'Kitty' Porter

‘Kitty’ Porter was another South Coast nurse who served with distinction in World War I but, unlike Pearl Corkhill, she was not to enjoy a long and fulfilling life upon her return to Australia.

Katherine (‘Kitty’) Porter was born in Little Forest, near Milton, in 1882.

She trained as a nurse at Sydney Royal Hospital under the surname of Lawrence, her grandmother’s maiden name, because there was already another Nurse Porter enrolled at the hospital for training.
She then worked as a sister at Sydney Hospital until she decided to enlist in the Australian Army Nursing Service in April 1915. By that time, she had become engaged to marry a Dr Bullock from Sydney.

Kitty served in Egypt during the Gallipoli campaign then in France at the No 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station near Ypres during the bloody Somme campaign, and on ambulance trains that transported wounded men away from the front. She also spent time at the general hospital in Boulogne where she was promoted to second in command of her hospital unit.

In April 1918 she was in the town of Roye on the Somme when she narrowly escaped capture by an advancing German army. In a rush to leave, she had to abandon all her personal effects and her diaries. For her tireless work in the evacuation of the injured she was Mentioned in Despatches by General Sir Douglas Haig.

Kitty returned to Australia in April 1919 and was greeted with a large public welcome-home celebration in Milton in June.

Kitty was to become Matron of the Randwick Military Hospital. However, she contracted Influenza (one of about a quarter of Australians who were to do so) in the 1919 Influenza Pandemic and died on 16 July 1919, aged only 35 and before she could marry Dr Bullock.

She was buried with full military honours in Sydney’s Waverley Cemetery.

Kitty was posthumously awarded a Royal Red Cross, a British Military honour presented only to women recommended for special devotion and competency in their nursing duties with the Army.