WWI veteran Torty, who was rescued by a New Zealand soldier after being run over by French gun carriage.

She is the only living survivor of World War I from down under, but she has never attended an Anzac service.

April is Torty the tortoise's hibernation time, and she's usually fast asleep in an apple box.

The Greek land tortoise was brought to New Zealand by Kiwi stretcher bearer Stewart Little, who found her wounded after she was run over by a French gun carriage in Salonica, where injured Gallipoli soldiers were being treated.

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He thought she must have been dead, and was amazed when she lifted her head, pulled herself out of the dirt road, and struggled to her feet.

Little nursed her back to health, and slipped her into his backpack when it was time to return home. When hibernating Torty awoke, she was in Dunedin.

These days she lives at Havelock North's Mary Doyle retirement village, along with owner Beth Little, who is Stewart's daughter-in-law.

Beth said Torty had never been to an Anzac service because "she's always asleep".

"Torty hibernates for five months of the year, wrapped in an apple box, and I would never disturb her. She will start waking up about the end of August and will gradually find her feet to wander about."

Torty's adventures did not end with her arrival in New Zealand. In Dunedin, she was stolen. Police were given descriptions of a tortoise with missing toes and gun- carriage grooves across her asymmetrical shell, which made her easily recognisable to an off-duty officer who took his son to the circus one day.

Her next escapade came while living with Beth Little at Waimarama, Hawke's Bay, several years ago. Freed from her enclosure to eat a clump of clover one day, she made a slow run for it.

She was found in hills far from home five days later by a woman who thought she had stubbed her toe on an unusually hard cow pat.

Tortoises have been known to live for more than 200 years.