New Zealand Nurses at Amiens
Ida Willis’ service as a nurse during WWI saw her involved in virtually all the theatres of war in which New Zealand forces served. In these excerpts from two radio interviews recorded in the 1960s, she recalls the long hours involved in treating wounded men in northern France, especially when a battle was underway.
Year:1914-1918 (Recorded 1966)
Location:Amiens, France
New Zealand Nurses at Amiens
Ida Willis’ service as a nurse during WWI saw her involved in virtually all the theatres of war in which New Zealand forces served. In these excerpts from two radio interviews recorded in the 1960s, she recalls the long hours involved in treating wounded men in northern France, especially when a battle was underway.
Year: 1914-1918 (Recorded 1966)
Length: 2:34
Production Company: Radio New Zealand
Source: Radio New Zealand Collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Catalogue Reference: 243341 and 247243 [Interview with Ida Willis, former Matron-in-Chief, New Zealand Nursing Corps]
People: Lizzie Ida Grace Willis
Location: Amiens, France
Image Title: Matron in Chief Ida Grace Willis 22/173, Captain Herbert Watson 90506, and Matron Maud Atkinson 22/176. Photo taken at Hazebrouck, France 1918
Image Source: Auckland War Memorial Museum, https://api.aucklandmuseum.com/id/media/v/525368?rendering=original.jpg
Nurse Ida Willis was on holiday in Fiji when war was declared in 1914. She had already been qualified as a nursing sister for several years, and moved immediately to Samoa to work with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force sent to capture the German colony. She then returned to New Zealand before sailing with the Army Nursing Service for Egypt in July 1915, where she nursed men wounded in the Gallipoli campaign, at the New Zealand General Hospital in Cairo. A year later she transferred to the New Zealand Stationary Hospital at Amiens in northern France, some 15 miles from the Front.
In these radio interviews she recalls the long hours nurses and surgeons worked in the operating theatres during active fighting and the preparations they would make in the days ahead of a ‘big push.’
She stayed with the New Zealand Hospital when it moved to Hazebrouck and Wisques and at the end of the war, nursed during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Her considerable experience during the war saw her become the matron in overall charge of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service during World War II, before her retirement in 1946.