text:
This book is dedicated to my friend Alexander Freeleagus, AM, Greek Consul for Queensland, who has done so much to promote the life and work of Joice Loch, Australia's forgotten heroine, whose life and work emphasise the strong bonds that bind Greece and Australia.
_There is no poetry here...only pain, misery and death._

SISTER ALICE KITCHEN, 1915

# Table of Contents

Cover Page

Epigraph

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 Olive May Kelso King

CHAPTER 2 Dr Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett and Dr Lilian Violet Cooper

CHAPTER 3 Sister Alice Elizabeth Kitchen

CHAPTER 4 Joice NanKivell Loch

CHAPTER 5 Sister Sylvia Muir, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, Sister Joyce Tweddell, Sister Betty Jeffrey and other 'Paradise Road' Nurses

CHAPTER 6 Mavis Parkinson and Sister Frances May Hayman

ENDNOTES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

# INTRODUCTION

Contrary to popular belief, for centuries women have been involved in war. Queen Boadicea (or Boudicca) took up arms to defend her family and lands. Florence Nightingale took a band of devoted women to nurse wounded soldiers in the Crimea. Mata Hari and Australia's Ethel Cooper acted as spies behind enemy lines.

In 1900 a group of Australian nurses, including the redoubtable Sister Nellie Gould, accompanied the 2nd New South Wales Army Medical Contigent to the Boer War. On her return Sister Gould founded the Army Nursing Reserve, which supplied the first nurses to military hospitals in Egypt in 1914.

By the second year of the Great War, Australian nurses, doctors and volunteer ambulance drivers were helping wounded Serb soldiers in Greece. Why were they there?

The answer lay in the racial melting pot known as Sarajevo. The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 in the predominantly Serb town of Sarajevo would escalate a small local war of retribution into a world war that killed millions.

The pretext for waging war was the fact that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian empire, was murdered by Gavrilo Princep, a young Serb, and member of a terrorist gang called the Black Hand. Princep and his fellow terrorists wanted to use the assassination of the archduke to highlight the religious and racial grievances of thousands of Orthodox Serbians and Bosnians living under the rule of the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Unfortunately, their plan misfired, bringing years of misery and conquest to the very people they aimed to help. As Princep was a Serb, Austria believed the Serb government must be involved (which it was not). The Austrians were outraged. As a result Austrian soldiers attempted to capture Belgrade, capital of Serbia. Initially they were repulsed, but they returned with German guns and planes and overran most of Serbia.

In the midst of winter the Serb Army, accompanied by a group of brave Australian nurses who had enlisted as volunteers, retreated through thick snow to Albania and then to the port city of Salonika (Thessaloniki), held by Greece. The retreat was forever after known as the 'March of Death', because so many died while crossing the snow-covered mountains.

It was against this background that Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm falsely claimed that France was planning to invade Germany. He seized the opportunity to strike first, sending German soldiers to march through neutral Belgium en route to capture Paris and northern France. While there they committed atrocities against women and children which feisty Australian-born war correspondent Louise Mack would document for London's _Daily Mail._

Britain defended Belgian neutrality and declared war on Germany. Australia, as part of the British Empire, supported Britain and, lacking a permanent army, raised what became known as the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) to fight in Europe. It was this force—a combination of men from every state in Australia—which helped forge Australians together as a nation.

On the way to Europe there was a change of plan. Australian troops were sent by British High Command to the Gallipoli peninsula to fight against the Turks, who supported Germany and had been supplied with German armaments.

On Anzac Day we remember the brave men who fought at Gallipoli and in northern France, but few people remember the 'forgotten Balkan campaign' in which Australian nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers and engineers took part, some giving their lives.

World War I was supposed to be an all-male affair. Experienced surgeons such as Dr Elsie Inglis, Dr Agnes Bennett and Dr Lilian Cooper, who volunteered to serve in the Army, were turned down by contemptuous recruiting officers and told to stay home and knit.

_Exhibition poster dated 1918._

However, these determined professional women refused to take no for an answer. Led by Dr Inglis, who had spent some early years in Tasmania, they ran their own all-women hospitals. After being turned down by the British and Australian Armies a dozen or so Australian women doctors paid their own sea passages to Britain and enlisted with the privately funded Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service—or SWH—which ran field hospitals in France, northern Greece and Serbia. These were countries unable to staff their own hospitals and deeply grateful for the women's help. The SWH employed women as doctors, nurses, cooks and ambulance drivers. Later the determined Dr Inglis commissioned a time-and-motion study, which revealed that in the Scottish Women's Hospitals, five unpaid female VADs (Voluntary Aid Detachment workers) got through the same amount of work as eight paid male orderlies.

An enterprising young Australian, Olive King, offered to serve as an ambulance driver in the British Army and even to donate an ambulance. Her offer was brusquely rejected and she was told that women were not tough or smart enough to do such a demanding and stressful job.

Baffled and annoyed by her rejection, Olive decided to join the SWH and took her ambulance to France and later to Salonika in Greece, where she won five medals for her valour and service.

In 1916 the writer Virginia Woolf, angered by the pointless slaughter of her male contemporaries, called newspaper articles that glorified war 'preposterous masculine fiction'. Woolf, a supporter of women's economic freedom, pleaded for 'another Joan of Arc to arise and lead the Allies to victory'. However, Australian and British generals made sure that a second Joan of Arc would not interfere with their all-male war.

Before World War I few Australian women attended university or had careers or meaningful employment. Most girls stayed home and helped their mothers until they married. But after the men had gone to war the door of the 'Doll's House' finally opened. All across Australia strong-minded young women left the kitchen sink or the drawing room and volunteered to serve in Europe as ambulance drivers, nurses, nursing aides, cooks or Red Cross workers. They also took on jobs within Australia that were previously reserved for men. 'Cowgirls' or land girls worked on the land, dipping sheep and helping on farms in a thousand other ways; women played an important role, moved into offices, became telephonists and secretaries (once male occupations), journalists, even porters.

With so many men away at the front some women even managed to slip into places in schools of law and medicine as enrolments were low. Joan Rosanove, for example, who later became a QC, was allowed to study law at Melbourne University. In the world of journalism, Joice NanKivell Loch got a job on the _Melbourne Herald_ , as did Katharine Susannah Prichard, and Sydney's Louise Mack was employed as Europe's first female war correspondent by London's _Daily Mail. 3_

Australian nurses served with distinction in France, Belgium, England, India, Burma, the Persian Gulf, Palestine, Egypt, Italy and Greece. They could enlist in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) in Australia's state capitals or pay their own fares to London and enrol with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Army Nursing Service (QAIANS) or the Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH).

Australian nurses found themselves in demand to work in at least a dozen private hospitals in France or on ambulance trains, funded by British aristocrats, by royalty (for example, the Queen of Denmark) or by French charitable organisations. In 1914, the British-run QAIANS employed 463 trained nurses, including a percentage of Australians. By 1916, that number had increased to 6864 nurses and 3580 nursing aides.

_Sister Claire Trestrail with colleagues and a patient._

Nearly 3000 Australian nurses served in World War I. Twenty-one of them paid for their dedication with their lives. Sister Claire Trestrail, for example, went to London in 1913 to improve her qualifications. She was there when war was declared, enrolled with the SWH in Brussels and narrowly escaped being captured by the Germans. In October 1915, Claire joined the QAIANS on a one-year short-term contract. Having enjoyed freedom and responsibility in her previous nursing positions, she found one particularly bossy matron unbearable. When her contract expired Claire did not renew it. She then worked for a variety of private organisations and in a private hospital in the Marne district around Paris where she nursed wounded French and Belgian soldiers.

Friendships forged amid the horrors of war helped nurses and volunteers face danger and deprivation. 'It's hard to face danger alone, but having a pal besides you makes you feel stronger,' as Patsy Adam-Smith once wrote.

Alice Kitchen was one of twenty-five senior Australian nurses recruited to join the newly established Australian Imperial Force. Alice and three other nurses left Melbourne on 19 October 1914. On the long sea voyage Alice developed a supportive friendship with Sister Hilda Samsing and they both volunteered to nurse on dangerous and exhausting rescue missions to Gallipoli aboard the hospital ship _Gascon._ Nursing on hospital ships was certainly not for the faint-hearted.

Alice Kitchen's war journal is memorable because she was so frank about the terrible conditions endured in the evacuation of the wounded from Anzac Cove. 'This isn't war, it's mass murder,' recorded Alice, describing wounded Anzacs left like 'run-over dogs' on the beach at Anzac Cove.

Alice Kitchen's diaries have a special resonance for Australians. She wrote about the moral questions posed by war and the conduct of the war itself—moral questions that concern all Australians today.

By the second year of the war, casualties from Gallipoli and France were pouring into military and private hospitals, and hospital ships and trains, all of which needed more and more well-trained nurses.

John Galsworthy, later to become author of the bestselling _Forsyte Saga_ , personally funded a hospital ship which rescued wounded men from Gallipoli. Serving aboard as orderlies were several young authors and the future poet laureate John Masefield. Masefield echoed the anger of Sister Kitchen in his book _Gallipoli_ , describing how many men died of septic wounds because they had to wait for days on the beach amid flies and burning sun.

Nurses who served overseas were governed by strict conventions. The 'top brass' of the Australian Imperial Force were convinced soldiers were sexual predators and young nurses feeble creatures who could not resist their advances. They feared that unwanted pregnancies and venereal diseases would result if young men and women were allowed to socialise. To prevent this, the AIF did its best to keep nurses and soldiers apart in their free time. Contraceptive advice for women did not exist in this prudish era.

The feminist Scottish Women's Hospitals were fiercely puritanical. 'No lipstick, no rouge, no high heels, no jewellery and no dancing in uniform,' the selection committee warned all applicants. Spirited young women like Olive King, who risked their lives in war, resented such constraints on their new-found independence and the SWH's demands for chaperonage at all times. Since the average life of a soldier at the front was brief, some girls wondered how they could possibly refuse the pleadings of a young man who might soon be dead.

Nevertheless, serving in World War I _did_ bring women increased freedom. Skirts became shorter as women complained they needed to clamber in and out of trains and lorries. The war changed women in many ways. While they became more masculine in their desire for freedom, in other ways they became more feminine. Pretty factory-made clothes were now within the reach of many more women and faces became more attractive thanks to the products of Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein. For the very first time 'respectable girls' could use lipstick, face powder and eye shadow, formerly the province of actresses and prostitutes. Virginia Woolf's novel _Mrs Dalloway_ , refers to young women 'taking out rouge or a powder-puff and making up in public', previously unacceptable.

War also provided many Australian women with the opportunity to leave home, travel and live in foreign countries. For some, like Sydney's Louise Mack, the first woman to report on the horrors of modern war in Belgium as a reporter for London's _Daily Mail_ during the German invasion of Brussels, it meant freedom from restrictions and instant fame.

At the start of World War I several married women aimed to join the AANS but were discouraged from doing so, although the daughter-in-law of Prime Minister Joseph Cook _did_ manage to enlist. Another woman, Sister Mary Kennedy, an AANS nurse serving on Lemnos Island, secretly married an Australian doctor but had to pretend she scarcely knew him. Had the Army discovered their secret, Sister Kennedy could have been sent back to Australia, while her husband, who had broken no Army ruling, would not have been penalised.

Despite the sacrifices made by women in wartime, once the men came home, most wives and daughters returned to the subservient role of 'the Angel of the House'. The concept of separate spheres for men and women continued to bind most women to the home. World War I had been responsible for the deaths of over eight million men, wiping out a substantial part of what became known as the 'Lost Generation'.

At the outbreak of World War I Australia had a population of less than five million people but sustained a shockingly high casualty rate. Of the more than 400,000 men who enlisted in the AIF alone, 61,720 died in the conflict, a calamity for so young and small a nation. As a result of such a high death toll, a large percentage of women would never have the chance to marry.

'They walked like princes, they looked like kings,' wrote John Masefield about the Anzacs at Gallipoli before the bloodthirsty massacres at Lone Pine and the Nek turned healthy young Anzacs into crippled wrecks. No one who went to war escaped damage, either physical or emotional.

Those Anzacs who survived and came home would later face the worst economic depression Australia has ever known. After the Great War women lived with husbands and sons scarred in mind and body, who turned to alcohol and were often violent. Many men could not find a job at all, an image author George Johnston showed in his novel _My Brother Jack_ , which depicts very movingly the problems of a sensitive boy trying to adjust to having his mother bring home disabled soldiers to nurse.

**F ROM CORSETS TO CAMOUFLAGE AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS**

When the Great War ended with the German request for an armistice, France (supported by America and Britain) imposed stiff penalties on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. These in turn led to severe recession and unemployment in Germany and the rise of Hitler's National Socialist Party. Within two decades the Third Reich defied the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and started to re-arm. Unfortunately, the League of Nations was a toothless tiger, lacking the power to send weapons inspectors to the Ruhr, where German factories like Krupp and Thyssen were manufacturing large quantities of armaments in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles.

In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. When in response Britain declared war on Germany, the Australian government announced it

_'Transport Driver', Nora Heysen, oils, 1945._

was also at war. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, thus entering the war. Japan had already seized Manchuria, a region of north-east China, in 1931 and invaded China proper in 1937 but felt obstructed by US policies towards its expansion in the Far East. It now looked towards the Philippines, Malaya and Indonesia as desirable sources of oil and rubber.

Following the fall of Singapore in February 1942, it became clear that the British Empire could not and would not defend Australia against Japan. Accordingly the Curtin government sought help from America. In response, General MacArthur arrived in Brisbane to run the Pacific campaign.

Women played a far more public role in World War II than in the previous war. Women were now employed in the Australian Army as decoders, cracking complex coded messages from Japanese ships and planes; they also worked in General MacArthur's planning rooms, moving models of troops and ships around large wall maps by means of billiard cues. Stella Bowen and Nora Heysen served as official war artists overseas, producing powerful images of war, Bowen with her scenes of Australian airmen, Heysen with her transport drivers and nurses at the blood bank.

With the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), the Australian Women's Army Service (AWAS) and the Women's Royal Australian Navy Service (WRANS), women became an essential part of the war effort. They also worked as drivers, telegraph operators, clerical assistants, telephonists, draughtswomen, seamstresses, tailors and in munitions factories.

Once more, Red Cross volunteers were vital. Dr Lucy Bryce set up the Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service, which was responsible for saving many thousands of lives. During World War II gift parcels packed and sent by Red Cross volunteers provided huge moral support and helped keep many prisoners of war alive.

With so many men enlisted, the Curtin government made a landmark decision to support the employment of women, as land girls, railway porters, bus conductors and even as station masters. As a result, child care facilities had to be established to help these women cope with paid work _and_ family responsibility. The Australian government nervously assured male voters that the employment of women was only a wartime measure and that everything would go back to normal when war ended.

The president of the Women's Employment Board, established to adjust women's rates of pay, expressed surprise that women were actually _capable_ of handling complex machinery. Having inspected women working in factories, Judge Alfred Foster wonderingly observed:

> It was an amazing revelation to see women who were yesterday working in beauty salons or who had never worked outside the home, actually operating machines with a skill and a mastery that was little short of marvellous.

Reluctantly, the men on the board raised female rates of pay to between 60 and 90 per cent of the male wage. However it was made clear that the concept of equal pay for equal work was an unnatural one and that, once the war was over, pay scales would revert to the old inequalities. It would take almost fifty years for women to claw back the economic gains that had been so hard-won in wartime.

In World War II 3,477 AANS nurses were posted as far afield as Britain, Egypt, Libya, Greece, Crete, Palestine, Syria, Eritrea, Ceylon, Malaya, New Britain, the Solomon Islands, Borneo, the Philippines and Morotai, off the coast of the Northern Territory. By the second year of the war, Army nurses were given the rank of captain or major and expected to salute superior officers. This regimentation did not suit most AANS nurses, who responded by smiling instead of saluting and asked to be addressed as 'Sister','Miss' or 'Matron' rather than by military titles. This gained them the respect and co-operation of the roughest and toughest Aussie diggers.

Nancy Wake was the only woman to be awarded a George Medal by Britain and a Croix de Guerre and the Legion d'Honneur by France. Nancy and her close friend Violette Szabo, one of only four women awarded a George Cross, trained with the British Special Operation Executive (SOE) and risked their lives when parachuted into France to help the French Resistance with money and arms. Nancy Wake survived, but Violette, who steadfastly refused to reveal the names of her comrades, was tortured to death. Violette Szabo had attended the same school as me, and her courage was commemorated on a stained glass window in our school chapel. Violette's life shows all too clearly the difference between heroism and our modern and warped cult of celebrity.

Not all women who behaved heroically in the war are quite so well known. Queensland-born Joice NanKivell Loch, who died in Greece in 1983, received eleven medals for humanitarian work and for risking her life to save 1000 Polish and Jewish women and children from the Nazis.

Other well-known war heroines are the 'Paradise Road' nurses. Just before Singapore fell to the Japanese, sixty-five Australian Army nurses escaped aboard the yacht SS _Vyner Brooke._ The yacht was bombed and strafed by Japanese planes and sunk off Bangka Island. Amongst the survivors were AANS Sisters Vivian Bullwinkel, Sylvia Muir, Joyce Tweddell and Betty Jeffrey, who spent the remainder of World War II as Japanese prisoners of war.

Despite all their hardships, these heroic women never gave up. Vivian Bullwinkel's miraculous survival has been the inspiration for several books, films and documentaries, and Betty Jeffrey's account became the basis of the film _Paradise Road._ Here their story is supplemented by the stories of Sisters Sylvia Muir and Joyce Tweddell who have never spoken about their ordeal before. Likewise, the stories of Mavis Parkinson and Sister May Hayman who faced the Japanese in New Guinea deserve to be widely known.

**H EROINES VERSUS CELEBRITIES**

The Ancient Greeks gave us the word 'hero', a word they applied to people they believed were supermen, even braver than the gods because, unlike the gods, they were mortal and risked death. A hero meant someone outstandingly brave, one who would give their life to save others.

In those days no female equivalent of the hero existed. Women were regarded as physically and intellectually inferior to men, because they had smaller brains and because of the strange medical misconception of internally 'wandering wombs' causing hysterical behaviour. Hence, it was concluded, women were incapable of truly heroic acts.

The word 'heroine' is a relatively modern concept. The term did not come into general use until the early eighteenth century when it was used to describe the female protagonist in a novel. By the middle of the reign of Queen Victoria, the meaning had morphed into 'a woman of exalted spirit' or 'a brave woman'. Over a century later, feminist principles held that 'heroine' was politically incorrect and should be replaced by 'hero', defined in several dictionaries by the more gender-neutral phrase 'those who are admired'. The _Oxford English Dictionary_ defines hero as 'someone brave, selfless and compassionate, who shows true greatness of spirit'.

Today, television programs, teenage magazines and PR specialists create 'heroic' female figures for young girls to emulate. These are often plastic Botoxed celebrities from the world of fashion and entertainment, shallow characters preoccupied with money and publicity, who do little for others and appear to lack any moral compass. The sporting media must also take some blame for having devalued the word 'hero' for their own ends. These days, anyone who wins a race or kicks a ball can be referred to as a hero, a term that should be reserved for _real_ heroes—men and women like these who save the lives of others.

Of the brave and compassionate women described in this book, it is evident that none of _them_ saw themselves as heroes or celebrities. In fact, apart from Vivian Bullwinkel, who was embarrassed by her fame, all are virtually unknown. These heroic women were compassionate and altruistic rather than narcissistic and inflated by silicone. Their lives say a great deal about the nature of female heroism and the fact that heroism is not gender specific.

Their names deserve to be known and remembered along with those of our Anzac heroes.
> _Out of the night that covers me,
>  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
> I thank whatever gods may be,
> For my unconquerable soul._
>
> W.E. HENLEY, 1849–1903, FROM 'INVICTUS'

# [CHAPTER 1
Olive May Kelso King](004-toc.html#ch01)

**Olive May Kelso King**
1885 – 1958

Serbian Order of St Sava

Serbian Good Samaritan Cross

Royal Serbian Memorial Medal

Serbian Silver Bravery Medal

Serbian Gold Zealous Conduct Medal

George V Silver Jubilee Medal

George VI Coronation Medal
> _In Greece you acquire wisdom and meet your destiny._
>
> TRANSLATED FROM AN OLD GREEK PROVERB
When Miss Olive King died in 1958, her half-sister, Hazel, had to go through Olive's possessions to see what should be kept and what thrown away. It was not something Hazel enjoyed doing. Half-sisters are often jealous of each other, but she had greatly loved Olive, who, because of the twenty-five year difference between them, had been more like a loving aunt than a sister.

Hazel unlocked a red morocco-leather jewel box, aware that her elder sister, although reasonably wealthy, had never worn much jewellery. Inside was a pearl necklace with a sapphire clasp, a small brooch inscribed on the reverse 'To Olive from Mrs Harley, 1915', two commemorative medallions bearing the portrait heads of Kings George V and VI, and some other medals with foreign inscriptions.

Gently, Hazel lifted the tray that divided the box in two. Underneath lay what she knew had been Olive's most cherished possession: a large blue and white enamelled cross hanging from a gold crown. It was the Order of St Sava, Serbia's highest award for humanitarian service, which had been presented to Olive by King Alexander of Yugoslavia for serving in the Serb Army in World War I, a period in Olive's life she had rarely spoken about.

Beside the medal lay two matching miniature gold crowns, badges of rank worn by officers. And then Hazel found something that Olive must have cherished all these years. It was a faded photograph of a handsome young officer with blond hair, wearing a uniform jacket with similar crowns on his epaulettes. Written in ink on the right-hand corner of the photograph were the words 'With fond love, Yovi'. Obviously there were wartime secrets her sibling had not shared with her family.

Olive May Kelso King was the younger and more unconventional of the two attractive daughters of wealthy Sydney philanthropist Sir George Kelso King, director of Colonial Mutual Insurance, the Bank of New South Wales and the hugely successful Mount

_Kelso King, to whom most of Olive's letters were addressed._

Morgan gold mine. Kelso King, as he preferred to be called, was the seventh son of a Protestant clergyman from Ulster, known for his devotion to the Anglican Church and his generosity to Anglican charities. His wife, Irene Isabella (née Rand), also a staunch Anglican, whose grandmother was French, had died of cancer when Olive was only fifteen. Her lingering and painful death affected her daughters in different ways. Sunny, the elder daughter, reacted by wanting to meet the man of her dreams and start a family of her own. At the age of twenty, Sunny married Harold Waring, an Englishman she met at a debutante ball at Government House, and moved to England with her husband. She had two boys, and the sisters, always close, kept in weekly contact by letter and phone.

At fifteen, Olive was old enough to realise how much her mother had suffered. The experience traumatised her, making her into a 'difficult' teenager. Once a brilliant student, Olive lost interest in studying and left Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School without taking any public exams.

What was she to do with her life? Olive was born in the same decade as Virginia Woolf, a period when intelligence and independence were not valued in young women. Instead, marriage and motherhood were seen as their destiny. But Olive did not want to settle down and get married, although she wrote love poems claiming that she wanted 'a great love in her life'. She was fascinated by the idea she had a French great-grandmother and loved the idea of going to Europe. She showed a flair for European languages so her father sent her first to a German and then to a Swiss finishing school. Olive loved her life in the Swiss Alps, learned to speak fluent French as well as German and became an excellent skier and mountain climber. With her teachers she visited Paris, Venice, Rome and Florence, and learned to appreciate art and architecture.

When Olive returned to Sydney she missed Europe and her freedom. She wanted to be financially independent but her father forbade her to get a paid job, telling her that young ladies did not work for money. As Olive and her father were very similar in character they quarrelled a great deal. Strong-willed Sir George Kelso King was proud of his spirited younger daughter, although at times he despaired of her tomboyish ways and her passions for surfing, tennis and ice-skating. Olive had to do as he wished. So she acted as her father's hostess. Being a good bridge player, she partnered her father in the game, as well as being his unpaid chauffeuse, driving him around to board meetings in his Rolls-Royce and involving herself with his fundraising activities for the various charities to which he acted as financial adviser.

Olive's father was an unusual man. Unlike many businessmen of the period, whose main goal was to make vast profits, he devoted much of his free time to raising money for charities, including those for cancer research, the disease which had killed his wife.

As well as being a dutiful daughter, Olive managed to enjoy her own pursuits. Out of the trust fund her mother had left her, she was allowed to buy a large open touring car and took up rally driving, at which she won numerous cups and prizes. Encouraged by her aunt, Georgina King, a renowned amateur anthropologist and ethnographer, she also took up mountain climbing as a sport. Georgina was a well-travelled, adventurous woman, way in advance of her time. She had written scientific papers, which were published in the journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australia, and she also funded the indomitable Daisy Bates. Aunt Georgina encouraged Olive to delay marriage and children as long as possible.

Despite expending her energies on the sports she loved, Olive still missed her mother greatly and she was not very pleased when her father told her he had fallen in love with young Alicia Kirk, ward of his late wife's good friend, the well-known philanthropist Eliza Hall. Alicia Kirk, known by her pet name of 'Belicia', shared King's interests in charity work. Kelso King rather naively hoped that Belicia and his younger daughter would become good friends. Naturally Olive was outraged at the idea of his marriage to a woman who was not much older than herself. Doubtless she felt, like most young girls presented with a stepmother, that no one could possibly take her mother's place, and may have feared that Belicia was only after her father's money. Had Olive felt that, she would have been wrong. Alicia Kirk was an admirable young woman and worked as tirelessly for charities as had Olive's own mother. It was through her charitable work that she had contact with Olive's father.

After their quiet wedding in November 1907, Belicia joined Olive and her father in his large apartment at The Astor, in Macquarie Street, Sydney. From its long windows the apartment had a magnificent view over Circular Quay, Sydney Harbour and the grounds of Government House.

Initially, Olive resented her stepmother and the situation between them became more strained when Olive learned her stepmother was pregnant. To add to the tension, Kelso King disapproved strongly of Olive's latest boyfriend, a racing driver, whom her father referred to as a 'lounge lizard' and a 'fortune hunter'. Her father feared the handsome young man was after the money Olive had inherited from her mother. However, the money was invested in a trust fund, of which her father was sole trustee. His daughter had to ask his permission before spending any of it. Her father hoped it would be spent on educating his grandchildren.

In 1908 when Olive was twenty-five, her stepmother gave birth to a pretty little girl, whom they named Hazel. Olive was initially jealous, but soon she grew extremely fond of her baby sister, who was more like a favourite niece than a stepsister.

Olive eventually realised that Belicia was a generous and sweetnatured young woman who genuinely wanted Olive to like her. Her stepmother soon became pregnant again and both Kings were delighted when she gave birth to a healthy boy they named Nicholas.

To remove her from the racing driver boyfriend, Kelso King sent Olive to Mexico in 1910, accompanied by Isabelle Hay, a close friend of her mother. Olive terrified Isabelle when she decided to join three young English climbers in a brave attempt to be the first woman to climb the volcano of Popocatepetl, the second highest peak in Mexico. Olive succeeded and entered the annals of mountaineering history. What is remarkable is the fact that Olive accomplished this daring feat wearing a long skirt, as in that era 'young ladies' were not allowed to wear trousers.

Olive's passion for adventure remained unquenched. In 1914 she won another prize for rally driving and stayed out late celebrating her win with a crowd of friends, incurring her father's wrath. Olive thought of moving out and getting her own apartment but in 1914 unmarried daughters of 'good' families did not live alone. Then she received a welcome letter from her sister Sunny, telling her that a third baby was on the way. Sunny asked if Olive could come to England, run the house and oversee the domestic staff while she was in hospital having the baby.

Urged on by her father, who was still keen to separate Olive from the 'fortune hunter', Olive sailed to Europe and took over the running of Sunny and Harold's comfortable home and the care of her two young nephews.

On 28 June 1914, Olive tuned the radio to the BBC news and heard that Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria had been shot by a Serb student in the city of Sarajevo. Olive had no idea this act would trigger a chain of events that would lead to World War I or that this news item would so profoundly affect her life.

The assassination of the Archduke, heir to the Emperor of Austria, served as a pretext for Austria to invade Serbia. Austrian troops burned down homes and farmhouses and killed thousands of Serbs. They assaulted the Serb Army with superior forces and German-made arms and planes, killed large numbers of Serb soldiers and forced the remainder to flee over the mountains into northern Greece.

The German Kaiser, in turn, declared war on Germany's traditional enemy. France. German troops marched through Belgium and attacked France from the north, an act that violated Belgian neutrality. When Belgium appealed to Britain for support, Britain declared war on Germany.

On the other side of the world, shortly before he became prime minister, Andrew Fisher promised that Australia would send a large force to help Britain,'down to our last man and our last shilling'. At the time Australia had only a tiny regular army and a volunteer part-time militia. Among the young men who enlisted in the newly formed Australian Imperial Force was Olive's cousin, Selwyn King, whom Olive more or less regarded as an elder brother. From Australia, cousin Selwyn wrote to Olive in London predicting that the war would be won by Christmas.

Olive became excited by the idea of going to war herself. She decided to volunteer as an ambulance driver. When Olive informed Selwyn of her decision he infuriated her by insisting that war was men's business. Women, in his opinion, should keep the home fires burning.

In those days, relatively few women drove cars. Driving was complex, as vehicles lacked synchromesh gearboxes and drivers had to master the skill of double declutching. But Olive had gained plenty of experience in car rallies, and the idea of helping to save lives had huge appeal for her. Not only that, it also offered a chance of adventure and escape from domesticity and possible marriage.

In England, many girls from affluent families who had never done paid work in their lives were now volunteering to drive ambulances or serve as volunteer nurses with volunteer aid detachments (VADs), which sprouted like mushrooms in northern France.

From Sunny's comfortable home Olive wrote to her father and asked him to allow her and her sister to use some of their capital to buy an ambulance, which Olive could take to France. Reluctantly, Kelso King gave his consent. Olive was overjoyed. However, she soon found that the Army had bought up all ambulances not already in service. Undaunted, she bought a lumbering second-hand lorry and sent it to a professional firm of coach builders who converted the vehicle into a well-equipped ambulance. The large and heavy vehicle, which Olive christened _Ella the Elephant_ , was capable of seating sixteen patients or taking four stretcher cases in bunk beds. A cupboard had been installed for emergency medical supplies and a primus stove provided for making hot drinks.

Olive with her ambulance _Ella._

To prepare for her role, Olive attended a crash course in First Aid with the St John's Ambulance Brigade and took lessons in motor repairs at Sunny's local garage, a very unusual practice for a woman in an era when so few women drove cars.

Olive submitted her credentials to the Allies Field Ambulance Corps (AFAC), a privately funded organisation, and passed her commercial driving test easily. The AFAC was short of funds so could only supply its drivers with caps and badges. Apart from these, drivers were free to wear their own clothes. Olive bought herself several pairs of jodhpurs and warm sweaters. These would be far easier for climbing in and out of the ambulance than a long skirt. She generously helped the AFAC by paying her own passage and that of _Ella the Elephant_ to cross the English Channel and for the fuel to get them to the Franco-Belgian border close to the front line.

**_E LLA_ AND OLIVE GO TO WAR**

Joining the AFAC proved to be a baptism of fire for Olive. She was billeted in a deserted château near Rouen, along with the rest of the drivers, and given the job of driving wounded soldiers to a British military hospital.

As no morphine had been provided, the wounded men cursed and raved with pain. On her first day Olive transported a man in agony, his right arm hanging by a thread of muscle. Another of her patients had lain untended on the floor of a deserted farmhouse for days and had a gaping gangrenous hole in his thigh. Knowing he would die, the young man laughed bitterly as Olive, overcome by the stench of putrefying flesh, had to put down her end of the stretcher, turn away and vomit. 'You women, you'll _never_ make proper ambulance drivers,' he jeered, his face twisted in pain.

At other times Olive had to transport soldiers so shell-shocked they could not speak and stared straight ahead, their limbs moving in spasms. The trauma of shell shock presented itself with a wide variety of symptoms, but had never been properly acknowledged before. Consequently, Olive was ignorant as to how to treat such patients and was left to cope as best she could.

For warm-hearted Olive, hardest of all to cope with were young boys, terrified of dying alone in a strange land, begging her with pain-filled eyes to sit beside them and hold their hands. Olive and her orderly worked up to seventeen hours at a stretch, frequently with only four or five hours' sleep a night.

Strangely enough, in spite of all the hardships Olive faced, she felt happy and fulfilled. Supervision was minimal in the AFAC and a great deal of decision-making was left up to their drivers, which suited Olive very well, as she detested rules and regulations. She also appreciated the easy camaraderie among the women drivers, the informality and the absence of ceremony. Each night they had a kind of rough-and-ready picnic meal around the dining table of the château with a few bottles of good French wine from a well-filled wine cellar. Olive was having the time of her life. She knew that she looked her best in trousers, enjoyed flirting with the young British officers stationed nearby and ignored the possibility of being hit by enemy gunfire—in fact, she revelled in danger all that summer.

Winter arrived with biting winds, sleet and snow. On New Year's Eve, 1914, Olive and the other drivers celebrated with a crate of French champagne discovered in an abandoned farmhouse. They drank the champagne out of tooth mugs. To keep warm, they burned worm-eaten kitchen chairs and ancient garden furniture, told jokes and sang songs in French and English.

The lives of Olive and the other drivers were placed in jeopardy when the AFAC headquarters, sited close to the French front line with Belgium, was captured by the Germans. Those who were able to escape looked after their own skins and took off for Calais, terrified they could be shot as spies. Those in charge at AFAC comitted to warn the ambulance drivers that they were in grave danger, and consequently Olive and two Canadian women drove back to the headquarters and into enemy hands. They were arrested by the Germans, locked in a damp basement and denied food. The officer in charge threatened that if they did not reveal all they knew they would be executed.

Later that night the women were interrogated one by one, as a Prussian officer shone a light into their eyes to confuse them. Olive kept calm and replied to the questions in German, which she spoke fluently after her time at finishing school. She explained that she was from Sydney and the other two drivers came from Toronto in Canada. And how did she, from the land of kangaroos, know how to speak German so well, one officer demanded. He was convinced that her knowledge of German proved she must be a spy. Olive gave the name of her finishing school and the names of several girls from prominent German families who had attended it with her. Luckily for Olive, they believed her. The officers decided Olive and the Canadian girls were harmless, a bunch of misguided idealists from the colonies caught up in a war they did not understand.

Finally they released the women. Impressed that Olive had actually bought _Ella_ out of her own money, a young officer, who had been friendly to Olive, returned the ambulance to her. However, the Germans impounded the other ambulances for the use of the German Army.

The girls climbed into _Ella_ and roared off, singing at the tops of their voices in relief that they were alive and free. Olive drove at top speed in case the Germans changed their minds. They reached Boulogne and boarded the Channel ferry. On arrival in London they discovered that the AFAC had collapsed.

Hearing what had happened to Olive in a letter from his elder daughter, Kelso King was so worried about badly organised private relief organisations in France, he urged Olive to sell _Ella_ and return home. Olive replied that, rather than returning home, she would apply to join the British Army as a driver, which would be far safer.

She did so but found the British Army refused to take women as ambulance drivers even when they had their own ambulances. One can imagine the recruiting officer scornfully declaring women far too hysterical to be ambulance drivers and unable to read maps. They could join the Red Cross and knit socks for soldiers instead. Olive probably gave him a withering glare, stood up and walked out.

Defying her father's wishes, Olive applied to another voluntary organisation, the independent Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service (SWH), run by Dr Elsie Inglis. The service's field hospitals and ambulances were entirely staffed by female volunteers from Britain and other parts of the British Empire.

The SWH received funding from American women and from the all-women's Cambridge colleges, Girton and Newnham. Their British supporters, mainly suffragettes, hoped that by showing courage and competence in war, British women would eventually obtain the right to vote, something Australian women had received in 1902 as a spin-off from Federation.

The SWH conducted several admission tests. Olive took an advanced driving test with _Ella_ and a French language test and passed both with no difficulty. She was asked to leave for France as soon as she bought her uniform from the Army and Navy stores. This turned out to be so hideous that Olive believed it must have been designed by someone with a grudge against women. It consisted of a grey felt hat like an upturned pudding basin, a badly cut grey flannel shirt, a thick grey woollen jacket with large pockets and matching ankle-length skirt. A long grey woollen overcoat which reached to her ankles, a tartan headscarf and a narrow black tie completed the attire. Olive attacked the pudding-basin hat with a hairbrush but nothing would make it more flattering. The uniform was nothing like the elegant outfit of cream jodhpurs, sweaters and well-polished riding boots, which showed off her legs to such advantage, she had been allowed to wear when working for AFAC. It was also far less practical. As Olive viewed herself in the mirror she winced.

For dinner in the mess, SWH staff were expected to wear a white silk blouse with their regulation long grey skirts. For 'special occasions' they could wear a plain black silk dress, which must have a high neck, but could be of any style they liked. Olive bought a black dress that showed off her slim figure and her long legs. However, in the SWH, high heels were taboo, as were lipstick, eye make-up and jewellery; even the gold charm bracelet she had worn since childhood and the little gold cross her father had given her on her confirmation into the Anglican Church were banned.

As men vastly outnumbered women at the front, Olive was warned that the conduct of SWH personnel with members of the opposite sex must be 'above reproach'. If invited to lunch or dinner by a man a woman could accept, but only if she was chaperoned by another woman. Olive, being typically Australian, loathed petty rules, regulations and rigid hierarchies. However, she crossed her fingers and agreed to these galling conditions, as she was desperate to get back on active service.

In the spring of 1915 Olive and _Ella the Elephant_ crossed the English Channel once again. Last time Olive had been a free agent driving the ambulance with a minimum of supervision. Now she found herself taking orders from the elderly Mrs Harley, sister of autocratic General Sir John French. This stubborn general has entered history books by refusing to use tanks in World War I, claiming that they 'will never work and are no substitute for well-bred horses!'

Old Ma Harley, as the girls called her, was stone deaf. In a vain attempt to counteract this she wielded a huge ear trumpet. Due to her advanced age and the fact that the ear trumpet was useless, Mrs Harley proved difficult to work for.

However, Mrs Harley liked Olive very much and was kind to her. On her monthly conduct report she wrote that she found Olive conscientious and an excellent driver, and asked the SWH top brass to allow Olive to act as her personal chauffeuse.

Initially Olive was pleased by such rapid promotion. However, she soon discovered that her new boss had the time sense of an ant! She would tell 'dear Olive' she would be popping in to see some Army general who was a chum of her brother and would be back in five minutes. Olive, who would wait for her outside, kept the engine running. But invariably Mrs Harley would not emerge from her visit or meeting for hours. Sometimes she would go shopping and forget 'dear Olive' altogether. On other occasions, Mrs Harley would tell Olive she would be in a meeting for two or three hours and suggest Olive find herself a cup of coffee and read a book. When Olive finally returned, she would find her boss standing beside the ambulance tapping her feet in annoyance at being kept waiting. She liked Mrs Harley but found it impossible to carry on working for her.

Eventually Olive requested a transfer, just as all Mrs Harley's previous chauffeurs had done. But Olive had a kind heart and still regarded Mrs Harley as 'a nice old thing'. They parted on good terms, Mrs Harley believing Olive had been requested for field hospital duty. She kissed Olive on both cheeks and presented her with a brooch as a farewell gift. This had the effect of making Olive blush to think what she had said about Mrs Harley and her ear trumpet when requesting a transfer, and she continued to keep in touch with Mrs Harley and her daughter by letter.

Olive was posted to Troyes field hospital, which lay south-east of Paris and to the south of the cathedral city of Rheims. Rows of wounded French and British soldiers lay in canvas tents connected by duckboards across the surrounding mud in the grounds of the sixteenth-century Château de Chanteloup, with its pepper-pot

_Olive King with fellow ambulance drivers including Kirstie Guthrie, aunt of the author, in France in 1914._

towers, elegant salon and mirrored ballroom, where Olive and her fellow drivers were billeted. The château had been abandoned by its owners at the start of the war, its ornamental _parterre_ and vegetable gardens, now overgrown with weeds.

Mice capered around the interior and over a few remaining Louis XV gilt chairs and Aubusson carpets. Most of the curtains and mirrors had been stolen during the first months of the war. As a result, Olive and her colleagues slept on camp beds in near empty chilly rooms, where fabulously expensive hand-blocked _toile de Jouey_ paper peeled in long festoons from damp walls. They hung their clothes on nails knocked into the walls and set to work with buckets of water and scrubbing brushes to make their rooms habitable. In a letter to her sister dated 14 May 1915 written from the château, Olive described sleeping on a broken stretcher for a bed, and how they 'worked like lions and ate like wolves'. She also joked that the drivers had renamed their new home 'Château des Chauffeurs'.

Many of Olive's fellow ambulance drivers came from aristocratic or middle-class families. They were delighted to escape from parental control and worked hard and played hard. Olive found the company of these amiable young women stimulating; they were young, fancy free and high spirited. Together they planned a dance in the château's ballroom, to which they would invite the young British officers billeted nearby and play gramophone records, wear fancy dress and dance the night away.

However, the fancy dress party never eventuated as the next day a British officer arrived and warned them to expect an intake of two hundred wounded men. They were to be housed in the château's grounds and the girls were given ancient tents, poles and mallets and told to erect more tents. Some of the girls were completely flummoxed but as Olive had been a keen Girl Guide at school, she took charge and they got the tents up in good time.

**T HE GETTING OF WISDOM**

> _In Greece you acquire wisdom and meet your destiny._
>
> TRANSLATED FROM AN OLD GREEK PROVERB

After some months in France, Olive was told she could transfer to the recently opened Balkan front, where, on Greek soil, what remained of the Serb Army was fighting the Austrians. A new SWH field ambulance unit officially attached to the Greek Army, would be leaving for the northern Greek port of Salonika very soon.

Olive realised that she knew absolutely nothing about Salonika. So each morning she studied _The Times._ From it she learned that the city, with its large and strategically important harbour on the Gulf of Salonika, had been captured by the Greeks only a few years previously from the Ottoman Turks who had occupied it for centuries. To the north of the city lay beautiful but rugged country, filled with canyons, gorges and steep mountain peaks. Here on the Greek side of the border, the Serb Army was fighting a combined force of Austrians and Bulgarians. The Bulgarians, who were staunch Muslims and loathed Orthodox Serbs, were fighting with the Austrian Army because the German Kaiser and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria had promised the King of Bulgaria part of conquered Macedonia, then part of Serbia, if the Bulgarians would join the war on the German side. Bulgarian bandits now filled the hills, harrying and murdering local peasants, as well as Allied soldiers and ambulance drivers who were bringing back the wounded from the front line.

To help the Serbs, an advance party of British and French troops who had been fighting at Gallipoli had landed at Salonika in October, under the command of General Sarrail. In Salonika, as well as Russian and Italian troops, a few British, Canadian and Australian engineers from the Gallipoli peninsula were helping to dig fortifications and earthworks to defend the city's northern frontier.

Olive prepared to leave for Greece. The SWH advised her that Salonika was extremely hot in summer but in winter could be snowed in. So Olive packed her fur coat, extra sweaters, her jodhpurs, her swimming costume and tennis racquet, just in case. She travelled by train to Marseilles where she and her group met up with another SWH unit. This unit was commanded by forty-three-year-old Dr Agnes Bennett, also from Sydney. _Ella the Elephant_ and the other ambulances arrived at the same time on open goods wagons attached to the rear of the train.

From here, their journey continued on a troop ship, an ancient freighter called the SS _Mossoul._ Aboard were Olive's Girton and Newnham unit and Dr Bennett's SWH field hospital, whose ambulances (unlike _Ella_ ) had failed to catch the boat. On the voyage the ship had to keep changing course to avoid German submarines. Everyone on board was aware the _Mossoul_ 's sister ship, the equally ancient _Marquette,_ had been torpedoed by the Germans and sunk, and that all the passengers and crew had drowned.

On board the _Mossoul_ was a group of SWH doctors, thirty-eight female drivers, the same number of nurses, and crates of medical equipment. After three days' sailing, the _Mossoul_ steamed safely through the high stone walls of the Corinth Canal and headed for Piraeus, the port of Athens.

After leaving Piraeus, the _Mossoul_ chugged northwards, hugging the Greek coastline and heading for the port of Salonika. Olive, who loved mountains, was excited to see handsome Olympus, the mountain of the Greek gods, with its peak clad in snow and hillsides covered in rows of sugar-cube houses. The _Mossoul_ docked at Salonika on 3 November 1915, just as the weather was turning bitterly cold. The passengers were greeted by a small group of Australian engineers. Delighted to see a fellow countrywoman, some of them immediately volunteered to help Olive unload _Ella._ The ambulance was swung across the deck by crane and lowered onto the shore.

While they watched _Ella_ being hoisted up by crane, an elderly Australian colonel, who had served as an engineer at Gallipoli, explained to Olive that he and his men were digging ditches and fortifications around the landward side of the city.

Olive was told how a number of Serb soldiers had fled from the advancing Bulgarian and Austrian Armies by retreating across the snow-covered mountains of Serbia and Albania, where many had died of frostbite on what was now called 'the March of Death'. The remnants of the Serb Army were fighting the Austrians in northern Greece but had their headquarters in Salonika. They planned to recapture Monastir (today's Bitola) on the Macedonian border from the Austrians, the first step in a joint French and Serb campaign to recapture the Serb capital of Belgrade, now occupied by the Austrians.

Olive also learned that the British hoped the Greeks would break their neutrality and join the Allies. But King Constantine of Greece was descended from the German royal house and his wife was related to Kaiser Wilhelm. The result was conflict between King Constantine and the Greek Prime Minister, Eleutherios Venizelos, who was keen to join the war on the British side. Venizelos hoped that by doing this Greece would defeat Turkey, Greece's old enemy, and obtain a larger share of Macedonian territory.

_Ella_ had now been landed on the quayside where she was surrounded by crates of bully beef, tea and marmalade imported by the SWH. The soldiers unhooked the clamps and chain from her wheels and, after a cursory customs inspection, Olive was free to drive her north to a French-run dressing station close to the front line at Guevgueli.

Olive and her three fellow drivers had to make their way carefully over the winding, potholed mountain roads with their hairpin bends, to Guevgueli. Sometimes _Ella_ 's radiator boiled and emitted clouds of steam, and Olive had to stop at intervals and top up the water in the radiator with melted snow.

Deep snow surrounded Guevgueli. In a letter to her father dated 12 November 1915, Olive mentions that the nights were freezing. _Ella_ had no heating, so Olive wore her fur coat over her uniform. On the other hand, she was pleased that there were fewer fleas here than at Château de Chanteloup and wrote that the snow-covered mountains were glorious and reminded her of Arizona.

Guevgueli dressing station was overloaded with patients and there were fears that the Bulgarians might attack staff and patients. A decision was made to scale down the dressing station. However, the nurses had heard tales about the rape and murder of female prisoners by the Bulgarian Army and were terrified. They pleaded to be allowed to return to Salonika with their patients.

Sixteen talkative and flirtatious French ambulance drivers, half a dozen French soldiers and a young lieutenant arrived to help dismantle the dressing station. They were to load the wounded French soldiers into waiting French ambulances and take them by road to Salonika before the Bulgarians arrived.

Olive and the French drivers tried hard to dismantle the tents. It was not easy as the ground was frozen solid and a biting wind tore at the canvas. Olive struggled on one tent with the help of two jolly French drivers, who told her their names were Jean-Luc and Henri. They were pleasant young men who said they had become ambulance drivers because they preferred saving lives to killing people.

Striking camp took most of the night but the gale-force wind abated just before dawn and they managed to load the least seriously wounded men into the ambulances.

The SWH nurses sedated those seriously wounded patients due to undertake the uncomfortable journey back to Salonika. Meanwhile, the drivers, who had had little sleep, took the chance to have a quick rest in their ambulances before the return journey.

However, they didn't have long. Within half an hour Olive and her orderly were woken by one of the young volunteer nurses. The French lieutenant had received a morse code message warning that a detachment of the Bulgarian Army was advancing on Guevgueli. Unfortunately, no more French troops could be spared from the front line to help them. They were on their own.

As Olive spoke French fluently she was chosen to act as interpreter with the French ambulance drivers, who were arguing over the best route to take. As the senior SWH driver, Olive was fully aware of the gravity of the situation. She emphasised that _none_ of them stood much chance of escaping from the Bulgarians if they took the mountain route. Even on the flatter road around the Doiran Lakes the ambulances were so overloaded they could still be overtaken by the Bulgarians on the terrible potholed roads.

She reckoned their only chance of escape was to drive to Guevgueli station, load the ambulances onto the next goods train for Salonika, and pray it arrived before the Bulgarians.

Olive knew they were taking a huge risk in relying on the train but she knew that the lorries transporting the Bulgarian troops had more powerful engines than the British or French ambulances. Catching the train was their only hope, although there was the risk that the train might have been cancelled.

Henri and Jean-Luc agreed with Olive but the other French drivers shouted them down and insisted they could easily drive faster than the Bulgarians. Male bonding and group solidarity won. Henri and Jean-Luc agreed to take the road to the Doiran Lakes along with their colleagues. Olive shrugged and wished the Frenchmen good luck before they revved up their engines and started off.

From where they were camped Olive and the other drivers could hear the sound of gunfire. Mesmerised, they watched the flickering headlights of the Bulgarian Army advancing on the opposite hillside. Olive knew they were gambling with their lives _and_ those of their patients, but what else could they do?

Olive told her colleagues they must make their own choice. They could follow the French drivers or they could drive to Guevgueli station, as she had suggested, with her and load their ambulances and passengers onto the next goods train for Salonika. After some discussion the others agreed to her plan. Olive had butterflies in her tummy as she crank-started _Ella_ into life and warmed up her engine. Slowly and carefully so as not to hurt the wounded men, Olive set off down the steeply sloping road to Guevgueli station. The other drivers followed, bouncing and jolting their way over potholes that threatened to break the suspension of their vehicles.

Once they reached the station it was nerve-racking for the women to see the lights of the Bulgarian lorries drawing closer. Luckily, the train was already standing in the station and the station master assured them that it would leave any moment now. The drivers bought tickets for themselves and their patients and drove the ambulances up the loading ramp.

Closer and closer came the lights of the Bulgarian lorries but the train did not move. Olive took her pistol from its holster, determined to kill the first Bulgarian who attempted to rape her or any of the other women. Still the train did not move. Then a whistle blew and with a flurry of steam they were off, only minutes before the Bulgarian convoy arrived.

As they drew out of the station they saw Bulgarian soldiers shaking their fists and making crude gestures at them. But it was too late—the Bulgarians could never catch them now. The train was gathering speed and was faster than any lorry. Soon they would be safe in Salonika. The women hugged each other with relief and several of the young VAD nurses burst into tears. After they had been travelling for ten minutes they heard a distant _crump crump crump_ and saw flashes of light in the sky. German planes were bombing Guevgueli.

When they reached Salonika they heard over the radio that Guevgueli and its railway station had been reduced to rubble and the friendly station master had been killed by flying shrapnel. Bulgarians armed with German machine guns had shot any Greek and Serb men of fighting age. As Olive had feared, Jean-Luc and Henri and the other ambulances _were_ overtaken by the Bulgarians and forced to stop. Although the French ambulances had red crosses painted on them, Bulgarian soldiers did not respect the conventions of war. The massacre and genital mutilation of the French ambulance drivers and their wounded passengers horrified everyone in the French and SWH ambulance services.

When the harrowing news was told to Olive, the blood drained from her face and she had to sit down. Poor poor Henri and Jean-Luc. She recalled how they all agreed to have dinner together in Salonika. She remembered how they had wanted to take the train—tears filled her eyes at the sheer horror of it all.

Olive knew she had survived by a fluke. Her main worry was that her father would find out what had happened and demand that she return to Sydney. Hoping reports of the Doiran Lakes massacre had not been picked up by the Australian press, Olive wrote a lighthearted letter to Kelso King saying nothing about Bulgarian atrocities. Instead, Salonika filled most of her letter. She told her father it was 'a fascinating spot, a real eastern town with bazaars, lovely Turkish coffee and quaint narrow streets aligned with old wooden houses with balconies'.

Her letter to Sunny gave a very watered down version of the truth and she warned her sister to say nothing to their father. Fortunately for Olive 'the forgotten Balkan campaign' did not attract the attention of the British or Australian press and her father never learned about the massacre on the Doiran road or Olive's narrow escape from Guevgueli.

However, Olive's bravery at Guevgueli had made her famous among the Serb garrison in Salonika. She was praised in the local press and awarded the Royal Serbian Memorial Medal.

**M EETING ONE'S DESTINY**

On return to Salonika, Olive's unit was camped uncomfortably on a windy beach outside the city. The next supply ship from Britain had been wrecked, so the SWH staff were living off tins of corned beef, rock-hard army biscuits, tinned marmalade and a soup made of boiled weeds. To supplement this strange diet Olive bought treats for her fellow drivers, such as fresh fruit from market traders in Salonika.

Serbia had been totally overrun by Austrians and Bulgarians and thousands of Serb civilians had been killed. The nurses and ambulance drivers worked long hours trying to cope with a massive influx of wounded Serb, Montenegrin and Rumanian soldiers.

The Serb Army was still busy regrouping and reorganising its shattered forces in various camps around Salonika and trying to get hold of new equipment and ambulances to bring down the wounded from the front line.

Olive had worked for weeks without a break and was due some time off. She used her free days to drive into the centre of Salonika, park _Ella_ and walk around the city. She was fascinated by what she saw. To Olive, brought up in a relatively young society, Salonika seemed incredibly ancient. It had been founded by a Macedonian leader named Cassander and ruled by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. Centuries ago it had been invaded by successive waves of Romans, Normans and Saracens. As part of the great Byzantine Empire it had been second only in importance to Constantinople (now Istanbul) when Athens was nothing but a village. Now Salonika was becoming strategically important once again; its port thronged with ships and soldiers from many different countries. The city was connected by rail to Belgrade, Paris and Athens, a vital cog in what was known as the Balkan Campaign against the Austrians and their German and Bulgarian allies.

In the narrow streets Olive learned to recognise Macedonians and Albanians by their black baggy trousers and brightly embroidered waistcoats of many different colours, and their white linen shirts. The women wore long black skirts with white linen blouses and white headscarves.

Wealthy Greek women, on the other hand, wore Western dress, silk stockings and high-heeled shoes. Olive also learned to distinguish Orthodox Greek or Serb priests from rabbis by their flowerpot hats. Both groups seemed to have bushy beards, flowing black robes and long hair, but the rabbis also had ringlets that hung down beside their cheeks.

Each day more British soldiers and a few Anzacs arrived from Gallipoli, shivering in their thin summer uniforms. As well, there were kilted Highlanders, Indians in turbans and Africans from the French colonies in blue jackets and white breeches with red fezzes on their heads.

Olive enjoyed her visits to the picturesque Turkish quarter of Salonika so much that she asked permission to move out of her tent in the SWH camp at Mikra Bay to rent accommodation there. Prices were amazingly cheap. She did not tell her father until she had moved into the city, delighted to have a home of her own at last, albeit temporary. The apartment already had some furniture and beds and Olive added dark wooden chests, ceramic plates and sheepskin rugs, which she bought cheaply from a shop owned by a Turk. He told her that his ancestors had lived in Salonika for centuries and that he and his family intended to remain here even though the city was now part of Greece.

Olive's new apartment overlooked the bay. It was surrounded by ancient Turkish-style timber houses, their balconies braced by timber supports to withstand earthquakes. The balconies were sheltered by and decorated with lattice, which gave privacy and made an additional room for summer living. As the houses of the workers were highly flammable few of them had stoves, so peasant women in black carried their casseroles of food to the local bakeries to have it cooked for them.

Olive was kept busy ferrying cases from the camp at Mikra Bay to the British tented hospital at Mount Hortiack, almost 20 kilometres away. She also ferried supplies up the Vardar Valley to the Serb battle lines on the slopes of Mount Kaimaktsalan, or the 'Peak of the Buttercups'. To get there she drove over 'perfectly poisonous, simply indescribable roads which were a mass of shell-holes'. On the return journey she brought back wounded Serbs to the new army hospital out at Kalamaria run by Canadian and British doctors, and to the SWH hospital at Charilaos run by SWH volunteers.

Olive serviced _Ella_ herself, not wanting to entrust her to Greek mechanics who had never seen an Alda engine, let alone serviced one. One day after changing tyres and doing some work on the engine, Olive lunched at the SWH mess at Mikra Bay. Afterwards she was called into the office of a senior staff member and told that there had been complaints that she had arrived at lunch with grubby fingernails. Olive, angry and annoyed by the reproach, said they could hardly expect her to service her vehicle _and_ look as if she had just come from the beauty parlour.

