“New Cotton and the dust of ages”: Nursing in and around Salonika from 1915 to 1918

Professional and volunteer nurses who cared for the wounded on the Macedonia Front were working in difficult and challenging conditions. Most were posted to base hospitals in or near Salonika. Others were located at Stationary Hospitals slightly closer to the front lines in the valleys of the Struma and Vardar. Here the relentless winds drove dust and flies into tented hospital wards, and disease-carrying mosquitos were a constant hazard. Keeping their patients safe from infection was a challenge, and nurses were themselves at risk. They described in their memoirs the intense cold of winter and the relentless heat of summer. This chapter will explore the perspectives of nurses in these hospitals, and will focus, in particular on the diary of Australian nurse, Christine Strom, who wrote an evocative account of her service in Salonika – a place of both ordeal and ‘serene hopefulness’.