Staff Nurse Ella Kate Cooke

Ella Kate Cooke (1885-August 9, 1917) was a New Zealand Sister who earned her nursing license in Auckland and later served as a nurse for France during World War I. She died in 1917 near the hospital in which she worked in Alexandria after being hit by a train.
Biography
She first began her initial training in nursing in 1907 at the Auckland Hospital and later at the Cook Hospital in Gisborne. She was transferred to the hospital in Hawera in 1910 and staying there until early 1913. Afterward, Cooke worked in the Waikato region of New Zealand after being sent there as the only available nurse for the region and peoples therein, having been given the title of "Native Health Nurse". She later became "a member of the Public Health Nursing Service".
In 1914, when she was 29, Cooke departed from New Zealand by way of Auckland on the RMS Niagara, accompanied by her twin sister, and headed for Canada on the way to Britain. Traveling across both Canada and America, they departed for Britain from New York on the RMS Lusitania. The ship was chased by a German cruiser on the open sea, but arrived safely in Britain.
Not long after arriving, "Britain declared war on Germany". Because she had known other English people while in New Zealand, Cooke decided to enlist as a nurse to help the war effort. However, her services were not necessary in Britain, so she traveled to France and joined the French Flag Nursing Corps as a volunteer and also worked with the French Red Cross. She was stationed in Bernay, France and treated wounded soldiers returning from battle.
Cooke was to be moved to another base on November 19, 1915, but she was instead sent to Egypt in October of the same year, as a part of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps. The training for her journey and the nursing knowledge she would have to know was done at Connaught Hospital in Aldershot.
She died in 1917 while nursing at the "No. 17 Hospital" in Alexandria. While going to meet a friend to have dinner, she passed through a fence onto train tracks behind it and was hit by a train. Her body was buried in the Hadra Cemetary and her name is "inscribed on the World War I Nurses Memorial in York Minster, England."
A video was made by the Auckland War Memorial Museum in 2008 called In Memory that features Ella Cooke.

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