Shortly after her brothers had sailed for Gallipoli Marie was called up for service with the VADs at Malta. Her mother accompanied her to London, where they spent a week together before Marie joined the hospital ship Oxfordshire. On 22 October 1915 the ship reached Valetta harbour in Malta. As it arrived a day earlier than expected, the VADs’ postings hadn’t been finalised. The nurses explored Valetta and, according to Marie, “had tea and deadly cakes.” The next day she was assigned to a converted barracks on a peninsula overlooking St. George’s Bay on the northern shore of the island. The hospital treated the wounded and the sick from the Gallipoli campaign. In the summer of 1915 the sick included those suffering from dysentery and enteric fever. As the number of soldiers with these illnesses decreased with the onset of winter, they were replaced by those with trench-fever and frost-bite. Marie wrote to her mother on 28 October: “the work is really hard, but of course it is what we came out for.” Her free time was spent on sleep or writing letters for very ill patients. When a patient died, Marie would write to his mother with information about his final days. October brought mosquitoes and sand flies that left Marie’s face in a terrible state and her eyes swollen. Days were hot and airless. But by December it had become cold, and the VADs, going between the wards housed in various parts of the barracks, were drenched in pouring rain. The yearly salary for a VAD was twenty pounds, as well as board and uniform. Marie was very excited when she got her first ever pay packet. She sent a registered letter to her mother with one pound and five shillings saying: “I wish I could only earn more to make things easier for you.” On 26 November she wrote to Tommy who was now convalescing on Bere Island County Cork and who, on 20 September, had been promoted to Captain. She asked if there was “any sign of this terrible war ending?” Meanwhile, in late September 1915, with Bulgaria preparing to join Germany and Austo-Hungary in an attack on Serbia, the 10th (Irish) Division was ordered to leave Gallipoli and a move to Salonika in the Macedonian province of Greece. Following fighting on 8 December 1915, Captain Charles Martin, 6th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers was recorded as missing. On 18 December Marie wrote to her mother saying that one of a newly arrived group of patients told her he had seen Charlie about two weeks earlier and he had been well. Marie said she would make enquiries to see if any of Charlie’s battalion was among the wounded on the island. On 27 December she received a cable from her mother saying the War Office had notified her that Charlie had been wounded and was missing. Deeply distraught, Marie redoubled her efforts in search of news of her younger brother. On 29 December, with a heavy heart,
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