Life after the Marquette
As we remember the armistice of World War I, a Palmerston North couple reflect on the life of a nurse who went through a traumatic event in the Great War.
It was Saturday, October 23, 1915, a cold grey morning on the fourth day aboard the transport ship Marquette. Gladys Metherell, 28, from Christchurch, was one of 36 New Zealand nurses on the ship, fresh from working in a hospital in Egypt, and now bound for another in Salonika.
As the ship ploughed on, people on deck barely had time to register the green line snaking through the sea towards them when there was a mighty thud, and the ship lurched.
That ‘‘green line’’ had been a German torpedo. The ship was sinking ... fast.
Strangely, for a troopship, the Marquette was carrying medical personnel and equipment. But because it was not marked with a red cross, it had been a target for German submarines.
On board, besides the nurses, were eight officers, nine noncommissioned officers and 77 orderlies of the New Zealand Medical Corps.
As the Marquette sank, there was a rush to get lifeboats out, round up the war horses and mules below decks, and try to save everyone.
Amid mishaps and confusion, of the 741 people on board, 167 died. Ten were nurses, drowned in the icy waters of the Aegean Sea.
Today, Lois Metherell shearman and her husband Ron Shearman say: ‘‘Gladys was thrust into the dirty water, and ended up with typhoid ... (despite being inoculated against it earlier). She recovered at Salonika.’’
Lois is proud of her adventurous forebear, and would like to know more. Here are some things she’s discovered:
Gladys Marion Metherell was born on January 7, 1887, in Amberley, Christchurch, the third of four sisters, none of whom ever married.
Her older siblings were Ann Louisa and Florence (one would become a teacher) and the younger was Henrietta, who later worked for the Post and Telegraph Department in Wellington.
Later, the family lived at 96 Bealey St (now Ave), St Albans.
When Gladys was 5 years old, her mother Rosa was widowed after her husband, a flour miller, was killed in an accident at the mill. He and his brother, who became Lois’ great-grandfather, had emigrated to New Zealand from St Heliers, Jersey.
When war broke out, Gladys, who had trained at Christchurch Hospital and worked in a private hospital, signed up. Her records reveal that she was 5ft 4 inches tall and slightly built, and that her writing style was neat and legible. She started her period of service in July 1915, at the No 1 New Zealand stationary hospital in Alexandria.
The Evening Post of February 19, 1916, notes that the ladies’ committee of the Town Hall (Wellington) received a thank-you letter from Gladys for the ‘‘lovely little parcel’’ they had sent her for Christmas. ‘‘The nice notepaper was the very thing I was wanting ... I went to see several New Zealanders in the Egyptian Hospital at Alexandria and they all seemed to have had a happy day.’’
After the war, in 1918, along with 13 other nurses from the Marquette, Gladys was summoned to Buckingham Palace to receive the Associates Royal Red Cross, first-class, for ‘‘special exertions in nursing sick and wounded soldiers’’. An account of the occasion in
Kai Tiaki, the nurses’ journal, mentions the excitement of the nurses, in their ‘‘snowy caps, wellcut capes, shining buttons and white kid gloves externally, and I fear, slightly palpitating machinery internally’’.
Gladys was awarded other honours: the Victory Medal, the 1914-1915 Star and the British War Medal. But, back in Christchurch in 1919, what she most wanted was the money to build her mother a house of her own.
Returned soldiers were receiving grants – shouldn’t returning nurses also qualify?
So she wrote to Brigadier GS Richardson. ‘‘I was disappointed to find that the privileges to soldiers with regard to money lent for building, etc, were not extended to members of the army nursing service.
‘‘So I thought I would write to you before Parliament sits to ask if you could have this law altered to include the Sisters.
‘‘I know it is generally understood that women have no responsibilities, but I know of several like myself, whose lifelong ambition it has been to erect a house for the mother who was left a widow in their infancy, and you can imagine my feelings when after a four-years’ absence, I return to find boys, with only a few months’ service to their credit in some instances, enjoying these privileges. Thanking you in anticipation of your attention.’’
Her request was refused. Under the Repatriation Act, returned nurses were treated as discharged soldiers, and ‘‘advances are made for businesses, training, furniture etc, and not for the purchase of dwellings...’’
According to author Peter Rees in The Other Anzacs, Gladys spent the rest of her life sharing a house with her sister, and a boarder to make ends meet.
Gladys died in 1963 at the age of 76 and is buried in Bromley Cemetery, Christchurch.
Today, her great-niece Lois Metherell-shearman has a theory, and an as-yet unanswered question: Did Gladys and Henrietta live for a time in Levin?