Salonika

The Salonika Campaign as it was known, began in October 1915 and by 1917 the Allies fielded 600,000 men: predominantly British, French, Greek, Italian, Russian and Serbian. The opposing troops were from the Bulgarian army reinforced by Austro-Hungarian, German and Turkish units.

The climatic conditions on the Salonika front limited combat to spring and autumn; in summer the temperature often reached 112 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade and the heat combined with the inevitable swarms of insects led to debilitated troops. Winter was marked by blizzards, bone chilling winds and freezing rain.

British and Canadian hospitals were established in 1916 to care for causalities, both combat and non-combat. However, by the end of July 1917, the nursing staff were being replaced by Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) nurses.

Courtesy - Australian War Memorial

The principal AANS matron at Salonika, Jessie McHardie White was infuriated, when in September 1917, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force Director of Medical Services, decided the nurses on the Wiltshire would be redirected to various British and Australian hospitals in Egypt. It was another six months before the Director authorised the relocation of McHardie White’s nurses to Salonika. He split the nurses into two groups; one arrived at Salonika in April and the other in June 1918.

Staff nurses Agnes O’Neill and Maud Patton were part of the group who arrived at Salonika in April 1918. Agnes could not fathom the hostility of the locals who in her opinion, ‘stared rudely’ at her. She wasn’t aware perhaps that Salonika until 1912 had, for centuries, been part of the Ottoman empire. Now part of Greece, its inhabitants were strongly opposed to Salonika being a vast and major Allied military encampment. Their once beautiful cosmopolitan port was now the main supply base for the British Salonika Force (BSF).

Salonika. "Album de la Grande Guerre" № 10, 1915

After a few weeks at the 50th BGH, Agnes and Maud were posted to the 42nd BGH, located on the Uchanta plains about a mile from a picturesque village at the foot of Mount Hortiach.

The 50^th BGH consisted solely of wooden huts. Each of the huts accommodated forty-two patients. The nurse’s quarters were three long huts subdivided into a mess room, a kitchen and recreation room with the remainder containing cubicles where the nurses slept.

In June, 1918 we had orders to move to Salonica, as the girls there were having a bad time, many being sick and exhausted from malaria and climatic conditions. We were not at all keen on leaving, … we knew things would not be too good at Salonica, …

We were given several days off to prepare for Salonica. With mixed feelings we packed and made ready to leave Egypt. We went to early prayer at the Church of England. As usual we left after dark by hospital train, …

The hospital train delivered the nurses to Ismailia after which they made their way to Port Said where they boarded the Gorgon. Jane Priestley and Sybil Newton were amongst their number.

The Gorgon as part of a convoy and with destroyers shadowing it, left Port Said at sundown. On their first night at sea, they ‘had a few thrilling minutes’ when ‘the whistles blew and the engines stopped; everyone was jumping out of bed and donning their life-belts, but nothing happened, and back we went to bed again.’ Due to heavy seas, the boat pitched and tossed relentlessly and sailed ‘miles off the regular course on account of the activity of the submarines.’

Venus de Milo

About the second or third day out we put in at the island of Milo. It is a small island, with the houses clinging to the sides of the rocks; it was a very hot day, indeed, and an old Greek priest showed us around … Milo is the home of the Venus de Milo, … We left the island … the same evening, and two days later arrived in the Gulf of Salonika, where we anchored well out in the gulf. We had to climb down the side of the boat on a rope ladder, which was wet and slippery, and fall or be lifted into a bobbing boat at the bottom.

Jane and Sybil joined Agnes and Maud at the 42^nd BGH where they lived, worked and slept in tents enclosed by a six-foot barbed wire fence. Frequent thefts of their belongings occurred until armed Serbian guards were brought in to protect them and their possessions.

On moonlit nights, the sky was riven with the sound and fury of air raids. When the raids began, the lights out order rang through the compound; nurses and patients alike waited in darkness for the attack to cease.

