About 80 Australian and New Zealand nurses are visiting Lemnos to mark the 100th anniversary of the first Anzac nursing contingent arriving on the island.
The journey to the former home of the Number 3 Australian General Hospital is part of a seven-day voyage of commemoration for the nurses, aged from 18 to 80, who also visited Athens, Skiathos, Thessaloniki, Anzac Cove and Istanbul.
Recreating the arrival of nursing sisters to Lemnos a century ago, they marched to the Turks Head Peninsula escorted by a bagpiper.
They also visited the Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries at Portianou and Mudros, where 148 Australian soldiers and several Canadian nurses are buried.
More than 2,500 Australian and New Zealand nurses served overseas during WW1, with many treating casualties of the Gallipoli campaign.
Speaking to News Corp Australia, tour leader and retired nurse Clare Ashton said her thoughts had turned to Elizabeth McMillan, whose letters home from the war are kept in the NSW State Library.
Sister McMillan served in New Guinea and Fiji in 1914 before she set sail for Lemnos. When she returned to Australia she founded the Karitane Mothercraft Society in Sydney, an early-parenting centre.
“It is a very emotional time for everyone,” Ms Ashton said. “People have been amazed that a group of nurses would come here to salute the services of nurses.”
She added that many of the WW1 women returned home to Australia deeply affected by their war service.
“It wasn’t just the soldiers who suffered from post-traumatic stress, a lot of the nurses did as well.
“They brought their war home with them and they just had to live with it,” she said.
During the trip, the group laid a wreath at the site where the British troopship Marquette was torpedoed and sunk, resulting in the death of 32 New Zealanders, with 10 nurses among the list of casualties.
Source: news.com.au
