Nurses!

The camp was thrilled when Canadian nurses were discovered on the island. With their wonderful ways, their delightful accents, and their cute little naval capes, the memory of those nurses working away in that hell-hole of Mudros should never be forgotten. On the road from Anzac, Suvla and Helles; on this dusty, rocky island; surrounded by that atmosphere of desolation and suffering caused by an aggregation of wounded and broken men—these girls, with no halfpenny illustrated paper to print their pictures and sing their praises, page 263 slaved away in the Mudros hospitals and saved the lives of many New Zealanders who must have perished had it not been for the devotion of the nurses. The soldiers of New Zealand can never adequately express their thanks for the magnificent work of those Canadian and Australian women at Lemnos, and the British, Australian and New Zealand nurses who toiled so heroically on those awful journeys in the hospital ships from Anzac to Mudros, Alexandria and Malta.

War has some compensations, after all. One begins to realize that we are so dependent on our fellows for most of the happiness and joys of life. Between the sailormen and the Colonials, too, there was a strong bond of friendship. This became very manifest after the landings, and further intimate acquaintance strengthened those early ties. The latest expression of these feelings came from the cruisers and destroyers in the bay. The crews had a “tarpaulin muster,” the result of which was a present for every man in the division of half a pound of tobacco, at a time when it was specially acceptable.