She Was A Nurse In 1942

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Today, nurses in the United States are required to have a nursing degree, but that wasn’t always the case. Women have a long history of serving as nurses to soldiers in the military. In the earliest days of American history, nurses were untrained. Many of them were women who couldn’t eke out a living with their men off to war, so they followed the troops and made themselves useful where they could to earn safety, food, and lodging. Later, the important role that nurses played during wartime was recognized and training programs were established. Today, nurses serve in all branches of the military.
During the Revolutionary War, women often followed the troops hoping for safety, food, and a chance to work. Some of those women worked as nurses. They were valued because of the traditional role women had as caretakers but also because if a woman was doing the nursing, that meant there was one more man available to fight. On July 27, 1775, a resolution was signed allotting payment of two dollars per month to women who worked as nurses. Women who supervised the nurses and acted as go-betweens to the surgeons received four dollars. The worth of female nurses was apparently recognized since the pay per nurse was raised to four dollars in 1776. The signing of this resolution was significant because it created the first organized system for the assignment and payment of nurses for the American military.
When the Civil War broke out, there was no organized training system in place for nurses in America, which means there was still no such thing as a nursing degree. However, the groundwork had been laid in Europe through the work of Florence Nightingale. That doesn’t mean, though, that women did not play a significant role during the Civil War. They served as nurses in Union and Confederate hospitals. Many also worked closer to the battlefield. On June 10, 1861, Dorothea Lynde was named “superintendent of women nurses,” which created an organized unit of nurses for the Union.
Between the time of the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, mainly men filled the role of military nurses. But as the war approached, the military began to realize that the scant number of male nurses who served in peacetime would not be enough to manage the needs during a war. In April of 1898, the surgeon general authorized the appointment of nurses who would serve under contract to the military. The authorization did not specify a required gender, so women applied. Most of them were untrained, though, and the surgeon general’s office did not have the necessary resources to examine their qualifications. The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) offered to serve as the examining board for nurses who wished to work for the government, and the standard for being appointed as a nurse for the government was set at having graduated from a training school and having recommendations from suitable sources. In a sense, this was an early form of the modern nursing degree.
The American Red Cross signed up in excess of 22,000 nurses during World War I. Almost half of them worked on the Western Front. Some of them also worked with the British and French armies serving in American units. Unfortunately, African-American nurses and immigrant nurses were not allowed to serve overseas at the time. Initially, military leaders sought to keep the nurses safe by keeping them as far away from the battlefront as possible. However, they eventually realized that more lives could be saved if the nurses were readily available to treat wounds at the front. After the war, there was a movement to assign ranks to the nurses. This happened because their authority was often not recognized since they were not commissioned. In 1920, an agreement was made to assign nurses “relative ranks” as majors, captains, and lieutenants.
World War II saw the service of 59,000 or more American nurses. Only 1,000 nurses were listed on the rolls of the Army Nurse Corps at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but following the attack, the rolls grew to 12,000. Nurses were called to serve even closer to the battlefield than they had before, even serving under fire. Thanks to the skill and dedication of the nurses, the U.S. military had an astonishingly low rate of death following injury. Less than four percent of soldiers who were treated in the field following an injury later died as a result of wounds or disease.
One year after the end of World War II, there were only about 8,500 nurses remaining in the Army Nurse Corps. On April 16, 1947, Congress established the Army Nurse Corps as part of the Medical Department of the Army and authorized having no fewer than 2,558 nurses on staff. Nurses of the Army Nurse Corps were also given the right to hold permanent commissioned officer status, which means those who had a relative rank and were still on active duty were assigned a permanent rank, but they served under their previous rank if the new rank was higher. Specialized courses for nurses began to appear on the scene, such as courses in anesthesiology and operating room technique.
Just as they did during World War II, nurses in the Korean War served on the battlefield, tending the wounds of the soldiers. They staffed mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) units and hospitals in both Korea and Japan. At the start of the Korean War, there were 22,000 women in the military; about 7,000 were medical professionals.
During the Vietnam War, many nurses were deployed to Southeast Asia. They worked at all of the major Army hospitals in the area. Because men were allowed into the Army Nurse Corps beginning in 1955, Vietnam was the first war in which there was a major deployment of male nurses. They were sent to areas that were considered too dangerous for female nurses. Due to the unprecedented style of the conflict, nurses were in greater danger than ever before, and several nurses died in Vietnam.
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Nurses War Stories
Stories of heroism, suffering, loss, sacrifice and resilience.
The ANMC was founded by Australian War Nurses who survived unimaginable adversity during the WWII - here are some of their stories.
At the fall of Singapore, 65 nurses would leave on the SS Vyner Brooke. The ship was bombed on 14th Feb 1942. 12 nurses would be lost at sea. 22 nurses would make it to Radji Beach. 21 were massacred. Vivian Bullwinkel survived. Vivian joined the remaining 31 nurses, who eventually made it to Bangka Island, to be taken prisoners of war.
