Connection to the Hunter Valley – Sister Gertrude Faddy was born in Wingham and was a resident of Paterson before enlisting. According to the First Fleet Fellowship of Victoria Inc Gertrude was a descendant of 2nd Lt William Faddy who sailed to Botany Bay on the Friendship.

Training and experience – graduated Sydney Hospital 1907

Service – Australian Voluntary Hospital and British Red Cross

Service location – France (Australian Voluntary Hospital, Wimereux) and UK (Netley Auxiliary Hospital).  At 16-years-old Gertrude had won First Class Honours in a French translation competition – this skill would have stood her in good stead during her service in France! (Australian Town and Country Journal, Saturday 3 December 1898, page 37, retrieved from Trove 18 October 2012).

Medals & awards – Gertrude was awarded the Associate Royal Red Cross (ARRC), gazetted 24 October 1917. She would also have been eligible for the 1914-1915 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.

The ARRC was presented to Gertrude by the Governor-General at the Victoria Barracks in Sydney on 7 October 1919.

After the War – on her return to Australia in late 1918 Gertrude was kept in quarantine for a time as she had contracted influenza on the voyage. On 7 December 1918 the  Sydney Morning Herald p.13 noted that she and a number of other nurses were now listed as convalescent.

Gertrude continued nursing.  At the time of her father’s death in 1932 the Sydney Morning Herald noted that she was working at the War Memorial Hospital in Suva, Fiji.

 

References:

Australasian Nurses’ Journal, Vol XII No 12, December 1914, p.423, Vol XIII No 4, April 1915, p.119, Vol XV No 4 April 1917, pp.122-123

British Journal of Nursing, 19 December 1914, p.489

Dungog Chronicle, 28 May 1915, p.2

Supplement to London Gazette, 24 October 1917, p.10977

Sydney Morning Herald, 5 March 1918, p.7, retrieved from Trove 25 July 2010; 8 October 1919, p.11, retrieved from Trove 8 August 2010; 10 August 1932, p.15, retrieved from Trove 9 August 2010

Neil Smith, The History of the Australian Voluntary Hospital World War One, Mostly Unsung Military History Research and Publications, Brighton VIC, 2006, p.16

Do you know more?

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© Christine Bramble 2013