Two weeks later, Olive received a letter telling her that women drivers were no longer expected to service their vehicles. An agreement had just been confirmed between SWH administrators and the Serb Army under which Serb mechanics would service all SWH ambulances, including those that were privately owned.

The following week, as Olive was driving casualties to the hospital at Mount Hortiack, one of _Ella_ 's front wheels ran into a large pothole, causing a spring to break, 'going with a click like a broken back', as she put it. Driving very slowly, Olive managed to get the ambulance to the Serb military garage where she asked to talk to the most experienced mechanic. He turned out to be a tall, shy young man named Artsa, with crisp black curly hair, startlingly white teeth and a friendly smile.

Artsa was extremely polite and respectful. He called Driver King ' _Gospojitsa_ ' or 'Most Honoured Lady' in the old fashioned Serbian way and explained that, due to the bad state of the roads, he had thirty vehicles with broken springs awaiting repairs, so her ambulance would be off the road for some time. He suggested Olive talk to Captain Milan Yovitchitch, the liaison officer, to arrange replacement transport. Olive waited to see him but the officer never arrived. Nothing more happened for two weeks and Olive was becoming increasingly angry with that wretched liaison officer. She planned to tell him just what she thought of him when finally he _did_ arrive.

Aware _Ella_ would be off the road for some time, Olive bought herself a Serb–English dictionary and a phrase book, hoping to learn the Cyrillic alphabet and some Serb phrases so she could try to converse with the wounded men. She also walked everywhere around the inner city, climbing cobbled streets and walking through ancient archways in the thick walls. Once she found herself high on the ramparts overlooking the bay, enchanted by the magnificent views. She enjoyed herself sitting at pavement cafés watching the world go by and developed a fondness for eating almond-filled _baklavas_ dripping with honey and drinking sweet, gritty Greek coffee, thick as mud and just as dark.

Finally, she received a message that Captain Yovitchitch would meet her. His English was rather halting so they communicated in French, which he and Olive both spoke fluently. Olive had intended to be furious with the captain. However, since he apologised so nicely and told her he was overwhelmed with work and meeting relations who had come to bury their sons or visit the wounded in hospital, she forgave him. The fact that he was tall, broad-shouldered and extremely handsome helped her to forget how annoyed she had been.

For his part, Captain Yovitchitch had been told by Artsa the mechanic that Olive was one of the most heroic ambulance drivers, and that she had saved many wounded Serbs at Guevgueli. The captain wrote out a docket which would give Olive a substitute vehicle until _Ella_ was repaired. Their official business over, the captain asked Olive how she was getting on in Salonika. When he learned that Olive had been spending her free time trying to learn Serbian, a most difficult language, he was impressed. He bought her another cup of coffee and told her how to pronounce some useful phrases. She would have no trouble communicating with educated Serbs, he told her, as French was their second language. The captain told Olive he had perfected his French in Paris where, before the war, he had been a junior attaché at the Serb Embassy.

Initially, the captain had thought Olive a rather plain young woman in her drab grey uniform. However, when she smiled her whole face lit up and her cropped blonde hair gave her a boyish charm. The fact that Driver King was risking her life to save wounded Serbs made him feel protective towards her. He promised her that she would receive a replacement ambulance very soon.

Olive thanked him but secretly wondered if he could be trusted. In her experience, handsome men rarely _were_ trustworthy. However, within two days her liaison officer was back with a replacement ambulance. They made a short drive to get her accustomed to driving the new vehicle. When he said goodbye the captain kissed her hand in the French way.

**T HE PURSUIT OF LOVE**

On Olive's next free day the captain drove her around the Byzantine landmarks of Salonika. He pointed out beehive-domed churches, some of which had had minarets added to them by the invading Turks, and the famous White Tower, a Salonika landmark. Then he parked his staff car and invited Olive for a cup of coffee. Sitting at a marble-topped table in a café she talked about her life in Sydney, mentioning that she had partnered her father at bridge and had played it for many years. The captain invited her to take part in a bridge tournament to be held the following week at the Serb Officers' Club.

The night of the tournament, Olive spent a long time dressing and washed her hair till it shone. Ignoring the regulations, she wore her gold charm bracelet, pale pink lipstick, eye-shadow and French perfume. That little black silk dress bought in London and a pair of high-heeled shoes showed off her slim figure and long legs.

The evening was a huge success. The captain was impressed by Mademoiselle King's skilful and rational bidding and the cool way she played her cards. Rationality was not something he had previously associated with women. He invited her to play bridge again and this time suggested they dine beforehand at the Serb Officers' Club. This did not break SWH rules—there would be plenty of other women around to act as chaperones—so Olive accepted with a clear conscience.

One can picture how the meeting might have gone: Olive arriving at the Serb Officers' Club, the captain once again kissing her hand and saying, 'Mademoiselle King, please call me Yovi. I know my family name is difficult for English people to pronounce.' 'Call me Olive,' she might have responded. 'Australians don't go much for ceremony.'

'Oleev,' he possibly repeated uncertainly, finding it strange that her parents had named their daughter after a fruit instead of a saint. 'I prefer, if I may, to call you a Slav name. How does _Olinka_ sound to you?'

_Olinka_ , what a beautiful, exotic name.

That night at dinner Yovi and his fellow officers spoke in French for Olive's benefit. They told her that their family estates had suffered from the Austrian invasion, crops and barns had been burned and tenants' cottages razed to the ground. Yovi's father had died of a heart attack, probably from the horror of it all. Olive was filled with sympathy. How these young men had suffered on the March of Death from Serbia to Greece and how brave they were, how determined to win back their homeland from the Austrians.

Yovi escorted Olive back to her apartment, said goodnight formally and kissed her hand.

Olive must have felt that this time her father had no need to be alarmed—even _he_ could not accuse Yovi of being a fortune hunter.

_Olive King in her Serb Army uniform._

_Captain Milan Yovitchitch. The print was inscribed, 'To my dear little pal with fond love, Milan (Yovi)'._

Yovi enjoyed Olive's company more and more. He admired the fact that she could dismantle an engine, change a tyre, and play bridge and tennis well.

They went to restaurants together, heard _bouzouki_ music with Yovi's fellow officers, danced to gypsy music, intoxicated by the rhythm. One night, after a few bottles of Samian wine, Yovi confessed to Olive that he had allowed himself to follow tradition and become betrothed to a seventeen-year-old girl whose parents were friends of his mother. He hardly knew the girl. According to his family it would be a good match. She was a descendant of Black George the Liberator, the famous Karageorge, ancestor of the present royal family. Yovi told Olive he wanted to wait until after the war before marrying his fiancée.

Olive was upset but not surprised by Yovi's confession. Although she knew the sensible thing would be not to get emotionally involved with him, it was too late—Olive was head over heels in love with Yovi and convinced that he loved her.

Soon they were dining and dancing several nights at week at the White Tower restaurant. Yovi admired how well she danced. He laughed at her jokes, enjoyed her company, did everything he could to please her, no doubt squaring his conscience about his fiancée by telling himself that this was wartime and he and Olinka were ships passing in the night.

On a mission up to the front line to confer with Crown Prince Alexander, Yovi narrowly avoided death when the car he was in was fired on by a Bulgarian patrol. The bullet grazed his forehead. On his return to Salonika, Olive sat him down on one of the bunks in the rear compartment of her ambulance, unwound the bandage a Serb orderly had placed around his head, disinfected the spot where the bullet had drawn blood, then rebandaged the wound. She hoped the bullet graze would heal without leaving a scar on that handsome face. Leaning over him and looking into his eyes as she tended his wound was her undoing. The tension between them was electric. He drew her down beside him and it was impossible to resist his kisses.

Olive may have rationalised her surrender to Yovi the same way he did: by saying that things were different in wartime. He could be killed by the Bulgarians any day—she could have been killed at Guevgueli or die next week. What were they waiting for?

They tried to keep their affair discreet but they were so obviously in love that people started to talk. The more prudish members of the SWH staff heard the gossip and demanded that Driver King be dismissed. With pursed lips they pointed out that she had broken the rules by dining unchaperoned with a member of the opposite sex. And it seemed the matter had gone further, much further. They had danced cheek to cheek in public and Driver King had been wearing eye-shadow and lipstick.

Olive was interviewed by the SWH director who reprimanded her. SWH rules were spelled out to Olive. Furthermore, the committee members (who were all over fifty) pointed out that Dr Inglis and other feminists had set up the SWH to prove women were as good as men in order to win British women the vote. Driver King was letting the side down.

The elderly woman who headed the SWH told Olive her relationship with Captain Yovitchitch had become a scandal and would be considered at next week's committee meeting. Her resignation might be demanded.

**'O LINKA' JOINS THE SERB ARMY**

To forestall Olive being sacked by the SWH, Yovi suggested she resign and join the Serb Army.

He added teasingly that _his_ army had no rules forbidding female staff from wearing lipstick or high heels. Yovi suggested that Olinka apply to be his personal chauffeuse and promised he would keep better time than Mrs Harley! It seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity to be together.

In July 1916, Olive shocked her critics by resigning from the Scottish Women's Hospitals, taking her ambulance with her.

In a letter to her father dated 20 July 1916, Olive told him that she was about to join the Serb Army as an ambulance driver. She did not mention that she had upset the SWH but added revealingly, 'I've had _enough_ of women's discipline.' Worried that her father might learn about her and Yovi, Olive mentioned that her liaison officer thought it was an excellent idea, as the Serbs were so short of drivers. But Olive gave no hint of her feelings for Yovi.

Olive's father had continued the King family tradition of upholding the Protestant faith, was a lay canon of St Andrew's Cathedral and churchwarden of All Saints' Anglican Church, was on the Board of Governors of King's and Sydney Grammar School, and involved in various Anglican charities. The idea of his younger daughter abandoning the Protestant faith and marrying into the Eastern Orthodox Church, which denied the authority of the Bible, Olive knew would be anathema to Kelso King, no matter how well-connected her bridegroom might be.

In her letters home to her staunchly Anglican father, Olive was careful not to mention any emotional involvement with Yovi. She made their relationship sound professional, referring to him as a 'good pal' who was only helping her as her liaison officer.

Mrs Harley, Olive's former boss in France, arrived in Salonika, heading another SWH unit. She was delighted to see Olive but puzzled as to why she had joined the Serbs. Olive did not enlighten her.

As a corporal in the Serb Army, Olive was issued with a uniform consisting of a khaki tunic with brass buttons, cream-coloured breeches, long boots of supple leather and a thick khaki pullover. She found these clothes far more practical for work than the long cumbersome long skirts provided by the SWH.

Olive's ambulance was one of three attached to the Serb medical headquarters. The other two needed constant repairs which meant that, as the only person insured to drive _Ella_ , she had to let someone else drive Yovi around. She was promoted to the rank of corporal and was sent to the front line on the slopes of Mount Kaimaktsalan near Monastir to collect wounded Serb soldiers to be transported to the British Military Hospital at Mount Hortiack, about 30 kilometres north of the city.

As the roads were potholed and precipitous, _Ella_ 's tyres were frequently punctured. Olive had to get out and change them and was often on the road for sixteen hours at a stretch.

When she wasn't carrying out rescue trips in _Ella_ , Olive acted as staff driver to Yovi and his immediate superior, Colonel Derok. She worked long hours and spent as much of her free time as possible with Yovi. She was deeply in love with him and, it seems, so was he with her.

On one trip, Olive was ordered to take _Ella_ to fetch Serb soldiers wounded in a skirmish high in the hills. The rescue trip meant crossing the rickety Gumendjie Bridge, a narrow structure only just wider than the ambulance, whose parapets had collapsed. A steely nerve was needed to drive _Ella_ over the dilapidated bridge, which had a drop of 30 metres on either side. One false move on Olive's part meant that she and the wounded men would plunge to their deaths. Fortunately, Olive kept a cool head and a steady hand on the wheel. Although the stretcher cases were terrified, she got them back across the Gumendjie Bridge without mishap. 'Excellent work,' said Colonel Derok when he heard about Corporal King's success. 'Women keep their nerve when men lose their heads.'

On another dangerous mission, driving with her orderly on a rescue mission along the steep and potholed road that led north to Vodena (today's Edessa), _Ella_ 's gearbox broke down completely and it was beyond Olive's capabilities to repair it. Clearly the engine, gearbox and suspension also needed time as well as money spent on them. However, Artsa and the other mechanics were already working around the clock and lacked the time to do a complete overhaul on _Ella._

Olive wrote to Sunny describing _Ella_ 's deterioration. She explained how desperately the Serbs needed another ambulance. Three weeks later she received a reply. Her father had agreed that each of his daughters could pay half the cost of a new ambulance from their joint trust fund as a contribution to the war effort. They should buy a smaller more economical and manoeuvrable ambulance and Olive should use _Ella_ only for emergencies. But where could Olive buy a brand new ambulance? They would have to buy a new lorry in England and get it converted into an ambulance there.

Olive thought of Mrs Harley. She made frequent trips home to see her brother and intended to buy the SWH another ambulance out of her own pocket. Surely she could look for two ambulances? So Olive wrote to Mrs Harley outlining the problems with _Ella._ Mrs Harley wrote back offering to find a suitable lorry and get it converted by a coachbuilder when she was in England the following month. She would see the suspension was reinforced as she knew what the potholed roads out here did to lorries. Olive must have felt a warm glow when she read Mrs Harley's letter.

On her next visit to London Mrs Harley was as good as her word. She bought a Ford lorry, organised its conversion and arranged for the new vehicle to be shipped to Salonika. Olive named the second ambulance _Bridget_ after a hardworking Irish girl who had cared for her and Sunny as children. _Bridget_ could not accommodate as many wounded men as _Ella_ but had far more responsive steering and so she handled better over the terrible roads.

Olive was thrilled with _Bridget_ , and Yovi invited Mrs Harley to a special luncheon held in her honour at the Serb Officers' Club to thank her for what she had done for the Serb Army.

Olive, who up to now had had plenty of admirers but never lost her heart, must have been suffering the torments and jealousies as well as the delights of love as she reflected about the seventeen-year-old girl to whom Yovi was betrothed. Her diary for 1917 revealed that whenever she was with Yovi she felt blissfully happy but she found his behaviour perplexing. He treated her like a younger sister, teased her affectionately, rumpled her hair and was annoyed when she beat him at tennis.

His fiancée, a Karageorge, was apparently distantly related to Crown Prince Alexander, Yovi's great friend since childhood. And in Serbia, Karageorge was a name to reckon with. The wedding would take place in the Eastern Orthodox Church which did not acknowledge divorce. If he married, that was final. Yovi, like most men, avoided matters that embarrassed him and refused to discuss his fiancée. Olive thought he regarded this betrothal as an obligation. In the midst of a war his family obligations seemed unreal. What was real was the here and now.

There was also the problem of Olive's age. Being over thirty, Olive was not regarded as being in her prime child-bearing years. She could easily bear him a mentally defective or a deformed child. And a healthy male heir was needed to secure Yovi's estates in troubled times.

Ironically enough, at this time Crown Prince Alexander himself was under pressure to marry and produce an heir. The prince was being urged to marry a Russian princess, whose church was also of the Eastern Orthodox faith. Tsar Nicholas, who had sent a detachment of Russian troops to help the Serbs, had several beautiful daughters all younger than Alexander Karageorge. It was believed that when the war was over Prince Alexander would announce his engagement to one or other of the Tsar's daughters.

While the romantic in Olive might have been disappointed that Prince Alexander would not marry his French girlfriend, Yovi explained that as regent to an ailing and elderly king, the Crown Prince could not make a morganatic marriage to the girl he loved. He must make a dynastic alliance to an Orthodox princess, and one from a wealthy country that could support Serbia.

Like most people who are desperately in love, Olive could not prevent herself mentioning Yovi's name in letters home. On several occasions she told her father how lucky she was to be working with Captain Yovitchitch, a close friend of the Serbian royal family who saw that whenever she drove to the front line she had an armed guard with her. She told her father how much she admired the Serbs' unconquerable spirit and their determination to repossess their country from Austrian and Bulgarian invaders. She explained that there were now about 80,000 Serbian troops garrisoned in northern Greece and Greek Macedonia, once part of the great Macedonian Empire.

Olive also explained to her father how war had changed her. Now she would gladly 'work day and night for the Serbians without pay'. She begged her father to use his financial skills to set up a fund to buy ambulances and medicines for the Serbian Army. While there was wide publicity for the suffering of the Belgians and the French, the suffering of the Serbs remained largely unreported. Unless her father did something, no one else would take up the Serbian cause in Australia.

On receiving his daughter's cry for help, Kelso King responded by setting up an appeal for funds to buy ambulances for the Serbs. Australians were generous, and money was raised and more ambulances and medicines were purchased. Colonel Derok, Olive's commanding officer, was extremely grateful to her and her father. Best of all in Olive's eyes was the fact that Yovi was delighted. Yovi was convinced that under the leadership of Crown Prince Alexander the Serbs would recapture their country from the enemy. After the war, the prince would build 'Greater Serbia'—a huge federation of Slav countries. This was the 'Grand Plan' Crown Prince Alexander and Yovi believed in and which, as a diplomat after the war was over, Yovi would help implement.

The spring of 1917 was hot and very dry. Olive and Yovi got up early and after working-hours played tennis and often went to the beach for a swim. Most nights they ate dinner together and sometimes attended concerts, as Olive shared Yovi's love of classical music.

In March 1917 Olive was directed to drive Yovi north over the hazardous mountain road to the SWH base hospital attached to the Serb Army, which Dr Agnes Bennett was running near the village of Ostrovo. Yovi was to represent the Crown Prince and award three women—Dr Bennett, Dr Lilian Cooper and the head of the Ostrovo ambulance service, Miss Josephine Bedford—with the Order of St Sava, the highest award for humanitarian service in Serbia. After three hours of skilful driving over precipitous roads they reached Dr Bennett's hospital, situated under some elm trees, and visited Mrs Harley's daughter who was suffering from malaria. The camp had a magnificent view across the waters of Lake Ostrovo and the surrounding snow-capped mountain peaks. Unfortunately, mosquitoes bred there in droves and were more dangerous than Bulgarian bandits—some of Dr Bennett's staff had already died from malaria.

In a simple ceremony as 'stand in' for Crown Prince Alexander, Yovi presented Dr Bennett, Dr Cooper and Miss Bedford with the Order of St Sava, a blue and white enamelled Maltese cross hanging from a large golden crown. The medals came in individual velvetlined cases and had been made by a leading Bond Street jeweller. The medal had been named after Prince Sava, who renounced the world to become a monk, and was awarded to outstanding Serbs and foreigners but rarely to women.

Yovi read out the commendation personally authored by Crown Prince Alexander, pinned the medals on each woman and made a short speech commending their dedication and bravery. Then he spoke a few words to each of them. Yovi found Dr Agnes Bennett and Miss Josephine Bedford pleasant but Dr Lilian Cooper hard to talk to. She was brusque and ill at ease. Little Miss Bedford was overcome by the honour and had tears in her eyes as Dr Cooper received her medal. Yovi did his best to make the ceremony informal and to put Dr Cooper at her ease but she was coughing badly and in need of a good rest as, like all the SWH women, she had been working under primitive conditions for months.

After the ceremony, they all drank a _vin d'honneur_ from tooth mugs.

Aware of the gossip about Olive's abrupt resignation from the SWH and her relationship with him, Yovi politely declined Dr Bennett's offer of a spartan lunch. Then Yovi said polite farewells and climbed into the vehicle. Olive crank-started the engine for the return journey. Yovi placed his pistol on the dashboard as protection against the Bulgarians in the high mountain passes. Then they drove away from Ostrovo and its mosquitoes.

They stopped at a high vantage point where they could look out over miles and miles of surrounding territory and were relieved to see no troops were in sight. All around them were masses of blue, yellow and white wild flowers amid the grass. They sat down and Olive unpacked some food and a bottle of wine for a romantic picnic.

Hours later they reached Salonika and congratulated themselves that the day had gone so well. Olive had never felt happier.

Despite Olive's care to sleep under a mosquito net at all times, she still caught malaria. One morning she found her temperature had soared. By the evening she shivered and shook and was covered in perspiration. Yovi called the doctor and was so worried by Olinka's condition that he visited her twice a day, sat beside her bed for hours and had special broth and minced-chicken dishes cooked for her in the Officers' Club. He brought the food to her apartment himself or had it sent over by one of the mess staff, but nothing seemed to bring down Olive's temperature.

In the second week of her illness Olive lost consciousness and Yovi feared she might die. He would not leave her bedside and once, as Olive regained consciousness, she found him wiping her forehead with tears in his eyes, whispering, 'Olinka, my love, don't die. Olinka, stay alive for me.' But Olive's blackouts and fever continued. The doctor asked Yovi to bring an Anglican clergyman to Olive's bedside just in case...

Yovi climbed into his car and scoured the city until he found an Anglican clergyman. He dragged the poor man out of bed and made him come to Olive's apartment. By the time Yovi was back at Olive's bedside with the clergyman the fever had abated and she was fully conscious. Yovi was convinced that the Mother of God had heard his prayers and intervened.

Olive's health gradually improved but she was aware that she had had a close shave with death. When Yovi felt that Olive was strong enough to bear the shock, he told her that poor Mrs Harley was dead and buried, and a memorial to her aid work was being erected in Salonika. An enemy shell had landed on her house in Monastir. Olive remembered the little brooch Mrs Harley had given her and how she had bought _Bridget_ for her in England. It highlighted the fact that in wartime they all were at risk. She and Yovi could die any time. Marrying or not marrying did not seem so important now. What mattered was staying alive.

The doctor now allowed Olive to get up for a couple of hours each day. Yovi still brought her special meals and told her that what mattered most to him was that she got well. It was a touching demonstration of his love. Olive had now lost so much weight that her clothes were far too big for her. In response to Olive's urgent SOS, Sunny sent out an elegant silk dress and a couple of pairs of well-cut black trousers—very daring for a woman to wear at that time. They showed off Olinka's long legs to best advantage.

Sometimes Olive ate with Yovi and several of his fellow officers in their favourite _taverna,_ run by an Athenian who, in spite of the food shortage, managed to produce assorted _mezedes_ of grilled vegetables and plates of grilled fish. Greek women of that era rarely ventured outside the home, so that _kafenions_ and _tavernas_ were almost exclusively male. With her cropped blonde hair, her tight black trousers, her scarlet cummerbund and knee high boots and in one of Yovi's crisp white evening shirts, Olive often passed as a boy. It amused Yovi when she dressed like that.

The previous summer Olive's father had written saying that he was worried about Olive living alone in a garrison city where there would be many drunken soldiers. Olive jokingly told him that she was 'more horribly independent' than ever. However, alleviating his worries she told him two English girls, Barbara M. Allen and D.K. (Mimi) Percival, who were also working as drivers for the Serbs, were sharing her apartment with her. But she never told her father that Yovi spent nights with her when he was not on duty.

Both Miss Allen and Miss Percival had fallen foul of the SWH for dining unchaperoned with Serb officers and had followed the example of Olive in enlisting in the Serb Army. Olive called her new flatmates 'Barb' and 'Mim' and they called her 'Ollie'. They were nice girls with a good sense of humour and they and their Serb boyfriends often joined Olive and Yovi for dinner.

Olive was well satisfied, with a modest home of her own, friends and a purpose in life. In her letters home, she carefully continued to make it appear that she, Yovi and Corporals Percival and Allen were just 'good pals'. She told her father that Captain Yovi was kind enough to escort them to restaurants or concerts in Salonika as part of his official duties.

The Serb drivers admired Olive for her bravery at Guevgueli and for her generosity and kindness to them. The drivers were fiercely protective of their _Gospojitsa._ They gave her a little medallion of the Holy Mother of God to hang from her driving mirror. Artsa swore he would fight to the last to ensure she would not fall into the hands of those terrible Bulgarians. Artsa, the head mechanic with his broad smile and dark curly hair, was a typical Slav: tall, broad-shouldered and ruggedly good looking. He did everything possible to help Olive keep her ambulances on the road.

The Serb drivers' garage doubled as a combined mess and recreation area. At lunch the drivers, the mechanics, Olive and Corporals Percival and Allen ate at a rickety wooden table in a corner of the garage. In an effort to improve things Olive hung a flowered curtain around the dining table to block out the pieces of dismantled car engine and the oily floor. She bought tablecloths and napkins and a set of comfortable dining chairs with padded seats for which her fellow drivers were grateful. Their lunches were a thin spartan soup with barley, gristly stewed meat and dried beans with boiled rice. Olive, generous as ever, bought _baklavas_ or other delicious Greek cakes and pastries and fresh fruit to supplement them.

With Yovi's help Olive had become reasonably fluent in Serbian, which was not an easy language to master. She learned from Yovi that the Serbs had paid a heavy price for recapturing the bleak slopes of Kaimaktsalan and Monastir: almost 125,000 deaths and an even greater number of wounded or maimed men.

Olive vowed that since her life had been spared at Guevgueli and she had recovered from malaria she would donate any money she earned from the Serb Army to help her fellow drivers and their families. There was no point in saving it. She might never live to see the end of the war. 'Shrouds have no pockets'was a proverb she had heard from several wounded Serbs.

Dining with Yovi at the Serb Officers' Club was like eating in a good restaurant in pre-war Paris. In marked contrast, the food and living conditions of the Serb drivers was woeful. Unlike their British and French counterparts, they did not even have subsidised canteens selling hot drinks, lollies, chocolate and warm clothes. Serb soldiers were paid a pittance by their exiled government and could not afford to buy chocolate or warm clothing at the inflated prices charged by Salonika's black marketeers.

Olive, who received a good income from the interest on her mother's money in the trust fund, did indeed spend her Serb Army wages on buying her fellow drivers some additional comforts. Another thing she felt she could do was to set up a canteen for Slav soldiers. Practical as ever, Olive noted the top-selling items in YMCA and Red Cross canteens. These were tins of barley sugar, nourishing hot drinks like Ovaltine and Horlicks, cough sweets, packets of chocolate biscuits, woollen sweaters, vests and socks. So Olive wrote to her father asking him to raise money to set up a couple of mobile canteens for Serb soldiers.

He wrote back saying that at present Australians were concentrating on raising money to buy additional comforts for Australian soldiers. However, her father did send a handsome personal donation to what they decided to call the Serb Comforts Fund. So Olive was able to set up the first of her canteens, employing a Serb-speaking Greek woman to serve hot drinks and snacks to the Serb soldiers.

As part of the Eastern Orthodox Church's celebrations for Easter (1917), the highlight of the religious year, Olive was told she and Corporals Allen and Percival had been promoted to sergeant. Yovi was delighted that Olinka's dedication to the Serb cause and her generosity had been recognised.

Celebrating the Orthodox Easter meant a great deal to Yovi, just as celebrating Christmas with her family meant a great deal to Olive. Olive was invited to a special Easter dinner at the Serb Officers' Club where everyone was in ceremonial uniform and she wore uniform as well. Afterwards, she and Yovi attended the midnight service at the Church of St Demetrios.

After dinner they left the Officers' Club and walked slowly through streets crowded with worshippers, carrying lighted candles. In the open square in front of the church, Yovi bought long white candles from a street vendor. Then, like everyone else, they carried their lighted candles inside the historic church, where mosaics sparkled under the light of hundreds of candles. In the dimly lit interior, candles cast a golden glow on gold brocade robes of the priests and on gold-ground icons studded with jewels.

Around them the voices of the choir soared and then fell to a whisper as the ancient liturgy revealed the promise of Christ's resurrection, man's redemption and life after death. Yovi repeated the words of the Orthodox liturgy, his eyes fixed on the officiating patriarch, or bishop, in his richly embroidered cope. A huge silvercovered book was brought out and presented to the bishop, who resembled an Old Testament prophet with a long white beard. But instead of opening the book and reading from it the bishop kissed the book reverently and then closed it. As the chanting soared to a crescendo the big book was solemnly borne away while younger priests and acolytes waved silver incense burners that gave out clouds of perfumed smoke.

Olive gazed around the huge church, one of the oldest and largest in Greece, recognising a mosaic of St Demetrios, the Roman centurion who had embraced Christianity and been martyred for his faith on this very spot. She was amazed by the amount of gold and silver ornaments all around her, in a church situated in one of Europe's poorest nations.

Most of the ceremony was a mystery which pulled Olive and Yovi apart rather than drawing them together as she had hoped. She could not understand the litany that Yovi was intoning so fervently or why bells kept ringing at intervals. She examined the icons with golden backgrounds, depicting black-robed sad-eyed Madonnas cradling Christ children, realising how much these icons meant to Yovi.

Inside the vault of the dome over the altar was a huge mosaic featuring a stern-faced olive-skinned Christ Pantocrator with one hand upraised, a gesture which Olive found more menacing than reassuring. She imagined her father's shocked face if she wrote to him saying she would be marrying Yovi in an Eastern Orthodox church complete with bells, smells and icons.

Finally the Easter Mass was over. They emerged from the church into the bustling traffic and walked up the street that led to the oldest part of the city, under the archway in the city wall near the Trigonian Tower. From the terrace of their favourite _taverna_ they watched firecrackers exploding in the narrow streets below.

Over a bottle of Samian wine, Yovi announced he had an Easter present for her. She felt her heart miss a beat. Was he going to give her a ring?

Afterwards, they walked hand in hand to Olive's apartment. They stood at the window, looked down at the city lights and out over the wide bay of Salonika far below them. Then Yovi took the gold stars from the epaulettes of his uniform jacket and clipped them onto Olive's khaki jacket.

'To celebrate your promotion, Olinka', he said.

It was not quite what she had hoped for.

**HEROINE OF THE GREAT FIRE OF SALONIKA**

With Monastir recaptured and over 1200 Serb soldiers dead or wounded, and a push north to take back Belgrade now being planned, Yovi was often working late or sometimes in conference with Prince Alexander. Olive was glad of the company of her flatmates, Barb and Mim. But on 4 August 1917 the two English girls, who were only on short-term contracts, returned to London. On the night before they left, they celebrated with a farewell dinner in the apartment. The girls presented 'Ollie' with a beautiful antique silver belt and Yovi with a bottle of very expensive French brandy bought on the black market.

Olive's apartment seemed lonely without the chatter and laughter of her English friends. Due to Yovi's heavy work commitments she now saw much less of him, increasing her loneliness. She moved out and rented a room in the home of a large and noisy Greek family in the Kastra district, closer to the city centre. Having mastered Serb and its alphabet, the next step was to learn Greek so she could find her way around the city better, as all street names in Salonika were written in Greek. She had her meals with the family, so she could practise speaking the language.

On the afternoon of 17 August 1917, after four hot and dry months, a huge fire swept through the wooden houses of Salonika. It was rumoured that the fire had been started by Bulgarian saboteurs.

Fanned by the hot wind from the north, flames leaped from house to house until much of the Turkish quarter was a blazing inferno. Then the flames leaped across the Via Egnatia and into the modern part of the city.

Seeing the flames, Olive climbed into _Bridget_ and drove into the city centre. There she saw men with grappling hooks pulling down the old wooden houses to try and stop the flames from spreading. But in spite of their frantic efforts to control the fire, it leaped over the debris and ignited still more buildings. All around Olive's ambulance pedestrians screamed, as sparks and flying embers filled the air and landed on them. Without a thought for her own safety, Olive climbed out of her vehicle, braving falling masonry and beams to help as many burns victims into the ambulance as possible. Then she drove out to the British military hospital at Mount Hortiack.

When Olive returned, dusk was falling but the sky over the city was as bright as day.

Olive drove past the Church of St Demetrios. The roof had fallen in and an end wall had collapsed. She could have wept to see its marble panels and columns stained by fire and smoke and its centuries-old mosaics cracked and peeling due to the fierce heat. Then she drove back to the Via Egnatia where buildings were crumbling and crashing in clouds of dust. She filled up the ambulance once again and returned to Mount Hortiack.

Olive worked until midnight without a break. The fire stretched in an arc that measured over 2 kilometres in width. On the skyline she could see minarets blazing away like tall candles. Time and time again Olive drove back into the burning city, rescuing terrified Greek women and children as well as Serb officers and soldiers and their families.

With flying sparks and embers all around her, Olive realised that many lives depended on her keeping calm and staying awake. Via Egnatia was now a solid wall of fire, its elegant shops in ruins and their plate glass windows shattered by searing heat. Everywhere Olive drove, she saw panic-stricken people carrying away their belongings on their backs, on handcarts or bullock wagons. The streets were filled with terrified people desperate to save their lives and their possessions.

Olive had another load of badly burned victims on board when the front wheels of her ambulance started to wobble. She climbed down and saw that, due to a flat tyre, the wheel had been riding on its metal rim. It was too dangerous to continue driving until _Bridget_ could be fixed. By now her ambulance was blocking the road behind a mob of screaming people and, in addition, two Greek women in the rear of the ambulance were panicking. Olive had no choice—she had to fix the flat tyre immediately. She dismounted, lifted up the rear door of the ambulance, got out the jack and changed the wheel. Roaring flames came closer, while terrified bystanders implored her to get out of the way.

An elegant Greek woman in the crowd was in hysterics, sobbing and shrieking after her silk dress caught fire from a flying ember. The woman moaned over and over again, 'O _yos mou, oyos mou_ ' ('My son, my son'). She explained that her boy was trapped inside their burning house, and then she collapsed at Olive's feet.

Olive hauled the Greek woman into the ambulance but when she regained consciousness she could not remember her address. With the aid of some friendly Greeks Olive finally coaxed the location out of the distressed woman.

Arriving at the house Olive wrapped a damp scarf over the lower part of her face and rushed into the blaze. She felt her way around the walls and managed to rescue the woman's terrified little son and get him outside, moments before the house collapsed. Overcome with gratitude, the woman kissed Olive's hand. No time for thanks. Olive set off once more with a full load of patients for Mount Hortiack.

On another desperate dash to the home of a Serb friend, _Bridget_ ran out of fuel. Olive hunted desperately around the darkened streets for petrol but found none. In despair she hailed an Army lorry. Luckily, the driver happened to have a spare can of petrol, enough to get her to a French Army ambulance station a kilometre away. There, she found to her relief that the French tanks still had some petrol in them.

With _Bridget_ 's tank replenished, Olive returned to the city centre crowded with bewildered people running in all directions. She rescued Greeks, Serbs and Albanians from blazing buildings. But a hot wind was blowing in the direction of the medical supplies stored in the Serb Army's depot.

Arriving at the Serb Army's depot, Olive found the place in uproar. She and Artsa and five other drivers worked through the night, dowsing canvas tents and ground sheets with water and laying them over their precious medical supplies in a desperate effort to protect them from the fire.

Adrenalin lent Olive strength and stopped her feeling sleepy. The phones were down so it was impossible to get a message through to Yovi. She imagined he would be out fighting the fire, just as she was.

During the night Olive drove more fire victims along the rubblestrewn quay and kept looking for more casualties she could take to the British Military Hospital. Around the harbour law and order had broken down—looting from shops, warehouses and abandoned homes was taking place. The gutters were running with wine as the intense heat had burst wine barrels in the stores. Soldiers lying full length in the gutters drank and drank 'or lay there sleeping it off', wrote Olive to her father after the fire.

Tram wires were hanging in festoons across the road and in places the overhead power lines were down, so she had to give them a wide berth. Around one of Scottish Women's Hospitals buildings, now reduced to a smoking ruin, were people with terrible burns, some unable to move. Olive helped them into the ambulance and took off again. Later, assisting burns victims into the crowded casualty department at Mount Hortiack, Olive suddenly realised that she had been working without pausing to eat or drink for fourteen hours.

Fortunately, Matron Jessie McHardy White, a fellow Australian, realised she must be exhausted. The matron grabbed Olive by the shoulder and insisted she sit down and have a sandwich and a cup of tea. Olive wanted to go back to the city right away but Matron White made her lie down in the casualty tent for an hour.

Rested a little, her face grimed black with smoke, Olive finally returned to her lodgings at six in the morning. She found the house filled with homeless Greeks—friends and relatives of the owners, and who were now refugees in their own city where the fire was still raging. Olive washed herself and lay down, quite spent. She slept for a few hours and then awoke with a start, remembering she had arranged to have dinner with Yovi and Captain Shapovitch in the Officers' Club the previous night. What had happened to Yovi? Had he been injured? To her relief she found Yovi at the Officers' Club. She hugged him, relieved and delighted that he was unharmed.

He kissed her on both cheeks, overjoyed to see her. Yovi told everyone how proud he was of her. He too had been at the fire with soldiers from his unit. He had received reports of her rescue work from those who had seen her in action and had heard about her saving the Greek child in the blazing building.

All that night the fire raged on, fanned by the wind that blew down from the Vardar River valley. Olive reflected on the day in a letter to her father: 'I carted refugees from 7 am till 10 pm and the following day started at 5 am.'

The city of Salonika was now in ruins, historic monuments, offices and warehouses destroyed, and thousands of people left homeless sleeping in the streets or on the hillsides above the city. Over the next few days Olive would learn that more than 4200 homes and business premises, all the hotels in Salonika and most of the banks, including her own, had been destroyed by fire. The

_Church of St Demetrios after the Great Fire, 1917._

Turkish quarter was largely destroyed. Only Kastra, high on the ramparts with its wooden houses where Olive had lived, was left intact. Many of the Byzantine beehive-domed churches were smoking ruins, their roofs collapsed, leaving marble-lined interiors open to the sky, and their art treasures stolen or damaged.

Olive worked long hours in her ambulance and not until 29 August did she find time to write a long description of the city's destruction. She wrote to her father telling him that she was unharmed. She described how the churches, cinemas, the best hotels, the Nursing Sisters' Club, the shops, bars, banks and restaurants had been destroyed. She told how thousands had died in the flames, suffocated or burned to death. Thousands more were left homeless and many hundreds of children were now orphans.

To her father and Sunny, Olive modestly played down her own part in the rescue but did eventually admit she was to receive recognition by the Serb and Greek governments. The Serbs had awarded her their Silver Bravery Medal immediately and she would soon receive a Gold Medal for Zealous Conduct and an official commendation from the Greeks in Salonika. Yovi was promoted to major for his rescue work. Now there were three pips on his shoulder instead of two.

The horror of those burning buildings and the charred corpses of those who perished in the fire gave her nightmares for months. She implored her father to raise money for fire victims and for the housands of homeless refugees. He promised to do so and set up a special Save Salonika appeal. Within a few weeks funds started to roll in. Olive involved members of the Orthodox Church, friends of Yovi, to distribute funds to those most in need. She also decided to fund an orphanage since there were so many children sleeping in the streets.

One day, without warning, Yovi came to see Olive. He knocked on the door, and when she opened it said, 'Put on your best dress. Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia is here. He wants to congratulate you personally for your rescue work during the fire.'

So Olive put on the silk dress Sunny had sent her and a pair of high-heeled shoes and they drove to the only cinema in Salonika still standing. Inside, the Crown Prince was standing under the giant screen. Olive was spotted by one of the equerries and beckoned forward. She walked up a small flight of steps and stood in front of Crown Prince Alexander, who raised Olive's hand to his lips and thanked her for everything she had done for his people. Then he pinned the Order of St Sava onto the shoulder of her dress.

After the ceremony Olive and Yovi came out of the cinema to find a huge storm had caused flooding in the street. Olive was wearing flimsy shoes so Yovi picked her up and carried her across the flooded street to his car and they drove to her home.

**A C ORFU IDYLL**

That night Yovi told her that, at the request of the prince, he had been ordered to leave Salonika and travel to French-occupied Corfu where the Serbs still had a military base. Yovi had been entrusted with a delicate diplomatic mission. He was to liaise with the French authorities and find common ground for peace negotiations once the war was over, since the Allies would be re-aligning borders. He explained that it was vital that France support Crown Prince Alexander's aims of a pan-Serb federation under Serb rule to include Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia, Hertzegovina and Montenegro. Yovi swore her to secrecy. He promised he would use his influence with the Crown Prince to obtain a driving job that would take her to Corfu so they could enjoy a holiday together once his conference with the French generals was over.

The next day he was gone and no one seemed to know where, not even his Army batman. At the end of that month, Olive had still heard nothing from Yovi and was starting to worry about him. Then, true to his word, she received a personal request from an equerry to drive friends of the prince, a Mr and Mrs Beshitch and their baby, from Salonika across the Ipeiros mountains to the port of Santa Quaranta (now Sarande in Albania) and on to Corfu.

Colonel Derok gave her permission and asked her to take three convalescent soldiers with her to Corfu so they could recover in the milder climate of this most beautiful of Greek islands.

Her orders were to drive to Santa Quaranta, leave the ambulance there, buy tickets and accompany her passengers on the ferry to Corfu. Obviously she would have to use _Bridget_ , as _Ella_ was not reliable enough, although a more comfortable and spacious vehicle.

What she was not prepared for was the nightmare journey which would take three days over potholed roads and through violent storms. Olive was forced to drive very slowly and edge her way around a succession of precipices. Despite the failure of _Bridget_ 's foot brake and Olive's worries that the heavy vehicle might skid over the edge of the precipice, Olive managed to bring her passengers safely to Santa Quaranta on the Adriatic coast, opposite the northern tip of Corfu.

The bad roads had damaged _Bridget_ 's suspension, and Olive had to leave _Bridget_ in the town to be repaired by a local garage. She bought ferry tickets for everyone and accompanied her passengers on an ancient caique to Kerkyra on Corfu, where she was to meet Yovi.

As they approached the jetty, Olive saw pink and blue sugar-cube houses climbing up the hill with, here and there, some gnarled and ancient olive trees and other vegetation. Yovi stood on the quayside in his splendid ceremonial uniform, a short-cropped jacket with the gold braid on its high collar accentuating the breadth of his shoulders. His blond hair gleamed against the dark blue uniform. He explained that he had had to leave a conference at French Army headquarters before it had finished in order to meet the ferry.

As they were surrounded by uniformed Serb soldiers she could only salute him. He helped her load the convalescents and Mr and Mrs Beshitch into a horse-drawn cab and then hailed another _fiacre_ for the two of them.

As the _fiacre_ took them up the steep streets of the old town, Yovi explained that talks with the French Foreign Minister and General Sarrail had gone well. The Serb Foreign Minister had been pleased with Yovi's presentation of the Crown Prince's ideas. The upshot was that Yovi was to replace the present military attaché at the Serb embassy in London, an ideal way of returning to the world of diplomacy.

The fact that Yovi was leaving Salonika for London was a bitter blow to Olive but she felt she should not show it. She reckoned that if she truly was Yovi's best pal, she should be _glad_ of such a promotion. But deep down she knew that his transfer to London was probably part of his mother's plan to take him away from Salonika and from her. She put on a brave face and told him she was delighted by his promotion.

He had booked her a room with a balcony in the luxurious hotel where he and the other diplomats were staying.

When he had free time, they hired a horse-drawn _fiacre_ and a driver and drove to unspoiled fishing villages with curved sandy beaches. They swam in crystal-clear turquoise-blue water, lay in the sun for hours talking, and lunched on grilled fish cooked over charcoal braziers by fishermen.

Olive was enchanted by Corfu, its mild climate, the amount of greenery everywhere, the magnificent olive trees and abundance of wild flowers. It was the first leave she had had for two years. As always, Yovi was kindness itself. However it became apparent that ambition would take him into a wider world of European diplomacy, the world he had been in before the war started. The parting of the ways had come sooner than expected: he was to leave Corfu for London without returning to Salonika. His mother would be waiting for him there.

Their time together was perfect but far too brief.

On their last day an orderly arrived from the Serb barracks with orders for Olive to drive three convalescent soldiers back to Salonika. Then came the dreadful moment when Olive had to say goodbye to Yovi.

She wanted to kiss him. But as they were both in uniform any display of emotion was impossible. Holding back her tears, all Olive could do was shake hands formally and say goodbye as a sergeant would do when farewelling a superior officer.

She and the three Serb soldiers she was transporting mounted the gangplank and settled themselves on the ferry. Yovi stood waving as the caique pulled away. Gradually the waving figure on the jetty got smaller and smaller and eventually faded into the distance. That evening she wrote in her diary: 'I couldn't help a couple of tears falling on my cheek but with the soldiers there couldn't howl my eyes out as I longed to.'

Olive feared separation would change everything for them. Theirs had been a wartime romance—two people of different backgrounds, religions and cultures thrown together in a foreign city. Now it was over.

'The return journey was no joyride' was how Olive described it in a letter home. The weather turned cold and to make matters worse when she stopped at an inn to get some hot soup for the convalescent soldiers and tried to restart the engine the starter failed to fire. Cranking it herself Olive injured her wrist. Then climbing a steep mountain pass on a potholed road, one of _Bridget_ 's springs and part of her chassis broke. Olive had to rope the chassis together to complete the journey.

On the long trip she had plenty of time to think about Yovi. For years her father had insisted men would try to marry her for her money and had tried to protect her against fortune hunters; now her money was powerless to get her the man she really wanted. How could she _ever_ explain the truth to her father, tell him that Yovi was her lover, that he was _not_ a fortune hunter and was breaking her heart.

One thing was certain. Her father and Belicia must never know the _real_ story. But Olive could not help herself mentioning Yovi's name. Her next letter to her father dated 15 November 1917 contained the revealing statement: 'Yovi was my most constant pal and Salonika is desolate without him.' She also added that Colonel Derok was very pleased with her work. As her fellow drivers referred to her as ' _Gospojitsa_ ' (Honoured Lady) she felt she had to live up to their high opinion of her. Olive added wistfully:'although at times I feel bewildered and hopeless and at a loss.'

**S ALONIKA WITHOUT YOVI**

Olive was now used to living rough, eating and sleeping at odd hours, wearing a uniform and yarning with men round camp fires. But she yearned to return home when the war was over. By now her family had left the Macquarie Street apartment and were living at _Quambi_ , a large house in Woollahra, with sufficient room for her. But she was worried she might not be able to take up her old life in Sydney. Could she go back to attending tennis parties, swimming and surfing, driving her father around in the Rolls and playing bridge with him as though the independence she knew in the war had never occurred? She described in a letter home how she could only marry someone who had shared the strange masculine life to which she had become accustomed.

At Christmas she organised a party and was delighted when her fellow drivers, for whom she had brought presents of food and warm clothes, gave her a beautiful evening bag which hung from a chain of solid silver. When she chided them affectionately for spending so much on her, the drivers insisted: 'It's _not_ extravagant— _Gospojitsa,_ you have done so much for us so we wanted to give you something that you will remember us by when the war is over.'

With tears in her eyes she thanked them for their gift. In an undated letter she wrote to her father describing the gift, saying, 'I wish they hadn't given me something so extravagant, none of them can afford it. But I will value their gift all my life as a remembrance of the dear fellows.'

To repay their kindness, on 6 January 1918 (the day when the Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas and Anglicans celebrate Epiphany), Olive entertained her fellow drivers. With her Greek landlady's help she served what she described in a letter home as a 'feast of ham and eggs' bought on the black market, and which she knew the Serb drivers could not afford.

The feast turned into a party. The drivers brought records of Serb folk music, which they played on Olive's wind-up gramophone and tried to teach her Serb folk dances. She found to her surprise that Artsa was light on his feet. Olive loved dancing and Artsa whirled and twirled her around in a Serb folk dance until they both collapsed on a low divan, out of breath and laughing. He was really very nice, she thought.

Olive missed Yovi and wrote chatty affectionate letters to him each week. He replied with brief notes at irregular intervals, revealing very little about life in London. His letters were friendly but he might as well have been writing to a male comrade. Worrying about Yovi, she did not eat the stodgy food served by the Serb Army, lost weight and looked better for it.

By 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had begun the war by invading Serbia, was collapsing. Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria and Hungary, King of Dalmatia, Slovenia and Croatia was dead. The Dalmatians, Slavs and Croats were demanding freedom.

But while the Austrians still had food, the Serbs, whose farms and barns had been burned by the retreating Austrian Army, had nothing. Much of the populace, already weakened by war, had died of starvation and from the flu epidemic that now swept through Europe like a plague.

At last the Americans awoke to the suffering of the Serbs. President Wilson ordered the Serb flag to be flown over the White House to honour the bravery of the Serbs and their wartime losses. The American Red Cross sent the Serb Army a gift of twenty-nine brand new ambulances. Artsa, Olive, Dushan and Lukar, as the most reliable of the drivers, made numerous journeys over dangerous mountain roads delivering the new ambulances to the battle lines.

On these journeys Olive became aware that Artsa was head over heels in love with her. She was flattered as he was a very handsome young man but felt she could never love anyone but Yovi.

Just at this difficult time in her life, Olive was told by her Greek landlady that she needed Olive's room for some relatives who had been left homeless by the fire. Olive had only two weeks to find somewhere else to rent in a city where accommodation was scarce and so many other people were homeless after the Great Fire.

Artsa and the other drivers were appalled at the thought of their _Gospojitsa_ without anywhere to live. In their free time they built a little house from a huge wooden crate in which an Australian light plane had been shipped out to a unit of the Australian Flying Corps in Salonika.

Artsa's father was a carpenter by trade. Artsa was able to turn the crate into a little chalet and build partitions inside, so she had a separate living room and bedroom; he also built cupboards. Olive's new home had a pitched roof, eaves decorated with scalloped barge boards, small windows with shutters, and its own front door. The diminutive home was installed in the garden of a Greek woman friend by the name of Mrs Papadopoulos, whose toilet and bathroom Olive could use. Olive lived there without paying rent for the rest of her time in Salonika.

To thank her workmates for their time and effort, Olive spent the money she would have paid in rent buying them little luxuries on the black market—chocolate, warm clothes and medicines.

In Salonika, homeless men, women and children slept in the streets, on park benches, around the harbour and on the hillsides outside the city. Their suffering made Olive feel that her own

_The Balkans and Greece during World War I._

unhappiness was trivial by comparison. Artsa told her that the Serbs in Belgrade were also homeless and starving, and were slaughtering their horses for meat. 'Hard work is the way to get through troubles', her father had always claimed. Olive decided she would drown her sorrows by doing everything she could to help the homeless.

Her father was still raising money in New South Wales for the Save Salonika appeal and sent it to Olive. She used the money to buy and equip mobile canteens in caravans. They were fitted with small stoves and ice boxes to provide simple meals and hot and cold drinks to the homeless. She also donated money to an orphanage run by Katharine MacPhail, a Scottish doctor who had left the Scottish Women's Hospitals and was doing marvellous work with the Quaker War Victims Fund, helping orphans and destitute families.

Eventually some of the homeless people _were_ rehoused, but Olive could see Salonika would take many years to rebuild. A French architect named Hébrard was appointed to design blocks of apartments and wide boulevards to replace many of the old and narrow streets.

In February 1918 Yovi wrote to tell Olive that he was following his family's wishes and formally announcing his engagement to the Crown Prince's cousin. He gave no details, aware that saying any more about his bride or his impending wedding would only hurt Olive more.

Desolate, she sought comfort from an overjoyed Artsa, who told her he had always loved her. She was the woman he wanted to marry and cherish. It was a clear case of love on the rebound, but the fact that this handsome young man loved her so devotedly was balm to Olive's self-esteem, which had taken a severe beating after Yovi's rejection.

Olive wrote to her father telling him she was thinking of marrying Artsa a 'comrade in arms'.

She was distressed to receive a disapproving cable from her father on 24 April 1918. She replied immediately saying,

> I am afraid you think Artsa is a fortune hunter, your views are quite natural because you can't know anything about him—I respect them and fully understand them, but oh Daddy darling, how I wish you could see the other side and try to understand.

Olive's father was so concerned he wrote to Colonel Derok and learned to his further dismay that Artsa was a peasant from a huge family who lived in a hovel in a Serbian village.

Kelso King wrote back to Olive: how could his darling possibly wed someone of a different race and a different religion, who had left school at twelve? Artsa might be good with cars but could he read and write? Ironically enough, her father actually suggested that she should write and discuss the matter of her marriage with 'her good friend Major Yovi', who would explain the impossibility of such an alliance.

In her next letter Olive attempted to explain that this was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. She and Artsa had been friends for years and she valued his loyalty and devotion. She did not admit to her father that her brave 'companion in arms', was in fact illiterate, but insisted she would not give him up.

Artsa continued to profess his affections. When they were on a trip to the Vardar River, Artsa swore on his mother's life he would die rather than let Olive fall into the hands of the Bulgarians, who might rape her. If necessary, he would defend her to the death.

Nevertheless, paternalistic forces strengthened against Olive. Colonel Derok called Olive into his office for a fatherly chat. He explained that Artsa and the other poor mechanics and drivers had lost touch with their wives, sweethearts, sisters and mothers—everyone they held dear. He made it clear that Artsa was only one of the _many_ Serbian soldiers who were in love with Olive. 'You are their _Gospojitsa,_ all of them would kill anyone who would harm a hair on your head.' The colonel stressed that he liked Artsa very much and considered him an excellent soldier and mechanic. But he was definitely _not_ a husband for _Gospojitsa._ 'You are an educated woman, you must not think of marrying _any_ of our soldiers—their ambitions, their way of life and their family circumstances are too different for such an unequal marriage to succeed.'

Colonel Derok was too tactful to refer to the fact that Yovi would marry the girl his family had chosen.

Without warning, Yovi returned from London to confer with Crown Prince Alexander, who was now back in Salonika from the front line. Yovi was worried and annoyed to find that 'his Olinka' could consider marrying an illiterate peasant. He declared he was in total agreement with Colonel Derok and with Olive's father. 'You _cannot_ marry Artsa,' he told Olive. 'I forbid it.'

Justifiably annoyed, Olive replied that she could not understand how Yovi could abandon her for someone else and _still_ believe he could run her life. He had chosen to marry someone else, so she was free to make _her_ decision and she chose Artsa.

Cousin Selwyn King, whom she had known since childhood and who was more like an elder brother, had been promoted and was now Major King in the 3rd Division of the Australian Imperial Force. Urged on by Olive's father, Selwyn arrived in Salonika to meet Artsa. Through a Serbian–English interpreter Selwyn told Artsa that Olive's father would never consent to their marriage.

Having thoroughly upset poor Artsa and left him distraught, Selwyn proceeded to lecture Olive on the impossibility of marrying Artsa. He also added that her father was very worried and wanted her to come home.

Olive, by now in her mid-thirties, was furious at being told what to do by Yovi and by Selwyn. 'I've had quite enough of men lecturing me and I'm quite capable of running my own life, thank you very much,' she said cuttingly. Yet she yearned to talk to her father, whom she had not seen for five years, and to Sunny, the only person in the world to whom she could confide the truth about the emotional turmoil she was in.

Olive wanted to obtain leave from the Serbs, and go to Sydney to see her father and discuss her future with him, possibly even tell him the truth.

The war in the Balkans was now reaching a crucial point. The Serbian and French Armies were fighting their way back through Serbia to Belgrade where they were horrified to find people starving, crops and houses burned and many Serbs reduced to begging.

Colonel Derok implored her to stay in Serbia, saying 'You are the only member of my staff I simply cannot spare for any length of time.' The only way of getting from Salonika to Australia was by cargo boat and that trip home would take months. He said he would give her a few days off to go to Athens, Vodena or Corfu if she needed a break to think things over, but marrying Artsa was not fair to him or her. After all, there was a war on, and she _had_ enlisted in the Army and was under Army discipline unless she resigned. They needed drivers and ambulances—the driving team could hardly spare her.

Olive was shocked that this was how the colonel saw it. But she wrote to her father telling him she had changed her mind. She had applied for leave to go to England to buy stock for her canteens. She would _not_ marry Artsa after all. As soon as the Serbs had control of their country once again, they would work together on an aid project to run canteens and shops in war-torn Serbia, similar to the canteens she had set up in Salonika to feed the homeless after the fire. She knew Artsa would be excellent at running the transport side of this venture and she knew she could trust him implicitly with money.

In May 1918 Olive wrote letters to her father and the editors of the _Bulletin_ , the _Sydney Morning Herald_ and the _Telegraph_ appealing for funds to help the Serbs through her canteens. Her father's reply was to send money but insist she stop seeing Artsa completely, or she would only hurt him even more. Involving Artsa in her new project was simply not fair on him and only asking for trouble.

By August 1918 Artsa had been advised by Selwyn, Colonel Derok and by his own parents that such an unequal marriage would cause grave problems. He was resigned to the fact _Gospojitsa_ would never marry him. It was left to Colonel Derok to solve the matter by posting Artsa away from Salonika to Monastir. Olive had by now realised that such a marriage was impossible. It was time to leave Salonika. Put her memories behind her and move on.

