Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Introduction
Mary Genevieve (Vieve) Dwyer was a WW1 army nurse from South Australia who served in Egypt, the Western Front and England. One of around 2500 Australian women who joined the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS), she embarked for Egypt in July 1915 and returned home in February 1920.
During that time, Vieve Dwyer nursed casualties from the merciless campaigns on first the Dardenelles peninsula and then the Western Front including Vimy Ridge and the Battle of the Somme. For most of the time she was attached to No 2 Australian General Hospital (2 AGH).  She lived and worked in marble surrounds in a grand Cairo hotel, in hastily erected tents and well-equipped huts in Belgium and France. She experienced the intense heat, mosquitoes and flies of Cairo, and the intense cold of the cruel Somme winter of 1916-17 when water pipes froze and burst, and when washing patients and taking temperatures were all but impossible. She nursed in large Australian and British run general hospitals well behind the lines and in No 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station (2 ACCS), a unit so close to the front she, all personnel and patients had to move at a few hours notice several times. She was one of a number of the 2 ACCS medical officers and nurses decorated for treating patients under extreme condition. In the last five months of the war she worked in No 1 Australian General Hospital (1 AGH) in Rouen, France, caring for not only battle casualties but victims of the influenza outbreak.
After Vieve Dwyer returned from the war she nursed in and managed district hospitals in Scottsdale, Tasmania and Maffra, Victoria. For virtually all that time she worked with her close friend and fellow army nurse, Annie Cameron.
She died in 1974 aged 85 and was buried in Centennial Park Cemetery, Adelaide, SA
 
Before the war
Mary Genevieve Dwyer was born in 1888, the second of the four children (1s, 3d) of William (Bill) Dwyer and his wife Mary Ann (nee Devitt). She was brought up on Oaklands, a well-known viticulture, fruit and grazing property in the then village of Marion twelve kilometres south of Adelaide. Her father Bill Dwyer (1860-1930) managed the vineyards there for the owners, as his father Michael (1834-1889) had done before him, the Crozier family. The wines and spirits produced there had a fine reputation and in Michael’s time as manager, won medals at several international exhibitions including Paris and Bordeaux. The cellar in the main house held 180 000 litres of wine.[1]
In 1884 Bill married Mary Devitt (b1859), a maid in the Crozier household. After Michael’s death in 1889, Bill and their children moved into the Dwyer homestead on the property.
Like many settlers in Marion the Dwyers and the Devitts were strong Irish Catholic stock. Vieve, her siblings and their cousin John (Jack) Brett who lived with the Dwyer family, were brought up with Irish customs, sports and festivals. Their community life centred around St Ann’s Church. The school attached to the church closed in 1891 so they most probably attended larger Sturt Public School which in the 1890s had around 150 pupils.[2] Vieve’s mother was said to have lived for ninety years within the sound of St Ann’s bell.[3]
Vieve and later her sister Josephine trained as nurses at the North Adelaide Private Hospital (NAPH) (now Calvary) in Strangways Terrace. The hospital, which opened in the 1880s, had been taken over by the Little Company of Mary religious order in 1900. Under their direction it grew rapidly in patient numbers, facilities and reputation, and was recognised as a training institution by the Australasian Trained Nurses Association. The first nurses qualified there in 1905.[4]
Vieve began her training there around 1908. The arrangements under which she worked were similar across training hospitals in the state. As a probationer she paid £20 on acceptance, received no pay for several months and then 5/- a week for the remaining three years of her training. She lived in at the hospital near the religious sisters. She began working on the wards immediately, attended lectures and took several exams before the final examination set by the Australasian Trained Nurses Association. Her hours on duty were long and time off was limited.
During her time there were around 24 lay nurses training or employed at the hospital, and 10 religious sisters. Most were Roman Catholic like Vieve but not all. The hospital could accommodate around 40 medical and surgical patients at that time.
Vieve remained on the staff there after she finished her training. At various times she was in charge of the operating theatre and both medical and surgical wards. The matron (Sister M.Michael) and doctors were impressed with her nursing skills, patient care, attention to detail, her character and her potential. Prominent Adelaide doctor Constantin Trent Champion de Crespigny whose patients she had nursed, commented on her ‘marked ability in her profession. She is observant, tactful, conscientious and kind.’[5]
 
Joining the AANS
War broke out in Europe in August 1914 and three months later Australian troops joined the fray with successive convoys leaving for Egypt from November. Two hospitals were set up (Nos 1 and 2 Australian General Hospitals) and by January 1915 around 180 members of the Australian Army Nursing Service were staffing them. By the mid-1915, those hospitals plus others that were hastily organised in Cairo were dealing with an avalanche of sick and wounded troops arriving by ship from the disastrous campaign on the Dardenelles peninsula.
The lists of casualties among Australian troops grew longer every day. Reinforcements – troops, medical officers and nurses – were desperately needed from Australia.
In May 1915 Vieve applied to join the AANS. Several trained nurses at NAPH had already applied or were considering it.[6]Moreover, John (Jack) Brett, the cousin who had been brought up with Vieve and her family at Oaklands, had already enlisted and was about to embark for Egypt with a field ambulance unit.[7]
In her application Vieve set out her qualifications in some detail. She had four years training, three years experience in charge of medical and surgical wards at the hospital, and was registered with the Australasian Trained Nurses Association. She attached glowing references from her matron and five prominent medical practitioners whose cases she had nursed including Dr Violet Plummer, one of SA’s prominent women doctors.
Vieve signed her attestation papers on 22 June 1915 and was posted to No 2 Australian General Hospital (2 AGH). Her pay was 7/10 per day, of which she ‘allotted’ (allocated) 2/- for her family at home.[8] In the three weeks before embarkation she gathered together her uniforms (outdoor and indoor) and her kit, which included a bed or stretcher, pillow, rugs, and very likely a camp stool or deck chair and primus stove. Her luggage comprised a cabin trunk, large holdall, hat bag, large suitcase and a smaller suitcase for hand luggage.[9]
She and fellow NAPH nurse Rose Gillick enjoyed a fine send-off from hospital staff and friends. The evening, which included musical items, songs, dancing and supper, presented a ‘scene of gaiety’.[10]
 
To Egypt on HMAT Orsova: July-August 1915
Vieve Dwyer left Melbourne on HMAT Orsova on 15 July, with reinforcements for the hospitals in Cairo and artillery and infantry units at Gallipoli. Aboard were medical officers, some 130 nurses from four states and 1700 officers and men.
