Item #105629 In Gray and Scarlet. Sister Rosa Angela KIRKCALDIE.
In Gray and Scarlet
In Gray and Scarlet
In Gray and Scarlet

In Gray and Scarlet

Melbourne, Alexander McCubbin, 1922.

Octavo (186 x 128 mm), 188 (last colophon) pages plus 23 plates.

Cloth (probably mottled grey with scarlet lettering) a little rubbed and bumped at the extremities; edges and endpapers a little foxed; front inner hinge lightly reinforced; mild signs of use and age; a very good copy.

Rosa Angela Kirkcaldie (1887-1972), hospital matron and army nurse, began her outstanding war service on 21 August 1914 when she join 'the "Grantala", the hospital ship accompanying the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force to German New Guinea'. By mid-May 1915 she was serving in Malta, attending to the wounded from Gallipoli. After a lengthy period on the hospital ship 'Panama', she worked in military hospitals in both France and England before returning to Australia in early 1918. In 1924 she became 'the "very celebrated" matron of the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Camperdown', before retiring in 1945 (Australian Dictionary of Biography). This book is an account of her war service, which in large part was shared by her friend and colleague, Elsie Clara Welman. We meet her first on page 16, as Kirkcaldie leaves for New Guinea: 'Elsie Welman, a dear friend ... Little did both of us think, as we waved farewell that day, that fate had decreed that we were to cross the world together, and serve for three thrilling years in the European theatre of the Great War'. They appear together in a group portrait (facing page 90), and she is mentioned numerous times in the narrative. They travel home together on the 'Runic', a transport returning to Australia with wounded men. 'The return trip was for the most part quiet and uneventful. This, the sunset of our wanderings, was illumined by the soft radiance of romance, and Elsie left the "Runic" engaged to be married'. There's more to the fairytale ending: the half-title is inscribed in pencil to 'Capt. A.E. White with best wishes from Eileen C. Dobby. The "Elsie" in this book is Mrs Archdeacon White'. The man Elsie met on the return voyage was an army chaplain with the 44th Battalion, Arthur Ernest White (1883-1954). He had emigrated to Australia in 1912 to join the Bush Brotherhood in WA. The couple were married in June 1918; in May 1923 White 'was appointed Archdeacon of Broken Hill, serving there for over six years until his departure for Albany in late 1929. On 25 April 1930, his first Anzac Day in Albany, White started the day with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist at dawn, the time the convoys had left in 1914. In a later service, White led his parishioners on a pilgrimage to the summit of Mount Clarence, where they watched a wreath, tossed out by a boatman in the Sound, float out to sea' (National Anzac Centre website). While the claim that White conducted the first Anzac Day Dawn Service is unproven, his actions in 1930 seem to have been the catalyst for this annual tradition.

Item #105629

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