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Caring for our Wounded
Video
Over 3,000 Australian nurses volunteered during the First World War, working in hospitals, including hospital ships and trains, and in field stations closer to the front line. This film shows scenes of Allied forces medical staff and stations taken throughout the Western Front, 1916-1918: “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”
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‘It's a Long Way to Tipperary’
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In this animated film, a British soldier dodges bullets and explosions. He grits his teeth as he thinks, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. If you want to sing along, as cinema audiences did when it was presented, the lyrics are right there on the screen.
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Maggots and brandy – evacuating wounded men
Audio
Facilities for evacuating and treating men wounded on Gallipoli were woefully inadequate. The British military command had not anticipated such large numbers of casualties, who often waited for days unattended on the narrow beach before they could be transported by ship to a hospital. Alexander McLachlan, a Scots officer on board the transport ship Saturnia, recalls in this 1969 interview how he and his colleagues were unable to cope with the vast numbers of sick and wounded.
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“All my mates ever got were wooden crosses”
Video
Corporal Cyril Bassett was the only New Zealander to be awarded a Victoria Cross for the Gallipoli campaign. In this 1916 film clip he is congratulated by fellow Kiwi soldiers shortly after being presented with his medal. His modesty can be seen in his bearing – while smiling and shaking hands jovially, he still appears reserved. Throughout his life, Bassett had mixed feelings about his VC. “All my mates ever got,” he said, “were wooden crosses.”
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Getting the message through at Chunuk Bair
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Lance Corporal Cyril Bassett, an Auckland bank clerk serving as a signaller in the Auckland Infantry Battalion, won New Zealand’s only Victoria Cross on Gallipoli. It was awarded not for fighting but for his bravery in repeatedly going out under fire to repair telephone lines which carried the vital signals from HQ to the men fighting in the front lines.
In the Battle of Chunuk Bair in early August 1915, Bsssett and several other signallers, including his good mate Cecil Whitaker, repaired lines again and again while men fell and died around them. As Cyril recalls in this 1959 interview, one bullet shot out the pocket of his tunic and another grazed his collar, but he was otherwise unharmed. His friend Cecil was not so lucky and was badly wounded, dying a few days later.