The voyage on HMAT Orsova from Melbourne to Port Suez took four weeks, with brief stopovers in Fremantle and Aden. Victorian nurse Kit McNaughton, also posted to 2 AGH, recorded life on board in her diary.[11] A day’s leave in Perth while the ship loaded fuel and stores was an opportunity to sightsee as well as to send cables and uncensored letters via the post office home. The nurses occupied the days at sea watching the officers and troops on parade, doing boat drills, playing quoits and deck tennis, making circumlocutions of the ship for exercise, reading, chatting, and listening to the Royal Australian Artillery band. As the heat increased they tried to keep cool. They attended medical lectures and learnt the rudiments of military etiquette. Evenings were occupied with concerts by the troops and dancing. The traditional fancy-dress ball for crossing the equator was held. A great deal of socialising took place between nurses and officers and men which, strictly speaking, was forbidden. For some, socialising intensified into flirtations and more on the boat deck. After an epidemic of liaisons the nurses were called on parade and forbidden to talk to the men or to gaze down on them while they slept![12]
The Orsova reached Port Suez on 12 August after what Vieve Dwyer described as 'a fine trip'.[13]
 
Cairo: August 1915-March 1916
Medical reinforcements were desperately needed in Egypt. As soon as they disembarked 50 nurses including Vieve were put on a train for their destination, 2 AGH in Cairo. Their first work came almost as soon as they arrived after their ten hour trip. They were put four to a room, with mattresses on the floor for beds, and with scant luggage between them. After a couple of hours of ‘rest’ they reported to their wards where 300 wounded men had arrived a few hours before them. ‘We went straight on duty’, wrote staff nurse Stella Broadhead, ‘and were wanted – every one of us.’[14]
Both 1 AGH and 2 AGH had been set up in facilities intended for tourists, not patients. As casualty numbers from Gallipoli and the Dardanelles surged, 2 AGH had moved from its initial location, the Mena Palace Hotel near the pyramids on Cairo’s outskirts, to much larger premises in the Ghezirah Palace Hotel near Cairo’s centre and on an island in the River Nile. When the nurses had time to look up at their surroundings, they were amazed. Vieve described it as a ‘most spacious building in a glorious position.’ Their hospital had marble floors, exquisite mosaic tiles, a magnificent marble staircase and beautiful garden surrounds. Rows of tents were set up in the gardens to cater for the overflow of patients. There were 45 wards in all.
That year, 1915, nurses at 2 AGH cared for almost 10 000 patients evacuated from the conflict raging on the Dardanelles peninsula. Lyla Stewart, also a staff nurse, described them as wounded Australian soldiers some of whom were ‘almost cut to pieces’, and ‘crowds of medical cases’ who were mainly British troops with dysentery, jaundice and typhoid. The patients in Stewart’s ward were looked after by two orderlies, two Arabs, two nurses and one or two convalescent patients.[15]  Flies, mosquitoes and trying heat added to the difficult circumstances. She was hardly alone in feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task at hand: 
One feels as if one can’t do enough for these soldiers. When one thinks of what they are doing for us, and how they are being cut up and shot, nothing is a trouble to you ... I could get home on a transport almost any time, but I have no wish to yet.
No nurse’s training or previous work would have prepared them for the wounds they encountered or the sheer volume of patients.
When the workload allowed for time off the nurses became tourists. Many had cameras, and film and postcards to send home were cheap. The streetscapes of Cairo with camels and donkeys seemedfamiliar from bible pictures. There were mosques to visit, gardens with palms in which to sit and drink coffee served by Egyptian waiters. The pyramids and sphinx were within ready reach, as were the ruins of the ancient capital of Memphis. Luxor was a day’s train ride away, an easy destination when on leave. Camel and donkey rides and trips on the Nile were almost obligatory.
The nurses shopped in the bazaars for cloth, trinkets and souvenirs to send home. Groppi’s, Cairo’s café famous for its pastries and coffee, was a favourite haunt and dinner at Shepheard’s Hotel was a special treat. A comfortable Nurses Club was set up by the wives of leading British administrators in Cairo in which they could relax and write letters. After the war Vieve commented that, notwithstanding the circumstances ‘I think we all look back on Egypt with very pleasant memories.’[16]
At the end of 1915 the Dardanelles campaign was finally abandoned. Its minimal impact had nowhere near justified the cost in casualties. Remaining troops were evacuated from the peninsula in late December and early January 1916. The heavy casualties and influx of hospital patients that had been anticipated did not eventuate, to Vieve Dwyer’s great relief.[17]
The first months of 1916 saw the conflict move across the Mediterranean to Europe. Most troops, supplies, equipment and services left Egypt for France and Belgium, and medical units followed them. No 1 and 2 AGHs packed all their equipment. Before leaving Egypt, the nurses had more time for sightseeing and rest. The unit and its equipment boarded the ship Braemar Castle on 25 March, and after a restful ‘roundabout trip’ from Alexandria across the Mediterranean docked at Marseilles on 1 April.[18]
 
Marseilles to Boulogne: April-August 1916
After disembarking, offloading stores and awaiting further orders, 2 AGH set up a temporary camp at a British hospital site at Mousset (also Moussa), about five kilometres outside Marseilles. Vieve remembered marching there in fours, while Matron Ellen Gould remembered the cobblestone paving and how uncomfortable the trip must have been for patients. Vieve described the location as ‘picturesque ... at the foot of the hills’. Gould found the camp windy and was appalled at the open drains. Nurses’ quarters were initially tents then huts but their wards were tents. Their patients – usually numbering around 300 or so – were Australian and British troops suffering from pneumonia, influenza and similar illnesses so in Gould’s words ‘not yet ready for the front line’. ‘A few weeks remedied that’, she wrote briskly. Patients with infectious diseases such as and typhus and diphtheria were nursed in an isolation section. Men assessed as medically unfit for active duty were ‘boarded’, that is sent to England and if necessary back to Australia).[19]
While at the Mousset camp, according to Matron Gould the nurses ‘volunteered’ to live on rations – bread and bully beef – without extras. Kit McNaughton mentioned no such voluntary sacrifice but commented Gould (who had nursed in the Boer War) ‘would put up with anything’. Not surprisingly the nurses’ health declined. They purchased milk and vegetables which they cooked themselves in their tents on the primus stoves that formed part of their kit. After three weeks, hungry and angry, they held a protest meeting and changes to their diet were made.[20]
No 2 AGH spent about ten weeks camped at Mousset. It seemed an unhappy time. Apart from the ration issue, there were tensions with the remaining British doctors and nurses. The 2 AHG unit’s experience with infectious diseases was ignored. In contrast to Cairo the nurses had relatively little to do and were given ample time off. Socialising with the patients, however – taking them on picnics for example – resulted in severe reprimands. Their cameras were confiscated and censorship of their letters increased.
