she arrived but it is recorded that she was hospitalized on January 3, 1917 with a Bronchial condition and apparently discharged on February 14 of the same year, possibly for a period of convalescence and was then, on 8th March, attached to the Kitchener Hospital, Brighton, Sussex, formerly a Workhouse (now Brighton General Hospital, East Sussex).

On September 18, 1917 she was posted to France and attached to the 1st Canadian General Hospital at Etaples and remained there until 21st December 1918 when she was transferred to the 2nd Canadian Stationary Hospital at Outreau then, on February 18, 1919, Sadie returned to England and was attached to 10th Canadian General Hospital at Brighton, Sussex, possibly part of the Kitchener Hospital mentioned above. Whether by choice or the reduction of staff in Europe, on May 13, 1919 she sailed on S.S. Northland to Canada arriving in Halifax on 23rd May and was demobilised on 26th May 1919.

Sadie settled in Ottawa in an apartment at 366 Laurier Avenue West where she died suddenly on May 3, 1923 aged 39 from Arterio Sclerosis, Tubercle in the lungs and Acute Pulmonary Odeema, the cause of death being officially attributed to her service.

Her funeral was a private function from her brother Milton’s residence at 122 Cartier Street, Ottawa.Sadie is buried in St James Cemetery, Hull, Quebec with an official Privy Council Canadian CWGC headstone.