Her first post was to St Malo, Northern France, a base hospital organised by the French government and designed to accommodate 15,000 patients that had formerly been a girls convent school. According to a report in The Flintshire Observer of 19 November 1914, the hospital in St Malo was the only one in the area at that time which catered for British sick and wounded, having nineteen British patients, though it also was caring for French and Belgian soldiers.
In one account of her work which she sent home, Gwenllian Morris described how she was one of the staff selected to travel on a Red Cross train sent to the front to collect the wounded. Three hundred and twenty four soldiers were brought back to the hospital and these included - in the description of the time - “Turcos, Zouaves, Cingalees, Moroccos, French , Belgians and British”.
The British soldiers were from the Lancashire and Yorkshire regiments. Sadly two patients died on the journey back to the hospital. Some patients were battling with typhoid. Many others were suffering from gangrene due mainly to shrapnel, one particularly unfortunate Moroccan having no less than forty nine shrapnel wounds. In her account Nurse Gwenllian praised the kindness of French people who brought fruit, bread and coffee to the patients on the hospital train. This was particularly valuable as provisions often ran short. She also remarked that the men were all brave and patient and on the whole in good spirits. British nurses like her were very keen to obtain British newspapers as all they knew of the progress of the war was through French reports.
No long afterwards, in February 1915, Nurse Gwenllian herself contracted diphtheria and she was forced to return to London to have treatment. As soon as she was fit again though, she volunteered to go out to Serbia under the auspices of the Serbian Relief Fund. She travelled in the second unit led by Sir Ralph Paget, whose wife had been instrumental in setting up the aid to Serbia. At this time there were many desperate appeals for medical assistance from Serbia, as the country was in the grip of a terrible typhus epidemic which killed 50,000 people in the first half of 1915 alone, in addition to the plight of many wounded soldiers.
On its way to Serbia, Paget’s unit was ordered to help out at Malta, where Nurse Gwenllian helped to care for some of the first batch of wounded soldiers from the Dardanelles. After that her unit spent a month assisting Russian doctors and nurses at Nish, formerly the capital of Serbia.
When Nurse Gwenllian finally reached Serbia she was stationed at Pozarevatz - a camp of 5000 typhus patients. Here she sometimes went out by ambulance to collect soldiers suffering from typhus who had fallen by the wayside and brought them into the hospital. Conditions were extremely hard, not only due to the combined effects of the heat and the necessity of having to nurse patients in tents, but also because of the heavy boots, gloves, overalls and masks the nurses had to wear to protect themselves from the lice which spread the disease . She remained in Pozarevatz until the Austrian and Bulgarian armies captured the area.
To the consternation of her friends, nothing was heard from Gwenllian for some months. The next news of her came in the form of a postcard received in January 1916. On it she said she was well but being kept a prisoner at Villa Zava which was then in Bulgarian hands. Her unit continued to manage to look after typhus patients. After being released by the Bulgarians she was able to travel home, the journey taking two months.
This photo appeared with the headline below in The Cambrian News dated 11th February 1916. Gwenllian Morris is the second nurse standing on the right and wearing a cross.
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| Photo courtesy of the Womens' Archive of Wales project website http://www.womenandwar.wales/ |
Unfortunately there does not appear to be any further news of what happened to Nurse Gwenllian later in the war or after it, other than that she was awarded a war medal in 1921 where she is described as having the rank of Sister.
Postcards and letter courtesy of Dr Gwyn Jenkins
Sources:
Cambrian News
Flintshire Observer
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