He got as far as arranging long leave from his practice, and enquiring with a shipping agent for a passage home, but the war intervened. Doctors were needed, and the two partners with whom he ran the practice had seven children between them. ‘It’s me,’ he said to his wife. ‘I’ll have to go.’

Her father had been at Gallipoli, and had told her about it on one of the rare occasions when he spoke of the subject. At the end of his narrative, which was interrupted at several points by sobbing, he took her hand. ‘Never again,’ he said. ‘Never. Never. Whatever happens elsewhere, Australia must never get caught up in all that.’

So when her husband said that he felt that he should volunteer, she begged him not to. ‘There are other doctors,’ she said. ‘Plenty of them.’

‘There aren’t,’ he said.

‘Well, just wait a while. See what happens.’

‘I can’t. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t go.’

She was silent. I’m going to lose him, she thought.