Self-sacrifice: A tribute to the nurses who have gone before

With ANZAC day approaching, I feel a need to reflect and acknowledge the brave young women who took up their nursing kits to sacrifice their lives in serving our country on the frontline. The nature of war was evidently far from the optimism that plagued the home front and had severe repercussions for many young lives. Although significant fatalities from World War I scar Australian history, these fatalities would be greater if it wasn’t for the many nurses who served tirelessly.
The need to remember and respect these courageous women was made clear to me when my best friend and I visited the exhibition on nurses that showed at the National War Memorial in Canberra last year. We traced the development of nursing from the First World War through to present times. In reading biographies of the women who served in world war one, we were deeply moved and challenged.
Through gangue green, fevers, trauma, amputations, festering wounds and trench foot, these women functioned in conditions that were unkind to one’s femininity. They proved themselves to be more than ‘angels of mercy’, but equals of stamina and ability. Their endless labours were the beginnings of a turning point for women’s rights in Australia.
The story of one nurse in particular gave us insight into the self-sacrifice of these young women. She was nursing in a camp where an explosion took place, sending shrapnel into the air. Some of this shrapnel pierced her lungs and slowly drained her every breath. Despite personal injuries she did not cease to attend to the needs of the soldiers who were under her care. She worked until she physically collapsed. I wonder what thoughts were racing through her mind? I wonder if at any point she subconsciously weighed her degree of suffering up to that of her patients, or if she simply ignored her own pain? Miraculously she survived the injuries and was returned to Australia.
The self-sacrifice of these nurses amazes and inspires me. These women could have stayed on the home front and naively condoned war like their peers. However, they chose not to – they silently attended to the brutalities of war and picked up the pieces that resulted.
As I reflect on the strength of character these women possessed, the boldness and the humility… I wonder if I, as a nurse, could exercise such self-sacrifice.
These nurses deserve our respect and are to be remembered this ANZAC day for the strong and brave women they were.