As we Australians get ready to honour the courage and sacrifice of those who served in wars, conflicts, and peace operations on Anzac Day, I am sharing a different perspective each day to help prepare ourselves for the day itself, 25 April. Each instalment will also include a poem that I’ve chosen, which I’m sure you will find very moving, as I did.
Yesterday, I focused on a war that was poorly managed here at home. It hurt our Vets. Today, I’m going to share with you about by far the largest contribution made through active service abroad by Australian women. I am of course referring to military nurses.
Day 4: Thursday, 24 April – “Australian miliary nurses: so much more than candlelight.”
“There was never any doubt in my mind once war was declared, I was going to enlist. I felt if my friends were willing to go and fight for their country, then they deserved the best care we could give them.”
– Matron Vivian Bullwinkel
Our nation has sent more than 1,500,000 men to war. In recent decades women have been recruited trained and deployed in more overseas operations in progressively larger numbers as our capability expands.
Did you know that up until to the rule change to allow women into combat roles that the largest contribution – by far – to active service abroad by women was through the various divisions of military nurses?
It started in the Boer War just before the dawn of our own federation, with some 60 nurses enlisting to support the deployment of our 16,000 personnel in South Africa. It started with a pioneering, and extremely brave trio.
Nursing sisters Nellie Gould, Penelope Frater and Julia Bligh Johnston were sent to South Africa in February 1900. When they arrived, they were confronted by a nurse’s worst nightmare: raging disease, unsanitary water and supplies, and dirty old buildings converted to unsuitable, dirty hospitals.
The nurses were expecting to undertake advisory roles, overseeing the work of the orderlies, who would in turn provide the patient care. However, it quickly emerged that it was a case of all hands on deck, with massive workload the advisory role quickly became hands-on nursing. The work was heavy and arduous, as many patients were suffering from diseases like dysentery and typhoid rather than battle wounds.
For sick or wounded soldiers, the care and comfort the nurses provided was almost as important as effective clinical treatment. They often found themselves taking on the roles of counsellor, letter writer, and even surrogate mother or sister.
The Australian Army Nursing Service was formed by the new federal government and many of these pioneers were retained and then again deployed just a small number of years later when the Great War broke out in 1914.
During the First World War, more than 3,000 Australian nurses enlisted for service, caring not only for Australian troops, but also civilians and enemy prisoners. When the Second World War broke out, nurses again volunteered and around 5,000 Australian nurses served in a variety of locations, including at home in Australia as well as Britain, India, France, Belgium, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.
By war’s end, nurses became essential to military service having faced the dangers and demands of wartime nursing. Since then, the Australian Defence Force has relied on the work done by military nurses.
I want to share with you on particularly moving account of Australian nurse, Vivian Bulwinkel. As I write this, there is a federal election on. I wonder have you noticed there is a new federal electorate called Bulwinkel? The seat is named in honour of this remarkable Australian.
I cannot do a better job of telling the story than Clair Hunter of the Australian War Memorial, so I have provided excerpts of it here. If you are amazed at what you read, I encourage you to read the full account here: https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/vivian-bullwinkel
Vivian Bullwinkel thought she was going to die. The 26-year-old Australian army nurse had escaped the fall of Singapore, and survived the sinking of the SS Vyner Brooke, clinging to a life raft before making it ashore at Radji Beach on Banka Island. There, 22 Australian nurses and a British civilian woman were forced into the ocean and shot by Japanese soldiers. Bullwinkel was the only survivor.
“The Japanese took out tommy-guns, set up a machine-gun, and ordered us into the sea,” Bullwinkel told reporters after the war. “There was no mistaking their vicious intentions … We all knew we were going to die.”
Matron Irene Drummond called out, “Chins up, girls. I’m proud of you and I love you all.” And then the killing began.
“When we were thigh deep in the surf they opened up a murderous fire, mowing us down like a scene I saw in a film as a child,” Bullwinkel told reporters.
“The women around me shrieked, stiffened, and sank. I was hit here, in the left side, under the ribs, falling unconscious in the water. “I can’t swim a stroke, I can’t even float, but somehow I felt my body being washed about in the waves. I lost consciousness, recovered it, and lost it again. I was never clear what was happening, but a number of times I felt that I was being washed towards the beach, then snatched away again …“I lay still, partly because something told me I would be killed if I moved, and partly because I did not care anyway.”
Wearing the uniform in which she was shot, Bullwinkel told reporters, “I am sorry I am hazy in parts about all this. I have tried so hard all this time to drive these scenes from my mind.” When one correspondent began to apologise for asking her to recall the horrors she had experienced during the Second World War, she replied, “No. This story is one that must be told everywhere.”
Bullwinkel went on to testify at the war crimes tribunal in Tokyo, and dedicated her life to ensuring the nurses killed at Banka Island were not forgotten.
Bullwinkel retired from the army in 1947. She was appointed assistant matron at Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital and then Director of
Nursing at Melbourne’s Fairfield Hospital. She devoted herself to the nursing profession and to honouring those killed on Banka Island, raising funds for a nurses’ memorial and serving on numerous committees, including as the first woman on the Council of the Australian War Memorial, and later president of the Australian College of Nursing.
In the decades following the war, Bullwinkel received many honours and awards, including the Florence Nightingale Medal, an MBE and the AO. She married in 1977 and returned to Banka Island in 1992 to unveil a shrine to the nurses who had not survived the war. She died on 3 July 2000.
Bullwinkel’s sculpture now stands in the grounds of the Memorial, opposite a sculpture of her friend, wartime surgeon and fellow prisoner of war, Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop. On the base are 22 stainless steel discs, representing the victims of the Banka Island massacre. They are arranged at the base of the sculpture as a reflection of the stars that would have been visible in the night sky on 16 February 1942.
Lest we forget.
A prayer of thanks
The night is dark and dank and drear,
I toss upon my fevered bed
And softly comes on soundless feet
An earthly angel to my head;
And over my burning brow her hand
So soft and cool in sweet caress,
A healing touch that soothes my pain
With loving care and tenderness.
God bless “The Rose of No Man’s Land”,
Who guides me through my night of pain,
And keep her safe throughout the storm.
– Anonymous
Sources:
https://mates4mates.org/news/remembering-the-bravery-of-military-nurses
https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/58/friends-sisters-and-pioneers
https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/vivian-bullwinkel
