Walking in Their Grave Clothes

Sister Hilda Samsing was one of just twenty-five Australian nurses who sailed with the First Convoy in October 1914. Her diary – sharp, opinionated, and entirely unvarnished – takes the reader from the hospitals of Cairo to the decks of the hospital ship Gascon off Gallipoli, and on through the casualty clearing stations of the Western Front.

Samsing did not write for publication. She wrote for herself, and it shows. Exhausted soldiers arriving from the trenches looked as though they were ‘walking in their grave clothes.’ Incompetent officers were described so in plain language. The diary is vivid, immediate, and at times deeply moving.

Previously unpublished and held at the Australian War Memorial, the diary is presented here in full for the first time, edited and annotated by John Dixon. A rare first-hand account of the war as seen through the eyes of an Australian nurse.