World War 1 Nursing Staff – Adelaide Hospital
Sister Enid Cherry completed training at the Adelaide Hospital in 1916. She joined the Australian Army Nursing Service in 1917 and served in Salonica, Greece.
1917
Miss Cherry enlisted in 1916. She went on to train in midwifery at the Queen’s Home and later took an appointment on the staff of the Myer Emporium, where she worked as an Industrial Nurse for twenty three years. She died at the age of ninety five in 1986.
The following interview was conducted by Joan Durdin on Anzac Day, 1976, with Miss Enid Cherry.
“When I was through (Nurse training) they didn’t need nurses (in the war effort). So I charged a (Adeladie Hospital) ward for a year, and then they advertised for nurses again, to nurse in a British hospital. Most of the patients were men who had been brought out from the gaols, in Britain , to fight in the Balkans.”
“They had been fighting in the Balkans. The summer hospital was at Hortiac, and close to us was Mount Hortiac which is mentioned in the Bible. The hill that our summer hospital was on was the one that St Paul preached from. We were living in tents. If we were off duty we had to be behind the barbed wire by half-past five. We weren’t supposed to go walking unless we were in the company of an officer. There were three hundred of us (Australians), went away on the ‘Mooltan’. We formed the nursing staff of four hospitals in Salonika. The English doctors were very nice”.
“There was a lot of medical work. Malaria, both innocent and malignant, was rife. Dysentery was rife – three kinds of dysentery. Also blackwater fever. Nothing had been done for them until the Allies went there. In the little village of Hortiac, the people were living in those thatched houses”.
“The winter hospital was very cold. In fact, when we had the blizzard, one of the nurses washed her hair and it didn’t dry – it froze! And the medicines froze. We had to melt snow to wash in the morning. We took turns to get up first, and light the kerosene heater. In the evening we’d melt more snow so that we could wash. This was whenever we had a blizzard. I shall never forget it. I think that we stayed for a fortnight too long at the summer hospital. I got up one morning, at a time when all the patients had been transferred, and we were waiting to be transferred and I said: “Girls, come and look at the snow!” Of course, they were out of bed in no time! That was Simon and Buchanan (tent mates)”.
“After Salonika , I was invalided home. I got the dysentery, and I still suffer because of it. I am a T.P.I. now. When we were coming back across the Mediterranean, all lights out, of course, at two o’clock in the morning there was a whisper at our door. “Get dressed and go to your boats.” A submarine was around. We had three men-o’-war conducting us, and when we got up in the morning one of them was missing. Laura Simon and I were together, and one other, Nicholls. We were in an inside cabin. We got dressed into our uniforms, fully dressed in our outdoor uniforms, and sat on the deck. While we were waiting by the boats a Chinese crewman brought us sandwiches about that size (indicating a large sandwich) and we ate them all. We didn’t know when we would get any more!”
“Anyway, one of the officers came along, and told us that there was no need to worry. There were three men-o’-war to deal with the submarine. It wasn’t all that reassuring! If there was one submarine there might have been another. There was a big convoy. Our hospital ship had a lot of men on it. There were quite a few nurses being invalided home. Uren was there too (Matron Uren). The nurses who were going home had either malaria, Nicholls had had pleurisy badly, no that was Simon. Polly Vowles was there. We were glad when we got in to Alexandria. We had to go straight off after a few hours, and we joined a hospital ship to go home. It was very nice when we got out of the danger zone and were able to have the lights on”.
“Some of Nurses were looking after patients on this return, but I was unfit for duty because of the dysentery. I was home for about a month before the Armistice. I went away in 1917, and got back towards the end of 1918″.
“I went back to Home Service for a while. Then we were asked to volunteer for quarantine work in Western Australia. The Western Australian hospitals couldn’t find enough nurses for them. So we volunteered, and went back to active service. We were on duty with the troops. Three of us went down to Albany to collect some troops coming back on a hospital ship, and we brought them back to Freemantle. The Polly Vowles and I went to Albany and later on Nicholls and someone else came to Albany with us. Most of our work was just quarantine work. We had very few sick men They were being held in quarantine for a fortnight. In between time, when we had no patients, we could go over to Albany and stay at the Freemasons’. A girl named Ridgeway died while on quarantine work at Albany. Some of our doctors were doing duty there too. They didn’t have enough doctors, so some from South Australia went over. They were house surgeons when I was training. Some of them stayed on in Western Australia, and practiced there”.
