Good evening Prime Minister, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I am honoured to be here today, to present five artefacts that expose the overlooked Australian army nurse experiences. These five artefacts must be included in the Australian War Memorial as they move beyond Charles Bean 's conventional Anzac Legend and display a different perspective of the Great War experiences. They reveal that nurses endured chauvinistic constraints, traumatic conditions and perpetual anguishing impacts on their lives.
Over two thousand two hundred Australian civilian nurses volunteered to serve as army nurses in World War 1. These nurses constantly cleaned, bandaged and consoled hundreds of patients whom had ghastly wounds or were suffering from dreadful diseases.
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Australian army nurses were not treated the same as men as they were fallaciously thought as inferior, unintelligent and weak. Furthermore, most men were against women working at war. Whilst obscure, this harsh mistreatment left a significant impact on the Australian army nurses ' lives as they eternally felt oppressed, undesirable and endured low self-esteem. Therefore it is crucial to add this artefact in in the Australian War Memorial so the vile discrimination Australian army nurses endured can be recognised by many.
This image illustrates Australian army nurses conducting an operation on a grievously injured soldier. It importantly reveals that Australian army nurses would have seen soldiers in their worst devastating states, which permanently afflicted their lives. Thus, this artefact extends our understanding of the impact the war left on Australians and must be encompassed among these walls. It shows that Australian army nurses would have eternally lived in dismay and anguish from the countless ghastly sights they