Her valor in these battles and her care for wounded comrades drew the attention of Chilean commander-in-chief Manuel Baquedano, who provided her with official recognition and the rank of a sergeant.

[2][3] Left without any family, Morales headed for Antofagasta, then a port town in Bolivia that was booming due to the nitrate mines in the area.

[2][3] While working there, she met Santiago Pizarro, a Chilean in his 30s who made his living in a Bolivian military band, and married him in mid-1878, aged 13.

[5] On 14 February 1879, Chilean forces entered Antofagasta to the welcome of most of the local population, beginning the War of the Pacific against Bolivia and Peru.

As a cantinière, she sold food and drink to supplement soldiers' monotonous basic rations, staying with them at their camp and marching with them on operations, and since she was a nurse, she had to be present immediately after battles to care for the wounded.

[8] After the battle, she was stricken for some time with an illness she picked up from prisoners of war she had cared for, and she wrote a letter to a friend of hers in Antofagasta, assuming she was on her deathbed.

[4] While all her contemporaries in Chile recognised her heroism, and the common soldiers she served with looked up to her as the "nun of charity," some men said Morales had gone too far for a woman by taking up a rifle.

Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna praised her for her dedication and bravery and for her hatred for those who killed her husband, but in 1881 gave her the free advice that she should not put herself at such risk and should "return quietly to her poor home and restart the life of a real woman in manual labor, in caring for her relatives, in work with the needle and thimble, and exchange, after several years of adventures and passions, the revolver for her honored and beloved sewing machine.

[4][5] Men like Mackenna were right to say she put herself at unusual risk for a woman at the time, for several other Chilean cantinières were killed after being captured by Peruvians during the war.

[2][3] On 25 August 1930, 40 years after her death, Col. Enrique Phillips wrote an article dedicated to her in El Mercurio that brought her into attention, in which he praised her in the highest terms, saying: "The Judiths of Chile were many in that glorious time, but none exceeded in valour Irene Morales, the paragon of Chilean women.

[8][13][14] Morales is often compared to Candelaria Pérez, a Chilean cantinière of the earlier War of the Confederation who was also praised for her courage and who also came from La Chimba.