When dawn breaks tomorrow, 25 April, Australians and our neighbours in New Zealand will commemorate the 110th anniversary of the infamous landing at Gallipoli.
Of course, we also remember every Australian who has served our country in battle and in peacekeeping missions in conflicts around the world in the years since.
As we know all too well, too many of them did not come home. Many others returned with injuries and trauma that stayed with them for the rest of their lives.
Over the years, Bairnsdale Regional Health Service has helped to care for some of those veterans.
One of those veterans was one of our own, Sister Alice Bull.
Alice was born to pioneering Bairnsdale residents Joseph and Elizabeth Bull in 1881 and trained at Bairnsdale Hospital.
Less than three months after the Gallipoli landing, on 14 July 1915, Alice answered the call at age 36 and enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service, embarking for Europe from Melbourne three days later.
There is little information on her war service, but it is known that she served on the hospital ship Kanowna in England and France.
She returned briefly to Bairnsdale on a furlough in March 1916, where she received a warm welcome along with another Bairnsdale nurse, Agnes Jackson.
This furlough may have been to recuperate from a bout of typhoid she suffered overseas.
In 1918, she also contracted influenza. It is unclear if this was the highly contagious Spanish Flu, which swept the world in 1918 and 1919, killing up to 20 million people.
Alice Bull came home in January 1919. Six months later, she was discharged as medically unfit.
She continued to work, however, managing a private hospital in Bairnsdale with Nurse Jackson, taking over in November 1924.
Later in her life, Alice Bull moved to Perth and lived in the suburb of Mount Pleasant.
The Gippsland Times reported that she died in Perth on 24 July 1951, aged 76.
On this Anzac Day, everyone at BRHS offers the sincerest thanks to Alice Bull, all who served and and those serving Australia right now for their sacrifice. Lest we forget.
