E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga iwi o te motu e huihui nei, tenei aku mihi
I particularly acknowledge:
- Colonel Anthony Blythen, Commander Joint Support Group
- Honorary Colonel Maree Sheard; and
- Lieutenant Colonel Dave Foote, Chief Nursing Officer
A very warm welcome to nurses of the Royal New Zealand Army Nursing Corps, past and present.
As your Commander-in-Chief, I am delighted to host this celebration of Corps Day and to acknowledge the contribution of the Corps in our nation’s military history.
In the First World War, one of my predecessors, Lord Liverpool took great interest in the New Zealand hospital ship Maheno and expressed amazement that ‘women were able to work so constantly and at such high pressure’.
Such attributes would not be surprising to the women and men of today’s Army Nursing Corps, who have built on the reputation for efficiency and professionalism established by your forebears in the First World War’s Army Nursing Service.
Their experiences included extraordinary stories of fortitude in the face of punishing workloads, enemy shelling, and extremes of heat and cold. Some lost their lives, including ten when the transport ship Marquette was torpedoed.
The stories of our First World War nurses are still being uncovered by historians, and deserve to be more widely known.
To mention one such example: Nurse Ethel Lewis served in Belgium before going to Serbia, where she was wounded in the trenches and was honoured by the King of Serbia for rescuing a high-ranking officer.
Newspapers here reported Nurse Lewis’s efforts to save the lives of Serbian wounded from approaching enemy forces. The hospital was evacuated and the transport vehicles carrying the patients broke down. The only option was to continue on foot up through snowy mountain passes.
Nurse Lewis had a nickname – Little Sister – because she was only 150 centimetres tall. That didn’t stop her from carrying a wounded soldier on her back for two miles.
When she returned home on furlough to Otaki, the shops and schools were closed in her honour and the whole town turned out to meet her at the railway station. She was met with ‘rousing cheers’ and ‘deluged with flowers’.
In his speech to the crowd, the Chairman of the Patriotic Society said Nurse Lewis had passed through trials and hardships enough to kill many a strong man, yet ‘this frail little woman had been spared to return to them, looking fit and as well as she ever did’. Nurse Lewis could have chosen to take things quietly at that point, but she returned to the UK and served with the Army Nursing Service until the end of the War.
There will be many more recent stories to tell about the distinguished services provided by the Royal Army Nursing Corps, and no doubt we will hear some tonight.
Nurse Lewis exemplified the army nurse ethos to protect patient welfare at all costs – as well as the resourcefulness and adaptability required when deployment takes a nurse into less than ideal situations.
I imagine there must be great satisfaction in having the skills to care for patients effectively, no matter where you are. Equally I imagine there will be times when the circumstances of your work is distressing and takes a psychological toll, especially when you are far from the support of family and friends.
Most recently, the demands put on your services in responding to Cyclone Gabrielle and the COVID-19 pandemic must have been particularly challenging, and I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the role played by Colonel Anthony Blythen in establishing the Defence Force’s strategic COVID-19 response.
I am pleased to be able to assist you in observing Corps Day this year, and thereby providing appropriate acknowledgement of the contributions of departing leaders, and the arrival of new members of the Corps.
On behalf of my fellow New Zealanders, I thank you all for choosing to serve your country in this way, and I wish the Corps all the very best in the years to come.
Tonight is your night, and so I invite you please to relax and enjoy the hospitality of the House.