1 April 1918

Our dressing station at Mailly-Maillet

The words are a soldier’s own. Leo Bestall wrote them under a photograph he glued into his diary and album.

Black and white photograph from 1 April 1918 of a two-storey French house with three dormer windows. A Red Cross sign hangs on sandbags beside the open front door, soldiers stand in the doorway and an ambulance is parked at the left. — **1 April 1918.** New Zealand medical men outside the dressing station. Photograph H492 by Henry Armytage Sanders, 1 April 1918. From the Leo Bestall diary and album, MTG Hawke’s Bay (public domain per the museum record).

What the photograph shows

A two-storey house with three dormer windows. Sandbags are stacked on either side of the front door, and a Red Cross sign hangs on them. Men in uniform stand in the open doorway and on the sandbags. An ambulance is parked at the left, and the museum record says it carries a New Zealand silver fern on its door. The number H492 is written on the negative.

The photograph was taken by Henry Armytage Sanders. The museum record describes the men as members of the New Zealand ambulance corps outside the New Zealand dressing station on the Somme.

Where it fits

The New Zealand Division was fighting close by in the spring of 1918, near Colincamps, from late March. Mailly-Maillet lay behind that line. A dressing station is the first place a wounded man is treated after the regimental aid post, before he is moved back to the rear.

The village was in use for medical work for much of the war. The Commonwealth cemetery extension was used by field ambulances from August 1915 to December 1916, and again from March to July 1918.

What we do not yet know

Which New Zealand field ambulance ran this station, and for how long. The war diaries of the New Zealand field ambulances are held at The National Archives (references WO 95/3666 and WO 95/3681 to 3683) and are not yet digitised. Finding the entries for April 1918 is the next research step. We will publish what they say.

Sources

MTG Hawke’s Bay, “New Zealand Dressing Station at Mailly-Maillet on the Somme, France”, photograph by Henry Armytage Sanders, 1 April 1918. Museum record.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Mailly-Maillet Communal Cemetery Extension. CWGC record.
War diary of the 1/4th Royal Berkshire Regiment, 6 September 1916, via The Wardrobe. Transcription.
The National Archives, New Zealand Division and field ambulance war diaries, WO 95/3666 and WO 95/3681–3.

The museum record spells the village both “Mailly-Maillet” and “Mailly-Mallet”. The correct modern spelling is Mailly-Maillet.