For her actions she was awarded a bar to the Royal Red Cross medal she had already received, becoming the first Australian to receive the honour during World War I.

Alice, who lived in Redfern and trained at St Vincent's Hospital, was twice mentioned in dispatches and also received the French heroism medal, the Croix de Guerre.

Strange then that, should you visit her grave at Woronora Cemetery in Sutherland, you wouldn't know that she existed, never mind learn any suggestion of her wartime accomplishments. All there is to see is an unmarked grave. A patch of grass, no cross and no name despite the fact that the cemetery's location map marks the spot precisely at Section One, plot 0332.

Lack of recognition for the much-decorated nurse was discovered by Kathleen le Gras when she was researching the family tree of her mother, whose maiden name was also Cashin. Her parents Vincent and Mary,like those of nurse Cashin, were from Irish stock and had decided on a fresh start in Australia.

The research eventually led her to Woronora Cemetery where Alice was buried in 1939 after a service at St Brigid's Church near her home in Marrickville. In a strange coincidence, funeral services for both Ms le Gras' parents were also held at St Brigid's before they were also buried at Woronora.

Mrs le Gras from Engadine said she was surprised when she visited the nurse's grave which is walking distance from those of her parents. "I found absolutely nothing and felt so sad," she said.

"She was an extraordinary woman who had done all these things and absolutely nobody would know that she existed. I believe it should be marked in some way."

The Australian Dictionary of Biography states that because nurse Alice travelled to England and joined Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve [rather than being with an Australian nursing service] 'the details of her service were little known'. She signed up with the service 100 years ago next month.

An insight into her stoic character is provided through an account she wrote of the torpedoing on March 30, 1917, of the Gloucester Castle, a copy of which survives at the Mitchell Library.

The ship was travelling in the English Channel with a convoy of 399 wounded of whom about 200 she describes as being "helpless".

"What could be more cruel than for the Hun to strike our ship loaded with suffering humanity, direct almost under the Red Cross of Mercy, brilliantly lighted, pleading for mercy," she writes.

All the worst cases got off the ship apart from those able to walk and with two lifeboats smashed in the explosion, the men were asking her if there were boats for them. "I kept assuring them that help was coming, although at the time I really didn't know...

Then they would say to me: 'If you're not frightened,  matron, we needn't be'."

Mrs le Gras' brother, Vincent McGarry, discovered more of nurse Alice's story at the Kew Records Office in London.

Mr McGarry said that after the war she got into the most awful wrangle with the British authorities while trying to get home to tend her 80-year-old father.

"The problem was two-fold. She had been in England before the war started, (joining up while here), so the Brits didn't see why they should pay for her to go home," he said.

"And when she said she wanted to go back, all ships were full, taking troops home. So after increasingly desperate letters to and fro, she had to stump up £48 to pay for her journey to Oz."

Despite all Mrs le Gras' research it ironically seems the two branches of the Cashin family are unrelated.

Brad Argent of Ancestry.com said: "Alice's Cashin family were from Thurles in Tipperary – just near the border with Kilkenny – about 150 km south west from Dublin so it's unlikely that it's the same family as Kathleen's. Alice Cashin's (her grandparents Joseph and Ellen) came on board the Strathfieldsaye in 1838 as assisted immigrants."

Ms le Gras hopes that the unknown Sydney school where nurse Alice studied might learn of their famous former pupil and consider marking the grave in some way.