Edith Blake’s War: The only Australian nurse killed in action during the First World War

by Krista Vane-Tempest

When Edith Blake missed out on joining the Australian Army, she was one of 130 Australian nurses allotted to the British Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service in early 1915. Her first posting was in Cairo where she nursed soldiers wounded at Gallipoli. In Edith’s remarkable letters to her family back home, she shares her homesickness and frustration with military rules, along with the savagery of the injuries she witnessed in the operating theatre. Later, at Belmont War Hospital in Surrey, she writes of her conflicted feelings about nursing German prisoners of war even as battles on the Western Front raged and German aircraft bombed England. In Edith Blake’s War , her great niece, Krista Vane-Tempest, traces Edith’s gripping story, from training in Sydney to her war service in the Middle East, England, and the Mediterranean, and her tragic death in waters where Germany had promised the safe passage of hospital ships.

Genres: Nonfiction, Australia

368 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2022

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edith Blake's War is another book that came to my attention via the Sandringham Library Book Chatters.  It's the story of the only Australian nurse killed in action during WW1.

TBH, I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was.  I am wary of Family History turned into a book because most of what I've come across has been boring, badly written, too long for itself and of interest only to the family and sometimes not even them.  But although the author of Edith Blake's War Krista Vane-Tempest worked as a lawyer before starting to write, she had also studied English, history and politics at the ANU and she has brought all the skills of a professional historian to bear on her great-aunt's story.

HMHS Glenart Castle in her hospital ship colours (Wikipedia
I could see from the Bibliography at the back that Vane-Tempest had, like me, read the award-winning Kitty's War by Janet Butler. It's not just another biography about an Australian nurse in WW1.  It's a book that teaches its readers about historical method and how letters and diaries of sentimental value to families can reveal much more than first meets the eye.  Noticing what's not in a diary or letter and comparing them with other contemporaneous records can reveal self-censorship and offer a valuable insight into the social and emotional pressures of the time.  To quote my own review, Kitty's War also showed that sometimes a war diary is not much about war at all, but rather about changes in identity because of the war.

Until 2011 Vane-Tempest had thought that her great-aunt's 1915 diary was the only surviving relic of Edith's war years, but then there was the discovery in 2011 of a bundle of 138 letters stashed away in a bag in the bottom of her father's wardrobe, passed onto him by an uncle.

We hadn't known they existed.  Her youngest sister had been their loving, silent, sole custodian for decades.

The letters were separated into three thick bundles tied with string: one each for 1915, 1916, and 1917-18.  Many ran to four or five sheets, secured by a rusty pin.  The paper had browned and mottled with age, the edges were somewhat ragged, but in faded ink flowing over hundreds of pages and about 100 000 words, Edith Blake had chronicled her war service.  She wrote home almost every week to 'Dear Mum, Dad, Grace and Queen.' (p.xi, 'Queen' was the nickname of her sister Alice.)

Through these letters and the diaries, Edie's voice comes through clearly.  She was a strong-willed and confident woman, intensely proud of the professionalism of the nurses from the Coast Hospital where she trained in Sydney, and determined to do her duty in whatever circumstances she found herself.  She is frank and forthright in her opinions, (and Vane-Tempest doesn't shrink from including some racist opinions from Edie's time in the Middle East) but both in her diary and her letters to family at home, like Kitty McNaughton, she tries to spare her family the anxiety that she knows they must be feeling. So while it's clear that she's nursing men with terrible injuries, she doesn't go into detail about the horrors she saw.  When Germany's aerial bombardment of cities brought for the first time danger to civilians from the skies and to medical staff from U-boats in the waters below, she reports on these atrocities as if they were remote and her own personal safety was not at any risk.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/03/19/e...

[Lee McKerracher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the only Australian nurse, Edith Blake, to be killed in action during World War I is harrowing but also in some places quite beautiful.

We learn about Edith's training as a nurse and her response to the call for nurses to go to the front lines. She was initially based in Egypt and had to use all of her skills and initiative to treat those patients coming in from Gallipoli.

The author had access to letters written by Edith to her family and these add so much to the narrative. Her personal experiences all in her own words give so much gravity to her situation but also show how she had no regrets about her decision to serve. She also made the most of any opportunity to see the local sights of wherever she was based.

The tragedy of the sinking of the Glenart Castle in the Bristol Channel which sunk after being torpedoed by a German U-boat was horrendous. Of the 182 people on board, 153 died, only 29 survived. There were nine women on board, Edith, Matron Beaufoy, another 6 nurses and one stewardess - none of those survived.

A story more people need to know.

[Cath Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this reflection through letters sent home by Nurse Edith (Edie) Blake of her time attending to the wounded - both allies and enemy alike- in the First World War. Her commitment to her craft allowed her to push through her emotions and support for the ‘good guys’ and tend to German prisoners of war. This was a very interesting story of a courageous and dedicated woman who lost her life after the hospital ship she was attached to was sunk by a German submarine torpedo attack. The book also told of significant battles, rules of engagement and described in real numbers the loss of life and injury to the countries who fought this war. Edie was the only Australian denial to die as a result of an act of warfare in the First World War. The extensive use of Edie’s letters made the storytelling very real and present and I was genuinely upset when her story ended with the loss of her life. Lots of good reasons to read this book.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting study of the only Australian nurse killed in action in WWI. This biography is based largely on Edith’s letters and diaries which the author, her great niece, obtained. It contains significant extracts from these, so that readers get to hear Edith’s voice. However, it was a little long.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly well researched, highly detailed, in depth writing. A good mix of letters and diaries plus historical fact about WWI. I read this to gain understanding of what some of my own female ancestors went through as British QAIMNS nurses. Fascinating.