Donald Marshall sent this email to all Marshall family members to encourage everybody to meet in Urunga nsw on Anzac Day 2015 , the 100 year anniversary of nurse Clementina Marshall’s heroic nurses work on board the hospital ship HS Gascon in the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Turkey on 25th April 1915. (The first ANZAC day )
……Good morning All, ….it is very exciting to have a family member who is actually a HERO.
Referring to the photo of the injured soldiers being crane up onto the deck of the hospitla ship HS Gascom, ……Images from the war photographer on board the Hospital Ship Gascon show the very real overwhelming sorrow, fatigue of the wounded.
Go www.H.S.Gascon the wounded soldiers photo says it all. Totally overwhelming. Think of the fact there was NO penicillin No anesthetics, No codeine, No Panadol, No intra -venous drugs, NO sterile conditions, No Blood transfusions, No plasma.
All Nurse Clementina Marshall had known by all her nursing friends & doctors as Clem,…..All Clem had was Ether & Chloroform or sometimes Morphine, IF IF there was some still in supply cupboard,….& bandages, most of all then she did have her caring spirit & Love for Humanity.
My Reading through the information on hospital ship Gascon, from the captains report, there were 577 wounded with 7 yes seven nurses, off the coast of Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 , certainly Clementina was definitely on board that day, she departed from Alexandria on 18/4/1915.
In Ruth Rae`s book Scarlet Poppies, sister Ruth Rae says theatre nurse Clem Marshall worked tirelessly for 22 hours on the first day of evacuation of the dying & wounded onto the HS Gascon.
I think in a man’s world it would be highly Unlikely that a single unmarried nurse be put on shore when there were 577 wounded soldiers being tendered on a Hospital ship. (However I am happy for some people to think that this may have happened, UNLIKELY, that Clem might have gone ashore. )
DONALD MARSHALL now has copies of ALL Clems employment records at Sydney hospital from 1903 to 1921 records from Sydney hospital MUSEUM, Clem then worked at Royal North Shore hospital & Royal Prince Alfred hospital, Concorde hospital & North Head quarantine hospital & other Sydney places where Clem worked from 1925 to 1949.
I have done enormous history of theatre nurse employment during this time.
My father, Max Marshall, tells me yesterday Clem worked also worked at Concorde hospital Sydney many years.
Most certainly Clem was a nurse of extra ordinary courage, working at Gallipoli, then Egypt, then London Hospital during bombing raids, The western front in France, also Wimareux France, then Marseilles.
When this newspaper article was written in Sydney in 1916 Clem was working in London waiting orders to head to either Egypt or the western front in France.
…further notes from Donald Marshall,… email June 2014 making arrangements for a family reunion on Anzac day 2015, 100 years commemorations….in URUNGA NSW>…
story…
I have finished reading CAPS & VIELS, The history of Sydney hospital nurses. WW1.
I suggest you purchase this book from Sydney hospital museum curator Eleanor Wrobel.
THIS IS A MUST READ FOR OUR FAMILY AS CLEM IS REFERENCED ABOUT 30 TIMES IN GREAT DETAIL.
Clems 3 Nurse friends form WW1, who she travelled the world with & they also meet the King of England to be presented with Clems medals, ALL 3 friends, later became Matrons at Sydney hospital.
What an amazing turn down Clem suffered in 1921 from the hospital board to be overlooked after doing the senior theatre nurses job during the previous Matrons dying days then Clem signing the death certificate on behalf of the hospitals OWN MATRON,
YES unbelievable.
From Marshall`s in Melbourne,…..my PARENTS (Father MAX 86 & Mother MAVIS 85, Ross 62 Brenda 60 & Donald 58, we all met Clementina, she visited our Pascoe Vale home in 1967.
Max told me a story last weekend that when my Grandfather Robert Williamson Marshall died in 1953, Clem was unable to come to her own brothers funeral, so a month later after much travelling & trouble, Clem Trained from Urunga to Sydney then Albury then bus to Shepparton then private car from Kyabram to Merrigum (population about 25) to be with my Grandmother Olive Victoria Marshall to stay in their general managers house in Merrigum for 5 days, comforting with my grandmother.
My dad Max borrowed my grand fathers old Chevrolet car from WW2 to drive Clem to another cousins house in Bendigo. What a lot of trouble for travel back then……..
Anyway, My father MAX has suggested our family offer to pay for a display showcase at the Sydney hospital museum or Urunga RSL or Urunga Museum with a written History photo board containing medals, colour painting of the ANZAC day war zone, which Max will purchased.
What I would like to do is arrange a family ANZAC day 2015 memorial in Urunga at the RSL or historical museum to celebrate CHM 100 years anniversary.
copyright donald marshall 9/9/2015