Amid the sounds of gunfire and violent battles, Helen Bowie was saving lives.
The Diggers Rest resident was one of the first women to join the staff at Lady Dudley’s First Australian Field Hospital during World War I.
She was deployed to France after a 12-month trip to Europe, where she “hoped to have opportunity of increasing her bacteriological knowledge and of trying her golfing ability against that of golfers of other lands”, The Age reported on December 21, 1915.
“As soon as I decided to go to France, a friend collected £50 for me to purchase the materials to equip a bacteriological laboratory,” Miss Bowie said. “Before we left, I had the necessary microscope, incubator and other essentials.”
Diggers Rest nurse Helen Bowie.
Miss Bowie and 50 other nurses landed at Le Havre in north-west France at a time when it was thought the Germans were approaching that town.
“The possibility of a German descent upon the town was so real that the entire body of nurses [were] placed for safety upon Lord Dunraven’s yacht, which had just brought Lady Dudley to France,” The Age reported.
The nurses remained on the yacht for four days before proceeding to St Nazaire, 400 kilometres from Le Havre, to open a hospital.
“We arrived at St Nazaire just at the time of the retreat from Mons,” Miss Bowie said in The Age article.
”We were able to begin work at once in a French doctor’s private hospital, and it was no time before it was filled with English soldiers and German prisoners.
“After spending two months in this hospital we were ordered to move northwards to Boulogne where the base had been established. Instead of remaining at Boulogne, we were sent to Wimmereux, some miles distant by train, and proceeded to convert the local golf hotel into a hospital.”
The hospital staff did more than 70 “major” operations during the first week, with Miss Bowie doing “a large share of this work”. She recalled working 17 hour shifts from 8am-1am, and “hastily” eating only cocoa and sandwiches at the door of the operating theatre.
She said most of the hospital’s patients were English “Tommies” and German prisoners.
“The men were very grateful for all we did for them,” Miss Bowie said.
“Most of them could speak English and told us repeatedly that they were thankful to be in the hospital and that they had not wanted to fight but had been forced to defend their country. The officers were quite different in their attitude – they showed their hatred of the English and the autocracy of their natures in that way in which they demanded attention.”
Miss Bowie returned to Diggers Rest in December, 1915.
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