After treating machete wounds and blast injuries in Rwanda, Mary Brandy appreciates what nurses on the front line of the COVID-19 crisis are facing.
“They’re exposed to this and they’re having to look after themselves as well,” the 70-year-old Newtown army veteran said.
“Full credit to them.”
Mrs Brandy provided medical support, from a hospital in the Rwandan capital Kigali, to the international peacekeeping force in 1995, following the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Militias killed an estimated 500,000 to one million Rwandans during the genocide from April to July 2014, in the bloodiest chapter of the Rwandan Civil War.
“With any spare capacity we would support the local population,” Mrs Brandy said.
“Because of the fighting that was going on, we treated a lot of machete injuries.”
Treating severed limbs or feet pushed out of place by landmine explosions could be “quite traumatic”, Mrs Brandy said.
But thinking about her crippled patients’ futures in a “less than Third World country” was more “gut-wrenching”, she said.
She admired the resilience of the Rwandans, who “handled their pain well”.
She commemorated similar bravery in 1990, when she commanded an escort for 60 Gallipoli survivors returning for the 75th anniversary of the landing that began the Anzac legend.
“We took them to reflect with their mates that never made it home,” she said.
“I think the thing that threw me was how small [Anzac Cove] was.”
She spoke to one 103-year-old veteran, who won a medal for charging uphill with his platoon to take a feature nicknamed ‘The Sphinx’ during the landing – on his 28th birthday.
“You look at this escarpment that he went up and you wonder how he did,” she said.
Mrs Brandy would retire as a colonel after becoming head of the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps, a journey that began when she met future husband Ron in a Townsville café in 1978.
Mr Brandy, 72, joined the army as a national serviceman in 1968 and went on to be a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Australian Engineers.
After the couple married, a recruiter approached Mrs Brandy, then working at Royal Melbourne Hospital, during an army function in 1984.
During almost 40 years of marriage the couple would spend seven years in total separated by postings and overseas deployments.
“My quartermaster used to say, ‘if the army wanted you to be married, you’d get a wife at the Q-store’,” Mr Brandy said.
Despite often not knowing where he was, Mary took it in her stride, he said.
In 2010 Mr Brandy, then a major, served in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates directing efforts to protect the Australian embassy compound in Baghdad.
He admired local contractors, who worked in “hot as hell” temperatures up to 50 degrees amid the constant threat of roadside bombs and suicide attacks.
“These people had to go from where we were in the green zone into the red zone, not knowing if their families would be there when they got home.”
The couple will join neighbours tomorrow to Light Up The Dawn from their driveway as the COVID-19 pandemic causes the cancellation of traditional Anzac Day services.
After 66 years of combined service in the army, the couple are coping stoically with the pandemic.
“We’re used to having restrictions being put on us,” Mr Brandy said.
“You just get on with it.”
