The overlooked helpers
Invercargill couple Irven and Sarah Raymond, and several hundred others, did much to make life better for World War I New Zealand soldiers in Britain through a little-remembered organisation. reports.
ANew Zealand soldier who had been wounded at Gallipoli was walking down a street in Edinburgh was hailed by a woman who called out, ‘‘Te¯na¯ koe, pa¯keha¯’’.
Fanny Young from Dunedin, and her husband Walter, ran the Scottish branch of the New Zealand War Contingent Association.
The soldier, George Littlejohn from Ongaonga, had been wounded in the head at Gallipoli and sent to a British hospital, in Devonport.
In an article, Littlejohn recorded that a Wellington woman, Hilda Williams, arrived at his bedside and introduced herself as one of the association’s members. She was there to find out what he needed and provide it.
He later went to the London headquarters where honorary secretary Helen Mackenzie gave him kit (including underwear) with which to go on leave – before making use of his free railway pass to go to Scotland.
Hundreds of New Zealand men and women worked with the NZWCA in Britain during World War I but their work is not recorded in our history books – though the official history volume, The War Effort of New Zealand, did have a piece on the association.
An Invercargill man, Irven Raymond, was the second chair of the NZWCA, following exGovernor Lord Plunket (whose wife gave her name to the Plunket Society).
Raymond wrote a book titled New Zealanders in Mufti to record the organisation’s work.
He clearly wanted to make sure the organisation was remembered – but he failed.
Raymond and his wife Sarah Raymond (nee Burrows) were both born in Invercargill.
They had four children, and travelled to London before the war.
The NZWCA was set up in midAugust, 1914. New Zealand’s High Commissioner Thomas Mackenzie called a meeting in a London hotel.
About 300 people turned up and set up committees.
They planned to look after the New Zealand soldiers expected to train on Salisbury Plain and fight on the Western Front – but the Main Body of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force was sent to Egypt and then Gallipoli.
The association started its real work when sick and wounded soldiers such as Littlejohn were sent to Britain from May 1915.
Raymond wrote: ‘‘The condition of the early arrivals from Gallipoli [officers and men were in a truly terrible plight, possessing little, if any, clothing, and being unable to obtain authority to purchase kit] was deplorable.
‘‘Someone had blundered in the Dominion in not anticipating the requirements of these men, and they suffered accordingly.’’
The women not only organised for things to be sent, but recorded their condition for the central card system that meant New Zealanders could easily find out about each other.
The NZWCA opened the New Zealand Hospital at Walton on Thames at the end of July, 1915. It was mainly staffed by New Zealand women and things were done in a consciously Kiwi way. King George V, Queen Mary and the Prince of Wales visited in August.
After the New Zealand Division went to the Western Front in April 1916, the hospital was taken over as the No 2 New Zealand General Hospital.
Raymond records that the NZWCA wrote off its investment – and felt sad to be handing over its beloved hospital while being told off by the military medical authorities for having been too generous to their soldier patients.
NZWCA women the set up and staffed canteens and clubs at the hospitals and camps.
Hilda Williams and her sister Ethel Russell, of Palmerston North, suggested, and helped pay for, the New Zealand Soldiers Club, a hostel in Russell Square for soldiers on leave.
Raymond became the chairman of the New Zealand Red Cross in London as well as of the NZWCA.
His book records the way his efforts to organise simple workable systems for New Zealand soldiers were sometimes thwarted by the New Zealand authorities.
For example, he worked out a code for telegrams so that New Zealanders could find out quickly and cheaply how sick or wounded men were progressing.
This was opposed by the authorities, and he had to drop it.
His foresight and care of the men is clear in his appeal to both military and civil authorities in early 1919 when Sling Camp contained 6000 New Zealanders who wanted to go home – or sightseeing.
Raymond suggested 2000 be paid and sent on leave.
The Sling Riot of March 1919 cost New Zealand much more than Raymond’s suggestion would have (Colleen Brown’s new book The Bulford Kiwi tells this story).
Raymond himself lent and gave money to soldiers.
Irven and Sarah Raymond’s son Dudley joined a British unit during the war, and died at Aleppo in October 1918.
Irven died in 1926, at age 65, in London.
Sarah lived on in very reduced circumstances, partly because so much of their resources had been spent on looking after soldiers.
According to her grandson, John Raymond, she lived in the boarding house run by Noel Coward’s mother.
While New Zealanders in Mufti has been overlooked in New Zealand, it has been digitised in Australia and is easily findable on the web – one of the many cases of the new technology shedding light on forgotten aspects of our history.
The work of Irven and Sarah Raymond, and several hundred other New Zealanders shows that civilians worked hard overseas as well as in New Zealand to make life better for New Zealand soldiers.