Australian women in World War I



The role of Australian women in World War I was focused mainly upon their involvement in the provision of nursing services. Australian women also played a significant role on the Homefront, where they filled jobs made vacant by men joining the armed forces. Women also undertook fundraising and recruiting activities as well as organising comfort packages for soldiers serving overseas. Around the issue of conscription, women were involved in campaigning on both sides of the debate, while they were also equally involved in the New South Wales strike in 1917. Nevertheless, despite this involvement, women have never occupied a central position in the Australian version of the Anzac legend, although since the 1970s their role has been examined in more detail as a result of the emergence of feminist historiography, and specialist histories such as the history of nursing.

The outbreak of war
When the war broke out between Britain and Germany in August 1914, Australia, as a dominion of Britain, was also at war and pledged full support. The government began recruiting for their military, and had strict enlistment requirements, only accepting the fittest men of military age (19 to 38 years of age). Australia's first significant contribution to the war at this time was to disrupt the German outposts in the pacific with a small, quickly assembled military unit called the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force. They focussed first on disrupting wireless communication lines for Germany’s most powerful fleet in the region, the East Asiatic Squadron. Australia's first hospital ship, and the Royal Australian Navy's only ship in World War I, the HMAS Grantala, departed Sydney on 30 August 1914, and supported the expeditions in Rabaul, and later in Suva. Onboard were 60 medical staff including Matron Sarah Melanie De Mestre, who was in command of six nursing sisters, Florence Elizabeth McMillan, Stella Lillian Colless, Rachel Clouston, Constance Margaret Neale, Bertha Ellen Burtinshaw, and Rosa Angela Kirkcaldie, all of whom were recruited from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. These seven nurses were the first women enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy. The ship returned to Australian on 22 December 1914 and the staff were demobilised. The first of the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) had already been deployed by this time, and it was not yet clear whether more AANS nurses would be deployed. So, impatient to rejoin the war effort, Kirkcaldie travelled to England at her own expense to join the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS). Burtinshaw would not return to military service as she married, making her ineligible for enlisting with the military. The five other nurses, De Mestre, McMillan, Colless, Clouston, and Neale all eventually enlisted with the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS).

In the meantime, Australian women at home and abroad who wished to support the war effort began to get involved in other ways.

The Australian Voluntary Hospital
In August 1914, Rachel Ward, Countess of Dudley, the estranged wife of the former Governor-General of Australia, the Lord Dudley, decided to create a hospital from Australian doctors and nurses who were in the United Kingdom. There were relatively large numbers of Australian doctors and nurses because advanced qualifications required a trip overseas.

Lady Dudley discussed her proposal with King George V, and then with the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, and the British Army's Director General Army Medical Services, Sir Arthur Sloggett, who authorised the hospital. The hospital was formally offered to the British government by the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Sir George Reid on 15 August 1914. Volunteers responded to advertisements that Lady Dudley placed in English newspapers on 17 August 1914. Women doctors were not accepted, but women nurses were welcomed. Ida Greaves, from Royal Newcastle Hospital, was appointed matron. The hospital soon reached a strength of 120 staff, of whom 36 were nurses.

Military service
One of the primary roles for Australian women during the war was nursing. No other official military roles were available to Australian women during World War I.

In May of 2015, a notice was posted in the Sydney Morning Herald under the headline "NO WOMEN DOCTORS", which stated: The Minister for Defence is in receipt of a cable message from the High Commissioner, Sir George Reid, stating that the War Office regrets that it cannot utilise the service of women doctors. Doctors, such as Katie Ardill, Eleanor Elizabeth Bourne, and Phoebe Chapple, after being rejected by the Australian military, travelled at their own expense to enlist in other associated organisations taking part in the war effort.

