Brave wartime nurses remembered

TODAY marks 100 years since 31 Kiwis were among those who died when a German submarine torpedoed British transport ship HMS Marquette in the Aegean Sea during World War I.

Nurses Mabel Elizabeth Jamieson and Marion Sinclair Brown, of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service, perished along with 29 other Kiwis. Both women had previously worked at Palmerston North Hospital. A total of 157 people died in the attack.

Brown’s niece Barbara Dodds said she still had some of the letters her great-aunt had sent home before the tragedy.

One excerpt read: ‘‘If any of us do fall victims to dysentery . . . or bombs. One thing you all will know is that we are ready to go wherever we are sent quite cheerfully, whatever the consequences may be, and some of the poor beggars who aren’t allowed allowed to go on have had a good howl about it.’’

Dodds said she was proud of her heritage because it was important to remember the sacrifices that New Zealanders like her relative made during the Great War.

The Marquette was an unmarked transport ship, carrying ammunitions and troops as well as the medical staff, which meant the Germans were technically within their rights to fire on the ship.

‘‘It was a matter of 17 hours and the ship had sunk . . . [it] went down within 15 minutes.’’

The tragedy will be marked at a church service and an exhibition at St Michael’s School Hall in Christchurch. The death of the nurses was felt particularly badly in the South Island, where most of them had lived or worked.