Some 550 Kiwi nurses served overseas in World War I. These two were captured on film by an unknown photographer in Egypt, the image travelling home to Aotearoa with fellow nurse Edith Jane Austen.
Hester Maclean, matron-in-chief of the newly formed New Zealand Army Nursing Service, initially recruited 50experienced (and unmarried) nurses to serve in theatres of war.
Led by Maclean, the first contingent arrived in Alexandria in June 1915 to work in British military-run hospitals there and in Cairo, caring for the wounded from Gallipoli.
Such was the need, two further New Zealand contingents joined them that year. The NZ History site notes that although initially faced with prejudice for being “colonials”, the well-trained Kiwis were found to be “more competent and flexible” than their British counterparts.
