NEWSNE
WHEN Townsville residents gather today to pay tribute to the nation’s fallen soldiers and veterans, one of the last remaining World War I widows will be among them.
Dulcie Hall, 97, lives at the RSL Care Rowes Bay Retirement Village and will attend the service held there today.
She married her husband James in 1937, when she was 18.
Mr Hall, born in 1898 in Charters Towers, had served during WWI with the 15th Battalion Australian Imperial Force and again in WWII as a signalman in the Citizen Forces.
During World War I he served in France and Egypt.
He died in 1969 from health problems caused by being gassed during the war, making Mrs Hall officially a WWI widow.
Mrs Hall’s son David, 70, said Anzac Day had always been special to his mother, who in 2012 penned a poem called The Anzacs, published in the Townsville Bulletin at the time ( inset). “When she wrote her poem I had to go to the library and get books for her to do the research,” he said. “It was pretty special to her.” David said his father didn’t tell the family many war stories and chose not to march on Anzac Day.
“He didn’t like to talk about the war,” he said.
“He’d always go to the RSL on Anzac Day and spend time with his old mates.”
Mrs Hall is a great- grandmother of seven and also o has one great, greatat grandchild.
“She loves noth- ing better than when her granddaughter brings her great granddaughter to visit her,” David Hallll said. VICTORIA NUGENT