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Letitia Anne Sylvie LEACH nee Metzke 1914-2017

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Letitia Anne Sylvie LEACH Captain WX3412, Australian Army Nursing Service

Born 15 June 1914 died suddenly at Claremont aged 102 on the 4 June 2017

Enlisted into the Australian Army Nursing Service 22 July 1940 aged 25 years and 11 months at Perth Western Australia as Staff Nurse WX3412. went up through rank to Captain.
While she was embarkation leave 24 February 1943 she married Captain WX3795 Vernon Pollack Leach of HQ, 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade.
While serving she was admitted to 7th Australian General Hospital on the 26 June 1941 for removal of a finger nail and again in the same hospital on the 9 April 1942 suffering from a ruptered internial lateral ligament right knee.
She retired from the army with the rank of Captain 31 August 1945 on the termination of her appointment.




Extract from the The West Australian New Paper April 2016.
Photograph taken at the State War Memorial on Anzac Day aged 101 years young.

Wearing her original distinctive World War II nursing uniform, her service medals and bright lipstick, Anne Leach has become a familiar and much-loved sight on Anzac Day. So much so that those who regularly attend the parade through the city look out for her and often approach her afterwards for a photo and a chat.

Letitia Anne Sylvie Metzke was born in Meekatharra on June 15, 1914, and when she was 11 her father John moved the family to a farm near Cuballing in the Great Southern.
Anne, as she became known, did her general nursing training at Perth Hospital (now Royal Perth Hospital) and then went to the children’s hospital in Subiaco (now Princess Margaret Hospital) as a staff nurse.

When war broke out in 1939 she applied to join the Australian Army Nursing Service and in July 1940 was called up to work at a military hospital in Claremont.
In 1941 she boarded the Aquitania in Fremantle, headed for service in the Middle East with the 2/7th Australian General Hospital.
She served in Palestine, Syria and Egypt, enduring harsh extremes of heat and cold, including the first snow to fall in the Hebron Hills for 40 years, while living in tents with three other nurses.

Heavy rain at one stage meant the nurses went to work in gumboots.
The hospitals cared for the wounded from battles including El Alamein and the nurses were kept busy with more than 1000 patients at any one time, with the tally reaching 1527 in August 1941.

In Palestine she met Vernon Leach, who was serving in the 2/16th Battalion, and they married back in Perth in 1943, when Capt. (later Major) Leach was on leave.
After a brief honeymoon, Capt. Leach was posted to New Guinea and Mrs Leach took up a post at 110 Australian General Hospital, where she remained until the end of the war, retiring with the rank of captain.

Mr Leach was appointed as magistrate to the Gascoyne in 1943, and the couple had two sons and two daughters. Mr Leach tragically drowned while fishing north of Carnarvon in 1956 and Mrs Leach and her four young children returned to Perth.
Mrs Leach not only returned to nursing as a volunteer, she also threw herself into numerous administrative roles during long associations with the Red Cross, Royal Flying Doctor Service and the Returned and Services League.

In 1983 she was awarded the coveted Florence Nightingale Medal by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and received an Order of Australia in 1994.

Mrs Leach remembers her days nursing in the Middle East as hard work but recalls with great fondness “our boys”.

“They were marvellous, our boys,” she said. “Their caring for each other was pretty good and they practically worshipped us I think.
“We looked after them pretty well.”
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