The woman pictured below in Melbourne in 1944 is the incredible Alice Appleford, nee Ross-King.

Alice was born in Ballarat, Victoria on 5 August, 1887 to Archibald and Henrietta Ross King. Tragically, when the family moved to Perth, Alice’s father and two brothers drowned in the Swan River.

Alice settled in Melbourne with her mother, where she went to school at Fitzroy’s Academy of Mary Immaculate, and later the Presbyterian Ladies’ College.

She assisted the matron of the Austin Hospital, and helped staff during a typhoid epidemic. She went on to gain her nursing certificate, and became a theatre sister in charge of a private hospital in Collins Street.

Alice enlisted to serve in WWI on 5 November, 1914, and set of for Heliopolis, Egypt. She was soon sent to Suez, where the Australian Army Nursing Service used a French convent orphanage as a clearing hospital for Gallipoli casualties.

Alice was to return to Australia, nursing the wounded, in 1915, and came back to Egypt on a troopship with reinforcements.

On the night of 22 July, 1917, Alice was on duty in a casualty clearing station close to the trenches near Armentieres in France. Five bombs hit the hospital. Alice’s ‘great coolness and devotion to duty’ on that night led to her being one of seven AANS nurses awarded the Military Medal in WWI.

On her voyage home to Australia from England, Alice met Dr Sydney Theodore Appleford, who would become her husband at a ceremony at Wesley Church in Melbourne. They had two daughters and two sons together.

Alice continued to work as a nurse following Armistice, and by 1942 she was appointed as a senior assistant controller for the Australian Army Women’s Medical Services. She was responsible for around 2,000 servicewomen, and she made a great contribution to fundraising activities with the Red Cross during WWII.

She died on 17 August 1968, and is buried at Fawkner cemetery in Melbourne. Alice is survived by her daughters, who describe her as a very private person who never spoke about her war experiences.

Image courtesy of the Australian War Memorial.