One hundred years ago this week, "Clio" of Melbourne's Punch, sensitive to how the heartbreaking war was making love so fraught, told another true tale of True Romance.
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"War has its romances as well as its tragedies: it brings with it many bitter partings. But to many parted lovers it also brings quick unions, as a certain young lady well known and universally admired in Melbourne has just experienced.
"Amongst 'the girls they left behind them' when our soldiers went away was an engaged girl who wept bitter tears at parting with her fiance, wondering what the future might hold for her, and whether she would ever gaze upon her lover again.
"Then her parents received from the lover a cablegram from Egypt, soldierly brief but soldierly pertinent: 'Can Dorothy come by the S.S. Mooltan – marry me here?'
"With the promptness befitting one who was to be a soldier's wife, the young lady decided at once. The vessel was to leave in 48 hours, but in that brief space not only was the necessary packing done, but the bride expectant had enlisted her married sister's service to accompany her. They caught the Mooltan."
We pray that Dorothy beetled safely across the world and into her lover's khaki-clad arms. But in July 1917 almost 300 Australian nurses en route to the war suffered an ordeal when the fiendish Germans sunk the S.S. Mooltan in the Mediterranean. But, thank God, all passengers were somehow saved.
