By the Australian War Memorial
Christine Erica Strom was born on 2 August 1892 at Ascot
Vale, Victoria. She was the second daughter of Herman Strom, a Master Mariner,
and Mary Eadington Rule Strom (née Pyott), a homemaker, who had met and married
in England in 1886 and migrated to Australia shortly thereafter. Strom began
training as a nurse at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1913. By 1917 she had
become an experienced nurse and in May that year she enlisted with the
Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) as a staff nurse. On 12 June 1917, the
25-year-old, along with nearly one hundred other nurses, embarked from
Melbourne aboard the steamer RMS Mooltan, bound for Egypt.
Strom quickly found that she had not inherited her
father’s sea legs and her journey was marred by bouts of seasickness. On board
she grew closer to her fellow nurses, including three whom she would grow
particularly close to over the coming years: Ellen Christine Melville, Norma
Noham Scott and Constance Adelaide Horwood. The Mooltan stopped at several
ports on its journey to Egypt, and Strom and her friends took these
opportunities to experience each destination, which included Colombo, Bombay
and Aden. After arriving in Egypt the nurses were sent to Salonika in Greece to
serve with the British military tent hospitals there, arriving at the end of
July.
Strom was assigned to the 66th (British) General Hospital
and once there she took up her role with vigour. She had been keeping a diary
since her embarkation from Australia and continued to make detailed entries
that encapsulated daily life as a nurse at Salonika and the often difficult
conditions under which the nurses served. Strom set about furnishing the tent
that she shared with Horwood and Scott, gradually making it more homely. In
September, Horwood and Scott were transferred, and whilst Strom initially found
it strange without the two, her good friend and fellow nurse Melville still
remained and she would periodically arrange to catch up with them.
In November 1917 the 66th was evacuated and Strom, along
with Melville, was transferred to the 42nd (British) General Hospital. The
extreme heat and malaria of the summer months and the extreme cold and
pneumonia of the winter months had been affecting soldiers and nurses alike.
Despite the often challenging conditions, Strom continued to find the humour in
many things, in one particular case about the ration biscuits which she posited
had the letter “B” stamped on them so as not to mistake them for the local
rocks, hard as they were. Through it all she maintained a strong sense of duty
and attachment to the British soldiers under her care, and on more than one
occasion was reprimanded by her British superiors for growing too close to her
charges.
By the later stages of 1918 the conditions at the 42nd
had deteriorated markedly and the hospital was overwhelmed with sick soldiers.
The nurses were also susceptible and the death of staff nurse Gertrude Evelyn
Munro in September 1918 from pneumonia and malaria hit Strom and the other
nurses hard. Fortunately, for the soldiers and nurses alike, the war ended soon
after and in January 1919 Strom and the other nurses were sent to England where
Strom was attached to the 3rd Australian Auxiliary Hospital at Dartford. Whilst
in England she took the opportunity to travel around the United Kingdom on
leave. On 17 July 1919 she left England, arriving back in Australia on 11
September 1919, and was officially discharged on 21 February 1920. Several
years later, on 8 September 1924 at Armadale in Victoria, she married Walter
Bonwick who had served as an infantryman during the war.
In her later years Strom regularly travelled overseas to
give nursing assistance at various Save the Children Fund camps. She also
continued to write poetry, which was published in various newspapers and also
compiled into books which were then sold to raise money for the Fund. Christine
Erica Strom passed away in 1984 at Mont Albert, Victoria. She was 91 years old.
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