The official Australian medical history of the First World War states that 2,139 women served overseas with the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) and 130 with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNSR).  However later research by Doctor Kirsty Harris indicates that at least 2,498 Australian nurses were sent overseas with the AANS and approximately 720 nurses and masseuses served with other Allied units.

Nurses who joined the AANS were in the vanguard of women in the Australian military.  They were aged 21 to 40, unmarried (mostly) and had completed three years’ approved hospital training. The AANS was the only arm of the Australian military that would accept women throughout the First World War. In contrast, the armed services of Great Britain eventually accepted women in other support roles including medicine, driving and clerical – the first party of 14 women of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps arrived in France in March 1917 and eventually 9,000 British women were to serve there.

Some Australian women paid their own way to England to join the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve (QAIMNSR), the British equivalent of the AANS, or happened to already be in Europe in 1914.

The stories of these nurses and their experiences of the inglorious face of warfare are a reminder of the cost of military action, lest we forget.