CWGC remembers the brave nurses lost during the world wars on International Nurses Day

Tomorrow, 12 May, is International Nurses Day which is held on the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday every year to celebrate the contribution that nurses make to societies around the world. The CWGC commemorates more than 900 nurses who died during the First and Second World Wars. Nurses served in all the major theatres of war and the Commonwealth home fronts. From tented hospitals within the sound of the guns, to busy base hospitals, hospital trains and ships, nurses were exposed to many of the same dangers as the fighting men they nursed. Here are the stories of some of the brave nurses commemorated by the Commission.

Staff Nurse Ruby Dickinson

Born in Forbes, New South Wales in about 1886, she received her nursing training at the Lister Private Hospital, Sydney, finishing in 1911.

In 1915 she enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service, and leaving Australia in July of that year, she served in military hospitals in Alexandria, Lemnos, France and in the UK.

She died of pneumonia on 23 June 1918, contracted while working at the No 1 Australian Auxiliary Hospital at Harefield – where she was buried. 

Her mother wrote to the authorities on 22 October 1918: "I am told she was much appreciated for her steadfastness to duty and nursing skills, much beloved by the sick and wounded for whom she worked so hard. I shall always have the consolation of knowing that she died doing her duty."

Nursing Sister Dorothea Mary Lynette Crewdson

Dorothea Crewdson was born in Bristol in 1886. Brought up in Nottingham, in 1911 she enrolled as a Voluntary

Aid Detachment Nurse. She trained in the local hospitals and passed her exams the following year.

Dorothea remained in Nottingham until 1915 when she and her best friend Christie received instructions to leave for the hospital in Le Tréport. Dorothea spent the next four years at hospitals at Le Tréport, Wimereux and finally, Etaples.

Etaples was thought far enough back from the frontline to be safe from attack but, in the summer of 1918, the site was attacked by German aircraft.

Dorothea was injured but refused treatment so that she could continue her care for the patients. An action which earned her the Military Medal.

Dorothea died in 1919, after contacting peritonitis.

She kept a diary of her wartime experiences which was published in 2013, under the title Dorothea's War.

She is buried in CWGC Etaples Military Cemetery.

Matron Jessie Brown Jaggard

Born Jessie Brown in Nova Scotia, Canada, in May 1873, she is one of the few women of the Canadian forces who died while serving her country in the First World War.

A professional nurse before the war, she had trained at Massachusetts General in the USA and was the superintendent of two hospitals in Pennsylvania before marrying a railway company president and leaving nursing to be a wife and mother.

At the outbreak of the First World War she approached the Canadian military authorities to volunteer. They appointed her a matron in the Canadian Army Corps and she was serving overseas by May 1915.

In August she arrived on the island of Lemnos to set up 3rd Canadian Stationary Hospital. It was declared operational on 22 August 1915.

She died of dysentery on 25 September 1915 at her hospital, near Mudros.

Annie E Ross, one of her colleagues on Lemnos, wrote: “…Our dearly beloved Matron … Mrs Jaggard, Canadian born  … Gave up a life of luxury to serve her mother land. It was my privilege to nurse her in her dying hours. In her we lost a friend. One who was well able to give us good advice.”

She is buried in Portianos Military Cemetery.

Nurse Kathleen Adele Brennan

Kathleen Adele Brennan was born in Sydney on 15 November 1882, the eldest of five children. On the outbreak of the First World War, it was agreed that while all five children wanted to serve, one girl and one boy would need to remain in Australia to look after their elderly parents.

Kathleen was able to go, and enlisted with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) with the Australian Red Cross. She left Australia in September 1916 on the SS Osterley and on arrival in England was posted to the 5th Northern General Hospital in Leicester. She served there until November 1918, when she died from Septic Pericarditis, following Influenza.

She was buried in Leicester (Welford Road) Cemetery.

Her coffin, which was covered with a Union Jack, was borne to the cemetery on a gun carriage, followed by a large procession of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) staff and VAD nurses from North Evington and the base hospitals. Her body was interred in the soldiers corner of the cemetery. 

The sinking of HMT Osmanieh

On New Year’s Eve 1917, eight nurses died on the British troop ship HMT Osmanieh when it struck a mine near the entrance to Alexandria Harbour. Pictured (top, left to right) Nursing Sister Winifried Brown, Nursing Sister Catherine Ball, Nurse Hermione Rogers and Nurse Gertrude Bytheway, and (bottom, left to right) Nurse Una Duncanson, Staff Nurse Dorothea Roberts and Nurse Lilian Midwood

On New Year’s Eve 1917, the British troop ship, HMT Osmanieh struck a mine near the entrance to Alexandria Harbour. She sank in under 10 minutes and almost 200 service personnel died.

Among the dead were eight nurses. Nellie Hawley and Dorothea Roberts, of Queen Alexandria’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), and Gertrude Bytheway, Una Duncanson, Lilian Midwood, Hermione Rogers, Catherine Ball and Winifried Brown, of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD).

All eight are buried side-by-side in CWGC Alexandria (Hadra) War Memorial Cemetery.