Ida Willis talks about her wartime experiences in Samoa and France, and receiving the decoration of the Royal Red Cross.
Ida Willis: One morning we were wakened at five o'clock by the Padre to say two warships were inside our reef and we stood on the beds and gazed through his glasses and saw the guns being trained round the island. We walked, looked straight into the mouth of the guns and wondered. Then there's a scramble to get dressed and up to the hospital, not knowing what might happen. A busy day was spent preparing dressings for theatres, and so on, but nothing happened, the warships faded away up the coast.
Arrived in France, we were taken to the first New Zealand Stationary Hospital, in Amiens. We found Colonel McGavin in charge of the hospital and many other well-known doctors, some we knew. The pressure - we worked anything up to fifteen and sixteen hours. Occasionally in the theatre we worked two days and a night without stopping - a few hours off and then back to the fray. We spent days prior to a battle making dressings, sterilising - one man would sit at a table sharpening scalpels all day long. The men would sterilise instruments, bowls etc. In fact it was desperately busy all the time. In the theatre the staff were extremely busy - two to three tables, operation tables working steadily. All the orderlies well trained, busied themselves all day long. Sometimes for two days and a night without stopping. Our surgeons operated possibly four to five hours and then had to retire as they could no longer hold the instruments and were replaced by fresh surgeons. This went on until all patients requiring operations were completed.
Interviewer: At the close of the war Miss Willis was decorated for her service by King George V.
Ida Willis: I was notified to report to Buckingham Palace to receive a decoration of the Royal Red Cross, Second Class. My brother took me to the palace and I walked up a, the enormous corridor into a bay with a huge fireplace where many English sisters were standing. Immediately opposite was another bay with generals, admirals and other senior officers, a sergeant and some private men standing. That day two hundred and forty people were decorated and the sisters watched all march past into the throne room. First to head the procession was a sergeant and the privates and we asked why - they were VC men. Then came admirals, generals and so on, in order of rank, and then we came up at the end. King George V placed our medal, spoke to us and shook hands. He asked me my war experience to date and was interested to hear that I had been in Samoa, and Egypt during the Gallipoli campaign, and in France for the Somme and other battles. From Buckingham Palace we drove to see Queen Alexandra who presented us with a book with her letter in it and the certificate as head of the whole of the Empire, the British Empire nurses.
Transcript by Sound Archives/Ngā Taonga Kōrero.