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| This Titled Can Be Ordered HERE |
Roads To the Great War sheds light on all facets of the Great War: the famous and heroic, the overlooked but crucial. Asleep in the Deep is the story of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC), loosely told through the experience of Nursing Sister Anna Stamers of St. John, New Brunswick. Two years after graduation from Saint John School of Nursing, Stamers was one of 50 CAMC nurses to sail from Montreal on 4 June 1915, arriving at Plymouth, England, on 13 June after an uneventful crossing.
On 2 July 1915, Anna began eight months at her first assignment at Moore Barracks near Folkestone, Kent. However, as Canadian troops became committed to battle in France, CAMC established two Canadian Casualty Clearing Stations (CCCS): Canadian Stationary Hospital (CSH) No. 1 and Canadian General Hospital (CGH) in France. Anna was one of nine Canadian nursing sisters arriving at CGH near Etaples on 19 February 1916.
Though ostensibly protected by the Hague Convention, medical corps were targets. On 25/26 April 1916, a zeppelin attack dropped two bombs directly on No. 1 CGH. Anna was not involved in this bombing, but since she had spent over a year treating Canadian casualties from Mount Sorrel outside Ypres, the Somme, and Vimy Ridge, she was granted leave, departing from Liverpool for Canada on 9 June 1917. This was a worrisome voyage, as the threat from U-boats was much greater than it had been in 1915. While in Canada, returning nursing sisters like Anna were called on to give speeches on conditions in France and to attend patriotic events.
Returning to England, Anna was posted to No. 16 CGH in Orpington by 12 October 1917. Many of her patients had already received treatment in France, and many would be sent back to Canada on hospital ships. Perhaps as a natural sequence in her service, Anna was transferred to the Canadian hospital ship Llandovery Castle, in March 1918. Despite special protection under the 1907 Hague Convention, to which Germany, Britain, and all the naval powers were signatories, observance of this protection varied over time and among officers.
Article 1 of the Convention stipulated that hospital ships were not to be used for any other purpose. Claims that they were used for transportation of troops or war materials and for observation menaced vessels of both sides. After sinking a half-flotilla of German minelayers on 17 October 1914, the British captured the German hospital ship Ophelia on the claim, upheld by the Prize Court, that it was acting as a signaling ship and had never attempted to act as a hospital ship. The Ophelia precedent would be cited by Germany to justify actions against British hospital ships for the rest of the war.
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| Two "Blue Birds" As Canadian Nurses Were Called |
After 4 February 1915, all ships in the war zone around Britain and Ireland were declared subject to German attack, although hospital ships were to be spared; they were only to be attacked when they were obviously used for the transport of troops from England to France. On 1 February 1915, a German torpedo narrowly missed the British hospital ship Asturias. In 1916, the Russian hospital ship Portugal was torpedoed by U-33 in the Black Sea as was Portugal’s replacement, Vpered. British hospital ships torpedoed included HMHS Gloucester Castle, HMHS Asturias, HMHS Lanfranc, HMHS Donegal, and HMHS Britannic.
Given the precedent, Anna knew she was undertaking hazardous duty when she boarded Llandovery Castle. On 27 June, after seven nights at sea, a torpedo from U-86 struck the ship at 9:30 p.m., sinking her in ten minutes. The explosion destroyed the wireless room and prevented the crew from sending a distress call. Witnesses claimed that seven lifeboats made it safely into the sea. One was sucked into the whirlpool created by the sinking ship, and two others capsized. The captain’s lifeboat was rescued after 36 hours at sea. A British sloop and four American destroyers continued the search, yielding only one lifeboat.
Many massacres have survivors. Major Thomas Lyon, a Canadian surgeon, testified the U-boat commander took him and Captain Sylvester of Llandovery Castle aboard for questioning. Then the U-boat went on “a smashing up cruise among the survivors and by hurling it hither and thither he succeeded in ramming and sinking all the boats and rafts except one…which escaped. The survivors in this boat heard the sound of gunfire behind them for some time.”
The sinking of the Llandovery Castle became part of the Allies’ propaganda war and forced a change in hospital ship practice. After the sinking, hospital ships proceeded as ordinary transports, with no distinguishing markings, armed, and with naval escorts. A trial for war crimes was held in 1920 against Helmut Patzig, commander of U-86. His conviction was quashed in a general amnesty in 1931, and he served as a U-boat commander from 1943 to 1945.
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| Anna Stammers was killed in the sinking and is commemorated in her home province of New Brunswick. |
Roads readers will appreciate this 222-page book for its insights into the Canadian Army Medical Corps in the Great War and for the shocking details of the perils of hospital ships. As Nurse Stamers left neither diary nor first person narratives, author Dianne Kelly was forced to rely on newspaper articles, military records, or writings of others from which Stamers’ location and actions could be determined or inferred. The focus of this book is the nurses of the CAMC, with Nurse Stamers serving to provide a connection to qualify the book for The New Brunswick Military History Series, of which it is a part. Asleep in the Deep has earned its niche in the medical history of the Great War.
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