Ida Willis

Ida Willis (1881 to 1968) was a New Zealand nurse who rose from hospital ward work to lead the country's army nursing service. Born in Wellington, she trained as a nurse at Wellington Hospital between 1907 and 1910. In August 1914 she was one of six nurses who went with the expeditionary force that occupied German Samoa, and in 1915 she sailed on the hospital ship Maheno to Egypt, where she cared for men wounded and sick from the Gallipoli campaign. She later served in England and at the First New Zealand Stationary Hospital at Amiens and Hazebrouck, close to the front line, working alongside surgeons and orderlies in long operating sessions. After the war she became assistant to the matron in chief Hester Maclean, worked in hospital administration and inspection, and became matron in chief of the New Zealand Army Nursing Service, organising the Nursing Corps at the start of the Second World War. She received the Royal Red Cross and was appointed OBE in 1944, the first New Zealand woman to receive that honour, and retired in 1946.