Rumours about when and where the unit was to be sent abounded for weeks.[21]In June 1916, the hospital prepared for its move north from Marseilles to Wimereux in the Boulogne area. As patients were discharged, around 50 2 AGH nurses were sent temporarily to British hospitals nearer Wimereux.[22] They made the 1 000 kilometre journey from the south of France to its north by train over several days. The route took them through Paris, and some at least managed to extract every spare moment allowed by the train timetables to see some of ‘Gay Paree.’[23]
Vieve Dwyer was among ten nurses sent to a British hospital at Camiers near Etaples. Etaples, which was 35 kilometres south of Boulogne, had been transformed from a small coastal port into a site for a large build up of troops, supplies and medical aid. The patients in the British hospital were mainly surgical cases. The Australian nurses, including Vieve, were anything but impressed with procedures there which had them on call for convoys 24 hours a day. In Vieve’s words: 'whatever hour of night the convoy arrived we were detailed to wards the patients were washed and dressed and when the last man was finished we retired to our beds again.'[24]
In Australian military hospitals, that was the role of night staff.
A month later, in July 1916, the Camiers nurses were reunited with others from their unit at what Vieve described as ‘an American hospital at Etaples’. Although America would not enter the war until April 1917 volunteer contingents of American doctors, dentists and nurses had been working at No 22 (British) General Hospital at Camiers since mid 1915.[25] With their assistance, by mid 1916 the hospital had 1 800 beds under canvas. The 2 AGH nurses spent around two months there before being recalled to their own hospital at Wimereux. Vieve described the situation as ‘frantically busy and very understaffed’.[26]. America would not enter the war until April 1917. However since mid-1915 volunteer contingents of American doctors, nurses and dentists had been working at No 22 (British) Hospital at Camiers. With their assistance, by mid-1916 the hospital had 1800 beds under canvas. The 2 AGH nurses spent around two months there before being recalled to their own hospital at Wimereux.

Wimereux (Boulogne): October 1916-September 1917
When Vieve Dwyer and the other nurses arrived in October 1916, 2 AGH had been in operation at Wimereux several months. Just as in Egypt it was frantically busy from the beginning with battle casualties, mainly preparing them for evacuation by ship to England. Fighting on the Somme was fierce. As Matron Gould described it:
The wards would fill and empty again into the Hospital ships at Boulogne two or three times in the twenty-four hours at times. Those who stayed longer were very sick and here again the staff was indefatiguable ... It was only the through practical training they received in Australia that enabled them to cope with the amount of work ... Day in and day out they worked, unselfishly and cheerfully ...
The site that 2 AGH took over, a former convalescent camp, was at a ‘very desolate spot on the sea cliffs’ and entirely canvas.[27] It was virtually all under canvas. The wards which held around 400 patients, the operating theatre, xray area and other medical services as well as the personnel accommodation and messing were all in tents.
In anticipation of winter, construction of huts started in September 1916 – first for the x-ray department, then the dental, dispensary and operating theatre. In October the weather deteriorated dramatically. No one knew it then but it was to be the coldest winter in decades. Wind and rain caused havoc. The Ward A tents were so soaked in a storm they had to be repitched facing the prevailing wind rather than side-on.[28] Almost everything froze: milk in jugs, flowers in vases, tea in teapots, ink in inkwells, toothpaste in tubes, dressings on wounds.[29]
After an inspection by the Surgeon General in early November, hut construction increased. However despite the deteriorating weather the nurses’ quarters were not complete until the end of the year and hutted wards were not fit for patient occupation until early 1917. Just before Christmas, on 23 December 1916, a ‘snow gale’ destroyed six tents necessitating a quick relocation of patients.[30]
It was scarcely surprising that some nurses became ill or, a Matron Gould termed it, ‘knocked up’. Vieve Dwyer was among them. On 22 November, she was admitted to 14 (British) General Hospital in Wimereux with bronchitis. Three weeks later she was evacuated to England. 
Vieve was away for two months, recovering and convalescing. She was well enough to spent Christmas with other nurses on leave in Scotland. The spent Christmas Day at snow-covered picturesque Glen Almond, near Perth north of Edinburgh.
In returning to 2 AGH on 21 January, Vieve missed some but not all of the cruel ‘Somme winter of 1916-17’. She was there when water pipes froze and the thaw burst the pipes and turned the frozen ground to mud. Water had to be carted from a British hospital nearby. She remembered it vividly:
Everything was frozen hard, thermometers frozen in the solution they stood in.
Washing patients impossible the only water obtainable was the snow we gathered from the ground and melted on the fire, taps burst, all bottled stuff was frozen. The bathrooms were a picture with icicles hanging everywhere unfortunately cameras were forbidden. The work was continuous with winter complaints and a few wounded men, the frozen feet were a pathetic sight and the pain from them intense.[31]
Some hutted wards finally became available in February 1917 but as casualties descended from the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April, more and more wards were needed. The hospital’s bed capacity in mid April reached 1642, housed in 17 huts and seven tents.[32]
Often the war itself, not just its ever-increasing casualties, came perilously close. Matron Gould remembered ‘the constant rumble of heavy guns [and] the occasional air raid scare.’ On 14 April 1917 a shell exploded in the hospital grounds. Damage was slight – a broken pane of glass and a ‘slight abrasion to a sister’s hand’ – but it must have caused a great fright.[33]
Vieve Dwyer became ill again in June 1917. An abscess saw her admitted to (British) General Hospital nearby for ten days.
The 2 AGH war diaries contain little detail and few comments. The diary for October 1917 noted that the month was ‘exceptionally heavy’ in terms of admissions, operations and deaths. Vieve missed all that: on 28 September 1917 she has been transferred to a casualty clearing station 100 kilometres inland, 2 ACCS at Trois Arbres.

