Rainbow: The
Story of Rania MacPhillamy (2007) is set during World War I during Australia’s
involvement in Gallipoli and Syria (1914-1919), and the aftermath when soldiers
return home.
In August 1914
Ronald Alexander MacDonald, a country boy from Mudgee, joined the Australian
Light Horse to fight in the war. He was dating 25 year-old Verania. They had
met at the annual Easter agricultural show in Sydney. By December 1914 Ronnie
was in Cairo, Egypt, waiting for deployment to Gallipoli in Turkey.
Ronnie set foot
on Gallipoli Cove in May 1915 but his stay was brief. He was shot in the hand
and sent back to Cairo. Rania trained as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), the
nursing service – a one-month training course and a two-week session in the
hospital wards in Sydney. By September 1915 she was in Cairo on overseas
service where she reunited with her boyfriend Ronnie.
When all the
Allied troops left Gallipoli on 17 December 1915 Ronnie was offered captaincy
in the Camel Corps but he declined and was sent to the Sinai in Egypt. He was
shot in the head in August 1916, killed in action.
Instead of
returning home, Rania went to Port Said in Egypt to help the troops. She met
Alice Chisolm, a sixty-year old nurse who established the Empire Soldiers Club
in January 1916, a tea and food canteen. Rania joined her and they worked
together in Port Said and then in Kantara from January 1917 to January 1918.
“In 1917 the daily average number of men visiting the canteen was over 2,500.
In September 1917 … the number of daily visits was over 4,500.” They gained a
reputation for tracking down large quantities of fresh meat and vegetables, as
well as for contributing to the morale of the soldiers. It was more than a
canteen, it was more than a “watering hole” – it was an oasis.
Rania visited
Ronnie’s grave in October 1917 before the women established a new Empire Club
in Jerusalem by July 1918 to again cater for the Australian troops. After
Gallipoli Lieutenant Colonel Clive Single took command of the 4th
Light Horse Field Ambulance. The “tall and lean” doctor grew up in the same
community as Ronnie MacDonald. Clive’s mobile ambulance dealt with 876 patients
and over 100 wounded prisoners of war during the advance on Syria in October
1918.
Many men
expressed their love for Rania, but as Australian troops were leaving the
region she took a ship home in August 1919. On the ship was Clive Single
returning to resume life as a civilian doctor. In December he asked her
father’s consent to marry her, but Rania was vacillating.
In June 1920 came
the awards. Clive was awarded the Distinguished Service Order; Alice was made
Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE); and Rania was invested
as a member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), a great and high honour.
Rania and Clive
married in 1920 to live in rural Moree but life on the farm wasn’t easy with
four children, drought, and the Great Depression. By 1927 Clive had established
a new medical practice in Sydney. He died an early and unexpected death in 1931.
He died a poor businessman because he was reluctant to ask his patients to pay
for consultations. A year later Rania was in the “deepest trough of the
economic depression” without an income. Horsfield doesn’t give the date of
Rania’s death, but Alice Chisolm died in 1954, aged 98.
Rainbow (of the
title) is the supposed nickname of Verania (Rania), but strangely there is
never a mention of the word in the novel. This is an interesting biography with
a complex mix of characters with both strengths and weaknesses. Clive and Rania
grew up in privileged households with extravagant tastes yet with extraordinary
independence of will and medical achievements. There was nothing conventional
about Alice and Rania’s actions to help the Australian troops and establish the
Empire Soldiers Club. They all provided compassionate service to others in times
of both war and peace. But for Rania and Clive “the long married life which
both had anticipated was not to be.”
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