CAPÍTULO 3. ACIDOS GRASOS ESENCIALES
3.4. FUNCIONES CEREBRALES
duties reflected the traditional organisation for female nurses.39 These nurses would
3 6
3 7
3 8
3 9
H . Maclean, p. 125.
Memorandum from Wortley, Director of Movements, British High Commission to High Commissioner, New Zealand. 22 March 1915, ADI, 49/1 12, NA.
I. McGibbon, p. 240. Australia was to supply 10,000 men while New Zealand's contribution would be 6,053 men. Australia would also supply hospital equipment and staff if more colonial forces were required.
On August 15 1914, the fIrst contingent of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, the Advanced Expeditionary Force, left New Zealand for German occupied Samoa with six nurses also on-board the transporters. Ida Willis joined the six nurses at Fiji. She had been on holiday and was unable to return to New Zealand. She worked in Samoa and later joined the NZANS. Headquarters, New Zealand Defence Forte's Base Records for Vida Mary Katie Maclean show that she was initially given the regimental number 3nO as a member of No. 4 Field Ambulance on the 10 August 1914. The prefIX 3 denotes the New Zealand Medical Corps. On the 1 1 August 1914, Maclean was attested as a member of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and given the regimental number of 22/50, the prefIx 22 denoting a
nurse the civilian population at the Samoan Hospital. The initiative to send six nurses on the troopships with the Advanced Force, 'details ordered by Sir Alexander Godley in excess of war establishment', was a pragmatic solution for staffing.40 Previously staffed by German doctors and nurses, the hospital at Apia treated the civilian population. Once Samoa had been occupied, the New Zealand nurses replaced the German nursing staff.41 The news that nurses had been called upon came as a surprise to Maclean and though she selected the nurses, their prescribed nursing duties remained under the control of politicians, military advisers and doctors.42 These six nurses wore a uniform similar to the QAIMNS and in the ship's records are stated as belonging to this British service even though no official recognition from Britain had been obtained. It seems to have been an arbitrary decision by the military authorities to call these nurses members of the QAIMNS.
Traditional beliefs about women's work: and war also influenced the position of nurses in military structures. While the links between nursing and beliefs about womanly propriety had assisted the achievements of nurses i n civilian hospitals, it restricted the place of nurses in military structures. Military service stressed the masculine qualities of strength and courage. Newspaper articles told of men keenly waiting to go to war, with women urging them to go. Shirkers, presented
in
cartoons as avoiding war work, became the target of women's antagonism, receiving white40
4 1
42
member of the New Zealand Anny Nursing Service. The other five nurses were Louise McNie, Bertha Nurse, Evelyn (Eva) Brooke, Frances (Fanny) Wilson and Louise Brandon. P.M.O.[Principal Medical Officer], Samoa, 27 August 1914 to 23 September 1914, War Diary, War Archives (W A), Series 213, 213/1, NA.
'New Zealanders at Samoa', NZNJ, October 1914, 7:4, p. 171. Australian nurses initially provided services for the civilians at the hospital at Namanula, Rabaul, see Australian Medical Corps, Administration in Egypt. 1915, Memorandum from the DGMS [Director General of Medical Services], 12 January 1916, Tait File, No. 32, Australian War Museum (A WM), Canberra.
Selected within three days the nurses were equipped
and
ready for transport with the Advanced Expeditionary Force.feathers to denote their cowardice and lack of patriotism.43 The soldier, depicted as the essence of upright manliness, became contrasted with the weak ineffectual male who failed to enlist. The ultimate hero, the volunteer soldier, filled the pages of newspapers and journals. In the initial intense patriotism expressed by most New Zealanders, little account appeared to be given to the fact that soldiers would suffer wounds and also sickness, that women would become widowed and children fatherless.
Military medical services received little formal coverage in newspapers; it is not clear whether this was in an effort to play down the trauma a war would bring, or an indication that the military authorities failed to appreciate the likely length of the war and the amount of sickness and injury which would occur. The major focus of New Zealand medical services at the start of war concentrated its efforts on the care of the wounded.44 Arrangements had been made for collecting and evacuating the wounded from the war zone, but little thought appeared to have been given to the likelihood of sickness occurring among soldiers.
The impression that the war would
be
short-lived also directed the initial preparation of medical services. Allocation of medical resources focused on providing services for gathering in the wounded from open battle areas. Yet the latter was the pattern of earlier warfare prior to the First World War, not the vast array of trenches which would become the feature of this war.45 Although nurses had a place in military structures their place remained securely attached to civilian hospitals caring for the sick soldier or wounded civilian who might tum up on the hospital steps in the43
44 45
P. Baker. King and Country CaD: New Zealanders: Conscription and the Great War (Auckland. 1988). p. 19.
J.R. Purdy. Colonel. 'Organisation for Evacuation of Sick and Wounded'. New Zealand Medical Journal. 1914. 13:53. pp. 252-261 .
event of a national attack. The major contribution of nurses during the early stage of war was to maintain their current duties, nursing the sick civilian population. The training of soldier volunteers appointed to the New Zealand Medical Corps concentrated on the immediate care of the wounded soldier in the field. Purdy had suggested that the number of soldiers who might suffer disease would be around ten percent; the majority of soldiers, he believed, would be requiring treatment for wounds. Colin Gordon, a law student, who served as a private with the New Zealand Medical Corps, recalls his training as a medical orderly which illustrated the emphasis put on the wounded and the limited attention given to learning about the care of the sick.
We had a month in Trentham [Camp] .... We had stretcher drill - perfectly useless; I could teach a man to handle a stretcher in ten minutes! But then some of us were selected
to
go into the Wellington Hospital to get training - roughlythree
hours. We were taken to a ward and detailed to a nurse who taught us how to make a bed the hospital fashion and how to wash a patient, and we then had to do it under her eye - and that's about all. We had lectures from some of our doctors on different aspects of wounds and how to give 'em medicine. In our month's training, practical nursing experience, I would think, was eight or ten hours and perfectly useless. When it came to the real thing we had to find out for ourselves what was to be done and how to do it.46Both the Advanced Expeditionary Force to Samoa and the Main Body, which embarked for Egypt in September 1914, apart from doctors, carried personnel who had received approximately eight weeks of training in first aid, stretcher bearer duties and bed making.47 As in the case of the old system of nursing of the 1 880s, privates of the medical corps gained most of their know ledge from observation and practice. Many of the untrained did learn from practical experience. One soldier employed with the field-ambulance recorded his attempts to give an intravenous injection of saline at a field ambulance post while the surgeon was performing an amputation. He also
46
47
N. Boyack and J. Tolerton (Eds.), In the Shadow of War: New Zealand Soldiers Talk about World War I and Their Lives (Auckland, 1990), p. 96. See also Bruce Thomson, New Zealand Field Ambulance 1915, MS Papers 1510, wru.
Lesley B. Quanennain, 9 March 1916, Awapuni Camp, MS Papers 1807, Folder 3, WTIJ. The medical service for the Main Body consisted of a field ambulance and a mounted field