For the past six weeks, Australian audiences have been absorbed in the lives of five World War I nurses depicted in the ABC-TV mini series Anzac Girls.
We watched the young women endure heartache and despair, joy, friendship and fear as war raged around them.
What happened to these women when peace eventually prevailed and they returned to their homes in Australia and New Zealand?
Sister Alice Ross King
Following the death of her true love Lieutenant Harry Moffit and the end of the war, Alice returned to Australia as one of only eight Australian nurses to be awarded the Military Medal for bravery. She had wanted to take leave and visit England but had been denied permission and instead was put in charge of the ship's hospital.
During the voyage, she developed a friendship with the ship’s doctor Major Sydney Appleford, who was also returning from active duty. He broke off his engagement to a girl in Geelong and he and Alice married in August 1919.
They had four children and settled down to a quiet life in Lang Lang in the Victorian Gippsland, where Sydney had a medical practice. When WWII broke out, both Alice and Sydney re-joined the army and Alice, now Major Appleford, became very involved in raising funds for the Red Cross.
She was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal by them in 1949. She died in 1969. After her death, her children found a shoebox under her bed and inside was Harry’s last letter.
Matron Grace Wilson
Having been awarded the Companionship of the British Empire, the Royal Red Cross and the Florence Nightingale Medal for her military service, Grace became matron on the Repatriation Hospital in Brisbane, then matron-in-chief of the Australian Army Nursing Service.
At the outbreak of WWII, she once again nursed with the AIF and dedicated her life to improving the standard of nursing care in Australia.
Grace found love at age 75 and married Robert Campbell in London but died only a few years later, in 1957.
Sister Olive Haynes
Following her marriage to Pat Dooley in December 1917, Olive found she had to work her passage home as a duty nurse on the ship carrying AIF wives and babies.
She and Pat settled in Victoria and had seven children, one of whom had Down syndrome.
This prompted Olive to become involved in establishing a school for intellectually disabled children in Ivanhoe. She was also deeply involved in various charitable organisations.
Both Olive and Pat died in 1978.
Sister Hilda Steele
Born in New Zealand, Hilda served with the Australian Army Nurses and returned to Australia on the Orsova in September 1919.
She was medically discharged in November but was then detailed for service with the New Zealand Territorial Nursing Service.
In 1924, she married Cyril Mulcock, a farmer 13 years her junior and they had a daughter.
In 1936 she was granted a divorce on the grounds of desertion. Hilda died in 1972.
Sister Elsie Cook
Following war's end, Elsie and Syd moved to Perth with Syd's job. They had one son before returning to Sydney, where Elsie opened an antiques shop, naming it Grafton Galleries, after the place she had been to celebrate the end of war.
The groove in Syd's scalp left by the bullet at Lone Pine was always a source of fascination for their grandchildren. Their son Peter, who also served in the army, became a well-respected antiques expert.
Both Elsie and Syd died in 1972.
Respect came from the soldiers
The lives of nurses returning from war were changed for ever. Most had experienced conditions and situations that profoundly affected them emotionally and professionally and many had lost brothers and sweethearts in battle.
Loading...But most importantly, these women had discovered a form of independence not experienced by unmarried women prior to 1914.
Australian Army Nurses were eligible for disability or invalid pensions but not for long-service pensions and at least 990 made requests to the Repatriation Department after the war.
It was not until 1958 that WWI nurses were given access to medical and hospital treatment in repatriation hospitals.
Stories exist of nurses who suffered terribly after the war, both financially and emotionally. Some surrendered to suicide, alcoholism and mental illness. Others, their hearts broken by the death of a fiance, never married at all.
Journalist Peter Rees argues that WWI nurses have remained invisible within the Anzac legend, their worth ignored by the Government at a time when women were still regarded as dependents of men.
"It was the soldiers who were in the best position to understand the Army nurses' achievements and give them the respect they deserved," he writes in his book about the nurses.
"To them, they were the other Anzacs."