Maud Butler, the Kurri girl who wanted to be a soldier, and her bad soldier brother
The main fighting Maud Butler did in World War I was with the authorities who wouldn’t let her go to the front to “do her bit”. A feisty Kurri Kurri teenager, Maud stowed away twice on troopships – having first disguised herself as a boy – and later got in trouble for collecting donations in uniform on a wartime Anzac Day. Stowaways were not rare. Digger diaries refer to stowaways being caught after troopships had sailed and being taken on strength and posted to battalions. But only if they were male. Maud Butler claimed at the…