The widows of servicemen, the passerby explained, should pin their husband’s medals on the right hand side of their clothing.

“She said to me, ‘I must tell you, you are wearing your medals on the wrong side’,” Mrs Bryce, of Batehaven, recalled.

“Oh, no, I said. I have earned these.” 

Earn them she did, during four-and-a-half years of as an Australian Army nurse in World War Two, including 15 grueling months in Papua New Guinea.

Medal placement aside, Mrs Bryce was guilty of one army infraction, signing up three years younger than she should have, at the age of 21.

“I was nursing an old lady and she said I should be in the army,” the 95-year-old said this week. 

“I had not tried to join, because I knew army nurses had to be 25 years old.

“She said, ‘give me all your particulars, dear; I have a son who is a colonel’.

“A month later I got word from Victoria Barracks to report for duty.” 

Mrs Bryce was stationed in Goulburn for the first 15 months, nursing men back from the Middle East, suffering terrible skin conditions from the sand and, even more heartbreaking, severe shock and trauma.

“A lot were psychiatric cases,” she said regretfully.

“They were so young, some of them, and it was very hard on the boys.

“We loved being there. They were our boys.”

A happy childhood in Manly where “I lived in the water” could not prepare her for what awaited her in Port Moresby, where she was sent at the age of 23.

“I was pleased I was sent up nearer the war, because I was there to do a job and I wanted to do a job,” she said. 

The biggest challenge of her career came when a plane due to pick up a battalion of soldiers crashed on the landing strip.

“It went through the battalion and burst into flames,” she said.

“Hundreds of boys were burnt.

“It was dreadful. We did not have the facilities to treat burns, so we just had to get them well enough to go home.

“So many died.

“All the hospitals were full, the beds were crammed in.

“You would give one a boy a drink, give another beside him a drink, turn back to the first one and he would be dead.”

Mrs Bryce said the camaraderie between the nurses was profound.

“We would work all day, come off duty and ask each other, ‘how many died in your ward today?’,” she said.

“We had to bear it. It was our job to care for them and help as much as we could.

“I was never fearful.

“We were bombed twice, but none of us were hurt and all we wanted to do was ensure the patients were not hurt.”

Mrs Bryce’s youth did not go unnoticed.

“I was in a tent with girls who had been stationed in the Middle East and they would say: ‘How did you get into the army? You’re only a kid.’

A friend who trained with her at St George Hospital also signed up, but was shot dead by the Japanese on Bangka Island, now Indonesia, after her hospital ship was bombed.

“It was so sad,” Mrs Bryce said.

To this day, Mrs Bryce remains an admirer of the strength and compassion of nurses, seeking them out in any social gathering.

“Nursing is a life all on its own,” she said.

Born on November 15, 1918, a few days after the end of World War One, Mrs Bryce wishes the world had learnt to avoid war.

“Mum shakes her head when she watches the news,” her daughter Lorraine Morison said.

“I hope there is not another world war,” Mrs Bryce agreed.

“The world has had enough of all this fighting.

“They should not let it go so bad that they have to kill each other. 

“Surely something could be worked out?”

Yet with her late husband, Robert, Mrs Bryce had first-hand evidence of the power of forgiveness and how ordinary people of both sides suffer in any war.

Her husband had been a prisoner-of-war in Germany for more than three years, including a stint working on a farm in the Austrian mountains.

He had formed close bonds with the family, teaching one son English and learning mountain dialects and German in return.

“In 1972, we went back in a caravan and we could not get a way for a month, they were so thrilled to have my husband back,” Mrs Bryce said proudly.

“The ‘young boy’ was now running the farm with his old mother.

“She had nine children and two sons were killed on the Russian front.

“They were lovely people and she was sad to lose her sons.

“The others were married with children, but they all came back to meet my husband again.”

Mrs Bryce nursed her last patient when she was 70 years old, and this week moves with her family back to Wollongong, after 12 years in Batehaven.

“I have loved living here,” she said, with the smile she is famous for at her many quilting, knitting, war wives and Legacy meetings.

“She is the busiest woman I know,” Lorraine said.