Still in hospital. No Sisters, all orderlies.
LATER: Now just a word about the wounded. At a few dressing stations I have seen some very sad cases due to carelessness on the part of the orderlies. I have seen men suffering terrible agony and yet those lazy articles would do nothing to help them. They would often turn a deaf ear to a man’s incessant pleading for water. Another case I saw was a man brought down from the firing line with a portion of his intestines hanging out and all they done was to put a sheet of paper over him, and left him for a couple of hours before getting treatment. Then again, dozens in fact hundreds have had their first field dressing still on when they got to the hospital in Egypt. That’s the reason why there were so many cases of septic poisoning and gangrene. I won’t say any more on that subject. It’s too much of a crying shame. Of course at times there were thousands of wounded to be attended to, but they should have had a bigger medical staff. The doctors, at times such as those, were certainly overworked and they done all in their power to keep up to their work. The nurses on the hospital ships and stationary hospitals also had their work cut out. To the majority of nurses I take off my hat, but some of them are abominable. All they thought of was running about after Officers. I’ll give you one instance. When I went on the hospital ship “Formosa” a man next to me was very badly wounded and the nurse proceeded to wash the wound preparatory to dressing. Whilst thus engaged, an officer was brought on and an orderly went to dress him. The nurse noticed he was an officer and said “Oh I’ll attend to the Officer, orderly, you fix this man up”. The officer had a slight wound on his arm. (From 5 April 1916)
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AuthorJack Graham, ANZAC soldier, kept a diary from 1914-1918. Here it is, blogged 100 years later to the day.... Archives
February 1958
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