Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command of The Royal Canadian Legion www.ns.legion.ca 87 continued ... dangers of enemy attack. On the night of June 27, 1918, the Canadian hospital ship Llandovery Castle was torpedoed by a German U-boat and 234 people lost their lives, including all 14 sisters on board. In France, as well as Africa and the Mediterranean, the nurses had to deal not only with an exhausting workload, but often under extremely primitive working conditions and desperate climatic extremes. This was the pre-antibiotics age and, as was the case during the South African conflict, the ranks of the injured were swelled by infection and outbreaks of diseases such as meningitis. In spite of these challenges, the Canadian Nursing Sisters were able to provide comfort to the sick and injured. A total of 3,141 Nursing Sisters served in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps and 2,504 of those served overseas in England, France and the Eastern Mediterranean at Gallipoli, Alexandria and Salonika. By the end of the First World War, approximately 45 Nursing Sisters had given their lives, dying from enemy attacks including the bombing of a hospital and the sinking of a hospital ship, or from disease. The beautiful Nursing Sisters’ Memorial in the Hall of Honour in the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa is a loving tribute to their service, sacrifice and heroism. The following is a letter written by Nursing Sister Harriet Graham of New Glasgow N.S. to her parents in 1914: From Nurse Miss Harriet Graham Canada No. 2 Stationary Hospital, France Dear--------------- I’m sorry not to have gotten a letter off to you before this, but we have been on the jump and have been awfully busy, and now I have all beds turned down and am waiting for the ambulances to come in with their loads. It is great, and we love it. We have a dandy crowd of girls and a very nice crowd of officers, and our men are as willing as can be, though most of them are untrained: but when I see the poor souls scrubbing and doing all sorts of things they never did before, I can’t but feel sorry for them. But I must start at the beginning of my story. We have the most beautiful hospital you could imagine, and we are simply proud of ourselves, for the FIRST Canadian Hospital to be in France. We just came here and commandeered a beautiful summer hotel, turned into it, and settled ourselves. Then we took a house belonging to Count Constaudivitch, who married Miss Cutting of New York, and who is in Servia or someplace on war business, for the nurses to live in, and another for the officers. They are all right together, so it makes it quite nice, and a comfortable bed to turn into at night when we get off duty. But our hospital is grand. There were big verandas on three sides, which have been enclosed in glass, and make fine wards. I tell you, if you think house cleaning is hard work, and you know I do think it, I hope I don’t have to clean another hotel; but we had some fun out of it too. Col. Shillington said he was going to name all the wards for the different provinces. So I said: “Well please put Nova Scotia in the dining room.” The dining room, I must explain, is the biggest ward and right at the main entrance. “that’s it ‘J he said, “Sister Graham always wants Nova Scotia to have the biggest and best place right in front; that is the place for Ontario, as most of the corps come from there.” One of the other girls said: “But British Columbia is the biggest province.” “Well,” I said, “We will all have to put the names in a hat and draw for it,” and the fun of it is Nova Scotia has it – the prettiest ward, with seventy-five beds and the most important place. We are all extremely pleased. I’m going to send to Dr. Neily and see if he can get a Nova Scotia flag for it. At present I am sitting in Quebec (ward), as they are going to receive tonight. Pearl Fraser is on night duty, but it is not so awful, or at least has not been so far, as the nights we receive we all stay in and help. You know, they always come in at night. We have fifteen ambulances and they each carry four patients, and when they all make about three trips, it makes quite a number of patients. I’m not allowed to tell you how many patients we have or how many we can take, but you can tell Kit we continued ...
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