Nursing in the Australian military
The Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) comprised more than 3,000 nurses during the war, over 2,200 of whom served outside Australia. When the first 25 nurses, led by Matron Nellie Gould embarked with the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) in November 1914, they had no military ranks, and the nurses and the AIF were unclear about how the AANS might fit in with the AIF. At the time, the military's senior medical staff were reluctant to enlist women in nursing roles, preferring to train male soldiers as nursing orderlies. Major General Neville Howse, the director of the medical services in the AIF stated:"'The female nurse (as a substitute for the fully trained male nursing orderly) did little toward the actual saving of life in war... although she might promote a more rapid and complete recovery”"Jane Bell had been the Lady Superintendent of the Third Military district, and when the war broke up she was responsible for enlisting the Victorian contingent of the 1st Australian General Hospital (1AGH). She departed Australia in December 1914 as the Principal Matron on the hospital ship Kyarra. She put pressure on the Army Medical Service to clarify the roles of the AANS staff, and allow them autonomy over the control and discipline of their own members. She had a number of serious disagreements regarding the control of the nurses with the commanding officer of the 1AGH, Lieutenant-Colonel William Ramsay Smith, and the Registrar, James Barrett, an ophthalmologist from Melbourne. In June 1915 she was promoted to Matron Inspectress. In July 1915 she submitted staffing recommendations to Smith which he rejected, so she requested transfer or to be returned to Australia. Both Bell and Smith were recalled to Australia in August 1915. An inquiry into 1AGH was called to the attention of an Inquiry, and the court found that clearer roles and greater AANS autonomy was required. In early 1916 there was an restructure of the AANS, and the members were given military ranks equivalent to officers. Matrons wore two crowns on their shoulders as Majors did, the Sisters wore two star like the 1st Lieutenants, however, they were still only paid half of what the men received, and often required financial support from their families back at home. At this time, Evelyn Conyers was appointed as the Matron-in-Chief, and was responsible for running the service. Conyers was a New Zealand born nurse who had immigrated to Australia, and had been part of the AANS since its inception in 1903. Conyers was awarded the Royal Red Cross "for conspicuous services rendered" and later a Bar "in recognition of her valuable nursing service". On 1 January 1919 King George V appointed Conyers a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and in 1921 she was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal with diploma.

21 AANS nurses died during their war service and a number shortly thereafter. Nurses were present on the Western Front, and in Greece, England, India, Egypt, and Italy. They served not just in Australian military hospitals but also in British hospitals and in ships at sea. The AANS comprised trained nurses, trained masseuses, 14 ward assistants and 1 bacteriologist. After enlisting with the AANS, Fannie Eleanor Williams, a trained nurse, worked as a bacteriologist in laboratories at the No. 3 Australian General Hospital in Lemnos from 1915, the Lister Institute in London from 1917, and the No. 25 British Stationary Hospital in France in 1918. She was awarded the Associate Royal Red Cross for her work.

In 1917, four AANS nurses won the military medal for demonstrating bravery under fire: Sister Dorothy Cawood from Parramatta, New South Wales; Sister Clare Deacon from Burnie, Tasmania; Staff Nurse Mary Jane Derrer from Mackay, Queensland; and Staff Nurse Alice Ross-King from Ballarat, Victorian, who was also awarded an Associate Royal Red Cross in 1918. They were working on the Western Front, at the 2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station which was near the trenches at Trois Arbres near Armentières when on 22 July 1917, there was a German raid and five bombs hit the hospital. The four nurses rescued patients who were trapped in the burning building.

Pearl Corkhill (1887-1985) nurse, who was awarded a Military Medal for showing courage when attending to wounded during an enemy air-raid. Rachael Pratt (1874–1954) a nurse who was awarded the Military Medal for courage under fire. Alicia Mary Kelly (1874–1942) Irish born, Australian nurse who won the Military Medal for gallantry under fire, and the Royal Red Cross, 2nd class (A.R.R.C.).

Service in the British Army Medical Services
Australian women were able to serve in the British Army Medical Services.

Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS)
The QAIMNS were an elite military nursing service and was part of the British Army. Volunteers had to be between 25 and 25 years old, single and need to be of good social standing. They required three years of hospital training and have a good references. The nurses had officer ranking and were addressed as 'Sister'.

