May Hennessy was the first Bendigo nurse to lose her life through war duty. This Anzac Day, local war historian TONY FORD looks back at Sister Hennessy's time on the World War I battlefields and the huge funeral she was accorded in Bendigo.
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By the end of World War I, more than 2100 Australian women had served overseas as nurses with another 900 serving within Australia.
Of these 3000, nearly 30 died while on active service, one of whom was Bendigo's May Hennessy.
A gifted nursing student from humble beginnings
May was the oldest of six children of James and Helen (nee Craike) and was born at Castlemaine with her exact birth year subject to debate - either 1893 or 1894.
The family moved to the Longlea area, where May attended the state school.
She completed a three-year nursing training course at the Gippsland Hospital in Sale, taking her final exams in December 1916.
A gifted student, she was one of only three nurses to be considered worthy statewide of an Honourable Mention for her exam results and the only one who had trained at a country hospital.
Transport ship torpedoed and sunk
May enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service on May 29, 1917.
The following month, she boarded the RMS Mooltan in Melbourne with more than 200 nurses heading for the war zones of Europe.
Thankfully, the passengers disembarked in Egypt, before the ill-fated ship continued its voyage across the Mediterranean Sea, where it was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat.
From Egypt, the nurses continued their journey to Greece to work in hospitals near the northern city of Salonika (now called Thessaloniki).
There were no Australian troops on service in the area, which makes Salonika seem like an unlikely destination for our nurses.
However, the deployment of Australian forces was largely at the behest of the British, who deemed this to be the most useful location for the newly arrived nurses.
There was a long front line extending from Albania across to north-eastern Greece, which was bogged down in trench warfare.
Although it was a minor theatre of war in comparison to the Western Front, more than half-a-million British, French and other allied troops were engaged in the conflict in that part of the world.
Working and living in tents while battling the elements
The hospitals that May and the other Australian nurses worked in were tent hospitals. They were also quartered in tents.
Conditions were horrendous, with cold and snow in the winter and extreme heat in the summer. Mosquito-borne malaria was a constant threat in the warmer months.
The nurses had to deal with many cases of disease as well as casualties from the front line.
Some of the nurses succumbed to malaria. Unfortunately, May was one of those and she was admitted to hospital "seriously ill" just after Armistice Day (now called Remembrance Day) in November 1918.
There was regular communication from the army with her parents, who were by then living in Bendigo at 38 McIvor Road (now the Vinnies op shop).
They provided details of her condition, which appeared to be slowly improving to the point where she was convalescent in Cairo by the end of January 1919.
Towards the end of February, May embarked on the transport ship "Novgorod", as an invalid, to return to Australia.
There was a dramatic relapse in her health on the voyage and she was critically ill by the time she disembarked at Geelong.
She was also suffering from dysentery and other complications. She was admitted to a private hospital, where she died shortly afterwards on April 9, 1919.
The official cause of death was listed as malaria and acute nephritis.
'Massive grief' and a full military funeral
May's death caused a massive outpouring of grief in Bendigo. The community had suffered so much loss during the war, and here was another death to bring more pain to all those who had been severely impacted by the war.
May was afforded a full military funeral, "one of the largest seen in Bendigo" (The Argus, 15/4/1919).
"The largest number of returned soldiers yet seen at a funeral in Bendigo turned out to pay their last tribute to the memory of the late Sister May Hennessy, who had nobly responded to the call of her country and went abroad to do duty in the hospitals" (Gippsland Times 1/5/1919).
The funeral procession left May's parents' home in McIvor Road, passing large crowds en route to the Bendigo cemetery.
"The coffin was carried on the salvage wagon of the Bendigo Fire Brigade, and was enclosed in the Union Jack, while two wreaths were placed on the casket ... Over 100 wreaths were sent by organisations and sympathising friends, and these were placed in a cab which followed the mourning coaches." (Various websites).
The procession was led by a firing party of armed soldiers. This party was followed by a number of city bands, which in turn were followed by a cohort of around 200 returned ex-servicemen and women.
Ex-servicemen performed the duties as pallbearers when the procession reached the cemetery.
In what today might seem like an odd gesture, at the conclusion of the service the firing party fired a volley of shots over the grave.
Archdeacon George Aickin from St Paul's Cathedral performed the funeral service.
In her younger days, May had been active in the Holy Trinity Church of England, then in Hallam Street, where she had been secretary of the Sunday school for many years.
A memorial tablet was placed in St Paul's Cathedral towards the end of 1919, which is still there more than 100 years later.
May's sister Annie Jean (known as Topse) who was also a career nurse, was buried with May in 1953.
In 2016 May was honoured in a remembrance ceremony at the Australian War Memorial.
