An estimated 1,500 nurses from a number of countries lost their lives during World War I.[1] Some died from disease or accidents, and some from enemy action.
29 Australian nurses died from disease or injuries; 25 of these died on active service, and 4 died in Australia from injuries or illness sustained during their service.[2] Most of these nurses were serving in the Australian Army Nursing Service; however, a small number were serving with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, one of a number of British Army nursing services during World War I.[2] Other Australian women made their own way to Europe and joined the British Red Cross, private hospitals or other allied services.[3]
Nurses serving with the Australian Army Nursing Service
53 Canadian nurses lost their lives during the war.[42] In one incident, on 27 June 1918, 14 nurses were killed when their hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle was torpedoed while travelling from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool, England.[43] The nurses who died were:
Rosa Vecht (18 July 1881 – 23 January 1915) died when she was injured by shrapnel at Veurne in West Flanders, while saying goodbye before a planned evacuation. She died after an operation to amputate her leg.[44]
New Zealand
Plaque at Waimate Hospital to nurses who died on the SS Marquette
16 New Zealand nurses died during the war, including 10 who died in the sinking of the troop ship SS Marquette.[45]
Ecaterina Teodoroiu was a Romanian nurse who enlisted as a soldier and died on 3 September 1917 during active service.[47]
United Kingdom
Edith Cavell
The National Memorial Arboretum has a memorial to nurses who served in the first and Second World Wars. The memorial includes the names of nearly 1,300 nurses who died during or as a direct result of their wartime service.[48] The names were taken from research carried out by Yvonne McEwen. McEwen created rolls of honour for the two wars, and deposited copies in national libraries in Edinburgh, Aberystwyth, Belfast, Dublin and London. The London copy is on permanent display in the Royal College of Nursing Library and can be accessed by appointment.[49]
Most nurses were part of the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS). At the start of the war there were fewer than 300 nurses; four years later when the war ended it had over 10,000 nurses in its ranks.[50] According to the British Red Cross, "128 nursing members, 11 general service members and six Joint War Committee hospital members were killed."[51]
Edith Cavell was executed for treason by a German firing squad on 12 October 1915 in Brussels, Belgium.
Catherine Miller was working at the 1st Western General Hospital in Liverpool, England when she died on 24 December 1918. She had contracted malaria while serving in Russia.[53][54]
Scottish nurses
An estimated 150 British nurses were killed during World War 1. Of those killed 40 were Scottish. Four of the nurses were killed by enemy action including Agnes Murdoch Climie, a staff nurse who trained at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.[55] Miss Climie was a member of the Territorial Force Nursing Service and based at a general hospital in France while she was on the staff of the 4th Scottish General Hospital, Stobhill. Miss Climie was not on duty during the bombardment but returned to her ward and was killed while singing to a patient who was nervous.[56] Miss Climie was killed instantly while in the same incident Sister Mabel Milne of Perth, who trained at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and was attached to the 2nd Scottish General Hospital died a short time after being wounded. Two Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs), Miss D Coles (2nd Scottish Hospital) and Miss E Thompson (1st Scottish Hospital) were also killed.[57]
In March 1915, four Scottish nurses died in Serbia of typhus.[60] They were part of a group of Scottish women – nurses, doctors and volunteers – who had travelled to Serbia to establish Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service:
A memorial with the names of the 40 Scottish nurses killed in WW1 was erected by members of the Military Nursing Service, and unveiled at the Cathedral of St Giles in Edinburgh in 1921. The memorial is a bronze tablet set in green marble.[59]
HMT Osmanieh sinking, 1917
On 31 December 1917, the British troop ship HMS Osmanieh (1906) struck a mine near the entrance to Alexandria Harbour. The ship sank in under 10 minutes and almost 200 service personnel died. Among the dead were eight nurses.[61] Two of them belonged to the Queen Alexandria’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS):
York Minster’sFive Sisters window is the only memorial in the UK dedicated to all the women of the British Empire who lost their lives in World War I.[62][63] Ten oak screens were added to the north side of the St Nicholas Chapel. They list the name of every woman who died in the line of service during WWI. An inscription thereon reads, “This screen records the names of women of the Empire who gave their lives in the war 1914–1918 to whose memory the Five Sisters window was restored by women”.[64] There are 1,513 names listed on the screens.[65]
United States
Nurses Clara Ayres and Helen Burnett Wood were the first two women to be killed while part of the United States military when they died on 17 May 1917, following an accident on board USS Mongolia.[66]
Helen Fairchild died in France on 18 January 1918, from post-operative complications following surgery for an ulcer.[67]
↑ York Minster, York; Order of Service, 9th December 1950. A Service to Welcome Back the Five Windows at their Reinsertion 1950 after the Second World War. Ref: {CY/ZC}/D10/OR 1950
↑ Newman, Vivian (2015). We also served: The forgotten women of the First World War. Barnsley, England: Pen and Sword History. p.145. ISBN1783462256.
↑ "Five Sisters Window: Unveiling by the Duchess of York". The Canadian Nurse (Vol. 21, No. 9ed.). Winnipeg, Canada: Canadian Nurses’ Association. September 1925. p.484.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
