When work allowed, Alice was able to see the wondrous sights including Cairo, the Pyramids and Sphinx and the Nile, and the evening social life was often a welcomed relief from the hardship of their work, with dinner or tea at a respectable Cairo hotel being a treat.
When Sister Alice Searell left Egypt, she had tended nearly 4000 patients. On her journey to England, Alice nursed on the hospital ship Devanha, arriving in England in October 1916. From Southampton Alice entrained to the No.1 New Zealand General Hospital at Brockenhurst (Hampshire) in the south of England.
The No. 1 NZGH was set up by New Zealand medical staff in June 1916 in a British hutted hospital that had previously been used to nurse Indian troops. Also used were two hotels in the village, Forest Park and Balmer Lawn. The latter became a neurological centre.
Alice Searell nursed soldiers from France and Belgium and saw awful injuries to both the body and mind though the men were delighted and comforted to be nursed by fellow New Zealanders.
Alice was at Brockenhurst until March 1919, when on 11 March 1919, the No.1 NZGH at Brockenhurst closed its doors. Today, Auckland Avenue and Auckland Place commemorate the stay of the New Zealanders.
Alice returned to NZ on the Ionic on 14 March 1919 and was awarded the Associate of the Royal Red Cross (ARRC) decoration that was published in the London Gazette on 31 July 1919 for her “valuable nursing services in connection with the war.”
Alice was discharged on 1 February 1920 when she took up a post at the King George V Military Hospital in Rotorua. She died in Auckland in 1975 aged 92 and was cremated at the Purewa Cemetery.
Alice Searell’s photograph album is held in the archive of the National Army Museum Te Mata Toa in Waiouru.
