WWI nurse honoured

BALLARAT residents will this month pay tribute a local World War I service woman during a tour of Greek and Western Front war cemeteries and battlefields.

The group will visit the Mikra British Cemetery at Thessaloniki, Greece and place plaques at the grave of Sister Gertrude Munro.

The plaques were donated by the Ballarat Base Hospital Trained Nurses League and Cornel Jan McCarthy ARRC (Retired), a member of the Returned & Services Nurses Club of Victoria Sub-Branch RSL.

They will be placed by Garry and Marion Snowden and were presented to the group by Trina Jones and Marie Dell from the Trained Nurses League.

“The Anzac Centenary period is the perfect time to honour and commemorate the sacrifice made by Gertrude Munro who lies half a world away from her Ballarat community,” Ms Jones said. Sister Munro, who was from Gillies Street in Ballarat, spent two years working at infectious diseases hospitals in India and Greece, and was constantly exposed to infection and malarial mosquitoes.

She died of pneumonia and malaria on 10 October, 1918, a month before the end of the war. At the time of her death a colleague noted, “Sister Munro had a most lovable nature and was a general favourite.

“The news of her death will be received with the deepest regret by all the nurses with whom she has worked, and the patients she has tended.

“I heard a matron of the British Regular Army say that Sister Munro was the-type of nurse who would be a comfort to any nursing administrator.

She was skilled in her profession, a reliable domestic manager, and a lovable woman.”

Almost eight years later the Adelaide Advertiser noted on 29 September, 1926, “It may be of interest to readers to know that in the war cemeteries of Salonika there lies only one Australian, Sister Gertrude Evelyn Munro, of Ballarat, Victoria.

“She gave her life nursing the sick and wounded British soldiers there, at the time of her death, October 10, 1918, being acting-matron of a hospital of 1,600 beds.

“As no other Australian graves were there, special permission was sought form the Imperial authorities to erect and word a tablet there in her memory.”