**T HE SAVE THE SERBS FUND**

Sergeant Olive King was demobilised from the Serb Army in April 1919, five months after World War I ended and which revealed the desperate straits the Serbs were left in. Olive had already written to Australian companies Arnotts Biscuits, the Queensland Meat Preservative Company and various sugar companies begging for supplies to be donated to help the Serbs. She received crates of goods for her canteens.

What Olive needed now was ready cash to buy more food for starving Serbs. She hardened her heart and sold _Ella_ to a motor dealer. She made a short trip to London to see Sunny and buy more supplies, returning promptly to Salonika.

Then, leaving her Salonika canteens in charge of two Quaker aid workers, Olive packed up her possessions inside _Bridget_ and drove north, up the steep winding road to Vodena (Edessa) until she crossed the frontier.

Serbia turned out to be an attractive country of mountain ranges and wooded valleys, bisected by the wide basin of the Danube and its tributaries, the Sava, the Marova and the Tisza. She drove along the valley of the River Sava, through plundered towns and villages, where barns and crops had been burned to the ground by the retreating Austrians and their German allies. Everywhere Olive went she found homeless families sleeping in drainage ditches or in damp pine forests. Some had crawled into underground trenches, others had dug holes in the ground and made shelters of boughs, and were surviving on berries and roots. Hunger, typhoid and cholera were everywhere. The graveyards were full.

So many people were left homeless and begging. She gave out the tins of food she had brought with her and then had so little more to give them she could have wept.

She arrived at the capital, Belgrade, on 11 November 1919, and wrote to her father about street upon street of burned-out buildings, just like Salonika after the fire. Everywhere she went was the same: piles of rubble, people trying to find shelter in bombed-out cellars, and long lines of the homeless waiting at soup kitchens or making fires on street corners to keep warm.

The retreating Catholic Austrians had slaughtered Serb cattle, ripped out their vines and burned fields of maize, barley and wheat before it could be harvested. Serb farmhouses and cottages, barns and onion-domed churches were in ruins. She thought how strange that these horrors had been inflicted by men on innocent women and children in the name of religion.

The Serb economy was in ruins: there was no money in the exchequer to import food. Summer was past. What would happen when the snows came?

The tinned food she had brought had all been distributed. Olive lived on black tea that she brewed in a billy. Now she had only a couple of packets of biscuits left and one jar of marmalade. Her throat felt constricted and she could scarcely eat. Everywhere she went hungry children clamoured for food.

Starving children haunted Olive's dreams. She wrote to her father again explaining to him how guilty she felt that before the war she had led an idle, selfish life. Now at last she had a chance to show that one person could make a difference. She would make that difference to the best of her ability.

In his reply her father claimed that he understood how she felt but implored her to come home. He feared that after three years of hard work, after several bouts of malaria and now surrounded by victims of cholera and typhoid her health would suffer. Surely she had done enough by setting up canteens for the homeless in Salonika?

Olive wrote back. She said she had to do something for those in need and this was her way of showing Christian charity. Far better to do something here than sit in St Andrew's Cathedral just _talking_ about doing good for the underprivileged and the starving. Surely her father and Belicia must recognise that this was what mattered to her. Kelso King the clergyman's son took the point.

Accustomed to raising large sums of money for various charities, Olive's father formed an Australian branch of the International Save the Serbs Fund. Belicia also organised fundraising functions among her friends.

Olive's letters to her father in 1919 reveals how much she was helped by the war veteran Colonel Derok and his network of contacts. After _Bridget_ was involved in an accident (while being driven by another driver) and smashed beyond repair, Olive travelled around by train, persuading local mayors to give her space for her canteens. She was allowed to park the canteens in Belgrade, the former Bosnian city Sarajevo, and in other ruined cities such as Skopje, Nish, Brod, and the walled city of Ragusa (now called Dubrovnik).

Practical as ever when it came to fundraising, her father sent more money to London to buy food and warm clothing at bulk prices. The Save the Serbs appeal took off, and there was a generous response from every state in Australia to advertisements and newspaper articles about famine in Serbia. Sufficient funds were raised to replenish the original canteens and to stock ten more canteen/shops in the villages.

To buy more food, Olive took the night sleeper from Belgrade to Paris, although the rail lines were badly damaged, changed trains and caught the Calais–Dover ferry, and from there travelled to stay with Sunny near London. She was planning to buy two large and reliable lorries and fill them with crates of tinned food and warm clothing, then ship them to Salonika, which was still the closest port to Belgrade.

Buying a lorry was relatively easy. However, in postwar England food was either rationed or in short supply.

But strong-minded Olive was determined to bring aid to the starving before it was too late. She contacted Sir Charles Wade, a former attorney-general of New South Wales, who was now the state's agent-general in London and an old friend of her father. Sir Charles had also become chairman and honorary treasurer of the London Committee of the Save the Serbs Fund.

Sir Charles made the necessary contacts with British government departments so that Olive could obtain permits enabling her to buy bulk supplies of tinned corned beef, tinned sardines, canned fruit and vegetables, packets of biscuits, powdered milk, coffee, chocolate, tea, blankets, woollen socks and scarves. She even bought a consignment of primus stoves at wholesale prices.

Olive paid the accounts, checked the items and arranged for the food and medical supplies to be shipped to Salonika. She asked for and was given a cabin on a cargo ship, the only woman on board. When the shipping company protested that a woman could not travel alone and unchaperoned on a cargo ship, Olive produced her Serb Army identity papers showing she had been a sergeant in the Serb Army, and as such was allowed to board.

Arriving safely at Salonika, Olive found thousands more Slav and Albanian refugees had flooded there, joining those who had been left homeless after the fire. Hundreds of people were living in the streets, using sheets as impromptu tents or sleeping rough in the hills around Salonika. There were homeless families everywhere, in every square and open space, their possessions in wicker baskets or pillow cases.

To help alleviate the desperate situation Olive set up two more canteen shops in Salonika and donated money out of her trust fund to the International Red Cross and the Quaker War Victims Appeal. These were staffed by English and American volunteers, who were also running free medical clinics. Apart from the old Turkish quarter high on the hill, most of Salonika (now reverting to its former name of Thessaloniki) was still in ruins. The French military architect who had been appointed to redesign the city was still working on his plans and progress was slow.

After establishing four more canteens in Salonika and hiring staff to run them, Olive employed a Serb to drive one of her lorries while she drove the other to Belgrade.

Olive kept her pistol handy on the dashboard in case there were attempts to rob the lorry. At night she placed her army sleeping bag on top of the crates and slept there, the gun beside her.

Living frugally and using some of her own money, Olive employed two English girls she met in Belgrade, former VADs with the SWH who spoke a little Serbian, to operate the new canteens. She also found additional part-time female staff from among the Serb community to help run her network of canteens.

Everywhere Olive went in Serb cities she saw desperation. Trees had been stripped of leaves which people boiled up to eat, and even the bark of birch trees was consumed. Cats and dogs were slaughtered for food, dead horses were cut up and turned into sausages, even leather harnesses were boiled up in water and the resulting liquid drunk for its nourishment.

Olive saw long queues materialise after the merest rumour that a shop had something to sell. Ration cards had been issued, giving each inhabitant the right to a small quantity of bread, potatoes and sugar, but the shops quickly ran out of supplies.

It was the same with Olive's canteens. The starving queued for hours to get food. Eventually the lines were so long, staff had to limit how many tins or packets of food each family could buy.

Yet Olive was absorbed by her work. One day she realised that her father had been right. Hard work and thinking of others had lifted her depression. Another letter to her father described how she made a trip to Salonika by boat to check the canteens there, and how beautiful she found Salonika after being away from it. On the return trip the captain gave up his cabin to her but then became a pest wanting to share the cabin with her. Olive wrote with humour about the incident, describing him as that 'wretched old skipper'.

Olive's Save the Serbs chain of non-profit making canteens serving hot soups and stews free of charge to starving people saved thousands of war victims and rescued Serb soldiers from malnutrition and starvation. The warm clothes the canteens sold at cost price saved many families from frostbite in winter. Eventually she had her big van and two smaller vans she called 'Tin Lizzies' to service the canteens.

Olive continued to open more canteens until eventually there were seventeen outlets. She seemed fearless as she drove or travelled by train around the ruined countryside, seeking food from as far away as Fiume and Constantinople. She and two of her staff were travelling on a Serb goods train when their carriage was derailed; many passengers were killed but miraculously all three of them escaped unscathed. When her father heard about the train accident he implored her to return to Australia, but she refused saying she had to stay until the famine was over.

By 1920, starvation no longer stalked the land. The last of Olive's canteens finally closed in June 1920. It was time to think about the future. It was six years since she had seen her father. She told him how much she missed him. 'If only Australia were not so far away,' she wrote in a long letter to her father. 'I would buy a house on the Adriatic and grow vines there.'

When Olive received disquieting news from Belicia about her father's health, she decided to go back to Australia immediately. Much as she loved living in Europe, going home to see her father had priority.

In recognition of her work Olive was decorated by the Serbs with the Good Samaritan Cross for setting up canteens for starving refugees in Salonika. She received a card from Yovi congratulating her.

Before leaving Serbia, Olive sold her lorries and all the cooking equipment, foodstuffs and clothing in the canteen/stores. She donated some of the money from the canteens to a child health unit being established in the University of Belgrade. The rest she gave to a Serb children's hospital and orphanage in the city, set up by her friend Dr Katharine MacPhail.

**R ETURN TO SYDNEY**

At the time Olive arrived back in Sydney by ship, her father and Belicia and young Hazel and Nicholas were living in a large house in the harbourside suburb of Point Piper. Back in Sydney, Olive's reunion with her father was an emotional one. He had aged greatly and every moment she spent with him was precious. Her father steadfastly refused to let her take a paid job or buy a pastoral property and run it herself. So, out of love for her father, she compromised by taking an interesting but unpaid position as state secretary of the New South Wales Girl Guides Association, an organisation with which Belicia (now Lady Alicia King) was involved.

Olive's Serb friends kept her up to date with news from Serbia. The Crown Prince's father had died in 1921 and he was now King Alexander. The King had set up new factories with foreign capital and given people jobs but there were growing tensions between Serbs and Croats in his new amalgamated kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He was now looking to marry but his choice for a spouse was very limited. There was scarcely an Orthodox princess of the right age left, because the Great War had seen the fall of so many kingdoms and empires. The best option seemed the daughter of King Ferdinand of wealthy Rumania, who was Orthodox and of the right age. In the end matters were settled. Rumania had not only common borders with the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes but also valuable oil wells. So diplomats were sent to arrange a marriage to young Princess Marie of Rumania.

When Olive read about King Alexander's engagement she wondered what part Yovi had played in it. His Christmas cards gave details about his postings and various addresses but never contained any news about his wife or whether they had children. Olive was too proud to ask.

Olive returned to Serbia only once. Early in 1922, she received a gold-edged card inviting Miss Olive King and Sir George Kelso and Lady Alicia King to attend the wedding of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Princess Marie of Rumania.

Belicia and Olive's father were thrilled. Kelso King's heart condition had stabilised and they longed to visit Serbia, the Dalmatian coast and Greece. For Olive the trip would mean meeting Yovi again. Yet how could she refuse?

Olive, her father and stepmother and little Hazel and Nicholas spent the summer of 1922 in England with Sunny and her husband, but her father's angina prevented him from travelling to attend the wedding. In the end Olive did return to Belgrade for the King's wedding, chaperoned by Belicia. Bells pealed from the churches, there was folk dancing in the squares, and the streets were garlanded with ropes of wild flowers. Olive met up with old friends like Dr Katharine MacPhail.

In a colourful ceremony in the cathedral the bride and groom were crowned with diadems. After the ceremony hundreds of guests streamed out of the cathedral and were taken in fleets of chauffeur-driven cars and wedding carriages decorated with flowers to the reception in the royal palace.

Determined that she would not look a frump in front of Yovi and his wife, Olive had bought a beautifully cut silk gown. She only hoped that she could keep her feelings under control and that nothing would betray to her stepmother just how much Yovi had meant to her.

To her surprise Yovi arrived at the reception with his sisters but not his wife. He wore a blue sash with the medal of the Order of St Sava and other decorations over white tie and tails in which he looked even more handsome than she remembered. Yovi behaved impeccably, every inch the 'old comrade in arms!'

Belicia was charmed by Yovi. Newspaper accounts of the wedding describe how, after a sumptuous dinner, the King and Queen led the dancing. Alexander wore his ceremonial uniform and rows of medals. The royal couple waltzed together surrounded by floor-length mirrors that reflected their every movement. Olive described to her father how 'the King was charming but the new Queen looked bored to the point of insolence'.

Yovi requested a courtesy dance with Belicia. Duty done, he invited Olive onto the dance floor, and waltzing with Yovi was as magical as it had been at the White Tower Restaurant years ago. They chatted about the old days in Salonika and mutual friends. Olive summoned up courage to ask after Yovi's wife. Apparently she was recovering from the birth of their second son. Olive was surprised that she did not attend the wedding, and Yovi observed that some women preferred their children to their husbands.

Colonel Derok stood back, looked Olive up and down, admiring the dress of shimmering floating silk, her Order of St Sava pinned to one shoulder, her bare tanned shoulders, shining blonde hair and polished fingernails. Olive reported that Colonel Derok said she looked 'so beautiful that he would never have known me'. She talked about the old days in Salonika, and wrote to her father: 'I met heaps of friends and had a most delightful evening.'

Olive and Yovi never met again, although they exchanged Christmas cards each year. One of these cards revealed that Yovi had been transferred from his position in Vienna to Athens, where he did well. Later he served a few years in Geneva as the Yugoslavian representative to the League of Nations, followed by a posting he had always wanted: ambassador in Paris, his favourite city.

In the Australian spring (European autumn) of 1934, Olive opened _The Times_ and read how, on 9 October, King Alexander of Yugoslavia had been assassinated while on a state visit to France. The King had been shot while driving through Marseilles in an open Rolls-Royce. There were grave fears the assassination could be used as a pretext for war in the same way the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been a pretext.

In another paper Olive saw a photograph of the King in the open Rolls-Royce in which he had been assassinated. Could that be Yovi sitting with him in the car? As Serb ambassador to France he could easily have been present. She found a magnifying glass and peered through it. The third man in the car sitting beside French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou _was_ Yovi. King Alexander and Foreign Minister Barthou had died instantly, while the Serb ambassador to France had died later in hospital. Yovi dead—she could hardly believe it.

In 1939, World War II broke out. Olive was now fifty-five but she was determined to join the Australian Army as a driver. When they told her she was too old she was annoyed. Undaunted, she put her mechanical knowledge to good use, studied aircraft manufacture and engine inspection techniques and became an examiner of engines at the De Havilland aircraft factory at Mascot. It was a most unusual role for a woman at that time.

Sir George Kelso and Lady King and his daughter continued to be involved with many charities and volunteer organisations until his death in 1943. Olive suffered a double blow when she learned that Sunny had developed heart disease and needed her help. Without a thought for her own safety, Olive managed to get on a boat to London to be with her sister.

Olive spent the final years of the war caring for Sunny. Later, she lived with Sunny and her husband, who had bought a villa at Kyrenia on the island of Cyprus. Gradually the island of Cyprus became turbulent and dangerous as Cypriot Turks and Cypriot Greeks became locked in a bitter conflict.

After Harold's death, Olive continued to nurse her sister until Sunny died too. Olive thought about buying a house in Cyprus. However, the conflict on Cyprus was growing worse and several English expatriates were killed by terrorists. Olive, who had already lived through one bitter racial and religious war, decided to return home. Olive returned to Australia and lived with Belicia at Point Piper, caring for her widowed stepmother until Belicia also passed away.

After Olive's death in 1958 at the age of seventy-three, Dr Hazel King, her half-sister, now an academic at Sydney University, published a small edition of Olive's letters to her father. These gave readers an insight into the remarkable courage and determination of her extraordinary sister.
> _War's purpose was destruction, which appeared to be the opposite of our function as artists or as women._
>
>
>
> STELLA BOWEN, OFFICIAL WAR ARTIST, FROM _D RAWN FROM LIFE_, LONDON, 1941

# [CHAPTER 2
Dr Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett and Dr Lilian Violet Cooper](004-toc.html#ch02)

**Dr Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett**

1872 – 1960

Serbian Order of St Sava

Cross of Honour of the Serbian Red Cross

Officer of the Order of the British Empire

**Dr Lilian Violet Cooper**

1861 – 1947

Serbian Order of St Sava

Imperial Russian Order of St Anne

At the beginning of the twentieth century, in line with the prevailing male opinion of the time, it was generally thought that women were too illogical and hysterical to serve as army medical officers or surgeons. These ideas were not new. The German philosopher, George Hegel, for example, wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century:

> Women's limited mental capacity equips them only for housework and child rearing. Women cannot succeed in science or allied fields and are incapable of intellectual achievements...'

William Balls-Headley, Professor of Obstetrics at Melbourne University, thought them incapable of becoming doctors:

> If young women were allowed to undertake tertiary education the energy needed by the uterus would be diverted to the brain, rendering them infertile.

However, dedicated young women like Agnes Bennett and Lilian Cooper proved these professors wrong. Despite encountering prejudice and opposition from male students and professors, both young women studied medicine and passed their final examinations with flying colours. And fortunately, too, many women doctors managed to enlist in voluntary medical organisations during World War I and save thousands of lives although risking their own. Their heroism went largely unnoticed by the governments of Britain and Australia—though the French, Serb and Russians, with whom they worked, awarded them medals.

**A GNES BENNETT—THE EARLY YEARS**

Agnes Bennett was born in the Sydney suburb of Neutral Bay, sixth of seven children of William Christopher Bennett, a quiet and cultured professional man, and his wife Agnes Amelia. The family comprised four boys and two girls. In 1878, when Agnes was six, her strong-minded English-born mother, who believed in the superiority of an English education, took Agnes and her two elder brothers overseas to place them in English schools. Agnes was sent to the famous Cheltenham Ladies' College.

Tragically in June 1881, while still in England, Mrs Bennett fell victim to smallpox and died a horrific and painful death. Agnes was with her mother in her last hours and her sufferings made a deep impression on the sensitive, highly intelligent little girl. Agnes's father, alerted to his wife's illness, took a boat from Sydney but arrived in England too late to see his wife alive and had to escort his children back to Sydney.

W.C. Bennett was a busy man so he employed a resident housekeeper named Sarah Darling to care for his large and motherless family. Relations between the Bennett children and Sarah were not pleasant but several years after his wife's death Mr Bennett married her. She bore him two more children. Agnes in later life would claim her stepmother only cared about her own children's welfare and was cruel to her stepchildren.

Agnes and her siblings and half-siblings moved from Neutral Bay to a larger house at St Leonards. Agnes was doing well at Abbotsleigh, a private school, where she was a member of the tennis team. Then Agnes's father, who was very fond of his eldest daughter, died of a heart attack when she was only fifteen. At this crucial time when Agnes needed security and continuity, she was removed from Abbotsleigh and the comfort of close friends and familiar teachers.

Agnes's stepmother sent her to a school where the fees were cheaper, Sydney Girls High School, in the Francis Greenway-designed building now occupied by David Jones on Elizabeth Street. Although it must have been difficult for Agnes at first, Sydney Girls' High encouraged its brightest girls, and Agnes's classmates included the future writers Ethel Turner and Louise Mack. Many pupils went on to tertiary education but Agnes was told by her stepmother that there was no money for university fees for _her_ —her father's money would be better spent on her brothers' education.

Agnes's stepmother was sole trustee of her father's will so she held the purse strings. In her opinion, Agnes would do well to get married as soon as possible and stop costing the family money. Fortunately, Agnes received a small legacy from an aunt on her father's side, which enabled her to pay what were then relatively expensive tuition fees to study arts at Sydney University. This was the only faculty that admitted women at that time.

In 1890, after a year of studying arts, Agnes applied for a scholarship and was thrilled to receive one. As a great privilege she was allowed to switch from arts to science, so she grasped the opportunity to study geology and biology. She was a good all-round student, intelligent as well as strong and athletic. She loved tennis and played for Sydney University.

While playing in a tournament near her home she met a young naval officer with whom she fell deeply in love. They announced their engagement and Agnes was ecstatically happy planning a future with the man she loved. Then came terrible news. Agnes's fiancé had drowned in a boating accident on Sydney Harbour. For Agnes, already grief-stricken by her father's death, this was the final blow. No one would ever take her fiancé's place. His loss marked a turning point in her career—from now onwards Agnes channelled all her energies into studying for a career, determined to be financially independent. In 1894, she became the first woman at Sydney University to gain a science degree and passed with first class honours.

But Agnes Bennett's dream of a career in science was soon shattered. Her responses to job advertisements received no acknowledgement—male employers did not want a woman. Her stepmother refused to continue supporting her: Agnes had to earn a living or starve. She did one of the few things open to educated young woman who lacked money in that era. She responded to an advertisement for a governess and went to teach children on a remote sheep property in outback New South Wales. It wasn't what she had spent so many years studying for but she tried to make the best of it.

**A GNES BECOMES A DOCTOR**

One day by chance Agnes opened the newspaper and read an article about the remarkable Dr Elsie Inglis (pronounced _Ing-alls_ ). Elsie had been born in India in 1864 where her father was a colonial administrator. When Elsie was five he had been given a job in Tasmania but the family returned to Scotland in 1878 and Elsie went on to do her medical training in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

What impressed Agnes was that Elsie Inglis had managed to qualify as a doctor at a university where _female_ students were banned from using the dissecting room. She had fought against this restriction and opened her own medical college so that the female students could acquire the practical knowledge that would help them get through their medical exams.

Agnes was fired with enthusiasm by the story and decided she too would study at Edinburgh University Medical College to become a doctor. Elsie Inglis would be her role model. But once again her stepmother disappointed her by refusing to loan her any money or pay her fees to undertake a second degree. Undaunted, Agnes applied to her late father's bank manager and told him that she felt that medicine was her vocation in life just as engineering had been that of her father. The bank manager agreed to provide her with a low-interest loan so she could enrol at Edinburgh but warned her that she had only a few years to pay back the loan plus interest.

When she arrived in Edinburgh, Agnes was forced to live very frugally. She rented cheap but damp lodgings in a basement apartment. After the warmth of Sydney she found Edinburgh the 'coldest, grimmest place I've ever seen'.

By now Dr Inglis had managed to obtain a teaching post at Edinburgh University Medical College, the first woman to do so. Agnes was one of her students.

However, due to the cold winter Agnes went down with bronchitis and had to miss several of her tutorials. She had been a keen student and the fact that she did not appear at tutorials for some weeks worried Dr Inglis. She looked up Agnes's address and came to visit her. When examining Agnes, Dr Inglis realised she had bronchial pneumonia. She provided medical care free of charge until her student had fully recovered.

Elsie Inglis had a soft spot for her young Australian student. Mindful of her own poverty-stricken days as a student and her own problems as a woman pioneer, she befriended Agnes. She invited her home to tea on many occasions and became her mentor and friend. Agnes was well aware she must pass each and every exam and qualify as a doctor as soon as she could. Today, when female students walk our medical schools in large numbers, it is hard to imagine how badly they were once treated. University lecturers ridiculed their intellectual capacity and often tried to embarrass them by telling salacious stories in class while the male students tittered if their female counterparts showed the least sign of discomfort.

Agnes ignored such jibes. She worked hard and passed her medical exams. Subsequently, she took examinations in surgery and was elected a member of the illustrious Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. But because she was a woman, the male-dominated Appointments Committee turned down Agnes's application for the position of surgical registrar at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh's main teaching hospital, in favour of a male graduate whose examination results had not been nearly as good as hers.

Other jobs she applied for were denied her, often for ridiculous excuses, such as the fact there were no staff lavatories for women doctors and she could not use the nurses' lavatory.

At long last she found a position at the lunatic asylum at Larbert, a grim and grossly under-funded mental hospital near the town of Stirling in Scotland. For fifteen harrowing months Agnes worked in this asylum, where conditions were primitive and Dickensian. Mental health was a Cinderella specialty in those days. In the absence of tranquillisers and anti-depressants, violently disturbed patients were held in straitjackets or 'restraining chairs', and kept on locked wards. Sexual abuse of female patients by male staff was commonplace. Dr Bennett struggled to improve conditions for her patients but found male hospital trustees rarely wanted to listen to a woman.

Eventually Agnes decided to return to Australia and look for a position in Sydney. However, in spite of her excellent qualifications she was no more successful than she had been in Scotland. Agnes soon realised that the specialty of surgery was the biggest boy's club of all.

By this time she was short of money and still had to repay much of her loan to the bank. So in 1904 she accepted the post of medical officer at Callan Park Hospital for the Insane, which, she soon found, had the same abuses as the horrific lunatic asylum at Larbert.

When a friend wrote to Agnes from New Zealand offering her a partnership in a leading private practice in Wellington, Agnes took up the offer. She went on to become chief maternity officer at Wellington's St Helen's Hospital. However, she had not given up her dream of practising surgery, and in 1911, returned to Edinburgh to complete her degree in surgery. She went back to New Zealand with this additional postgraduate qualification and fought against male authorities who opposed tertiary education for women on the grounds that the health of the nation's future mothers would suffer due to the stress of too much study.

#### DR LILIAN VIOLET COOPER—NO SHRINKING VIOLET

On the other side of the world another determined and highly intelligent young woman had also dreamed of becoming a surgeon but suffered from prejudice against women in medicine. Lilian Cooper came from an affluent middle-class family but had to struggle just as hard as Agnes to be allowed to study medicine in an era when boys had careers and girls married and had children. Lilian's parents were very kind to her but they gave priority to educating their sons.

Although Lilian's middle name was Violet, she was no shrinking violet. She had strong opinions and a strong will. She yearned for financial independence and wanted a career, a very unusual concept in the late 1870s when she was an adolescent.

Lilian was very tall with beautiful brown eyes, a large nose and large hands and feet. Extreme shyness about her appearance made her appear brusque, especially in the presence of young men. She was interested in books and science and totally uninterested in acquiring the 'ladylike' accomplishments which were so prized by her mother and aunts.

On the contrary, she loved science and anatomy and read books on these topics. Eighteen-year-old Lilian secretly used her dress allowance to pay fees to attend a cramming establishment to obtain tuition in the scientific subjects which fascinated her. Seven years later, in 1886, Lilian Cooper found a loophole in the regulations that banned women from studying at the London School of Medicine: her qualifications in science and maths from the London Society of Apothecaries, which blithely used the word 'person' rather than 'man' on admission forms for their qualifying exams.

Once Lilian gained admission to the London School of Medicine she was determined that nothing would stop her qualifying. She studied very hard and passed her medical exams. At this critical and stressful time in her life, she formed a deep and abiding friendship with a young art student, Josephine Bedford, a friendship which aroused hostility among her colleagues.

In 1890, the only professional job newly qualified Dr Lilian Cooper could obtain was as assistant to a general practitioner in the small Essex town of Halsted. Whether the GP in question was difficult to work with or whether he suspected Lilian Cooper of a lesbian relationship with Josephine Bedford is unclear but after a few months he dismissed Dr Cooper without a reference.

#### DR COOPER PRACTISES IN BRISBANE

Dr Cooper must have placed advertisements in foreign medical magazines for her next job because she received a letter offering her the post of 'assistant with a view to partnership' in a general practice in Brisbane, at that time a primitive frontier town with few amenities and a very humid and exhausting climate in summer.

In June 1891, Lilian and Josephine sailed 16,000 kilometres from Britain to the subtropical city of Brisbane, and Lilian became the first female practitioner to be registered in the State of Queensland. She soon discovered that her employer was a temperamental alcoholic and Lilian feared his alcohol problem was endangering his patients. Once again Dr Cooper stood up to a bullying employer, consulted a lawyer and finally secured the cancellation of her contract.

For standing up for herself she was unjustly pilloried and boycotted by male colleagues in Brisbane, who refused to give anaesthetics whenever she was asked to operate on patients. Alternative employment was denied her. In fact, there was a concerted effort among male specialists and GPs to freeze Dr Cooper out of medicine altogether so that she would be forced to return to Britain.

Strong-minded Lilian was determined not to be beaten. She was lucky that Josephine had a private income so that they had the means to live in Brisbane until Lilian once again found paid work. Dr Cooper was determined the medical establishment of Queensland would acknowledge her skills, even if she had to work without pay. She knew she was a good doctor in a city that badly needed well-trained physicians and surgeons.

Lilian Cooper was eventually allowed to join the Medical Society of Queensland and appointed as an unpaid 'honorary' at the Lady Lamington Hospital for Women. Lilian also worked at the Brisbane Hospital for Sick Children, which had been established by another woman, the pioneer settler Mary McConnel. To see her own patients, she conducted her daily rounds in a two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage driven by a groom, who looked after the horse while Dr Cooper was inside tending to patients.

On one occasion she narrowly escaped death. She was in the carriage when the groom took the blinkers off the horse, which took fright and bolted, smashing the carriage against a lamppost, throwing Dr Cooper headfirst onto the road and damaging her lower back. Lilian never minced her words and her language when she reproved the groom would have done credit to a bullock driver.

After that experience, Dr Cooper bought a bicycle and became known as the 'Lady on the Bicycle', as she pedalled around the streets of Brisbane in cumbersome long skirts or in the very modern 'bloomers' invented for women cyclists.

Her patients loved her and found her a warm and caring doctor. She was especially kind to the children of large, impoverished families and would buy toys for them out of her own money when they were in hospital.

By 1905 Dr Cooper was a senior doctor and appointed an honorary staff member of the Catholic Mater Misericordiae Hospital, newly established across the river in south Brisbane, and would later be employed in a salaried capacity there. She was devoted to the work of the Mater, which was run by well-trained and very dedicated Irish nuns, and would be connected with this hospital and its staff for the rest of her life.

In 1907 Lilian Cooper moved away from The Mansions on George Street and she and Josephine Bedford set up in handsome Auckland House on the corner of George and Mary Streets.

To update her surgical skills, in June 1911 she and Miss Bedford travelled to the United States and visited Minnesota's famous Mayo Clinic, and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland. A year later Dr Cooper gained further postgraduate qualifications in surgery at the University of Durham. Back in Brisbane, she now received warm congratulations (feigned or genuine) from male colleagues who at one time had done their best to prevent her practising medicine there by fair means or foul.

#### WORLD WAR I: EVERYTHING AND NOTHING CHANGES FOR WOMEN

At the outbreak of the war, Agnes Bennett was forty-two and a paediatrician with a long operating list. Dr Cooper was fifty-three and had a thriving practice acquired through twenty-five years of hard work.

Financially secure and successful though they were, both women would feel driven to offer their skills to help those injured in war, even if it cost them money to do so.

Three of Agnes's brothers had enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), and every day the papers brought news of young men dying in the trenches of northern France and Belgium. Keen to help in the war effort, Agnes returned from New Zealand to her home city of Sydney and offered her services to the AIF. The interviewing officer, who was far less well qualified than Dr Bennett, rudely told her that, if she wanted to help the war effort, she should 'stay home and knit'. Agnes left the room seething with rage. She wrote to her old friend and tutor Dr Elsie Inglis, asking if she could help her. Dr Inglis was setting up a chain of hospitals called the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service in countries like Belgium, France and Serbia, which were unable to fund military hospitals and ambulances. In her reply to Agnes, Dr Inglis told her that there would certainly be work for her and promised a surgeon's position in an all-women hospital in France.

Several months later Dr Inglis received an application from Dr Lilian Cooper, who had similarly been rejected by the British Army. Dr Cooper also recommended Miss Josephine Bedford for the post of orderly/ambulance driver and added that Miss Bedford was an excellent driver (a skill possessed by few women at that time).

In the middle of 1915, Dr Agnes Bennett sailed from Australia to join the Scottish Women's Hospitals, hoping to work with Dr Helen Sexton, an Australian surgeon in charge of a tented hospital at Auteuil in France. The SWH now had five tented hospitals in the north of the country assisting Belgian soldiers whose country had been overrun by Germany. When the ship made a stop at Alexandria, Egypt's main port, Agnes looked over the rail and saw wounded soldiers being carried down the gangplanks of hospital ships flying the British flag. They were then dumped unceremoniously on the dockside in the burning sun to wait for horse-drawn ambulances to take them to Army hospitals. She descended the gangplank and discovered the wounded men were Anzacs. These were soldiers from the fighting at Gallipoli, on their way to various military hospitals in Alexandria and Cairo. Due to the influx of so many patients, she learned, these hospitals were short of surgeons. Terrified one of her brothers might be among the wounded, she walked through indescribable chaos, overworked orderlies and Australian Army nurses trying to attend to men with terrible injuries. Many of the men had gangrenous wounds and needed limbs amputated immediately or they would die.

Agnes told the medical officer in charge she was a trained surgeon on her way to England to enlist. His face brightened and he asked if she could give them a hand as they were so short-staffed. Agnes made a quick decision. She had her surgical instruments with her and she would be useful here. She could continue on to Britain once the crisis was over. Agnes called for a steward to bring her trunk up from her cabin and left the ship. The commander of the medical services in Alexandria was delighted with his new recruit. Agnes was asked to escort wounded men to Cairo where she was received with open arms. There, she signed the necessary papers and became the first woman surgeon commissioned into the British Army, albeit on a temporary basis. Captain Bennett was attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) accredited to the staff of the British Army Hospital in Cairo. At last she was doing what she loved most—working as a surgeon. Agnes had that rare combination of qualities that made her an excellent physician, a brilliant surgeon and a good administrator.

In Cairo she found overcrowded wards and long operating lists. Wounded soldiers from the Dardanelles poured into the Army hospital. Typhoid and dysentery were common. Beds were scarce until Agnes and some other doctors commandeered a car, drove to the river and ripped out bunks from laid-up tourist steamers on the Nile.

After nearly six months spent in an operating theatre and in the wards with little free time, Dr Bennett received news that Bob, her favourite brother, was in Alexandria. She took the train there from Cairo and they spent the day together before he left for London.

With the evacuation of Gallipoli the hospital ships ceased bringing loads of wounded men to Egypt. It was time for Agnes to move on. She caught the train to Alexandria and boarded a ship for London, arriving there early in 1916.

The crying need now was for doctors and nurses to go to what had once been Macedonia, where the Serbs and the French—Britain's allies—were fighting Austrian soldiers, who were armed with German guns and German planes. As regent for his ailing father, Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia had applied to Dr Inglis, asking her to set up field hospitals on the border between Greek-owned Macedonia and Serb-owned but Austrian-occupied Macedonia, both of which had been ceded to Greece and Serbia after the recent Balkan Wars. Soldiers from the Irish Fusiliers and the famous Scottish regiment, the Black Watch, who had served at Gallipoli, were now being sent to help the Serbs fight the Austrians in an attempt to regain their captured country. A large British field hospital had been established for British troops in Salonika. But the Serb Army, now exiled from its own land, had no hospitals and very few ambulances.

Dr Bennett contacted Dr Inglis, who offered her the command of a field hospital in Greek Macedonia.

The new field hospital was to be set up near the front line, out of range of the guns. Wounded men would be sent down from the front line in lorry ambulances, driven by a team of women who would be under her command. Excited about the idea of running her own unit, Agnes signed on with the Scottish Women's Hospitals as a senior surgeon for a salary of £200 a year, plus expenses. This was far less than she received in civilian life, but war was not a time to argue over money.

From London, Dr Bennett took control of ordering tents, medical equipment, emergency rations, ambulances, spare parts and bedding to be shipped to Salonika. She also interviewed large numbers of volunteers. From the British and Canadians who had applied she selected two experienced surgeons—Dr Sybil Lewis and Dr Josephine Muncaster—and an Australian general practitioner with surgical experience named Dr Jessie Scott. Agnes was told that Dr Lilian Cooper from Brisbane would be joining the unit shortly.

For her field ambulances Dr Bennett was allocated several Australian nurses including Agnes Kerr, who had served with Agnes in the military hospital in Cairo, Caroline Reid from Melbourne, Florence Grylls from Cue in Western Australia, and Robina Ross and Mary Stirling of Adelaide. Much later the author Miles Franklin would join the unit as a volunteer, working initially as a cook and then as a nursing aide. She became a great admirer of Dr Bennett.

The nurses and doctors were paid substantially less than their counterparts in civilian hospitals. Their fares to Greece and back were paid but many, including Dr Bennett and SWH nurses, would be out of pocket when the war ended. All staff had to pay for their own SWH uniforms, which consisted of a grey woollen coat with lapels faced with tartan, a grey skirt, three thick grey flannel shirts, a grey cotton suit for summer, a Gordon tartan scarf and a felt hat for the nursing staff and a peaked cap for the doctors. Agnes, who hated military pomp and ceremony, made up her mind that in _her_ hospital all the women would be on first name terms. There would be none of the saluting she had disliked in Cairo. As for the uniform, she would have to put up with it, but she was determined to wear her own Akubra hat.

At last all was ready and the new unit and its equipment caught the train to Marseilles and then boarded a rusty old tramp steamer to Greece. There was insufficient room for all the crates of equipment and vehicles, so much of it had to follow on another cargo ship.

The ship called at Piraeus, the port of Athens, and then sailed north along the coastline, arriving off Salonika in mid August 1916. Agnes noted the turquoise-blue sea bordering the rocky coastline and a harbour crowded with troop ships from Britain, France and Italy.

While they waited for their ambulances and equipment to arrive, Dr Bennett marshalled her nursing staff, surgeons and twenty ambulance drivers and they pitched their tents at Mikra Bay on the outskirts of the city. Dr Bennett met several generals of the Serb Army with whom she would be working at the staff headquarters in Salonika. Then she set off with the chief of Serb Medical Services to select a suitable site for the new field hospital near the Greek–Serb border. Their Chief Medical Officer advised her to select a sheltered spot under spreading elm trees, a kilometre or so north of the railway station at Ostrovo (once part of Serbia; the town is today known as Arnissa and is part of northern Greece; Lake Ostrovo is known as Lake Vegoritis).

Eventually all was ready and the convoy, consisting of forty supply lorries and several dozen ambulances and cars, rumbled over the dusty Vardar plain and then drove north over winding, potholed roads and hairpin bends bordered by precipices. The area was wild but hauntingly beautiful. One lorry lost a wheel and had to be abandoned. German aircraft flew overhead and a big attack was expected any moment. Dr Bennett knew the area had been the site of fierce battles between Serb and French troops against a combined force of Austrians, Croats and Bulgarians. They drove with loaded revolvers beside them, fearful of Bulgarian bandits who were known to hijack lorries and kill their passengers. One of Dr Inglis' field hospitals, including its doctors and nurses, had already been captured by the Austrians. A French field hospital had been attacked by Bulgarian troops and the staff had had their throats cut. It was scarcely encouraging news to the women in Dr Bennett's unit.

#### WOMEN ON THE BATTLE LINE

The site selected for their hospital was located in a small hollow on the slopes of a mountain 5 kilometres from the small town of Ostrovo. It had a superb view across a valley to snow-covered peaks. Below them were deep gorges, canyons and steep roads.

The field hospital consisted of a row of tents—each tent taking at least ten patients—and had an overall capacity of two hundred beds. There were smaller tents for orderlies and even smaller individual tents for doctors and nurses. The main operating theatre was in a long low barn, divided into two compartments, and beyond a hastily erected partition was a small X-ray room. A second operating theatre was housed in a large tent. More tents were added at a later date. The nurses and female doctors were issued with revolvers and ammunition, so they could defend themselves in case the Bulgarians, who had a reputation for rape, attacked.

On the slopes of neighbouring Mount Kaimaktsalan ('The Peak of the Buttercups') and around the ancient Macedonian town of Monastir, the Serbs were fighting a combined force of Austrian and Bulgarian troops.

Agnes wrote:

> Our first evening in camp star shells were being sent up over the enemy lines and preparations made for a big advance. Heavy guns wakened the unit and by 6.30 am, our breakfast hour, the great Serb and French advance which ended in the fall of Monastir had begun.

Ostrovo Base Hospital was soon overflowing with casualties, far too many for the tents available. Not all patients had been wounded. Some had typhoid or dysentery, the common diseases of trench warfare.

Badly wounded Serbs arrived in lorry-ambulances driven by courageous women. Due to the terrible conditions of the roads, many patients were in agony and sometimes died in transit. In the midst of so much horror and pain, Agnes was amazed to find herself working in a place of outstanding natural beauty. The view of snow-covered mountains resembled postcards of the Swiss Alps. The nearest peaks were 40 kilometres away but in the clear sparkling air they seemed much closer. Now, in high summer, the fields around them were filled with daisies and scarlet poppies.

Their Serb orderlies, seconded from the front line, had dug the latrines far away from the lake, fearing the malarial mosquitoes that lurked in its rushy swamps. However, the stream beside the camp soon ran dry as that summer it had not rained for months. This meant all water for drinking, washing and cooking had to be carried several kilometres in buckets. The mosquitoes seemed undeterred by the distance. Agnes had been assured by the Serb Chief Medical Officer that malarial mosquitoes would not venture from the marshes surrounding Lake Ostrovo but, it turned out, he was wrong. Malaria became a serious problem for the staff who were ordered to cover their heads and shoulders with veils, which soon proved too cumbersome and were abandoned.

Shortage of drinking water also became such a problem that the camp had to be moved closer to the lake where the mosquitoes were even worse. Each staff member was issued with mosquito nets and gaiters or knee-high canvas boots and told to wear the boots after dark. Although they were given massive injections of quinine, large numbers of the staff had at least one attack of malaria.

In August, the weather was very hot and dry. Food was cooked and eaten outside, which meant they were subject to another plague—wasps. Most people were stung and a few were unlucky enough to swallow a wasp, which meant their throats swelled and they required emergency tracheotomies. Snakes frequently invaded the camp and in autumn, as the weather turned colder, a mouse plague infested the tents. The pesky little rodents ate holes in uniforms and nested inside mattresses and between spare blankets.

Early in October came the rain. Later it started to snow. The rain and snow were a huge problem for soldiers ankle-deep in water in the trenches. The poor men were soon suffering from soggy feet, which led to trench foot, in which soldiers' feet swelled and their toes blackened with gangrene. Those affected had to be brought down by ambulance so their toes could be amputated.

The battle for Monastir, and the Serbs' eventual recapture of their country, marked a turning point in the war and a psychological blow for the enemy. But the death toll was huge. Serb casualties numbered many thousands—of these, over four hundred men died in ambulances while being driven over rough mountain roads to Ostrovo Base Hospital. After the final battle of Mount Kaimaktsalan ended on 28 September 1916, Serb officers drove Dr Bennett up the mountain to the battle site. There she saw rows and rows of dead Serbs and Bulgarians, far too many to bury. The long wet winter was over. Their corpses were already mummifying in the dry atmosphere of summer.

On 18 September 1916, Dr Lilian Cooper and her friend, Miss Josephine Bedford, arrived at Ostrovo Base Hospital. From Brisbane they had taken a steamer to Port Said and a P&O liner to Salonika. They had signed a contract to serve at Dr Bennett's hospital at Ostrovo, attached to Unit 3 of the Serb Army, Dr Cooper as a surgeon and Miss Bedford as an unpaid orderly or ambulance driver. They arrived just in time for the final stages of the battle for Monastir and the ongoing battle on the slopes of Mount Kaimaktsalan.

Dr Bennett was delighted to have an experienced surgeon and mature ambulance driver join her unit, as some of the younger drivers were feeling immense strain or had had accidents. She and her junior doctors were operating long hours, carrying out amputations and removing bullets and shrapnel from wounds. The operating theatre was in constant use and sterilising of surgical instruments had to be done at night to keep up the supply. The women ambulance drivers were working round the clock, making the 45-kilometre round trip to the battle front and back.

Summer was well and truly over and now the weather had turned cold and wet. The track down to Ostrovo was not only potholed, but slippery as well. One ambulance went over the edge and the driver was killed. On 25 September Agnes wrote in her diary: 'The chauffeurs are still a trouble but I have given them entirely to Miss Bedford, who has arrived with Dr Cooper. Both are simply splendid and going to be an enormous help to me, being older women.'

By mid October the rain had changed to snow and sleet. The shivering ambulance drivers would arrive at the base hospital with icicles hanging from their eyebrows. The staff were very uncomfortable in tents with no heating. At night, snow drifted in under the tent flaps and they piled every single piece of clothing they owned on top of themselves. Dr Bennett wore a battered sheepskin coat bought from a Vlach shepherd over her uniform jacket.

By November, with snow piled up around their tents, food became scarce. A ship from Britain, loaded with tinned peaches and jars of marmalade, was hit by a German mine and sunk without trace in the Gulf of Salonika. The retreating Austrian and Bulgarian soldiers had plundered the villagers' barns and fruit trees and killed their cattle so there was little food to be had in the villages and many of their inhabitants were starving.

Due to the shortage of local supplies including butter and milk, all food for the hospital had to come by road from Salonika. By now they had eaten the stores they had brought out from Edinburgh. Their rations consisted of tinned sardines, packets of biscuits, corned beef and marmalade, eternal marmalade. Bread was scarce and even the flinty, bitter greyish Greek 'famine' bread to which acorns had been added to make it go further, was welcome.

The cooks looked at the diet of the Greek and Macedonian villagers and copied their resourcefulness, picking weeds and boiling them into a traditional Greek dish known as _horta._ Eventually, the camp was reduced to eating a soup made from weeds and stewed rats with boiled rice. If asked, the staff said it was chicken.

It was now so cold the doctors operated wearing woollen mittens rather than rubber gloves. Dr Bennet still wore her sheepskin coat over her uniform and her bushman's hat.

Day and night they heard the distant booming of the guns from the front line. The Aussie women became known for their coolness under fire, their laconic sense of humour and their uncomplaining acceptance of horrific working conditions.

Agnes worried over the agonising deaths of wounded Serbs as they were being transported. Since Mount Kaimaktsalan had been captured, the Serbs were pressing further north towards their homeland. She decided to set up an advanced dressing station nearer the battle line to reduce the number of deaths, and chose a bleak mountain hamlet called Dobraveni as its site. The dressing station consisted of enough beds for thirty-nine patients, a lean-to shed used as a makeshift operating theatre and some ambulances in which emergency operations could be performed and wounds dressed.

Working close to the battle line was dangerous but at least the wounded could be transported in panniers by mules along grassy tracks. This was far less painful for badly wounded men than travelling over potholed roads in bone-shaking ambulances.

Agnes Bennett decided that Dr Cooper was the ideal person to run the dressing station. She had worked well with Lilian and trusted her skill and competence completely.

Arriving at Dobraveni Dr Cooper asked her staff to make a dining room or mess house of timber framing with tin cladding using a tarpaulin for the roof. The resourceful Josephine Bedford made a chimney out of kerosene tins so they could light a fire to keep warm. There were three ward tents, each of thirteen beds, and the patients and staff slept on lumpy straw mattresses. By now temperatures were down to below freezing and air raids were frequent. In sub-zero temperatures and howling winds, from mid January to early March, the ambulances under the direction of Josephine Bedford carried 1840 patients from Dobraveni to Ostrovo. Miss Bedford's talent for organisation kept the service going. Whenever spare parts were needed for the vehicles, Miss Bedford had to drive down to Salonika and beg, borrow or steal them. Indeed, she soon became known as 'Miss Spare Parts' at the SWH headquarters.

Naturally, tempers flared under such pressure. One can only imagine the oaths used by Dr Cooper when things were specially trying. She must have sent crisp notes to Dr Bennett, furious about the working conditions, the diet and the lack of so many essentials to run a dressing station. Not that the lack of equipment or food was Dr Bennett's fault. Everyone was suffering in the Balkan or 'forgotten' campaign. Agnes obviously valued Dr Cooper, but she did write home to a relative in Australia saying, 'It has not been easy getting on with Mesdames Bedford and Cooper...but their work is so good, one can forgive them a great deal.'

Then a typhoid epidemic broke out among a detachment of Russian soldiers who had been sent to help the Serbs win back their country. Dr Cooper and Miss Bedford shifted their advance dressing station to the far side of the Czerna River, so they were nearer the Tsarist Russian camp. The Russian commanding officer was so impressed by Dr Cooper's skills in operating under primitive conditions that he recommended her to be awarded the Order of St Anne (an Imperial Russian decoration given to foreigners).

But the cold winds, the snow and bleak living conditions were taking their toll on Dr Cooper and she went down with bronchitis. Eventually she became so ill she was driven by Miss Bedford to Salonika to rest and recuperate in a convalescent home. Dr Mary Garis, an Australian surgeon who had just arrived, took over until Dr Cooper was well enough. Dr Cooper returned in March 1917 and continued helping the Russian and Serb soldiers.

By now the Serb Army had advanced closer to the Serb border. This time, to be close to the wounded, the advance dressing station had to be moved further north to Skocivir, which was only 8 kilometres behind the battle lines. Then they had to move further north again, this time to Yellac, another desolate spot amid the mountains. On several occasions storms blew the tents over and rain flooded through the shed Dr Cooper used as a field kitchen, carrying their precious pots and pans down into the stream below it.

Eventually the terrible winter of 1916–17 was over. Spring arrived and the mountain slopes became covered with wildflowers. But with the warmth, plagues of flies also arrived, and it was impossible to keep them away from the wounded men over whose wounds and lips they swarmed.

In March 1917 Crown Prince Alexander Karageorge awarded the Order of St Sava, the Serbs' highest award for humanitarian service, to Dr Bennett, Dr Cooper and Miss Bedford. He sent his _aide de camp,_ Captain Milan Yovitchitch, to present the medals to them in a special ceremony. Dr Cooper and Miss Bedford both drove down to Ostrovo for the occasion.

By May, Dr Cooper's advance dressing station had been in operation for eight months. Nearly 300 badly wounded men had been admitted as patients and 144 operations had been performed under the most primitive conditions imaginable. In such a harsh environment, it was a tribute to the nursing and medical skills of her team that only sixteen deaths were recorded.

By the time Dr Cooper's one-year contract was over, she needed to recuperate in Britain before taking the long return journey by ship through the tropics to Queensland.

Meanwhile, malaria was taking a toll at Ostrovo. Miles Franklin, one of the camp cooks, went down with the disease as did another Australian, Sister Agnes Kerr, who died from it. Eventually, after two nursing sisters and several patients died, it was decided that malaria was now such a severe risk for staff and patients that the field hospital must be moved down to Salonika. Dr Bennett had been feeling feverish for some time but refused to admit it and carried on working.

The day before the hospital was due to move, Agnes received the shocking news that her favourite brother, Bob, had been killed fighting in France at the Battle of Passchendaele. There was no time to mourn him.

As commander of a field hospital attached to the Serb and French forces she had to attend a formal farewell dinner with Crown Prince Alexander and the Serb and French commanders who were leaving to go north, aiming to recapture the Serb capital, Belgrade, from the Austrians.

Following the dinner Agnes arrived back at her field hospital to find the tents had had been shelled by the Austrians and many orderlies and patients wounded. The operating theatre in the old barn was ablaze and had to be hosed down. She was exhausted but took command, helping to fight the fires. Once the danger was over, Agnes went to her tent and, out of sight of everyone, she collapsed.

The next morning she staggered to her feet, shaking with malaria, to say her goodbyes. The Serb orderlies, with whom Dr Bennett had such an excellent rapport, lined up to kiss her hand. Her Serb driver wept unashamedly as, pale and wan, she climbed into one of the ambulances determined, in spite of her fever, not to depart on a stretcher.

In spite of her brave stance, on the way to Salonika, Agnes collapsed once again. At Salonika she tried to get back on her feet but failed. She was too weak to protest when the orderlies carried her off on a stretcher to the British hospital at Mount Hortiack where she spent a few days recovering.

She had left Ostrovo just in time. After her departure, the skeleton staff that remained to care for patients too ill to be moved to Salonika were bombed and strafed by German aircraft. The surviving patients, doctors and nurses were massacred by the Bulgarians, another sad chapter in the history of the gallant SWH.

Agnes made a good recovery on her journey home to Sydney on a troop carrier. However, bouts of malaria occasionally returned as she recuperated at the home of one of her brothers. When she felt stronger she gave lectures about her time at the military hospital in Cairo, nursing the Anzacs from Gallipoli, and the exploits of Australians working for the SWH in the Balkans.

The fact that Bob Bennett had been killed at Passchendaele made Agnes all the more determined not to give up. As soon as she was well enough, she volunteered for war service once again and in view of her excellent war record was accepted. This time, Agnes sailed to Britain on a troop ship as medical officer to a returning Anzac regiment. They had a narrow escape when the convoy was torpedoed and several ships were sunk.

With her regiment off to France, Agnes was discharged from the Army and went to work in a civilian hospital, the overworked Royal Infirmary in Glasgow. Normally the infirmary had a staff of fifteen to twenty residents. Now she and one other doctor were assisted only by a couple of third-year medical students. Her clerical workload as well as her operating list was enormous. Casualties of war included workers from the local munitions factories, with arms and legs blown off in accidents.

'I had to do major operations without the assistance of another doctor,' Agnes wrote. 'There was no option and medical students gave the anaesthetics.' However, for a woman who had performed complex operations under primitive conditions at Ostrovo, surgery in a hospital theatre was child's play.

Later she worked at a British military hospital at Netley, in Southampton Water, until the war ended.

#### RETURN TO THE ANTIPODES

Once the war was won Agnes Bennett returned to Australia, but in spite of her many commendations, testimonials and medals, men dominated the world of medicine and she _still_ could not find a surgical post in Sydney. Serving in the war had cost her a great deal of money and she needed to work so she returned to her old job in New Zealand.

Just before the outbreak of World War II the death of another sibling brought Agnes back to Sydney.

This time, in her seventies, still active and alert, she went north and worked for the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Burketown in north Queensland, something that suited her sense of adventure. Between 1940 and 1942, Agnes returned to England to work as a medical officer in hospitals. For her wartime service and for her dedicated work in the remote Chatham Islands, Agnes Bennett was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Five years before her death, in memory of her beloved father, W.C. Bennett, Dr Bennett donated the sum of £10,000 (then a very considerable amount indeed) to her alma mater, the University of Sydney, to further pioneering research into aviation. The university inherited the residue of her estate after her death in 1960.

Back in Brisbane after the war Lilian Cooper resumed her work at the Mater and other Brisbane hospitals. She bought herself a car and initially employed a male chauffeur, but eventually learned to drive it herself. With Miss Bedford's help she did her own motor repairs. Dr Cooper was famous in Brisbane for uttering fearsome curses whenever the car failed to start, which must have been fairly often, considering the unreliability of cars in the pioneering days of motoring.

Both Josephine Bedford and Lilian Cooper were devoted to children. Lilian enjoyed voluntary work with children in kindergartens which Miss Bedford had founded. Embarrassed by displays of emotion, Dr Cooper would visit her young patients in hospital and gruffly say a few words of comfort before placing a toy into their hands. She often refused to accept fees from poorer patients and was very popular with those who realised that underneath her stern exterior Dr Cooper was a sincere, caring woman and a dedicated doctor.

In 1926, Lilian's health started to deteriorate, either as a result of her war service or from the high humidity in Brisbane's subtropical summers in the days before air-conditioning. She went into semiretirement, moving from Auckland House in the centre of Brisbane to Kangaroo Point, where she was cared for by Miss Bedford. Two years later, Lilian Cooper was honoured by being invited to become a foundation fellow of the Royal Australian College of Surgeons and its first female fellow.

She died in 1947 and was buried in Brisbane's Toowong Cemetery. St Mary's Anglican Church at Kangaroo Point has a memorial window to Dr Lilian Cooper and its altar cloth is embroidered with a reproduction of the blue, white and gold medal of St Sava, to serve as a reminder of her service in the Great War.

In her will, Miss Bedford donated the large tract of land she and Dr Cooper owned jointly at Kangaroo Point to the Sisters of Charity to build what is now Mount Olivet Hospital and Hospice. Miss Bedford was very unselfish and made no claims for her own name to be preserved but insisted one building be named in memory of a remarkable female pioneer of medicine.

Today, the Lilian Cooper Aged Care Centre is regarded as one of Queensland's best centres for aged care. In commemoration of Dr Cooper's difficulties in gaining the right to study medicine, as well as in due recognition of her achievements, the Queensland Medical Women's Society and the Queensland Branch of the Australian Medical Association maintain an annual Lilian Cooper prize. It is awarded to the female medical student with the highest grade point average during the course of their medical studies.
> _To leave injured soldiers in the blazing sun for days without dressing their wounds or giving them water is mass murder. Our poor boys, if only the world knew how badly they are treated._
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> SISTER ALICE KITCHEN, ABOARD THE HOSPITAL SHIP _G ASCON_ AT GALLIPOLI, 12 AUGUST 1915

# [CHAPTER 3
Sister Alice Elizabeth Kitchen](004-toc.html#ch03)

**Sister Alice Elizabeth Kitchen**

1873 – 1950

British Campaign and Service Medals Victory Medal

At 2 pm on the afternoon of 19 October 1914, Her Majesty's Australian troopship _Benalla_ drew away from the dock at Port Melbourne, taking some of the newly formed Australian Imperial Force to fight overseas. Four Army nursing sisters in brand new uniforms, filled with excitement about their overseas trip, leaned over the _Benalla_ 's rail. They were surrounded by soldiers of the 8th Battalion, yelling and waving at friends and relatives on the quayside below.