Eight nurses would not survive captivity. Only 24 would return home to Australia.

2nd/13th Australian General Hospital
After a bullet from a Japanese machine gun tore through her body, Australian nurse Vivian Bullwinkel floated face down in the sea and feigned death. She was the sole survivor of the 1942 Bangka Island Massacre, in which 21 nurses were forced to wade into the ocean at gunpoint and then shot in the back.
Vivian was born on the 18/12/1915 at Kapunda, South Australia. She trained as a nurse at Broken Hill Hospital then continued her career in Victoria. She volunteered for service in 1941.
“I felt if my friends were willing to go and fight for their country, then they deserved the best care we could give them,” she said in a later interview.
Vivian set sail for Singapore on the AHS Wanganella, travelling to Johore Baharu to join the 2/13, where she remained until the Japanese began to work their way down the Malayan peninsula, then she was moved to the relative safety of Singapore. As it became likely that Singapore would fall into Japanese hands the nurses would be ordered to leave Singapore. Vivian was in the last group of 65 Australian nurses to leave Singapore bound for Australia on the SS Vyner Brooke.
The SS Vyner Brooke was a small ship designed to carry only 12 passengers; however, 265 passengers were packed onto the ship. The Vyner Brooke travelled along, hugging the coast of the islands. On the 14th of February 1942 Japanese aircraft bombed the ship. It began to sink. The nurses assisted passengers to evacuate. Over the next three days, some would drown, some would drift ashore on life rafts and others would make it to shore in various locations on Bangka Island. Vivian joined the group on Radji Beach. There were men, women and children on the beach. The nurses cared for the sick and injured and remained with them. A decision was made to give themselves up so a group of men walked into Muntok to do just that.
When the men returned with the Japanese they could not have know what would happen next. All the men were ordered around a bluff where they were bayoneted and shot. The Japanese soldiers returned and ordered the nurses to walk into the water whereupon they were machine gunned. As they marched into the sea, Irene Drummond called to her sisters “Chin up girls, I am proud of you I love you all.” All of them fell but one would not die. Vivian Bullwinkel would survive the massacre. She recalled that being shot was like being kicked by a mule and that she thought that being shot meant that you were dead. Floating in the water amidst the bodies of her friends she discovered that she was still alive. She feigned death until the Japanese had left the beach, then dragged herself up the beach, tendered the gunshot wound as best she could, then took shelter in the jungle near a stream, where she fell asleep. Vivian was woken by a voice. It was Private Kinsley, a severely injured British soldier.
Vivian found a water canteen, filled it with water from the stream for Kinsley. She dressed his wounds with what she could find. Finally she decided to seek help from the nearby villagers. The men of the village declined to assist her for fear of recrimination. The women of the village were more helpful and left her food on more than one occasion. Several days passed and they both decided to give themselves up to the Japanese. Kinsley requested one more day of freedom. When asked why, he told Vivian that it was his birthday and he wanted to spend the day in freedom. She agreed to his wishes. Vivian and Private Kinsley spent 12 days in the jungle.
Vivian used the water canteen, slung over her shoulder to hide the bloodstained bullet hole in her uniform. They were walking towards Muntok, they were met by a car carrying a Japanese Naval officer, who drove them into Muntok where Vivian was reunited with 31 of her fellow nurses. Private Kinsley would die from his wounds a few days later.
Initially Vivian and the nurses were held in the Coolie Lines near the prison in Muntok. They then travelled to Palembang under horrendous conditions. After eighteen months in Irenelaan they would be sent by boat again back to Camp Menjelang in Muntok. The nurses lived under awful conditions. They had little food to eat and coupled with Beri-Beri, malaria, TB and Bangka fever, four more nurses would die in Muntok. The nurses were then sent back to Sumatra to Loebok Lingau to a camp called Belalau. A boat journey followed by a long train journey. Four more nurses would succumb to disease during their time in this camp.
On the 16th of September 1945 the nurses would be liberated. On hearing this news, Matron Annie Sage and Sister Jean Floyd flew to Lahat, to greet the surviving Australian nurses, at the camp that was hidden in the jungle. Matron Annie Sage had lipsticks for all of the girls as she expected to find 65 nurses. Instead she was confronted with 24 painfully thin and unwell nurses. 24 women whose suffering had been unimaginable.
The nurses returned to Singapore where they were treated for illnesses, and given time to recuperate from their malnutrition.
Having put on some weight, they were ready to be seen by the Australian public. They left Singapore on the 5th October 1945 on the AHS MANUNDA.
On their arrival back in Australia, they were greeted by many well-wishers offering fruit and bouquets. They still had so much to recover from though.
Vivian and the other prisoner of war nurses were at home at last. What would the next chapter of their lives be like?
For Vivian it was letters and visits to the family of the murdered girls on Bangka Island. This was an amazing testimony to the woman that she was. She was discharged from the Army in 1947, and was awarded the Royal Red Cross Medal. She took some time to recover from the ordeal through which she had been as a prisoner of war. Vivian then commenced work at the Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne for a time. In 1947, Vivian travelled to Tokyo for the War Crimes Tribunal and stated her recollections of the massacre and subsequent treatment by the Japanese in the prisoner of war camps.