Matron-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force on the western Front
The most senior Australian woman in military service in World War I was Maud McCarthy, the British Expeditionary Force Matron-in-Chief for France and Flanders. McCarthy was born in Paddington, Sydney, and was raised and educated in Australia, and she studied nursing at the University of Sydney. By the time she enlisted to serve in World War I, she had military decorations, having served as one of the then Princess Alexandra's personal military nurses in South Africa, and being involved in the formation of the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, and from 1910, she had been the Principle Matron of the War Office. She held this position until World War I broke out, when she sailed on the first British Expeditionary Force ship that left England, and arrived in France on 12 August 1914. Under her command were all the trained nurses and volunteer medical workers on the Western Front, which included the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, the Territorial Force Nursing Service, and the nursing detachments connected to the Australian, Canadian, Indian, South African militaries, and after 1917, the United States of America, as well as The Red Cross and the Voluntary Aid Detachments.

McCarthy answered directly to the Matron-in-Chief of the QAIMNS, Ethel Becher, and the Director of General Medical Services. Her role was to manage all aspects of nursing administration, and deployment and training of nurses, throughout the Somme campaign. She was required to manage the nursing across all the military facilities, such as the casualty clearing stations, hospital trains and barges, stationary and base hospitals, and hospital ships. Her headquarters were at Abbeville, however she had to travel across all the medical units of the western front. In the month of July in 1916, she travelled to 18 different hospitals across France and Belgium to review conditions of the patients and the nurses, and the quality of nursing services.

One of the most decorated nurses of World War I, McCarthy received praise for her work, including from one Army general who stated:"She's perfectly splendid, she's wonderful … she's a soldier!… If she was made Quartermaster-General, she'd work it, she'd run the whole Army, and she'd never get flustered, never make a mistake. The woman's a genius'."On 5 August 1919, McCarthy left France and was seen off by representatives from the French government. For her work in World War I, McCarthy was appointed a Dame Grand Cross of the British Empire (GBE), received a bar to her Royal Red Cross, and was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal, the French Légion d'honneur and Medaille des Epidémies, the Belgian Médaille de la Reine-Élisabeth.

An Australian Aboriginal woman serving in World War I
At the time of the outbreak of war, Australia had various protectionist policies which enforced segregation, and controlled the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. These policies restricted where they could live and work, who they could marry, whether they could practice culture, raise their own children, or receive wages. Despite these policies, over 1000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men are known to have served in World War I by either hiding their identities to enlist early in the war, or by waiting until after 1917 when a military order allowed some Aboriginal men, those the military identified as ‘half caste’ due to having one European parent, to enlist.

Aboriginal women were subject to extra restrictions due to their gender, as the Australian Army only allowed trained nurses, with references to enlist. While Aboriginal women were likely working as nurses in private service, or in hospitals on missions, the aforementioned policies meant there were limited opportunities for them to receive the formal training required to be registered, before the middle of the 20th century. May Yarrowick is an exception, having successfully trained and registered as a midwifery nurse in 1907. However, she did not enlist for service, as she was working as a midwife in regional New South Wales at the time. Marion Leane Smith, a Dharug woman, is the only identified Aboriginal woman to have served in World War I, volunteering with the QAIMNS. Smith was born in Liverpool, New South Wales, and when she was two years old, her parents moved to Canada. This move to Canada meant that she was able to avoid the official and unofficial barriers to nursing that she would have encountered in Australia. Having completed her training in the United States in 1913, and undertaken work in Canada, she then enlisted with the QAIMNS on 7 March 1917, and sailed to France. On 9 December 1917, she was assigned to the No. 41 Ambulance train. The ambulance trains were made up to transport injured soldiers from the casualty clearing stations, back to the base hospitals. Her records from ambulance train state that she was a "a very good surgical nurse most attentive to patients." and furthermore: "'Staff Nurse Smith has given complete satisfaction in the carrying out of her duties whilst on the train. Her work is both quickly and efficiently done. She is most capable in every way. Power of administration satisfactory as also tact and ability to train others.'"Smith served on the ambulance train until September 1918, when she travelled to Italy with the British Italian Expeditionary Force. She then she worked at the University War Hospital in Southampton until the end of the war in 1919, when she returned to Canada.

Australian's honoured for bravery during service in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service
A number of Australian women in the QAIMNS were awarded medal for bravery.

