A New Zealand nurse at war

Ella and Lily Cooke were travelling. Ella had finished her nursing training and the twins were enjoying a trip that had taken them to Britain via America and Canada before heading back to New Zealand in 1914.
They had intended it to be an adventure.
By the time they had reached New York, war had been declared and the world as they knew it had changed forever.
Ella and Lily had been born in 1881 to Henry and Sarah Cooke - the youngest of their eight children.
Ella left school in 1907 and immediately went into nursing completing her training in Auckland before working at hospitals around the North Island, like Gisborne and Hawera before becoming the native health nurse in Ngāruawāhia.
As their ship docked in London, Ella knew what she wanted to do and she offered her nursing services to the British Government. When they refused she headed to France working for the French Flag Nursing corps as a volunteer.
Her first wartime hospital was in Bernay, near Rouen in northern France. She wrote home a lot, and it’s through her letters that we get a sense of how bad it was for so many.
While in France she witnessed severe cases of trench foot, many of which required amputation. In a letter home, she wrote, ‘I am sure many people do not realise what this war means unless they could see these poor suffering men.’
After six months she was back in England and invited to join the Queen Alexandria;s Imperial Military Nursing Service reserve, training and nursing in England for a bit at Aldershot hospital.
Her letters now spoke about how hard it was, saying they had too few staff and that she was responsible for 240 beds with only three orderlies to help her.
In September 1915, she was sent to the No 17 General Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt.
It was a far cry from the green countries she had been in. She was well liked and social and the chief amusements were excursions to view the Pyramids and the Sphinx, boat trips up the Nile and dinner at the Continental.
Ella became a favourite with those she nursed described as happy and popular.
Tragically, after two years nursing in Egypt, on September 8, 1917, Ella was walking to a friend’s house for dinner when she took a shortcut across a railway line and into the path of an oncoming train, and was instantly killed.
She was buried with full military honours at Hadra War Memorial Cemetery in Alexandria.
Her name is also on the York Minister window of the Five Sisters - one of the largest ancient stained glass windows in the world. When it was restored after World War One the names of the women who had died doing their duty were added.​