FIGHTING LAST FIGHT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 355, 17 October 1932, Page 7

FIGHTING LAST FIGHT

IIEROIC SOUTH AFRICAN « NURSE LIES DYING. HELPED BOER AND BRITON. A little old woman who du'ring the 70 years of her life has often faced death to minister to the wounded, the suffering, and the dying, was herself recently iii Billericay Hospital, Essex, awaiting her end with the courage she inspired in others. The woman is Mrs. ElizabOth Koskey, who, as "Sister Gillard," acted as riurse in the Koffyfontein Hospital, in the Orange Free State, during th'e Boer War, and whom many a British and Boer soldier died blessing her for the devotion she lavisbed on them far from their homes and womenkind. Sister Gillard trained at a Lohdo'n hospital, settled with her husba'nd at Kimberley, South Africa, in 1899, alid she was nursing a case at Koffyfontein, a few miles away, when war broke out. The Boers commandeered her servibes and ordered her to start a hospital. She did so, and continued to direct it after Kimberley had been relieved and the British had swe'pt forward. She served there throughout the war, giving her services gratuitously, and for her reward reeeived both the Queen's and the King's medals. Later on Sister Gillard saw service during two Kaffir rebellions, and at one period she was the only white woman not rounded up by the authorities for safety's sake. In 1924, after the death of her first husband, she married. a trader, Mr. George Koskey, and settled down with him at his store at Livingstone. One day in 1928, there came news' of a nurse urgently needed at Kafue, where the wife of an officer Was dhngerously ill. Although then 66* years of age, Mrs. Koskey said at once, "I must go and see what I can do." Hef husband protested, and pointed out that Kafue Was full of fevef. She refilse'd to listen. She nursed the sick woman, who recovered. Then Sister Gillard herself fell ill. A few years later, Mr. Koskey, Koping that a trip to England would heTp his wife to regain her strength, sold all his remaining eflrects so that they might make the expensive vbyage, and so she went. Her most painful separation has been from her husband. When she n'eeded money for nursing attention, he.h'ad, though an old man, to try to find if somehow. ' Employnxent was impossible in Brithin. So' h!e retufned to Rhodesia.