Alice Alanna Cashin was born in Melbourne, and was raised in Sydney, and completed her nurses training at St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst. When the war broke out, Cashin was already in London having just gained her diploma at the International School of Therapeutic Massage. Instead of returning home, she volunteered at the general hospital at Calais, France. 19 July 1915, she enlisted with the QAIMNS, and was put in charge of a surgical ward, in the general hospital at Ras-el-din in Egypt, for which she was awarded a Royal Red Cross. She was then awarded a bar to the Royal Red Cross for saving wounded soldiers on the HMHS Gloucester Castle when the clearly marked hospital ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat.

Lydia Abell was born in Parramatta in New South Wales, and at first signed up with the French Flag Nursing Corps working at a hospital in Bordeaux. She then moved to the Australian Voluntary Hospital in Wimereux. On 1 July 1916, when the Australian Voluntary Hospital was absorbed into the British army, becoming the No. 32 Stationary Hospital, Abell was officially enlisted with QAIMNS. She also served at the No.14 General Hospital, and a number of Casualty Clearing Stations, and worked on the No.3 and No. 4 Ambulance Flotillas which evacuated patients along canals and rivers. In May 1919, she was awarded with the Royal Red Cross by King George V, for bravery when evacuating a field hospital under bombardment.

Australian nurses Leah Rosenthal, and Isabella Jobson, volunteered with the QAIMNS. They were good friends and business partners who had previously been running the Windarra Private Hospital in Toorak. They left Australia together on 18 December 1915 to volunteer with the QAIMNS, and were assigned to various British base hospitals in Northern France, until December 1916 when they were both assigned to No. 33 Casualty Clearing Station in Béthune. They were among the first nurses trained in anaesthetics. They were often working under fire, and Rosenthal reported home that she would wear a gas mask on her shoulders to cross between buildings in case of an emergency. Rosenthal collected, and sent home souvenirs of used shot and shell pieces which had hit the hospitals. Both women received the Royal Red Cross (second class) for their service. After they returned to Australian in 1919, where they entered into another business venture together running the Vimy House private hospital. They named the hospital after the Battle of Vimy Ridge, which was an important victory by the Allies carried out by Canadian troops.

The Australian Red Cross
When World War I broke out, there was no Red Cross association in Australia. Nine days later, Lady Helen Munro Ferguson set up the first Red Cross headquarters in the ballroom of her home, Melbourne’s Government House. Initially formed as an Australian branch of the British Red Cross Society, this was the foundation of the Australian Red Cross. Unlike the British Red Cross, and the Canadian Red Cross, Ferguson saw an opportunity for the Australian Red Cross to be led by women, recruiting women in all levels of the organisation. She contacted the wives of the governor generals of all states of Australia, making them members of the central organisation, and invited them to establish their own local branches. They were:

All the women accepted the appointment, each becoming the first president of their state’s Red Cross division.
 * In New South Wales, Lady Edeline Strickland née Sackville.
 * In Victoria, Lady Margaret Evelyn Stanley née Evans-Gordon.
 * In South Australia, Lady Marie Galway née Blennerhassett.
 * In Queensland, Lady Elsie Goold-Adams née Riordan.
 * In Western Australia, Lady Clara Barron née Kelly.
 * In Tasmania, Dame Ettie Ellison-Macartney née Scott
 * In the Northern Territory, Jeannie Gilruth née McLay.

The Australian Bluebirds
The Australian Red Cross sent a number of VADs to work in military hospitals. This included a group of 20 nurses and a masseuse who were recruited to work in French hospitals, they were dubbed the "Bluebirds" in reference to the colour of their uniforms. The Australian nurses had their roles changed mid-way through World War I. As the war went on, the facilities became better throughout. They were able to clean and sterilize utensils used to clean up wounds. Offer mental support and treatment. And finally offer strong medication.

The Australian Hospital in Paris
At the outbreak of war, Melbourne surgeon Helen Sexton had recently retired from surgery due to ill health, and was in Europe. She travelled back home to Australia, and started rallying support, supplies, and funding to establish a military hospital unit. Sexton had experience in founding a hospital, she was one of the founders of the Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne. Furthermore, she was highly regarded, and carried letters of recommendation on official commonwealth stationery from people such as the chief justice Sir John Madden; the founder of the Australian branch of the British Red Cross, and wife of the Governor General, Lady Helen Munro Ferguson; and the Governor of Victoria, Lord Stanley. Other recommendations came from military figures such as Vice Admiral Sir William Creswell, and Colonel Richard H. Fetherston and academic Harry Brookes Allen. However, despite these recommendations, her offer to run and fully fund a military hospital unit was declined by both the Australian, and the British Imperial Forces.

