Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

​NOK in Rusholme, Manchester, England
Embarked for Cape Town 10 March 1900 per 'Euryalus'
Worked at 13GH Johannesburg and 1GH Wynberg.​

Sister Ellen Walter wrote on 15 July 1900:

'We started the hospital here for the troops, and it has been a great business getting things fixed. It is just a large room in the athletic sports ground, formerly used for a gymnasium and which we use as a ward. The grandstand is boarded up for the doctors and for our rooms-all wood and iron-hot in the day and cold at night. Sister Julia Anderson and I are doing all the nursing work at present, as it takes Sister Marianne Rawson all her time looking after the housekeeping. Sisters Diana Tiddy and Annie Thomson are still at the civil hospital here, as there are a few men there still.
'Each intake of men who arrived in camp had such a lot ill with fever, dysentery and pneumonia. So far no typhoid among our men. We now have 30 in the ward, and 11 in tents with measles, and such a lot of New Zealanders arrive with it. Four nurses are still at Umtali and will come on here later, as the base hospital is to be here. Sister Frances Hines is at Enkeldoorn, but we expect her here soon. She has been a long time alone there. We are anxious to go with troops, and the Colonel in command has promised to send some of us on when the Imperial contingents have passed.'
'Each intake of men who arrived in camp had such a lot ill with fever, dysentery and pneumonia. So far no typhoid among our men. We now have 30 in the ward, and 11 in tents with measles, and such a lot of New Zealanders arrive with it. Four nurses are still at Umtali and will come on here later, as the base hospital is to be here. Sister Frances Hines is at Enkeldoorn, but we expect her here soon. She has been a long time alone there. We are anxious to go with troops, and the Colonel in command has promised to send some of us on when the Imperial contingents have passed.'
The Victorian nurses suffered a fatality when Sister Frances Hines contracted pneumonia. She was buried at Bulawayo with full military honours.
Captain W. W. Dobbin, a Victorian Bushman, wrote: 'You have no doubt heard of all the misfortunes, disease and discomfort encountered by the troops unfortunate enough to be sent to Beira, Marndellas, etc. Our nursing sisters were the only sisters who ventured into these districts, and they have indeed done more than their share of work. At times one, sometimes two, would be trekked off on a week's coaching journey to some fever bed where the troops are falling ill, with possibly no accommodation but a deserted public house. I have seen two sisters on their knees scrubbing and cleaning such a place to receive their patients, and in the middle of their work 10 or 12 sick and dying men dumped down from an ox wagon, and no orderlies detailed and no native servants.
'The nurses would be obliged to take off some of their own clothing to make pillows for sick men, and then go outside to cook food under a blazing sun. They were never with us after Beira, but some of our troops, and men from other contingents write and speak in most grateful terms of their willing services.'

SOURCE: Wallace R.L.: The Australians at the Boer War: AWM & AGPS : Canberra: 1976: pp.249-250