Objects of Substance - A modest abode for an illustrious alu

1916 Suez - Third Australian General Hospital staff with Grace Wilson (seated centre) and Major Stewart (seated on her right). Photograph by courtesy of Kaye Vidgen (1961).

Like many of the over 2,100 nurses who served during the war, Grace kept a diary, and her accounts of the appalling conditions and waste of life reveal a strong independent woman, indignant and critical of the horrors endured by the men and women. When Grace passed through Alexandria in August 1915 and her entry notes that it was “… a very French place, fascinating and pretty…”, but it was here that Grace received news of the death of her brother, Graeme, killed by a sniper at Quinn’s Post, Gallipoli, but she also had news that another brother, Norman, was safe and well in Heliopolis. After the evacuation of Gallipoli in December 1915, the hospital moved to Egypt and, over the following years of the war, Grace was mentioned many times in despatches. She finally returned to Australia in 1920. She was awarded nursing’s highest honour, the Florence Nightingale Medal, in 1929 for army nursing service and humane actions, and at the outbreak of World War II in 1939 served as Matron-in-Chief of the Army Nursing Reserve. She was also posted for a short stint in the Middle East.

The Florence Nightingale medal is an international award presented to a nurse “for exceptional courage and devotion to the wounded, sick or disabled.”