Issue 3: Behind the front line

your family

Behind the front line Gallipoli was a marker in the growth of national identity for New Zealand as well as Australia. Mark Webster looks at one family’s loss: a young nurse named Ada Hawken

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n New Zealand, it’s said that everyone with Kiwi connections for three generations has a line to a soldier at Gallipoli. Indeed, two of my friends had relatives who died there. A neighbour is the great granddaughter of Lord Russell, one of the more famous New Zealand officers of Gallipoli who went on to command the New Zealanders in Europe. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark had relatives there. The core that became the infamous Maori Battalion of World War II did service at Anzac Cove as a pioneer battalion, and went into the line in the attacks preceding the taking of Chunuk Bair in August 1915.

In World War I, New Zealand made a commitment out of proportion to its population.

From just under one million people, more than 10 per cent of the population (117,175) served. Of those, 18,500 died and nearly 50,000 were wounded. The effects were dramatic and long-lasting. Memorials still dot the country. Perhaps the fact that all New Zealanders in the Gallipoli campaign were volunteers was partly responsible for the indelible imprint

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in the national consciousness. From the following year, New Zealand introduced conscription.

Medical care — a personal story Medical facilities were woefully inadequate at Gallipoli. The wounded or sick had to be evacuated from Turkish territory by boat — this could take hours or even days. Stifling heat and enemy shelling were terrible hindrances. Once free of the beach, casualties were tended by doctors and nurses on ships. Some were sent to medical facilities set up on the island of Lemnos, or all the way to Egypt, to places like the 19th General Hospital. The terrifically unsanitary conditions of the battlefield, due to the heat, proximity to corpses, millions of flies and inadequate latrines caused widespread ‘enteric fever’ — a collective term for typhoid and paratyphoid. These days, it’s easily treated with antibiotics, but in the first part of last century, death could occur in 10 to 30 per cent of cases.

Among soldiers weakened by warfare conditions, one may assume the death rate was at the upper end.

Far left The 19th General Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt, where Ada Hawken served, and died in October 1915.

Courtesy of Phil Gregory’s collection Left Ada Hawkins’ graduation photo, Auckland, 1911

on Hospital Ship Number One, the Maheno, just There weren’t very many New Zealand women four days after enlistment. Tragically, she died in the campaign, as you’d imagine, but they may shortly after arriving in Egypt to nurse soldiers, have suffered similar casualty rates to the men. having avoided the sinking of the Marquette, which Among the very few women involved directly were must have claimed the lives of some of her friends. nurses. A group of New Zealand nurses was drowned She was admitted “with enteric” on October 19, when their transport, the Marquette, was torpedoed 1915 and passed away three days later (according on the way to Salonika. This occurred during the to her service record) at the 19th General Hospital Gallipoli campaign, and in the same general area. in Egypt, the hospital at Others suffered illness “Ada Hawken graduated which she was presumably due to contact with the troops based. She is buried in the they were attending. One was 18th in the state midwifery Alexandria (Chatby) Military nurse Ada Gilbert Hawken. I examinations… and enlisted and War Memorial Cemetery know of Ada via her brother’s in Egypt; her grave reference grandson, Phil Gregory. Phil’s in the New Zealand Army is G. 125. Ada died despite mother Ada Hawken was named for her aunt — and her Nursing Corps on July 6, 1915” being, again according to her service record, “inoculated father (Ada’s brother), Henry for typhoid” on July 14 and July 22, 1915. A tablet Hawken, went to war too, later serving in France. was later erected to her memory at the Kawakawa Ada Hawken graduated 18th in the state Hospital where she had worked. At the time of Ada’s midwifery examinations after training at Auckland death, her next of kin was recorded as her father, Hospital, and subsequently moved north to work Gilbert, who lived in the family home in Mt Eden, as a nurse for the Public Health Department.

Auckland — a homestead called “Boscoppa” after the Ada was in Kawakawa in the Bay of Islands when family’s ancestral farm in England. As with so many she enlisted in the New Zealand Army Nursing Gallipoli stories, it’s a tragedy that still resonates Service Corps on July 6, 1915, although elsewhere with the family nearly a century later.  it states she enlisted in Wellington. She embarked

Inside History

Mar-Apr 2011

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Left Ada’s nurse’s cape. It’s in excellent condition and, nearly 100 years later, is still a vivid red. It must have been sent back to the family from Egypt. It has her name on a label sewn inside. Courtesy Phil Gregory collection

Did you have a relative at Gallipoli?

Many New Zealand families have stories, postcards, even mementoes, going back to World War I. But if this is not the case in your family, all is not lost. There are books published in New Zealand containing letters from soldiers, which may include your relatives, or at least men from the same units.

Some examples are:

● Echoes of Gallipoli: In the Words of New

Zealand’s Mounted Riflemen by Terry Kinloch (2005, Exisle Publishing). NZ mounted troops fought dismounted there, like their Australian Light Horse counterparts. ● Behind the Lines: the Lives of New Zealand Soldiers in the First World War by Nicholas Boyack (1989, Allen & Unwin) ● Letters From Gallipoli by Glynn Harper (out April 2011, Auckland University Press) Where to next? ● For information about New Zealand military nursing, visit www.nzans.org ● For a listing of service men and women mentioned in dispatches from Gallipoli, see The New Zealanders at Gallipoli by Fred Waite. This

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is available online at www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/ tei-WaiNewZ-b5-1.html ● Some personal records prior to 1920 are searchable online at Archives New Zealand.

Visit www.archway.archives.govt.nz Libraries well worth a visit include:

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Hocken Library in Dunedin National Library of New Zealand, Wellington Auckland Public Library Kippenberger Military Archives and Research Library at the National Army Museum in Waiourou on the North Island. See www.armymuseum.co.nz ● The grand Auckland Museum, in central Auckland, was originally erected after World War I as the War Memorial Museum. It has an excellent, searchable library as well as a terrific website that supports investigations by names. This site contains biographical and service details for more than 115,000 New Zealand men and women from the 19th century onwards. Go to www.aucklandmuseum.com and click on Cenotaph Database. If you suspect a relative was killed at Gallipoli, head to the top floor: every name is engraved on the wall in alphabetical order. 