LETTERS FROM LITTLE FOLKS
Dear Dot,— We have a tortoiseshell cat. She was caught in a rabbit trap three times Her paw is nearly better now. We had a kitten, but it died; we called it Yellowboy. I was nine years of age on the 13th of June. I go to school, and am in the Second Standard. My sisters Jessie and Madelene go to school with me. — Yours truly, Lily Lind. Makarewa, September 2. -Otago Witness, 17/9/1891.
Photo from the "Online Cenotaph."
Lily must have done well at school, indicated by her winning "Junior Honours" in the Music Theory exams of 1903, with 97%, at age 21. She took Intermediate Honours the next year with 81%.
In 1907 she passed her nursing exams for anatomy and physiology and passed her final examinations the next year. She and a friend, Margaret "Daisy" Hitchcock travelled to Ireland to study midwifery in 1913 and were living in London and working as private nurses when they enlisted in 1914.
British military authorities, anticipating a short war, declined their applications for the British Army but they were free to enlist with allied forces - that is how Lily came to serve with the French Flag Nursing Corps - aiding an army which was woefully unprepared for the numbers of casualties suffered in modern warfare.
Lily and Daisy left for France in October, 1914, and were posted to the Hotel Dieu in Rouen, working alongside French nuns. In December they were in a large military hospital in Bordeaux, then at Bergues, near the Belgian border, dealing with victims of a typhoid epidemic.
In 1915, still at Bergues, Lily and the rest of the staff found themselves under German artillery fire, taking to the cellars and buildings around them were hit and collapsed. It was the first of two barrages they endured.
A SOUTHLAND NURSE
HER EXPERIENCES IN FRANCE
EXCITING TIMES
Miss Herman of the Floral tea rooms, has received the following letter from Nurse Lind, who is a native of Makarewa, Lind's Bridge having been named after her father. Nurse Lind commenced the practice of her profession in Nurse Thomson’s private hospital at Invercargill. Later she received an appointment in the Wellington Hospital. To gain further experience she journeyed to the Old Country where she held positions in hospitals in Kngland and Ireland. When the war broke out, she enlisted with British nurses for the front:
Hospital Temporaire 72,
Paris-Plage, Pas-de-Calais, France. June 11.
It was very nice to get your very kind letter after not having heard from you for so long. I have now been working with the French military for the last eight months, and love them. We have had the most exciting experiences, and have just come to Paris-Plage, which is a seaside place, for a few weeks. We have been shelled out of our hospital at Bergues, near Dunkirque, and all our patients had to be removed; but when the guns that were shelling us are taken we expect the hospital to be re-opened and we will then return. We had a most exciting month, spending most of our time in cellars, and, as all the civil population fled from the town, the shops were all shut and for about two days we lived on dry bread and condensed milk. We had shells from the guns at Dixmude by day and bombs from Taubes (German single-seat monoplanes) at night; but now here we are safe in a lovely seaside place and doing nothing.
There is a beautiful forest at the back, and near here are two Canadian camps, so for the first time for months we have plenty of English society. In Bergues we six English nurses were the only English in the town, and so we got no end of a fuss made of us. I see by the papers that a lot of New Zealand nurses have gone to Egypt. While we were in Bordeaux at the beginning of the year, the New Zealand office in London wrote and asked us to go there, too, but I am very content here with the French. How time does fly! It is over two years now since I left Wellington, and I have no idea yet when I will be back again. It depends a good deal on this awful war. -Southland Times, 30/7/1915.
After some leave on the nearby coast, Lily and Daisy were assigned to the "Service des Evacuations Fluviales" - a unit which took wounded soldiers from the combat zone to hospitals by way of barges on the Northern French canal system. At the beginning of 1916 the friends took some leave at Nice on the French Riviera. This was an escape from the wartime winter but was also necessary as Lily had fallen ill. She was soon diagnosed with tuberculosis of the lungs.
Lily was nursed by her friend Daisy and in late 1916 she was well enough to travel home to New Zealand on the NZ Hospital Ship Maheno. She succumbed to her disease during the voyage, the 12th New Zealand nurse to die as a result of her service, and was buried at sea off Sri Lanka. She had made her will four months before her death.
Lily's name appears on a memorial window at York Minster in York, England and on the cenotaph in Invercargill. A Croix de Guerre awarded to her by the French Nation is held at the Auckland Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira.
ROLL OF HONOUR.
LIND — On November 21st, on N.Z. Hospital Ship Maheno, Sister Lily Lind, late of Welington Hospital, after a long illness contracted whilst nursing in France. -Dominio, 30/12/1916.
ABOUT PEOPLE
The British Journal of Nursing for 3rd February has the following paragraph;—"We deeply regret to report the death at sea, on November 21st, of Sister Lind, a bright young life sacrificed to duty. Sister Lind, a member of the Registered Nurses Society, went to France in October, 1914, where she did splendid service for the Corps, working with the utmost devotion through the terrible epidemic of typhoid at Bergues and elsewhere. She developed phthisis, and, was most tenderly cared for by Sister Hitchcock at Grasse for many months, where the French authorities treated them both with the utmost kindness. Recovering slightly, she was brought to England, and both Sisters left for their home in New Zealand in a troopship last October. About a week before she reached Colombo Sister Lind became suddenly much worse and died about twenty-four hours after leaving Ceylon, and was buried at sea. When we remember the charm and sweetness of character, and gay, courageous spirit of this young Sister we realise how deep must be the sorrow of her bereaved family. If only she could have lived to see all her dear ones again. They have our sincere sympathy.” The late Nurse Lind was a Southland girl and lived here until she left for Wellington Hospital to train as a nurse. Her many Southland friends will learn of her death with deep regret. -Southland Times, 7/4/1917.
I am greatly indebted to Kirstie Ross, Curator at Te Papa, for many of the details of Lily's story.
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