Australian women in World War I
Tensions between the organisations resulted in principal matron Jane Bell of the AANS, and Lieutenant-Colonel William Ramsay Smith of the AIF to be recalled from duty.
Men held dominant positions in society, professional professions, and politics, as well as in families, having legal right of ownership over all household income, property, and children.
So, while Australian women were still subjected to segregation in public life, with limited freedom and autonomy, they had gained the right to inherit property, earn wages, and vote, and were increasingly making their way into professions previously reserved for men.
Additionally, there were other women who either did not meet the eligibility for joining the military as a nurse, or who wished to participate as doctors, administrators, ambulance drivers, orderlies, or cooks, who funded their own travel to Europe and found alternative opportunities to take part.
Onboard were 60 medical staff including Matron Sarah Melanie De Mestre, who was in command of six nursing sisters, Florence Elizabeth McMillan, Stella Lillian Colless, Rachel Clouston, Constance Margaret Neale, Bertha Ellen Burtinshaw, and Rosa Angela Kirkcaldie, all of whom were recruited from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
So, impatient to rejoin the war effort, Kirkcaldie travelled to England at her own expense to join the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS).
[13] Doctors, such as Katie Ardill, Eleanor Elizabeth Bourne, and Phoebe Chapple, after being rejected by the Australian military, travelled at their own expense to enlist in other associated organisations taking part in the war effort.
Major General Neville Howse, the director of the medical services in the AIF stated:"The female nurse (as a substitute for the fully trained male nursing orderly) did little toward the actual saving of life in war... although she might promote a more rapid and complete recovery”[14]Principal Matron of the 1st Australian General Hospital (1AGH), Jane Bell departed Australia in December 1914 and put pressure on the Army Medical Service to clarify the roles of the AANS staff, and allow the AANS autonomy.
[26] The most senior Australian woman in military service in World War I was Maud McCarthy, the British Expeditionary Force Matron-in-Chief for France and Flanders.
She held this position until World War I broke out, when she sailed on the first British Expeditionary Force ship that left England, and arrived in France on 12 August 1914.
While Aboriginal women were likely working as nurses in private service, or in hospitals on missions, the aforementioned policies meant there were limited opportunities for them to receive the formal training required to be registered, before the middle of the 20th century.
19 July 1915, she enlisted with the QAIMNS, and was put in charge of a surgical ward, in the general hospital at Ras-el-din in Egypt, for which she was awarded a Royal Red Cross.
[34] She was then awarded a bar to the Royal Red Cross for saving wounded soldiers on the HMHS Gloucester Castle when the clearly marked hospital ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat.
Other recommendations came from military figures such as Vice Admiral Sir William Creswell, and Colonel Richard H. Fetherston and academic Harry Brookes Allen.
[39] Instead Sexton's offer was taken up by the French Army and in July 2015, she began setting up the Hôpital Australien de Paris in Auteuil with a team of nine women including the team of six she recruited in Australia, Susan Smith and her two daughters Alison and Lorna, Constance Blackwood, Florence Inglis, and Dora Wilson, and three additional Australian women, Audrey and Eileen Chomley and Suzanne Caubet who met them in France.
[42] In a full-page spread about the service, in January 1918, the Sydney Mail stated:"No individual medical unit in this war has accomplished more than the Scottish Women's Hospitals.
"[43]Millicent Sylvia Armstrong, a farmer and writer from Queensland, volunteered as an orderley with the SWH at the Abbaye de Royaumont, Asnières-sur-Oise, and then at the Advance hospital at Villers-Cotterets, Aisne which the French military used as the Hôpital Auxiliaire d'Armées No.30.
[44] Another Australian working at the Abbey with the SWH was Dr. Elsie Dalyell, who had just completed eight months at Addington Park Military Hospital in Croyden, based in the diagnostic laboratory, when she arrived in Royaumont in 1916.
She worked in the laboratory which has been established by Dr. Elizabeth Butler, a Scot who had a won the Beit Fellowship, just as Dalyell had, which was a prestigious award making them two of the most eminent female scientists in the pre-war period.
[3] In early November, Hope, Charles, and the other 32 medical staff awoke to find that the Austrian Army had quietly taken possession of Vrinjatcha Banja during the night, and they were now prisoners of war.
A few days later on 4 December, they were loaded into a cattle truck for a bumpy thirty-six hour drive with no food, and little sleep, arriving in Semendria to cross the Danube river to Hungary.
[3] Named after the University of Cambridge colleges, Girtan and Newnham who provided the funding, the unit was a mobile hospital attached to the French Expeditionary Force, supporting them close to the front lines of their battles first in France, then Serbia, and in Salonika.
She rose in the ranks becoming a sergeant, and then in 1917 she responded to a huge fire that broke out in Salonika, driving for 20 hours back and forth transporting patients, staff, and civilians to safety.
After working in the infectious diseases hospital in Cairo, Agnes Bennett an Australian, New Zealand doctor met with Elsie Ingles at the Lyceum club in London.
Bennet signed up, and Inglis tasked her with establishing a new unit to in Serbia and serve as the Chief Medical Officer close to the front line, in the hills at Lake Ostrovo.
Practical experience has convinced me that women run things very well, making me a more ardent feminist than ever.”[3]Australian novelist, Stella Miles Franklin joined the unit in July 1917.
On her journey from London, she travelled through Paris, Turin, Rome, and Taranto, before boarding a troop transport carrying 3000 men, with only two other women, destined for Salonika.
[66] The group were dubbed the "Bluebirds" in reference to the colour of their uniforms specially designed from David Jones, and their service was funded by the Australian Jockey Club.
Late in 1915 comfort parcels consisting of a billy can filled with items such as condensed milk, tins of food such as fruits and sardines, as well as pipes and tobacco, However due to the evacuation at Gallipoli many soldiers did not receive theirs until they returned to Egypt or arrived in Lemnos.
[72] Goldstein herself stated: "I think that it is a fearful reflection on 2000 years of Christianity that men have rushed into war before using every combined effort to prevent this appalling conflict.
