Port Pirie Red Cross and World War 1

¹In response to the outbreak of World War 1, the Australian Branch of the British Red Cross Society (Australian Red Cross) was formed on the 13th August 1914 in Melbourne, Victoria. Within days, state based divisions were formed across the country. 

ʸThe Port Pirie Red Cross ‘circle’ had their first meeting on Tuesday 18^th  August 1914 when a meeting convened by the Mayor, in absence of the Mayoress, addressed 60 people in the forming of a local committee to immediately undertake the following duties.

(1) To co-operate with St. Johns Ambulance Society in the formation of units.

(2) To enrol men and women having first aid and nursing certificates to be allotted to recognised voluntary aid detachments and transferred to the A.A.M.C. for service in Australia.

(3) To organise work parties for the making or collecting of hospital comforts and clothing.

(4) To collect money to equip detachments and for other Red Cross purposes.

ʷWhat enormous work-loads and challenges it would confront in its first four years – from nursing the shattered victims of war to supporting their dependants; initiating national tracing services, searching for the missing and sending news from the front to anxious families at home.

Fig.1,2,3. Part South Australian Red Cross Information Record of Patrick John Brusnahan.

This was sustained by the volunteer work of thousands of members, mostly women, through a branch network that extended across the country. By June 1918, South Australia claimed 369 circles. Throughout the war, industrious members sewed, knitted, baked and raised significant funds for the Australian Red Cross. Patterns had been obtained from Government House for larger garments; head bandages, bed socks, flannel belts and roller bandages occupied the attention of the initial working committee. The call was put out for old linen, particularly old sheets that had been first washed, boiled and ironed. Further articles that were made and donated included; flynets, handkerchiefs, scarves, mittens, washers, pyjama coats and trousers, singlets and shirts.

²Sandbag sewing and other voluntary work was carried out by other bodies such as the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Salvation Army, the League of Loyal Women and the Fighting Forces Comfort Fund. Fifty thousand fly-nets were made for horses in the Palestine campaign by South Australian school children, whose Patriotic Fund also raised £85 000.

³In September 1915, 1,400 sandbags were sent to the Ordnance Department at Keswick Barracks in Adelaide. The majority of these were made by the men of the town working in conjunction with the Port Pirie Red Cross branch. On Tuesday 28^th  September 65 men from the Broken Hill Associated Smelter met together and sewed 103 bags in an hour; the necessary material having been purchased by the workers.

ʷPost-war Australian Red Cross was fully involved in the care of returning sick and wounded soldiers, establishing convalescent homes, hostels and sanitoria, in agreements with the Department of Defence and Repatriation. A network of Anzac Hostels provided care for the totally and permanently incapacitated, such as amputees, nerve and shell shock cases. The effects of gas were especially horrendous, and death came cruelly, ultimately from chemical pneumonia and pulmonary oedema. Valiant Red Cross Voluntary Aides nursing such patients night and day well learned the truth of Lady Munro-Ferguson’s words, ‘Peace will not close the hospitals; the sick and wounded will be the last to demobilise; therefore Red Cross workers must be the last to quit their posts.’

Sources:

¹Melanie Oppenheimer, Professor of History, Flinders University and Australian Red Cross Centenary Historian. 

² SA History Hub

³ ʸTrove Australia :The Wooroora Producer, Balaklava, SA, Thursday 20 August 1914 

Port Pirie Recorder and North Western Mail, SA,Thursday 20 August 1914  

ʷ Redcross.org.au