Deloraine RSL member and Vietnam veteran, Greg Hall AM, shared Jean's story at the Deloraine Anzac Day Service.

"This is a story about one of our own," he said.

"One who arguably did as much for the World War II effort, and for her country, as anyone in the whole district.

"The family said, 'growing up we thought Jeanie was just an ordinary mum, but now we realise that she was quite extraordinary."

She began her training as a nurse in Launceston 1935, before she answered the call for medical staff and joined the 2^nd/5^th Australian Army Nursing Service in 1940.

Alongside seven other Tasmanian nurses, she sailed to the Middle East to begin treating sick and wounded soldiers.

In April 1941, she was sent to Greece to assemble a 1200 bed tent hospital. However, the German army had begun its invasion of the country six days before she arrived and for the next three weeks her unit underwent heavy air raids.

"When the air raid warning sounded, instead of going down to the trenches, Jean loved going up on the roof of nearby buildings to watch," Mr Hall said.

"As the situation deteriorated, Jean volunteered to stay behind to nurse the wounded ... accepting that she would become a prisoner of war. She was eventually ordered to evacuate and was deeply upset."

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With rail systems out, the nurses joined a convoy of retreating allied troops for the 300 kilometre journey down the Greek Peninsula.

The German's continued to bomb the retreating ally troops and they were forced to travel only at night, sleeping in cemeteries and open fields during the day. Before the roads became undrivable, and they set off on foot with what they could carry.

They eventually reached a coastal port in Greece's south and joined HMAS Voyager, escaping capture by three days.

Jean was off to Crete to work in a British tent hospital, before they again had to be evacuated. This time she sent to Gaza, where she detailed continuous theatre work with amputations, shrapnel wounds, burns and bomb blast victims.

"Jean mentions in her diary ... raging dust storms, when they had to dig their patients out of the sand," Mr Hall said.

Mr Hall said she left the Middle East in 1942 and was headed for Java before they were luckily diverted at the last minute to Australia, as the Japanese captured most of those who arrived in Indonesia earlier.

On returning to Australia she was promoted to Captain in September 1943, before she went on to nurse in New Guinea and eventually returned to Tasmania in 1944 to care for returned soldiers at Campbell Town hospital.

Fast forward to 1995 and she was selected as the representative of all Australian women who served in WWII for the 50^th anniversary of the end of the war on a government pilgrimage to Europe and North Africa.

Mr Hall said despite all of her traumas during her service for Australia and raising six children on the family's farm at Deloraine, she made it to age 99.

"A true legend of the district, Tasmania and Australia," he said.

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