As the distance between ship and shore widened, the paper streamer linking dark-haired Sister Alice Kitchen with an elderly woman in a wheelchair grew taut and snapped. With a thrill forty-one-year-old Alice realised that she was free.

Alice Kitchen had been born at Amherst near Ballarat. After her father, William Barratt Kitchen, died, Alice had moved to inner-city Carlton with her invalid mother, Mary Collway Kitchen, a former nurse, and looked after her devotedly. While Alice was away, Sister Mary Perpetua and the other nuns would take care of her mother in a Catholic nursing home. It wouldn't be for long, as the general opinion was that the war against Germany would be over by Christmas.

Alice's three fellow nurses were her cabin companion bespectacled, shy Hilda Samsing from Adelaide; Janey Lempriere, daughter of a wealthy Melbourne merchant; and statuesque Jessie McHardy White, who was a widow and, like Alice, in her early forties. Both Jessie and Alice had grown up in country Victoria.

Each nurse had been given ten guineas as a uniform allowance. The uniforms consisted of a floor-length grey serge dress, black ankle boots and an antiquated black bonnet like that of a Salvation Army sister, with chestnut coloured silk ribbons tied under the chin. Over their dresses they wore ankle-length grey woollen cloaks with scarlet facings, which fastened with genuine silver buttons.

Rules and regulations governing the conduct of nursing sisters were as outdated as their Boer War uniforms. They were forbidden to smoke, drink or wear lipstick or other make-up while in uniform. Matron Grace Oram, Lady Superintendent of Nurses who would be heading the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) in Cairo, warned the nurses they would be court-martialled if found disobeying orders.

On the first night of the voyage, the nurses were invited to a formal dinner in the Officers' Mess. Alice and Hilda were at a table of senior battalion staff. Alice found herself seated between grey-haired, moustached Colonel 'Jock' Gartside and Colonel William 'Bill' Bolton, a family friend. On either side of Hilda were Captain John Fowler, a handsome young medical officer from the Light Horse Field Ambulance, and beside him Frank Mathieson, Medical Officer to the 8th Battalion. Also at their table were Colonel McPhee, Captains Graham Coulter and Frank Dale, and Dale's dashing cousin, Lieutenant Rupert Barratt. During the long voyage these three men would become part of Alice and Hilda's 'family'.

The 8th Battalion had been raised in country Victoria. All the men were crack shots and had already trained as volunteers in the militia. Shared values and backgrounds strengthened shipboard friendships.

Colonel Bill Bolton's eldest and youngest sons, Lieutenant Jack Bolton and young Private Hunter Bolton, were also aboard the ship. Alice's friendship with the Bolton family gave her an _entrée_ into the inner circle of the 8th Battalion.

The convoy assembled off Albany in Western Australia. It comprised thirty-six ships, carrying 29,185 Australian and New Zealand officers and men, eight dozen doctors and nurses, over 11,000 horses and quantities of guns, ammunition, tents, medical and surgical supplies and three cruisers. According to Alice's journal the _Benalla_ left Albany on 3 November 1914.

The sea was rough and the nurses were confined to their cabins with sea sickness. Alice was the only one to keep her sea legs. She took Mothersill tablets in water with a dash of Worcestershire sauce, a remedy used by the nurses who sailed to the Boer War, her mother had told her.

Alarming reports had come in that the _Emden_ was in their vicinity. This huge enemy cruiser with its powerful long range guns was greatly feared, as it had sunk twenty-three British ships. After receiving information that the _Emden_ had been sighted near the Cocos Islands, the cruiser _Sydney_ left the convoy to pursue it.

Concerned about the possibility of having to abandon ship, Alice went on deck with Hilda to inspect the lifeboats. Practical Alice also decided to sleep with a candle and matches beside her so she could see when going down to the sick bay, after the night patrols had switched off the lights for security reasons.

Later that week the captain announced that HMAS _Sydney_ had torpedoed the _Emden._ They were all relieved but the captain warned them they must still be vigilant as a second German cruiser, _Koningsberg,_ was still in the vicinity.

Convinced they would eventually be serving in France, since the Germans had invaded Belgium and were threatening the north of France, Janey Lempriere gave the three other nurses conversational French lessons. On 11 November 1914 the crew and passengers were told by the captain that Turkey had entered the war on the side of Germany. At the time nobody had any inkling that this event would change their lives.

As the convoy approached the equator the temperature soared. The nurses in their heavy uniforms, designed for a British winter, were drenched with perspiration. 'Today was so hot I felt that my bones were burning,' Alice complained in her journal.

The nurses started a program of inoculating the troops for typhoid and paratyphoid. Some soldiers did not wish to be inoculated, but Colonel Bolton announced that anyone who refused presented a health risk to the others so would be court-martialled and sent home. This had the desired result. Long lines of apprehensive men formed outside the medical centre.

On 28 November, everyone was told that they would be stopping at Cairo rather than continuing on to Britain. Salisbury Plain, where it had been planned they undergo combat training, was overcrowded with troops and bitterly cold. It was thought better that the AIF train in Egypt, where it was warmer.

At that stage the troops were _not_ told that Lord Kitchener, the British Minister for War, had decided that the joint Australian and New Zealander forces (later known as the Anzacs) would take part in the forthcoming expedition to the straits of the Dardanelles.

#### ARRIVAL IN EGYPT

On their last evening on the _Benalla_ , the nurses and officers enjoyed a formal dinner followed by coffee on deck. Against a crimson sky that faded to yellow they watched Alexandria's minarets and domes gleam in the last rays of the setting sun, and Alice felt sure she would find Egypt fascinating.

The following day the happy voyage was over but firm friendships had been forged. The 8th Battalion disembarked and marched to the main station of Alexandria, where they boarded troop trains to Cairo.

The nurses boarded a separate passenger train. The journey to Cairo took five hours in a hot, close compartment.

Alice and Hilda were to live and work at Mena House, built in 1869 at Giza as a hunting lodge for the Egyptian royal family, and later a luxury hotel before becoming an Army hospital. Alice had feared they might have to live in tents and was delighted with her accommodation, which turned out to be large and luxurious, its ballroom filled with rows of beds with screens around them. From her bedroom Alice had a superb view of the Great Pyramids, which were within easy walking distance.

Colonel Neville Howse, who had a reputation as an excellent doctor and administrator, would be in command of the new Army hospital. The nurses had to work eight-hour shifts but could be called out at any time during the night should there be an emergency. They had three or four hours off for a siesta during the heat of the day.

_One entertainment off duty was visiting the Sphinx where the nurses could enjoy a camel ride._

In addition to the 8th Battalion, two other brigades of infantry and some light horsemen were camping near Mena House. While the officers had huts and a house to serve as their mess, the enlisted men had nothing. They had to sleep on the sand, which blew everywhere, causing severe respiratory problems like pneumonia, bronchitis and throat infections.

Food poisoning also caused many hospital admissions. In Egypt, vegetables were often fertilised with human excrement so dysentery became rife. Talks on hygiene and the dangers of infection were regularly given by medical officers and nurses, but their warnings were often ignored.

Another problem was syphilis. During World War I there was no effective cure for this disease. Treatment was ineffective and consisted of applications of mercury and an ointment laced with arsenic called Salvarsan, which often caused the sufferer's hair to fall out and had other serious side effects.

Mena camp's inadequate washing and toilet facilities horrified Colonel Howse, so he granted permission for the men to swim every day in the large marble-lined pool. The nurses watched admiringly as the bronzed, fit young Australians waited in line for their turn. 'Our lads were the finest groups of men I ever saw,' wrote Alice in her journal the week she arrived, blissfully unaware that within a few months, many of them would be crippled, mutilated or dead.

As yet no clear rules had been laid down for authority over Australian doctors and nurses and this led to bitter in-fighting between Australian medical and nursing staff and British military administrators. The Australian-run hospital inherited almost two hundred British soldiers suffering from respiratory infections, food poisoning and syphilis. Having to care for these patients rather than for men wounded in war annoyed some of the nurses; they complained to the matron in charge that caring for syphilitics was not why they had enlisted.

Soon ten percent of all Anzacs were suffering from syphilis and three times that number from gonorrhoea. Gonorrhoea, although infectious, was curable and detected by a penile discharge, and the nurses were told that it could also be spotted when the men's ankles swelled after route marches. 'Getting a dose of the clap' was regarded as a sign of sophistication and a symbol of manhood by many soldiers, who ranged from young farmhands and stockmen to clerks and farmers' sons with no previous experience of war.

The Army regarded nurses as officers but did not extend to them the same rights and privileges or appropriate pay as male officers. The nurses did not have batmen and had to look after themselves, as well as mend soldiers' clothes and prepare special meals for those too ill to eat standard hospital food.

The nurses received nine shillings and sixpence a day, only sixpence more than an Army corporal. However, corporals were provided with free meals whereas the nurses had to pay for their own food and were charged the same high mess fees as the better-paid officers and doctors. Consequently, the AANS nurses had a struggle paying for basic necessities as well as laundry and food. Colonel Neville Howse, who was married to a former nurse, was sympathetic to the nurses' plight and did his best to sort out various anomalies, but he was often obstructed by Matron Nellie Gould.

Matron Nellie Gould was a martinet and in charge of nurses' dress codes and behaviour. She insisted that all nurses wear their hot, uncomfortable winter uniforms—ankle-length long-sleeved dress with stiffly starched collar and cuffs, a white webbing belt and a long, stiffly starched white apron. Thick grey stockings and black lace-up walking shoes completed an outfit totally unsuited to the tropics. Matron Gould ruled with a rod of iron. All nurses had to be back in the nurses' home by 10 pm each evening and were not allowed to drink even one glass of an alcoholic beverage. She even attempted to ban the nurses from dancing in public, without much success.

Alice dared to defy Matron Gould and created a lifelong enemy when she headed a movement among the nurses for new summer uniforms. To silence all comment Nellie Gould placed a notice on the bulletin board stating that 'The Imperial Government requires _all_ nurses to wear the regulation uniform of grey serge or grey cotton dresses. A stiff white collar will be worn at the neck of the uniform dresses, topped by a black bonnet when going outdoors.' Eventually the nurses won the right to wear white solar topees, but only if they paid for them out of their own pocket.

Alice kept her journal under lock and key fearing Matron Gould might exact revenge by confiscating it and handing it to the Censor's Office with dreadful consequences for Alice.

#### 'CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR'

For years Alice had cared for her invalid mother without much in the way of a social life. Now at Mena House she enjoyed her new-found popularity and freedom. She and Hilda felt the need for new off-duty clothes. They had elegant white linen dresses made by a local dressmaker, who had learned her craft in Paris. Cotton, linen and silk were good value in Egypt and the dressmakers charged the nurses very reasonable rates. Alice and Hilda bought red silk poppies imported from Paris to trim their wide-brimmed straw hats and matching red silk ribbons to make coloured belts to wear with their new outfits.

Elegant in her new white linen dress and a belt, Alice attended a garden party in the grounds of Mena House, in honour of General Bridges. The moustached, silver-haired general stood on a raised podium with the newly promoted Colonel Neville Howse beside him. In his speech General Bridges emphasised that the AIF, being the first force to fight as an all-Australian unit, was creating history.

As meals at Mena House were unappetising, the nurses were often asked out by affluent Red Cross lady volunteers from Sydney and Melbourne. These ladies would drive the nurses to Groppi's Tea Rooms, a favourite spot for unaccompanied European ladies, and treat them to a truly delicious tea. Groppi's became a kind of home-from-home for the nurses, who enjoyed choosing French patisseries, brought to their tables by waiters, along with Indian or China tea, real French-style coffee or hot chocolate in silver pots.

_Mena House as it was in 1999._

The nurses were permitted to receive officers or male relatives to visit in their sitting room, providing they had a chaperone. Old friends from the _Benalla_ were frequent guests, dropping in unannounced for a warm cup of tea and a chat and bringing their 'sisters in arms' Australian magazines and newspapers. Colonel Gartside even made a presentation to Alice and Hilda of brass shoulder badges in the form of an '8' to wear on their uniform jackets. They treasured these and wore them with pride on their lapels when they were invited to meals at the 8th Battalion Officers' Mess.

On Christmas Eve 1914 the nurses decorated the wards with greenery and bought each other presents. Alice and Hilda also bought presents for their friends in the 8th Batallion. Alice wrote in her journal: 'We allowed ourselves a little latitude...stayed up till 11 pm entertaining old friends from the _Benalla_ and from 1 AGH [Australian General Hospital in Cairo] in our private sitting room, and talking nostalgically about old times in Australia.'

On Christmas morning the 8th Battalion's brass band arrived to serenade the nurses and patients, playing for them old favourites like 'Home Sweet Home' and 'Waltzing Matilda'. Colonel Bill Bolton came round the wards to wish the boys a happy Christmas. The nurses distributed Red Cross parcels, each containing a home-made cake, a hand-stitched pillow case, a cake of soap, a note pad and pencil, and sometimes a hand-knitted pair of socks.

By the new year Surgeon-General William Birrell had arrived in Cairo to run the medical corps of the AIF. Birrell clashed bitterly with Neville Howse over the allocation of money for medical care. Howse wished to spend more money on hospital ships but this plan was vetoed by Birrell. However, Neville Howse was responsible for the Australian Army acquiring the hospital ship _Gascon_ , which would save thousands of lives.

It was whispered in the 8th Battalion Mess that the AIF would soon be off to foreign parts. There was talk of Lord Kitchener as Admiral of the Navy involving the Australian Imperial Force in a 'big stunt'. The British War Council had adopted Winston Churchill's ambitious plan for ships of the British Navy to force a way through the heavily mined Dardanelles.

Winston Churchill's daring but impractical plan involved British warships steaming through the Dardanelles channel and landing Allied troops, who would capture the forts and guns that protected the narrow straits. Churchill expected little opposition. He envisaged that Constantinople would fall immediately, ensuring the collapse of Germany's ally, the Ottoman Empire. The Allies could then attack Germany from the east, aided by Russia. To Churchill, the idea of capturing the Hellespont had a ring of Homeric glory, making the somewhat impractical Dardanelles plan irresistible. (Of course, had the plan succeeded Churchill would have been a hero.)

Secretary for War Field Marshall Herbert Kitchener was just as single-minded as Churchill. Kitchener suffered from the delusion that 'if a British submarine surfaced opposite the almost uninhabited Gallipoli peninsula and waved the Union Jack the Turkish garrison would turn tail and run'. Kitchener and Churchill agreed that the newly raised Australian and New Zealand Imperial Forces had to play a vital role attacking the Dardanelles, in company with British, French, Indian and West Indian troops.

To lead the military side of the expedition, Kitchener chose Sir Ian Hamilton, a retired general with a passion for books and ancient history. Unfortunately, General Hamilton's practical knowledge of the area was non-existent. Hamilton and Birrell's plans for the evacuation of wounded soldiers from the Gallipoli peninsula were based on a brief report and a map made nine years previously.

It was unclear to whom the Australian Army Nursing Service would report. Were they officially under the Royal Medical Corps or under the command of the colonel of the regiment to which they were attached?

#### TRANSFER TO HELIOPOLIS

In February 1915, Sister Alice Kitchen was transferred to 1 Australian General Hospital (AGH), which operated in the former Palace Hotel, Heliopolis, an affluent suburb on the other side of the city from Giza.

The Palace Hotel was so big it occupied two city blocks and it lacked the charm of Mena House. Alice missed her friends and the homelike atmosphere of the nurses' sitting room at Mena House.

On the wards, vital equipment was lacking. There was no steriliser so the nurses were forced to sterilise surgical instruments in a saucepan full of water, which they boiled on a primus stove. The Art Nouveau-style lift, imported from France at the time the Suez Canal was built, was so old it frequently broke down. As a result, after a hard day's work the nurses often had to walk up four flights of marble stairs to their rooms. 'Marble is very very hard on the feet at the end of the day,' Alice observed wryly in her journal towards the end of February.

Matron Jane Bell, the administrator, found her orders blocked by the hospital's commanding officer Colonel Ramsay Smith, a stickler for etiquette and female propriety. Matron Jane Bell was a competent and fiery Florence Nightingale in steel-rimmed glasses. Alice knew the matron well and admired her from the days when they had worked together at the Melbourne Hospital. It was inevitable that Matron Bell would arouse the enmity of the autocratic colonel. Because Alice supported Matron Bell she also incurred Colonel Ramsay Smith's anger. The fact that Ramsay Smith was in alliance with Alice's old adversary Matron Nellie Gould, now in charge of nurses' welfare at Heliopolis, aggravated things. Constant disputes between the CO and Matron Bell only made life harder for the already overworked nurses.

Colonel Ramsay Smith issued a vengeful order restricting the nurses' right to entertain male friends and relatives in their sitting room. Nurses had to obtain written permission from Colonel Ramsay Smith twenty-four hours in advance of receiving male visitors. Alice was one of the chief protesters against the newly imposed rule, pointing out that the nurses and their visitors often did not know when they would be off duty beforehand, making it impossible to predict their visiting hours.

Censorship of letters and personal diaries became even more stringent than before. Like all military and medical staff Alice had signed the _British Official Secrets Act_ of 1911. This Act had severe penalties for revealing 'information of potential benefit to the enemy' and included dismissal from the service, court-martial or imprisonment if information was written down in any diaries, letters or documents, which could be handed to the enemy.

Understandably, Alice felt uneasy about the CO or Matron Gould learning she was keeping a journal detailing her experiences as an _aide memoire_ to writing a book. In her journal Alice made guarded reference to 'hospital management problems' and 'discord between nurses and administrators', but did not elaborate.

Meals provided by a caterer were unappetising, grease-laden and expensive. Matron Jane Bell put in a complaint, but the CO refused to take any action and meals continued to get worse.

The caterer employed by Ramsay Smith was, in Alice's words, a 'canny money grubbing person', who charged each nurse a flat fee for 'breakage and replacement costs' even when nothing had been broken. In desperation the nurses bought their own cutlery and crockery, carrying it down the long marble corridors from the wards to the dining room and then back again.

Alice became so angry with the CO that she jeopardised her chances of promotion by heading a deputation to complain about the poor treatment of nurses. In return Colonel Ramsay Smith and Matron Nellie Gould gave Alice bad work reports, which, in accordance with custom, she was shown each month and had to sign. Alice stopped being cautious and vented her outrage in her journal when she wrote on 18 February, 'Everyone here _loathes_ the C.O. [Ramsay Smith] and J.W.B. [Colonel J.W. Barrett] like poison. No one would grieve if anything happened to them.'

Colonel Ramsay Smith countered protests by making the nurses account for every meal or snack sent to the wards. Each patient's meals had to be ordered on special sheets which were then sent down to the hospital kitchens. All this paperwork was time-consuming for the already overworked nursing sisters. On 1 March 1915 Alice's journal records that 'this evening I was so tired I was nearly reduced to tears while trying to make the diet sheets tally and fill in prescription forms'.

Alice could accept working long hours for low pay but constant friction with Colonel Ramsay Smith and endless red tape wore her down.

Colonel J.W. Barrett (later Sir James Barrett), who had previously lectured the troops on the dangers of syphilis, was a good doctor. But like Ramsay Smith he was a stickler for discipline. Both men blamed the nurses for patients leaving the ward at night to slip into the bars and brothels of 'The Wozzer'. The nurses were aware of the dangers of syphilis but were not happy to take on the role of jailer.

One evening the CO called for Sister Kitchen and told her sternly the military police had reported that _three_ of her patients had been seen in the streets in their blue hospital pyjamas. Alice assured him that none of her patients was missing, but the colonel insisted on inspecting every bed on her ward. He stormed about, pulled covers off the beds and thumped pillows to see whether the beds were occupied. To Alice's relief every one of her charges was in bed. In her journal she wondered if the soldiers had deliberately hoaxed the colonel by making the call themselves, pretending to be from the military police.

A few weeks later Alice and Hilda (who was now working at the Citadel Hospital) had lunch at Shepheard's Hotel with their friends Captains Dale and Coulter and Lieutenant Barratt. On leaving Shepheard's Alice and Hilda were confronted by an uproar in the street outside. Alice recorded the scene in her journal:

> Motor cars, horse-drawn fire carts and military police everywhere. We heard shots fired. Was told afterwards that Australian soldiers had burned down undesirable places, defied the 'red caps' [as the British Military Police were known] and fired at them, killing one man and injuring several others and that police had cleared the street using fixed bayonets.

Alice later learned that the spread of venereal disease amongst the soldiers had triggered the riot. In retaliation drunken Anzacs had evicted prostitutes and pimps from the brothels and gaming houses, and set bedding and furniture alight. When a fire cart arrived they had cut its water hoses so that several of the bars and brothels burned down.

General Sir Ian Hamilton arrived in Egypt on 29 March. Five days later the 8th Battalion was ordered to pack up camp.

Every bootblack on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria seemed to know that the troops were off to the Dardanelles, but ironically the Anzacs themselves were kept in the dark.

On 4 April 1915, the 8th Battalion boarded the _Clan McGillivray_ for a two days' voyage to Lemnos Island. 'May God have mercy on them and protect them,' Alice wrote in her diary that night.

Australian military hospitals in Cairo and Alexandria were told they should prepare a few hundred beds for the arrival of wounded soldiers. All leave for Army doctors and nurses was cancelled.

Colonel Neville Howse had warned that casualties could be extremely high on the Gallipoli peninsula, but his requests for more hospital ships and more medical supplies and equipment continued to be ignored.

On the evening of 24 April 1915, the 8th and other battalions steamed out of Mudros Harbour at Lemnos, past the island of Imbros, 24 kilometres away from the Gallipoli peninsula. The men lay on deck wrapped in their greatcoats and gazed up at the stars, reminiscing in low voices about 'home' and speculating about the 'Big Stunt' to come.

According to historians Les Carlyon and C.E.W. Bean, the following morning at dawn between 15,000 and 16,000 men prepared to land on the Gallipoli peninsula. Due to an unexpectedly strong current and a faulty marker buoy the landing crafts were dragged towards a narrow strip of beach more than a kilometre north of their original target. This meant the Anzacs were facing almost impossible terrain with steep cliffs rising only some 20 metres from the waterfront.

A handful of Turkish sentries patrolling the coast from the cliff tops spotted the approaching boats and quickly summoned reinforcements. As soon as the British were within range, Turkish soldiers opened fire—not with the ancient muskets the Anzacs had been told to expect, but with brand new German rifles, machine guns and howitzers.

Some of the Anzacs were killed by shrapnel even before the boats ran aground, others clambered out into waist-deep water and drowned under the weight of their heavy packs. Within minutes the shallow waters of Anzac Cove were stained red with the blood of the dying.

Those surviving the first wave waded ashore and found themselves at the foot of steep scrub-covered cliffs. Anzac Cove resembled an amphitheatre with the Turks in the gallery and the Anzacs on stage. On the beach, the Anzacs rushed towards the cliffs to shelter from a rain of Turkish bullets. Then orders were given to ascend the slopes. Hundreds of Anzacs were killed and wounded in the attack. The wounded lay in the blazing sun until the stretcher bearers could reach them. Many died a lonely, painful death.

Evacuation of the wounded to the hospital ships was a huge problem. Over 1700 wounded men were placed on mine sweepers and taken out to two hospital ships, the _Gascon_ , and _Guildford Castle,_ and the transport ship _Osmanieh,_ which had no nurses and only one doctor on board. No one had allowed for so many casualties, and with the impossibility of setting up a hospital on the Gallipoli peninsula many more hospital ships staffed by trained personnel were needed.

Such was the carnage that commander of the Australian and New Zealand forces, General Sir William Birdwood, sent a message to General Sir Ian Hamilton, seeking permission to withdraw and return to the waiting ships. General Hamilton, who had just received a radio message that an Australian submarine had slipped through the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmara, refused Birdwood's request. Instead of allowing the Anzacs to retire and saving thousands of lives, Hamilton sent back a message: 'Your news is indeed serious. There is nothing for it but to dig yourselves right in and stick it out. It would take at least two days to re-embark you.' And so those valiant men began to dig.

Alice's former CO at Mena, Colonel Neville Howse, had kept his head amid the chaos which he had predicted. Heroic Dr Howse set up a small casualty clearing station (CCS) at one end of the beach and disinfected and stitched wounds and splinted limbs, ignoring his own safety. As Howse had foreseen, there were not nearly enough stretchers or supplies of drinking water, morphine and surgical dressings. As a result men were left in the blazing sun injured and their wounds became infected by sand, dirt and flies.

#### THE RETURN OF WOUNDED ANZACS

Alice recorded in her journal that the first load of wounded Anzacs arrived at Alexandria on 29 April 1915. Those who arrived on hospital ships were in better condition than the unfortunate men assigned to transport ships. Most had not been washed for days, were badly dehydrated and had wounds swollen with pus or black with gangrene.

Half the wounded were hospitalised in Alexandria while the rest were sent another 320 kilometres to Cairo. On 30 April, Alice, disobeying censorship restrictions, recorded that 2849 wounded men had been shipped from Gallipoli to Alexandria. Lieutenant Rupert Barratt had been killed and Colonel Bolton wounded.

Alice's ward at No 1 AGH at Heliopolis was swamped by wounded men, many of them on the point of death. Camp beds and rubber mattresses overflowed into the hallways, corridors and wherever nurses and orderlies could find space for them. Some of the men were too tall for the hospital's flimsy camp beds, which had to be extended with chairs.

Some of the wounded men had been left lying in pools of their own blood for so long they were stuck fast to their canvas stretchers. The nurses and orderlies had great difficulty prising them off the canvas, and often caused the men excruciating pain. By now Alice was in despair about the appalling treatment of wounded men at Gallipoli. Angry and frustrated, she wrote in her diary: 'If wounded animals had been treated as these soldiers were, the RSPCA would have raised a storm.'

The nurses were overwhelmed with the flood of distressing cases: men who vomited blood or haemorrhaged, tetanus victims with their jaws locked rigid and men whose faces or genitals had been shot away. Young soldiers terrified at the thought of having a limb amputated clung to Alice's hand for comfort. The suffering was terrible and no effective pain killers as yet existed apart from morphine, and supplies of this were limited.

Each morning the nurses had to drain pus out of infected wounds. Fortunately, Red Cross volunteers helped the nurses to feed those patients who could not feed themselves. These ladies also provided small luxuries, such as bars of chocolate, tobacco, books, magazines and shaving gear. Alice was amazed that, in spite of their suffering, the patients rarely complained. They could see the nurses were overworked and were grateful that at long last they had _someone_ to attend to them.

More casualties arrived each night by train. Alice worked ten- or twelve-hour shifts. When she finally did get to bed she had terrible nightmares in which wounded men with shattered faces and bleeding stumps instead of arms and legs haunted her. On the morning of 30 April she awoke, feeling as though she had not slept a wink. The horrors of Gallipoli and the bungling that cost the lives of thousands had shattered her illusions about the poetry of war. She had enjoyed reading the poems of Rupert Brooke. Now she wrote her own memorable words: 'There is no poetry here...only pain, misery and death.' Her journal entry for 2 May 1915 reads:

> This is not war but mass murder. Poor boys, if only the world knew how badly they are treated. There are not nearly enough hospital ships to cope. Another strenuous day. Over fifty officers admitted in my section. We are all worked to breaking point with so many dressings to do, meals to provide and so much marble underfoot.

Heliopolis had two hundred medical orderlies, but Alice described some as 'pretty hopeless'. There were only thirty-five overworked doctors. Each nursing sister was responsible for forty wounded officers and between one hundred and fifty and two hundred enlisted men. The nurses worked on average twelve hours a day, six days a week. However, in cases of an emergency they had to work on without a break. They could also be woken to assist the night staff if necessary. On 5 May Alice wrote in her journal:

> Everyone is working long hours. Scarcely time to think of snatching a meal. So many patients have arm and hand injuries. One poor young lad had his leg amputated due to gangrene. Work gets heavier each day. Some say [Gallipoli] casualties reached 6,000: others say 8,000 is nearer the mark.

On 7 May Alice was overwhelmed with the arrival of another thousand casualties. She wrote in despair:

> By this time perhaps all the men we looked on as friends have been blotted out of existence. All our leave has been stopped until further notice. Another turmoil of a day. I have charge of forty-two officers, some of them good friends. The work is harrowing. If we had been nursing strange troops we may have felt it less, but among our own people the horrors of war are brought home. Almost everyone on the nursing or medical staff has a relation or friend at the front so you dread the latest news, in case it is someone you know.

On the open wards, shell-shocked men raved and screamed. Some crawled under the beds, terrified of gunfire, while others tore off their bandages. Being a danger to themselves and other patients they were moved to a special lockable ward. Over half the men in the wards, debilitated from a poor diet, were suffering from dysentery or enteric fever (typhoid). These men wanted water and more water, which had been in short supply during transport from Gallipoli.

The mental and physical strain on the nurses was immense. Alice and her colleagues were haggard from overwork, lack of sleep and worry about friends and loved ones. Eventually the situation grew so desperate that more Australian nurses were enlisted, but it would be a long time before they arrived.

Catering at Heliopolis was still tendered out and the food became worse by the day. Some patients could not keep down any of the hospital food and relied on the nurses to buy them fresh eggs and milk. Frequently, Alice paid for these out of her own money, because the enlisted men would not get paid until after leaving the hospital, and so many were penniless.

Once again the nurses complained about the food. This time Colonel Ramsay Smith took action. The following day the caterer departed in a huff, taking everything in the hospital's larder with him. The nurses survived on tea and biscuits until a new caterer arrived with fresh supplies. The food improved, but only marginally.

On 11 May 1915, Alice started a week on night duty. In a contemplative mood she wrote:

> The morning star rises outside our ward windows. It and the white desert sand are lovely at dawn and compensate for the fatigue that accompanies a spell on night duty. I have grown to love Egypt and shall be sorry to leave it. The jacaranda trees are in bloom everywhere: have never seen such fine blossoms.

On 19 May, Colonel Cunningham from the 8th Battalion told Alice that General Bill Bridges was wounded and Captain Mathieson, another good friend and a medical officer to the 8th, had been killed at Anzac Cove. Alice wrote with sadness, 'Captain Mathieson was such a nice kind man.'

A group of younger nurses arrived on the SS _Kyarra_ a week later and brought new energy to Heliopolis. Among them were Sister Olive Haynes, a clergyman's daughter, and her flirtatious, exuberant friend Sister 'Pete' Peters, both from Adelaide.

As well as their medical duties, Alice and the other nurses mended the men's uniforms, listened to their troubles and wrote letters home for amputees or those with arms in slings.

Following the example laid down by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, Alice did her best to write letters of condolence to families whose sons had died. Her letters were filled with praise for the dead men's courage in their last moments, even when this was not entirely true.

By now Alice was aware that young soldiers did not die happily. They called for their mothers, some cursing the day they had enlisted. However, the older men showed extraordinary courage and most confronted death with stoicism. 'I would like you to know your son died bravely,' she would write. 'He was happy to know he had given his life for his country and the Empire.' Sometimes at a loss for words and wanting to provide comfort she would quote a few lines from Rupert Brooke. What she could not tell grieving mothers was that if only their sons had received prompt treatment at Anzac Cove or on the filthy transport ships, their wounds might not have become infected with gangrene and their sons might still be alive. After witnessing the deaths of many young men whose lives had been needlessly sacrificed due to bungled evacuation processes Alice was finding it harder and harder to write these letters.

Over the next few months Alice received replies from the boys' mothers thanking her for caring for their sons in their last hours. Some of the letters were so sad they made Alice bite back her tears.

The hottest time of year was fast approaching and the nurses joked that Heliopolis should have been named 'Hell-iopolis'. Their heavy uniforms were hotter than ever. Matron Jane Bell had already lobbied the administration in London who, after months of deliberation, grudgingly conceded that nurses in Egypt could be issued with lighter weight dresses and summer capes of red cotton rather than wool. Measurements were taken for new uniforms, but nothing arrived.

Alice accepted an invitation to a luncheon at Shepheard's Hotel for Colonel Bill Bolton, who had been invalided out of the Army and was to return home. He had been mentioned in despatches for bravery at Gallipoli, in particular for the capture of an important Turkish stronghold on top of a ridge, which had been named Bolton's Ridge in his honour.

At the dinner Colonel Bolton, who had his arm in a sling, related how the men of the 8th Battalion had charged up the beach and climbed those terrible cliffs while being strafed by Turkish bullets. Then he told the sad story of Lieutenant Rupert Barratt's death, killed as he stepped ashore. There was a gasp from the audience, many of whom had known Rupert well. Alice remembered that first night at dinner on the _Benalla,_ when Rupert and his cousin Frank Dale made them all laugh with their funny stories. Now this young man, heir to a vast grazing property, lay in a grave at Anzac Cove.

With a grave face Bill Bolton went on to tell them that, during the battalion's first month of battle, 251 of its members had been wounded, 58 killed and 79 reported missing and believed dead. At this, he turned towards Sister Kitchen and Matron Bell and as representatives of the AANS in Cairo thanked both nurses for everything they were doing for the wounded men. There was a burst of clapping among the officers. Glasses were raised to Sister Alice Kitchen and Matron Jane Bell before Bill Bolton sat down amid a chorus of cheers.

#### IN THE AEGEAN AND AT GALLIPOLI

In the first week of May 1915, Matron Jane Bell called Sisters Kitchen and Samsing into her office. She congratulated them for running their wards so efficiently. As a reward for all their hard work she was recommending them for a more pleasant job—taking convalescent patients back to Australia.

Alice and Hilda discussed Matron Bell's kind offer. It would be nice to return to Australia and see their families but they decided that as they had enjoyed working on the _Benalla_ they would now like to do a spell as nurses on a hospital ship. Hopefully, they would be sent to Gallipoli and could look after wounded men from the 8th Battalion, which they regarded as their 'special' regiment. Matron Bell promised to support their application. However, she warned them that work on hospital ships was very hard and carried no extra pay or overtime allowance.

For weeks and weeks they heard nothing from the War Office. The temperature in Cairo was soaring and they were still wearing the winter uniforms in which they had left Melbourne. Finally, after months of waiting London sent out their new lightweight summer uniforms. Matron Nellie Gould posted a notice stating that even though the new summer uniforms came with soft muslin cuffs instead of starched ones, all nurses had to continue to wear 3-inch (75 mm) high starched collars.

On 7 June 1915, almost a month after their interview with Matron Bell, Hilda burst into Alice's room with exciting news. The War Office had granted their wish. They were to join the hospital ship _Gascon_ in Alexandria as replacements for two nurses unexpectedly returning to Australia. One poor nurse had collapsed when she learned her younger brother had been killed at Anzac Cove. The other nurse had refused to go back on board saying she could no longer endure such terrible sights.

_Hospital ship_ Gascon.

At Alexandria, Alice's former colleague and friend from Melbourne days, Grace Oram, now Lady Superintendent of Nurses, was there to meet them. She filled them in on the hospital ship _Gascon_ 's situation.

It seemed that the War Office in Whitehall was to blame for the hospital ship _Gascon_ 's chaotic last voyage from Gallipoli. Instead of sending out bandages and bottles of morphine, those wretched clerks in London had sent babies' feeding bottles and nappies. The nurses had had to tear their petticoats into strips to bandage the wounded. Without enough morphine to last the voyage the cries of pain from badly wounded men had been heartrending. These poor men had lain out in the blazing sun for days before the stretcher bearers could reach them, so their wounds were badly infected. This had caused grave problems for the medical team. Matron Oram warned Alice and Hilda that this was not a job for the squeamish. She shook Alice and Hilda by the hand. 'Goodbye and good luck. You'll need it,' she said ominously.

The _Gascon_ had once been a passenger liner operated by the Union Line on the route between London and South Africa. Its lower cabins had been converted into hospital wards, its elegant furniture stripped out and the white hull painted with huge red crosses to show the enemy it was a hospital ship. But the Germans did not always observe these rules: to date, two hospital ships had been torpedoed and sunk.

On board the _Gascon_ , they were presented to a tall Englishman in a gold braided uniform. In a plummy voice he told them that he was the captain and seemed less than delighted at the idea of two _more_ women on what he obviously thought should be an all-male ship. He informed them stiffly that the nurses did not eat with 'his' naval officers but at a special sitting of their own in the mess. Women were only admitted as long as they did not break any of the rules of the British Navy, whose officers staffed this ship.

They were shown around the ship by the chief engineer, a friendly Geordie. He showed them the big box-cradle in which two stretcher cases at a time could be hoisted aboard and told them the procedures to follow when the wounded arrived. First, the men's wrist labels were checked and names and ranks written on a record card. Urgent cases were 'red carded', a sign they should be given priority. Seriously wounded patients were assigned to one of five wards which could accommodate a total of 450 patients. The _Gascon_ could transport another 200 to 300 men known as 'sitting' cases—those who could sit up but needed food brought to them—and 'walkers', who could get their own food from the Patients' Mess. Walkers slept on mattresses on top deck or wherever they could find space in the companionways.

Alice and Hilda were shown to a small cramped cabin which they were to share. It was on the lowest deck near the engines and was very, very hot. On the wards they met up with a former colleague from Heliopolis, Sister 'Pete' Peters, who told them that on the _Gascon_ 's previous voyage from Gallipoli to Alexandria, fifty-two soldiers had died from badly infected wounds.

They were bound for the small rocky island of Lemnos, approximately 40 kilometres off the Turkish coastline, which the Greeks had allowed the British to use as a supply depot and to set up tented hospitals. These were run by British, Australian and Canadian nurses, who were functioning under difficult circumstances. The island was only two hours by sea from the Gallipoli peninsula but, like Gallipoli, was short of drinking water, which had to be shipped in by a tanker from Alexandria.

On 11 June 1915, the _Gascon_ steamed into Mudros Harbour, the main harbour on this parched island. The ship lay at anchor amid rows of British and French warships, transport ships bringing food and water to provision the tented hospitals, and converted trawlers used to sweep the area for German mines. The captain warned them all through the loudspeaker that they were under an hour's notice to sail to Anzac Cove where the _Gascon_ would replace the _Sicilia_ as duty hospital ship. There they would wait until nightfall, load the wounded and take off for Alexandria again.

On Sunday morning they were still awaiting orders to leave for Gallipoli. While Hilda wrote letters home Alice wrote to her mother and updated her journal. After a traditional roast Sunday lunch with a joint of beef, two naval officers on an adjacent supply ship offered to take them sailing in a dinghy. As it was highly unlikely they would sail that day, Colonel Hugo, as the senior medical officer on board, gave them permission to leave the ship, something that did not please the captain. It seemed there was an uneasy truce between those two, each believing the Army nurses were under their command.

Alice, Hilda, Ella Tucker and Major Ilias (a surgeon with the AIF whose Greek-born parents had migrated to Melbourne from Athens) were taken by the two friendly young British naval officers for a sail round the harbour. Alice, who had grown up in inland Victoria and never learned to swim, initially was nervous but discovered she enjoyed small boat sailing. They landed on a beach near the Australian tented hospital and found soldiers of many different nationalities camping along the waterfront. There were French and French-colonial troops from Africa, brown-faced Ghurkhas from the Himalayas, turbanned Sikhs, and West Indians with broad smiles and gold teeth.

They walked through a camp of French soldiers whose officers wore elegant pale blue-grey uniforms and were extremely polite. But Alice, suspicious of their flowery compliments and hand kissing, called them 'chocolate soldiers' and thought the French looked as if they belonged in a comic opera. She and Hilda politely refused invitations to join the French officers for a glass of wine while marvelling at the comfort with which the French surrounded themselves. The mess tents used by the French contained barrels of wine shipped over from France. The men had also set up a long row of camp ovens which baked long crusty loaves of bread fresh each morning.

From this French enclave they walked to the Australian camp whose dining room rarely served fresh bread but provided hard biscuits and a never-ending supply of tins of salted bully beef or stewed lamb. The Australian camp, with its rows of white tents, was surrounded by borders of white pebbles and had pathways with evocative names like Collins Street and Macquarie Street.

They were greeted by Colonel Bryant, the Australian CO, who showed them over the tented field hospital. Alice looked at the lines of stretchers lying on the ground in the blazing sun. They had no mosquito nets over them. Blowflies buzzed round the mouths of men too ill to brush them aside—surely it _must_ be possible to do better than this for men who had risked their lives for their country.

#### AT ANZAC COVE

Just before midnight on 14 June, Alice was woken by the rattle of the _Gascon_ 's anchor chain. With relief she realised the continual throbbing and droning of the ship's engines had ceased. They had arrived at Anzac Cove safely. Alice turned over and went back to sleep.

When she woke, Alice looked through the porthole and saw the hospital ship they were to replace lying about 50 metres away. She glimpsed a narrow strip of sand above which reared cliffs sharp as fish bones, with slopes scarred by steep ravines. In the distance Alice could see trenches that traversed the buff-coloured or reddish cliffs like a fine network of veins.

On the beach were two small tents with a white canvas awning slung between them which she realised must be the tiny casualty clearing stations. Beside them was a much larger tent with a red cross on its roof. It was a hospital tent where serious cases could lie in the shade until nightfall. However, it was not large enough to accommodate all the wounded and many of the men had to lie on the beach, in the hot sun plagued by blowflies.

Most of the beach was covered with packing cases, and mules were dragging stores to the gullies. Men in khaki shorts surrounded two water carts. With a shock Alice realised they were lining up for their daily water ration. Others braved the shells which pock-marked the water and went for a swim. The water looked exquisite—turquoise-blue and clear as glass. Alice looked down and saw dolphins gambolling around the _Gascon_ 's hull, giving the impression she was on a luxury yacht anchored in a millionaires' playground rather than a hospital ship hopefully anchored out of range of the enemy guns.

Alice watched a small boat rowed by a young midshipman coming towards them. He tied his dinghy to the _Gascon_ 's rope ladder and climbed up on deck, removed his braided cap, saluted the chief engineer and told him that the _Sicilia_ would be leaving for Alexandria at midnight.

His message delivered, the midshipman saluted, turned on his heel and made for the rope ladder. He climbed down into his dinghy, untied it and started to row back to the _Sicilia._ As he reached a point half way between the two hospital ships Alice heard a shrill whine overhead then a hissing as an object hit the water. The enemy shell created a surge which rocked the _Gascon_ and nearly swamped the tiny dinghy.

Alice watched in horror, fearing the dinghy would be sucked down by the rapidly spreading whirlpool.

Rowing like a man possessed, the young midshipman managed to reach the _Sicilia._ Alice felt uneasy, knowing another German shell could be aimed at the _Gascon._ Engines throbbed and propellers churned. Slowly the _Gascon_ moved out of range of the gigantic German-made gun known as Asiatic Annie.

Alice went below. The ward reeked of carbolic soap. That meant the orderlies had been hard at work cleaning up. She checked each bedside locker to see it contained a china urinal and that each water carafe was full. In order that they would not spill when the sea was rough the carafes were slung from metal gimbals beside each cot. Just to make certain, she rechecked her dressings cupboard and was relieved to see the large stock of neatly wound bandages, gauze dressing pads, bottles of iodine and Eusol disinfectant.

Reassured that the ward was shining clean and ready to receive the next load of wounded, Alice returned on deck. Here, the chief engineer was chatting animatedly with Sister Peters. Their conversation was interrupted by a droning sound high above them. The three of them looked up. Alice saw a small plane circling overhead, its wings glinting silver against the vivid blue of the sky.

'Theirs or ours?' Alice asked.

'Theirs,' said the chief engineer laconically, 'Looks like a Taube.'

There was a burst of gunfire from Anzac Cove. Seconds later a tiny piece of cotton wool appeared in the sky close to the German plane. In response, the Turkish fire increased in volume until the noise was deafening. Like a lazy wasp the German plane droned away over the lion-coloured hills of the Gallipoli peninsula, one of the most lonely and desolate places on God's earth Alice thought.

She wrote up the scene in her journal:

>...heavy booms from Turkish guns echo round the hills and over the sea, dealing out destruction and death. From the hills opposite we constantly hear the sound of snipers' rifles cracking. There is dust everywhere. Destroyers patrol around like watchdogs in case of German submarines.

Having experienced the searing heat, Alice felt sympathy for the Anzacs trapped in the hot and dusty trenches, deafened by gunfire. She could understand why soldiers would risk their lives for a swim in the sea, the only diversion in such a bleak place.

After dinner the doctors and nurses watched the sunset, one of those crimson and golden skies slowly turning to a mixture of grey and lilac. The hills behind Anzac Cove resembled a recumbent elephant, whose wrinkled trunk pointed inland to the hills that ran down the spine of the Gallipoli peninsula. At midnight, when the guns had fallen quiet, their sister ship, the _Sicilia_ , slipped away for Alexandria, her hold full of wounded soldiers.

Shortly afterwards, a small fleet of pinnaces, tugs and barges ventured out from the shore and surrounded the _Gascon._ Wounded men lay pressed tight together; others sat bolt upright, due to lack of space, their faces gaunt with pain.

_Wounded soldier being lifted onto the_ Gascon _in a box hoist._

Alice, watching the scene from the ship's rail, thought the rolling of these small boats must be agonising for men with stomach wounds or broken limbs. She saw how the first patients, their faces ghastly white in the light of flares, were swung aboard. Those with less serious wounds were able to climb the _Gascon_ 's rope ladder unassisted. Those men who had sustained serious injuries, 'cot cases' in Army medical jargon (meaning those intended to occupy metal cots on the wards), were swung aboard the _Gascon_ on its box hoist. Patients who had

_Stretcher cases on a barge await loading onto the_ Gascon. _To the rear of the barge are the walking cases; on the left orderlies carry wounded men over their shoulders up the gangway._

been given morphine by the doctors at Anzac Cove arrived with a large 'M' written in indelible ink on their foreheads or on the red wrist labels to indicate they needed urgent attention.

Fearful of showing too much light, which could attract German planes, the crew worked by flickering flares. Again and again the large wooden cradle soared high into the air and hovered over the deck. Slowly and carefully, over two hundred stretcher cases were lowered onto the deck. The stretchers were then carried by the orderlies into the lifts that disgorged them directly onto the wards.

The medical orderlies were Hindus or Sikhs seconded from the Indian Army. Alice called her orderly 'Billy' because she couldn't pronounce his name. Hilda's medical orderly was named Selim. Neither Billy nor Selim could read but they were kind to the patients and very hard workers. Alice and Billy worked their way along the right side of the ward while Hilda and Selim took the left side. The stretchers and their occupants reeked of stale blood and excrement. Alice helped Billy to cut soiled and torn uniforms off the wounded _,_ swab them down, using the minimum of water which was in short supply, and dress and disinfect their wounds so the doctors could operate if necessary. Changing field dressings often took a long time as dried blood encrusted the area. Sometimes an anaesthetic was needed before the dressings could be removed. The nurses had learned to administer these as the surgeons were too busy carrying out amputations and other urgent operations. Some of the Anzacs had hacked off the legs of their uniform trousers with pocket knives in an effort to keep cool. Sadly, for some of them, this problem of short trouser lengths would soon be resolved by amputation.

Men who had been lying out in the blazing sun in 'No Man's Land' (where it was very dangerous for the stretcher bearers to rescue them without being killed themselves) often had third-degree sunburn, and swollen and blackened tongues that protruded from their mouths. The nurses and orderlies had to restrain them from gulping down water too greedily.

Washing the wounded, Alice noticed how many of them were infested with fleas as well as lice. Since most men were crawling with lice, whose eggs nestled in the seams of their uniforms, all clothes were sent to be deloused and disinfected in a machine the staff jokingly referred to as the Detonator. The name was given to it because if any unused cartridges were left in pockets, they would explode in the heat of the machine. Many soldiers had festering sores around their mouths and on their arms and legs, due to months of living on an inadequate diet without fruit or vegetables. Others had the distinctive red rash that Alice knew denoted scabies.

After the orderlies had washed their patients they eased them into clean pyjamas. One young lad with shrapnel wounds that had ripped through his body and lodged in his genitals was left mute from shock. So was a young officer who could not stop shaking and shivering. Alice was told by other soldiers that the officer had been forced to spend days trapped by enemy fire beside the decomposing body of his younger brother and was now in shock.

The concept of shell shock was very new. It had not existed as a diagnosis in the Boer War, which had consisted of cavalry charges and infantry manoeuvres by men armed with sabres or bayonets attached to their rifles, and no machine guns or trench warfare. But at Gallipoli the Anzacs had spent weeks in tiny dug-outs or trenches, waiting for Turkish shells to land beside them, aware they were unable to escape. The sheer horror of seeing men blown apart and having to pick up the body parts afterwards had badly affected them.

From her experiences with shell-shocked men at Heliopolis, Alice was convinced that some of them, given rest and quiet, could be cured. However, in an open ward on the _Gascon_ , surrounded by throbbing engines and other hallucinating patients, these shell-shocked men raved, screamed and disturbed soldiers who were very sick or dying.

What amazed Alice was how brave many of the wounded men were—most did not complain despite being in terrible pain. And if they _did_ complain it was in soft moans rather than loud curses. A sergeant with a broken leg asked her how long it would take for him to get 'fixed up' so he could get back to Anzac Cove 'and have another go at the Turks'.

Abdominal wounds were the hardest of all to deal with. One unfortunate case had entrails protruding from his stomach like a string of sausages. Alice had to steel herself to push the guts back inside the body and bandage them in place until he reached the operating table. Now at last she understood why one of the young nurses on the previous voyage had refused to go back on the ward.

'Abdominals' were often in grave danger of haemorrhaging to death. They had to be made ready for the operating table immediately (since at that time there were no blood transfusions, no blood bank, no intravenous drips). Alice knew that no matter what they did most of these men would die, but nevertheless tried desperately to keep them alive.

On 10 June the second group to be made ready for the operating theatre were amputees. A soldier with an arm missing and a pair of bleeding stumps where his legs should have been told Alice: 'That shell knocked me arse over tit, sister. An' when I saw what the buggers 'ad done to me, I wished to Gawd the Turks 'ad finished me orf.' Alice's heart went out to the poor man but she could do little except give him morphine to ease the pain.

Another high-priority group were those with broken limbs. Most needed splinting, a skill Alice soon mastered. She never forgot one patient, a senior officer from Brigade HQ Battalion, who in her journal she called Colonel X. She had last seen him in Cairo, tall and handsome, mounted on a chestnut horse, riding beside the other colonels—Gartside, McPhee and Bolton—leading the 8th Battalion as they rode from Mena camp to Cairo station. And now here he was, a cripple, on board the _Gascon._ A shell had shattered the bone in his right leg, ripping the muscle to shreds.

On 18 June, Alice was told an old friend from 8th Battalion had come aboard and would like to see her, if she could spare a moment.

Directly she had finished changing the dressing on a patient's wound, Alice patted her hair into place and went up on deck. There she found Colonel McPhee, now looking years older than when she had last seen him. He handed her a parcel wrapped in old newspaper. Inside was a small but very beautiful watercolour of Allied warships in Mudros Harbour with the grey granite hills of Lemnos silhouetted against a vividly blue sky.

She thanked the colonel profusely for his gift, touched that he had thought of her.

Another soldier from the 8th Battalion that Alice remembered from the _Benalla_ was Ross, a cheerful boy who had once delivered bread to her parents' home in Ballarat. He had been hit while having a swim in Anzac Cove and arrived on her ward, his guts full of shrapnel. Poor Ross held Alice's hand and made her promise she would write to his mother and tell her that he died bravely. In the event, he died screaming with pain in spite of the morphine injections, but Alice honoured his last wish.

>...poor Ross died shortly after admission as did two more 'abdominals'...hit while swimming. The work gets heavier daily, the flies are a continual pest and the atmosphere oppressive down below on the ward. Several large shells were fired at a store ship close by and rocked our poor wounded boys on the _Gascon_ causing them to cry out in pain.

Whenever she had a spare moment, Alice tried to help the 'sitters' up on deck, including those suffering from typhoid or severe bouts of dysentery. Over a hundred men lay sprawled on the deck under a big white awning because the wards were too full to accommodate them. Some had the luxury of mattresses, others did not.

These poor men had been waiting to board the hospital ship for five days. Most were badly dehydrated, weak as kittens and unable to get up and fetch a cup of tea or a bowl of soup from the Patients' Mess down below. Alice did her best to help those who were dehydrated but, before the discovery of penicillin, there were no really powerful drugs for enteric fevers.

When the supply of clean pyjamas ran out, the 'enterics' had to be left in their soiled khaki trousers until they reached Alexandria. These poor men were pathetically grateful for the smallest attention by the 'walking' patients, by overworked nurses or the orderlies. Few of them complained of how the Army had treated them, although Alice felt they had every right to do so. Some died of dysentery or typhoid aboard the hospital ship; others had their health permanently damaged.

After a scare when a German submarine attempted to torpedo the _Gascon,_ each night, at 9 pm, the crew now closed the portholes. Alice described in her journal for 17 June how:

>...each night after dark, the mine-sweepers bring over patients. The watertight doors can be closed quickly so it would take us longer to sink. We continually hear guns and shells being fired from the beach and from torpedo boats but now we scarcely give them a thought.

Alice got very little sleep but knew she could cope provided she kept focused on the task in hand. Throughout her shifts, Billy kept her supplied with cups of strong sweet tea and she cat-napped in an armchair on the ward whenever she could, only leaving the ward at dawn to change out of her bloodstained uniform. She would put on a clean white apron, a clean grey cotton dress and a freshly laundered set of muslin cuffs. By now she did not give a fig _what_ Matron Gould wanted—she was _not_ going to wear one of those dreadful starched collars: they were far too hot and uncomfortable.

Fleas were a problem. They were brought on board from the trenches and hopped from the patients to the nurses. Alice's midriff became raw from flea bites. Her nails were often rimmed black with dried blood after a patient haemorrhaged and she had had to use a tourniquet on arms and legs to staunch the bleeding. Bleeding could be fatal as there were no blood transfusions and nurses had to cope unaided with patients bleeding to death.

Major Ilias, Colonel Hugo and the other two Army surgeons also worked flat out almost round the clock. Tin buckets containing severed legs, hands and arms mounted up outside the operating theatre. Finally, the orderlies took the buckets up on deck and heaved their contents over the side, which caused a flurry of activity among the sharks.

Alice's ward lay below the waterline. It was hot, humid and poorly ventilated. Try as she would to keep the area fresh and clean, it often reeked of stale sweat and tobacco. Although the patients were not meant to smoke, what nurse could forbid such heroic men anything that might ease their suffering?

The death of Ross had been hard to bear. Alice was experienced enough to understand why nurses were not meant to get involved with their patients. She vowed this would not happen again but of course it did, because underneath her efficient exterior Alice had a warm and loving heart. Another _Benalla_ boy by the name of Gooch, riddled with shrapnel was red-carded for her special attention. She was with him when he went to theatre and offered up a silent prayer that this time the surgeons could save him.

After Gooch returned from the operating theatre, Alice stayed by his bedside holding his hand and talking to him as slowly he regained consciousness. It seemed as though he would recover, but then his condition deteriorated. White as death, he haemorrhaged from a wound the size of a dinner plate. It proved impossible to staunch the flow of blood and soon Alice was drenched in it, blood staining her white apron and the hem of her dress. The poor boy gave a sigh and held tight to Alice's hand. She remembered Gooch confiding to her that he had raised his age to enlist—he had just had his seventeenth birthday.

Not wanting to let the patients see her cry she went below and wrote a letter to Gooch's mother. In her journal on 21 June she wrote:

> I wonder when this awful destruction of life will cease. There seems no safe spot for the men anywhere at this rough spot, except in their dugouts. They seem to take their lives in their hands whenever they move about, whether in search of water, food, fresh air or any form of recreation.

When all the 550 cots were full, Alice and Hilda gave up their cabins to two badly wounded men and slept on deck chairs for the return journey. A dozen patients died en route and were buried at sea.

At Alexandria there was no time for an overnight break which regulations recommended. They were under orders to go straight back to Gallipoli. They saw their patients off onto the quayside and immediately took on more crates of bandages, morphine, food and other supplies. At least they could rest on the outward journey.

After they had anchored off Anzac Cove, the procedure of loading patients at night was repeated again.

