“at home to her friends”
The Mildura Cultivator published this notice on the 13th October, 1915. “Miss Bessie Gallagher will be at home to her friends tomorrow afternoon.” To us this seems a quaint remnant of an era when ladies would go visiting in the afternoons to exchange news and cement friendships. But in the dark days of war such an activity would provide support for each other in their fears and losses.
Bessie, Caroline Elizabeth Gallagher, had returned to Mildura from Melbourne four days prior to this notice. She was on ten days final leave before proceeding to the war front in the following month. This afternoon would see her say goodbye to her friends for four years. She was born in Wentworth just across the New South Wales’ border, in 1884, the daughter of George Gallagher and Elizabeth Mary (nee Jackson). George was a saddle and harness maker providing his services in both Wentworth and Mildura, but by 1907 the family had moved to live in Mildura, where he died in 1907 aged 47.
Bessie had trained as a nurse in the Maryborough Hospital, the Deniliquin Hospital and the Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. She was appointed to the Euston Bush Nursing Hospital in 1911 where she was popular with the locals. She had also worked with Dr. Henderson in Mildura.
When Bessie enlisted on 23rd August, 1915 she gave her address as Mont Park, Macleod. She was probably already nursing the first casualties from Gallipoli. In 1915, under the provision of the Mental Treatment Act 1915 and subsequent legislation, a Convalescent Military Hospital was established at Mont Park. It was for the treatment of service personnel with a mental disorder derived from their war service.
The hospital had been built on farmland and wooded hills. Treatment included working on the farm and gardening which was seen as a way for the shattered men to be in the open air, quieten their minds and move towards recovery.
The Argus of 10th September published an appeal from the local Red Cross in Preston, for gramophones and records, comforts and games for the returning wounded soldiers.
Colonel (Dr.) John Springthorpe returning from Egypt after 12 months as senior physician at No.2 Australian General Hospital expressed grave concern for the mental condition of some returning soldiers from the Gallipoli campaign. He did not believe that young men of 19 or 20 were mature enough to stand the physical and mental strain of what they had to endure.
“There were some boys not much over 17, and it is doubtful if they will ever be the same again owing to shock and strain.
There were a number of cases of shell shock. When you consider “the hell of fire” which they had endured [at Gallipoli] you can imagine the state of their nerves; some could not speak, see, nor hear for a month or more; some had tremors of the whole body. Officers, whose courage could not be doubted, were unable to speak.”
Doctors and nurses were picking up the pieces, and suffering in their own way. Sister Kitchen who worked with Dr. Springthorpe at the hospital in Egypt wrote in her diary that while chatting to Colonel Springthorpe “he looked aged and harrowed by the horrors and hardships that the men have had to endure.” He was 60 years of age.
While on leave Colonel Springthorpe spoke at Scott’s Hotel in Melbourne at a fundraising luncheon for nurses who would return from the front needing ongoing support. He said:
that those at the front had been electrified by the magnificent work done by the women of Australia. The nurses who went from here were especially fitted for the duties they had to perform and they performed them in a remarkably efficient manner. The work of the nurses at the front had been magnificent. The women’s sacrifice had been as great as the men’s and in many cases the danger had been very little less. The work they had done deserved the everlasting thanks of the community. A number of women would come back incapacitated and the funds they were raising that day would fulfil the worthy object of affording relief.”
This then was the situation nurses found themselves in when Bessie enlisted from Mont Park. Elizabeth (Bessie) Gallagher entered as a staff nurse to special reinforcements for the 1st Australian General Hospital and would be paid 7 shillings and 10 pence per day. The nursing recruits were required to have a minimum of three years hospital training in medical and surgical nursing for entry into the service.
Bessie Gallagher left her position at Mont Park and embarked on 12th November, 1915 on board H.M.A.T. Orsova in Melbourne. She was 30 years of age. She was mature, well trained, experienced, and had seen firsthand the effects the war was having on her countrymen and women.
She would go on to nurse servicemen on hospital ships and on the Western front in France. She would be faced with the injured and the dying, malnourished, distraught men, young and old, who had ventured forth for a variety of reasons. Some out of duty, some out of adventure and others who still had their roots embedded in England. The ordeal would bring her into contact with the worst of war man had yet invented. She would nurse men brought in from a world turned to mud. She was part of the war to end all wars. She would be one of the healers, the listeners, a steady hand working to restore these shattered men.
