Memories of the Aragon

Several times over the last couple of years I've sent people a copy of an account of the Aragon, both before and at the time of her sinking. As it seems popular, I thought I'd add it here, which will make it easy for a web search to pick up. The first account is of the Aragon during the days following the Gallipoli landings.

Some Memories of the Good Ship
A. M. Cameron

The Gallipoli campaign must always be a poignant memory for the Army sisters who tended the wounded and sick brought to the hospital ships in such overwhelming numbers. The sinking of the good ship Aragon will bring it to the remembrance of hundreds of sisters who have so often seen it in their journeyings to the Dardanelles in the days when it was a stationary staff ship in Mudros Harbour in the Island of Lemnos. My special memory of the Aragon is a sad one.

It was in April 1915. The landing of our heroic troops at Cape Helles had been satisfactorily accomplished, though at a woeful cost. We gathered in a shipload of wounded and carried them to Alexandria. Just before the harbour was reached we had got all our patients ready for disembarkation, but when we reached the quay the news was brought to us that they must remain where they were. There was no room for them. The hospitals were flooded with wounded, and still the wounded came. The hospitals ships were insufficient to meet the rush. Temporary hospitals were being hastily improvised, and medical and nursing help and hospital ships were being hurried to the East with all possible speed. There was no dearth of willing volunteers, but they were untrained, and the number of trained nurses to meet the overwhelming need was pitifully small. Our orders were to carry our wounded to England. As we had over a hundred men who could not possibly live through a rough sea passage they were taken off and room was found for them somewhere. Our French troops were also removed. This resulted in over 200 empty cots, and these, we learned, were to be filled with wounded from the Aragon.

The Commanding Officer and the ship's captain went over to the vessel to arrange about the transference of some of these poor soldiers, and when they returned they told us a pitiful tale. Hundreds of wounded were lying all over the ship. A few medical men and a handful of orderlies had worked night and day for the relief of the sufferers, but what could they do among so many with no medical comforts and no nursing requisites? We were prepared for much, but it seemed almost more than we could bear, the passion of pity which surged up in our hearts when the men from the Aragon were brought to us. Undressed wounds absolutely polluted the atmosphere, and the poor souls, in their muddy, bloodstained clothes, their eyes bright with fever, their bodies weak through loss of blood and lack of food, made an unforgettable appeal not only to our humanity, but to our nursing instinct. They had lain in untold agony for days and nights, undressed, untended and unfed - and it had been no one's fault, merely the hard and cruel luck of war!

The cool, clean cots, the invigorating food, the careful, tender cleansing of bodies and of wounds meant more than we could ever realise to the poor men and boys who had endured so much. Doctors, sisters, and orderlies all appeared to be seized with one overwhelming idea, and that was that nothing was too good for these men from the Aragon. If human skill and nursing could save lives and limbs, the precious lives and limbs should be saved, those long and dreary hours of pain and suffering leave no permanent ill-effect. The gratitude of these men was quite pathetic. Some of them had wearily thought that only death could end their sufferings, and the unremitting care of the medical and nursing staff fell like healing balm on the tortured bodies. By the time our ship reached Southampton our patients from the Aragon were decidedly better, and I cannot remember that any deaths occurred on board.