There was no intensive care ward but a system of 'special' nursing for the worst cases. One of Alice's colleagues, Sister Rachael Pratt, was ordered to relieve Alice of general duties so Alice could 'special' or monitor closely four young soldiers in need of intensive care. The first died just before midday, holding tight to her hand. The second did not regain consciousness. The third—another boy from the 8th Battalion, not yet twenty—remained conscious right up to the last moment. He complained of terrible headaches and Alice tried to soothe him by massaging his temples. In his last moments he confused Alice with his mother and asked her to give him a hug. Then, as darkness finally descended on him and he drifted into unconsciousness he cried out, 'Mum, I wish I'd never volunteered.' The wretchedness of it all made Alice want to cry. Her fourth patient was a young man from Singleton in the Hunter Valley, 'a fine young fellow, far too young to have his life blotted out so quickly', wrote Alice on 25 June.

Alice hated laying out the dead. They represented failure to her as a nurse. Fortunately, Billy did the lion's share of the work and with the help of other orderlies carried the corpses out of the wards. In the ship's mortuary they were sewn into canvas shrouds and placed in rows on the top deck, each one draped in the Union Jack.

After a burial service was over, the shrouded bodies were placed on the _Gascon_ 's hoist and winched down onto the deck of a mine sweeper. Naval ratings removed the flags so they could be used again and slid the shrouded corpses, now weighted with lead, down a wooden chute and into the sea.

In addition to wounded men, Alice was trying to cope with almost fifty patients with dysentery. They were running high temperatures and demanded water constantly, which was a problem on a ship where drinking water was precious. Dysentery seemed worse than on her first trip. And still the admissions poured in.

During daylight hours the whine of 100-pound shells was sometimes so loud Alice found it hard to hear what her patients were trying to tell her. On deck when she was bending over a typhoid sufferer, a shell landed beside her and Alice felt stinging pain as shrapnel grazed her leg, drawing blood. A nursing sister working on deck and a patient were killed by shrapnel from the shell.

In all, thirteen AANS nurses died during World War I, ten of them Alice's fellow Victorians.

Alice wondered how _could_ they hope to conquer the Gallipoli peninsula when it seemed the Turks were able to obtain reinforcements, supplies and drinking water more easily than they were?

As soon as the G _ascon_ was relieved by the next hospital ship on duty it began the journey back to Alexandria. The weather was fine and the sea not too rough, and this time the voyage took only three days. Nevertheless, thirty-eight more men died en route and were committed to the deep.

At Alexandria, the orderlies, assisted by stokers and crew, hoisted the stretcher cases ashore in the cradle. Alice and the other nurses soon had the walkers and sitters dressed in their newly fumigated and laundered uniforms. With their nurses' help the wounded men managed to walk off the boat with their heads held high.

After tidying their wards, the nurses went ashore. They hoped to get a decent night's sleep in a hotel, collect their pay and pick up letters from home. In the meantime, the _Gascon_ was fumigated, restocked with provisions, medical supplies and coal, and her tanks filled with drinking water before returning to Lemnos for another rescue mission.

#### 'LEMNOS, IMBROS AND CHAOS' (A POPULAR SAYING AMONG THE ANZACS AT GALLIPOLI)

The _Gascon_ returned to the island of Lemnos on 27 June. The ship entered Mudros Harbour as the sun came up, flooding the sky with pale light. Alice recognised the softly rolling hills with their brown, fawn and lilac shadows, the lower slopes masked by the olive trees that turned silver as the wind stirred their leaves, just like the watercolour Colonel McPhee had given her. She hoped the colonel and all her other friends in the trenches were still alive.

Overcrowded, waterless Lemnos, only two hours away by sea from Gallipoli, was now designated as the place to send dysentery cases. Surgeon-General Birrell believed once the dysentery cases were removed from Gallipoli and its plague of flies they would get better rapidly and be able to return to the fray. What he failed to realise was that the flies were just as bad on Lemnos as they were on

_Gallipoli and surrounding islands (60 miles = 96 kilometres); Gallipoli to Alexandria = 1000 kilometres._

Gallipoli, and Lemnos was also short of drinking water. As a result, many men got worse or died in agony.

There were now three tented hospitals at Lemnos, all overflowing with patients, so it was impossible to keep the dysentery patients in tents. The only option was to leave them out in the open air where they were tormented by malarial mosquitoes and plagues of blowflies.

By now the death rate from dysentery was so bad that Whitehall decided dysentery patients should be moved to Alexandria, where there was an adequate supply of drinking water.

The _Gascon_ was ordered to take on as many of the dysentery sufferers as possible plus a hundred badly wounded men. Alice prayed they would survive the journey.

The nearer they came to Alexandria, the hotter and more humid it became in the belly of the ship. On Ward 2 forty men had already died. Alice found some consolation in Padre MacAuliffe's words: 'You are helping to ease the end of the dying,' but she knew that if the men had been treated better in the first place far fewer would have died.

After unloading at Alexandria Alice bade her patients goodbye with a cheery smile but a heavy heart, knowing some were so badly wounded it was unlikely they would see Australia again.

By now two of the original nurses from the _Gascon_ had had enough. They had requested a transfer to work in military hospitals in Egypt. After attending a farewell lunch for their colleagues, Alice and Hilda threw a few overnight things into their kit bags. They were rowed ashore in the _Gascon's_ tender and would have twenty-four hours' shore leave before returning to Gallipoli.

The Australian Army Nursing Service had booked the nursing sisters into a relatively modest hotel with poor facilities. The medical officers were provided with far more luxurious accommodation in the magnificent Hotel Beau Rivage.

On the quayside, Alice and Hilda hailed a horse-drawn _gharri_ to take them to their hotel, eagerly looking forward to their first night off in eleven days. In the lobby the concierge apologised profusely that their rooms were not ready. Alice and Hilda were too tired to argue. They left their kit bags with the concierge and went shopping.

On leave they often found release in shopping in bazaars, sometimes bargaining fiercely for things they didn't even want. However, the shopping expedition was not a success for Hilda. Already stressed and tired she was upset at being hassled by touts and had difficulty making up her mind _what_ to buy. In the end she was so annoyed by them she bought nothing at all.

Hot and thirsty after lengthy negotiations with the shopkeeper, Alice and Hilda adjourned to the Alexandria branch of Groppi's Tea Rooms, which acted as a home-away-from-home for Australian Army nurses. There they found a group of AANS sisters sitting at a round table reading the latest newspapers from London which were now several weeks old.

As usual the despatches from the Dardanelles reported the Allies' successes against the Turks who were expected to surrender very soon. It was obvious to Alice that the censor's blue pencil had removed all references to the large numbers of wounded, the soaring rate of deaths from dysentery, the awful diet, biscuits as hard as rocks, salt beef that made them thirsty, and the shortage of drinking water. With all this talk of surrender, victories and happy soldiers, Alice seemed to be reading about a totally different war from the one she was living through.

On 2 July 1915, the _Gascon_ once again left Alexandria for Gallipoli to take over from the _Neuralia_ as receiving hospital ship. The old system, under which hospital ships anchored off Anzac Cove and took on as many wounded each night until their wards were full had now been replaced by fixed timetables and regular sailings, with the aim of reducing the long hours medical staff had to work.

On the _Gascon_ 's arrival Alice was glad to hear that the 4th Australian Field Ambulance had set up two more first-aid posts, including one in Hotchkiss Gully, so now there was a good chance the wounded could be treated more promptly and kept out of the burning sun.

Despite the new system, Alice found she was working just as hard:

>...another poor 'abdominal' begged me not to leave him as he was dying. The nursing staff is not adequate for the heavy demands on it, especially at night when the wounded come in two or three batches. Shells whistled and shrieked over or beside us and made huge splashes as they fell alongside.

The following day, 11 July 1915, after a number of narrow misses from the enemy guns, the _Gascon_ sailed back to Alexandria with a full load of patients.

Without time for an overnight break they were ordered to load more medical supplies and water and return immediately to Anzac Cove where they would receive another cargo of wounded men. So much for regular timetables and shore leave, grumbled the nurses.

This time there were fewer men wounded but the number and severity of dysentery and typhoid cases had soared. Clearly this was an epidemic, probably due to the open latrine pits, Major Ilias reckoned. Most of the poor 'enterics' were so weak they arrived on stretchers and had to be hoisted aboard the _Gascon_ on the cradle.

At Anzac Cove Hilda and Alice worked from eight in the morning to one o'clock at night. Thirty more stretcher cases arrived needing their details recorded, dressings changed and some amputations. Since the cots were full, even badly wounded men and dysentery cases had to lie on deck. Alice had three deaths that day, and a fourth critically ill patient on her ward. All day she flew up and down steps between these poor men, but in spite of all her dedication could not prevent their deaths. She felt powerless, never having imagined conditions on board a hospital ship could be so terrible. She also had responsibility for another two dozen wounded men. The stress and rushing about all over the ship were wearing her out. How long before she too had to resign or become ill herself?

By now all the hospitals in Alexandria were full and the War Office was desperate. On the return trip from Lemnos, the captain of the _Gascon_ received orders that the ship should proceed to Malta, another British colony.

And so on 18 July, the _Gascon_ anchored in Valletta's grand harbour. Then it was back to Gallipoli for another load. A major attack on the Turks was about to begin.

#### THE HERO OF LONE PINE

The August attacks on Lone Pine and the Nek by the Anzacs were intended to divert the attentions of the Turks while the main attack took place several kilometres north of Anzac Cove at Suvla Bay. To achieve this, fresh troops were to be landed at Suvla Bay and the attack would involve British, Irish and Gurkha soldiers.

The Anzacs held the Turkish trenches for three days, surrounded by the reeking corpses and severed limbs of their comrades. Handsome Captain Frederick Tubb of the 7th Battalion killed twenty Turks who advanced into the trench he and his men had captured. Fighting the Turks off with his bayonet, Captain Tubb saved the lives of two of his comrades, but a third friend died in front of his eyes.

_Captain F.H. Tubb., VC._

'Tub', as he was affectionately known in his battalion, survived Lone Pine but spent twenty-four hours half-dead from his wounds and thirst out in the sun. Finally, the stretcher bearers found him and carried him down to the tiny casualty clearing station. There was insufficient space inside so Tubb spent more agonising hours on the beach, tormented by blowflies, waiting to be loaded onto a barge and taken out to the _Gascon._

Alice had been cooped up in the heat of the ward and emerged on deck to see the first of the wounded swung aboard. An orderly indicated she should look at an officer who had been 'red-carded' for priority treatment with a label noting 'Recommended for Victoria Cross. Provide special care.'

The wards were nearly full with wounded men. Alice made sure that Captain Tubb was taken down below _immediately._ From his records Alice saw he was a fellow Victorian from the town of Euroa, in his late thirties. As she had done with Gooch, Alice became attached to Frederick Tubb. She was determined he would not die like Gooch but survive to receive his Victoria Cross. She felt honoured to have the responsibility of looking after such a brave man.

Other wounded men who could still hobble around came to see the hero of the hour. They whispered to Alice what a good fellow he was and how he deserved recognition. The Victoria Cross was the highest award for bravery presented in battle—Captain Tubb, who was promoted to major for his heroism, would be the first recipient of the award Alice had nursed.

On 7 August, a day of unbearable heat, the 11th Battalion had landed at Suvla Bay under heavy fire. The _Gascon_ was ordered to steam north, and load more casualties there, even though space was at a premium and men were jammed like sardines on the decks and in the companionways.

Alice thought Suvla Bay resembled Anzac Cove, with the same background of steep-sided hills and ravines but with a huge salt pan behind them.

The _Gascon_ anchored beside a fleet of destroyers, mine sweepers, hospital ships, and transport ships which had brought horses and mules and heavy equipment there.

Alice's journal for 11 August shows that the _Gascon_ received fifty to sixty Ghurkhas and Irish troops, many suffering from third-degree burns. She was told that some of the wounded men had crawled for safety under gorse bushes to find shade from the burning sun. But when the tinder-dry scrub had been set on fire by Turkish shells, many of the wounded men had been badly burned.

The Ghurkhas had been ordered to cross Suvla's salt lake, a huge sparkling white salt pan against which their khaki uniforms and pith helmets stood out clearly. The Turks had been able to pick them off one by one from the top of a hill. Some survivors had lain out in the open for twenty-four hours dying of thirst or their burns. Others had managed to crawl back to Suvla on hands and knees or had been brought back by stretcher bearers who braved enemy fire. The wounded Ghurkhas were stoic but in spite of all Alice's care several died from burns and were buried at sea.

On 11 August she worked from 7 am to 11 pm. 'Truly this is a dreadful war...more like wholesale murder,' she wrote at the end of that terrible day.

Alice had planned to let Sister Pratt take over the running of the ward and spend as much time as possible with Major Tubb, who still needed special nursing. But the arrival of so many bad burns cases from Suvla Bay prevented her spending as much time with the hero of Lone Pine as she had hoped. 'We heard the authorities were preparing for 22,000 casualties so are not surprised there are thousands already. So many septic wounds,' Alice wrote sadly when she reached her cabin after midnight.

After another nightmare five-day voyage to Malta, the _Gascon_ delivered Major Tubb and Alice's other patients to Valletta's crumbling and ancient military hospital.

Major Tubb recovered and was later shipped to Britain to convalesce at Lennel House near Coldstream. Alice never forgot him, her first patient honoured by the Empire's highest award for valour.

By October and early November 1915, military hospitals in Egypt were so overcrowded that the _Gascon_ was ordered to make the long trip via Gibraltar to England. However, Alice was no longer in London on 16 December, when Major Tubb went to Buckingham Palace to receive the Victoria Cross. One by one the seven heroes of Lone Pine went forward to receive their awards. Afterwards, standing in front of the iron railings in front of Buckingham Palace, Major Frederick Tubb, Lieutenant William Symons, Captain Hugo Throssell and Private John Hamilton posed together for a historic photograph of four Australian holders of the Victoria Cross.

After only a brief stay in London the _Gascon_ returned to the Mediterranean and through the Aegean to Anzac Cove. By now winter was almost upon them and Gallipoli had turned freezing cold. Many Anzacs were suffering from severe frostbite—lack of warm clothing meant that the poor men were still obliged to wear light-weight summer clothes, although it was snowing.

On 4 December 1915 the _Gascon_ took on board dozens of Anzacs with badly frostbitten toes who had been lying in the snow for days. Another contingent of frostbitten patients arrived the next morning. Their feet were turning gangrenous and some toes needed amputating. Six soldiers had frozen to death—one had been buried under snow over a metre deep.

#### WITHDRAWAL FROM GALLIPOLI

Towards the end of 1915, with the Gallipoli Campaign conceded a failure, Churchill resigned and finally it was agreed to pull out. Ironically, it turned out that the evacuation was one of the few successful operations of the whole Gallipoli campaign.

To mislead the Turks, automatic firing devices kept the Anzacs' rifles firing spasmodically. Covered by darkness the men quietly slipped away with their equipment, their boots muffled by sacking. They managed to pull out without the loss of a single life. 'Every inch of the Gallipoli peninsula was dyed red with Anzac blood,' Alice wrote when she heard that the Anzacs had left the peninsula.

By 22 December Alice was once more nursing at Heliopolis. On Christmas Day 1915, Alice and Hilda were invited by Graham Coulter, the new colonel of the 8th Battalion, to eat a special Christmas meal with some of the 'original' Anzac officers. Alice described in her journal entry for that day how they were greeted warmly with presents and glasses of champagne. They sat down to eat and raised their glasses in a 'Loyal Toast' to the King and a 'Silent Toast' to those who had died at Anzac Cove. They drank a third toast to success in France where the 8th Battalion would soon be going.

By February 1916 most of the patients had returned to Australia, so the long line of beds in the ballroom at Heliopolis stood empty. Free of responsibilities at last, Alice decided to realise one of her dreams. She booked herself onto a cruise steamer which took her up the Nile to Luxor and Memphis.

On her return to Heliopolis Army Hospital Alice heard rumours that the nurses and administrators of her unit were off to Rouen in northern France under the command of Colonel de Crespigny. She tidied up her ward for her replacement, supervised the packing of the medical equipment into shipping crates and packed her suitcase and kitbag. She bought a French phrasebook she intended to study on the ship bound for France, a country she had always wanted to visit but under different circumstances.

#### ALICE IN FRANCE

In April 1916, Alice, Hilda and the other Australian nurses disembarked from their rusty transport ship at the southern French port of Marseilles. Their journey north was scheduled to take sixteen hours: instead, it took four days and nights. The carriages were so crowded the AANS nurses had to sleep sitting upright. There was no restaurant car, lavatory or washing facilities. They sprinkled themselves with eau de cologne, the only way to keep fresh. It was a hellish journey, broken at stations where they could use the toilet and buy French bread and cheese and beakers of ersatz coffee to warm themselves.

From the train windows Alice admired the soft green fields, so different from Australia. As the train advanced northwards most villages they passed through seemed to be in ruins. British soldiers, mules, gun carriages and horses lined the roads. It rained unceasingly and ambulances, lorries and guns were bogged in mud that reached up to their axles.

Hilda and Alice had been selected to work in a British military hospital, nursing troops from Britain and Commonwealth countries, in the port of Boulogne, from where the ferries left for Britain. Tired and stiff from their journey they arrived at 7 pm, 'Our _sixteenth_ day of travelling since we left Egypt,' wrote Alice in her journal.

The European spring was very late in arriving. Though it was now mid April it was still very cold. Being wartime, heating fuel was in short supply. Alice wrote that she and Hilda were glad of those thick grey winter uniforms they had hated so much in tropical Egypt. Although the nurses slept in unheated rooms, Alice was grateful that at least the wards were heated. In her journal she wrote:

> The wind [is] so wild it tore the doors out of your grasp and the breath from your body and the air is icy. Each ward has a nice coal stove.

The Australian Imperial Force (or what was left of it) was now renamed No 1 Anzac Corps. German trenches stretched across France to Switzerland, and for many months there had been a virtual deadlock across the entire Western front. Lord Kitchener was determined to break the stalemate, no matter how many men died in the attempt.

On 8 June 1916, Alice realised that a year ago she had boarded the _Gascon_ full of hope that the war would soon be over. And now after a year of deadlock in France the slaughter of young men on a grand scale was happening again. Thinking about her time aboard the _Gascon_ Alice wrote in her diary:

> Sad memories mingle with happy ones of superb sunsets and sunrises at Anzac Cove and Lemnos, over the Grecian Isles and the lovely Mediterranean...One can almost forget the days full of heat, hard work and misery...after Gallipoli was evacuated it seems the heartbreak was for nothing.

In June the nurses were shocked to hear that Lord Kitchener had been lost at sea on the ship HMS _Hampshire._ Meanwhile Scottish-born General Sir Douglas Haig had been appointed commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force. He would be responsible for more deaths than Lord Kitchener.

On 2 July 1916, Alice and Hilda received orders to take the train to Rouen Australian Auxiliary Hospital. The hospital, which had been set up on the site of a former racecourse, was overcrowded with wounded men and badly needed more nurses.

Alice and Hilda had less than an hour to pack their bags, say their goodbyes and board the train for Rouen. The journey was exhausting. There were no seats so they sat on their suitcases in the corridor amid stale tobacco fumes. Tired and grimy, they arrived at Rouen station at three in the morning of 3 July to be met by an ambulance driven by a young woman in the uniform of a volunteer driver. Alice recorded the converstaion in her journal the following day.

'Welcome to Ruin,' the VAD said crisply.

'Ruin?' Alice queried.

'That's what the lads call it, due to its awful death rate!' the VAD replied cheerfully.

At the newly established field hospital with its tents and tin roofed Nissen huts they were pleased to meet up with former colleagues from Cairo. Less pleasant were their immediate sleeping quarters, which consisted of a dank storage shed with a concrete floor. During the night there were ominous rustlings and skitterings and in the cold light of dawn they discovered a dead rat in one corner. The other rats had fled, doubtless to return the following night.

The tents had been rented for a high price from the British and leaked like sieves, and the Australians had to make do with substandard supplies. On 10 July, Alice made her feelings clear in her diary:

>...that rubbishy medical equipment should have been burned long before it left Egypt. One feels ashamed to be part of such a muddle...No water laid on, either hot or cold, so all drinking and washing water has to be carried some distance.

_Interior of a tented ward._

The eight nurses and ten inexperienced VADs looked pale and pasty-faced from poor food, overwork and exhaustion. By now Alice was too tired to write a separate entry for each day, as they were working under immense pressure on long shifts, six days a week. In her usual forthright style in the second week of July, in the heat of the European summer, she described their situation:

> Meals are disgusting and good food is spoilt. Potatoes are served out of a billy, likewise pudding. There are no hospital trays for the sick and no way of keeping food hot in the meantime. The nurses resent that the medical officers have a total of twenty-two batmen between them while the sisters have to do everything but stretcher bearing.

On Alice's ward one severely shell-shocked patient was hallucinating that a German officer was standing over him with a gun. He begged over and over again not to be shot. Other severe shell-shock cases moaned and hid under their beds, as they heard in their imaginations the crash of falling shells and saw their comrades blown apart.

The summer of 1916 was the wettest for decades. By now the roads around Rouen were ankle-deep in dark sticky mud and the nurses' skirts and shoes were covered with it. The ground outside the tents was a morass of mud; the wounded arrived with mud on their uniforms and on their bandages. No matter how hard the nurses worked, it was impossible to keep anything clean for long and drying clothes and bed linen was a problem. Early in July Alice wrote:

> How long can we last in this unhealthy spot? We are worn out. The nurses have to drag heavy men off their stretchers, undress them, live and sleep in damp surroundings without even the comfort of a warm bath after the working day is over.

Several nurses were killed by German bombs. In another undated entry in July Alice instructed Hilda that should she be killed, Hilda was to give her diary to a Melbourne newspaper to be published, in the vain hope that if they printed her descriptions of life at Rouen, the working conditions might improve for nurses and VADs.

_Bombing on this British hospital resulted in the deaths of nurses and patients._

As usual, the British Army administrators at Whitehall had not cooperated with Australian administrators. As a result the Rouen hospital was constantly running low on medical supplies, food and even on cutlery and crockery, and nothing was done to make life more comfortable for the nurses. For the first few months, the nurses had to drink their morning tea out of jam jars and eat with their fingers as they had no knives and forks. They were issued with tin hats and knee-length rubber boots. They were given cumbersome gas masks, fitted with glass eye pieces, which came in boxes with shoulder straps. The nurses put these on whenever they heard the air raid warning. Alice was terrified of bombs but was determined the patients would not know she was afraid. She found the best way of dealing with fright was to ignore it and concentrate on soothing the patients' fears.

On 15 July 1916 Alice heard the whine of a shell followed by a _crump_ and a scream. She grabbed a tin hat and went outside. In the light of her torch she saw that an Indian orderly had been blown off the duckboards and lay dead face-down in the mud, one of his legs lodged in the fork of a tree. Alice felt sick but forced herself to continue working on the ward for the rest of the night. The following morning a fatigue party arrived and removed the corpse and its lonely leg.

The next staff fatality was Sister Jacobsen, who had been suffering from tuberculosis. Alice attended her funeral. On 20 July she wrote in her journal:

> In a few months' time there will be few of the original staff left. Sister Jacobsen has been ill since we came but no notice was taken of her cough until now. Convoys in and out with a stream of sick and wounded men. The great offensive seems to be failing and another winter of cold and misery seems to be before us.

Each night after dinner they listened to the distant boom of guns and were told this was part of another 'Big Push'. The generals would proclaim there was no chance any Germans could survive this particular barrage but somehow they always did. General Haig promised that the war would soon be over.

When Alice had arrived in Rouen the fields and hawthorn hedges around the old racecourse had been green and leafy with the white flowers of hawthorn everywhere. When autumn arrived there was hardly a leaf left due to shelling and bombing. Birds no longer sang, the days were shorter and patches of frost whitened the grass each morning. Summer was almost over.

On 26 September 1916, the next big battle involving Australian troops took place at Polygon Wood, near Ypres. One casualty was Major Tubb, who had returned from Australia at his own request. Hit in the chest he was carried on a stretcher to the ambulance train. In one of the tragedies of war, Major Tubb, VC, was hit by 'friendly fire' while the stretcher bearers were crossing open ground and died without recovering consciousness.

A week later Alice wrote in her journal: 'The only man I could have loved and married has died.' It made her wonder what sort of a country Australia would become if the bravest men died in battle, while cowards and shirkers stayed home in safety. She also wrote about the morality of persuading so many immature boys that it was glorious to enlist and die for king and country before having experienced much of life.

_Northern France where Alice Kitchen nursed._

By November most of the nurses were coughing and sneezing and had chilblained hands and red noses. Casualties were pouring in, including soldiers with severe cases of rheumatism contracted in the damp trenches. 'Some of us sisters are working five or six days on twelve hour shifts without a break,' she commented on All Saints' Day, the first day of November, as the weather turned even colder and the wind howled around them. She continued:

>...paddling about in rain and wind with a mackintosh and an umbrella is most uncomfortable and scarcely satisfactory. Leaky tents make the work harder than it need be. Motor ambulances have bogged down, some of the wounded are half drowned in mud in flooded shell holes and trenches.

In her unheated hut Alice slept badly. She had nightmares in which she saw young soldiers with terrible wounds crying out to her for help, and wounded boys begged her to hold their hands.

The bitterest winter of the war had arrived. On 13 November, Alice wrote, 'The whole place is covered in a mantle of snow, dry as sugar and bitterly cold.' Snow etched the bare branches of those trees that were still standing and lay thick on the ground. By now the British, Australian and Canadian tented hospitals were filled to bursting with casualties. Finally they had some kerosene heaters, but their effect inside the draughty tents was minimal. The nurses slept in wooden huts without heaters but by now had a few cane chairs and a table. They wore woollen gaiters, mittens, muffs and knitted jackets to try to beat the cold. Nevertheless, several of them suffered frostbite and had to be admitted to the sick bay. Many of their patients were also suffering from frostbite.

Alice piled all her clothes onto her bed in a desperate effort to keep warm. The icy conditions and long hours had weakened her health and brought on rheumatism and a persistent cough. The wan pale face that looked back at Alice from the mirror was nothing like the tanned healthy woman she used to be.

One night the mess hut was hit by a bomb, which destroyed every stick of furniture including the piano. Fortunately no nurses were in the hut at the time.

So-called 'trench fever' killed many patients; other fevers such as typhoid were carried by lice. Patients with trench foot gave the nurses a great deal of work. This condition was caused by standing ankle-deep in water for days on end, while damp puttees, which the men were ordered to wrap round their trouser legs, restricted the blood supply. As a result, the soldiers' feet turned soft and puffy, causing them to hobble around painfully. After several days the feet turned black and blistered and oozed with pus. Socks became stuck fast to the wound and the smell was fearsome. Nurses and orderlies alike dreaded the job of removing the boots from these patients. The only treatment was to rub the blackened and gangrenous feet morning and night with whale oil, keep them warm in heavy socks, and try to get the bedridden men to rotate their ankles and feet as much as possible and bring back the circulation.

During the first big attack in the Somme surgeons were so overworked that the nurses had to amputate blackened, gangrenous toes themselves with or without anaesthetic. The nurses received a brief course in administering anaesthetics as the hospital was short of anaesthetists, although they were not paid extra for this. Alice observed wryly that Australian Army nurses were seen as 'general dogs-bodies, called upon to do just about everything except stretcher bearing'.

Dozens of shell-shocked men continued to be admitted to the hospital. To add to the nurses' workload a severe outbreak of meningitis occurred. Known in Army medical circles during World War I as 'cerebro-spinal fever', this lethal disease, which seemed to thrive in Army camps, transport ships and ambulance trains, caused a swelling of the brain followed by a rapid death.

In December 1916, Alice's persistent cough grew much worse. She recorded that she 'coughed like a sick cow before falling asleep'. She gargled with salt water and prayed her sore throat would clear up of its own accord. A week later, however, she was still coughing badly and feared it might be due to anaemia or bronchitis. She confided her fears to the matron on duty but received only a barbed comment that she was no longer young so must expect to tire easily. Alice had already noted bitterly that 'Nursing sisters may give gentleness and attention to wounded men but should not expect too much attention if they fall sick themselves'.

Despite her ill health, Sister Kitchen carried on until she collapsed while accompanying a doctor on a ward round. She was then admitted to a special ward for nurses.

> They can't say I'm faking being ill or 'swinging the lead' as they put me off duty themselves and I [have] no voice but only a cough and a squeak. Snow drifting softly down. Matron R (British) expected to do an inspection so I kept my bed tidy, being told she did not like Australians. Matron R's dislike is based on our independent spirit and the fact that Australians are supposed to take no notice of rules!...My voice not much better and I shudder at the thought of pneumonia or lung disease [by which she probably meant cancer].

During the first week of December, Alice's inflamed throat grew worse and she was diagnosed with what she described as 'purulent bronchitis'. However, her sense of humour did not desert her and on 17 December she wrote:

> The loss of a voice is a worry especially to a woman used to airing her opinions. Marked for evacuation to Blighty. Feel as if I were deserting Sister Samsing in all her worries but have no choice in the matter. Sister Rogers and Sister Curtis came in today as patients, both with broncho-pneumonia.

Once Alice made it to 'the sick list' she was given every care and attention. After enduring weeks of misery, kindness and consideration were as good as a tonic. Alice's throat was examined by a consultant physician, who insisted she be sent to London by the next available vessel, which was the _Aberdonian,_ a black-hulled transport ship. Feeling sad and guilty that she was 'letting her fellow nurses down', Alice said tearful goodbyes to her colleagues.

Unlike hospital ships, Alice knew that transport ships were not allowed to fly the Red Cross flag, so they were vulnerable to enemy torpedoes. By now she was feeling too ill to care if she lived or died. She nevertheless arrived safely in England, and was taken to Southwell Gardens in South Kensington, a special clinic for Army nurses. Having cared for others for so long Alice was very appreciative of the care shown to her.

> I have a room to myself with a radiator, nice furnishings, good food and much kindness. I shall always be grateful to these people for their kindness. Don't know what the next move is—perhaps more laryngoscopes and mirrors etc though am constantly assured it is not chronic.

A week later, Hilda, who had also become seriously ill, joined Alice at Southwell Gardens. Alice spent Christmas 1916 in the clinic and was told she should not return to the cold and damp of France. Instead, she was posted to more comfortable surroundings at Harefield Park in the heart of rural Hertfordshire.

#### A FAREWELL TO ARMS

Alice spent the next two years nursing crippled and paraplegic soldiers at Harefield Park Hospital, a square neo-Georgian mansion which had been loaned to the Australian government for the duration of the war by the Billyard-Leake family of Western Australia. The general hospital was housed in a Nissen hut; three operating theatres and an X-ray department were also in prefabricated buildings. The grounds included a lake, tennis courts, croquet lawn and bluebell woods, where Alice used to pick armfulls of flowers for the wards.

Alice was assigned a ward of thirty-two men who had only fourteen legs between them. The men had left Australia young and fit and were terrified of going home to be objects of pity. Caring for them was hard work and demanded great tact.

Whenever the weather was warm enough Alice would wheel her patients outside onto the terrace in front of ivy-covered Harefield House. Here the blind and the crippled and maimed sat in rows in the pale English sun, one of the saddest sights Alice had ever seen. What would be their future? Who would care for these unfortunate war victims? Some would go home to their wife or mother, others would be forced to live in institutions.

Alice often described writing letters for men who had no arms. She always dreaded being asked to read the replies to these letters as sometimes they revealed that the patient's wife or girlfriend had found someone else.

On 25 April 1917, which had just been gazetted as Anzac Day by the Australian government, they observed two minutes' silence on the wards at Harefield to remember the dead.

Even at rural Harefield Park Alice was not safe from air-raids. In June a bomb landed on the roof and flames roared through the upper storey of the mansion. Nurses and orderlies risked their lives to get the patients to safety. As Alice checked the rows of patients massed on the front drive, she realised that two of them were missing. She and Sister Pearl Corkhill tied wet handkerchiefs around their faces and climbed the servants' staircase through clouds of smoke. They located the missing men in a burning ward and dragged them down the stairs before the upper storey caved in.

Publicity about the fire brought King George and Queen Mary to Harefield to inspect the damage for themselves. Sir Francis Newdegate, a former governor of Tasmania, also visited Harefield. He was so upset by the sight of the crippled and paraplegic soldiers that he purchased a large burial plot beside Harefield Parish Church in which Australians who died at Harefield could be buried with no cost to their families.

By now Hilda had been posted to an Army hospital for limbless soldiers at Southall. They managed to meet up occasionally on their free days.

Alice and Hilda took leave together in February 1918 and visited Dublin and the west coast of Ireland, which Alice greatly enjoyed, in spite of the cold weather. During her three-week stay in Ireland, she wrote in her journal:

> The Irish don't like the Huns but hate the British even more although they seem to like Australians. Our landlady told me that the Irish and Australians had been colonised by the English so we had much in common. So many people here would like to come to Australia.

By then over a million and a half soldiers had been killed. The AIF had lost over 59,000 men, a relatively large number for a nation with a population of only four million. The average life expectancy of a young officer in the trenches of northern France was a matter of weeks. More men were constantly needed as replacements. In Britain even the elderly and arthritic maintenance men and gardeners at Harefield Park were being called up.

On 28 May, just as the spring flowers were coming out in the gardens at Harefield, Alice received her first patient suffering from Spanish flu, a highly contagious disease. The nurses were issued with surgical masks but were not immune. Wearing a black armband over her uniform, Alice attended various funerals including those of two nurses. This lethal disease reached epidemic proportions and would eventually kill more people worldwide than were killed during the entire war.

Alice continued working long hours, now nursing flu victims, eventually catching the disease herself. She was nursed at Harefield Park and was lucky enough to recover quickly, although other nurses died. She was now in her mid-forties and whenever she looked in the mirror she saw that her dark hair was streaked with grey and her handsome face had become lined. Age had caught up with her.

There were rumours that the enemy was short of food. Civil unrest in Germany meant Kaiser Wilhelm was planning to abdicate, so possibly the war might end soon.

Alice started to worry about her future. Due to the low rates of pay for nurses she had been unable to save any money. New regulations stated that Army nurses returning to Australia would be laid off if they were over the age of forty. Alice wrote in her journal, 'It seems a polite way of asking us nurses to go home and be scrapped.'

In October Alice was saddened to learn that Hilda would be sent back to Australia as escort for twenty soldiers who had been blinded by gas. They said goodbye at a final meeting and realised that in Australia the long distance between Adelaide and Melbourne would separate them. Alice would miss her outings and holidays with Hilda, her closest friend, but intended to continue working in England as long as possible. Several of her crippled patients were 'sweet' on her but she knew that eventually she would have to go back to Melbourne to care for her mother. She did not say so but it would appear from the tone of her journal entries that she had no intention of caring for a crippled mother _and_ a crippled spouse.

At 11 am on 11 November 1918, the Germans' request for an armistice was granted and the fighting ended. Sirens blew, bands played, but Alice kept on working. That night she wrote:

> I don't trust the Germans...they are probably preparing for _another_ Great War. We are still too near the sorrows and heartbreaks to feel like rejoicing. One sees as many sad faces as merry ones. The general feeling is relief rather than joy that it is finally over.

Senior nurses were told that the Army would pay them to do a course of their choice, which might help them find jobs in Australia. Alice took a course at the Institute of Public Health.

On Saturday 28 June 1919, six months after the armistice began, a victory parade took place in London. Huge gaps in the marching men revealed just how many had been killed. Some battalions had only a few dozen survivors. Back at Harefield, most of the crippled and wounded men had been sent home and Harefield Park estate was about to be handed back to its owners.

Before returning to Melbourne Alice decided to visit Australian war graves in France and Belgium. Her plan was to photograph the graves of the men she had nursed and send photos to their mothers. At various cemeteries Alice was horrified to see piles of bones and skulls lying around awaiting identification. In marked contrast to the well-tended French graves with their marble angels and crucifixes, most Australian graves were still raw mounds of earth with here and there a wooden cross, some unmarked, others with a name scrawled on in pencil.

She visited the cemetery at Lijessenthoek in Belgium where Major Tubb was buried. Scarlet poppies resembled clots of blood among waist-high corn. Fertilised by human blood and bone, the poppies grew large and in abundance—the harvest of war. She was shocked to find that many of the dead did not have their names painted on the wooden cross that marked their graves—instead the names were scrawled on pieces of paper pinned to the end of each row.

The Australian War Graves Commission had as yet not identified all the graves.

Between the pages of her journal Alice pressed a newspaper clipping containing a poem dated 1918 by John McCrae who had fought in Belgium.

> _In Flanders fields the poppies blow_
>
> _Between the crosses, row on row_
>
> _...We are the dead. Short days ago_
>
> _We lived, saw dawn, felt sunset glow_
>
> _Loved, and were loved, and now we lie_
>
> _In Flanders fields._

It was the best epitaph she could find for Major Frederick Tubb, VC, for Rupert Barratt, golden boy of 8th Battalion, and for poor Gooch and Ross, the soldier boys.

On her trip to Australia Alice served as an escort to twenty crippled war veterans aboard the troopship _Kanowna._ The homeward voyage was a sad one and very different from the outward voyage on the _Benalla._ 'So many legs and arms gone, so much optimism and boisterousness evaporated,' Alice wrote late in July 1919.

There were as yet no Australian medals. Alice Kitchen was awarded British Campaign and Service Medals and a Victory Medal. She was formally discharged from the AANS on 28 August 1919 with severance pay and a small annual pension.

Alice, heroine of the hospital ship _Gascon_ , faded into obscurity. She died aged seventy-seven in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton.
> _I realized that only one thing counted...and that is kindness._
>
>
>
> JOICE LOCH, FROM _A F RINGE OF BLUE,_ LONDON, 1968

# [CHAPTER 4
Joice NanKivell Loch](004-toc.html#ch04)

**Joice NanKivell Loch**

1887 – 1982

Polish Gold Cross of Merit

Serb Order of St Sava

Greek Order of the Phoenix

Greek Order of the Redeemer (2)

Greek Gold Medal, National Academy of the Arts

Rumanian Order of Elizabeth

Member of the Order of the British Empire

Polish Gold Cross of Virtue

Greek Order of Beneficence (2)

Joice Loch's courage took her close to death in several theatres of war and her life was one of astonishing heroism. In this chapter, which relies on extracts from my biography of Joice, _Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread_ , I am concentrating on her exploits during World War II.

Joice NanKivell Loch was born in the middle of a cyclone—a suitable entry into the world for a third-generation Australian who would face danger and be involved in rescuing the victims of war and ethnic cleansing in World War II.

In the booming 1880s, Joice's paternal grandfather, Thomas NanKivell, was one of Australia's richest men. His company, Fanning & NanKivell, owned a fleet of ships and leased four huge cane plantations near Ingham in North Queensland. One of them was managed by Joice's father, George NanKivell. Joice's first years were spent on a large plantation surrounded by Pacific Islanders as house servants and a Kanaka nanny. This pleasant life came to an end once the Queensland Government acted to prohibit the importation of Kanakas. Since it was impossible to cut the cane without imported labour, the plantation faltered and Joice, her brother and her parents were forced to leave their home with almost nothing but a few clothes and some books.

The swift descent from riches to rags led to the NanKivells moving to a dirt-floored hut without running water on a run-down property in the wilds of Victoria's Gippsland. With no money to send Joice away to school, she was taught by her mother. Joice loved books and writing and longed to become doctor. But there was no money for a girl to attend university. Instead Joice worked as an unpaid labourer, cook and general rouseabout on her father's struggling farm.

When war was declared in 1914, Joice's beloved younger brother, Geoff, enlisted. Serving with distinction at Gallipoli, he was later killed in the trenches of Northern France, and to deal with her grief Joice wrote a book about their childhood, _The Solitary Pedestrian_ , published in 1918.

In the later years of the war, Joice moved to Melbourne, became a book reviewer and journalist, and worked as a secretary for a professor of classics. She also developed a longing to visit Greece.

After reviewing a book about Gallipoli Joice met and eventually married its author, Sydney Loch, a young Gallipoli veteran, but even when married Joice continued to write under her own name of NanKivell. Once the war ended, the Lochs went to London. They were commissioned by the prestigious publishers, John Murray, to write a book on the Irish war of independence (the Troubles).

The Lochs' book, _Ireland in Travail_ , published in 1922, displeased the IRA and the Lochs were warned by a member of the British Secret Service to get as far away from London as possible.

Hearing of Quaker-run refugee camps in war-torn eastern Poland, the Lochs volunteered to work there. Eastern Poland had been left devastated after World War I, with villages burned, farmland destroyed, and people slaughtered or transported to Russia. The population began to return but malnutrition and disease were rife.

The Lochs remained in Poland until 1923, when they heard from Quaker headquarters about the 1.5 million Greek Orthodox refugees fleeing persecution in Turkey and other areas in Asia Minor, and who were now pouring into Thessaloniki where a large refugee camp had sprung up on the grounds of the American Farm School. Joice worked in the camp tending the sick. She was later joined by Sydney, who taught refugee children at the American Farm School. Gradually the refugees were resettled in villages, including Pirgos (now Ouranoupolis) to which the Lochs eventually moved. There they established a home and became involved in helping the villagers both medically and economically.

Before fleeing Turkey the refugee inhabitants of the village had been rug weavers. From her royalties as a writer (the Lochs were still writing for British papers and John Murray), Joice paid the village carpenter to build looms and started a women's rug-weaving cooperative.

The rug-weaving cooperative was successful and by September 1939 Pirgos was thriving. The Lochs were celebrating at a Greek wedding when the BBC Foreign Service announced that Hitler had invaded Poland.

The Lochs contacted Quaker headquarters at Friends House in London and, since they still spoke some Polish and had no idea Hitler would later invade Greece, volunteered their services to help Polish refugees.

The Quaker War Relief Service appointed Sydney head of an aid centre for Polish refugees who had fled to Bucharest, the capital of neutral Rumania. The Lochs took the overnight train to Bucharest, a city of huge contradictions—lush restaurants and cafés, elegant boutiques and fashionable women alongside starving refugees and gypsies begging in the streets.

Joice was by now in her early fifties. She found herself with the huge responsibility of feeding and clothing hundreds of refugees. Most were Polish women and children, but there were also some Jewish orphans. Male Polish refugees were being interned by Rumania's King Carol II, who was juggling allegiances to his British and German royal relatives.

Joice was overworked and badly needed an assistant—preferably someone middle-aged and sensible. Father Ambrosius, priest to the internment camp where the Polish men were held, recommended Countess Lushya, sole survivor of one of Poland's aristocratic families. The countess was young and beautiful. She had lost her home, her family and her money. Nevertheless she was, it seemed, good at figures and book-keeping. To Joice, who hated having to keep the accounts of the Polish Refugee Mission, this was a definite point in Lushya's favour.

After interviewing the young countess it was apparent she was not just a pretty face. Lushya (pronounced Loo-shah) showed Joice a list she had compiled of wealthy Rumanians prepared to allow Polish families to 'house-sit' their holiday villas on the Black Sea free of charge until the next summer.

The winter of 1940 was a particularly cold one and a disastrous year for Rumania. The Rumanian capital of Bucharest lay under a deep blanket of snow that muffled the clip-clop of horses pulling the _trasuras_ (hansom cabs) along the streets. The children of the rich kept warm in fur coats and snow boots, while beggars and refugees shivered.

A sub-zero wind from the Carpathian Mountains whistled through the thin walls of the Quaker Refugee Mission. Joice would sit at her desk wearing a fur hat, woollen mittens, her old fur coat over her Quaker uniform, and a huge pair of fur-lined pilot's boots over two pairs of Sydney's thickest socks. Sydney worked in a Harris tweed coat and a grey knitted balaclava helmet of the type the Mission had given out to the thousands of interned Polish men.

Lushya had turned out to be a brilliant fundraiser. She set up a Save the Polish Refugees Committee made up of Rumanian princesses and countesses, and which encouraged the wives of bankers, industrialists and oil tycoons to join and raise money for the Polish women refugees and their children.

The committee met once a month at the Café Mavrodaphne. All the proceeds of their fundraising luncheons were used to support their Polish charges. Joice also paid for the school fees of Jewish orphans under her care.

As funds accumulated, so the Lochs were able to move many of the Polish women to better accommodation and organise classes in typing, hairdressing and other skills to help them obtain jobs to feed their children.

The Lochs' resourcefulness in organising these courses was drawn to the attention of King Carol. Although he had interned the Polish men for political reasons, and after several assassinations of ministers by the Iron Guard ruled as a virtual dictator, the King was a reasonable man in an uneviable position. As well as having divided loyalties between Britain and Germany, he was also romantically linked with a Jew, Magda Lupescu. Wanting to help refugees but nevertheless afraid of what would happen should Hitler invade his country, he awarded medals to volunteer workers helping displaced Polish refugees. Joice was to receive the Order of Elizabeth while Sydney was awarded the Order of the Star. Their investiture was to take place at King Carol's palace in mid April 1940.

On the day of the investiture, the Lochs crossed the huge square in front of their hotel. From far away the brand new royal palace seemed most impressive. Through the vast reception hall the Lochs were ushered into the throne room, where they sat side by side on gilt chairs. King Carol, a very tall man, wore a white uniform with gold epaulettes and stood on a raised dais to award the medals.

The Lochs rose from their chairs when their names were called. They came forward down a long strip of red carpet, and the King pinned on their medals and had a few words with each of them.

Joice found the King knowledgeable about their work with refugees and easy to talk to, but clearly his political situation was distressing.

That evening the expatriates and foreign journalists who gathered at the English Bar at the Athenée Palace Hotel toasted the Lochs. Yet a gloomy note pervaded the occasion: what if France should fall and Russia and Germany raced to seize Rumania's oilfields? How long would the Rumanians remain pro-British once they realised the British could not protect them? For Joice there was the further question: what would be the fate of her Polish refugees? More urgently, how could they get 2500 Poles out of Rumania if the Germans or Russians were coming to invade it?

The first thing was to get money. The Save the Polish Refugees Committee organised a fundraising dinner at Capsa's restaurant. The champagne was French, the caviar from the Black Sea, and tickets enormously expensive. Rumania's super rich chewed their way through mountains of food. The function was a great success. The Polish refugees' escape fund was building up.

One day Lushya relayed an unusual request. Friends in one of the internment camps needed a printing press to produce a Polish newspaper. Could they be given one from the Save the Polish Refugees Fund? When pressed, Lushya admitted another reason. One of the inmates of the camp had been an art forger. He could use a press to print exit visas so good that no one would be able to tell they were forgeries. If provided with skis and funds to bribe

_Joice and Sydney in a rare period of relaxation._

their way out of camp, hundreds of Poles would be able to cross the mountains and the frontier to Turkey and from there to reach Cyprus and Palestine. Among them were young men thirsting to fight for Poland if they could reach England, and serve as pilots for the Polish Air Force.

'I don't want the Quakers to know about the printing press,' Joice told Lushya. 'We'll donate it to the camp and ask no questions. What the eye doesn't see and so on.' Lushya smiled and hugged Joice, and many hundreds of Poles subsequently escaped using forged visas.

By Easter 1940 the two huge barbed-wire encampments that had housed Polish soldiers and officers were nearly empty of men of fighting age. Those who could had escaped to fight with the Free Polish or the British forces. Only the middle-aged and elderly, politicians and senior government officials, and a sprinkling of Polish professors remained.

As the thaw set in and the snow turned to slush, King Carol found himself under increasing pressure from Hitler, as the main buyer of Rumania's oil, to lift his ban on the activities of Rumania's Fascist Party. Carol announced an amnesty for acts of violence committed by the pro-Nazi Iron Guard who were terrorising Jews and pro-British citizens.

Spring 1940 arrived late. By the time the chestnut trees that lined the boulevards were decked in pink blossom King Carol had attempted to salvage his situation by offering to sell Rumanian oil to the British government, which unaccountably turned down his offer and bought oil from Mexico instead. Rejected by Britain, the King next received a demand from Hitler to increase Rumania's food and oil exports to Germany. He had little choice but to accede. If Rumania stopped trading with Germany its entire economy would crash.

The mild spring weather transformed Bucharest into a city of gardens and pavement cafés. The pretty streets, however, contrasted with deteriorating social conditions. As exports to Germany lifted, domestic prices rose. The Lochs' landlady, Doamna Popescu, complained bitterly, telling Joice that butter and milk had almost doubled in cost and she would be forced to raise the prices of her breakfasts.

With increasing freedom, jackbooted Iron Guard members could be seen marching along streets, or hanging around street corners looking bored and sullen.

In neighbouring countries, including Austria and Slovakia, new police restrictions based on those in Germany were issued on Jews working or going to public places. Slowly Hitler was tightening a noose around the Jews. Amid this atmosphere, Jews in Bucharest began applying for visas to America and Palestine. Suddenly everything they owned was for sale or being auctioned off, homes, cars, silver, rare books, paintings, jewels, as they attempted to raise enough money to bribe their way out of Rumania.

Joice asked their friend and co-worker 'Brownie', who acted as liaison officer between the US and Rumanian YMCA, why the United States would not accept more Jews.

'We're doing what we can,' Brownie told her sadly, 'but it's a difficult time for any government to accept large numbers of immigrants. Americans still remember the Depression and mass unemployment.'

At this critical juncture, Francesca Wilson, Head of Friends War Relief in Budapest, Hungary, visited Bucharest. She explained that the Quaker Relief Mission in Hungary was experiencing problems. Fear of the Germans had made moderate Hungarians turn against Polish refugees; Admiral Horty's pro-Nazi party was now popular and Hungary would soon be under German rule. Francesca had closed her mission down and was advising Polish refugees in Hungary to escape to Rumania.

Joice explained that there was room in an old and dilapidated jail at Czernowicz, capital of the Rumanian territory of Bessarabia, which would at least be roof over the refugees' heads.

The Germans had rented offices for their Propaganda Bureau in Bucharest; its full-length window featured a huge map of Europe on which German conquests were charted. As Hitler's troops invaded Scandinavia, Holland and France, the citizens of Bucharest saw black arrows advancing across the map. The Lochs and British Legation officials walking past the Bureau looked at the map with foreboding.

In June 1940, Rumanians were devastated by the news that France, their erstwhile protector and the source of everything they considered civilised, had surrendered to Hitler's troops. The French government left Paris and fled south to Vichy where it followed a program of collaboration with the Nazi regime. The British Army presence in northern France had to be evacuated from the port of Dunkirk by a fleet of small ships, while German planes bombed them ferociously.

Under threat of invasion, the Rumanians were no longer so generous to Polish refugees. The evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk was regarded by the Rumanians as a crushing defeat, though the British journalists the Lochs met in the English Bar viewed it as a victory. The British talked of 'the Dunkirk spirit' in the same way that Australians talked about the spirit of Gallipoli. How strange that we both celebrate defeat, Joice thought. It must be something in the Anglo-Saxon character.

The map of Rumania, too, was shrinking rapidly. In June the Soviet Union demanded that Rumanians cede within twenty-four hours the Rumanian territory of Bessarabia and its 'Russian' oilfields, as well as northern Bukovina. German diplomats advised King Carol to cooperate with Germany's Soviet ally, on the understanding that these territories would be returned once Germany had won the war—which could only be soon.

With a Soviet takeover of Bessarabia imminent, Joice and Sydney drove to the capital, Czernowicz, loaded the Polish refugees who had sought refuge there onto a fleet of lorries and brought them back to Bucharest. The following day, 24 June, the Russians invaded Czernowicz.

Rumania relied for her defence on the 'King Carol Line of Fire', a series of huge trenches into which jets of oil could be pumped. In the event of an invasion, these were to be set alight by Rumanian soldiers. Unfortunately, King Carol's plan failed. Instead of pumping oil into the trenches and lighting it, the soldiers fled before the advancing Russian Army, which scarcely had to fire a shot, so terrified were the Rumanians of its brutality. With the King Carol Line of Fire out of action and without a shot being fired, the Russian troops advanced a few kilometres each day.

Cars bearing Rumanian and Jewish refugees from Bessarabia were pouring into Bucharest full of horror stories of the looting and pillaging of Bessarabia and the killing of Jews. Joice later wrote in her memoirs:

> Many Rumanians we talked to or lunched with in Bessarabia were hung from the lamp-posts by the Russians within a few days. Everything movable on hoof or in store was sent back to Russia. Bessarabia was picked bare.

Stalin had given orders to be brutal with the Rumanians as a warning to the rest of the country not to resist. Russian troops, fuelled with alcohol, were encouraged to rape and destroy. In contrast with the Russians, the Germans began to seem positively civilised. Despite earlier assurance, it was obvious that no help would be coming from Britain.

As the Rumanian members of the Save the Polish Refugees Committee resigned, Joice realised there would be no more charity concerts in Rumanian mansions. The Poles were now a living reproach to the Rumanians.

Rumania continued to be threatened from all sides. In August, under German pressure, King Carol was forced to return the territory of Transylvania to Hungary. In September part of the Dobruja district was lopped off by the Bulgarians. Bucharest was seething with rumours of the imminent invasion of Britain by the Nazis. Dr Goebbels' propaganda machine broadcast a barrage of misinformation.

In Bucharest's Athenée Palace Hotel, the English Bar was filled with officers in grey uniforms. The German Military Mission occupied every chair and bar stool, toasting each other and behaving so arrogantly that it was clear they believed the war as good as won. Showing great restraint, the British expats retreated to the chilly inner courtyard, ordering their pink gins and glasses of _tzuica_ to be sent there, forced to sit outside on hard wooden chairs at metal tables covered in dead leaves while the Germans lived it up in the main hotel. To Joice it seemed like a foretaste of the future.

With the Hungarian Quaker Mission now defunct Joice undertook to collect the funds from the Budapest Mission and use them to help Polish refugees in Rumania. Just before she set out, she was summoned to the British Legation: Old Etonian, the 'Honourable Nigel Fraffly-Fraffly', as Joice and Sydney nicknamed him, was nominally a third secretary but also working for British Intelligence. Somehow he had discovered she was about to leave for Budapest. Had he got the Mission's telephones tapped, Joice wondered.

Nigel had a difficult request to ask: would Joice take a spot of government money to one of his Hungarian contacts—or pay his contact out of Quaker funds and be reimbursed later?

It seemed that what Nigel referred to as 'the Powers that be' had decided this was an undercover assignment that would arouse less suspicion if carried out by a woman. Joice and the Legation's press secretary, Olivia Manning, were two of the few women left in Bucharest with a British passport and a high-security clearance. Possibly the Legation felt they could not spare the much younger Olivia Manning, or that Joice as a more mature woman would be more suitable. Joice was amazed to learn that the British Legation had security-vetted both her and Sydney.

For his part, Nigel tried hard to make his mission sound about as dangerous as a shopping trip to Harrods, but eventually he admitted that a Polish-Jewish scientist desperately needed by the Allies for the war effort, was being 'slipped from jail'. He was asking her to take a bribe intended for the scientist's jailer. Joice realised that the operation was important, but she also knew that it was dangerous. If things went wrong it could jeopardise her role in getting funds from the Hungarian Mission to the Polish refugees.

'Not scared are you?' sneered Nigel.

Joice hesitated before replying, but she could never resist a challenge. 'Perhaps not. But who else have you got?' she countered.

Nigel explained that the rail lines between Bucharest and Budapest had been damaged the previous night by Rumanian partisans, protesting against the handing back of Transylvania to Hungary. With the railway out of action, Joice would have to fly, but all commercial flights to Hungary were fully booked. Her only option was by a privately owned light aircraft which was taking charter passengers at double the normal price. The Legation's travel agent duly booked her seat.

The next day, wearing her old grey serge uniform with the red Quaker star on the sleeve, Joice was driven to the airport in a Legation car. She was slightly late and was the last to climb the gangway. Inside the cramped plane she found her seat as the door closed and the engines began to roar. Looking around at her twelve fellow passengers, she realised with horror that all the seats were filled by jackbooted men in long military overcoats with swastikas on their lapels. She looked across at the opposite seat and met the eyes of Herr von M, Minister of Kultur in the German Mission to Bucharest, the only civilian aboard the plane apart from herself.

The rest of the plane had been chartered by the German Mission to transport high-ranking officers to Budapest. As an Australian (before Australia issued its own passports) Joice was travelling on a British passport—and Germany was officially at war with Britain and Australia! Under her uniform jacket was the money belt containing cash to bribe a Hungarian jailer to release a Jewish prisoner. If the Germans caught her she could be shot or sent to a concentration camp. This had happened only the previous month when a charter plane carrying a young Englishman working for British Intelligence had been diverted to German-occupied Vienna. He was arrested by the Gestapo when the plane landed and was presumed dead.

