Believed to be Australia’s last surviving World War II Army nurse, Albion Park’s Hazel Bryce celebrated her 100th birthday on Thursday.
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Born in Narrandera, Mrs Bryce (née Lewis) served as an Army nurse in World War II, including spending 15 months in New Guinea.
Initially a trained nurse, she joined the Army at age 23.
“Nurses back then couldn’t join up until they were 25, but I was private nursing an old lady, and when she was better she said, ‘you should be in the Army, sister’,” Mrs Bryce said.
“I said, ‘I’m not old enough’. So she said ‘give me your particulars, I have a son who’s a Colonel’. And within a month I was in the Army.”
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As she was younger than most of the other Army nurses, the family believes she is likely the only surviving Australian Army nurse from WWII.
She has vivid memories of New Guinea, where she served with the 2/5 Army General Hospital.
“Some of them (the soldiers) were very ill, but it was good to see them recover, those that did recover,” she said of her time there.
“But of course not all of them did. It was very sad to see the boys dying. We’d come off duty and commiserate (with) each other; saying, ‘oh, you poor thing, how many did you have die today’, and ‘how many do you think will die?’
“It was very hot, and very hectic for the first six months, but when the war moved up higher (in the country) it quietened down, and we didn’t have any more raids.”
Mrs Bryce was working at the nearby hospital when the Japanese bombed the airport at Port Moresby.
She was among the nurses who tended to the injured.
There are some fond memories of New Guinea though, including attending dances and forming friendships with other nurses.
She met her future husband Bob, a soldier, prior to the war when he was a patient with a broken leg.
After leaving Australia, he became a prisoner of war in Germany for several years.
They both married other people after the war.
However, after their respective divorces they ran into each other again by chance, and were married in 1965.
Mr Bryce died in 1974 from a heart attack attributed to war service.
When she returned from New Guinea, Mrs Bryce was stationed at Concord Hospital until the end of the war.
After leaving the Army in 1946, she continued to work as a nurse in various capacities until the age of 70.
She has a daughter, Lorraine Morison, as well as two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
The family relocated to the Illawarra several years ago.
“It’s amazing to think that a hundred years has gone by since I was born,” Mrs Bryce laughed.
“It’s incredible to think about.”
Mrs Morison said Remembrance Day on Sunday “really brought it home” for her mother.
“She was born four days after that (the Armistice which ended the First World War),” Mrs Morison said.
“That really brought it home when she was watching all the services on television.
“She was saying, ‘my goodness, I was born just then, and a hundred years later I’m still here’.
“And she’s still healthy.”
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