1915:09 A Much Needed Rest

A Much Needed Rest

 

"4 weeks hard and terrible work...We anchor about half a mile from the firing line - guns going off all round us shaking the ship and startling the life out of me each time they begin -
it's a dreadful place Gallipoli, dreadful and awful...the work is terrible - but we are needed badly...To my dying day I will never forget this last six weeks." 

     22/137 Nurse Charlotte Le Gallais, NZ Army Nursing Service, HS Maheno

 

By September the Hospital Ship Maheno had anchored herself just off the shores of Anzac Cove. It was there to tend the sick and wounded New Zealanders. Not many of the men of the 'Main Body' who landed in April were left.

 

Some of the New Zealanders were taken to rest at Lemnos, an island off the south west of Gallipoli. Here they could eat better food and enjoyed packages of sweets sent from the children of New Zealand and Australia. The men caught up on letters and newspapers from back home.

 

For the men who did not go to Lemnos, life in the trenches remained the same.