With the Zionists in Gallipoli

by J. H. Patterson

As we rounded the stern of the hospital ship in order to get to the lee-side, as the weather was a bit boisterous, I was interested to see that the ship was called the Assaye.

Now during the South African War, I had gone out in this same ship in command of about twelve hundred troops, and it was somewhat odd that I should now see her as a hospital ship and be going aboard her as a patient. I found things very comfortable on board, and certainly it was an immense change to us to find ourselves once more between sheets on a spring bed swung on pivots, so that the patients should not feel the motion of the ship. We were very democratic in the hospital, as generals, colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants and senior N. C. O.'s, some thirty or forty of us in all, were jumbled up together in the ward.

There was only one nursing sister for our ward, an Australian lady, Sister Dixon, who certainly worked like a slave from somewhere about seven in the morning until ten at night. Her task was too severe, and enough to break down any ordinary mortal. She was assisted in the ward duties by Corporal O'Brien, who did what he could to make us comfortable. The night orderly was a big kindly Scotch Highlander, named Mackinnon, almost as tender and sympathetic as a woman, who apologised profusely when he had to wake us every morning at 8 A. M. to take our temperatures and count the beats of our pulse.

The Assaye lay off Cape Helles in a blinding blizzard of hail and snow, during which many of the poor fellows in the trenches were, I am told, frozen to death, or, as a lesser evil, got their feet frozen during that very cold spell.

On the 27th we set sail for Mudros, which we reached in about four hours, where we lay at anchor for a day, and there was much speculation as to whether we would be transhipped, or go ashore and be put in hospital on this island, each and all wondering what was going to happen. One or two light cases were put ashore, and then the ship weighed anchor bound for Alexandria, which we reached without adventure on the 1st of December. All of us who were unable to walk were carried ashore by some stalwart Australians, and then we were sandwiched into a motor ambulance, still remaining on our stretchers, and driven off to Ras-el-Tin Hospital, which occupied an excellent position by the edge of the sea. Here I spent fifteen days getting every care and attention from Miss Bond (the matron), and nursing sisters Blythe and Jordon, who looked after the patients in my ward. Ras-el-Tin Hospital is used for officers only, but I noticed that some of the medical officers were somewhat young and inexperienced. This I consider wrong, because in these days the lives of officers are of great importance, and only the best and most experienced medical officers should be employed to look after them, and get them fit for their duties as soon as possible.

My own little experience in this respect may not be out of place here as an apt illustration of what I have just written.

The senior medical officer in charge, a very young temporary captain, without coming to see me, decreed that I was fit and well enough to leave the hospital for a convalescent home. Now, I was just about able to crawl and no more, and the matron and sister who knew the state I was in, told him that I was utterly unfit to leave the hospital. However, without coming to see me, he still remained obstinate, and ordered my kit away, but meanwhile, Colonel Beach, the A. D. M. S. Alexandria, having come to see me, his experienced eye showed him that it would be some months before I should be fit for military duty again, and he told me I should have to go before a medical board, who would dispose of my case. The following day the medical board decided to send me to England, and I was put on board the hospital ship Gurkha, which I found very comfortable, with excellent food and a most excellent medical staff, a colonel, three majors, and a captain, all of the Indian Medical Service; and I thought what a pity it was that some of these able and experienced officers could not be utilised to take charge of such hospitals as Ras-el-Tin, where they could guide the junior staff into the way they should go. It is just another example of not utilising in the right way the wealth of talent which we possess in skilled and able men. I do not for a moment mean to suggest that the talents of these Indian Medical Service officers were wasted on the Gurkha. What I do mean is that one or two of the senior men, would have been ample on the ship, with a couple of younger men as assistants, and the other senior men could then have been released for similar work among some of the ill-staffed hospitals in Egypt or Mesopotamia.

Colonel Haig, I. M. S., the senior medical officer on board, was untiring in his care of the sick and wounded, and if a testimonial of his zeal were wanted, it could be found in the difference in the appearance which his three hundred patients presented from the day when they came on board the Gurkha at Alexandria to the day when they left his hands at Southampton. I, who saw it, can only say it was simply marvellous.

After eleven days' treatment in the capable hands of Major Houston, I. M. S., I found myself a different man when I walked off the ship at Southampton, where we arrived on Boxing Day, 1915, and reached London on a hospital train the same evening. At Waterloo we were met by a medical officer, who scattered us throughout the hospitals in London. I was fortunate in being sent to that organised by Lady Violet Brassey at 40, Upper Grosvenor Street, where I was never so comfortable, or so well cared for in the whole course of my life, and for which I tender her my very sincere thanks; and I would also like to thank Doctor A. B. Howitt, Miss Spencer (the matron), and the sisters and nurses for the care and kindness which they showed me during the three weeks I was in their charge.

It was delightful to have old friends crowding in with gifts of flowers, and fruit, and books, and all the latest London papers and gossip. Lady Violet arranged some delightful concerts for us at which such public favourites as Madame Bertha Moore, Miss Evie Greene and others charmed us with song, story, and recitation. Among the "others" was Miss Marjorie Moore, whose song, "Just a Little Bit of Heaven," reached all the Irish hearts there.