Joice's palms were damp. Her stomach churned. She prayed for good weather so there was no risk the plane would be diverted to Vienna.

She had already met Herr von M at a reception held by the Rumanian princesses. He had seemed impressed when she was introduced to him as the author of several books and had been very charming to her. During their flight, the German minister smiled at Joice and pointed out the beauty of the land they were flying over—the mists swirling around mountain peaks, the huge pine forests.

Politely Joice agreed with him, hoping he would not notice how nervous she was.

Joice's flight was becoming nightmarish. As visibility was poor, there was a real possibility the plane might bypass Budapest and land in Vienna. Joice wondered if the German minister who was being so nice to her suspected anything. Had there been a leak at the Legation? Were they being diverted to German-occupied territory so that she could be caught and arrested by the Gestapo? She prayed for the visibility to clear...within half an hour it did.

The passengers left the plane and filed past Hungarian customs and passport control. Joice handed in her blue British passport, which stood out among so many green German ones. The German minister stayed close beside her and together they were driven to the city in his car.

Leaving the minister's car and peering over her shoulder to check she was not being followed, she took a horse-drawn _fiacre_ to Nigel's prearranged rendezvous, a café on tranquil Margaret Island in the middle of the Danube. She chose an outside table under a striped awning.

Nigel had arranged for Joice to meet his 'contact' at one o'clock. He was to carry a copy of Langenscheidt's German–English dictionary and wear a red rose in his buttonhole. Joice thought the whole device corny, as though Nigel had been reading too many bad spy novels. But at least having her Hungarian contact carry a dictionary was a better idea than a rolled-up copy of _The Times._

She ordered a pot of coffee, then waited—and waited.

At a quarter to two, just as she thought something had gone wrong with Nigel's arrangements, a man arrived with a rose in his buttonhole, carrying a bulky dictionary. He was built like a prizefighter. He sat down opposite her, smiled and she caught a flash of gold-capped teeth.

A trio in black waistcoats and tight trousers played gypsy music on their violins. No one appeared to be observing them.

Gold Teeth ignored Joice, clicked his fingers to summon the waiter and demanded a glass of the most expensive tokay on the wine list. He swallowed it as though it was lemonade and ordered another. As the gypsy trio launched into another of its glissando-filled _czardas_ Joice's heart pounded. This was the moment.

She got up, went to the ladies' room, unbuckled the money belt, placed Nigel's banknotes in an envelope she had brought with her, put it in her handbag and returned to their table.

She sat down and said a few words to Gold Teeth in English. He looked puzzled. She picked up the dictionary and opened it, pretending to be searching for the right word. Then she unfastened her leather shoulder bag and nonchalantly slipped the envelope containing the money between the pages of the dictionary, thanked Gold Teeth for lending the book to her and passed it back across the table.

Gold Teeth picked up the dictionary and placed it under his chair. In fractured English he quoted the date and time his Jewish prisoner would be 'allowed to escape': on no account should Joice write down the time and place. He drew a finger across his throat which said more than words. She shuddered inwardly—obviously Gold Teeth feared she might be captured and killed by the Nazis.

Gold Teeth drained the last drops of golden tokay, reached under his chair, picked up the dictionary and tucked it under his arm. Without a word, he stood up and strode away, leaving Joice to pay for his expensive glasses of wine.

She strolled through the beautiful gardens of Margaret Island, took a bus back to the city centre and found the Quaker Mission headquarters. There she talked to the elderly Hungarian who was the last Mission volunteer left, signed for the money remaining in their safe, and received a list of exiled Poles who had fled to Rumania.

She recalled her conversation with Herr von M about the beautiful view over Pest from the heights of Buda. Her watch said half-past four—there was still time to watch the sun set over Pest. She took a _fiacre_ up the steep hill to the castle ramparts of Buda. The Herrengasse that Herr von M had called Buda's oldest street, as though he felt Budapest was already part of Germany, was as fascinating as he had claimed. Its Hungarian name was the Uri Utca, and it was lined with tall houses painted in pastel shades of pink, green, turmeric and terracotta. The houses had arched oak doors with their former owners' coats of arms embossed in gold leaf, and steeply tiled roofs with distinctive 'eyebrow' windows to light their attic rooms. A few had been turned into hostelries, their inn signs showing double-headed eagles, golden stags and roses.

From the ramparts of Ober Buda, Joice looked out over a magnificent panorama. Steeply terraced slopes, green with trees, were crisscrossed by flights of steps, some arched and roofed like small cloisters, which descended abruptly to the wide streets that bordered the silvery loops of the Danube. Six huge bridges linked Buda with Pest. Far below her she picked out the spires of what must be Hungary's House of Parliament, its Gothic pinnacles topped by a huge dome. It looked like a cross between Brunelleschi's Duomo in Florence and London's Houses of Parliament. Far below sprawled the nineteenth-century business and shopping centre of Pest, its wide boulevards slicing through dense rows of shops, offices and apartment blocks.

As the last rays of the sun disappeared and the lights came on, Joice thought Herr von M had been right—this _was_ the most breathtaking view she had ever seen.

The next morning Joice rang the railway station, determined not to return to Bucharest on a charter plane. To her relief, the stretch of railway line damaged by the Rumanian partisans had now been repaired. What luck! She took a _fiacre_ to the station, where she telephoned Sydney, careful to say as little as possible in case the Nazis had tapped the line. She gave her expected time of arrival at Bucharest station. Sydney said he would be waiting for her under the railway clock.

When the train drew in at Bucharest, Joice felt almost light-headed with relief that her spy mission was accomplished. That afternoon she rang the Nigel and gave him the message from Gold Teeth.

#### ESCAPE FROM THE IRON GUARD

German domination of Rumania was becoming increasingly heavy handed. Germany had been instrumental in the loss of all the Rumanian territories, as it traded off Soviet ambitions in return for the oilfields of the Ploesti area, close to Bucharest where it would establish Nazi headquarters.

The loss of Bukovina and the failure of the British to save them had now turned the populace against the King. He was jeered as his chauffeur drove him through Bucharest in his bullet-proof Rolls-Royce. Carol had already alienated the peasants and the working class, who resented the fact that he spoke English and French better than Rumanian and had spent huge sums on his new palace and his Jewish mistress. Posters appeared in the streets calling for the King to resign in favour of his son by his estranged wife, Princess Helen—Crown Prince Michael, now a boy of nineteen.

Carol, who had already spent a period in exile with his mistress Magda Lupescu before being invited to return to Rumania after his father's death, had no intention of spending another exile in penury. Realising that his days were numbered he had been hoarding gold ingots from the Treasury to take with him to Estoril in Portugal.

Meanwhile the Iron Guard, sinister in their dark green uniforms and jackboots, no longer stood around on street corners but goose-stepped proudly down the Calea Viktorei, Bucharest's main street. Joice felt shivers run down her spine. Clearly they must get the remaining Poles out of the country as soon as possible.

The Lochs continued to bombard Friends House and the British War Office with information about the plight of Polish and Jewish refugees trapped in Rumania and to plead for more funds to get them out. Finally a very senior British civil servant granted permission for a group of 2000 civilian refugees from Poland to be accommodated in an Army camp in British-run Cyprus. But no more than 10 per cent of the escape party could be Jewish. They were to cross the Black Sea from Constantza to Istanbul and sail via the Turkish port of Mersin to Cyprus. Should Cyprus be invaded, the Polish refugees would have to escape to Palestine, although the Arabs, Britain's oil-rich allies, had made it plain they did not want too many refugee Jews in their country.

On receiving the go-ahead to what Whitehall called Operation Swordfish, Sydney spent days drawing up escape routes out of Rumania. The Lochs' plan was for Sydney and five hundred Polish men to leave Bucharest by river steamer to the Black Sea resort of Constantza. Joice, Lushya and Father Ambrosius, in Operation Pied Piper, would follow with four hundred and fifty Polish women and children and fifty Jewish children. They would leave by train for Constantza as soon as they had the funds. They would be joined at Constantza by as many as possible of the four hundred Polish women and children who had been living in the holiday villas of wealthy Rumanians.

Many Polish women and their children were also scattered through outlying Rumanian villages. Some of the women had found paying jobs which, understandably, they were reluctant to leave. Having been in an economic limbo they were now trying hard to build new lives for themselves and their children.

Using Quaker funds Joice purchased a roneotype machine. With Lushya's help, she sent out circulars advising the women of the danger they faced. The circulars explained that the Free Polish government in exile was urging them to flee from Rumania if they could. The women were told about the escape plans, and warned not to take suitcases. All they could take was a beach bag, so that the Iron Guard would think they were off to the coast for a day trip rather than fleeing the country. Joice had instructed the women to sew any jewels they had not pawned into the hems of their dresses.

On 6 September 1940, with demonstrators screaming for his blood outside the royal palace, King Carol issued a statement. He would abdicate in favour of his son, who would reign under the name of King Michael of Rumania.

Carol had also appointed Pro-Nazi General Ion Antonescu premier, with the result that, the Iron Guard could exercise its force freely. In the violence that followed Carol's abdication, shop windows were smashed, there was shooting in the streets and many dead. Corpses piled up and no one dared bury them for fear of becoming a target.

Guns were firing as the Lochs crossed the square in front of the royal palace to reach their hotel. In the hallway their landlady, Doamna Popescu, threw herself into Sydney's arms weeping and laughing wildly. As the group came upstairs Sydney insisted that they lie face-down on the floor. A stray bullet winged through the long windows and embedded itself in the wardrobe. Doamna Popescu's hysterics returned.

Eventually Doamna Popescu revealed the reason for her hysterics. Although she had not told a soul, her bedridden eighty-year-old mother was Jewish. Neither her father nor her late husband had Jewish blood, but under Rumanian law, having a Jewish mother meant that she and her children and grandchildren were Jewish, even though they followed the Catholic faith.

'Come with me to Cyprus. One or two more will make no difference,' Joice advised her.

Doamna Popescu thanked Joice but said she could not leave her mother, who was far too ill to travel. She told Joice, 'Doamna Loch, I am more Rumanian than Jewish. I was educated in a convent. They will not touch us.'

Their landlady sounded so convincing that Joice almost believed her.

Sporadic firing continued. Joice described how:

> Each boarding house...was seized and behind each door stood an armed man. At midday a man bearing a white flag emerged from the royal palace and declared a truce. Shooting stopped; everyone went out to lunch and stacked their guns under their tables. For an hour all was calm. Then we poor foreigners slunk out and bought sufficient supplies for another twenty-three hours of rage and ruin...Rumanians take their stomachs much more seriously than their revolutions.

The following morning the police informed the British Legation that the body of a young man had been brought into the morgue. The body had been thrown from a bridge onto the cobblestones below, the spine broken on impact, the face so battered it was almost unrecognisable. A British Legation official was asked to go to the morgue and had no difficulty identifying Nigel, whose striped Old Etonian tie was still knotted around his neck.

It was time for the Lochs to put their plans into action. With regular Danube ferries already crowded with refugees, Sydney managed to charter a huge pleasure steamer for his escape party. When he received a message from the captain that his river steamer was ready, Operation Swordfish was under way.

Joice kissed Sydney goodbye, trying to sound unconcerned about what lay ahead but inwardly scared. It was agreed they would meet up at the small Turkish port of Mersin—or, should something prevent this, on the British-held island of Cyprus. Joice would somehow get the Polish women and children to the Black Sea port of Constantza, and from there by ferry to Istanbul and on to Mersin. If she had problems she was to contact the British Embassy in Ankara or the British High Commissioner in Famagusta, Cyprus, who would pass messages to Whitehall, but for safety's sake she must not give her name; just use her code name: Pied Piper.

By now most of their Bucharest funds as well as the money Joice had brought back from the Budapest Mission had been used up. Joice cabled Friends House in London, pleading for money to help the women and children escape. But no money arrived. The banks kept erratic hours during what was a state of emergency. Whenever they did open long queues of people formed, desperate to leave Bucharest before the invaders arrived. Day by day the Russian troops drew nearer. They would be caught between the Nazis and the Reds and it would be cattle trucks and labour camps for the Poles, Joice knew, if she did not act soon.

The day before Operation Pied Piper was due to depart, the promised Friends War Relief Fund money had still not arrived. Joice had almost enough to buy tickets to Istanbul for those who could not pay but nothing to spare should anyone fall sick or to get them to Cyprus. They would have to go and trust to providence, she thought.

Mr Brown, the Lochs' American friend and colleague, had kindly agreed to look after those Polish women and children who had opted to stay behind. Brownie was extremely upset that the US government (which was still not involved in the war) had not done more for Poles and Jews, and insisted on taking Joice, of whom he was very fond, to a farewell lunch at Nestor's restaurant. 'Got to see you have a square meal before you leave,' he said.

_The route taken by Joice and her refugees._

At the door of the restaurant, Brownie greeted a pair of Germanspeaking Rumanians, who said they had been listening to the radio and that Churchill was on the point of surrendering to Hitler.

Joice and Brownie both laughed. 'Don't believe a word of Dr Goebbels' propaganda,' Joice responded.

Inside the restaurant they were shown to a table where a well-dressed couple were already seated. Brownie introduced them as Mr and Mrs Gluckstein, of Solomon and Gluckstein's Bank.

'This is Mrs Loch, a woman on whom you may depend,' he told the Gucksteins. They shook hands.

Mrs Gluckstein was from a Jewish banking family, owners of the famous Dresdner Bank. Her brother-in-law, who ran a branch in Bessarabia, had been killed by the invading Russians; her sister had been raped and killed by Russian soldiers.

'We sent our chauffeur to bring my nieces to Bucharest. He hid them on the floor of the car under a rug,' Mrs Gluckstein told Joice, biting back her sobs.

Brownie had told the Glucksteins about Joice's flight and asked them if they could donate enough money to help the escape of the Jewish orphans on Operation Pied Piper. The Glucksteins agreed on the condition that Joice would include their recently orphaned nieces and their only daughter in her escape party. Mrs Gluckstein had another sister living at Haifa who had agreed to look after the three girls until the Glucksteins could wind up the bank's affairs and leave the country for British-run Palestine.

'Of course, we'll make it worth your while to take our girls to Haifa,' Mrs Gluckstein told Joice, pulling a large envelope out of her handbag. 'Here are ten thousand _lei,_ ' she whispered. Joice realised with gratitude that this money would cover emergencies during the long and dangerous journey that lay before them.

'Mrs Gluckstein, please understand that I am not in this for the money,' Joice said. 'But it would come in handy with so many mouths to feed. I can't sleep worrying about what happens if we encounter delays.'

'Take it, take it, my dear. Get my daughter and my nieces to Haifa where there is a large Rumanian-Jewish community and we will join them there, or the Nazis will kill them. Mr Brown tells me very good things about you. So give me your word that you will take my beloved girls to Haifa.'

'I will, as long as their passports are in order and they don't say they are Jewish.' Joice knew that prominent families such as the Glucksteins were high on the Iron Guard's wanted list.

Mrs Gluckstein reached into her handbag again. She produced three blue British passports bearing the royal coat of arms, in the names of Sally, Susan and Janet Brown. Joice examined them. They looked just like her own passport. Surely no one could tell.

'Doamna Loch,' Mrs Gluckstein said nervously, 'I swear on my sister's life, no one but God himself would know these girls are Jewish. They had an English nanny so they have a good English accent and their hair is so blonde they don't look _Jewish_!'

Joice agreed to take the three girls to Haifa. They arranged to meet next morning at eight under the clock at Bucharest's main railway station.

That night, as Joice made her final preparations, she thought about Sydney. By now his party must have reached Constantza, taken the ferry to Istanbul and, God willing, be at Mersin.

By six o'clock next morning Joice was ready. She bade a sad farewell to her landlady, who gave her a thermos of coffee and a bag of rolls filled with smoked ham for the journey.

' _La revedere_ is Hungarian for _au revoir_ ,' Doamna Popescu said as she kissed Joice on both cheeks.

I only hope we do meet again, Joice thought to herself.

#### OPERATION PIED PIPER

Although he abdicated on 6 September, the former King Carol did not depart from Rumania until 16 September.

Operation Pied Piper also began its journey from the main station of Bucharest on 16 September 1940. By good luck and because it was still in the school holidays, Joice had selected the very day the royal train departed with King Carol and his Jewish mistress, Magda Lupescu, taking them and their possessions first to Belgrade and then to exile in Portugal. Aware of rumours of crates of gold bullion from the Treasury and Old Masters' paintings leaving with the former king, the Iron Guard had stationed marksmen by the approaches to a railway tunnel where it estimated the royal train must slow down. From there the Guard could shoot King Carol and his mistress through the train window and take the gold. The plot only failed because King Carol had his _own_ team of marksmen, who shot the assassins first, and his train arrived in Belgrade riddled with bullets.

An inner-city rally of the Iron Guard was also scheduled that day, which further distracted their attention from the ordinary travellers at the railway station. The next day Horia Sima, the Iron Guard commander, and his thugs would go on a killing spree: hanging their victims from meat hooks in abattoirs was to become their trademark. Over 6000 Rumanian Jews perished in one week.

Meanwhile Joice and her hundreds of refugees were getting ready to board the train heading for the Black Sea. As it was the school holidays, the train was crowded with Rumanian parents and children bound for the twin resorts of Constantza and Mamounia.

To play the role of holiday maker, Joice had exchanged her grey Quaker uniform for a blue cotton frock, sandals and a straw hat with blue ribbons.

Just as Joice and Lushya had insisted, the Polish children wore sundresses or shirts and shorts and carried spades, and their mothers had their night things in beach bags rather than in leather suitcases.

The three bewildered little Gluckstein girls arrived at the previously arranged meeting place under the station clock, delivered by the very Jewish-looking Mrs Gluckstein. They bobbed little curtsies to Joice and Lushya and announced in beautifully enunciated English that their names were Zara, Magda and Dina.

Joice put her arms around the little girls and promised to see that they reached their aunt and uncle in Haifa safely. The three girls kissed Mrs Gluckstein goodbye. She burst into tears and soon all of them were crying. Then, shepherding the weeping children, Joice and Lushya boarded the train.

For the moment it seemed as if they were safe. However, Joice worried that the Iron Guard might decide to board the train further down the track, make an inspection of passports and discover that some of the children were Jewish, with terrible consequences for her and her charges.

A ticket inspector informed Lushya that the train was being diverted in order to load a big export consignment of Black Sea caviar from the processing factory at Tulcea. Lushya said it would mean an hour's delay before they reached Constantza. Joice prayed they would arrive in time to catch the afternoon ferry to Istanbul. She wanted to get out of Rumania as quickly as possible.

Their train clattered alongside ripening fields of wheat and maize and orchards loaded with fruit. The day was warm and the journey had such a holiday feel to it that the excited, chattering children were oblivious of the danger they were in. After passing the town of Giurgeni, the steam train ran beside the banks of the Danube whose brown muddy waters were spliced by the mint-green waters of streams from the Carpathian Mountains.

Gradually the Danube grew wider. Finally they arrived at a siding beside the huge canning factory of Tulcea. The train waited while crates of tinned caviar were loaded into the goods wagon. Then the whistle blew and they set off again through the flat lands of the Danube delta where Joice kept the little girls busy counting pelicans and flocks of creamy-white storks.

They finally reached Constantza, a thriving Black Sea holiday resort with concrete Art Deco-style hotels bordering a wide sandy beach. As arranged, they were joined at the ferry terminal by four hundred more Polish widows, wives and children who had been 'house-sitting' holiday villas for wealthy Rumanians. Accompanying them were some Polish teachers and priests, who helped Joice and Lushya buy ferry tickets from the expedition's slender funds. Fortunately luck remained with them: Joice was relieved to see that the Istanbul ferry was in port and waiting for them.

They filed through customs apprehensively. However, the Rumanian officials were not very interested in schoolchildren on an outing. Still no members of the Iron Guard were in evidence.

Joice, playing the role of an English-speaking governess taking her charges on holiday to Istanbul, steered the three little Gluckstein girls through passport control, while Lushya took the rest of the Jewish orphans with their forged passports. The ferry set out.

Just as Joice and Lushya were congratulating themselves that everything was going to plan, announcements in Rumanian and German boomed over the ship's loudspeakers. Lushya frowned and translated for Joice's benefit: 'We are returning to Constantza on the orders of the Iron Guard.'

At this change in plan, beads of perspiration trickled down Joice's back. The Iron Guard would be there waiting to herd them into cattle trucks.

Back at the dockside an armed detachment of Iron Guard was drawn up in a dark green line, waiting for them. Joice feared the worst. They watched from the deck as the gangplank was lowered. Jackbooted guards swarmed aboard. Joice thought the moment of reckoning had come. It was all up now, those poor children would soon be in a labour camp or worse.

Ignoring the apprehensive Polish women who gathered their children protectively to them, the Iron Guard clambered up the steep companionway that led to the top deck.

The passengers watched a detachment of men swarm around eight huge shipping crates roped to metal rings inset into the deck. Was the Iron Guard fussing over that export order of tinned caviar that had been loaded onto the train? Surely not.

As the Iron Guard untied the ropes that held the shipping crates, the ship's captain argued with them, waving his arms and gesticulating. Obviously he did not want the crates moved. The officer in charge barked an order and members of the Iron Guard drew their pistols from their holsters. The captain dropped his arms to his sides and stood very still indeed.

The boom of a crane swung overhead, a huge net dangling from a hook. The wooden crates were loaded into the net, swung over the side of the ship and deposited carefully on the dock.

At the sight of them, more Iron Guard waiting below uttered cheers of delight and started to prise open the crates using heavy crowbars. From the deck Joice caught a glimpse of something inside the crates that glinted like gold.

'That's not caviar! It's the gold bullion King Carol was shipping out of the country,' Lushya said, laughing so much that tears of relief poured down her cheeks. So gold was what the Iron Guard was after, not their refugees.

With their gold back, the Iron Guard wasn't interested in inspecting the passengers.

Very slowly the ferry pulled away from the dock and they steamed past the lighthouse for the second time that day.

This time the crossing of the Black Sea passed without event. As they approached Istanbul, on each side of the placid waters of the Bosphorus they saw picturesque timber houses painted pink and blue, with latticed balconies lining the shore. Thank God, Turkey at last.

They were met by a group of Polish refugees who had escaped from Bucharest a few months before. Listening to the BBC Foreign Service they had heard that the German Army had marched into Bucharest a few hours earlier. It had been the signal for the Iron Guard to commence a reign of terror, throwing Jewish people out of high windows to their deaths or hanging them from meat hooks in the city's abattoirs. Joice felt sick, thinking what might have happened to poor Doamna Popescu and her mother. Why, oh, why had their landlady not come with them when Joice had begged her to?

Joice and her huge party of refugees walked through street markets where men in baggy trousers and pointed slippers sold exotic-smelling spices, pastries filled with nuts and honey, and glasses of drinking water from huge copper urns carried on their backs.

The group had been booked for the night into several large inexpensive _pensiones_ near the Topkapi Palace, in the old part of town known as the Sultanahmet.

They were to catch the overnight ferry for Mersin the following night, which left Joice and some others enough time the next day to visit the ancient Topkapi Palace. There they were shown an immense faceted diamond, larger than a duck's egg, jewelled daggers encrusted with rubies and emeralds, and coffee cups glittering with diamonds, worth enough money to feed and house their refugees for years, Joice thought. Their guide took them through the 'gilded cage', where the sons of various Sultans, born to their many wives, used to be confined to prevent them being strangled or poisoned and where some had gone mad as a result.

The time came to board the ferry from Istanbul to the south-eastern port of Mersin, near the Turkish-Syrian border. For the next two nights everyone had to sleep on deck. On the second morning Joice woke stiff but tremendously exhilarated to think they had managed to escape from the Iron Guard and the Nazis.

The quayside and town of Mersin were filled with Polish refugees from Rumania and Hungary, all using this tiny port to reach Cyprus and Palestine. The number of refugees was so large that the British and the Germans had opened consulates to process their passport applications.

Joice visited the British Consulate and learned that the Consul was ill with typhoid. She was given a letter addressed in Sydney's firm handwriting. Opening it, she read that he had got a very good price on three large fishing boats to take his party to Cyprus. Joice must wait at Mersin and one of the boats would return to take them to Cyprus. She should contact the Turkish harbour master: he would arrange everything in return for a good tip.

Faced with the prospect of spending some time in Mersin, Joice realised she would have to organise accommodation, food and clothing. After some hard bargaining with a Turkish hotel owner, Joice managed to install most of the refugees in his clean but totally empty hotel for a nominal charge, provided they slept on the floor. The hotel was in process of being sold and all the beds, bedding, linen and cutlery had already been auctioned off. This meant that out of her diminishing funds, Joice also had to buy mattresses and cooking utensils. Once they were in Cyprus, Joice assumed the British government would contribute to the Polish refugees' living expenses, as the Poles were Britain's allies.

Joice, Lushya and a few of the older Polish women stayed at the nearby Hotel Gazelli, which fortunately had a telephone. From there Joice sent a telegram to Friends House in London, explaining that food was expensive in Mersin and they needed more money to buy fresh milk and eggs for the children.

The German Consul ate his meals in the rooftop restaurant of the Hotel Gazelli, where, it seemed, anyone who was anyone in Mersin's diplomatic world stayed—apparently all spying on one another. The dapper Italian Consul pleaded dyspepsia. He flatly refused to share a table with his German counterpart, even though by now Mussolini had entered the war as Hitler's ally. The French Consul looked supremely unhappy, refused to eat with either of the other consuls, but grudgingly consented to eat with Joice and Lushya. There was no sign of the British Consul.

Over dinner the Frenchman told Joice that doctors believed the British Consul might die—apparently typhoid was a constant health risk in Mersin because the underground sewers were so close to the water pipes, and the sanitation was poor. Here was another thing for Joice to worry about: the children might catch cholera, dysentery or typhoid. She would need to rent a ship with a purified water supply to take them to Cyprus. In the meantime she had to persuade the Turks to sell them fruit, vegetables, bread and fresh milk at prices she could afford. Meat was far too expensive for their budget but they did manage to get some fish. The women took it in turns to cook meals in the hotel's huge kitchen, using equipment and crockery Joice had bought at the market.

After a week of waiting, the largest of the three boats that Sydney had hired returned. The captain contacted the harbour master, knowing he was in touch with Joice.

A Turkish sea captain brought Joice a second letter from Sydney. She read it. The letter was something of a shock. Sydney explained that the voyage had not been nearly as easy as he had hoped. In fact his party had had a hellish four-day voyage under sail. The wind had dropped, leaving all three sailing ships becalmed for two days. Each one had run out of drinking water which had turned out not to be purified after all. The 'modern flush toilets' promised them by the captain and the harbour master had proved to be nothing but a few buckets filled with sand. Many of the refugees went down with food poisoning; the stench had been vile.

Sydney warned Joice that she must, on no account, hire the boat of the captain who brought her this letter. She must not trust the harbour master. He was a complete rogue and was only helping them because he received a good commission from the captain. Indeed the two of them were rogues, in league to get as much money out of refugees as possible.

Joice could not run the risk of her party getting dysentery, especially with children on board; polluted water and 'sanitary buckets' were out of the question. She would have to stay in Mersin until she could find a modern ship. Sydney had suggested that the British Consul would help, but Joice realised that she could get little assistance from him.

There were many picturesque but unseaworthy sailing boats for hire in Mersin harbour but none of them was suitable. The sea passage between Turkey and Cyprus was not long but if the wind blew up it could be dangerous—vessels had been shipwrecked in the past. This was a terrifying prospect. Many of the Polish children could not swim and there were no lifeboats or life rafts on board any of these old _caiques._

By now Joice had been advised that the German Consul was spying on her party, trying to learn their destination. Was he plotting to pass on the information to the German Navy so that their ship could be attacked and torpedoed?

Even with unlimited money, finding a trustworthy captain prepared to take a party that included many young children to Cyprus would have presented problems. Meanwhile, the Turkish harbour master, fearing the loss of his introductory commission from the captain, was insisting Madame Loch and her band of refugees should charter the captain's boat and two other ancient sailing vessels and leave Turkish waters immediately.

In desperation Joice sent Lushya with flowers to the Consul's home but was told he was critically ill. Joice managed to get two Polish doctors to attend him till he recovered, but it seemed she had only one option for her refugees left. She telephoned the British Embassy in Constantinople, giving the telephonist her code name, Pied Piper. She was terrified her phone might be tapped by the German Consul but she had to take that risk.

She was put through to an embassy official and asked him to be kind enough to radio British Naval Command to see if they could provide a ship capable of taking a party of some eight hundred refugees to Cyprus. The official was flabbergasted by her request. 'The British diplomatic service, was governed by strict protocols,' he said and he had not been instructed by the Foreign Office to help.

Joice held her ground. She insisted that on humanitarian grounds he _had_ to help. The Poles were their allies, weren't they? Some were fighting in the British Army and Air Force. Sensing his quandary, Joice gave the name of an old friend, an admiral in charge of the Mediterranean Fleet, and suggested the official contact him. There was a long pause. The official had obviously gone to consult someone higher up the ladder. Finally he came back to the phone and suggested Joice phone back tomorrow.

Although Joice belonged to no church or religious denomination, their situation seemed so precarious that on the way back to their hotel, she entered the cool, dark interior of what had once been a Greek Orthodox church. She prayed that God or Divine Providence would, by some miracle, protect the women and children in her care and send them a ship.

The following day she rang the British Embassy in Constantinople, not confident of receiving help. But there was good news. British Naval Command _had_ found her a suitable vessel. The ship was called the _Warszawa,_ affectionately known by the British Navy as the _Warsower._ It had flush toilets, water tanks and was manned by a volunteer crew whose aim was to rescue refugees from the Nazis. Joice was amazed. It was as though her prayers had been answered.

Joice was informed that the _Warszawa_ was due to arrive in Mersin harbour within twenty-four hours to pick up Polish soldiers who had escaped from Hungary and were on their way to join the British Army in Palestine. Since the _Warszawa_ was already bound for Cyprus the fare for each refugee on Operation Pied Piper would be a nominal one. However, there was one problem. The ship's cook had his work cut out to provide food for the Polish soldiers and the crew. Joice must buy all the provisions for her group and they must arrange to cook their own meals. This was easy to arrange and Joice and Lushya hugged each other at the thought that they could get out of Mersin before anyone got sick.

The following day when the _Warszawa_ steamed into Mersin harbour, it was easy to see why the British Navy had nicknamed her the old ' _Warsower'_. She was a battered hulk with a strong list to port, resurrected from a breaker's yard at the beginning of the war by a volunteer crew, some of whom were Polish, others British. No one had given her a coat of paint for decades and her hull was red with rust. She did have piped water but the pump-action toilets only worked intermittently and the smell was fearsome.

But this battered steamer and her volunteer crew had saved British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, as well as carrying boatloads of Jews to safety. To Joice and the Polish refugees, she seemed like the _Queen Mary._ They were overjoyed to board her and leave disease-ridden Mersin.

The _Warszawa_ 's captain, who as luck would have it was Polish, handed over his cabin to Joice. 'Madame Loch, as the commander of Operation Pied Piper, you must have my cabin,' he insisted gallantly.

The Turkish harbour master, baulked of his commission from Joice's party, was furious. He tried to delay their departure by demanding changes in their paperwork. Joice wondered if he was radioing the German Navy to tell them in what direction they were heading.

Also observing them was the German Consul, who had been tipped off, probably by the harbour master, that the _Warszawa_ should be watched. He hired a dinghy and sailed around her hull. Yet unknown to the German Consul or the harbour master, just before they left under cover of darkness the old tramp steamer stealthily loaded its large group of Polish soldiers on board. Had the German Consul spotted any of the Polish soldiers in their khaki jackets and breeches boarding the ship on the landward side, he could have pressured Turkey to intern them. If they were caught on board, the captain of the _Warszawa_ would have been deemed to have broken international shipping rules by not declaring he had Polish soldiers aboard.

But everything went without a hitch. The _Warszawa_ slipped out of Mersin harbour the same night she arrived, so quietly that not even the harbour master suspected her departure.

After an anxious night, Joice was relieved to see the island of Cyprus appear on the skyline. The sea had been calm and there had been no mines to impede them. They docked at the down-at-heel harbour of Famagusta, where Joice was relieved to see the Union Jack was flying.

British Army doctors came on board to do a health inspection. Because the women and children had spent time in Mersin, they insisted on inspecting them for symptoms of typhoid but found no signs. After the refugees disembarked the old _Warsower_ and her crew sailed on, taking the Polish soldiers to Palestine.

Joice and her party were escorted to a tented quarantine camp, by now overflowing with Polish and Jewish refugees. She was delighted to find Sydney there. He had been anxiously awaiting their arrival.

Sydney's own group had been housed in an Army camp; since so many of them were members of the Polish Parliament they were considered official guests of the British government until transport planes could be organised to fly them to Britain. However, no authority wanted to take any responsibility for the Polish women and children, financially or otherwise. The British military authorities were also anxious about having so many women and children to care for, and warned the Lochs they might have to evacuate again if the German Army invaded the neighbouring island of Crete.

In wartime there were many empty luxury hotels beside the beaches and beauty spots of Cyprus, but their owners refused to rent rooms to refugees who might damage expensive fixtures and fittings.

After some haggling by the Lochs and the British Consul—who pointed out that these Polish refugees were educated people who would not allow their children to wreck the premises—a bulk rate was negotiated with two smaller hotels. Joice felt that she and Sydney had secured a real victory when, after much discussion, it was agreed that the British government would pay accommodation costs for the women and children on Operation Pied Piper. They managed to obtain a small weekly allowance for each refugee, plus a grant of five pounds per adult and three pounds per child for new clothes and shoes.

By the spring of 1941, Joice was still negotiating for places on a troopship to take the Gluckstein girls and the rest of the Jewish orphans to Haifa, where she hoped the large Rumanian-Jewish community would take care of them.

She had written several times to the Glucksteins' address in Bucharest but had heard nothing and was worried. Perhaps the Glucksteins had planned their escape before the Nazis arrived and were already in Haifa waiting?

And then came terrible news. Unexpectedly, the German Army invaded Greece. Cyprus seemed likely to be the next island to be invaded after Crete. Cypriots heard on the radio that Germans on the Greek mainland and several of the islands had slaughtered British and Australian soldiers, as well as Greeks suspected of being friendly to the British. In the days that followed there was a rush by pro-British Greeks to escape Greece, some of whom headed to Cyprus.

With the Nazi threat so near, the Polish government in exile (some of whom had been part of Sydney Loch's escape party) requested the British government to evacuate all the Polish refugees in Cyprus to British-run Palestine. It now seemed likely that the whole Operation Pied Piper group would be going to Palestine, not just Joice and the Gluckstein girls.

In June 1941, after an anxious period for Joice, Sydney and their refugees, the British government sent a naval cruiser to evacuate as many of them as possible from Cyprus to Palestine. Australian troops who had arrived on Cyprus after the battle for Crete helped load the refugees aboard the vessel. Hearing Aussie voices again made Joice feel quite homesick.

The Lochs were so busy with last-minute arrangements, buying food and medicines for the women and children and settling outstanding hotel bills, they had no time to buy food for themselves. As the Polish refugees formed a long line and edged slowly up the gangplank, Joice and Sydney managed to have a cup of tea and a biscuit in an English teashop beside the harbour. When the Cockney proprietor of the teashop learned they were in sole charge of many hundreds of refugees, she insisted on packing up four cheese sandwiches and a thermos flask of tea for them. 'Good luck dearie,' she said to Joice. 'You'll need it.' Her gift was very welcome and would be the only food Joice and Sydney had for the next two days.

As they left Famagusta harbour the sea was as flat as glass under a scorching sun. The British cruiser made slow progress, twisting and turning to avoid floating mines. Father Ambrosius and the other priests on board gave lessons to the Polish children under striped canvas awnings, while the Jewish girls and boys played under another awning and Lushya looked after any children suffering from sea sickness.

Joice and Sydney ate their sandwiches in the gun room, far too anxious about floating mines or German bombers to relax. At dusk they went on deck to find the sky overcast. A cigarette butt flickered for a moment and the captain yelled down from the bridge, 'Stop those Poles smoking!' The last thing they needed was a signal to German planes that they were there.

After some reconnoitring on board, Joice and Sydney were disturbed to discover that the ship did not have enough lifebelts or lifeboats for all the passengers. If the ship were bombed or blown up by mines it would be a disaster. Some hours afterwards the drone of German planes could be heard overhead. Huge waves surged around them as the dropped bombs made a wall of water on either side of the ship. At times the ship seemed as if it would be swamped. The raid seemed to last for an eternity, then, as dawn came, denied their quarry, the German planes flew away.

During the morning the captain was advised by port control at Haifa that mines had been placed at the approaches to the harbour. The Germans had succeeded in blowing up a British ship the previous night and had bombed two more so fiercely they had sunk and everyone aboard had perished. Tenser than ever, he invited the Lochs up to the bridge. Just then over the horizon steamed a battered tramp ship. As it came nearer they realised it was the old _Warsower._ At the sight of her and the hundreds of soldiers in Polish uniform waving from her rails, an answering cheer came up from the Lochs' Polish refugees.

'The old _Warsower._ Now we're all right...That ship has a charmed life and nothing will hit us as long as she is here,' the captain breathed.

The captain was still very gloomy about their chances of getting the Jewish orphans into Palestine. He knew that several British ships had been refused permission to land because they carried Jewish refugees. He told Joice how one captain had been so desperate he had risked a court-martial and beached his ship so he could offload his Jewish passengers in Palestine rather than sail on from port to port. (In 1941, before the world was aware of the Nazi death camps, it was hard for ships to arrive anywhere with Jewish refugees aboard, as few countries would accept them.)

To the dismay of Joice and Sydney, the captain told them that Palestine had demanded a reduction in the numbers of Jews entering, down from the maximum 10 per cent originally agreed. Palestine was part of the Arab bloc, and Britain desperately needed Arab oil (as well as Mexican) to win the war.

Joice believed firmly in the Quaker principle that _all_ refugees regardless of religion or race _must_ be accepted. She had promised the Glucksteins she would deliver their daughter and orphaned nieces to Haifa. _Nothing_ would stop her getting those children to their aunt, even if she had to take a lifeboat and row them ashore herself.

The captain radioed his vessel's whereabouts to the officer in charge of port control. A reply crackled back: 'Cut engines, drop anchor and wait for clearance.' They followed orders, hove to and waited anxiously for over an hour.

To distract the children, Joice and Lushya got the teachers to play games with them. They plaited the hair of the Gluckstein girls and made them change into clean dresses and ankle socks so they would look their best. The three little girls, overjoyed at the thought of seeing their aunt and uncle, chattered away nineteen to the dozen. Joice marvelled at the resilience of children. She wondered how Doamna Popescu and Mr and Mrs Gluckstein had fared in Bucharest during the full rampage of the Iron Guard, and only hoped they might find the Glucksteins waiting for them.

Finally a British mine-sweeper appeared and removed the mines which the Germans had laid the previous night. They were advised by radio that it was safe for them to dock. British medical and port officials came on board. To Joice's relief there were no difficulties about the Jewish children and no awkward questions asked about their passports.

Once they had ushered the refugees through customs, Sydney and Joice telephoned the British High Commissioner, who had already been advised of their imminent arrival by Whitehall. The High Commissioner promised that a special train would be sent to the port to deliver the refugees to two camps outside Haifa. He also invited Sydney and Joice to dine at the High Commission that night.

Then Joice dialled the number Mrs Gluckstein had given her weeks ago in Bucharest. The phone rang for some time before anyone answered.

'Mrs Gutman, this is Joice Loch. Your nieces are safe and longing to see you. How soon can you collect them?'

A sharp intake of breath at the other end of the phone was followed by sobbing. Mrs Gutman replied haltingly, 'Mrs Loch, forgive me. My sister and her husband were murdered by the Iron Guard two days after you left Bucharest.'

She added, 'How can we thank you for saving our girls?'

'I am so sorry. Please, I don't want any thanks,' said Joice, shocked and horrified at the news. Then she thought about the orphans with no relatives or homes to go to and added, 'If you really want to thank us, please find foster homes for the other Jewish children in our party.'

'Anything, Mrs Loch, anything. We have a large Rumanian community in Haifa. We will do all we can. You have my word.'

#### THE CAMP OF A THOUSAND ORPHANS

As the British High Commissioner had promised, a special train was sent to the rail siding beside the ship to take the refugees to a transit camp in Haifa. Mrs Gutman kept her word, and the Jewish children found their relatives or foster homes among Haifa's large Rumanian Jewish community.

From Haifa the Polish refugees who had come with the Lochs from Bucharest were transferred to a much larger camp outside Tel- Aviv. Sydney was given a liaison post with the British Army, and Joice spent the rest of World War II running what became known as the Camp of a Thousand Orphans.

When Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and invaded Russia in June 1941, Stalin joined the British in the war against Hitler. His huge slave labour force of transported Poles then became an embarrassment. Stalin gave orders to release all Polish prisoners from Siberian labour camps, and the Lochs' Polish refugees from Operation Pied Piper were eventually joined by a cohort of starving Polish orphans who had been held in labour camps in Siberia and used as slaves in salt mines. The International Red Cross had helped many of them to reach Iran where the Shah then helped by chartering ships to bring them to British-run Palestine. Many of these refugees included the wives and children of the more than 20,000 Polish reserve officers who, on Stalin's orders, had been shot in the head by Russian firing squads and buried in the Katyn forest and other locations.

It was from this group that Joice's camp received a large intake of emaciated Polish orphans, many of whom were so weak from lack of vitamins and minerals they could hardly walk. Joice used all her skills as a writer to compose an emotive plea to the Quakers for funds. In a letter to the Quakers, she described the orphans as:

> khaki-clad midgets...with thin necks like wobbly stalks, making their heads seem larger. Their eyes burning with fever and starvation stand out against their white faces. Most are suffering from scurvy or pellagra due to vitamin deficiency.

Joice and Sydney fought the British authorities for food and suitable clothing for the orphans, who had been issued with Army uniforms too big for them and boots too heavy for them. Practical as ever, Joice obtained supplies of rope and canvas and organised the inmates of the camp to make rope-soled canvas _espadrilles_ for them. The Lochs bargained with the Palestinian owner of an orange grove for fruit to feed the malnourished children. Slowly the orphans lost their pallor and listlessness and started to gain weight and strength.

Meanwhile the British Army, which was in charge of all refugee camps, was insisting it had no funds to feed so many Poles: the Quakers or the Lochs must pay for food for 'their' refugees. By now the Lochs' relief fund was almost exhausted. If 'their' Polish women and children were not to starve, the Lochs would have to confront the director of the Ottoman Bank at his headquarters in Jerusalem. So taken was he by the story of their escape, he agreed to allow them enough credit to feed and clothe 'their' refugees for the duration of the war.

As they had done in the camps and villages around Bucharest, the Lochs arranged for instructors to give courses in engine maintenance, electrical repairs, bricklaying, lorry driving, sign writing and other practical trades that would help the Polish men to find work once they had emigrated from the refugee camps. Joice set up courses to benefit Polish women who would also need jobs in their new countries. They managed to place their Polish refugees in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), New Zealand, Britain, Australia (which only took a small number) and America.

_Joice encouraged Polish refugees to stitch dolls in national costume as a means of earning a living._

For the beautiful and talented Lushya, the story was not to end happily. Lushya fell in love with an English Army officer and was given permission to travel on board a naval vessel from Haifa to join her fiancé in England. The ship hit a German mine and sank with no survivors. Joice grieved deeply when she heard the news.

At the end of the war, Sydney and Joice returned to work at the American Farm School near Salonika (Thessalonika), Greece, where Sydney was made head in the absence of his close friend Charlie House, who had been imprisoned by the Germans. Joice taught girls in the Farm School and they both also worked in the refugee camp in the grounds of the Farm School.

But peace had still not come to Greece, as Joice described:

> The joy of getting back was shadowed by the horror of the new situation. Murder was afoot—and such murder. For civil war had broken out in Greece...a war of extermination on the part of the poor against the deadly poor.

Finally after eighteen months of bitter fighting and attacking the villages, the communist guerillas, or _Andartes_ , were defeated and the Lochs were able to return to Pirgos, now renamed Ouranoupolis. There they helped the villagers rebuild lives shattered by the years of world war and civil war. Again Joice organised the village women into the rug-weaving cooperative, which had saved the village in the 1920s. She sold the rugs to British and American friends and brought some to Australia. She also restarted her free medical service for the villagers, and ploughed whatever income she received from writing articles and books back into the village to help fund such amenities as the services of a doctor and a road to connect them to the outside world, which were both eventually achieved.

In the winter of 1954, Sydney Loch, his health weakened by his service at Gallipoli and in Polish and Greek refugee camps, suffered a massive heart attack and died.

Joice, by now in her mid sixties, stayed on in the village of Ouranoupolis in northern Greece. Until the villagers had a supply of unpolluted water, a road and a resident doctor, she believed her work was not complete. She became 'Kyria Loch', the saviour of the village, loved, and greatly honoured by the entire community to which she selflessly devoted her energies and what little money she had.

During her long and productive life Joice Loch was awarded eleven medals and several international awards, more than any other Australian woman.

In 1924, Poland's President Pilsudski awarded Joice the Polish Gold Cross of Merit for helping homeless refugees in eastern Poland. Two years later, while working in a refugee camp in the grounds of the American Farm School near Salonika, she was awarded the Order of St Sava for work on mosquito eradication programs to prevent malaria. In 1926 Joice became the first woman to be honoured with the Greek Order of the Phoenix, a medal for 'outstanding Greeks and foreigners', for her work with refugees.

On two separate occasions, Greek authorities honoured her with various grades of the Order of the Redeemer. The first was for running free medical clinics in 'her' refugee village of Ouranoupolis. The second and higher grade of the Order was awarded for establishing a women's rug-weaving cooperative which rescued refugee villagers from penury; for this achievement she also won the Gold Medal of the National Academy for the Arts. At a time when Australia did not award its own medals, Joice was also made a Member of an Order of the British Empire for medical rescue work following an earthquake which decimated the village of Ierissos, near Ouranoupolis.

In 1940 she received the Order of Elizabeth from King Carol of Rumania for her work with Polish refugees. At an award-ceremony held in Jerusalem in 1945, just before returning to her Greek home, Joice received from the exiled Free Polish government, the Polish Gold Cross of Virtue for her organisation of Operation Pied Piper.

In 1950 she received her first Order of Beneficence from the King of Greece for reviving the Pirgos rug-making cooperative. A second and higher grade of the Order was awarded over a decade later for funding a supply of unpolluted water for the villagers of Ouranoupolis.

Joice also received several awards from the International Red Cross.

Joice died in 'her' village, at the ripe old age of 95, loved and honoured by everyone. By now Ouranoupolis had become a thriving port bringing travellers to the monasteries of Mount Athos. The village closed down completely over three days for her funeral: people wept openly in the streets. In his funeral oration, Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware proclaimed Joice Loch 'among the most outstanding women of the twentieth century'.

The tower of Prosforion, Joice's home in Ouranoupolis, has been restored by the Byzantine Museums Authority, and plans are afoot to open a Joice Loch museum inside the tower to commemorate her life and work.

Ingham in North Queensland, birthplace of Joice Loch, has honoured her with a brass plaque in the Botanic Gardens. At the dedication ceremony, Alexander Freeleagus, Queensland Consul for Greece, placed the Greek flag beside the plaque.

Once totally unknown in Australia, slowly the fame of this remarkable Australian is increasing. Her story is being used by the author to raise funds for the work of Austcare, which has offices in every state capital. This work continues today. Donations for refugee programs will be gratefully received by Austcare in memory of Joice Loch.

The full story of Joice NanKivell Loch is told by the author in _Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread_ (Hale & Iremonger/Tower Books, Sydney, 2002).
> _Her heroism, courage and humanitarian achievements are unique._
>
>
>
> FROM THE CITATION FOR VIVIAN BULLWINKEL'S ORDER OF AUSTRALIA, APPLICABLE TO ALL THE 'PARADISE ROAD' NURSES

# [CHAPTER 5
Sister Sylvia Muir, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, Sister Joyce Tweddell, Sister Betty Jeffrey and other 'Paradise Road' Nurses](004-toc.html#ch05)

**Sister Sylvia Muir**

1915 – 1999

Member of the Order of the British Empire

British Campaign and Service Medals

**Sister Vivian Bullwinkel**

1915 – 2000

Member of the Order of the British Empire

British Campaign and Service Medals

Officer of the Order of Australia Royal Red Cross Medal

Florence Nightingale Medal

**Sister Joyce Tweddell**

1916 – 1995

British Campaign and Service Medals

**Sister Betty Jeffrey**

1908 – 2000

Officer of the Order of Australia

British Campaign and Service Medals

And Other 'Paradise Road' Nurses

In 1996, when I came to write their stories, Joyce Tweddell and Betty Jeffrey were dead but Sylvia (Muir) McGregor and Vivian (Bullwinkel) Statham were still alive.

Sylvia, who had always refused to talk to journalists, agreed to tell me about her years as a prisoner of the Japanese. She knew that her breast cancer was advanced, and each week an ambulance took her for treatment at Brisbane's Wesley Hospital, which is very close to my home.

We agreed to meet in the hospital's café following each treatment session but after six weeks Sylvia was too ill to continue with our interviews. Aware she had only a short time to live she spoke frankly to me about her war experiences, the sexual harassment of nurses by Japanese guards, those women captives who had agreed to become 'comfort women', and her feelings about the Japanese captors who had refused to provide the medicines that would have prevented her closest friend from dying.

As Sylvia spoke to me, it became increasingly obvious how the nurses' deep loyalty to each other had enabled them to endure horrors, hardships and privations that might have caused psychiatric breakdown among women who were less stable, disciplined and courageous.

In spite of Sylvia's Christian faith, with its precepts to forgive, and her wish to put the past behind her, it became clear that she had not come to terms with her emotions. Neither did she seem to realise the underlying reasons why Colonel Yamasaki had encouraged the camp guards to treat the women in such brutal fashion. Under the ancient Japanese code known as _busheido_ , warriors ( _samurai_ ) were taught to despise anyone who did not fight to the death. The only other alternative for any honourable _samurai_ was to commit suicide ( _hari-kiri_ ).

The Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) nurses were wearing uniforms when they surrendered to the Japanese soldiers. They had mistakenly believed they would be treated according to the terms of the Geneva Convention. Unfortunately, the fact that they were wearing uniform and accompanied by wounded soldiers meant the Japanese to whom they had surrendered regarded them as cowards and hence without honour.

To those who embraced these old ideas, the nurses were degraded beings who could be starved and used as beasts of burden till they dropped dead.

Once the war ended and the nurses returned home they made a point of going to visit the parents of dead colleagues. When doing so Sylvia Muir, Vivian Bullwinkel and others appear to have experienced survivor guilt similar to that experienced today by people who have been involved in terrorist attacks or hijacking attempts.

#### GROWING UP

Sylvia Muir was born on a property near Longreach in the Queensland outback in 1915, the second year of World War I. She spent her early years on 'Aviemore', a vast and isolated cattle station where her father was employed as station manager.

Childhood memories included fierce droughts, when most of the cattle sickened and died through lack of food and water, swirling dust storms, bushfires that nearly engulfed the homestead, and Christmases when the temperature soared—all the joys and heartbreaks of the pioneering life.

Sylvia loved horses and became a fearless rider. As there was no doctor or vet for hundreds of kilometres, she learned to care for wounded animals and to treat simple ailments from reading a battered home encyclopedia of bush nursing she found on the shelf in her father's office.

Dark-haired and elfin, the little girl was taught to read and write by her mother. At the age of eight, Sylvia was sent to Rockhampton where she boarded with relatives so she could attend Rockhampton's Central Girls' School where, fortunately for her, she was taught to swim. Sylvia conquered homesickness and did well at school but always loved returning home for the holidays.

Sylvia was one of a large family so there was never much money, but her mother valued education and books and insisted the little girl read a great deal. At that time, nursing and teaching were two of the few occupations considered suitable for bright girls who needed to earn a living.

'I'm going to nurse overseas if there's another war. Then I'll come back and marry a grazier and have four sons,' Sylvia told her mother, who hated war, as several male relatives had been killed in the trenches in World War I.

Armed with her leaving certificate, Sylvia enrolled as a trainee nurse at the Brisbane General Hospital. She was an attractive, extroverted girl who made friends easily. Sylvia's best friend was Pearl Mittelheuser, known as 'Mitz'. Her other close friends were Joyce Tweddell, ('Tweedie') and Florence Trotter ('Flo').

As enthusiastic young nurses they enjoyed their training at the Brisbane General Hospital (now the Royal Brisbane Hospital), shared rooms in the spacious Lady Lamington Nurses' Home, attended parties and dances, but worked very hard.

Sylvia gained her midwifery certificate and worked as a nurse in Townsville and in the sugar town of Ingham, where, for a year, she was both district nurse and local midwife.

After finishing her training at the Brisbane General Hospital, Joyce did additional training as a radiographer but decided she would continue as a nurse.

In 1940, Sylvia, Joyce and their group, enlisted in the AANS. Although Sylvia was the minimum twenty-five years of age, Joyce at twenty-four was so determined to join the Army that she raised her age to gain admittance.

Sylvia, Joyce, Mitz, Flo and another nurse, 'Mickey' Syer, were posted to Redbank Military Hospital for further training. Like all AANS nurses they received a small uniform allowance, which was not enough to pay for their mess kit and outfits, which cost them almost a month's pay. Soldiers and officers were instructed to address them as 'Sister'. They were given the honorary rank of lieutenant and permission to use the Officers' Mess but ordered not to fraternise while off-duty with 'other ranks'. (They were never formally gazetted as officers, however, which did not help them when they were captured by the Japanese, who showed them no respect whatsoever.)

Vivian Bullwinkel (or 'Bulli' to close friends) was born in Kapunda in South Australia. At the age of twelve, she went to live in Broken Hill, where her father worked in the accounts department of South Mine. After leaving Broken Hill High School she tried without success to get jobs in several banks but was persuaded by her widowed mother to become a nurse instead.

Vivian began her nursing training at Broken Hill Hospital, aged eighteen. Initially Vivian had no great commitment to nursing. While she enjoyed the challenge of learning new things she saw it more as a way of earning a living and gaining independence. However, she soon found she had a natural aptitude for it and went on to nurse at Hamilton in the Western District of Victoria and later at Melbourne's Jessie McPherson Hospital. At the Jessie McPherson Hospital, Vivian greatly admired the matron, Irene Drummond, for the way she ran such a happy hospital so efficiently, and she became very fond of the older woman.

Vivian may have been shy and reserved but she had a warm, generous personality. While a trainee nurse she received several proposals of marriage but had no intention of settling down before she had seen something of the world.

In May 1941, Vivian enlisted in the AANS, as nurses were urgently needed in wartime. She was sent to the Army base at Puckapunyal, 100 kilometres north of Melbourne, from where she hoped to be posted overseas.

Betty Jeffrey, always known by her friends as 'Bet' or 'Jeff', was a tall, athletic young woman born into a family of six children. Her father was a manager with the postal service and the family moved around a great deal for his work. Betty attended schools in Tasmania, Queensland and Victoria.

From childhood onwards Betty kept a diary. She was a good writer with a lively sense of humour and extremely intelligent. However in the 1930s few young women received tertiary education, which was seen as the prerogative of men.

After leaving school Betty took a shorthand and typing course and became a secretary but soon tired of the monotony of office work. She felt restless, dreamed of travelling overseas but lacked the money to do so. In 1935 Betty applied to become a trainee nurse at Melbourne's Alfred Hospital, hoping that eventually she might get a nursing job on an ocean-going passenger liner.

As a late entrant to nursing, Betty had turned thirty by the time she finished her training, somewhat older than most of her fellow trainees. Like Vivian, she did her midwifery certificate in Melbourne.

In 1940, aware that the Australian Army was short of nurses, Betty joined the AANS. She was assigned to 2/10th Australian General Hospital (AGH) and left Melbourne for Malacca aboard the _Zealandia_ in May 1941.

#### READY FOR ACTION

On 25 August 1941, Sylvia, Mitz and Joyce, nine other nursing sisters, two radiographers and two doctors (also assigned to the 2/10th AGH) left Brisbane on the SS _Wanganella,_ bound for Melbourne, where they picked up the main troopships and an escort of destroyers.

Boarding the _Wanganella_ in Melbourne was a group of nurses with the newly raised 2/13th AGH, to which Sylvia was also assigned. They included Vivian Bullwinkel—as Betty Jeffrey would later describe her, 'a tall, slim girl with very fair straight hair, cut short, and blue eyes'—and Vivian's close friend Wilma Oram. The 2/13th would later be commanded by Matron Irene Drummond.

