Where are the women? Recordings of New Zealand nurses in World War II

New Zealand nurses, waving farewell from a deck of a troopship during World War II. The Evening Post newspaper. Ref: PAColl-5482-018. Alexander Turnbull Library. /records/22299346

Over 90 percent of the voices heard in the Mobile Broadcasting Unit’s wartime recordings are male. As with any archive, it is important to consider what is missing from the official record: whose stories haven’t been written, whose voices are not heard? In the case of a sound archive, it can be a very literal ‘archival silence’.

The absence of female voices in the collection is largely due to the limited opportunities for New Zealand women to serve overseas during World War II. But there were women on active service – and some of them and the stories of their experiences were recorded. I’ll give a brief overview here of the Unit’s recordings of nurses of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service. Other women were also recorded by the Unit, such as WAACs and Tuis, and their recordings will feature in a later blog.

New Zealand nurses sailed with the First and Second Echelons of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force. When the Third Echelon departed in August 1940, it too contained members of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service, as well as the staff of the National Broadcasting Service Mobile Unit. In all, around 600 NZANS members were to serve outside New Zealand between 1939 and 1945. ¹

From the deck of the troopship “Empress of Japan” on 26 August 1940, broadcasting commentator Doug Laurenson described watching the loading of their sister vessel “Mauretania”, as both readied to depart Wellington . His recorded commentary painted a picture of the scene for radio audiences: “All along her decks, leaning out of port holes and perched in her rigging can be seen lines and lines of khaki-clad figures. …High up on her boat deck, the most vivid sight is that of the scarlet capes, the grey uniforms and white head dress of Army Sisters. In the sunlight they make an unforgettable splash of colour, flanked by the blue uniforms of the ship’s crew and the khaki drill of our own troops.” ²

The women he was describing were staff of No. 2 New Zealand General Hospital (2NZGH) which sailed with the Third Echelon, some of whom can be seen waving goodbye in the photograph above. In early recordings the Unit made en-route to Egypt, we get small glimpses of what life was like for the handful of women on board a ship with over 1,000 men. In one recording, an unnamed nursing sister gives a brief description of shore leave. Due to wartime censorship, the actual location was not able to be mentioned on-air, but from the date of recording we know it was Fremantle in Western Australia She greets Mangatawhiri (presumably her hometown) and describes how the nurses were met by local (Australian) nurses and shown great hospitality. Arrangements were made at Perth clubs to provide meals and dancing for the women, as well as the New Zealand troops who were also granted shore leave.

Later in the voyage as the Third Echelon headed for its next port (Bombay/Mumbai, India) some of the nurses joined the men in taking part in a traditional “Crossing the Line” ceremony. This is a centuries-old old naval tradition that marks the first time a person sails across the Equator. The Broadcasting Unit recorded a commentary on deck describing the good-natured hi-jinks, which involved the ship’s crew dressing -up and taking the roles of various members of “King Neptune’s Court”. They cover the ‘land-lubber’ initiates who are crossing the line for the first time with soap-lather and them give them a dunk in a pool on the deck. A Sister Anderson, matron of the nurses on board (possibly Lucy Edna Anderson) is described entering into the spirit of the occasion, appearing on deck in fancy dress as an elderly woman complete with bonnet. She takes her lathering and dunking as a “good sport”, but turns the tables on “King Neptune” pushing him into the water as well, much to the amusement of the crowd! ³

Once the Third Echelon reached Egypt and settled into life at Maadi Camp near Cairo, the Mobile Broadcasting Unit staff began preparing one of its longest early broadcasts, which was to be played in New Zealand on Christmas Day 1940.

It was an ambitious programme, obtaining recorded messages from representatives of various branches of the New Zealand Division, as well as men serving with the Royal Navy and Air Force, a Christmas message from New Zealand commander General Bernard Freyberg himself and a talk by “a Middle East nursing sister.” Apart from the General, all participants in this programme are frustratingly unnamed. Perhaps it was intended that through their anonymity, the speakers would be representatives of all the New Zealanders overseas. However, the unnamed nurse is introduced as having been overseas for nearly a year at the time of the recording, which means she was most likely one of the 18 nurses in the First Echelon who had left New Zealand in January 1940.

In what would become something of a feature of the Broadcasting Unit’s recordings of women, the nurse in the 1940 Christmas programme addresses herself directly “to the womenfolk of New Zealand, whether wives, mothers or sweethearts.” She describes the conditions in Egypt: the weather, food, and the outings arranged for off-duty mento see the sights. She ends by telling listeners that “All the men in our care on Christmas Day will be looked after and we’ll see that their stockings are filled.” ⁴ Hearing these reassurances in the voice of a New Zealand woman on the other side of the world, might have gone some way towards the Broadcasting Unit’s stated aim of boosting morale on the homefront.

New Zealand nurses continue to appear sporadically in the Unit’s recordings throughout the war. As the “messages home” became a regular popular feature on New Zealand radio, they too were given an opportunity to appear in front of the microphone and send greetings to loved ones. In March 1941 the Unit visited the New Zealand General Hospital at Helwan, and recorded greetings from nurses, including the Matron Doris Brown.

A couple of months later in May 1941 the Unit recorded a talk by Matron Eva Mackay who had been in charge of the party of nurses which went to Greece in February to set up a tent hospital for New Zealanders fighting there. However, as that campaign rapidly unravelled, she instead found herself helping to lead over 100 British, Australian and New Zealand nurses in a hurried evacuation away from advancing German forces. 

Their journey through Greece and Crete was a dangerous and arduous one, pursued by the advancing enemy and under fire from German aircraft.  In the New Zealand Nurses’ Journal she wrote “Never will I forget my few weeks in Greece. The last part will be like a nightmare for some time to come and the relief at stepping ashore in the Middle East was almost too much for me.” ⁵

In her interview for New Zealand radio recorded shortly after ‘stepping ashore’,  she described how the evacuating nurses’ truck convoy was bombed and strafed from the air, forcing the women to shelter for a day in an old Greek cemetery before continuing their journey in darkness. The interview was written up as a full-page feature article for The New Zealand Listener magazine in June 1941, under the headline N.Z. Nurses in Greece. Their experiences told by Miss E.C. Mackay in the N.B.S. session “With the Boys Overseas.” ^6.

Other wartime recordings of nurses which survive in the sound archives include Sister Vera Hodges, who nursed in a casualty clearing station in the North African Western Desert campaign and gave an account of their work to the Broadcasting Unit in early 1943. (She noted the men were amazed to find New Zealand women so close to the front line. ) She had also been interviewed when the Unit travelled to visit New Zealanders in Syria in 1942 and recorded greetings from a handful of nurses in a CCS there.

Matron-in-Chief of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service, Emily Nutsey was interviewed shortly before her departure from that role in November 1943, when she had to return to New Zealand due to ill health. Her interview, in which she which reviews the work of the NZANS in the war to that point, is still awaiting digitisation. Once it is available it will become yet another useful resource for researchers interested in the role of New Zealand nurses on active service in the war.

References: 1. New Zealand Army Nursing Service Roll World War Two, https://www.nzans.org , 2. Doug Laurenson in Embarkation of the Third Echelon commentary, ID11155 Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, 3. Crossing the Equator Pts 1-5 ID11030 Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, 4. Talk by a Middle East nursing sister, ID 19066 Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision,
5. Eva MacKay in New Zealand Journal of Nursing 15 July 1941, cited in Anna Rogers, While You’re Away: New Zealand nurses at war 1899-1948 (AUP 2003) p223, 6. The New Zealand Listener, 20 Jun 1941 p7.