Instead Sexton's offer was taken up by the French Army and in July 2015, she began setting up the Hôpital Australien de Paris in Auteuil with a team of nine women including the team of six she recruited in Australia, Susan Smith and her two daughters Alison and Lorna, Constance Blackwood, Florence Inglis, and Dora Wilson, and three additional Australian women, Audrey and Eileen Chomley and Suzanne Caubet who met them in France. Caubet was a senior volunteer administrator, and director of the French Red Cross at the Buffon Centre, which adjoined the Military hospital Val de Grace, She was instrumental in establishing, supplying and managing the hospital. The unit received its first patients, wounded French soldiers, in late July of 2015, and it was officially opened on 4 August 1915.

Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service
Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service (SWH) was formed by Scottish doctor Elsie Inglis. Inglis had offered her surgical skills to the British War Office, and was told “my good lady, go home and sit still”. Instead, she raised funds and formed a series of 14 medical units, run by women in France, Serbia, Greece, Russia, and Corsica. Around 1500 women volunteered in the service making up almost all of the staff of doctors, nurses, orderlies, ambulance drivers, cooks and administrators. The SWH provided Australian women who were not nurses, or did not meet the strict criteria of the Australian or British nursing units an opportunity to serve overseas directly in the war effort. In particular, the SWH provided opportunities for the doctors who, often with decade of experience, had their applications to volunteer rejected by the Australian and British militaries. In a full-page spread about the service, in January 1918, the Sydney Mail stated:"'No individual medical unit in this war has accomplished more than the Scottish Women's Hospitals. [...] The glorious work they accomplished there was equalled only by the wonderful heroism of the members of the unit, many of whom suffered severely from sickness, privation, and utter exhaustion.'"

Royaumont, France
Millicent Sylvia Armstrong, a farmer and writer from Queensland, volunteered as an orderley with the SWH at the Abbaye de Royaumont, Asnières-sur-Oise, and then at the Advance hospital at Villers-Cotterets, Aisne which the French military used as the Hôpital Auxiliaire d'Armées No.30. She entertained the wounded in soldiers by staging pantomimes, melodramas and variety shows with a cast of medical staff and some patients. When the German army advanced in May 1918, they had to evacuated to Royaumont. For the bravery she demonstrated rescuing the wounded patients while under fire, Armstrong was presented with the Croix de Guerre.

Another Australian working at the Abbey with the SWH was Dr. Elsie Dalyell, who had just completed eight months at Addington Park Military Hospital in Croyden, based in the diagnostic laboratory, when she arrived in Royaumont in 1916. She worked in the laboratory which has been established by Dr. Elizabeth Butler, a Scot who had a won the Beit Fellowship, just as Dalyell had, which was a prestigious award making them two of the most eminent female scientists in the pre-war period.

The Great Serbian Retreat and prisoners of war
The SWH had four units stationed in Serbia when, in the Winter of 1915, they were invaded leading to the Great Serbian Retreat. In September 1915, Dr. Laura Margaret Hope from Adelaide, sailed to London, accompanied by her husband Charles, who was also a doctor, to volunteer with the SWH. They were posted to different units in Serbia, Charles in a unit headed by British doctor, Alice Hutchinson in Valjevo and 100 km to the east, Hope was posted to a 300 bed hospital unit at Mladanovatz under command of Scottish doctor Beatrice McGregor. On Hope's arrival she was met and welcomed by Elsie Inglis, the founder of SWH, then quickly began working to assist the doctors working on a backlog of patients who had gas gangrene in their wounds. Charles' unit at Valjevo had to evacuate immediately after he arrived, and two days later Hope's unit was evacuated to Kragujevac. In the new hospital, Hope observed the procedure for amputating limbs in surgery on the first day, and by the end of the week she had attended to 180 patients. On 25 October they were ordered to evacuate again. Hope decided to join Charles and his unit, which was about to evacuate to Vrinjatcha Banja.