Trois Arbres, Hazebrouck and Blendecques: September 1917-June 1918
By September 1917, Vieve Dwyer had been away for just over two years. She had nursed injuries and illnesses she had never encountered before, in wards set up in a palace hotel, huts and snow covered tents covered, and in numbers she could never have imagined. Throughout that time she had been well behind the lines. The next ten months at 2 ACCS brought her closer to danger and the battle lines than she had been to date.
Each of the three AGHs was responsible for providing medical personnel for an Australian casualty clearing station (ACCS). The CCSs were a highly significant component of the Australian medical services on the Western Front. Initially they were centres designed to evacuate quickly sick and wounded troops from the frontline to a base (general) hospital for further treatment, return to their unit after ‘minor repairs’ or burial in a cemetery. They quickly evolved into hospitals with operating theatres, xray equipment and dispensaries. The sheer volume of casualties swept away any lingering official opposition to the presence of the AANS in the CCCs and nurses were posted there from mid-1916, usually seven to twenty at a time.
The CCSs were the ‘nearest nurses get to the actual fighting.’[34] ‘Great care was always taken that suitable sisters should be selected for duty in Front Areas’ because not all nurses were suited to the work and the attendant risks of shellfire and bombing.[35] A number of nurses were decorated for their service with the ACCS, Vieve Dwyer among them.
Nurses from 2 AGH were working at 2 ACCS when it was inundated with casualties in mid 1917. Its location, Trois Arbres 100 kilometres east of Wimereux, was less than seven kilometres from the front line. No 2 ACCS had been under fire for weeks when, on 22 July 1917, heavy attack caused casualties among the patients and medical personnel. The nurses continued working under fire, refusing to take refuge in their dug-out. Four were awarded Military Medals for their bravery.[36]
On 28 September 1917, Vieve Dwyer reported for duty at 2 ACCS. Much smaller than 2 AGH, 2 ACCS had 11 officers, 13 sisters and staff nurses and 86 other ranks who were orderlies, cooks, drivers etc. Personnel, patients and services were housed in huts and tents. Although the unit kitchen could cater easily for 1000 patients, the actual number at any one time was far smaller, usually between 150 and 250, sometimes around 400 and once 568 when evacuations ceased briefly. The station had a reputation for innovative surgery, treatments and equipment which attracted considerable interest from other medical units. Vieve described the hospital as ‘most comfortable, duckboards to walk on, everywhere’, and her fellow nurses as a ‘happy family.’
Sick troops heavily outnumbered battle casualties among her patients. ‘The work was continuous,’ she wrote, ‘admitting day and night.’ She continued: 'We evacuated about three times a week more often if necessary the train came beside the hospital, the patients were taken on stretchers and light railway trucks to the train. The evacuation took place about 8 a.m all sisters got up about 5 a.m. and dressed her [sic] patients for the journey.'
The colder months (October 1917 to March 1918) resulted in spikes in cases of pneumonia, trench foot and trench nephritis with accompanying bronchitis. In January 1918, the war diary noted a ‘good many cases of Trench Nephritis coming in, most of them very bad indeed, requiring hot packs and very rigorous treatment’. Patients responded very well to intensive treatment and nursing. Many of the personnel developed colds. Among the battle casualties that month were injuries resulting in paraplegia, femur cases with a high mortality rate, and troops suffering from burns and the other effects of mustard gas. The statistics for January 1918 included 26 operations, 1346 dressings and 14364 articles sent for laundering. Behind those figures are hundreds of hours of patient care by Vieve and the other nurses.[37]
While the 1917-1918 winter was less severe than the previous one, it was bitterly cold at Trois Arbres. Vieve Dwyer missed a little of it, being on leave in Ireland for two weeks in December. In January 1918 heavy snow falls alternated with thaws and rain. The conditions left the station ‘in a filthy state of mud and slush’ and briefly prevented lorries getting through with supplies. In February when the weather improved, ‘every available piece of spare ground’ was dug up and readied for planting vegetables for the unit kitchen. 
The noise of war was a constant presence. On 8 November 1917, German planes bombed the area, fragments rained over the station and ‘a large missile came through the roof of the Operating Room’.[38] In March 1918, air raids became more frequent as the German army launched its spring offensive. Wounded troops were admitted at night in greater numbers, and the patient load swelled to over 350.
March 10 1918 was a busy day after a night of heavy artillery bombardment, with many admissions and 16 operations. That night orders came for the immediate closing down of the station. Within 24 hours in freezing cold most patients were evacuated by train and the fifteen nurses including Vieve were sent by motor ambulance to No 10 Stationary Hospital in St Omer, fifty kilometres west. The nurses were ordered to await the setting up of the unit at a new location.
The station was quickly packed up and moved to a new site near Hazebrouck, about 20 kilometres west of Trois Arbres (see map below). Dwyer and her fellow nurses arrived on 5 April from St Omer over roads made almost impassable by continuous rain. They found huts and tents, including their quarters, already erected. The first patients were admitted on 9 April after heavy bombing in the area.  The unit diary for 10 April reads: 'Wounded arriving practically all the time ... many convoys appear to have gone astray ... [3pm] Station now overflowing ... through the morning the wounded arrived in continuous streams, including many gassed ... Huns advancing according to all accounts ... Things in general working fairly satisfactorily.' [39]
Head Sister Keys wrote later, ‘The weather was very bad, wet and cold, in a new camp nursing was extremely difficult ... The theatre and the dressing room worked at the highest tension ... In the wards work never ceased for a second.’[40] That day the unit recorded 458 admissions of whom 407 were wounded, 35 operations, three deaths and 446 evacuations.
The next day there were 500 admissions, 500 evacuations and 35 operations.
The German army had advanced so close that again the situation was untenable. On 12 April, after being open for four hectic days, 2 ACCS received orders to evacuate all the patients and the nurses, to ‘pull down tents and get ready for a hasty move.’ The nurses left with ‘sore hearts’, Keys wrote, ‘any one of [them] would gladly have remained, but orders were orders.’ Given just a few hours notice the nurses packed and crammed onto the top of an old double decker London bus, with their luggage stowed below. They headed back to St Omer along roads crowded with fleeing refugees and their animals, a ‘pathetic sight’ Vieve recalled. The scene was described in the unit diary:
Refugees thronging the roads, walking and riding in all sorts of conveyances, men, women and children, cows, horses and donkeys in a confused mob. Soldiers everywhere, many wounded, everyone making west. A very pathetic sight.[41]
At St Omer, she found nurses who had just been evacuated from various casualty clearing stations, Australian, English and Canadian, ‘all refugees like ourselves.’