The Brisbane contingent had been led to believe they were going to the Middle East. However, one morning they were amazed to find all the other ships in the convoy had vanished. The _Wanganella_ was steaming towards the Far East instead.

The hospital where they were to work was not ready to receive them, so Mitz, Sylvia, Joyce, Vivian and some of the others were briefly seconded to the 19th AGH on the Malay Peninsula in the picturesque colonial town of Malacca, where Betty had been posted.

There the Australian nurses had the time of their lives. Living in a military garrison, the younger prettier nurses were in great demand and constantly invited to dances and tennis parties by the single officers.

The girls worked hard and played hard, glad to escape from the conventions whereby young women saved for their glory boxes and married early. Yet these high spirited young women were protected by the extremely strict conventions that surrounded nurses on duty and off.

All the younger nurses, including Sylvia, enjoyed male attention: flowers and phone calls from young officers inviting them to dances and dinners, swimming parties and fancy dress parties. As far as they were concerned, marriage could wait. Wartime was a crazy time. No one made long-term plans.

One patient on Sylvia's ward was a tall, broad-shouldered soldier from Queensland named Colin McGregor, who was suffering from a severe case of prickly heat. The boys in the beds around Colin were all competing for the attentions of the prettiest nurses, but he warned them to lay off ogling Sister Muir. He was in love with her and once the war was over he would ask her to marry him.

Part of Colin's treatment was to lie face-down on his bed while Sylvia rubbed his back and shoulders to reduce the severe inflammation caused by prickly heat. If the rash was too bad she would paint it with iodine. Once Mitz had to do this for him and as a joke she painted 'I love Sylvia Muir' on his back, amid roars of laughter on the ward.

_Betty Jeffrey and a colleague in 1941._

One day Colin followed Sylvia out to the sluices and right there among the bedpans told her he was in love with her. Sylvia was most surprised. She had hardly paid any attention to him—in fact, she knew his lean muscular back far better than his face.

She told Private McGregor that she liked him but at this stage in her life she was not looking for a serious relationship.

Colin smiled down at Sylvia. She never forgot how he replied calmly and confidently, 'Once the war's over, I'll find you, no matter _where_ you are. Then I'll propose properly in much nicer surroundings than this.'

Sylvia was touched by his faith that they would both get through the war but was fairly certain their paths would never cross again.

The following day Colin's back was better. The medical officer discharged him as cured and he returned to his regiment which was by now 'up country'. Sylvia put the good-looking soldier from Queensland out of her mind.

On 8 December 1941, Japanese assault troops landed in northern Malaya near Kota Baharu. Betty Jeffrey described in her journal how 'when [war] did come...our group were right in the thick of it. Early in the New Year our [Malacca Army] Hospital was forced to evacuate to Singpore.'

Back in Singapore, by 10 January 1942, the returned nurses under the charge of Matron Olive Paschke found themselves also working alongside Vivian's old colleague, Matron Irene Drummond, and her staff, turning the buildings of Oldham Hall School and St Patrick's School into hospitals.

As more and more wounded soldiers arrived, the hospital expanded and took over adjacent private houses. All leave was cancelled and the nurses found themselves working increasingly longer hours to cope with the influx.

Yet morale was high. They were part of a close-knit and disciplined team. Life for the Australian nursing sisters on the tropical island of Singapore was far more comfortable than for those serving in war-torn Europe. Similarly for the men. Those single officers lucky enough to have been posted to Singapore seemed to Sylvia to be obsessed by the seemingly endless round of cricket matches, golf, cocktail parties, fancy dress balls and amateur theatricals. They continued to believe the myth that Singapore was safe because the Japanese were too short-sighted to shoot straight.

No defences had been constructed on the vulnerable north-west of Singapore island. Everyone thought the Japanese would attack by sea from the south and could easily be beaten off.

However, throughout January the retreat of British forces down the Malay Peninsula continued. The seemingly unstoppable force of Japanese soldiers could apparently live on a handful of rice a day and carried no unnecessary equipment to impede their progress southwards. Some even travelled by bicycle.

On 31 January, the causeway between Singapore and the Malay mainland was blown up. With their guns trained on the sea rather than the land, this came as a huge shock to the garrison.

The nurses were working hard when the sirens sounded a warning. Japanese planes flew overhead and bombed the docks: chaos and confusion reigned. The RAF could not muster nearly as many planes as the Japanese. By now the Japanese artillery had arrived on the far side of the Strait of Johor from where they were shelling selected targets on the island of Singapore.

#### ESCAPE FROM SINGAPORE

In early February 1942 the British began the process of evacuation. Betty Jeffrey recalled how 'on 10 February, six of the sisters left early on a Chinese hospital ship taking wounded patients with them. The following day a second group left to board the SS _Empire Star_ , which would manage to take them to Australia, although the Japanese bombed it on two occasions.

Betty and Sylvia both pointed out that in spite of the danger there was no panic among those nurses who remained. They wished to stay with their patients rather than leave.

The next day, the remaining nurses were told they were all to be evacuated. They must be ready to leave at a moment's notice. Yet, however great the danger, the Australian nurses did not _want_ to be evacuated. They did not want to walk out on wards full of badly wounded soldiers and said as much to Matron Paschke, who pleaded on behalf of all the nurses to be allowed to stay with their patients.

The military authorities, being aware that the Japanese would soon be surrounding the hospital, refused to listen. Plans for evacuation had been made: the nurses had to leave by whatever boats were available.

Some wounded men, fearing the Japanese would gang-rape the nurses as they had done in Hong Kong, urged them to go. Others, especially those who were badly injured, were distressed to see them leave.

'Whatever the risk, I just hated having to leave my patients,' Sylvia said, still emotional as she remembered it. 'Especially since in hindsight we realised we would all have been far better off had we only stayed in Singapore.'

Matron Paschke gathered her nurses together and gave out white armbands with red crosses printed on them, to wear in case they were caught by the Japanese. Sylvia and the other nurses grabbed a few personal belongings and stuffed them into their handbags. Flo Trotter snatched up a pair of scissors (precious objects during their imprisonment). Sylvia took a few pencils and a notebook.

The nurses were given backpacks containing iron rations, field dressings, morphine and other medical supplies before they scrambled into the waiting ambulances and set off for the port area. Meanwhile, Japanese planes zoomed overhead. As they drove through the Chinese quarters buildings were burning all around them and thick black smoke was pouring from the oil terminal.

At the docks bombs were falling on the warehouses or 'godowns', and finding suitable ships on which to evacuate the remaining nurses was not easy. The port and the dockyard were in chaos. Civilians panicked as they hunted for a ship—any ship at all—on which they could leave what they now saw as a doomed island. Enemy planes screamed overhead: wives bade sad goodbyes to husbands and frightened children howled as they farewelled their fathers.

Amid the chaos, the Australian nurses and Matrons Paschke and Drummond were ferried out to a relatively small yacht flying the Red Ensign. The date of their departure—12 February 1942—would be one Sylvia, Vivian, and other survivors would remember.

The nurses, outwardly calm in their uniforms and white headdresses, helped the women civilians and their children climb on board. In the crisis all available yachts had been pressed into service, including the SS _Vyner Brooke_ , a small vessel designed and built for Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the former 'rajah' (white ruler) of Sarawak, to take guests on pleasure cruises round the islands. Into this yacht were jammed over two hundred people—British Army wives and children, wounded soldiers and the Australian nursing sisters.

The _Vyner Brooke_ had no food aboard and a relatively small water tank. It had only two lavatories or 'heads' and one washbasin. Sylvia and Joyce, who had spent a lot of time on boats in Queensland realised there were not nearly enough lifeboats should they be bombed by the Japanese.

Sylvia described the scene:

> In our group there were sixty-five nurses. Only twenty-four would survive but of course no one knew that at the time. We each carried a haversack with tinned food in it and we were wearing our working uniforms, grey with short sleeves. When we got on board, we pooled our food because the ship had no provisions. There were about two hundred civilian women and some children, some elderly men, and some selected service personnel. The crew consisted of Malays and some survivors from the _Prince of Wales_ , which had been sunk.
>
> Well, we were briefed and told that in case of bombing we were to go below decks and obey instructions from the ship's officers. The mood was calm because we were all sort of stunned. The overall enormity of the experience was just too much to take in at the time. We'd been working hard and I suppose we were all desperately tired. Fortunately, the good old Australian trait of humour emerged and this helped break the tension. I remember we had lifeboat drill and the chief officer said that the nurses were expected to get everyone safely overboard before we left ourselves.

Once again Matrons Paschke and Drummond took charge, outlining the procedures should they have to abandon ship. Matron Paschke had drawn a plan allocating places in the two lifeboats to the children and those mothers who could not swim. She warned the adults that, in an emergency, they should remain calm in order to save their children. Matron Drummond insisted that the captain fly a flag with a red cross on it to demonstrate there were nurses on board.

Space was severely limited. At night there was not even enough room to lie flat on deck, which meant everyone was short of sleep.

The yacht moved slowly ahead. Sylvia thought they were heading for Colombo, the capital of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Some optimists even believed the tiny overloaded yacht would attempt to reach Australia. They zigzagged a slow course, the captain worried about the dangers of mines.

Two days after leaving Singapore, Japanese aircraft spotted them. They were by now in the Bangka Strait, off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The planes strafed the _Vyner Brooke_ with gunfire, deliberately aiming for the yacht's lifeboats, which were damaged but still useable.

Sylvia and several civilian women received shrapnel wounds but Betty and Vivian survived unscathed. The medical supplies and bandages were stored below and unreachable so Sylvia tore up her petticoat and hastily bandaged her wounded arm and the wounds of several civilians. The yacht was in chaos, women and children screaming and yelling, many of them injured. As the yacht started to list alarmingly, canvas life jackets were given out by the crew.

The planes circled and returned. A bomb exploded in the water near where Sylvia and Mitz were standing. The force almost knocked them off their feet. As it exploded, a wall of water rocked the yacht. Mitz grabbed Sylvia's good arm with one hand and the rail with the other. A second plane whined above them and they ducked for cover. The yacht rocked again as a bomb exploded. A third bomb landed on the funnel and exploded in the engine room below, killing several of the crew and setting the vessel on fire.

Amid the mayhem, the nurses remained calm. They helped the aged and women and children into the lifeboats, which the crew managed to lower from davits into the sea below. Rafts, duckboards, loaded kitbags—absolutely anything that would float—were thrown overboard to act as emergency life rafts.

By now the _Vyner Brooke_ was listing badly to starboard and smoke and fumes were everywhere. There was no time to lose. Sylvia put on her life jacket with difficulty, kicked off her shoes and jumped into the sea, blood pouring from her wounded arm as she hit the water. She was a good swimmer and had won many swimming prizes at school, so the prospect of a long swim with only one good arm did not concern her unduly. What really worried her was that sharks could be attracted by the scent of blood.

Betty and several other nurses slid down ropes into the water and received severe rope burns which tore all the skin away from their fingers and palms. Others dived or, like Joyce, held their noses and jumped into the sea. Soon Betty's hands became badly swollen, causing her great pain, but she managed to clamber onto a floating raft.

In spite of the pain from her arm, Sylvia tried to swim against the strong current that was taking them further out to sea. She stayed afloat for several hours, exhausted by the effort. She could not have lasted much longer, but fortunately she was saved by being hauled into one of the lifeboats by Mitz.

On board Sylvia's badly damaged lifeboat, a soldier took the tiller and told the passengers that since the engine had been damaged a makeshift sail was necessary if they were ever to reach land. He was shirtless like the rest of the men aboard. Would two of the nurses sacrifice their uniforms which could be buttoned together for a sail?

It was no time for false modesty. Sylvia and another nurse undressed then buttoned their pale grey dresses together and watched them flap in the breeze as the lifeboat picked up some speed. The two girls sat there in their underwear trying to look unconcerned and hoping they would not get too sunburned.

The sail worked well for some time and they made good progress before the lifeboat was becalmed in a gigantic oil slick. By now the boat was dangerously low in the water. Some of the nurses attempted to plug the jagged shell holes with their pants but without much success. Sylvia, having no outer garments, kept her pants on and attempted to bail out the lifeboat with an old tin but the water kept rising. The boat was soon so low in the water it was time to take to the sea again.

> We saw a raft with men and women in uniform aboard, and made for it. It was overcrowded and so, for the next sixteen hours, I used my good arm to hang onto a trailing rope at the side of the raft. The worst thing was being thirsty and surrounded by sea water but knowing I could not drink it or I would hallucinate and die.

For some time this raft stayed afloat but eventually it too started to tilt dangerously. One nurse sighted ships in the far distance. The rest of them raised a faint cheer, thinking it must be the British Navy come to their rescue. However, as the ships approached Sylvia realised these were _Japanese_ warships. The Japanese ignored the perilously tilted raft and the waving people, presumably believing that if they did not help them, the occupants would drown or die of thirst.

But they did not drown. Instead, they drifted on through the night. Those who had been burned or wounded by shrapnel were in a bad way. Some were hallucinating. As night fell, they heard the groans of the dying on other rafts floating around them or in the water. It was like a scene from Dante's _Inferno._

Sylvia recounted seeing a raft holding Matron Paschke and five nurses with babies and toddlers on their laps. It seemed dangerously low in the water. A strong current swept them past Sylvia whose attention was distracted by a crying child. When she looked up again the raft with Matron Paschke and the other sisters had disappeared. None of the nurses or the children were ever seen again.

Watching them disappear also were Betty Jeffrey and Iole Harper, a nurse from another unit whom Betty had never met before. Betty and Iole had left the raft Matron Paschke was on to swim alongside and therefore lighten the load. The current that swept Matron Paschke's boat away somehow missed Betty and Iole. The girls swam together for hours until they were eventually carried into the mud and mangroves of Bangka Island.

There was little respite for them here, however, as they swam up tidal streams to search for fresh water. They injured themselves on the mangrove roots and spikes. As night fell they floundered amongst the mudflats and mangroves, trying to keep ahead of the rising tide until daylight. The next day they swam again. That night they found a river to swim up and eventually saw signs of a native village ahead. When finally they were rescued by Malay fishermen, they had spent three exhausting days in the water.

The day after she had watched Matron Paschke disappear, the raft Sylvia was on and its cargo of thirsty, exhausted nurses and wounded soldiers floated ashore at Muntok. Although they did not know it at the time, they had landed on Bangka Island, on the far side of the Bangka Straits offshore from Sumatra. Near them was a pier full of Japanese soldiers who had disembarked from the very same ships that had ignored the nurses' cries for help the previous night.

Sylvia was horrified that she would have to face the soldiers while she was wearing only bra and pants. The nurses had been told terrible stories about Japanese soldiers pack-raping British nurses on the mainland. Would this be their fate?

_Sumatra and Bangka Island during World War II._

'We'd been warned in Singapore to keep our uniforms and Red Cross armbands on if we were captured,' Sylvia explained. 'But in my case that was impossible.'

On the wharf they were surrounded by leering, jeering Japanese soldiers pointing at them gleefully. Sylvia, expecting to be raped or shot, had already made her peace with God. They were not assaulted, however, but lined up and marched off to a hot and airless cinema. For another six hours they were held without any food, while the Japanese discussed what to do with them. At least they had cold water from a hand basin in the cinema's cloakroom.

By now other rafts were arriving with nurses, including Joyce, as well as English soldiers and civilians and their children. They too were brought under guard to join them in the cinema while their fate was discussed. There was no chance of escape as they were guarded by two armed soldiers. Having followed orders to remove their shoes before they jumped from the _Vyner Brooke_ they were also barefoot. Those girls who had been on the rafts had bad cases of sunburn and some were feverish.

The nurses were starving and very thirsty as by now their water supply had been cut off by the Japanese. Towards nightfall they were brought a bucket of water, to which a little rum and sugar had been added. A second bucket containing boiled rice arrived, plus the news that Singapore was now in Japanese hands. All British and Australian soldiers there had been taken prisoner, they were informed by a Japanese guard who spoke a little English.

Bangka Island was rich in tin deposits. Before the Japanese occupied it, Dutch colonists had prospered from mining the metal. Rickety wooden barracks had housed the coolies imported from China to work the mines. These were now empty and the Dutch in captivity. It was to these dirty unsanitary buildings with their open sewers that Sylvia and her fellow nurses were eventually transferred.

#### VIVIAN AND THE BANGKA ISLAND MASSACRE

Unlike Sylvia and Joyce, who were strong swimmers, Vivian could not swim well. Later, she told me her story of the shipwreck.

> I was wearing a life jacket in which I had no faith whatsoever. However, after jumping ship I was astounded to find myself coming to the surface again. I'd read somewhere that the first thing you did was get away from a sinking ship as quickly as possible. It was a sunny tropical day, waving palms in the distance and very much like a travel poster—if it hadn't been for the gunfire and the sinking ship and people floundering for their lives. I saw an upturned boat in the distance with people clinging to it, so I dog-paddled over there. We all looked back and saw the ship roll over on top of some lifeboats—though we saw one get away—and then the poor old _Vyner Brooke_ had gone and I realised Sister [Mona] Wilton who could not swim had not jumped and must have gone down with the yacht.
>
> It was all over in fifteen minutes. We began to paddle and push and jolly the upturned boat towards an island which, before the attack, we'd guessed was about 16 kilometres away. The chief engineer took control. Finally, we got ashore at about ten o'clock that night. When we were on the beach, someone pointed out that the water had probably been infested with sharks but, as someone else said, all the bombing and so on had probably driven them away.

The boat carrying Vivian, Matron Irene Drummond and others had floated ashore at what they would later learn was Radji Beach on Bangka Island.

Among the twenty-three AANS sisters on Radji Beach were some who were badly wounded. Also on the beach were the surviving crew members from the _Vyner Brooke._ While Vivian and other nurses tended the wounded, others gathered driftwood and lit a bonfire, hoping any other survivors would see it and join them. They also found a spring of fresh water at which to slake their thirst. Soon they were joined by a second raft containing twenty-five British soldiers and a group of British wives and children and more shipwrecked nurses who had been saved by clinging to floating spars or duckboards.

Vivian described the scene:

> The older civilians were beginning to show signs of strain and the children were getting a bit tearful because they hadn't had a meal for about twenty-four hours. It was decided that a party would go inland, find a village and try to get help. The chief officer and five of the _Prince of Wales_ crew and five women, of whom I was one, went inland and found a village. The local people said no, they couldn't help because the Japanese had arrived and it was worth more than their lives to be seen helping us. So we went back to the beach.
>
> On the Monday morning, the chief officer called everyone together and said, 'These are the facts: we can't get away from the island, we haven't any food, but we've got plenty of fresh water from a spring. We can either give ourselves up to the Japanese or we can stay put.'
>
> A vote was taken, and it was unanimous that we couldn't do any good staying there. The only alternative was to give ourselves up, and although we service personnel knew that the Japanese hadn't been taking prisoners in Malaya, we realised that there were so many civilian lives to think of as well as the wounded men. Then the chief officer and two of the _Prince of Wales_ crew volunteered to go and contact the Japs and tell them there was a party of us on the beach. The nurses all put on their Red Cross armbands to protect them. I felt chilled as I remembered the words of an officer in Singapore: 'You can't put any faith in your Red Cross armbands because you're fighting an enemy that doesn't play cricket!'

The chief officer and two of the crew and most of the women and children went off to find some Japanese to whom they could surrender.

Some of the nurses stayed on the beach, trying to construct rough stretchers on which to carry the injured men. On Matron Drummond's instructions they fashioned a crude cross from driftwood to highlight the fact they were non-combatants under the terms of the 1906 Geneva Convention to which they hoped the Japanese would adhere.

After an hour one of the crew returned accompanied by a Japanese officer and fifteen armed soldiers. He told the group on the beach that the Japanese had taken the women and children prisoner. The senior officer from the second raft obeyed the rules of war and informed his soldiers they should give the Japanese officer their ranks and serial numbers. He then formally asked that they be taken prisoner according to the Geneva Convention. The officer spoke little English and ignored the request. He held a brief conference with his men. Then, without warning, the Japanese soldiers rounded up those soldiers who could walk and marched them away over a bluff, leaving the wounded men on their stretchers behind. They disappeared from the view of the nurses, who sat on the sand in a state of shock, waiting to see what would happen to them and their patients.

From around the bluff came the sound of distant gunfire. No one said a word. There seemed nothing they could say or do. Five minutes later, the soldiers returned grimly wiping their bayonets and cleaning their rifles. The soldiers now made signs to the nurses that they were to walk into the sea. Vivian described Matron Drummond calling out, 'Girls, I love you all and I'm proud of you. Walk into the water with your chins up. Don't be afraid.' For the rest of her life those words would haunt Vivian.

The group obeyed.

> No-one panicked. We marched ahead with our chins up until we were waist-deep in water. Matron Drummond, Sister Casson and Sister Wight, injured when the ship went down, were killed by the water's edge.

Vivian did not cry out but thought how sad it was that her mother would never know what had happened to her.

The other nurses were equally stoic. No one whimpered, cried or screamed. Some girls prayed aloud as they stood in shallow water and waited for the Japanese to shoot them in the back or the head.

Vivian was near the end of the line on the far left between her friends Alma Beard and Jenny Kerr. She thought how strange it was that such a terrible thing could happen in such a beautiful place. She heard the _rat-tat-tat_ of machine gun fire. And then the full force of the bullet slammed into her like a giant fist, knocking her off her feet into the water. She lay there face-down, swallowing a tremendous amount of sea water until she was violently ill, expecting to die any moment.

From the stabbing pain in her side Vivian knew she must have been shot in the region of her left loin. How was it that she was still alive? Had the bullet gone through her, missing her stomach and intestines by some miracle because they had shrunk from lack of food? She dared not look at her wound, knowing she must pretend to be dead or the Japanese would finish her off with another bullet. So she stayed motionless, rocked by the waves, floating limp as a corpse, turning her head surreptitously in order to breathe.

After what seemed like an eternity she raised her head and turned round. The waves had carried her closer to the shore in shallow water. The Japanese had disappeared. Neither Alma, Jenny nor any of her fellow nurses or Matron Drummond were to be seen. No corpses floated beside her. She was alone, sole witness to a nightmare in which the sea was awash with blood.

Vivian stood up, shivering with shock. She examined her left hip with its trail of blood and saw that her dress had two holes, one where the bullet had entered and another where it had emerged. She managed to crawl up the beach and into the surrounding jungle where she hid among the thick tropical vegetation, a little away from the track that led to the village.

The pain from her wound was intense and, feeling light-headed, she slid in and out of consciousness. When she awoke it was dark. She dozed off again and it was light when next she awoke. She thought about going down to the spring for a drink of water but felt too exhausted. Vivian drifted off again but awoke as soldiers passed very close to her hiding place, returning in single file to the beach, doubtless hunting for survivors. With a shock she realised that had she gone to the stream for that drink they would have killed her.

The question going round in Vivian's mind was why had _she_ been spared. Why her and not Matron Drummond who would have known exactly what to do and was far more worthy of being saved?

Vivian waited for another hour to make certain the Japanese had gone. Then she made her way slowly back to the spring and had a drink of fresh water. Suddenly a male voice with a strong Yorkshire accent asked, 'Where've _you_ been, Nurse?'

The voice turned out to belong to Private Pat Kingsley, who had been one of their stretcher cases and been bayoneted on the beach. He had managed to crawl to a fisherman's hut and take shelter. One of his arms had been badly wounded and he had lost a great deal of blood. He had also received a bayonet wound to his side but by some miracle he too was still alive.

Vivian had nothing to dress Private Kingsley's wounds but bathed them in salt water. Then he wanted to return to the fisherman's hut but Vivian convinced him that it was safer to stay in the jungle. Somehow they managed to walk back up the beach and into the surrounding jungle. She pulled bark off a tree and wrapped it round his wounds as best she could. She did nothing to her own wound, believing that the long immersion in salt water would act as a disinfectant.

They lived in the jungle for twelve days, eating berries they thought would not be poisonous and some grass. Vivian brought Pat Kingsley fresh water from the spring. On her trips to the beach she saw bloated corpses of the nurses washed up by the sea. But as Vivian and Private Kingsley lacked the necessary strength to bury them, they lay there undisturbed, rotting away in the tropical heat.

Finally, they were so hungry they managed to walk as far as the village. A woman took pity on them and gave them a handful of boiled rice and a few small fried fish. However, the men, doubtless terrified the Japanese would kill them if they knew they had helped their enemies, drove them away with menaces.

By now they were very weak with hunger. Eventually they decided it was better to be shot by the Japanese than die slowly from starvation.

As it was Private Kingsley's thirtieth birthday they waited for another day before surrendering. They spent the time telling each other stories about their lives. The next morning they set off very slowly along the track to give themselves up.

They were found by a naval officer and taken to Muntok by car for questioning. Vivian and Private Kingsley had already agreed that neither of them should mention the massacre on the beach, only too aware that in order to cover the evidence of their crimes the Japanese would shoot them as well.

Fortunately, Vivian had found an old water bottle with a leather strap on the beach. She slung the bottle over her shoulders so it covered the bullet hole in her bloodstained uniform and answered the questions the Japanese put to her as to how many troops were in Singapore by saying that as a nurse she knew nothing at all about troop movements.

Private Kingsley and Vivian were taken to the Muntok jail where Sylvia and the other thirty nurses were now being held, and where Private Kingsley died a few days later. Up till now Vivian had believed she might be the only one still alive out of the nurses who had left on the _Vyner Brooke._ It was a relief to see so many other survivors.

Then, out of the crowd, she heard a voice: 'It's Vivian.' Her friends were overjoyed to see her alive. They showered her with questions about what had happened to her and the other nurses. At first, fearing the guard would overhear her story and kill them all, she refused to tell them anything. Then, as they continued with their questions, her iron self-control snapped and she broke down in tears and fell into the arms of Nesta James. Between sobs, Vivian recounted the story of the massacre.

Also in the group were two Australian Intelligence officers. They warned the whole group they must _never_ mention the massacre at any time or they could all be shot. So during the three long years of their captivity, the massacre on Radji Beach was never spoken of again.

'We had to keep Vivian's secret. We had to adapt to circumstances or die,' Sylvia told me.

#### AT THE COOLIE LINES

For the next three years Sylvia, Vivian and the other nurses learned the art of survival on very little food in a series of overcrowded, unsanitary prison camps. At the jail in Muntok, they were reunited with Betty and Iole.

Betty and Iole had received food and some medical attention from the Malays who rescued them, but knowing the island was in Japanese hands the women resolved to give themselves up. The Japanese soldiers to whom they surrendered brought them to Muntok and gave them some more food and water. The Japanese showed the two nurses some of their own wounded soldiers. But hands of the nurses, now wrapped in bandages, were so damaged Betty and Iole could do nothing to help.

Some time later the two nurses were led from what appeared to be the Japanese headquarters to the jail, where Betty was surprised to be hailed by a strange woman dressed in a sarong. With relief to find that others had survived the wreck of the _Vyner Brooke_ , Betty recognised two of her colleagues and was soon among the rest.

The nurses and civilians women were moved and then moved again from Bangka Island to Sumatra. At times they shared accommodation with the wives and children of wealthy Dutch-Indonesian planters and colonial officials. These women tended to be rather snobbish because they had been allowed to take money, jewel cases and other luxuries into the camps with them.

Many of the Dutch women managed for years to live quite well off the proceeds of selling these various items, or off stored money hidden in pillows or bedding. They were able to buy eggs and fruit or the occasional chicken from the locals and survive, although by the second or third year of imprisonment most of their money was gone. It meant that there were two distinct castes in the camp: the haves and the have-nots. Those who had been shipwrecked had absolutely nothing other than the clothes they stood in. 'Long-distance breast stroke isn't much good for carrying luggage,' Sylvia observed wryly.

The nurses kept themselves occupied. They drew up rosters of who should cook, clean and tend to the sick. They did everything possible to earn money to buy extra food for themselves and their patients from the locals who were allowed into several of the camps to trade.

They nursed the British wives and children who had been with them on the _Vyner Brooke_ and shared any food they had with them. The nurses also cared for sick Dutch-Indonesian civilians. In this vital humanitarian work they were assisted by Dutch Charitas nuns. At first the nurses cared for the sick who lay on narrow wooden platforms or _bali bali_ in the huts. Eventually, the Australian nurses were allowed a building to use as a hospital, which they shared with Dutch nursing sisters. As medicines were unobtainable, all they could dispense was care and keep the patients clean.

Many of the British were elderly and the first to fall sick and die. Although most of the British officers' wives were strong-minded women, others lacked the discipline and group loyalty that kept the Australian nurses going.

Sylvia, who had no clothes, apart from her bra and pants, and no shoes, found a trunk belonging to a planter who had returned to Holland. When she lifted the lid she found a few old books, a blank diary, several pencils, work boots and wooden clogs, and a very large thick blue woollen suit, totally unsuitable for life in the tropics. A Dutch nun took pity on her and gave her a needle and thread and Flo Trotter lent her that precious pair of nail scissors. Sylvia cut the legs off the suit and altered the waist to make herself a pair of shorts. She unpicked the lining of the jacket to turn it into a halter top and created a pair of sandals out of two strips of bark. She kept the book to record life in captivity and made little pencil drawings to illustrate her accounts.

With little money to buy additional food from the natives who came to the barbed wire fence with baskets of fruit and vegetables for sale, the nurses had to survive on meagre rations including a handful of soya beans each day. Sylvia expanded on this:

> We'd be given our rice ration in cigarette tins—enough for ten days at a time. The rice often contained weevils or rat droppings. Hunger pains were a daily occurrence. Food became an obsession.

All through their three years of capativity, the Australian nurses proved themselves extremely resourceful and adaptable. They were able to earn a little money by acting as nannies to the planters and mining officials' children in the camp. At times they cared for the sick children of the locals and bartered their services and their knowledge for scraps of food. Iole and Betty ran a cookery business making cakes of fried rice and selling them to the Dutch, and a kind of fish paste, made from the remnants of the meals of the Dutch women. Betty roasted fish heads and bones, pounded them to a paste and added salt and lime juice.

Any money the nurses managed to earn from child minding, cooking or sieving the weevils out of the rice rations for the Dutch-Indonesian women was spent on little luxuries, such as eggs or an ancient scrawny chicken. The nurses shared all food, and the luxuries always went to those who were the weakest.

'If you managed to find a banana you'd sell it to the Dutch women so you could buy something else you desperately needed. Then you would ask them if they would give you the skin to eat,' Sylvia told me, explaining how she and her friends would fry and eat banana skins and banana flowers— _anything_ that increased their meagre diet of boiled rice and soya beans.

Always hungry, the nurses dreamed about food, talked about food, swapped recipes and pined for the roast dinners their mother had made. Most of the Australians loathed the taste of soya beans. However, hunger being a great spur to ingenuity, Sylvia and Vivian and some of the others learned how to soak the beans for days and then pound them down to make soya milk. They either drank the milk or sold it to the Dutch-Indonesian women, who gave it to their children, or made a paste from it which Betty and Iole used in the little cakes they sold.

Several nurses earned money by making straw hats from dried local grasses, while Flo, who still had her pair of nail scissors and a comb with a few teeth in it, became the camp's hairdresser. Both Flo and Betty earned money by cutting the hair of the Dutch women. Sylvia made toy kangaroos from scraps of material and sold them to the Dutch women for their children.

On a virtual starvation diet even the tallest of the nurses dropped to 6 stone (38 kg) while some weighed only 5 stone (32 kg) and now lacked resistance to disease. Red Cross parcels that had been sent from Australia by relatives convinced the nurses were still alive were either lost or stolen by their guards, with the connivance of Colonel Yamasaki, the officer in command of the camp. He was responsible for its policy of starving the prisoners and denying them medicines.

In most of their camps the living conditions were horrific. At one time the nurses were made to sleep on a sloping concrete floor beside stinking latrines used by the Japanese soldiers, who would delight in splashing them with urine. They were forced to shower under buckets of cold water in cubicles without doors while the soldiers enjoyed making lewd comments about their bodies.

The brutality of some guards was beyond belief, treating their captives worse than animals. At _tenko,_ or roll call, some women had initially worn make-up until one guard (later named Lipstick Larry by the prisoners) smashed the teeth of women wearing it as a punishment. Another guard they named Rasputin would hit them with his stick at _tenko._ The guards despised their prisoners; their ancient culture of _bushido_ honoured only those who fought to the death or committed suicide rather than surrending. Sylvia saw it this way:

> They treated us with disdain or indifference: many of them blamed us for the fact they had to guard us. They hoped we would die as soon as possible so they could go home to their families in Japan...They practised refined tortures, hoping that they would break our spirit...This was why they withheld the medicines that could have saved so many of us.

One of the 'refined tortures' that the guards enjoyed most was withholding food.

> If they did give us some meat or fresh vegetables, they'd put it down on the road outside the barbed wire around the camp. They knew that we knew that if we ventured outside the wire to get it, we'd be shot. The food that was ruined by the sun could have saved many nurses from dying of beriberi [caused by vitamin deficiencies].
>
> So instead of us eating it, that precious food would sit there for hours, rotting away in the boiling sun. By the time the guards let you go and get the vegetables, more than half would be ruined and stinking. Or they'd bring us a bag of dried soya beans and empty them on the ground or in the latrines, hoping to see us grovel in the dirt at their feet.

Sylvia counted those friends who died of beriberi off on her fingers: Irene Singleton, Pauline Hempsted, Shirley Gardam, Win Davis, Dot Freeman and eventually Pearl Mittelheuser (Mitz).

> Colonel Yamasaki (behind his back we called him 'Saki the Sadist'), the military commander, was the man we all loathed. Saki insisted we make a low bow to any guard who spoke to us at roll call. If your bow was not low enough, you got a slap in the face. They were very good at slapping faces.
>
> If you did anything wrong, they would stand you out in the sun for hours. One of our girls, Ray Raymont, had heart trouble. They trussed her and Val Smith up with ropes so they couldn't stand but only kneel and left them there in the blazing sun for not bowing low enough at _tenko._
>
> Poor Ray fainted and she lay out there in the sun for hours. We were terrified she would die. It was agonising, knowing we could do nothing or the guards would have been happy to shoot us. Eventually we got her in and both she and Val had severe sunstroke, which undoubtedly shortened their lives.
>
> Most of those guards enjoyed being cruel. They were sadists and really took pleasure in finding ways to humiliate us...We stuck together and presented a stubborn, united face, insisting we were officers and they should obey the rules of war. They could jeer at us but sticking together was our only weapon against them. We vowed they would not kill us or break our spirit.

As a result of being tortured, 'Ray' Raymont was never able to do heavy work again. She died in camp only a few weeks before the end of the war.

#### WHITE COOLIES AND 'COMFORT WOMEN'

On 2 March 1942, the nurses and their fellow captives were moved to a camp at Palembang in Sumatra, built by male internees who were soon sent elsewhere. The men at Palembang included Australian prisoners who would eventually alert the outside world to the plight of the captives. Sylvia described conditions there:

> Over five hundred women and children, including Dutch, German and English women and our large group of twenty-five Australian nurses, were jammed into a barracks intended for one hundred men with only two bathrooms and lavatories among the whole group. We slept on concrete floors during the wet season. We were often ankle-deep in mud as the camp had been built on a swamp and there was no drainage. The mozzies were terrible. Most of us, including myself, got malaria and the Japanese refused to give us quinine.
>
> Eventually we were so thin we were like X-rays, only skin and bone. They despised us, used us as white coolies, made us clean out their filthy latrines as well as our own. We were tired of cleaning shit for them and being used as slave labour for a bunch of illiterate Japanese sadists.
>
> We had to till their vegetable garden with heavy wooden hoes but were not allowed to eat the vegetables.
>
> We were white coolies. We had to cut wood for them, cart water for them and do all this on the most meagre of diets imaginable...Somehow many of us managed to survive on less than 90 calories a day. We grew sweet potatoes to eat whenever the Japs let us do so. We did better than many of the civilian women, because we had group discipline and group loyalty.
>
> The Japs punished us for any infringement of discipline by cutting our rice rations even further. No wonder so many of us died. Can you imagine what it is like to sit beside a close friend you have known for years, holding their hands and watching them die? When Mitz died I swore I'd never forgive the Japs. Now I'm not so sure.

Each time a colleague died of malnutrition or disease the nurses would get out their stained grey uniforms, dig a grave and hold a funeral. As they grew weaker it took more and more of them to carry the coffin. The little money they had been able to earn from the Dutch planters' wives was drying up as the Dutch women themselves were running out of money.

Sylvia said:

> Somehow, we survived by helping each other. We kept up our morale. Our shared friendships got us through thick and thin. It was no good thinking about escape. What was the point of escaping into dense jungle miles from anywhere where the mosquitoes were even more lethal than the Japs? All that escape meant was dying even sooner.

Then a new ordeal arose. The nurses were ordered to 'entertain' the guards in the house the Japanese had nominated their 'social club'. Four of the youngest and most attractive women, including Joyce Tweddell and Pat Gunther, were ordered to attend the club. To protect them, a large group of nurses accompanied the selected group.

They prepared themselves for the ordeal by continuing to wear their AANS uniforms (or what was left of them) and the armbands with red crosses that Matron Paschke had given them when they left for the _Vyner Brooke._ Viv and her friend Wilma Oram rubbed dirt on their faces, Wilma and Sylvia wore men's work boots, others went barefoot or wore old sandshoes sold to them by a local trader. Some of the girls cut each other's hair close to the scalp, and a few of them even sprinkled their hair with their own urine.

Sylvia recounted what happened that evening:

> Each of us made ourselves look as ugly and dirty as possible. Inside the club house we sat on chairs and ate all the peanuts and biscuits we could find, refusing to accept any of the alcoholic drinks they plied us with. We made lots of visits to the cloakroom, stole toilet paper and stuffed it into our knickers, as we didn't have any paper in our latrines. We tried to behave as though we were lesbians to discourage the guards.
>
> We had agreed beforehand we wouldn't have any alcohol to drink. When one of the Japs asked in amazement 'What do Australian girls drink when they go out?' Blanche Hempsted, one of the Queensland contingent, lied 'We never drink anything but milk!', which made several of us want to burst out laughing, in spite of the danger we were in. Unfortunately they didn't give us any milk.
>
> Conversation was limited as the guards were uneducated fishermen who only had a few phrases of English. However, one of them could write a little English. When it became apparent after an hour or so that any advances were repelled and that sex was not on the agenda he wrote: NO SEX MEANS WE'LL STARVE YOU TO DEATH. One of the nurses wrote back laconically under his message. OK, SO WE DIE SOONER RATHER THAN LATER. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
>
>
>
> Sylvia continued with amusement:
>
>
>
> Stalemate. After a few hours of getting nowhere the Japs in the social club seemed to abandon the idea of having sex with us that night.
>
> The group walked out, their heads held high. However, outside the 'club' four Japanese officers were waiting for them. There was a nasty struggle as they tried to take four of the younger nurses back to their quarters. One of them was Val Smith, who had been made to stand out in the sun as punishment with Ray Raymont. Val was a heavy smoker and had observed the behaviour of many patients with TB. Val and two others now put on a hacking cough as though she had TB, a disease the Japanese were terrified of catching. As Val rolled around doubled up with coughing, the officers took fright and ran away.
>
> Next morning, an angry Colonel Yamasaki sent an interpreter to tell the nurses that the inauguration of the club had not been a success. He insisted that next time the nurses must take more care with their appearance and the social evenings would continue.
>
> The nurses were horrified. Not only were they being slowly starved to death, some of them were also to be used as prostitutes or 'comfort women'. Their rank as lieutenants and their uniforms would not protect them. Sister Win Davis was chosen to go to the Officers Club and put the sisters' views that they were fellow officers, prisoners of war and should not be subjected to such indignities. Win was ordered to sign a paper agreeing to the Japanese terms and one officer hissed at her, 'You no sign, you die.'
>
> Another nurse, Sister Blanch ('Blanchie'), was called in and also refused to sign the document. Finally the officer stopped the interview, realising that these pressure techniques were getting them nowhere.

Sylvia related that for days the Japanese put enormous pressure on the group to hand over the four young nurses selected to be comfort women. They withheld their rice ration as a punishment, hoping this would make the nurses cooperate in their plan. The same tactics were applied to Dutch, Eurasian and English women captives who had no money to buy food.

> Their demands placed even more stress on the rest of us and now some of the guards became quite open in their demands that nurses would masturbate them to orgasm. From then onwards we slept badly, fearing the guards would enter our huts at night and rape us.

The supplies of sour rice and withered vegetables dried up. By now the nurses had lost half their body weight. Joyce Tweddell was the skinniest of all, and Betty and Sylvia feared Joyce's amoebic dysentery was so severe she could not live much longer. The pain of watching another close friend die was almost more than Sylvia could bear. Joyce and Mitz had become like sisters to her.

Last-minute relief occurred when a Dutchman in another camp near Palembang, who still had hidden money with which to buy food, heard of their plight and managed to smuggle a small quantity of flour into the camp. The nurses lived off that and a soup of grass and berries for several days rather than give in.

Although not all accounts of the 'comfort women' stories agree, Sylvia claimed that at a secret meeting held in the Japanese Officers' Club, four older nurses agreed to replace the younger ones and become comfort women to spare the rest of the group from being starved to death. The other nurses swore on the Bible that the names of 'the four' would never be revealed, to spare pain to them and to their relatives, and no one ever broke this promise. (At the time of writing only one of the captive nurses is still alive.)

The four women were thereafter kept in a separate house with some Dutch and British women who had also agreed to cooperate. They were given good supplies of food and nice clothes but, regarded as prostitutes by their jailers, they were repeatedly raped.

Sylvia told me this very quietly so that no one in the hospital café could overhear what she was saying. 'Those girls were truly heroic—I couldn't have done it. Mitz and I would have rather kissed a leper than a Jap, let alone have _sex_ with one of them!'

After the war the survivors put out a story that Japanese demands for sexual services ceased after Dutch prisoners reported the incident to a Dutch Red Cross official who protested on their behalf. This was clearly not true because throughout the war the Japanese paid no attention to the Red Cross.

#### THE PALEMBANG CAMP CHORAL SOCIETY

To keep their spirits up, a group of British wives and Australian nurses, including Sylvia, formed a choir which rehearsed at night. Betty joined slightly later. They used their voices to hum classical music specially adapted for them by two talented English women, Nora Chambers and Margaret Dryburgh. Dryburgh was an accomplished pianist and choir director, and Chambers was a professional violinist, with a huge knowledge of music. The choir was highly professional and their concerts did wonders for the prisoners' morale. For light relief Sylvia, who passed an audition to get into the choir, decided that for their third Christmas concert, she would change the mood, and organised a 'mock ballet' during the interval.

> A few of us who had done ballet at school put on a sort of comic ballet after one particular camp concert. I remember that I wore a short skirt of banana leaves and a pair of men's boots. Three of us did a comic rendering of the 'Dance of the Little Swans' from _Swan Lake._ We knew we must keep our sense of humour and laugh whenever possible or we were finished.

The Palembang choir continued to give concerts until the women were too weak to sing and the organisers were dead of malnutrition.

Just like the Jewish choirs that performed under leading Jewish conductors at Theresienstadt concentration camp before the organisers were sent away to Auschwitz, the Palembang choir performed inspiring music and reached a high standard of performance. Their repertoire included Ravel's _Bolero_ , Dvorak's _New World Symphony,_ adaptations of requiem masses by Mozart and Fauré, and the slow movement from Beethoven's _Moonlight Sonata._ Later, they added Mendelssohn's _Song Without Words_ , extracts from Bach's _St Matthew Passion_ and _Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring_ , music that helped to comfort them.

Hearing the choir perform meant for many of the captives that the camp, with its dilapidated shacks, seemed to fade into the background. The music took over and their spirits soared on wings of sound. Betty and Sylvia felt that singing in the choir set them free. They realised that although the Japanese might starve them to death, they could never conquer their spirit. As Sylvia related, 'Singing in the choir did wonders for us. The Jap guards couldn't understand how we could still sing after everything that had happened to us.'

#### 'I'M NOT GOING TO DIE A PRISONER' – SYLVIA MUIR

The nurses were allowed to write home 'just to keep us quiet', Sylvia said bitterly. Letters had to be brief, not more than twenty-five words. Plump, well-fed Colonel Yamasaki, who ate the food in the Red Cross parcels intended for the prisoners, forbade them to mention where they were held or the terrible conditions under which they lived.

Vivian wrote a brave letter to her mother pretending they were all well and enjoying themselves, not wanting to upset her. Sylvia did the same for her parents. (After the nurses were freed they found most of their letters unposted, stored in a box in the guard room.)

A move from Palembang on Sumatra back to Muntok on Bangka Island, where their captivity had begun, took place in October 1944 and after that many more prisoners died from malaria.

Up to then the nurses had been housed in a variety of government buildings, primitive log huts or deserted coolie barracks without any protection from mosquitoes. A few people had managed to scrounge strips of mosquito netting, which they used to place over their faces at night as some protection. When anyone died they bequeathed these pieces of netting to a friend along with their ragged clothes and treasured possessions, like a comb or a sewing needle.

By now their complexions were yellowed, their faces lined and wrinkled, and many of them had lost several teeth, which made them look grotesque. When they were moved back to Bangka Island most of the group suffered from 'Bangka Island fever', a virulent form of malaria which gave them a high fever and affected coordination of their limbs. The slow painful deaths from amoebic dysentry and beriberi continued among the civilians and nurses.

The sanitation in all their camps was extremely primitive but in this particular camp on Bangka Island the latrines were dangerous, the narrow deep pits often overflowing. Using them was precarious. By now all the women captives were so thin that several of them slipped between the poles that ran across the narrow slit trench as they squatted over them. If someone fell into the pit their screams alerted the next hut. Although the unfortunate person was hauled out and buckets of water thrown over them by the nurses, each woman died from swallowing excrement.

One of Betty's most haunting descriptions in _White Coolies_ records how, in January 1945, the last year of the war, Iole Harper, Vivian, Wilma Oram and Jean Ashton worked as night soil cleaners. For performing the revolting chore of cleaning out the latrine pits, these 'white coolies' were paid eight cents a day each. The nurses pooled the money they earned in order to feed the rest of their group.

Those nurses who had volunteered to be part of what they called the 'carrying squad' rose each morning at the crack of dawn to start work. Already weak and emaciated, the nurses knew the money was vital to ensure the survival of the rest of the group, who were stricken with beriberi, recurring bouts of amoebic dysentery and malaria. As nurses, they also knew the camp must be kept free of typhoid and dysentery which spread like wildfire once the latrines were allowed to overflow.

The tools of their foul-smelling trade were kerosine tins and two half coconuts shells nailed on sticks to use as scoops. Each pair of nurses was given a long bamboo pole to carry the loaded kerosine tin nearly a kilometre away from the main camp and they were ordered to bury the reeking contents in the jungle. Each nurse had to make six trips before breakfast. By the sixth trip each of them was faint with exhaustion. On one occasion the pole slipped and cracked two of Iole's ribs.

By now Betty was down to skin and bone, suffering from amoebic dysentery, which meant she absorbed very little of what she did manage to eat. She was also suffering from beriberi. Game as ever Betty wrote in her journal: 'Wish I could help them [the girls on the 'carrying squad'] but am back in bed again and down to six stone.'

On 8 February Betty wrote sadly of the death from a severe bout of malaria of Ray (Wilhelmina) Raymont, who had been tortured by being left out in the burning sun for hours without water. Since friendship was so precious to all of them Betty wrote sadly 'Val Smith has lost her best friend.'

In the final three months of their captivity—now at Loebok Linggau—many of the remaining twenty-six nurses were so sick and depressed they no longer cared if they lived or died.

Mitz Mittelheuser, who had saved Sylvia's life by hauling her into the lifeboat, was even thinner than the rest. She was suffering a severe case of beriberi, which covers the sufferer with painful sores and causes their limbs to swell up. Mitz lay on her bunk, resembling a

_Joyce Tweddell before incarceration on Bangka Island and recovering in hospital in Malaya after the nurses' release at the end of the war._

skeleton, her ribs protruding, her cheeks sunken, eye sockets hollow, covered by an old rice sack. Sylvia sat beside her in despair, trying to soothe her. Lacking medicine, all Sylvia could do was wipe the sweat from Mitz's face and limbs with a damp cloth and give her sips of water from an old milk tin to stop her dehydrating even further.

Mitz died on 18 August 1945, a date Sylvia told me she would never forget. By that time Sylvia was too weak to cry. Drained emotionally and physically, the tears would not come.

Ironically enough, three days before Mitz died, unknown to any of them, the war in the Pacific had ended. The only sign the nurses had that something was happening was reports of air raids, which they took as a sign that the Allies were advancing.

Now it seemed that it must be Joyce's turn to die. Weak as a kitten, she could hardly move her stick-thin limbs. A tall, big-boned girl, she had weighed over 10 stone (63.5 kg) at the start of their captivity. She now weighed only 4 stone (25 kg). Suffering from an advanced case of beriberi, she lay on the raised bamboo sleeping platform where Sylvia sat beside her, sponging her face and body covered with peeling skin and open sores with the same rag she had used for Mitz. Would help arrive in time to save Joyce?

Like the rest of them, Vivian was weak and emaciated and half her hair had fallen out. She was far too frail to do manual chores such as sweeping the compound or hauling water or cleaning out the sewers, all tasks which drained the prisoners of energy on their meagre diet. Vivian had saved the life of a little English girl named Betty Kennieson by nursing her through a high fever. As a result, little Betty adored Vivian and through a trader, Betty Kennieson had sold her only surviving possession, a gold bangle, which she had kept covered in tar and hidden from the Japanese. The money enabled Vivian to buy fresh limes and other foods from the natives and the pair of them to stay alive.

#### 'THE WAR IS OVER, SISTERS'

Fearful of reprisals, the Japanese authorities kept quiet about their female prisoners on Bangka Island. Of the sixty-five sisters who had left Singapore, by late August 1945 only twenty-four were now still alive and more were admitted to hospital later that month. By now all the nurses were so wasted and weak from malaria and malnutrition they could not survive much longer.

Had there been a very senior matron to negotiate with Colonel Yamasaki they might have achieved better living conditions but Matron Drummond had died in the massacre on Radji Beach and Matron Paschke was swept out to sea. As it was, all the nurses were relatively young when they were imprisoned and therefore lacked authority in the eyes of the enemy.

In their final camp, a disused rubber plantation 13 kilometres from Loebok Linggau, they lived in leaking dirt-floored huts provided for the rubber workers. The camp was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and plagued by mosquitoes.

Fortunately for the nurses, help was at hand.

Since the Japanese now realised they were losing the war, their attitude changed. Colonel Yamasaki was aware that eventually his prisoners would be found and as the senior officer he would be held responsible for their deaths. After years without proper food and medicines, he issued orders that the nurses were to receive the parcels denied them for so long. The degrading _tenko_ roll calls were abandoned.

On 24 August 1945, Sylvia's thirtieth birthday, she received what she described as 'an unexpected present'. Colonel Yamasaki summoned the prisoners and, standing up in front of them, said, 'The war is over, sisters'. With an impassive face he announced, as though past events had never happened, 'Now we can all be friends.'

Sylvia thought, 'I'm a Christian but I _can't_ be friends with you. I can't forget what you did to Mitz and Ray and the others who have died. If you had given them the medicines we asked for they would still be alive.'

And then an amazing thing happened. Nesta James, as the senior nursing sister, received a telephone call. An unknown male voice told Nesta that an Australian rescue plane was searching for them and would get them out as soon as they were located. This gave the remaining nurses the strength to hang on until they were found.

To keep herself going, Vivian ticked off on her fingers the things that she wanted most when she was back home: a comb, a cup of tea and a piece of toast and butter, toothpaste, talcum powder and soap. She vowed if she ever had those items again she would never take them for granted, neither would she ever again waste food.

The day after Colonel Yamasaki's announcement, the Japanese released European male prisoners from the neighbouring camp. They arrived in the women's camp: battered men in rags and on crutches—Dutchmen, Englishmen and Scotsmen, who had once held important positions as school principals, administrators, mining engineers and rubber planters. The men were as gaunt and as thin as the women.

There were cries of joy as husbands and wives were reunited and tears as they heard of loved ones who had died. Amid the throng of those weeping with joy and sorrow the Australian nurses found themselves on the fringes of the crowd. They were acutely aware that it would be a long time before they would see their homes and their loved ones again.

#### THE END OF THE ORDEAL

When they were finally found by the Australian Army, the emaciated nurses resembled scarecrows in their tattered rags and homemade straw hats. Their faces were gaunt, yellowed skin stretching tight over bones, their hollow eye sockets and sunken cheeks bearing witness to malnutrition and starvation. Black holes marked the gaps where teeth had fallen out through lack of vitamins. Some of the girls had lost much of their hair and bald patches showed through lank locks.

The Army rescue team had been provided with photographs but could not recognise these walking skeletons as the carefree, jaunty girls in smart uniforms who had landed in Singapore at the outbreak of World War II.

Vivian described the scene:

> I don't know what they thought of us. We'd lost teeth. We looked awful. We heard about the atomic bombs. Later, some of us talked together and thought perhaps we'd better stay where we were. We felt frightened of the changed world we would have to cope with.

The prisoners, wearing their tattered uniforms, were driven to the nearest station to Lahat airport. Such were their pride and dignity that Sylvia, Vivian and the other nurses still capable of shuffling insisted they did not need help to board the train.

Joyce Tweddell was the worst affected of the group. Before the war she had been a most attractive young woman with her magnolia complexion, dark expressive eyes and regular features. From June 1943 she was badly weakened by severe amoebic dysentery. Malnutrition had given her pellagra (caused by lack of Vitamin B), and beriberi had coarsened her complexion, darkened her hair, and given her sores all over her body and legs. By now her body was so shrivelled that her hands resembled freckled claws and her eyes looked huge in her gaunt wasted face. It seemed as if her bones might crack if she moved. She was carried to the train on a stretcher and it was feared she would die on the journey.

From Lahat airport the nurses were flown to Singapore. At Singapore airport, journalists and well-wishers pushed and jostled to take photographs of the women. 'As though we were something in a freak show,' Sylvia observed wryly.

They were taken to St Patrick's Hospital, the very place they had worked as Japanese bombs rained down on them back in 1942. There, bunches of flowers and goodwill messages awaited them.

At the sight of these starved and skeletal survivors, the nurses of St Pat's burst into tears, wondering how these poor women could have endured so much and still be alive.

One of the first things the survivors noticed was that the St Pat's nurses were wearing safari jackets and trousers. 'Women wearing trousers!' they exclaimed. 'Whatever next!'

There were also gasps of horror from the male patients—Australian survivors from Changi—when they saw twenty-four human skeletons hanging onto the banister rail in a valiant attempt to haul themselves up the stairs. The diggers asked one of the hospital nurses what had happened and when she told them, with one accord the men cried out in rage, ' _We'll_ get the bastards who did this to them!'

Those warm-hearted soldiers collected their dinners and took them straight up to the ward, wanting to give their own plates of steak and chips to the starving women. But a matron told them that the women would have to be on a special diet. To the survivors' indignation the precious food they had been dreaming about for years was taken away from them.

The women protested they were being starved by their own people but the medical authorities were right. What the nurses needed now was a gradual change of diet: rich food would have had a terrible effect. Initially, they could only take broth, so shrunken were their stomachs. Later, they were given a strictly controlled diet of eggs and milk, with other richer foods being introduced gradually.

As a young student nurse, Joyce had worried she was overweight. Now she was the thinnest and most scrawny, and she took the longest to recover. She weighed only 4 stone (25 kg), a stone lighter than the rest, and resembled a stick insect lying back on the pillow. Only her eyes, still beautiful, huge and luminous, reminded anyone who had known her what an attractive girl she had been. Even when she was well enough to get out of bed Joyce shuffled around like an old crone. The rest of the group were not much better.

Their bodies had an unpleasant acetone-like smell, a result of living on stale rice. It took almost a week for the smell to disappear and many months before their menstrual cycles resumed.

Provided with cotton nightdresses and dressing gowns, for the first time in many years they slept between sheets and with pillowcases, the greatest luxury they could imagine after spending years sleeping on wooden floors or narrow bamboo platforms. Another treat was a bath or a shower, complete with soap and talcum powder, things none of them had seen for years. Hairdressers and beauticians were sent for. Shampoos and manicures made them feel better and took their minds off their ailments.

Only when their shrunken stomachs could accept a normal diet could they sail home.