Had Hope stayed with her unit, she would have had to decide whether to join the Great Serbian Retreat, evacuating patients across freezing Mule tracks through the Albanian and Montenegrin mountains, or to join Inglis and other staff who stayed with patients too unwell to be moved, becoming prisoners of war. Instead, with Charles's unit, the decision was made for her. In early November, Hope, Charles, and the other 32 medical staff awoke to find that the Austrian Army had quietly taken possession of Vrinjatcha Banja during the night, and they were now prisoners of war. Their captors made them work on their wounded soldiers for three weeks, before forcing them to walk 11 km in the snow to board a train for Krushevatz. A few days later on 4 December, they were loaded into a cattle truck for a bumpy thirty-six hour drive with no food, and little sleep, arriving in Semendria to cross the Danube river to Hungary. They were jeered at by German soldiers while they waited to cross. After another 150km journey, they arrived in Kevevara, and housed in two unfurnished room with straw for beds. They would spend Christmas and New Years here, with insufficient rations, supplemented by them selling their belongings to buy food from the locals. The locals were kind to them,, and would smuggle them food. In the new year, they were put on a train, that headed to the Swiss boarder and their freedom on 8 February 1916.

The Girton and Newnham Unit
Named after the University of Cambridge colleges, Girtan and Newnham who provided the funding, the unit was a mobile hospital attached to the French Expeditionary Force, supporting them close to the front lines of their battles first in France, then Serbia, and in Salonika.

Australian Olive Kelso King from Sydney, joined the unit in France, in the spring of 1915. She had recently returned from Belgium where she had been volunteering with the Allied Field Ambulance Corps (AFAC) as a driver. She had supplied her own vehicle, a 16-seat ambulance she had converted from a 3-litre French Alda lorry, which she named "Ella". However, King and two other volunteers had been detained when the AFAC organisers came under suspicion of spying. The AFAC abandoned King, taking her lorry with them. Due to her German language skills, she was able to talk their way out of detention, just in time to escape the advancing German army. She returned to England, and was able to retrieve Ella the lorry, before signing up with SWH and taking Ella with her. After six months in France, the unit sailed to Salonika in October 1915 on the SS Mossoul, to the Serbians in their fight against Austro-Hungarians, Germans and Bulgarians. They landed at Salonika on 4 November 1915, and established a hospital in an old silk factory in Gevgelija close enough to the front to hear the continuous drone of the guns. They had to quickly dismantle the hospital after six months as the enemy advanced, and King and the other drivers had to evacuate patients, narrowly escaping before the station was bombed. They retreated back to Salonika where they set up their canvas hospital. In mid 1916, King and "Ella" left the SWH to join the medical service branch of the Serbian army. She rose in the ranks becoming a sergeant, and then in 1917 she responded to a huge fire that broke out in Salonika, driving for 20 hours back and forth transporting patients, staff, and civilians to safety. She was awarded a Serbian silver medal for bravery.

The Ostrovo Unit, in Serbian Macedonia
The Scottish Women's Hospitals was a 200-bed hospital unit, functioning as a casualty clearing station, and field hospital, and supported the Serbian Army. The unit was funded by American donations, and was referred to as "the American unit".