St Omer was no safe haven. That night (12/13 April) the town was badly bombed. The nurses feared for their lives; in Vieve Dwyer’s words
Fritz aeroplanes overhead for about 2 hours we all thought our last hour had arrived broken glass fell from over our heads ... the casualties were numerous.[42]
Head Sister Keys confessed ‘we did not expect to come through safely, though all were plucky and prepared.’[43]
Within a few days, 2 ACCS was up and running again, this time near Blendecques which Vieve described as ‘a pretty little spot at the foot of the hills where wild flowers were numerous.’[44] The weather and scenery were very different from the snow, slush and mud of a few months earlier but the work was the same – sick and wounded troops. The day before the first 200 patients arrived, 25 April, the unit celebrated ‘Anzac Day’, with an open air church service, sports carnival, tea hosted by the nurses and a concert in the evening.
At Blendecques patient transport was streamlined. Carriages on a light rail brought sick and wounded men from the station at Trois Arbres to the wards for treatment – a far easier method than the double-decker stretchers bumping along the duckboards at Trois Arbres. Most admissions were sent to the ‘Resuscitation ward’, where a medical officer identified those needing surgery in the adjacent operating theatre. The commanding officer noted that dressings and operations were done ‘more quickly and expeditiously than of yore.’
During the first week (late April into early May) over 1100 wounded and 155 sick were admitted. Admissions and evacuations then dropped off dramatically for the remainder of May, and several times the unit diary reported there was very little work on hand. There was a good deal of activity around the station preparing for air raids, of which there were many. Vieve recalled:
Fritz visited us every night and dropped bombs, about 10 o’clock each night one would hear his plane coming over the hill he would stay probably about two or three hours about May 17th he dropped a bomb on an Ammunition dump about 10 miles away it was a sight to behold and shells went off all night ...[45]
Trenches were dug, the nurses’ quarters were surrounded by sandbags and trenches, and gas masks inspected. During the lull there was time to paint the unit kitchen, to install notices about walking on the grass, and to hold concert parties and cricket games. There was also cause for celebration. Four members of the unit – the commanding officer, two surgeons and one staff nurse, Mary Genevieve Dwyer – were mentioned in despatches for ‘valuable services’ in the war.[46]
The month of June opened with news of a major German offensive and advance on Paris. The station prepared for attacks from the air and casualties. Amid the noise of gunfire, the operating theatre was readied, more areas were sandbagged, the sisters’ trench was lined, fire buckets were filled with water and the long grass was cut. In June amid news of influenza outbreaks, Vieve and all personnel in the unit began a preventative course of quinine injections.
Tension mounted in mid June when bombardment resumed. The 2 ACCS and 1 ACCS were asked to attend to casualties in local villages and to prepare for the admission of sick and wounded personnel. Reinforcements arrived from a British CCS including ‘3 Lady Anaesthetists’ and several nursing sisters. Sick and wounded began arriving on 18 June and soon 2 ACCS had nearly 150 patients.
Most worrying were the influenza cases. ‘Very prevalent’ among the incoming troops despite precautions such as compulsory gargling and nasal washes, influenza quickly spread to the unit’s medical officers and nurses. Some required hospitalisation. On 22 June, the unit diary noted ‘Three sisters with Influenza to go to 18 CCS today.’
Vieve Dwyer was one of the three. She spent over a week recovering in nearby 18 CCS. She returned briefly to 2 ACCS at Blendecques before she was transferred to the relative quiet and safety of 1 AGH at Rouen in early July. After eight hard months at 2 ACCS, including numerous bombing threats, the continuous sounds of war and two hasty evacuations, she was undoubtedly exhausted and ready for a change. Ellen Gould, her matron at 2 AGH, noted that many nurses were ‘unnerved’ by work in casualty clearing stations but ‘many after a rest and regular peaceful work were able to continue.’
Dwyer spent the remaining months of the war attached to 1 AGH.
 
Rouen: July-December 1918
‘Regular peaceful work’ was certainly not Vieve Dwyer’s experience when she arrived at 1 AGH on 3 July 1918. 
Like Dwyer’s original unit 2 AGH 1 AGH had been located in Cairo before its transfer to the Western Front. Since April 1916, it had been stationed in Rouen in Normandy, France. Its tents and huts were crammed into a portion of the city’s racecourse, next to the 10 [British] General Hospital and 12 General Hospital (St Louis, USA). 1 AGH was equipped with just over 1 000 beds although it could accommodate additional patients in 'crisis establishment' mode. Personnel numbers averaged around 20 officers (mainly doctors but also a dentist, quartermasters and chaplains) and between 80 and 90 nurses. 
June had been very busy at the hospital with around 100 admissions a day. Several longtime nursing staff ‘showing strain’ were transferred and other nurses including Vieve were brought in to replace them.
An explosion in patient numbers at 1 AGH greeted Vieve in July, her first month at 1 AGH. There were more than 3 300 admissions, and 20 deaths. As the conflict escalated there was a ‘rush’ of surgical patients with gun shot wounds and fractures as well as nearly 250 patients affected to varying degrees by mustard gas attacks. In a foretaste of what was to come later in the year, 488 cases of influenza were admitted. Not so long before the cold weather had been a problem; now it was heat (sometimes over 32 degrees Celsius) that was ‘very trying to the patients.’[47]
The surge in patient numbers continued for months, until the Armistice on 11 November brought an end to hostilities. During those months the medical officers and nursing staff were under intense pressure. Admission numbers rose steadily due to battle casualties and increasing influenza cases. Patients were so ill or injured they required more intensive nursing and remained in hospital longer; the average length of stay blew out from six days in June to 12 in October. Convoys brought patients in and evacuations transported them out between midnight and 6 am, taking a toll on all concerned not least the nursing staff. In August 1918 49 convoys brought sick and wounded patients in and 73 separate evacuations took place transferring patients to hospital ships bound for England, convalescent depots or other hospitals. September saw a ‘great number of very seriously wounded patients, too ill for evacuation to the “U.K.”’. In October, the unit diary reported that the numbers of admissions (5858) and deaths (115) had exceeded all previous records at the hospital. On 1 October, Staff Nurse Vieve Dwyer was formally given the rank of Sister.
