Canada’s nursing sisters brought care to wounded soldiers

They came from far-flung farming communities, small towns and big cities across Canada, nurses who answered the call of duty from their country and their profession.

Almost 4,500 women donned the white-veiled uniforms of Canada’s Nursing Sisters, enlisting along with young men who also listened to the Second World War call to arms.

Some were recent nursing graduates, others more seasoned veterans. Many had grown up fed on tales of heroism and despair from fathers and uncles who had served in the Great War. Some had brothers newly in uniform, and they wanted to join in a common cause.

But nothing could have prepared this doughty band of women for the horrific injuries they would witness from the new and terrible machinery of war, nor the sheer scale of the destruction.

Bombs and shrapnel that severed limbs or left gaping wounds; burns that melted skin and sinew of hands and arms or erased the features of a serviceman’s face; spinal injuries that left many partially or fully paralyzed; battle fatigue that left young soldiers screaming from the horror they had seen.

“I used to be quite upset about the patients when I first went,” admits Elsie Dandy, 92, of Fergus, Ont., who joined the Canadian Army in 1942 and was stationed at the Basingstoke Neurological and Plastic Surgery Hospital southwest of London.

She began in the burn ward, then moved to the plastic surgery ward, caring for soldiers flown to England from battle on the Continent and in need of facial reconstruction or other rehabilitative surgery.

“They were real sick boys,” she says of her charges, her voice wistful at the memory. “Not all of our patients got better, but most of them did, and so you had to take a positive attitude.”

Hallie (Harriet) Sloan, who enlisted with the Royal Canadian Medical Corps in 1942 at age 25, also saw her share of gut-wrenching injuries during postings in England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

While in Antwerp, Belgium, Sloan and her medical unit were preparing to move their field hospital when a German V2 rocket hit a cinema packed with civilians and Allied soldiers on leave.

There was no warning sound, “just a terrible concussion,” she recalls of the blast that created 1,200 casualties in an instant.

“One thing that was so frightening about them was they were totally white, because the plaster powdered. And they looked like mimes.”

“I can remember a man coming in with a big chunk of wood right through his face,” says Sloan, 92, from Ottawa. “And the terrible wounds from glass exploding.”

“Well, of course, they were dreadful.”

Scottish-born and Winnipeg-raised Betty Brown was just 22 when she joined the Army as a nursing sister. Following a nine-month stint at the No. 5 military hospital just outside London, she took ship as part of a convoy with a secret destination.

Dogged by the German submarine Wolf Packs, the convoy reached its destination of Sicily, but not before the hospital supply ship was sunk.

“Nurses are pretty handy and can make do,” says Brown, relating how the Canadian troops had found a cache of medical supplies left by the retreating enemy, which they put to immediate use in a makeshift hospital.

In Catania, the operating room at one point had to be given over to German prisoners of war and their surgeons, recalls Brown, now 92 and living in Ottawa.

“There was a young fellow that came in and was lying on a table and he’d lost his leg just below the knee. And these doctors were very quick and rough because they wanted to get on their way – they were going to a prisoner of war camp, of course – and (one surgeon) was sort of ripping this dressing off, you know. And this was a young fellow.”

“And I, well a” she says, pausing with emotion, “I thought of his mother and I walked over and put a hand on each side of his head. And he looked up at me and he pulled his head away, so I just stepped back.”

“He didn’t want any sympathy from the enemy, I guess,” she says of the incident more than 60 years ago that still has the power to tear at her heart.

It was that dedicated sense of caring that not only endeared nursing sisters to wounded Allied soldiers at the time, but afforded these women a deep respect from male veterans that endures to this day.

Less than 500 Second World War nursing sisters are still alive today, one part of the legacy that began with the 1885 Northwest Rebellion and continues today with nursing officers in Afghanistan.

“The nursing sisters made a significant contribution on several levels,” says Cynthia Toman, a nurse and historian at the University of Ottawa. “Probably first and foremost to the military was their value in expedient medical care, their value in outcomes for the soldier.”

One medical officer wrote at the time that nursing sisters were worth “five to 10 bottles of blood.”

To their patients, nursing sisters were the face of Canadian womanhood, Toman suggests. “They represented family, they represented older sisters and mothers, as well as sweethearts.”

“But as well, they represented protection and safety 
 they felt safe in their presence and they knew they were getting good care and there was hope for recovery,” says Toman, whose PhD dissertation was entitled “Officers and Ladies: Canadian Nursing Sisters, Women’s Work and the Second World War.”

“And even for those who couldn’t recover 
 they represented home and family in the dying moments. They made sure no soldier suffered or died alone.”

Yet none of these veteran nursing sisters see themselves as particularly brave or special in any way.

It was all about looking after “our boys,” they say.

“They were so wonderful,” enthuses Sloan. “They never complained, they worried about each other. Every one of them would say: ‘Look at that fellow, Sister, he needs to be looked after first. You look after him.”‘

Unlike nursing sisters in the Great War two decades earlier, Sloan says she and her colleagues had the new drug penicillin to stop rampaging infection and a blood-transfusion system.

“We had so many blessings, compared to our First World War compatriots. We had everything going for us, I think.”

Dandy doesn’t think she did “anything very special” – all the nurses did their share to patch up the patients, both body and soul, she says.

“Whoever was in the ward was a part of your family. You did what you could for them when you were free and you nursed them when you were on duty.”

But surely, they were scared?

“Never, no,” insists Brown, whose maiden name Nicholson earned her the moniker Nick. “I wanted to join. Remember, I’d been brought up on stories about the First World War.”

And as with any generation, the youth of the war years had a sense of invincibility and a hunger for adventure.

“You didn’t expect anything to happen to you,” she says. “And you couldn’t (show fear) for the boys, anyway. You were just trying to be kind and help them as much as you could, so you wouldn’t let on.”

“I’m Scottish, you know, and if you hear the bagpipes, you’re up and over the front. You just follow the pipes, regardless of what happens.” – Healthzone.ca