Malta – the ‘Nurse of the Mediterranean’

According to one contemporary writer, Malta “…assumed the role of nurse, and her breakwaters seem like arms stretched out to receive her burden of suffering. Once the hospital ship has passed within their shelter the rolling ceases, and the wounded feel that they have reached a haven of rest.” So wrote the Rev. Albert MacKinnon in 1916 in “Malta: The Nurse of the Mediterranean” – an early reference to the soubriquet by which the island came to be known during the First World War.

As the war in France began to grind into stalemate, other fronts opened in the Dardenelles and Gallipoli, with disastrous consequences for the allied forces. The scale of casualties was unprecedented and required an urgent response,

“That Malta should become the home of one of the British Empire’s largest systems of war hospitals was not anticipated in the early months of the war. It was not until May 1915 that the first badly wounded casualties from the Gallipoli campaign started to pour into Malta. The first convoy of 600 patients arrived on May 4, followed by a further 400 a day later, and on May 6 another 600 cases were brought ashore. Before the end of May, upward of 4,000 casualties from the Gallipoli campaign had reached Malta…The end of May saw the number of hospital beds catering for the sick and injured rise to over 6,000 in 14 hospitals spread all over the island.” Source: Times of Malta

In Salonika, a hostile climate and serious illness – mainly malaria – were the principle cause of casualties. Malta again provided an immediate solution,

“After January 1916, the number of sick and wounded fell very considerably with the scaling down of the Gallipoli campaign, only to rise again with a vengeance in the summer of 1916, as the Salonika campaign proceeded. However, the number of hospital beds remained in the region of 25,000, and reached a maximum of 25,522 housed in 27 hospitals by April 1917. The number of sick patients, suffering mainly from “dysentery and enteric group of diseases”, always exceeded the number admitted with war wounds. With the end of the Gallipoli campaign and the start of the Salonika campaign in October 1915, this trend in admissions became even more marked as a result of a rush of malaria cases from Salonika. Up until April 30, 1917, Cottonera, a mixed hospital catering for both the sick and injured, received 2,867 sick but only 308 wounded.” Source: Times of Malta

Malta’s strategic location in the Mediterranean – and its history as a British Protectorate – made it an important naval base for the British and, together with its climate, also an important place of rest and healing. But it was also hundreds of miles from Salonika and by April 1917, increasing submarine attacks on hospital ships made it unsafe to continue evacuating casualties to Malta from Salonica. Five General Hospitals, Nos 61, 62, 63, 64 and 65 were therefore mobilized at Malta for duty in Salonica, arriving on 11 July 1917. Malta’s role as the ‘nurse of the Mediterranean’ had, effectively, ended. Source: MaltaRAMC

Further Reading

• Military Hospitals Malta 1914-1918
• Malta in WW1: The ‘Nurse of the Mediterranean’ in the eyes of the ANZACs
• Malta in World War One: The Nurse of the Mediterranean
• Imperial War Museum

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Featured image: Times of Malta