Throughout these trying months the nurses ‘kept up with the incessant rush of patients.’ The commanding officer and the acting matron were fulsome in their praise for the nurses’ work under pressure. One reason for their stamina the matron believed was the availability of hot water in the nurses’ bathrooms for the first time in August. The occasional performances of the unit’s acclaimed concert party, ‘the Whizzbangs’, would also have boosted morale.
Not surprisingly a number of nurses, as many as a quarter, contracted influenza although according to the matron’s reports, it was usually only a mild form without the often fatal complication of broncho-pneumonia. ‘The large mortality among the patients was depressing,’ the matron wrote of the October deaths, ‘but generally things are somewhat brighter.’ Walks in the woods were encouraged when nurses were off-duty and a hockey team was in the planning.
The mood did indeed lighten on 11 November at 11 a.m. with the signing of the Armistice. Pressure of work however, particularly the number of influenza cases, meant ‘no special festivities took place within the unit during the Armistice week.’ Of the 3379 admissions that month, over 2500 were sick and the remainder wounded.  
Late in November 1918 came the news that 1 AGH was to close down at Rouen and return to England where it would reopen on a site at Sutton Veny near Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. Nearly 80 nursing staff were transferred to England the week before Christmas. Vieve Dwyer and her group travelled to Le Havre where they boarded a packet board for Southampton. She remembered it all too well: ‘It was very rough and we sailed about midnight, no cabins available and we were all very sea sick.’[48] They arrived at Sutton Veny that night, on the verge of Christmas.
 
Sutton Veny: January-August 1919
Any thought that peace and a return to England meant a change of pace was quickly shattered. Its first two weeks of operation (15-31 January) were ‘most strenuous ... for all members of the 1st. A.G.H.’ The unit report for January show the pressure on already exhausted personnel. There were 21 deaths among the 1200 patients, mostly from influenza complications. Demand for beds was high until over 330 German prisoners of war were moved out to make way for dangerously ill Australian soldiers. Snow, frosts, wind and rain persisted, creating alarm about the water supply. There were constant changes in the nursing staff as some were transferred to other Australian hospitals or to transport duty accompanying repatriating troops home to Australia.
From March until the last unit diary entry in August 1919, the situation eased. The influenza epidemic abated although a third wave among as many as 15 000 Australian troops still camped nearby on Salisbury Plain remained a possibility. The personnel had been inoculated but some nurses contracted other infectious diseases including measles. Patient numbers dropped steadily month by month, from 900 in January to around 400 in June and 113 in August.[49] Personnel numbers fell as well and Australian service personnel were progressively repatriated to Australia and the camps on Salisbury Plain emptied.
Peace time seemed to be ‘taking’. On several occasions Matron Gray noted that the nursing had become more like that in a civilian hospital, a taste of the not too distant future. She wrote in her diary: 'The experiences we have gained, not only in our work, but through mixing with others, and in the travel that the work has necessitated, apart from the places we have visited on furlough, should help us when we return to Australia, to be better citizens, more capable of fulfilling the duties that may come in our path.'[50]
Vieve enjoyed several periods of leave, including a trip to Killarney in Ireland, perhaps in search of her Irish forebears. Her service records shows that she was still attached to 1 AGH at Sutton Veny in October 1919, and that once again she had been ‘brought to the notice of the Secretary of State for War for valuable nursing services rendered’.
 
Return to Australia
Vieve Dwyer finally left England on her repatriation voyage in December 1919. She and fellow nurse Annie Cameron from 1 AGH, were among the nursing staff on the SS Matatua, which reached Australian ports in early February 1920.
SS Matatua was no ordinary troop transport but a luxury ship, ‘a floating palace.’[51] Most of the passengers on board were ‘soldiers’ wives, dependants and sweethearts,’ among them 54 children. The former troop ship had been modified to Repatriation Department specifications to counter previous complaints about dependants’ travel arrangements. It carried a crew of 120, medical officers and nurses, and a vast array of amenities. The third class accommodation, which approached second class standards, had been ‘designed for women only’. In deference to the passengers’ comfort, no cargo was carried on the voyage. Adults had sports and afternoon teas to pass the day and enjoyed balls, concerts and dances in the evenings. Special arrangements were made for their children including clothing, food and entertainment. Adding to the pleasure was the ‘splendid weather’ encountered throughout the voyage.
Vieve Dwyer disembarked in Adelaide on 2 February 1920, and was discharged from the AANS/AIF three months later, on 5 May. She had been away from home four and a half years.
 
After the War: Scottsdale and Maffra
Some AANS married soon after the war but the majority resumed nursing. They were single, in their 30s and used to financial independence. Their wartime experiences had greatly enhanced their professional skills and the nursing profession itself offered more opportunities than it had when they joined up. Repatriation hospitals sought former AANS to nurse their sick and wounded ex-servicemen. Infant welfare offered a new burgeoning field for those who wanted an experience completely different from military nursing. Openings in general nursing – medical, surgical and maternity – were available in local hospitals, often in country towns, that were built or refurbished as memorials to Australia’s returned soldiers. 
There is an 18 month gap in Vieve Dwyer’s story after her return to Australia and her discharge from the AANS/AIF in 1920. She may have returned to the North Adelaide Private Hospital or worked at Keswick Repatriation Hospital. In December 1921 she moved to Scottsdale in north eastern Tasmania where the local community had recently opened a new Soldiers Memorial Hospital. The matron, Annie Cameron, also from the AANS, had worked with Vieve at 1 AGH in Rouen and Sutton Veny (see image above) and then on the SS Matatua. Dwyer was described as having ‘wide experience ... high qualifications ... [and] the distinction of being twice mentioned in despatches.’[52] She was appointed at an annual salary of £115. One of the hospital’s two doctors, Neil McColl, had known Annie Cameron and possibly Vieve as a young regimental medical officer on the Western Front.
