Ethel Strachan trained at St Luke’s Hospital, Chelsea Infirmary, London, [1910?]; and nursed at Bolingbrooke Surgical Hospital, England

She migrated to New Zealand with a friend, Sybil Kelly in 1910.

She was a nurse at Wanganui Hospital and private nursing before enlistment

When war broke out Ethel and her friend Sybil were not accepted for the NZ Army Nursing Service, which gave precedence to New Zealand trained nurses, so they paid their own passage to England to nurse with other New Zealanders at the Walton-on-Thames Hospital and were among first to nurse wounded soldiers from Gallipoli.

In March 1916 Miss Strachan and Miss Kelly were selected to join the staff of the Anglo-Russian Hospital at Petrograd, housed in the palace of Prince Dimitri, and also served close to the frontline of battle. She was in Petrograd at the commencement of the revolution and later noted that “I became well mixed up in the intrigue when Prince Dimitri plotted the murder of Rasputin from his flat on top of the palace. I even nursed the murderer when he got a fish bone stuck in his throat.”

Ethel and Sybil left Russia in April 1917 shortly after the March revolution and the abdication of Tzar Nicholas II. They returned to NZ aboard troopship ‘Tahiti’, which left England on 1 February 1918. She assisted as a theatre sister while en route. After the war the pair opened a private surgical hospital in Wanganui (financed by Govt rehabilitation loan). AWMM