A letter a Hunter nurse wrote to a dead soldier’s wife during World War One near Poperinge in Belgium has found its way back to the region.
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Matron Ida Greaves wrote to Private Alfred Houldcroft's wife Mary Anne Elizabeth on August 13, 1917 after he died from a spinal injury at No 4 Casualty Clearing Station – a large medial triage centre and field hospital.
He was an English man from Birmingham who was part of the sixth battalion Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry Regiment with the British Expeditionary Force.
Private Houldcroft’s grandson Guy Anstiss sent a copy of the letter to researcher Christine Bramble in 2015 after he came across her website Great War nurses from the Hunter, which includes information about Ida’s service.
The letter read:
Dear Mrs Houldcroft, I am grieved to tell you that Private Houldcroft … was very badly wounded in the spine and although everything possible was done for him he passed away at 4.50am this morning. He was very ill all day yesterday and thought he would get better. He was unconscious at the last, didn’t realise that he was dying. His few personal belongings will be forwarded you through the military channels which takes some time. He will be buried with military honours and be with many of his comrades. The graves are very well looked after and his name and number will be put on his cross. With much sympathy, yours sincerely, I Greaves, Matron.
Ms Bramble said matrons generally said the soldier died peacefully, or was asleep when he died, to bring comfort to the family. In many cases this would not have happened, she said.
“Ida was serving in a British unit near the Belgian town of Poperinge at the time. This was close to the 3rd Battle of Ypres,” she said.
“Nurses cared for whoever came through the door – it didn’t matter that she was Australian and he was British.”
Ida, who was born in Newcastle, was in England when war broke out. She was quick to sign up to help and within a month she had been named Matron of the Australian Voluntary Hospital and was working in the field, historical documents show.
Read more: Maitland nurses near the front line
Ms Bramble, who also wrote the book Sisters of the Valley: First World War Nurses from Newcastle and the Hunter Region, has spent years piecing together the movements of more than 80 Hunter nurses who served in the war.
Her research offers our best insight into the experiences these women had as they worked tirelessly to care for wounded and ill soldiers in some very challenging conditions.
Ms Bramble has been able to obtain documents and photographs from Ida’s war experience from her great-great niece and is writing the matron’s biography.
Ida was one of two Hunter women to receive the Royal Red Cross (RRC), the other was Maitland’s Louisa Stobo.
Ms Bramble said the experiences nurses encountered depended upon where they served.
Seven nurses with a connection to Maitland served in Salonika in northern Greece and experienced rough conditions compared with those that served in France far behind the front line.
They were:
Minnie Mears and her sister Sarah Avaline Mears, who were born in West Maitland
Dorothy Mary Feneley, who was living in West Maitland when she signed up
Leila Godfrey, who lived in East Maitland
Ada Harvey, who trained at Maitland Hospital
Genevieve Nimmo ‘Vera’ Hocquard, who graduated from Maitland Hospital in 1916
Minnie Cowan, who trained at Maitland Hospital
At that time Salonika, the second-largest city in Greece, was very underdeveloped and had no roads. The hospitals also did not have electricity, which posed many challenges.
“They only had kerosene for heating and everything took longer to do. It meant that nurses serving here found it harder to spend as much time with their patients as the nurses did in France who had more modern conveniences,” she said.
“Even just boiling the kettle for a hot drink was time consuming.
“Nurses serving in Salonika had casualties brought into the hospital on stretchers that were pulled by donkeys.
“It was very rugged mountain country and it was freezing in winter and hot in summer. A lot of the casualties they were working with were suffering from the diseases that went with that kind of country, as well as wounds.”
Historical documents show many soldiers – and some nurses – contracted malaria. Nurses had to put mosquito nets over their patients at night and tuck it under them to try to stop insect bites.
Some of the nurses in Salonika got malaria themselves and were so seriously ill they were sent home early,
- Ms Bramble said.
“Nurses used to catch what was going around no matter what place they were serving in. You can imagine trenches full of blokes that hadn’t showered in days, the sanitation was rudimentary. They caught all the usual suspects like measles and the flu and came into hospital with it.
“I don’t think I have read a single service record of any of these nurses where they didn’t have at least one period of sick leave.
“Sometimes they got totally run down and they needed to do nothing for a week or a couple of weeks to recover.”
Belinda-Jane Davis
Passionate about community news
Passionate about community news