Both Matron Cameron and Sister Dwyer were actively involved and highly regarded in the district. The hospital’s annual fund-raising carnival was a major community event each year, and the ‘Beauty Contest’ a particular highlight. In 1923 Vieve was the hospital representative in the quest (wearing violet) and raised the most money - £276 of the  £1120.[53] The board had already expressed its approval of both the matron and sister with a salary increase.[54]
In 1928 however a row broke out between the hospital board and Matron Cameron. It divided the community and led to an official inquiry. Originating in a complaint by a patient (the local Anglican clergyman) about his smoking in the hospital, it resulted in the board dismissing Annie Cameron. Vieve Dwyer, Dr McColl and several nurses resigned in sympathy for their matron. A public meeting was held in support of the popular matron and sister and a petition collected 1035 signatures. The local Returned Servicemen’s League were affronted by the treatment of ex-army nurses and offered them support and legal counsel:
We feel proud to be able to offer our services to our returned sisters, so that in some small way we may pay a little of that great debt of gratitude which we owe to them for their self sacrificing devotion rendered in the Great War.[55]
The subsequent inquiry, which conducted by a police magistrate for the state governor, found faults and errors of judgement on both sides but particularly on the part of the board.[56]
Annie Cameron and Vieve Dwyer had already left Scottsdale. They were farewelled at a packed public gathering in February where they were showered with praise and presented with illuminated addresses, money and gifts.[57]
In May 1928, just three months later, their supporters would have been interested to read that Dr McColl, formerly of Scottsdale, had set up a practice in Maffra, Victoria. Matron Cameron was purchasing a private hospital in the town, and furthermore ‘there is a possibility that Sister Dwyer, a lifelong personal friend, will be associated with her in the enterprise.’[58] This was no coincidence. McColl had purchased the practice of a retiring doctor who also owned his own hospital in the town, St David’s. McColl would have invited Annie Cameron and Vieve Dwyer to take charge of his hospital.
Their arrival in Maffra in 1928 began an association with the town and with there that ended only with Annie Cameron’s death in 1968 at the age of 84. She was still matron of the hospital.
St. David’s Private Hospital in Johnson Street had been established around 1906 by Maffra’s local doctor who was concerned at rates of infant mortality.[59] Situated next to the doctor’s residence, it appears to have been the only hospital in the town until 1945. St David’s became a local institution, its name synonymous with the two sisters. Annie Cameron and Vieve Dwyer. Dr McColl’s house was next door. They took general, surgical and midwifery cases. It was the birthplace for many in Maffra and the surrounding district – ‘Gosh, weren’t we all born there!!’ wrote a contributor to the Maffra and District History (MADH) facebook page in 2017. Many remembered the babies lined up in the enclosed veranda and outside in the fresh air. Just as many took their first breath there, others took their last, particularly those for whom it functioned as an aged care hospital.
The surgical patients ranged from children having tonsillectomies to adults with amputations. From reports in the local papers in the 1930s and 1940s, Annie Cameron and Vieve Dwyer nursed people after accidents with cars, horses and cows. They nursed adults and children with severe burns after lightning struck them at a local cricket match.[60] During those decades the population of the area and particularly of the town increased significantly, and the hospital was extended.[61]
Their wartime service, and the fact that both had been mentioned in despatches, added to their reputation. Occasionally they and McColl encountered patients they had nursed in the war, such as a soldier settler in the area.[62] Another of their patients who regarded military nursing as ‘the pinnacle of nursing expertise’, credited them with her survival following childbirth – ‘the nursing was superb’. Her baby was cared for with devotion at St David’s while she was treated in Melbourne.[63]
Just as they had been in Scottsdale the sisters, particularly Annie Cameron, were involved in their local community. In the 1930s she won prizes in various competitions for her cakes, her floral displays and not least, for her ‘Decorated Car (Patriotic)’ in Maffra’s Coronation Day procession in 1937. While less prominent than Cameron, Vieve Dwyer made news in 1934 when the car she was driving hit a train. She and her passenger escaped with shock but her car was extensively damaged.[64]
Sisters Cameron and Dwyer ran St David’s Hospital for an astonishing forty years. Cameron was still in charge at the time of her death, age 84, on 23 June 1968. Dwyer, who was 80, had no choice but to retire. The hospital was sold and subsequently demolished.
Vieve Dwyer returned to her home state, South Australia. She died on 12 March 1974, aged 85 and was buried in Centennial Park, Adelaide.
 
Mary Genevieve Dwyer in retrospect
In recent years considerable research has been done about the women who served with the Australian Army Nursing Service in World War One. There have been published diaries and biographies, as well as a study of the nursing skills they brought to or developed caring while for thousands of sick and wounded Australian and Allied troops in Egypt, England, France and Belgium, India and elsewhere, and on hospital ships. The digitisation of many records such as each nurse’s service history, the daily log of their unit/hospital and several hundred ‘nurses’ narratives’ about their experiences has facilitated this research by academic, professional and family historians. Australians have learnt that, in the words of Olive Haynes AANS, ‘we were here too’. Inevitably the focus of those records has meant that their experiences and perceptions as travellers and sightseers in unfamiliar lands has had less attention. Ship board life, foreign ports, and leave in Cairo, England, Ireland, Scotland and not least Paris were all new and exciting adventures that otherwise they might not have ever experienced. They too deserve the attention of historians.
In each account of a nurse during the war particular threads or themes stand out. In Vieve Dwyer’s story three are particularly striking.
First, there is the extraordinary range of experiences Vieve encountered. She nursed, for example, in the extreme heat of Cairo and the freezing cold of the Western Front, in a palace style hotel and in tents. Every different situation made huge demands on the nurses’ work. Her patients were suffering from conditions she had never seen before, such as limbs and torsos shattered by explosives, mustard gas burns and trench foot. New techniques and medical treatments were constantly developed by the medical officers and put into effect by the nurses.
Secondly, Vieve served for a time with 2 ACCS, a unit located so close to the lines that it had to be evacuated several times at short notice. The nurses were highly skilled in preparing hundreds of patients for evacuation within hours, evacuating themselves, waiting for the next move, setting up their wards again at short notice in readiness for hundreds more patients, and then – as happened inVieve’s case – repeating that again in less than a week.
