Dr. Laura E. Forster: War Surgeon at the Front

Rob Leicester Wagner

2017, Sabretache (Vol. LVIII, No.4 ): 26-38.

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Dr. Laura E. Forster was one of a handful of female Australian physicians to volunteer to serve as a battlefield surgeon during World War I. Although accredited by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, and the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons, both in Edinburgh, she was Initially rejected by the patriarchal British medical military establishment. However, Dr. Forster joined the British Committee of the French Red Cross. With other female surgeons of equal talent, she served during the 1914 siege of Antwerp by the German Army. Later she worked in field hospitals in France, Turkey, the Caucasus and Russia. She worked a lengthy stint with the Russian Red Cross, in which she treated Armenian and Muslim civilians during the Russian Caucasus Army assault on Erzurum against the Ottoman Third Army. Dr. Forster then joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in Zaleschiki, Galicia, Russia to treat soldiers of the Russian Ninth and Seventh armies under the famed General Aleksei Brusilov. She died in February 1917 while treating civilian casualties at a field hospital in Zaleschiki at the age of 58.

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Such is the lot of an independent physician. Forster would join the Millicent Fawcett Hospital Units operated by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in early 1916 in Russia. The Common Cause, a magazine published by the NUWSS, and The British Journal for Nursing reported on some of Forster’s work. As an itinerant surgeon, she travelled after about a year in Northern France to Petrograd in the autumn of 1915 to treat the ill and wounded. Later she joined the Russian Red Cross to serve in the Caucasus and then in Erzurum, Turkey. Although she sacrificed her life saving thousands of war refugees and soldiers, her work remains largely unknown.* 3 Beavis and Souttar, ‘A Field Hospital in Belgium’, pp.64-66; Anonymous War Nurse, 4 War Nurse’s Diary: Sketches from a Belgian Field Hospital, MacMillan, New York, 1918; Souttar, A Surgeon in Belgium, pp.1-42. 4 The Common Cause, ‘The Millicent Fawcett Hospital Units’, 8 December 1916, p.464; 15 December 1916, p.478; 5 January 1917, p.516; 19 January 1917, p.535; 23 February 1917, p.610; and 2 March 1917, p.625. 2 Dr Laura Elizabeth Forster family tree, Ancestry. com, Pe ~ PP a a Pg ae ee ae ae ee — . Be # amg

Forster, Benham, Maude, Baker and nine nurses spent long shifts in the operating theatre assisting Beavis and Souttar. The theatre had three long windows facing a courtyard that At 56, Forster was older than the rest of the medical staff leaving for Antwerp. Very small, with elfin features, and somewhat frail-looking even when she was in the best of health, Forster was someone who didn’t necessarily telegraph her presence. But she was the only member of the medical team with experience in a combat zone.

Fig.3: The operating theatre at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1914, shortly before it was abandoned as German troops advanced on the city. (Courtesy University of California Libraries/Internet Archive The operating team worked quickly and efficiently, and celebrated the fact that they performed no amputations with the first wave of wounded. By dawn the next day, most of the patients had been treated and dressed and were resting. The hospital was divided into 14 wards with the largest accommodating 70 patients. The remaining wards had up to 12 beds each. By this time the medical staff had grown to about 40 doctors, nurses, drivers and orderlies.!? In the weeks that followed, small contingents of doctors and nurses travelled by automobile to the front to treat Belgian and British soldiers in the trenches for minor injuries and ailments. Forster and Benham stopped at every village along the route to the front to treat civilians and soldiers alike.

bus can be a rough ride on all-rubber tires and primitive suspension. Dodging potholes and driving over debris on cobbled streets aggravated wounds and forced Dr Maude to administer morphine to the men. The only exit from the city was to cross the Scheldt River on a pontoon bridge. Hundreds of refugees jammed the city square on foot and in vehicles waiting to cross. The bridge could only accommodate one vehicle at a time, requiring nearly a two-hour anxious wait for the convoy’s turn to cross. After the last bus of the 10-vehicle caravan crossed the bridge, a German artillery shell scored a direct hit on the bridge, splitting it in two and stranding civilians in the square.

Fig.5: The medical team at Zaleschiki, Galicia, Russia, in 1916. Laura Forster is believed to be seated in the centre. (Australian War Memorial photo H18592) Zaleschiki was about 30 miles from the southwest front and a steady stream of Russian soldiers passed through the hos pital — the only infectious diseases facility within 200 miles — with typhus and diphtheria. Joining the Russians were Austro-Hungarian POWs who were among the 400,000 soldiers ca ptured by Brusilov’s forces, which was covering 15 miles a day along the 250-mile front. At one point the hospital had vaccinated 20,000 soldiers from both armies. Thrust into the maelstrom of wounded and infected soldiers, were the local population and refugees. Fors er never managed to catch her breath. Once arriving in Zaleschiki, she alternated every other day with other doctors by travelling in an open car exposed to freezing January temperatures to the front to treat soldiers in the trenches and at field headquarters and aid statio ns.*!