Krista Vane-Tempest
Edith Blake’s War
UNSW Press, 2021
In the early hours of 26 February 1918, the British hospital ship Glenart Castle steamed into the Bristol Channel, heading for France to pick up wounded men from the killing fields of the Western Front. On board was 32-year-old Australian nurse, Edith Blake. Unbeknown to the ship’s company, a German U-boat lurked in the waters below.
When Edith Blake missed out on joining the Australian Army, she was one of 130 Australian nurses allotted to the British Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service in early 1915. Her first posting was in Cairo where she nursed soldiers wounded at Gallipoli. In Edith’s remarkable letters to her family back home, she shares her homesickness and frustration with military rules, along with the savagery of the injuries she witnessed in the operating theatre. Later, at Belmont War Hospital in Surrey, she writes of her conflicted feelings about nursing German prisoners of war even as battles on the Western Front raged and German aircraft bombed England.
In Edith Blake’s War, her great niece, Krista Vane-Tempest, traces Edith’s gripping story, from training in Sydney to her war service in the Middle East, England and the Mediterranean, and her tragic death in waters where Germany had promised the safe passage of hospital ships.
“Edith Blake’s story powerfully evokes the horrors and dangers of nursing during the Great War while capturing the poignant and special bond Australian nurses forged with Anzac soldiers. Krista Vane-Tempest deftly weaves the larger context of the war throughout Edie’s remarkable letters home and gives her the long overdue recognition her courage warrants.”
About the Author
Krista Vane-Tempest is the daughter of a teacher and was raised in country New South Wales. She studied law, English, history and politics at the Australian National University then worked as a lawyer before starting to write. In her spare time, she is a volunteer guide at the Australian War Memorial. She lives in Canberra with her husband and three children.