After working in the infectious diseases hospital in Cairo, Agnes Bennett an Australian, New Zealand doctor had travelled to London, where in May 1916, she met with Elsie Ingles at the Lyceum club. They knew each other because Inglis has been the dead of the College of Medicine for Women at the University of Edinburgh while Bennett was completing her studies there. Inglis and the SWH were recuperating and regrouping after the Great Retreat, and were recruiting more staff. Bennet signed up, and Inglis tasked her with establishing a new unit to be deployed to Greece where she would lead as the Chief Medical Officer. Bennett travelled to Scotland to recruit 55 staff members and organise supplies, including the fleet of model-T Fords which were to be converted to Ambulances for an attached transport column, initially commanded by English suffragist Katherine Harley. Bennett took discipline seriously, and she was concerned by the behaviour of the women in Harley's unit who she felt were unruly, After three months the transport column was also placed under her authority. Initially they planned to be based in Salonika, however on arrival the plan changed due to the fighting front shifting to Macedonia. So the unit ended up being based close to the front line, in the hills at Lake Ostrovo. Another Australian doctor Lilian Violet Cooper, who was born in Britain, but had spent the last 25 years living in Queensland, travelled to Europe to volunteer with the SWH with her long-term companion Mary Josephine Bedford, arriving at the Ostrovo unit in September 1916. Cooper was the third surgeon to join the unit, and Bedford, who had mechanical knowledge, managed the ambulance fleet, becoming the Chief Transport Officer. Bedford’s ability to source spare parts for the fleet of 12 converted T-model Ford ambulances led to her the nickname ‘Miss Spare Parts’. Cooper herself had a habit of using foul language when stressed, which Bennett disapproved of, however, she appreciated the work both Cooper and Bedford put into the unit. Cooper was a skilled surgeon, who was popular in the unit, especially with the young ambulance drivers, as she encouraged their new found freedom to wear trousers, cut their hair short, and take up smoking. These freedoms alleviated the difficulty of their work, transporting seriously wounded and dying patients along very rough and rocky trails, fixing the ambulances when broken down, or getting them un-bogged from deep potholes. With the fighting 25 km away, it took the Ambulances three to four hours to travel via narrow mule tracks, over rough terrain. This was too long for some of the wounded who died on the journey. So in late 1916, Bennett received permission from the local Serbian commander to open a dressing station, a small tent hospital of 25 beds, at Dobraveni, closer to the fighting, where their staff would be rotated every 6 weeks, due to the intensity of the work, and the freezing conditions. The site was in the foothills of Voras Mountains, and was desolate, treeless and windy. In February 2017 a new recruit, Australian doctor Mary De Garis from Melbourne, arrived at the Ostrovo unit, and in her first month she alleviated Cooper from her rotation shift at Dobraveni. She was tasked with supervising the dressing station's camp reassembly after a recent move. De Garis found the constant air raids added a 'spice of excitement' to life, and the trenches, or 'funk holes' provided effective shelter

After the Australian Army had refused her application to serve in 1915, De Garis had stayed working as a doctor in Australia until mid-1916. This was when her fiancé Sergeant Colin Thomson, who had survived Gallipoli, was deployed to the Western Front. De Garis's anxiety for him saw her travel to London, arriving on 14 July 1916, to take a role at the Manor War Hospital, as a means to be closer to him. However, soon after arriving, Thomson's postcards stopped and De Garis received the news that he had died on 4 August, at the battle at Pozieres. In the following months, she channelled her grief into taking action, resigning from the Manor War Hospital, and applying to the SWH. In December 2016, her application was accepted, and she was appointed as Bennett's second in command.

Australian novelist, Stella Miles Franklin joined the unit in July 1917. On her journey from London, she travelled through Paris, Turin, Rome, and Taranto, before boarding a troop transport carrying 3000 men, with only two other women, destined for Salonika. Once in Salonika she travelled to Ostrovo on a drive that she would describe as "the roughest journey I ever underwent". Working first as a cook then as an Matron's orderly, she was in charge of the stores of linen, bedding, clothing, and dressings. She said the work was hard physical labour, and they worked long hours, with only a half day free each week, and one full day per month. When they had free time, she would join the nurses for a swim in Lake Ostrovo, where she said they could be seen "dancing a spirited reel on the shores in their bathing tights". The Ostrovo hospital camp had issues with outbreaks of diseases, and illness. They had problems with sanitation as the tented camp was not sewered. The site also had many flies and wasps, and there were outbreaks of malaria, endemic to the area, spread by mosquitos. Bennett, and De Garis, and the staff had to pay careful attention to establishing and maintaining hygienic latrines and urinals so that outbreaks of diseases such as dysentery and infection diarrhoea were minimised. They took care to regularly fill latrines, taking note of previous locations. De Garis attempted to address the issues with malaria by ordering a nearby swamp to be drained. The staff covered up and put up mosquito nets. If anyone recorded a high temperature, they would immediately be administered with painful and dreaded intramuscular quinine injections, which was the most effective treatment at the time. Franklin described these as ‘bayonet charges’.

