Book Excerpt - Anne Donnell

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Monday 6th December 1915
on Night Duty in F2 ward
Number of Patients: 42
Orderly: Private Andrews

Dears,
Fancy this is my 91st paper. On looking back, it seems to be quite a book. I haven’t written for some days, the truth is I have felt too down hearted and miserable. The foundation of it being the weather. Yes, we are indeed experiencing the grim realities of this awful war. The 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th of November will never be forgotten. We all suffered with the cold terribly and with all our warm clothing we couldn’t get warm day or night. Personally, I shivered for three nights without sleep and the chilblains. Agony; my two small toes were frost bitten. Then in the daytime, most of us just hobbled about.

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I heard one boy say as he saw me, ‘She won’t stick the winter through.’ He exactly expressed my feelings. It all seems in that weather with wind travelling at the rate of 100 miles an hour and rain, sleet, and snow so pitifully hopeless. The wards inside both night and day are dark, the patients cold, and I would defy anyone to call the outlook bright. Some of the sisters were able to rise past their own feelings and be bright and happy. Dear old Rush was one of them, how fond I am growing of her, she saved me from being downright sick. I will send you a snap I took of her outside the tent stirring the dixie.

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During those fearful days our thoughts were constantly with the boys on the peninsula and wondering how they were faring, but little did we realise their sufferings until the wind abated and they began to arrive down with their poor feet and hands frostbitten. Thousands have been taken to Alexandria. Hundreds, the boys say, were drowned because their feet were so paralysed, and they couldn’t crawl away to safety in time. Some of the boys are losing both feet, some both hands. It’s all too sad for words; hopelessly sad.

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The world just seems topsy turvey. I dream of the peaceful lives we lived before the war, and wonder if Australia is the same peaceful land, of course I know it must be changed somewhat with all the sorrow. It takes a good deal to be able to stand it, and to see the cheerful braveness of the boys in their sufferings.

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The days were gone before you knew it, and you felt you hadn’t accomplished anything, but this laddie in the corner I thought he shall have some special care, and I told him he would be mine until his mother came. He gave me the loveliest smile, but next morning his bed was empty, just another one of many there that had made the supreme sacrifice.