A dreadful war … more like wholesale
slaughter…
(Alice Kitchen, quoted in Heroic Australian women in war)
Sister Alice Kitchen, whose mother, her
next of kin, lived in Brunswick, wrote a three volume diary of her experience
of the war. Her papers, including the diary, are in the Manuscript Collection
of the State Library of Victoria. Here she describes
in stark detail the experience of nursing Australian wounded from 1915 until the
end of the war. If you want to read more about what conditions were like for
the wounded and dying, I highly recommend you find out more about Alice
Kitchen’s war. A good starting point is Susanna de Vries’ Heroic Australian women in war. Chapter 3 of that book concerns
Alice Kitchen’s frank and often disturbing observations. Patsy Adams-Smith has
also referred to her extensively in her The
Anzacs (Melbourne, Nelson, 1978).
Recommended reading:
More than
bombs and bandages : Australian Army nurses at work in World War I, Kirsty Harris, Newport, N.S.W., Big
Sky Publishing, 2011.
Scarlet
poppies : the army experience of Australian nurses during World War One, Ruth Rae, Burwood, N.S.W., College of
Nursing, 2004.
Veiled lives : threading Australian nursing history into the
fabric of the first world war, Ruth Rae, Burwood, N.S.W., The College of Nursing, 2009.
The other Anzacs : the
extraordinary story of our World War I nurses, Peter Rees, Crows Nest, N.S.W., Allen & Unwin,
2009.
Heroic Australian women in war : astonishing tales of bravery from
Gallipoli to Kokoda, Susanna
de Vries, Pymble, N.S.W., HarperCollins, 2004.
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