In summer, the malaria carrying female mosquito bred prolifically in sodden marshes and numerous small streams making the incidence of malaria amongst the wounded and their carers barely manageable.

Once infected, weakness, fever, vomiting, headache, diarrhoea, aching limbs and trembling gradually took hold. Quinine and aspirin were administered and shivering patients were covered with blankets until the shivering stopped and their temperature dropped back to normal. The blankets were then removed one by one.

Courtesy - Australian War Memorial

Both staff and patients were vulnerable to mosquito attacks. The night staff before going on duty donned, gloves, puttee, hat and a net veil which physically made it difficult for them to treat their patients.

In an effort to protect their patients from mosquito bites, the nurses learnt how to droop the mosquito nets and then tuck them in under the mattress in a particular way. The nets, of course, hindered their ability to observe those under their care.

Nursing patients with malaria was not particularly rewarding for no sooner did a patient recover before they would be struck down by another attack.

Malaria bearing mosquitoes, flies, ants, scorpions, centipedes, the occasional snake and the extreme heat made the summers unpleasant; however, the winters which many nurses found ‘terribly distressing’ were worse.

At night they would ‘dress up to go to bed, with pyjamas, bed socks, woollen coat, woollen cap and gloves, and several hot water bottles to keep us company.’ By morning, even the hot water bottles were frozen. Most of the nurses purchased goat skin coats or leather jerkins to shield themselves from the piercing blizzard like winds known as the Varda.

The snow fell deep at times and would penetrate the tents covering the patients’ beds with snow and everything including towels and medicines were frozen. Because of the difficulty in obtaining fuel, charcoal was burnt in braziers often exposing the nurses to charcoal poisoning.

Like many of their contemporaries, Agnes, Jane, Maud and Sybil experienced health issues; Sybil was the most seriously affected having contracted malaria in August 1918.

Agnes was admitted to the 43rd BGH’s Sick Sisters ward suffering from anaemia and cardiac debility for a little over a month before convalescing at the Sisters Convalescent Home, formerly the home of the Turkish Governor.

Jane spent nearly a month recovering from diarrhoea whilst Maud experienced several bouts of debility. Debility is a state of general weakness resulting from one or more medical conditions which produces symptoms such as pain, fatigue and the loss of body weight and muscle mass.

Every hospital had a home sister whose main role was the provision of accommodation and meals, mostly in the form of rations; bully beef and biscuits, bread, jam, meat, tea, and tinned milk. Fresh food was scarce and home sisters would often scour the countryside and nearby villages for fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, fowls and milk. The jam, as Agnes O’Neill recalled, was inedible as it was stored in poorly washed kerosene tins. Leeks apparently were plentiful, so plentiful that she, after leaving Salonika, vowed to never eat another leek!

Each nurse was paid a cash allowance which they often supplemented themselves but even this was not enough to cover some of their expenses. The cost of laundry, for which they were responsible was expensive and led some to do their own washing and living as much as they ‘could in grey’.

The staff at the 42nd BGH staff were at times, overrun with patients suffering from the pneumonic flu. The beds of dead patients ‘were filled instantly’ and there were as many as eighty to one hundred deaths a day. ‘It was not at all unusual to come on duty and find men lying about everywhere, and one would have to step over them to make progress along the ward.’

Deaths from illness were not only confined to soldiers; in late September 1918, Gertrude Evelyn Munro, a colleague of Sybil’s at the 42nd BGH became seriously ill with pneumonia and malaria. She was transferred to the 43rd BGH on 1 October where she died nine days later.

For Agnes, Jane, Maud and Sybil, the nightmare that was Salonika came to an end in early March 1919 when they boarded the Indarra, an Australian ship, manned by Australians on the first leg of their journey to England.

Many of the nurses ‘had always hoped to see England, either on leave or after the war’ and now after ‘many months of hard work under such trying and sad conditions’ their hopes were to become a reality.