Connection to the Hunter Valley – Staff Nurse Dorothy Traill was born at Cassilis in the Upper Hunter Valley.   She was a granddaughter through her mother, ‘Mia’ Windeyer, of Sir William Charles Windeyer and Lady Windeyer of Tomago near Newcastle.    She and two brothers, Arthur Traill and James Hamilton Traill, are named on the Cassilis Memorial Gates.  Either the creator of the gates or the client who commissioned it didn’t get it quite right – both ‘A Traill’ and ‘D M Traill’ are asterisked as killed in action.   In fact ‘D M Traill’ returned from Egypt and took up private nursing after the War.  Her brother, Arthur Cecil Traill, was killed in action in France in May 1918. Only a very small number of army nurses died whilst on active service or as a result of their service – mostly from illnesses such as influenza or malaria.

Detail of Cassilis Memorial Gates
Photo: Christine Bramble 2012
Click on image to enlarge.

Training – at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.  Staff Nurse Traill passed the examination for membership of the Australian Trained Nurses’ Association in 1915.

Service – Australian  Army Nursing Service (AANS)

Service location –  Egypt and No 4 Australian General Hospital Randwick.  In her own words …

Medals – British War Medal and Victory Medal

Do you know more?

References:

National Archives of Australia B2455 TRAILL DOROTHY MAUD

Nominal Roll of the First AIF Australian War Memorial (AWM) AWM133, 52-129

Embarkation Roll of the First AIF AWM Nurses (July 1915 – November 1918)

AWM 4, 26/97/1 Part1 Australian Army Nursing Service in Egypt June 1916 – April 1918

Singleton Argus, 27 November 1917

Australasian Nurses’ Journal, Vol XIII No 7 July 1915, Vol XIV No 3 March 1916, Vol XX No 6 June 1922

Sheila Galbraith, Practitioner, pioneer, pastoralist, the author, Sydney 1998

© Christine Bramble 2013