She was not the only member of this Mildura family to volunteer. On 6th January in that same year, Bessie’s younger brother Godfrey David Albert Gallagher, a clerk with the National Bank, had enlisted. Within four months he had left Melbourne on H.M.A.T. Ulysses, a Lance Corporal with the 22nd Infantry Battalion. He would be paid five shillings per day with three shillings a day to remain in Australia. His next of kin was their mother Mrs. E.M. Gallagher of Lime Avenue, Mildura.
In August, 1916 Godfrey, known as Goff to his friends, was involved in a battle at Pozieres, in the north east of France. Private H.C. Dickenson in a letter to the Red Cross advised that on 5th August 1916 Godfrey had been hit in the stomach and Private Dickenson had seen him lying at the bottom of a trench. From there he was taken to the field hospital. Six days later he died of his wounds.
The following month Bessie wrote to the Red Cross seeking clarification regarding his death and of the fact that he had “received decoration for conspicuous gallantry to duty during operations at Pozieres.”
She was anxious to let her grieving family, especially her mother, know of the circumstances, and she wrote a further letter from the hospital ship Grantley Castle out of Malta on the 16th.
Godfrey was awarded the Military Medal and was buried in the Pucherullers British Cemetery. Pucherullers is a village about nineteen kilometres north east of Amiens. Godfrey was 21 years and 3 months old.
Those serving overseas during WW1 often sent copies of the English newspaper the Daily Mail back to Australia. This newspaper sometimes contained photographs of personnel as well as the usual wartime articles.
On 11th April, 1919, six months after Armistice, Bessie wrote home from No.3 Australian Hospital, Abbeville, France and enclosed a cutting from the Daily Mail. She thought it would be worth reprinting. “Mildura”, she wrote “has had her sad share of the war and after reading this beautiful and sacred piece called Tread Softly (which I felt was holy when I was on the battlefield at Pozieres) thought how Mildura mothers and wives and sisters who have loved ones in a little bit of France would be comforted to know by reading this, how sacred and holy the battle fields of France are.”
The newspaper cutting by Sisley Huddleston began
Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. The battlefields of France must not degenerate into the most wonderful showplace of the world. They must be preserved as far as possible as a place of pious pilgrimage.
It is …true – and the feeling is one which is very deep in the soul of the French – that it would be something of a sacrilege to trample down the soil where humble heroes fought and where humble heroes died.”
Bessie returned to Australia on 23rd August 1919 on board the Zealandic. She was welcomed back to Mildura in October and given a “gift tea” by Mrs. J.H. Bell of Miam, Irymple, as a welcome home and in honour of her approaching marriage. The newspaper reported that she was shortly to be married to Mr. W.H. Cox of Mildura who was one of the original ANZACs. However the marriage did not take place for nearly three years. Meanwhile, Bessie was discharged as medically unfit on 30th May 1921.
On the 30th May 1922 she married William Henry Cox, and they went on to have two children. She died on 13th March, 1958 at Moorabbin.
Bessie’s husband William Henry Cox and her brother Godfrey D. Gallagher are listed on the First World War Mildura and District War Memorial located in Henderson Park, Mildura.
Nurses in the First World War however were not included on memorials.
Footnote:
Colonel (Dr.) John Springthorpe returned to the front in 1916 with postings to France and Belgium and then worked for two years at Dartford in England with servicemen who were suffering shell shock.
In his diary of 19th February, 1918 Colonel Springthorpe recorded that he had written home to explain why he was still in England. He saw himself as “doing my little bit of infinite importance to some hundreds who have been to or will see Hell before they become unconscious, dream terrible dreams, lose memory and powers of mind. If I don’t – no one will.”
He returned to Melbourne in 1919 to his young wife whom he had married when on leave in 1916. He was appointed in charge of neurological and cardiac cases at No. 16 Australian General Hospital at Macleod.
Photo: Mont Park Hospital, Alice Broadhurst Collection, Yarra Plenty Regional Library
By Maureen Jones
This story was first published in “Fine Spirit and Pluck: World War One Stories from Banyule, Nillumbik and Whittlesea” published by Yarra Plenty Regional Library, August 2016
