NO WORDS can describe the awfulness of the wounds. Bullets are nothing. It is the shrapnel that tears through the flesh and cuts off limbs.
So wrote Sister Claire Trestrail of the horrors of World War I, seen through the eyes of a nurse.
About 2500 nurses served with the Australian Army Nursing Services in hospitals, on ships and trains or in casualty clearing stations closer to the frontline during World War I in battlefields from the Middle East to Europe.
Their heroism and fortitude under trying conditions will be brought to life in the play The Girls in Grey.
It tells the story of three nurses and follows them on a journey as they leave Australia and head for the battlefields of Egypt and Lemnos Island, where they patched up and comforted soldiers wounded at Gallipoli and the western front in France and Belgium.
“Where there was life, there was hope, and we won,” wrote Sister May Tilton.
Maribyrnong resident Helen Hopkins and The Shift Theatre co-founder Carolyn Bock wrote the play. To give life to the lesser-known facet of the Anzac story they read extensively and travelled to Canberra to read unpublished diaries written by the nurses.
It was there that a story of bravery and women whose actions defied the roles of women in Edwardian times emerged.
“They didn’t have warm clothing so they wore soldiers’ coats and soldiers taught them how to use a rifle so they were also doing things that at home would’ve been considered inappropriate for them to do,” Hopkins said.
In one example of putting their lives in harm’s way, a Sister Kelly shielded her patients’ heads with enamel wash basins and bedpans during a bombing raid in August 1917. She said she could not leave her patients.
One actor plays all male roles, but the focus is very much on the women, Hopkins says. “They were heroines, but they were also ordinary women being pushed to their limits.”
The Girls in Grey opens on Anzac Day, Wednesday, April 25, at 14 Acland Street, St Kilda. Details: theshifttheatre.com
