Rose O"Connell - Athlone"s Florence Nightingale

On 28 June 1914, two shots rang out in the streets of Sarajevo which signalled the start of a war that would ultimately kill 20 million people. On the far side of Europe, the Irish didn"t know it but 200,000 of their number would soon enter the fight. At least 35,000 would never come home. Athlone, as one of Ireland"s garrison towns, was sure to commit men to the war. Athlone-men had been fighting in wars since General Ginkel tried to force his way across the bridge in 1691 and Sergeant Custume died trying to stop him. The First World War would be no different. Regular Athlone soldiers were mobilised for overseas service, reservists were called to arms while ordinary citizens - labourers, tradesmen, shopkeepers - poured through the barracks gate to enlist. When the guns finally fell silent four years later, at least one hundred and forty Athlone-men lay dead and buried in France, Flanders, Gallipoli, Salonika, Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia. Another 27 men killed in the war lay in Cornamagh Cemetery, just outside the town. The First World War did as much to change Ireland as the Easter Rising, but the story of the conflict is not solely one of men in action - it is also about women at war. Born on 26 March 1892 in Drumpark, Athlone, Rose O"Connell was only 22-years-old when the First World War exploded to life. She was a nurse who had been trained, and was now employed at, Saint Patrick"s Duns Scotus Hospital in Dublin. However, she was also a member of the Queen Alexandra"s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNSR), and with the body count in Europe starting to climb horrifically by the day, it would only be a matter of time before Rose was called up for active service. This happened on 15 May, 1915, when she was finally commissioned as a staff nurse into the QAIMNSR. This meant that not only was Rose a woman on her way to war, she was also a commissioned officer. But instead of being sent to a hospital along the Western Front in France or Belgium, Rose was sent to tend to the wounded from a new military expedition currently underway in Turkey - the fighting on the infamous Gallipoli Peninsula. She sailed aboard HMT Ionian on 4 June 1915, arriving at Alexandria in Egypt just over three weeks later. For Athlone-woman Rose O"Connell, her senses must have been overwhelmed. She may have never been out of Ireland beforeThis was the land of the biblical Pharaohs. Moses had led the Israelites from this place. The Pyramids of Giza were to the south, and in this city - Alexandria - there had once been a great library of ancient knowledge, one that had drawn scholars and students from all across the known world. But Rose was not here to sightsee, she was here to treat the wounded arriving by hospital ship from Gallipoli. Posted immediately to 19th General Hospital in Alexandria, Rose would have soon been treating gaping chest wounds, cases of severe dysentery, horrific burns, as well as assisting doctors in the endless amputations of legs and arms. She may have even treated some Athlone-men, since the 10th (Irish) Division, which contained a battalion of the Connaught Rangers and another of the Leinster Regiment - two regiments favoured by Athlone soldiers - was then engaged in Gallipoli. It was most certainly a horrible shock to her, since it is unlikely she had seen anything like these wounds during her time in Dublin. Rose stayed in the Alexandrian hospital for nearly a year, until, with the Gallipoli campaign having ultimately been abandoned with the loss of 220,000 allied casualties, her services were required elsewhere. But once again, she would not be sent to the Western Front. Instead, on 21 April 1916 - three days before the start of the Easter Rising - she set sail aboard HT Abbassich for Mombasa in Kenya. It is a little known fact, but while everyone is aware of the trenches of France and Flanders in the First World War and to some extent the fighting in Gallipoli (better known as The Dardanelles), almost no one remembers that there was also fierce fighting between British and German troops (mostly black colonial troops with white officers, but with some all-white regiments) in East Africa throughout all four years of the war. In fact, there are many war graves today in Dar-Es-Salaam - the capital of Tanzania - which are the final resting place of several soldiers from Westmeath. Rose served in her new East African hospital for exactly a year, until she herself was admitted to hospital on 16 May 1917 in Morogoro - a city 190km west of Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania. The reason - malaria. It was a bad case and Rose had to be transferred to several hospitals before the illness was brought under control - she even had to shipped out of the region to Cape Town for a while to recover. Then Athlone-woman Rose O"Connell simply returned to East Africa and resumed treating her patients, a time during which she received an impressive Mention-In-Dispatches for her devotion to duty. When the war ended in 1918, Rose finally sailed home. But the malaria never left her and she suffered repeated attacks over the following months and years. She resigned her commission with the QAIMNSR on 1 April 1919, but then, for whatever reason, returned to army nursing when she applied for and received another commission with the QAMNS India in August 1919. All of a sudden, Rose O"Connell was heading overseas again, this time to India. However, her nursing days in India were short, since, in August 1920, she again resigned her commission and returned home. The reason this time - to get married. In 1920, Athlone-woman Rose O"Connell became Rose Bennett, and in October 1921, her first child was born. Rose was 29. But the birth brought back the malaria attacks with a vengeance - attacks which had never really gone away in the first place. The bouts were now accompanied by extreme insomnia. But in a subsequent check up, it was determined that the worst was now behind her, and by 1924, Rose was reported to be doing well and living with her family in Harrogate, Yorkshire, while working in a local hospital. After that, she drops off the radar, and we can only hope that this Athlone war veteran lived out the rest of her life in peace.