NZ nurses detained on way to Spanish Civil War

Most of the handful of New Zealanders who served in the Spanish Civil War made their own way to Spain from Britain and Australia. The only organised New Zealand contingent comprised three nurses: René Shadbolt, Isobel Dodds and Millicent Sharples.

The nurses were recruited by the New Zealand Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC), which was formed in February 1937 after it became clear that New Zealand would not officially support the Republican government. SMAC initially planned to send a doctor, two nurses, an orderly and an ambulance to Spain. This more ambitious plan was abandoned in favour of sending aid more quickly. René Shadbolt, aged 33, the head sister in Auckland Hospital’s casualty ward, was appointed to lead the group. Isobel Dodds, aged 22, a staff nurse from Wellington Hospital, and 46-year-old Millicent Sharples, who worked at a private hospital in Levin, made up the rest of the contingent.

On the day they were to leave Auckland, 18 May 1937, the nurses were summoned to the Central Police Station and interrogated for three hours about their reasons for going. The police took a ‘slightly different tactic’ with each woman. Shadbolt was accused of being a member of the Communist Party and Dodds of having an illegitimate child. Sharples, the oldest member of the group, was seen as simply naïve. Though the nurses were released in time to board the Awatea, SMAC was outraged. It wrote to the government demanding an explanation and an inquiry. Neither was forthcoming, although Police Minister Peter Fraser – a family friend of Dodds – eventually admitted that the government had over-reacted to a fear that ‘three dedicated revolutionaries [would be] flying New Zealand’s flag in Spain’.

The nurses arrived in Spain, via Australia and England, on 15 July 1937. They were initially based at a large makeshift International Brigade hospital in Huete, 75 km south-east of Madrid. Shadbolt and Dodds remained there until mid-1938, when the fighting came too close and the hospital was evacuated to Barcelona.

By this time Sharples had left Spain. She had been posted to the Aragon front as an ambulance driver in October 1937. Then, following several other transfers, SMAC recalled her to New Zealand. It is unclear what prompted this, but SMAC was certainly displeased with her performance after her return to New Zealand. In July 1938 it severed all official connections with her.

Shadbolt and Dodds, meanwhile, continued to be a key promotional tool for SMAC in New Zealand. Their photographs were used on posters, and their letters home appeared in newspapers and in SMAC’s regular newsletter. After a month’s leave in England in June 1938 the pair returned to Spain to work in a large hospital at Mataro, near Barcelona. As the Republican forces continued to retreat they were evacuated to Barcelona. They left the city shortly after a ‘stirring and emotional’ farewell parade of the International Brigades on 15 November.

Dodds and Shadbolt arrived back in New Zealand in January 1939. While seeking nursing positions they continued to work for SMAC. In February they embarked upon a six-week speaking tour to raise awareness of and money for the hundreds of thousands of Republican refugees in France.

Image: Nurse Dodds, Sister Shadbolt and Nurse Sharples