Anne Donnell
‘We hope soon to be fully equipped ... We are really roughing it but the majority of us are as happy as can be. We feel as if we are doing what we came out to do, and as long as we can benefit the boys in making them better, comfortable & contented we do not mind. Our chief luxury is exercise & fresh air & we get those in abundance & which gives us a keen appetite for our tinned provisions on enamelled plates ... I’ll warn you not expect to see dainty maids when we return.’
– Anne Donnell, letter, 10 Oct. 1915
Born in Cherry Gardens, South Australia, in 1875, Anne Donnell enlisted in May 1915, aged 39. Serving with No. 3 Australian General Hospital (3AGH), she departed Australia on SS Mooltan.
However, she was not with 3AGH when it disembarked on Lemnos in August 1915. She had been ordered to remain in Egypt to care for Colonel Fiaschi’s wife, fellow nurse Sister Amy Curtis, who had recently discovered she was pregnant. In Alexandria, Anne worked at Deaconesses Hospital and cared for Amy during her pregnancy and delivery.
Anne’s letters reveal a spirited, upbeat and patriotic woman, happy to do her duty in Alexandria but eager to be ‘braving ourselves to do for our brave men’. On the eve of leaving for Lemnos, she wrote in a letter home: ‘Yesterday I saw the dear little “odd bit” & her Mother safely on the SS Milano bound for Italy, and on returning to the Majestic Hotel received my official notice to board [SS Galeka, from which she would be transferred to SS Kanouna] for Lemnos.’
It was mid-October when Anne was reunited with 3AGH. The hospital was by then established in West Mudros, though supplies remained limited and some patients were still being treated on mattresses on the ground. When she was not tending to her patients, Anne corresponded with family and friends and took great pleasure from recording life on Lemnos with her camera, even requesting more film be sent.
Anne remained on Lemnos until 3AGH left in January 1916. Following this, her service took her to Egypt, England and the Western Front. In June 1917, she was promoted from staff nurse to sister.
Anne returned to Australia in February 1919, initially becoming matron of the South Australian Anzac Hostel, in Glenelg. She later undertook mothercraft training in New Zealand, before running the Infant Welfare Centre in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.
She died in Perth in 1956.