The third theme that stands out inVieve’s story concerns ‘mateship’ or, more aptly in the case of women, friendship. Janet Butler, the biographer of Kit McNaughton who served with Vieve in Egypt, has pointed to the importance of close bonds between women who served in the AANS.[65]Vieve’s friendship with Annie Cameron was forged late in the war when they were both attached to 1 AGH. Like many such friendships it lasted long after the war. They lived and worked together first in Scottsdale and then for forty years in Maffra, an indomitable pair professionally and personally. They seemed like ‘a single unit’.[66] That friendship was just one of the ways in which the war changed their lives forever.

Thanks are due to the Maffra and District Historical Society for permission to use a photograph and in particular to Vieve Dwyer's great niece, Trish White (nee Kenny), for all her encouragement and for supplying Vieve's treasured albums and memorabilia. 
 

[1] Southern Cross, 13 December 1889, p6; http://www.oaklandsestate.org.au/about/history/, accessed 10 July 20
[2] Register, 22 December 1899, p2
[3] Southern Cross, 22 July 1949, p15. See also Alison Dolling, The History of Marion on the Sturt, Peacock Publications, 1981
[4] Ian Forbes, Calvary Hospital Adelaide In celebration of one hundred years of service of the Little Company of Mary at Calvary Hospital Adelaide 1900-2000, Calvary Hospital Adelaide Inc, 2000
[5] Dwyer, M.G. Service Record, B2455, National Archives of Australia
[6] Irene Bonnin (an Anglican) applied in April 1915, and Rose Gillick in June 1915. Numbers vary across sources but between 20 or 30 nurses trained at NAPH joined the AANS during World War One. Irene Bonnin’s diary in the State Library of South Australia showd that she, Vieve and Rose often visited each other in Cairo.
[7] Southern Cross, 17 December 1915, p15
[8] First World War Embarkation Roll, Mary Genevieve Dwyer, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/R1847723
[9] Janet Butler, Kitty’s War: The remarkable wartime experiences of Kit McNaughton, University of Queensland Press, 2013, pp10-11
[10] Register, 28 June 1915, p8
[11] Butler, Kitty’s War, Chapter 1
[12] Butler, Kitty’s War, pp22-23
[13] Nurses Narratives, Mary Genevieve Dwyer, 1919, AWM41 972 (hereafter Narrative, Dwyer)
[14] ‘Letter from Matron Broadhead’, Western Age (Dubbo), 9 October 1915, p2. Broadhead had been matron of a country hospital was a staff nurse in the AANS.
[15] Lyla Stewart, Terang Express, 7 January 1916, p2
[16] Narrative, Dwyer. Egypt was effectively a British protectorate from 1882 to 1922 .
[17] Narrative, Dwyer
[18] Nurses Narratives, Matron Ellen Julia Gould, 1933, p74, AWM41/975 (hereafter Narrative, Gould)
[19] War Diary, 2 AGH, April-May 1916, AWM 4 26/66
[20] Butler, Kitty’s War, p104
[21] Butler, Kitty’s War, pp100-114
[22] Butler, Kitty’s War, pp113-114
[23] Butler, Kitty’s War, pp116-117
[24] Narrative, Dwyer
[25] The contingent was known as the Harvard Surgical Unit. https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/exhibits/show/noble-work-for-a-worthy-end/harvard-surgical-unit/first-unit-arrives-in-europe
[26] Narrative, Dwyer
[27] E H Cuthbert AANS, quoted in Jan Bassett, Guns and Brooches: Australian army nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War, Oxford University Press, 1992, p57
[28] War Diary, 2 AGH, 29 October 1916
[29] Butler, Kitty’s War, p140
[30] War Diary, 2 AGH, 23 December 1916
[31] Narrative, Dwyer
[32] War Diary, 2 AGH, 14 April 1917
[33] War Diary, 2 AGH, 14 April 1917
[34] Sister Ida O’Dwyer of 3 ACCS, quoted in Rupert Goodman, Our War Nurses A history of the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps 1902-1988, Boolarong Publications, Queensland, 1988, p282
[35] Report on the Work of the Australian Army Nursing Service in France, National Archives WO222/2134, http://www.scarletfinders.co.uk/21.html, accessed 3 July 2021
[36] For eye witness accounts, see ‘Trois Arbres’, http://throughtheselines.com.au/research/trois-arbres, accessed 3 July 2021
[37] War Diary, 2 ACCS, January 1918, AWM4 26/63/17
[38] War Diary, 2 ACCS, 11 November 1917
[39] War Diary, 2 ACCS, 10 April 1918
[40] Nurses Narratives, Sister C Keys, AWM41/990
[41] Narrative, Dwyer; War Diary, 2 ACCS, 12 April 1918
[42] Narrative, Dwyer
[43] Nurses Narratives, Sister C Keys, AWM41/990
[44] Narrative, Dwyer
[45] Narrative, Dwyer
[46] War Diary, 2 ACCS, May 1918
[47] War Diary, 1 AGH, August 1918, AWM41 26/65. The information in this section is taken from the unit diaries between July 1918 and August 1919 (the final diary digitised).
[48] Narrative, Dwyer
[49] The 1 AGH War Diary seems to have ceased in August 1919
[50] Goodman, Our War Nurses, p105
[51] ‘The Luxury Ship’, Daily News (Perth), 29 January 1920, p1
[52] North Eastern Advertiser, 2 December 1921, p2, 13 December 1921, p2. The matron’s salary was £150. Examiner, 4 December 1920, p8
[53] North Eastern Advertiser, 17 August 1923, p3; Examiner, 3 November 1923, p6
[54] Daily Telegraph (Launceston), 10 August 1923, p2
[55] Mercury, 28 January 1928, p11
[56] Mercury, 16 April 1928, p7
[57] North Eastern Advertiser, 10 February 1928, p2. The event was widely reported in the Tasmanian papers.
[58] North Eastern Advertiser, 29 May 1928, p2
[59] Doris Kemp, Maffra The history of the shire to 1975, Bairnsdale, 1975, p103
[60] Gippsland Times, 10 November 1952, p1
[61] Kemp, Maffra, p124
[62] https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=MaffraHistSoc&set=a.768413476646468&comment_id=769151643239318
[63] https://catherinemeyrick.com/2017/04/25/book-review-one-womans-war-and-peace-by-wing-commander-sharon-bown-retd/; personal communication with the author
[64] Argus, 17 April 1934, p3
[65] https://theconversation.com/friendship-in-war-was-not-just-confined-to-bonds-between-men-38391
[66] Anne Meyrick, personal communication with the author