After eight months at the Ostrovo unit, having performed 144 surgeries, Cooper's reoccurring bronchitis developed into pneumonia in August 1917. Cooper and Bedford departed for London, where Cooper would recuperate, before they returned home to Brisbane. They were both awarded the Order of St Sava, Cooper a 4th Class, and Bedford a 5th class, for their service in the unit.

The next month Bennett caught malaria while at the Dobroveni dressing station. She became very unwell, and when the ambulance returned to the main camp, her colleagues were shocked at how ill she was. So, after 16 months she had to resign due to ill-health. She returned to Egypt, where she learned of her brother Bob's death at the Battle of Passchendaele. Deep in grief, she boarded the troopship HMAT Wiltshire to return to Australia. De Garis took over the Ostrovo unit as the Chief Medical Officer. Bennett was awarded a Serbian Order of St. Sava third class for her contributions as the Chief Medical Officer of the Ostrovo Unit in The SWH.

Franklin worked for 6 months, until the end of her contract in February 1918.

De Garis would stay as CMO for another year. In that time she, like most SWH staff, would suffer through bouts of serious sickness including typhoid, dysentery, and malaria. However, she remained an effective leader. She was a strict disciplinarian, but fair according to her staff, who saw her as their “guide, philosopher and friend’. She continued to experience deep mourning for Thomson, and this was compounded in June 1918 when her mother died unexpectedly from a heart attack. Missing her family, she resigned as CMO in September 1918. She said of her time in Macedonia:"“I shall always remember my association with the SWH with pleasure. Practical experience has convinced me that women run things very well, making me a more ardent feminist than ever.”"De Garis was awarded a third class Order of St. Sava medal for her service.

Other volunteer work
The following women's voluntary organisations were involved in support work:


 * Women's Christian Temperance Union
 * Australian Women's National League
 * Voluntary Aid Detachment
 * Australian Comforts Fund
 * The Cheer-Up Society



Other awards
The following women received medals or other awards for their war work:


 * Phoebe Chapple (1879–1967) a South Australian medical doctor, was awarded the Military Medal for her heroic service in France during World War I


 * Vera Deakin (1891–1978) humanitarian, was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for establishing the Australian Wounded and Missing Inquiry Bureau
 * Flora Reid (1867–1950) Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) was an inaugural recipient of the DBE for aiding convalescent soldiers

Opposition to the war
Women in Australian also played in important role in the movements opposing the war. While many women who had been actively involved in the activities of first wave feminist movements, securing and political and social rights becoming pioneers in their various fields, supported the war, and used their skills and experience for the war effort, there were others who took a stance against the war.

Vida Goldstein was a Melbourne feminist and suffragist who campaigned for women's rights and ran for political office. In 1903, she founded The Women's Political Association (WPA), which aimed to educate women in political matters. By the time war broke out, the WPA's paper Women Voter, had already been expressing the organisation's stance against militarism. Goldstein herself stated: "'I think that it is a fearful reflection on 2000 years of Christianity that men have rushed into war before using every combined effort to prevent this appalling conflict. It is my earnest hope that women in all parts of the world will stand together, demanding a more reasonable and civilised method of dealing with international disputes [...] The enfranchised women of Australia are political units in the British Empire, and they ought to lead the world in sane methods of dealing with these conflicts. While deprecating this war of aggression, I really cannot help thinking that Britain will reap what she has sown. The law of retribution affects nations as well as individuals.'"

Three days later she founded the Women's Peace Army which had the slogan "We War against war". In late 1916, the WPA took over the lease of what had been the guild hall on Swanston Street in Melbourne. The building is now called Storey Hall and is part of RMIT University.

The Women's peace army expanded to having branches in Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia.

On 9 July 1917 in Brisbane, the Women's Peace Army protested a meetings of the Women's Compulsory Service Petition League which were voting to request that the federal government conscript reinforcements for the war. Margaret Thorp, and other activist gatecrashed the meeting, and resulted in the Conscription disturbance at the Brisbane School of Arts, on 9 July 1917.

Other anti-war activists were May Francis, Bella Guerin, Elizabeth Wallace, Jennie Baines, Adela Pankhurst, Cecelia John, Emma Miller,Doris Blackburn, Sarah Jane Baines, Jennie Scott Griffiths, Eleanor May Moore, and Clara Weekes