Betty Jeffrey and Vivian Bullwinkel travelled around the state of Victoria talking about their experiences as POW’s and how they were fundraising to support the establishment of a nurses’ memorial centre in memory of their fallen comrades. They didn’t want just a stone edifice to memorialise their fallen friends, they wanted a living memorial that would offer nurses a place to meet and a place that would support continuing education. They had thought about this concept when they were prisoners in Sumatra. On the 19th of February 1950 the establishment of the War Nurses Memorial Centre would become a reality.
Vivian was appointed Matron of Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital in 1959. She was involved with many nursing related ventures that included the positions of President of the College of Nursing Australia and member of Council for the Australian War Memorial. She was an instrumental player in Operation Babylift where Vietnamese orphans we brought to Australia in 1975 by Australian nurses who cared for them in flight.
In September 1977 she married Colonel Francis (Frank) Statham and moved to Perth. She remained in touch with all of the ex-POW friends.
She continued to be an active voice for veterans throughout her life. Here she is on the left, marching with other military nurses in the 1955 Anzac Day parade in Melbourne.
Vivian was awarded both the Order of Australia and the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her bravery.
Over the years and she was awarded many decorations which included an MBE(Member of the Order of the British Empire), Order of Australia Efficiency Decoration and the Florence Nightingale Medal and the Royal Red Cross Medal. In 1993 she, along with seven of the other POW nurses, would travel back to Bangka Island, Indonesia to unveil the memorial to the nurses who had died there during the war and to those who had been prisoners of war.
Vivian died on the 3rd of July 2000 aged 84 years. Her service to Australia and to the nurses who died and were prisoners of war during World War II and to the nursing profession will never be forgotten.
This portrait in the Australian War Memorial depicts her wearing her grey nurse’s uniform, red cape and sister’s veil. Among her medals, she is wearing the Florence Nightingale Medal, the world’s highest honour available to nurses.
On the 75th anniversary of the tragedy in February 2017, a commemorative coin bearing an image of the SS Vyner Brooke was struck by the Royal Australian Mint.
At that time, the director of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson, paid tribute to this outstanding heroine by saying this: “From a generation that produced so many remarkable Australians, Vivian Bullwinkel was a giant among them.”
Rest in peace, Vivian Bullwinkel Statham.
2nd/10th Australian General Hospital
Sisters Jenny Greer (left) and Betty Jeffrey recovering in a Dutch hospital in 1945 from the malnutrition they suffered while prisoners of war in Sumatra.
Throughout this ordeal, Sister Betty Jeffrey kept a secret diary, later published as White coolies (1954). In her diary Jeffrey recorded the physical and mental battle for survival, the unrelenting obsession with food, the death of friends, and the fading of hope.
Agnes Betty Jeffrey was born in Hobart, Tasmania on 14th May, 1908. Second youngest in a family of six she preferred to be known as Betty, not liking the name Agnes. Whilst growing up her family moved often, as her father was an accountant at the General Post Office frequently transferred interstate to set up new accounting methods. Her family finally came to live in East Malvern, Victoria where Betty stayed for the rest of her life, close to some of her siblings.
Betty attended Warwick Girls College in East Malvern and gained her Intermediate and Leaving Certificates. At school she excelled at playing tennis, was good at swimming and athletics. Upon leaving school she worked as a Sports Mistress at a Girls School and as a typist for a firm of accountants.
At the age of 29 Betty began nursing training at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. She had always wanted to begin a career in nursing, but had not been impressed with hospitals interstate and so had put off training for many years, with her mind set on training at the Alfred Hospital. Betty graduated with her General Nursing Certificate in 1939. In 1940, at the Royal Women's Hospital, Betty received her Midwifery Certificate. Aged 33 she joined the Australian Army Nursing Service, excited by the opportunity to travel and aid the war effort. She was posted to Darley Military Camp, Victoria with five other nurses to set up a Camp Hospital.
In 1941, Betty was posted to Malacca, in Malaya to join the 2/10th Australian General Hospital. At this stage there wasn't any war in the Pacific, so it seemed to be a safe place for the nurses. Being fit and healthy and with no responsibilities at home, going overseas and representing her country was exciting and something Betty wanted to do. In May, she left Melbourne for Malacca aboard the ship, Zealandia. After the nurses had been in Malacca for several months the war in the Pacific commenced and their hospital was now heavily involved. In early January 1942 the hospital evacuated to Singapore and the 2/10th Australian Hospital converted a school into a hospital where the nurses worked tirelessly to care for the sick and wounded under constant danger and air raids.
On 13 February 1942 the order was given for the nurses to evacuate Singapore as the Japanese forces closed in. None of the nurses wanted to abandon there patients and initially
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She Was A Nurse In 1942