The nurses returned to Australia on the hospital ship _Manunda_ and were overjoyed to see their families again. Meeting the press, however, was an ordeal for all of them. Everyone wanted to interview Vivian as the survivor of the massacre at Radji Beach. Although the nurses had not spoken of the event, word had nevertheless spread, as apart from Pat Kingsley, two other soldiers from the group marched over to the bluff and shot had survived.

The press popped flash bulbs into her face until Vivian told them in no uncertain terms to leave her alone: she had not seen her mother for years and was going home to catch up.

All the nurses steadfastly refused to discuss what had happened to them in the camp. Nevertheless, stories still appeared in the press about their captivity and how they had been used as slave labour by their Japanese guards.

#### CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN JAPAN

After her return, Vivian initially did her best to lead a normal life, enjoying the company of friends and her mother but found it hard to disappear from the public eye.

War crimes tribunals were taking place in Germany and in Japan. Survivors of prison camps were being assembled to give evidence against their captors.

As the sole survivor of the Bangka Island Massacre, the Australian government sent Vivian to Tokyo to give evidence against the Japanese officer who had ordered the atrocity and against camp comander Colonel Yamasaki. Vivian went with some trepidation, as she still felt nervous about speaking in public and was far from the accomplished performer she would become in later years.

In Japan, Vivian took the opportunity to visit the grey wasteland that had once been Hiroshima. She could not cry for the dead there either, remembering only too well the three and a half years of misery she and her friends had endured. But the sight of the devastation of what had been a large city removed all desire for revenge from her mind. She wanted justice for her friends but to rebuild the world, to make it a better place, and to make sure the young did not repeat the mistakes of their elders.

In Tokyo, in spite of her fears, Vivian turned out to be a brilliant witness at the tribunal. Cool and collected, she had written out her speech, point by point, on cards and rehearsed it carefully.

Trim and composed in her grey uniform, Vivian's voice was low but firm as she spoke into the microphone. It never faltered as she told the tribunal about the conditions under which they had been forced to live. She gave approximate dates and details of violence, such as when the nurses had their front teeth knocked out when they did not bow low enough to Colonel Yamasaki at _tenko_ ; of women being forced to stand out all day in the sun without water; of being made to do heavy manual labour when they could scarcely lift a hoe; of how they had been moved from camp to camp, forced to carry the heavy luggage of the Dutch prisoners, so they would weaken and die and of how the group had sustained each other.

She told the assembly of the nurses who had died of beriberi and other fevers and how the food and medicine that had been sent by the Red Cross could have saved them. She described how Colonel Yamasaki had refused to release the medicines to them; how he and his guards would jeer at their prisoners when they pleaded for the medicines and say: 'No matter—plenty room to bury them in the ground.'

During her evidence there were no tears, no histrionics. She put the facts clearly. When Vivian ended her speech she was trembling with the effort of holding her emotions in check.

Taken together with written testimonials from other nurses read out in front of the Tribunal, it was a spine-chilling portrait of Japanese scorn and hatred of their prisoners.

A far thinner Colonel Yamasaki appeared in front of the Tribunal. He was no longer the arrogant commandant but a beaten and resentful man.

He was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment for the illtreatment of prisoners, mainly on the evidence provided by Vivian. Absent was Captain Orita, who had given the order to shoot the soldiers and nurses. He had been found in Russia, sent back to Tokyo to be tried but true to the cult of _bushido_ committed suicide in his cell before the start of the tribunal.

#### LIVING AGAIN

Sylvia also received a hero's welcome and, albeit briefly, became a celebrity, something she found disconcerting. She soon discovered she had a real talent for organisation but disliked speaking in public. At a victory parade in Brisbane, Sylvia and several other nurses were driven slowly down Queen Street in an open car past cheering crowds standing six deep, which embarrassed Sylvia.

Suddenly a tall, dark, muscular man leaned over the side of the car and said, 'Sister Muir, it's me, Colin McGregor, the soldier who said he'd propose to you when the war was over. Can I see you later?' Sylvia agreed, amazed by his persistence.

Colin, she discovered, had also been a prisoner of the Japanese and they had a great number of experiences and attitudes in common. A year later Colin and Sylvia were married.

The McGregors moved from Brisbane to Bega, where Colin became a dairy farmer. Sylvia gave up full-time nursing to become a farmer's wife and rear their three sons, Iain, Neil and Ross.

Once her children had grown up Sylvia dedicated herself to voluntary work in the community. She remained close to the other nurses and eventually was elected president of their Prisoner of War Association.

'Unfortunately, I outlived Colin by many years. But I can't complain. I'd say I've had a very happy life. After all, I did tell my mother I wanted to be an Army nurse, then marry and have four sons, though I only managed three.'

My last memory of Sylvia was when our interview session ended. She told me she needed to pick up some tablets from the pharmacy before the ambulance arrived to take her home. I immediately jumped up to do this for her.

'No, thanks, Susanna,' she said firmly. 'I'm not dead yet. _I'll_ get them.'

And off she went down the long passage clinging onto her walking frame. Sylvia was just as determined to refuse help as she had been when, weighing 5 stone (32 kg), she turned down any assistance to board the train that took her away from their last camp.

Joyce was a very private person who never once spoke to the press about her harrowing years of captivity. Her ordeal at the hands of the Japanese became a catalyst for an outstanding career in radiography and a truly heroic life dedicated to the welfare of others.

It took years for Joyce to recover after her release. Joyce's niece remembers her mother helping Joyce peel away the top layer of skin from her hands, which was flaking away due to beriberi.

Back in Australia, with loving care from her family, Joyce slowly recovered her strength and was finally well enough to consider what she would do with the rest of her life. She had no wish to exist on an invalid pension. She wanted to do something to help others. When she asked her doctor for his opinion, he told her that returning to nursing was out of the question, as she lacked the physical strength to lift patients. Why not go back to radiography? All she needed to do was to update her qualifications.

Through guts and determination this quiet woman had the strength of character to transform herself from a physical wreck into a leading figure in the world of cancer treatment. In time, she acquired an international reputation for her pioneering work in the field of therapeutic radiography.

In May 1950 Joyce Tweddell was admitted to membership of the Australian Institute of Radiography. At that time Royal Brisbane Hospital had a vast treatment area stretching from the north of Queensland, the Torres Strait Islands and Papua New Guinea. In 1959 Joyce was sent by the Queensland Radium Institute to set up a radiotherapy department in Papua New Guinea.

'Tweedie' became a senior, much-loved figure in the Royal Brisbane Hospital. Tall, silver-haired and imposing, she was generous with her time and helped many younger women achieve careers in radiography. She was extremely kind, loyal and supportive to her staff and she had a wonderful sense of humour. Later she became deeply involved in the planning of new buildings and the upgrading of radiation facilities at this hospital, and watched it become the most important centre for radiography in the southern hemisphere.

In 1972 Joyce was appointed chief radiographer and radiation therapist at the Royal Brisbane. She travelled the world, attending conferences and speaking on her treatment methods for cancer. She finally retired from professional life in 1979. She went to live in Caloundra, where she cared for her ageing mother, played golf and coped bravely with several bouts of illness. She died in 1995.

In the 1970s when my late husband, Dr Larry Evans, worked at the Royal Brisbane, Joyce was a legendary figure, loved by her staff and famous as one of the Bangka Island nurses ill-treated by the Japanese.

A handsome state-of-the art oncology building at the Royal Brisbane has been named the Joyce Tweddell Building after her, a fitting memorial for a woman who bravely endured so much and still managed to turn her life around to help others less fortunate than herself.

Vivian confided how hard it had been to adapt to civilian life. After living so tightly packed together in the camp, she and the other nurses found it most disconcerting to be on their own. Like the others, Vivian and Sylvia 'wanted to be with one of the group all the time'.

Vivian admitted that it had been worse for her when she returned to Australia because, though naturally quiet and shy, she suddenly found herself in the public eye, followed about by journalists and photographers. Her wish was to let the world know how heroically the _whole_ group had behaved in the camp rather than concentrate on the Bangka Island Massacre. To do this, she had to overcome her natural reticence, and embark on a busy program of public appearances.

> I'd never been involved with public speaking before but Betty and I went around Victoria raising money for a memorial to the nurses who had died. I was still emotionally involved with the girls we had lost. The way they behaved on the sinking _Vyner Brooke_ was heroic. I could never forget the heroism of Matron Drummond. She was so calm organising us all, helping civilians and children into the lifeboats, and sacrificing her own life to save others. All the nurses were brave. We only left after everyone else was safe.
>
> What none of us will ever forget was how Mitz and other girls who died thanked us for caring for them and apologised for dying so slowly. It was so terrible just remembering these things. At first I had a lump in my throat and could scarcely talk about them in public and I had to overcome that.
>
> Those journalists pestered me and wanted to take my photograph and wanted me to answer stupid questions. I didn't want to talk about the Japanese and the details of the massacre. I wanted to talk about my friends and their bravery. But most of the press didn't want to hear about that, they wanted to know about the violence and the sordid aspects of it all.
>
> I spoke at RSL branches, school graduation nights; I opened things, unveiled things. I was propelled into becoming a different person, a new and totally different person, Sister Bullwinkel, the survivor of the massacre. Sometimes the whole thing seemed unreal as though it was happening to someone else, not me. Often, if I had problems to deal with, I thought, 'How would Matron Drummond have dealt with them?', and tried to act accordingly. But there was always the guilt that I had been saved rather than her. I know she would have been far better at negotiating with Colonel Yamasaki than any of us.
>
> Guilty thoughts kept returning. I would say to myself, 'Why were _you_ the only one to be saved? Why weren't you killed when girls who were far better than you were killed?' For three days, I wouldn't allow myself to pray. Then finally, I did pray, and found a measure of peace but I couldn't cry for the others. I never shed a tear for them but I never forgot them. Never for one single day.

Returning to Melbourne, Vivian left the Army and nursed wounded soldiers at the Repatriation General Hospital, Heidelberg. Later, she took a diploma in civilian nursing administration. She was appointed assistant matron of the Heidelberg 'Repat' serving from 1956 to 1960.

Vivian became matron and then director of nursing of the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital in Melbourne, and in 1974 president of the College of Nursing. She received a host of honours in the field of nursing administration. She also became a lieutenantcolonel in a Royal Australian Nursing Corps training unit and the first woman trustee of the Australian National War Memorial in Canberra. She was also instrumental in the establishment of nursing scholarships to enable Malaysian nurses to undertake training in Australia.

Vivian attended many ex-servicemen's functions, and became known for her willingness to help ex-servicemen and women, especially those down on their luck.

As well as working hard, Vivian took care of her ageing mother and led an active social life. She received various proposals of marriage, but none of them seemed right. In spite of those years of extreme hunger and deprivation, she remained a strikingly attractive woman who always managed to look elegant for her speaking engagements.

Vivian had planned one day to go to London with her best friend, Wilma Oram, but Wilma was now married to a former prisoner of war, nursing him and living on a farm. In the end Vivian went to London with Betty Jeffrey and other members of the group. In 1973 Vivian returned to London to receive a Member of the Order of the British Empire award. Later she received nursing's highest award, the Florence Nightingale Medal.

After the nurses' release, two films and a TV series described their capativity and ill treatment by the Japanese. Vivian found to her dismay that the media had turned her into something of a legend. She tried to guard her privacy fiercely, as did Sylvia and Joyce, but it was Vivian's name everyone remembered, while Sylvia and Joyce were able to slip into relative obscurity.

On her return to Australia, Betty was down to skin and bone and weighed less than 5 stone (32 kg). She spent the next two years in hospital. For a long time afterwards, her great-niece Emily Malone remembers, she needed to be treated with injections of cortisone. Her limbs bruised easily and it took a long time for her to recover her former strength.

But as soon as Betty felt well enough, she came out of hospital and, energy reviving, moved into a block of units in East Malvern, Victoria. She became involved in plans with Vivian to raise money for a 'living' memorial to their dead colleagues. This was to take the form of a Nurses' Memorial Centre, which would include a lecture theatre and accomodation for visiting nurses. Betty and Vivian borrowed a car and toured hospitals throughout rural Victoria, giving fundraising talks together. By a great deal of various hard work and public speaking, these two indomitable women collected the sum of £78,000, a considerable amount in those days.

The money they raised was used to build and furnish the Nurses' Memorial Centre in St Kilda. Betty became the centre's administrator and ran the facility very well. In 1950 she went to London with Vivian and they were presented to King George VI, Queen Mary, the Duchess of Gloucester and the young Princess Elizabeth. Eventually, continuing ill health forced Betty to retire on a pension from the Federal government.

In her retirement Betty continued to keep herself busy and active. She was always very involved with her close-knit family and her sister's two daughters, who were her special favourites. Betty's great-niece Emily Malone records her aunt as being very generous and loving. Betty also took on voluntary work for ex-prisoners of war, attended reunions of the group and played a great deal of golf at Huntingdale Golf Club.

At the same time Betty was hard at work preparing an edited version of her 'war' diary for publication by Angus & Robertson under the title _White Coolies._

The published book was Betty's personal view of those bleak years of captivity, a dark story enlivened by flashes of the author's characteristic wit and good humour. It also revealed to Australians the heroic side of the story, describing how the nurses grew weak but carried on trying to save the lives of those around them.

_Betty Jeffrey at the launch_ of White Coolies. _Vivian Bullwinkel is on the left._

As a senior nurse, Betty who by the third year of captivity was feeling very ill indeed, described with grim foresight, how even if they survived, few of the nurses would emerge from captivity unscathed by the terrible diet and shortage of vitamins, and the fevers. She wrote:

> Thirty-one of our thirty-two sisters now have malaria quite badly...We are...praying for our freedom. If this doesn't happen soon we shall be a mess for the rest of our lives.

_White Coolies_ caused an overnight sensation when it was published. Over the course of the next two years it was reprinted eight times and copies were sold in England, at that time something rare for an Australian book.

A popular drama series on commercial radio based on Betty's book was later produced by Gwen Friend, sister of the well-known artist Donald Friend. June Salter starred in it as Betty. June and Gwen became great friends with Betty and enjoyed her keen sense of humour.

In 1954 after her edited journal was published, Betty donated her battered war diary to the Australian War Memorial, along with her nursing uniform and a watch from which the Japanese had removed the hands so she could not tell the time. Later she gave the War Memorial drawings of the camp, produced, like her diary, at great danger to herself. Had the diary, which she had kept hidden in her pillow, been found she could have been shot, as could Sylvia for her diary. The Japanese guards were keen to destroy anything that might incriminate them should the Allies win the war. Typical of Betty's spirit and sense of humour was a 'soldier' doll with Japanese features that she made out of a shirt-tail stolen from one of the guards.

In 1987 Betty was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, an honour bestowed on Vivian in 1993.

In 1996 Betty was invited to act as script adviser to the film _Paradise Road_ in which Betty's character was played by Ruth Cracknell. Betty attended the premiere of the film but told her great-niece, Emily Malone, who accompanied her, that she felt that after the shipwreck of the _Vyner Brooke_ the film deviated too far from the truth.

However _Paradise Road_ , directed by Bruce Beresford, received great critical acclaim for its sensitive portrayal of the heroism of women in wartime. It differed from Betty's diary substantially because it was intended for an international audience and omitted the Bangka Island Massacre, possibly because it was just too gruesome for general viewing.

The film was superbly well acted. It also depicted the British civilian wives in the camp and featured the little Eurasian girl named Nellie who acted as a go-between and traded with the local people and sold the gold bracelet that saved Vivian and Betty Kennieson's lives.

Betty Jeffrey's journal was concerned with life as she experienced it rather than as an overall picture of concentration camp life. Betty and Sylvia both wrote about the struggles of the Australian nurses to stay alive and the overwhelming kindness of the Dutch Charitas nuns to the Army nurses and civilians. Both Betty's diary and Sylvia's briefer account, as well as the film, pay tribute to the work of British missionary Miss Margaret Dryburgh in sustaining morale by conducting her 'humming' choir, of which Betty and Sylvia were keen members. Like the diary of Anne Frank and the diary of Vera Britain in World War I, Betty Jeffrey's poignant journal and _White Coolies_ are among the great anti-war testaments written by women.

Betty Jeffrey died of a heart attack in a Melbourne nursing home on 13 September 2000, managing to survive to the ripe age of 92.

At Betty's funeral at St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne, Wilma Oram (Young), the youngest of the nurses' group, praised 'Bet' for her strength and her courage and ended her speech by saying 'We have all lost a gifted and sincere friend.'

#### THE FINAL YEARS AND A MEMORIAL ON BANGKA ISLAND

The surviving 'Paradise Road' nurses remained close, had frequent reunions and sent birthday and Christmas cards to each other. Vivian and Sylvia corresponded regularly, particularly since Sylvia had taken over the arrangements for their annual reunions.

In 1975 Vivian was part of a rescue mission to bring a group of Vietnamese orphans to Australia for adoption by Australian parents. Quietly and unobtrusively Vivian did everything possible to help those less fortunate than herself.

In 1977 Vivian appeared on _This is Your Life._ In the television studio she was surprised to find assembled Betty Jeffrey, Mickey Syer, Flo Trotter, Sylvia, Nesta James and her closest friend, Wilma Oram. Each of the nurses spoke with love and respect about the things Vivian had accomplished and what her friendship represented to them.

Finally it was Vivian's turn. She spoke about some of her war experiences but glossed over others that were still too painful to mention. Vivian won the hearts and minds of the audience, who repeatedly applauded her. The television program was seen all over Australia and letters of admiration for Vivian poured in. As a result, she was deluged with speaking offers and had she been so minded could have gone on the speaker's circuit around Australia and overseas. But money and fame were not what she wanted. She still dreamed of a memortial on Bangka Island.

In the year she was due to retire as matron of the Melbourne's Fairfield Hospital, Vivian surprised everyone by announcing she was about to get married. Her husband-to-be was a much decorated army colonel she had known for a long time. Frank Statham had been one of the war heroes known as the 'Rats of Tobruk'. He was a widower whose wife had died of tuberculosis after a long illness. Vivian and Frank had met at the Naval, Military and Airforces Club in Melbourne. Vivian wished her marriage to be a low-key affair, away from the media spotlight. She had her farewell party at the hospital and then packed up her house and took herself and her elderly mother to Perth where Frank lived, and quietly got married.

Vivian and Frank settled into a happy retirement. With shared interests, a great deal of community service and a few overseas trips to Penang and Singapore, the next twenty-three years of happy married life flew by. One sadness was the death of Vivian's mother.

In March 1993, Vivian finally succeeded in getting a memorial to the victims of the massacre erected at Bangka Island. Sylvia McGregor was one of the group of seven nurses who flew to Indonesia for the dedication of the memorial. She, Jessie Simons, Wilma Oram and the others watched as Vivian, wearing her Order of Australia and other medals, laid a large wreath at the foot of an engraved block of granite. The monument was as close as possible to the spot where the survivors of the _Vyner Brooke_ came ashore. On the brass plaque was the following inscription:

**8th Australian Division 2nd Australian Imperial Force**

This memorial honours the heroism and sacrifice of members of the Australian Army Nursing Service who served in the Bangka area during the years 1942–1945.

Lost at sea off Bangka Island after the bombing of the SS _Vyner Brooke_ on 14 February 1942:

Matron _O.D. Paschke_ Sisters:

_L.M.J. Bates_ | _CM. Ennis_ | _M. Schuman_
---|---|---
_E. Cohan_ | _K. Kinsella_ | _A.M. Trenerry_
_M.D. Clarke_ | _C.M. McDonald_ | _M.M. Wilton_
_M.H.M. Dorsch_ | _L.J. Russell_ |

Killed on Radji Beach, Bangka Island, by Japanese soldiers, 16 February 1942:

Matron _I.M. Drummond_

Sisters:

_E.L Balfour-Ogilvy_ | _RE. Farmaner_ | _K.M. Neuss_
---|---|---
_A.M. Beard_ | _C.I. Halligan_ | _F.A. Salmon_
_A.J. Bridge_ | _N. Harris_ | _E.S.J. Stewart_
_F.R. Casson_ | _M.I.Hodgson_ | _M.M.A. Tait_
_M.E. Cuthbertson_ | _E.L. Keats_ | _R.J. Wight_
_D.G.H. Elmes_ | _J. Kerr_ | _B. Wilmott_
_L.F. Fairweather_ | _M.E. McGlade_ |

AANS sisters who died in Japanese Prisoner-of-War Camps:

_W.M. Davis_ | _P.B. Hempsted_ | _W.R. Raymont_
---|---|---
_R.D. Freeman_ | _G.L. Hughes_ | _I.A. Singleton_
_D.S. Gardam_ | _P. Mittelheuser_ |

AANS sisters who survived and returned to Australia:

_J.C. Ashton_ | _J.Greer_ | _C.S.M. Oxley_
---|---|---
_K.C. Blake_ | _E.M. Hannah_ | _E.M. Short_
_J.J. Blanch_ | _I. Harper_ | _J.E. Simons_
_V. Bullwinkel_ | _N.James_ | _V.E. Smith_
_V.R. Clancy_ | _A.B. Jeffrey_ | _AC. Syer_
_C.E.M. Delforce_ | _V.I. McElnea_ | _F.E.O. Trotter_
_J.G. Doyle_ | _S.J. Muir_ | _J. Tweddell_
_J.P. Gunther_ | _W.E.F. Oram_ | _B. Woodbridge_

This monument was dedicated on 2 March 1993 in the presence of seven of the above including Matron Vivian Statham AO MBEARRC (the former Sister V. Bullwinkel), sole survivor of the massacre at Radji Beach.

Speeches were made by government officials from Australia and Sumatra. Vivian, her emotions tightly in check, held a small circlet of flowers. As the Australian flag was unfurled Vivian threw her little wreath as far as she could into the sea. She watched as it bobbed about in the waves where the lives of her companions had ended.

She had fulfilled her promise to honour her dead comrades. Now at last she was able to weep, to release the tangle of emotions she had held at bay all those years. Tears rolled down Vivian's cheeks as she sent up a silent prayer for all the dead nurses and for Matron Irene Drummond who had helped them all to leave the sinking ship and made an inspiring last speech just before they were killed.

In her final years Vivian suffered a series of strokes but fought back bravely and learned to overcome most of the after-effects. She was able to be present at the dedication of the Nurses' Memorial in Canberra, close to other military memorials, in October 1999, the centenary year of Australian military nursing.

Then, in December, Vivian had occasion to weep again after her husband died of a heart attack. In March 2000, her biography, written by fellow West Australian Norman Manners, was launched. To guests at the launch it was evident that Vivian had been deeply affected by Frank's death—much of the spark had gone out of her life.

Vivian died of a heart attack on 3 July 2000, in Perth's Hollywood Private Hospital. At her funeral, Australia mourned a woman who had never sought publicity for herself but only for humanitarian causes.

A state memorial service for Vivian Bullwinkel was held in Perth's St George's Cathedral to honour the heroic woman who had done so much for others. The funeral cortège, accompanied by nurses in uniform, passed slowly along St George's Terrace, where flags were flying at half mast. A month later, a memorial service was held in Melbourne, a city which also claimed Vivian as its own.

Major-General 'Digger' James summed up the life and work of this determined yet extremely modest woman. Vivian Bullwinkel, he said, had been a, 'superb role model for all who care for the sick in war and in peace. Her life and her work made our world a better place.'
> _If I do die, I've had an...adventure...I wouldn't have missed for anything._
>
>
>
> MAVIS PARKINSON, PAPUA, 1942

# [CHAPTER 6
Mavis Parkinson and Sister Frances May Hayman](004-toc.html#ch06)

**Sister Frances May Hayman**

1906 – 1942

**Mavis Parkinson**

1915 – 1942

One of the shortest and saddest stories of Australian women in war is that of Mavis Parkinson and May Hayman. These two young women loved the Papuan children they cared for but their refusal to return to Australia until Japanese soldiers landed on the beach beside the Anglican mission where they worked would cost them their lives.

Mavis Parkinson attended Ipswich Girls' Grammar School near Brisbane. She was a vivacious girl who enjoyed sport and work, and became a school prefect. On Sundays she worshipped at St Paul's Anglican Church in Ipswich with her parents. She was also a keen Girl Guide, enjoying outdoor activities, including bushwalking, with fellow members of her church.

Mavis was a petite girl with brown hair and brown eyes—and a lively mind and a good sense of humour. She once devised what seemed to be a good method for avoiding an exam. She and a classmate ate large boxes of chocolates in the hope they would become too ill to sit for the test. Although the girls did become sick they were made to sit for the exam along with the rest of the class. It says a great deal for Mavis's intelligence that she passed the exam easily.

After leaving school Mavis found herself a clerical job locally with Cribbe & Foot in Ipswich but her ambition was to become a teacher. She was fortunate in being accepted at Sydney University, where she studied languages and anthropology before gaining her degree in theology.

Mavis was accepted to teach at Gona Anglican Mission in Papua, which had been established in 1929. Formerly governed by the British, Papua was then under Australian administration. The Australian government spent very little on education in Papua and it was left up to various missions to provide most of the educational services. Only primary education was given to most Papuan children.

At the time of Mavis's arrival at Gona Mission, Sister Frances May (Merry) Hayman had been working there for some years and provided the only medical services in the area. Small and delicate, with light hair and bright blue eyes, May Hayman was nine years older than Mavis. Born in Adelaide, she had grown up in Canberra and trained as a district nurse in Melbourne.

Gona Anglican Mission had extensive grounds which sloped down to the Pacific Ocean. Its timber houses with wide verandas sat on the large, well-tended grounds less than 90 metres from the beach. Massive tulip trees with scarlet flowers lined paths that ran parallel to the sandy beach. Flowerbeds were bright with canna lilies and red and yellow crotons, brightly coloured hibiscus and variegated 'Busy Lizzies' with white, pink and scarlet flowers. The school was a happy place which gave children, who would otherwise have had no chance of an education, a variety of skills. There was a kindergarten, a primary school and the All Souls' Senior School. Mavis and her associate Simon Peter Awoda were assisted by several pupil teachers. Mavis was an inspiring teacher. She and her team tended the gardens with pleasure and the plants provided a teaching resource for Mavis's botany lessons.

The head of Gona Anglican Mission was the Rev. James Benson who, like the rest of his staff, was dedicated to improving the lives of Papuan villagers.

Behind the mission was a coconut plantation leading to the village of Bepore. Beyond the village were hectacres of jungle with mangrove swamps and tangled undergrowth. In the low-lying swampy ground, millions of mosquitoes bred, including the dreaded anopheles, carrier of malaria.

_New Guinea showing Gona Mission during World War II._

In 1937, after training May for two years to act as his replacement, the mission's resident doctor returned to Australia, leaving May in sole charge of the medical centre. She dispensed medicines, delivered babies, stitched wounds, splinted broken limbs and coped with the thousand and one ailments of the Papuan population in the surrounding villages. The medical centre and the small hospital provided care for the mission staff and the surrounding villages, and many Papuans would have died or had far less productive lives had it not been for May's nursing skills.

May and Mavis shared a bungalow and soon became close friends. Life at the mission lacked many material things we take for granted today but the environment was a happy one. Both these capable young women felt a sense of achievement at what they were accomplishing.

Mavis acted as housekeeper for the mission and ordered all the stores. She organised breakfast for the staff, then walked each morning across a small bridge to open up her school. Mavis had a knack of creating order, happiness and harmony around her, and a capacity for hard work.

_Vivian Redlich._

During the day May worked in the dispensary and the isolation hospital, and undertook what she called her 'walkabouts'. These were conducted on foot or by lorry to the outlying villages for which May, in her role of district nurse and 'barefoot doctor', provided medical care.

Both women had attractive and outgoing personalities and were deservedly popular among the expatriate community, as well as with the Papuan villagers. May was also attracted to a shy, bespectacled English priest named Vivian Redlich, described by Anglican Bishop Philip Strong as 'happy, youthful, gifted', who had been working for the Bush Brotherhood in Queensland and was now posted to Papua.

#### THE JAPANESE INVASION

In December 1941, Japanese forces attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. In the same month the Japanese invaded Malaya and struck the first blows in their well-planned onslaught on the South Pacific region. They seized Guam, the Wake Islands and Sarawak in British Borneo, and ousted a small Australian force in Rabaul, the main port on New Britain island. There they captured a group of Australian nurses and sent them to a prison camp in Japan.

On 19 February 1942, Japanese soldiers landed on the island of Timor in the Malay archipelago and invaded the island of Sumatra, part of Dutch-Indonesia, and neighbouring Bangka Island. British and Australian forces in Singapore capitulated to the Japanese in February 1942.

Despite the danger of an invasion, in January 1942 the Anglican Bishop of New Guinea, Philip Strong, had made a radio broadcast urging all committed Christians to set an example and stick to their posts, come what may. He said 'We must endeavour to carry on our work. God expects this of us...the people whom we serve expect it of us.' Much later, when tragedy ensued, Bishop Strong insisted he had also stated that it was up to each individual's conscience what _they_ chose to do. In his radio message he had added a thinly veiled warning to women—that 'terrible things could happen, worse than death', by which he meant rape and torture by the Japanese. In the bishop's defence very few believed it possible the Japanese would land at remote coastal areas like Gona or at Buna with the aim of using the heavily forested Kokoda Track and attacking Port Moresby by land.

How May and Mavis interpreted the bishop's warning is unclear but undoubtedly in the light of later events, his stirring and emotional words did influence them to make a major and fatal decision not to leave the mission.

Lae and Salamaua, in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, were occupied by the Japanese on 8 March. Port Moresby was also bombed by the Japanese although planes continued to arrive from and depart for Australia from its tiny airport.

In April, General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Brisbane from the Philippines to command the now desperate battle against the Japanese in the Pacific. By now Mavis's parents were anxious for her to return home but the staff at Gona were convinced that the war would pass them by and life would continue as normal. So the two young women stayed to teach and run the medical centre.

The Japanese advanced relentlessly along the coast of Papua. Although Gona was isolated, some news reached the mission via an ancient radio, which had an unfortunate habit of fading out at critical moments.

News also reached them through Europeans fleeing from the Japanese, who were arriving at Gona on foot and by sea, exhausted, hungry and tired. Many of them had made their way across the border between Papua and New Guinea, desperate to escape from the Japanese, and reach Kokoda and Port Moresby and its airport. Thirty American and British refugees travelled south by canoe from Salamaua. The staff at Gona took them in, fed them and sent them on their way refreshed.

Mavis gave all the refugees a warm welcome, fed them home-cooked meals and gave them clean clothes. She and the rest of the mission staff believed that giving food and hospitality to refugees was part of their Christian duty, and that by showing kindness and love to those in need she was following the precepts laid down by Christ.

Allied servicemen whose planes had been shot down and who were cut off from their fighting units were also given hospitality by Mavis.

Meanwhile, American planes were harassing Japanese shipping off Midway Island. When an American plane crashed in the jungle near Gona, survivors brought with them disturbing reports of events that followed the fall of Singapore. The gruesome tales of rape in particular increased Father Benson's belief that May and Mavis must leave as soon as possible. He was convinced that no matter how difficult it was to make their way on foot, the two women should try to reach Port Moresby, which lay south of Gona on the opposite coast over the mountains. There they could board a plane to Australia and safety.

The only way out of Gona was by sea or along the narrow walking track to Kokoda. The Kokoda Track twisted its way through 240 kilometres of dense jungle and traversed the heights of Papua's Owen Stanley Range. It took about five days of hard walking to reach Port Moresby.

The Australian government administrative centre at Buna was a few hours away from Gona and was staffed by Magistrate J. Atkinson and his assistant, Alan Champion. These two men had previously attempted to persuade May and Mavis to trek inland with them where the people were predominantly Christian and would hide them from the Japanese. However, May had refused to leave, claiming her medical work was vital.

For her part, Mavis truly loved the children entrusted to her care, especially the orphans, and did not wish to leave them. She was also committed to the vital task of providing shelter, food and clothing for the refugees. Finally May and Mavis insisted they would only leave if directly ordered to do so by Bishop Strong.

Rightly or wrongly, they were not ordered to leave. So, based on humanitarian motives and Christian principles, these two Australian women and several English and Eurasian women at other missions made the altruistic decision to stay on and care for others rather than saving their own lives.

As the head of Gona Mission, Father Benson was still convinced the two women were in danger and should leave. He warned May and Mavis they must keep a bag packed with essentials, just in case they had to escape in a hurry. In her bag Mavis packed arrowroot biscuits and two slabs of chocolate for emergencies.

Local radio messages also advised residents to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. The warnings were couched in curiously stilted English, which aroused suspicion among some expatriates that the warnings were broadcast by the Japanese to lower their morale.

One broadcast in heavily accented English announced, 'For you people on the north-east coast, I have no definite instructions. But if you don't want to leave your bones on the beaches, I think you had better clear out too.'

These dire warnings had the effect of terrifying the villagers on the north-east coast of Papua. Father Benson was unsuccessful in contacting the bishop of New Guinea for more advice. He learned that the bishop was on his motor launch, the _Maclaren King_ , visiting other mission stations by sea and could not be contacted by radio.

In the midst of Father Benson's dilemma, a messenger arrived from Magistrate Atkinson, saying that he accepted the wireless announcement from Salamaua as genuine. He would be leaving the following morning for Kokoda with his staff. Did any of the staff at Gona Mission want to accompany his party?

Father Benson, who was a widower and had no surviving family, intended to stay on at Gona and care for the mission but he encouraged May and Mavis to be ready to join Mr Atkinson's party. It was somewhat reassuring that Mr Atkinson was taking a radio transmitter along.

Late in the afternoon a motor launch arrived at Gona from Eroro Mission, some 110 kilometres down the coast, bringing Father Newman who wanted to know what the Gona staff intended to do. Father Newman said he did not regard the radio message from Salamaua as official and, like Father Benson, he would stay at his post until advised to leave by Bishop Strong.

However, both men agreed that due to the danger of rape the women should leave. In spite of the fact that the trail to Port Moresby was long and difficult, Father Newman was so worried by the thought of what Japanese soldiers might do that he was entrusting his wife to Mr Atkinson's party. Father Benson persuaded May and Mavis they too should go with this group.

The following morning, Mavis and May left Gona surrounded by tearful children wishing them goodbye and good luck. They were accompanied for the first kilometre or so by twelve of the senior pupils who competed fiercely for the honour of carrying the women's overnight bags.

'They could have had a couple of hundred devoted helpers had they wished,' wrote Father Benson years later, remembering how the children had wept as May and Mavis departed.

Father Benson and Father Newman accompanied the group for the first few kilometres, and with considerable relief watched them heading off in the direction of the Owen Stanley Range. May and Mavis were young and fit. The prospect of a long walk through the damp and steamy jungle didn't worry them.

Each night they listened to the news and heard it had now been confirmed that the radio announcement about not 'leaving their bones on the beach' had definitely been put out by the enemy. The teacher and dedicated nurse felt annoyed they had been deceived by it into leaving.

#### RETURN TO GONA

From now on it weighed heavily on Mavis and May that they were deserting their charges. Another fact that influenced their wish to return to Gona was a meeting at Sangara with two strong-minded women like themselves, Sister Margery Brenchley originally from Kent in England, and a young Eurasian teaching assistant, Lilla Lashmar. These two women had decided to defy the broadcasts and stay on at Sangara Mission.

After talking it over, Mavis and May likewise decided to return to Gona. Mavis asked Mr Atkinson to radio her father in Ipswich asking his permission to stay. Her father agreed, although both her parents were unhappy about it and they later sent a letter demanding she return home. Having contacted her parents and explained to Mr Atkinson and the rest of the group how they felt, Mavis turned around and headed back along the track to Gona with May, hearts light and filled with the optimism that nothing unpleasant could happen to _them._

Five days later, Father Benson was surprised to see Mavis back at the Mission surrounded by a flock of laughing, happy children delighted to see her return. Father Benson was amazed that Mavis was as fresh and neat 'as if she had been down town shopping'. May had not returned directly with Mavis but gone to Eroro to spend a few days with Father Newman's wife (who had also returned), possibly hoping to see Vivian Redlich who was due to visit. When May returned from her stay at Eroro, thanks to the hard work of the women, Gona school, the little bush hospital and the medical centre opened again. The shy, dark-eyed children with their wide smiles streamed back into the classroom. Life was back to normal. Or was it?

Mavis and May thought they were safe. They had no way of knowing that Lilla and Margery would later be beheaded by Japanese soldiers, as would Vivian Redlich, who ran Sangara Mission. Their devoted assistant and fellow teacher, Papuan-born Lucian Tapiedi, who stayed behind to protect them when the rest of his countrymen fled, would also be beheaded by a fellow Papuan, a man called Hivajapa.

On 7 and 8 May 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea was fought off New Guinea's eastern tip. It involved planes from Japanese aircraft carriers and Australian and US aircraft based in north Queensland. The Japanese lost two aircraft carriers and their convoy turned back to Rabaul.

A month later, between 3 and 6 June, American planes engaged with the Japanese fleet off Midway Island, some hundreds of nautical miles to the north-east of Gona. In the ensuing battle the Japanese lost four troop carriers and some 250 planes. As a result, the Japanese changed their strategy and decided to attack Papua by land. They selected isolated Gona as the place they would land. From there, following the inland track, their commanders planned to send a large detachment of Japanese troops to cross the wild and rugged Owen Stanley Range to Port Moresby, hoping to capture its airport.

Meanwhile, at remote Gona Mission, the staff were blissfully ignorant of the Japanese plans, believing that large ships could not pass through the reef and enter Gona Bay and that they were therefore safe from attack.

That same month May announced her engagement to Vivian Redlich. The newly engaged couple received the good wishes of both the locals and expatriates, who felt that May's extroverted nature and sweetness of character and Vivian Redlich's more intellectual approach to religion would combine very well. When married they would be an ideal couple to run a mission station.

But war was coming closer. One morning, when the children were playing in the gardens, a US fighter plane flew low over the station, its engine on fire and losing height rapidly. The mission staff heard a loud crash and saw a plume of smoke rising from the jungle.

Mavis took some of the older boys with her and set off to investigate. They found the pilot, who had bailed out and broken his neck on landing, and carried his body back to the Mission. The two women had to lay out the body. They held a funeral service for the pilot in Gona church and buried him there.

Late in the afternoon of Tuesday 21 July, Father Benson was in the Mission's repair workshop when one of the pupil teachers, Lancelot, rushed to the door, shouting, 'Father! Come quick. Great big ships are here.'

Father Benson followed Lancelot to the beach. To his horror he saw steaming towards the shore a huge ship bearing the emblem of the rising sun escorted by four smaller destroyers.

Amazed that the Japanese were able to enter the bay through the reef, Father Benson ran back to his house where he had a bag packed with essentials. He added his vestments and Office Book, a watch, tobacco, pencils, a notebook and some notepaper (which Mavis would later use to write a letter to her parents) and a few other necessities.

The remaining villagers, simple people who had never seen a ship larger than the bishop's motor launch, took fright at the sight of the destroyers. They gathered up their sleeping mats, cooking pots, babies and piglets, and fled along the bush track into the depths of the encircling jungle.

Father Benson, May, Mavis and the senior teacher, Simon Peter Awoda (who had already sent his wife and family away), watched more Japanese transport ships and destroyers anchor offshore. When four planes arrived soon after Mavis declared: 'They are Japs, and they are shelling Buna.' However, eventually their Allied markings were revealed and the planes flew over and strafed the ships. The battle was bitter but eventually the Allied planes flew away, their ammunition exhausted.

Now that the danger from the air was over, rowing boats and barges were lowered from the Japanese ships as hundreds of armed soldiers prepared to come ashore.

Shells were now landing in the compound and a barrage of fire swept the beach. It was getting dark and time to go. Adding some mosquito nets, tinned food and the precious compass to their bags, Father Benson, May, Mavis and Peter set off on the little track at the back of the mission into the jungle with three boys who volunteered to act as their guides. They were just in time. Hundreds of armed Japanese soldiers were now coming ashore.

#### ESCAPE FROM THE JAPANESE

Their stressful experiences over the next nineteen days were described by Mavis in a brave and lively letter to her parents. In the memoirs of Father Benson, Mavis comes across as an entertaining woman with a vivid turn of phrase, not easily afraid of anything. Father Benson records Mavis saying:

> Golly, think of it. In the past twenty-four hours I've seen a naval battle, been driven out of hearth and home, crossed the enemy lines, been lost in an impenetrable forest, on the edge of a first-rate aerial bombardment, and now I'm one of the babes in the wood. Me! Who feared I was going to die without any adventure. Scrummy! Scrummy! If I do die tonight I've had a day's adventure anyhow. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Her letter to her parents was written in pencil on a piece of crumpled notepaper from Father Benson's bag. Months later, as though by a miracle, the letter was discovered in the jungle.

It reveals nothing of her own fears for her safety but demonstrates her strength, her courage, her altruism and concern for the peace of mind of her parents.

> Dearest Mummy, darling,
>
>
>
> I know how terribly worried you all must be, but if thoughts can comfort, I know you must be comforted...Father Benson, May and I are in a little hide-out in the bush and, indeed, are doing what probably few white men have done before, living deep in the heart of the Papuan jungle...
>
> On Sunday, July 19, Sergeant Hewitt and Signals Officer Palmer arrived at Gona on their way through from Buna and as they had a few days to spare decided to salvage the American plane which had crashed on our station...
>
> As we had visitors at night, May and I dressed for dinner in our long frocks. Afterwards, as it was rather warm, we took the light and gramophone out under the palm-trees on the lawn where we talked and ate chocolate the boys had received in Comforts Funds Parcels.
>
> Tuesday passed as usual (I was examining the schools) and early in the afternoon I pressed my pretty blue georgette evening frock to wear that night.
>
> About 4.45 pm I heard yells from Lancelot, one of my pupil teachers: 'Sister, Sister, are you there? Oh Sister [a courtesy title commonly used for medical and teaching staff], come quickly!' as he ran up the path from the beach.
>
> I simply could not believe my eyes. There were four big ships not far out to sea, and another two on the skyline. Then the boats farther out opened fire on those nearer the beach, burst after burst of shellfire until the ground shook with the explosions. Then ensued a most thrilling naval battle. The warships, both ours and Japan's seeming to move around like tiny boats, they were so quick. Then the transports put down dinghies, and men got into them, so we decided we'd better move to a healthier spot.
>
> We rushed up to the house, grabbed a box, and flung as much as we could into it, our nicest dresses, some undies, comb, toothbrushes, soap, shoes, etc. The soldiers had meanwhile gone up the beach. Our mission-boys were so frightened, but so brave, and carried our things for us along the only road we could take—the mission road to Kokoda. It was by then 6.30, and as it was fairly dark we stopped at the first garden house along the track, a mile from Gona. There we said Evensong with the boys, put up our mosquito nets and prepared to settle down.
>
> About a quarter of an hour later we heard footsteps on the road, and voices. We thought they were village people going into hiding, and I called out to them first in English, 'Boys, come here, we want you,' then the same in Motu (the local dialect), but only silence answered.
>
> Soon another lot came, and again we called out, and Father whistled, but again silence. Then we saw a torch flash, heard a clank of a bayonet, and knew we had been calling out to patrols of Japanese soldiers passing by up the mission road. Our way to the villages of Isivita and to Sangara was cut off, and we could hear the Japanese all around us on the various Kokoda roads. May and I thought we'd like a run for our money so suggested that we should wait our chance of getting across the main Kokoda road and into the bush on the other side. We grabbed our mosquito nets, ground sheets, a blanket each, a tin of biscuits, and some chocolate, a billy can for water and Father Benson took his walkabout haversack.
>
> We left everything else, and crept down the path to the track where the Japs were, and as soon as the way was clear, between patrols, we went for our lives across that road and into the thick wet grass on the other side. We pushed through the undergrowth to a log, a damp rotten one, where we spent the rest of the night.
>
> We were glad to see dawn, and after eating a biscuit each pushed on through the bush. By a great mercy Father had a compass in his bag, one given us by Lieutenant Dickenson, an American pilot who had crashed nearby and stayed at Gona for some weeks.
>
> We'd not gone far when the first raid...occurred. We crouched under a big tree, hoping to get some protection. The air seemed thick with bombs and shells, the planes roared over our heads, and the air seemed full of dog-fights.
>
> Things quietened down after eight or ten minutes, and we said Matins, then continued our journey through the bush. Less than every half-hour throughout that day there was a raid. We had lunch (two milk coffee biscuits and a piece of chocolate each), and again pushed on, but about 3.30 pm we came to a big tree with a brush turkey's nest at its foot, and decided to make our camp for the night. There had already been nineteen raids on Gona that day (surely a record) and as soon as the moon rose we started again.
>
> Next day, to our dismay, we got into a sago swamp, and only if you'd been in this country could you know what that means—prickly, almost impenetrable undergrowth, slushy mud underfoot, into which it is possible to sink up to one's waist or even one's neck. And there is always the chance of crocodiles. However, we decided to go east, retracing our footsteps, and try to get around that way.
>
> Soon we came to a clean running stream, and while Father went farther up the river, May and I stripped and got into the water. Oh, it was heavenly to feel the cool water on our bodies, and to bathe our poor legs, torn by the prickles and thorns of the bush. Then we went on for some distance until, to our great joy, we came to some [Papuan] natives. They made a great fuss of us and prepared food for us. My word, we were pretty hungry too, and just ate taro and sweet potato out of the cooking pot—no salt or anything! They told us of Japs on the tracks nearby...and also told us we were on the right track to Siai, our outstation [on the Kumusi River].
>
> We walked hard the next morning, and about lunchtime met three boys from Bakumbari [a village about 16 kilometres from Gona] on the track. We were quite overwhelmed by their affectionate greetings. They carried our swags and on we went and arrived at Sageri about mid afternoon. From there we sent a letter on to Siai, telling Father John Yariri, our assistant native priest, who happened to be at Siai, to meet us the next day.
>
> Next morning off we went again, the Sageri people carrying our swags, and just beyond Orosusu met Father John, Nathaniel [the Siai teacher] and a crowd of Siai people.
>
> As long as I live I shall never forget the welcome they gave us. They hugged us and patted us for ages, and actually cried over us. They took us on to Siai station and there we had another demonstration of affection, this time by the women who brought us food and hot water for a bath. May and I took off our filthy dresses and washed them and while they dried, May wore a cassock of Father John's and I wore an alb [a church vestment].
>
> The people decided the best thing to do would be to build us a cottage in the bush where we should be hidden until things cleared up. We could still hear the bombs falling on Gona. So we came to this house just a fortnight today. Mr Chester sent May and me some clothes belonging to a woman who had evacuated in January—dresses and scanties, and a few towels and two nightdresses, so we are beautifully fitted out.
>
> We've simply no idea what is happening, though we do know that the bombing of Gona has stopped. Of course we hear all sorts of rumours. We heard of fighting at Kokoda at Olive Hill, and on the Port Moresby road. We also heard that the Japs' cartridges are finished and the fighting is now hand to hand.

Their situation was extremely worrying. They had heard disturbing tales about Japanese atrocities against prisoners and harsh reprisals against any Papuans who sheltered Europeans and knew they must leave their hut at Siai. By staying there, they were putting the villagers' lives at risk.

Father Benson's worries increased when he learned that the sorcerer or 'medicine man' at the neighbouring village of Oitanandi had told the elders they should kill all Europeans in the area or the Japanese would punish them.

There were strong anti-European feelings in many villages in the interior because in the past gold miners had exploited the Papuans and treated their women appallingly. This hostility increased after missionaries of various denominations had endeavoured to end the 'old ways' of head hunting and cannibalistic practices and, in doing so, break the power of the sorcerers. There was a deep rift between the Christianised pro-mission villages and those that remained true to traditional ways.

On 9 August, Father Benson decided they must head towards the more isolated but mainly Christian Mamba district.

Later that afternoon, two Australian soldiers arrived, part of a group which included five wounded American airmen and soldiers from the Papuan Infantry under the command of a brave young Australian subaltern named Lieutenant Arthur Smith. The group was heading for a track across the Owen Stanley Range (not the Kokoda Track) to walk to Port Moresby. They asked Father Benson and the two women if they would like to join them. The Gona Mission group, who had met Lieutenant Smith when his coast-watch unit was stationed at Buna, was in two minds. May and Mavis approved of Lieutenant Smith's daring plan. Father Benson did not. He reckoned such a difficult journey would take between six and eight weeks and they would be crossing harsh country which few Europeans had succeeded in traversing. By then the soles of the women's shoes had been worn away and they were finding it painful to walk on the rough jungle track.

Later Father Benson wrote: 'I think I was unwise in not insisting on following my own plan that we should all go to the Mamba area and live out the war in peace there.'

However, Father Benson allowed himself to be persuaded by May and Mavis that they could manage the long trek and would prefer to join Lieutenant Smith's group and walk to Port Moresby, although to date only one woman had ever accomplished this difficult journey over the Owen Stanley Range.

Father Benson thought the presence of Papuan soldiers would provide some protection but in reality it did the opposite, providing a pretext for the Japanese Army to regard the entire group, including May and Mavis, as military personnel.

On that last morning, just before dawn, Father Benson woke May and Mavis and they prayed together and took Holy Communion. Then, as dawn was breaking, they set off. They walked through the jungle for the next four days, plagued by mosquitoes and in danger from poisonous snakes. Fearing capture by sentries, the group retraced their steps in order to be further away from Popondetta, which they realised was the site of Japanese Army headquarters.

By morning on the fifth day, they felt safe from pursuit and rested until noon. That afternoon, they set out for the Gona road and were soon within a few hundred metres of it. Before they could cross the road, a Papuan soldier guarding the rear of their group ran up and yelled that Japanese soldiers were approaching them from the rear.

They stayed in the bush until another of the Papuan soldiers reported that the way was clear. By now it was almost dark. Accordingly they ran across the road and into the jungle. They kept running for ten more minutes before stopping to catch their breath.

Father Benson recalled shaking Lieutenant Smith by the hand in relief and saying to him, 'That's our biggest hurdle crossed.' He remembered the women smiling before a blast of gunfire caused them to swing around in terror.

To his horror, Father Benson saw that between eighteen and twenty armed Japanese soldiers were less than fifty metres away. He heard the crack of their rifles and dived for cover amid the bushes. Then came a burst of rifle fire on his right. In the dark he could see nothing at all. He heard low moans and feared one of the girls must have been hit by a bullet. Father Benson called out but received no reply.

In his headlong dive into the jungle Father Benson had dropped his blue bag containing the food and the compass and was now completely lost. For the next five days he wandered around in circles. He managed to survive by drinking the morning dew. Ravenous with hunger, by the sixth day he decided that his only chance of staying alive was to surrender. He found a patrol and gave himself up.

Father Benson was put in an all-male prison camp and spent the next three years in captivity. Whenever he asked his Japanese guards about the women from Gona he was told they were being held in another camp.

Only when the war was over did he learn the sad and awful truth.

#### REVELATION OF THE TRUTH

Neither of the women had been hit by a Japanese bullet as Father Benson believed. What he had heard was a wounded Papuan soldier groaning. May and Mavis were unharmed and had retreated through the bush with some of the Papuan soldiers, several of whom were slightly injured. Other Papuan soldiers had turned tail and fled.

That night May, Mavis, Lieutenant Smith and a few soldiers slept in the jungle, plagued by mosquitoes but otherwise unharmed.

The next morning they walked briskly to the village of Upper Dobodura, the women keeping up well with the rest of the party in spite of the fact that their worn shoes gave little protection from thorns underfoot. Two soldiers from the Papuan Infantry offered to go into the village and see how the land lay. They returned with the news that the villagers appeared friendly.

Reassured, the rest of the party entered the village and found the inhabitants playing football. Lieutenant Smith asked if some men could be spared to act as stretcher bearers and guides, as two of the soldiers in the party were limping badly and in great pain. The villagers promised to supply stretcher bearers the following morning.

That night the group camped outside the village. Next morning, no one from the village arrived to help.

When Lieutenant Smith and an interpreter inquired at the village, they received flimsy excuses for the delay and overheard hostile mutters among a few of the men.

As the sun mounted overhead, Lieutenant Smith became worried. He decided it was better to continue walking towards Port Moresby and so the group set off again without any help. The men carried improvised stretchers and the two women took turns to help, but their progress through the dense undergrowth was slow.

What the group did not know was that after some discussion the elders of Upper Dobodura, fearing Japanese vengeance if they helped Europeans, had instructed a boy to go to Popondetta and inform the Japanese that two Australian women and some soldiers were nearby. In consequence, when Lieutenant's Smith's group was still only a few kilometres away from Popondetta, a Japanese patrol caught up with them and opened fire.

Amid a hail of machine gun bullets Lieutenant Smith, May and Mavis took cover in the jungle. Their remaining soldiers fired back but were either killed or badly wounded. One Papuan soldier survived by feigning death and he went on to give evidence of what happened at the Webb War Crimes Commission after the war ended.

May and Mavis wandered around in circles all night, totally lost and separated from Lieutenant Smith. By morning, they were exhausted and once more near the hostile village of Upper Dobodura. However, by chance they met a friendly villager named Tionda who was out hunting. He warned the women against entering his village.

Seeing how thirsty and hungry they were, Tionda took pity on them. He went to his hut and returned with pieces of paw-paw, for which the women were very grateful. With Tionda were two young boys whom he introduced as his nephew and a friend. Tionda instructed both boys to guide the women to the neighbouring village of Jegarata, advising them that Embogi, an elder and sorcerer who lived there and spoke a little English, would act as their guide and lead them to a predominantly Christian village.

Accordingly, May and Mavis accompanied the boys to Jegarata, where they found Embogi digging in his garden. That night they slept in the village longhouse beside the women and children.

In the morning, Embogi told them he would take them to an even remoter Christian village where they would be safe. This seemed to be their only option and it looked promising. However, Embogi had a hidden agenda.

He was resentful towards the missionaries whom he felt had undermined his power, and extended his anger to all Europeans. He decided to seek revenge by betraying the women to the Japanese at Popondetta. Embogi had already had one meeting with the Japanese and been offered a bribe to act as their spy. He believed he would acquire some financial or personal advantage from the betrayal.

May and Mavis, who had never received anything but kindness from Papuans, naturally trusted Embogi and were unaware of any danger. They followed him into the jungle. However, instead of leading the women to safety he took a round-about route back to Popondetta.

Tiondo's nephew and his young friend did not trust Embogi so they followed him from a safe distance. They soon realised the elder was taking the women in the wrong direction. They ran back to Upper Dobodura and reported to Tionda that it seemed Embogi was taking the women to the Japanese at Popondetta.

Another uncle of the boys, Aitere, had received much kindness from Anglican missionaries. He was horrified at Embogi's treachery and hurried along the track after the women, hoping to warn them while there was still time. However, by now the group was so far ahead of him that Aitere could not overtake them.

By the time Aitere reached Popondetta, Embogi had handed the women over to the Japanese. Their captors had taken them to Ururu plantation, where they locked them inside a large cage made from wire-mesh and used for storing coffee beans.

As dusk fell, Aitere crept close to the cage. Fearing he would be caught and imprisoned, the women waved him away. So Aitere hid behind some bushes and stayed there, keeping watch throughout the night.

By now, Mavis and May were desperately thirsty in the tropical heat. Through the mesh of the cage Japanese soldiers amused themselves by offering the captives water and then snatching it away before they could reach it. They repeated the same cat and mouse game with a plate of rice. After an hour or so the women refused to react and sat on the floor of the cage and wept, doubtless aware of their probable fate.

At eight o'clock, the following morning, Aitere saw four Japanese soldiers appear, two carrying rifles and two carrying shovels. They unlocked the cage and at rifle point escorted May and Mavis into the heart of the plantation.

Aitere followed at a safe distance so the soldiers could not see him. The Japanese halted at the site of a freshly dug grave. They handed the women the shovels and made signs to them to make the grave deeper. They stood over the two women menacingly as they struggled to do this.

Then one of the soldiers approached close to Mavis and tried to embrace her and paw her chest. She struggled fiercely. Angered by the rejection, the soldier stepped back and plunged his bayonet into her side. Mavis fell to the ground in agony, her life blood ebbing away.

The sight of her friend's sufferings was so unbearable that May covered her eyes with her handkerchief. A second soldier then plunged his bayonet into May's throat. The sharp edge of the weapon severed her jugular and May died almost instantly.

According to Aitere, the four soldiers lifted up the women's lifeless bodies and threw them into the grave without the least sign of remorse. They covered the bodies with a thin layer of earth and then departed.

After the war the murders of Sister May Hayman, Mavis Parkinson, May's fiancé, Vivian Redlich, Sister Margery Brenchley, Lilla Lashmar and Lucian Tapiedi were considered as war crimes against civilians. Under the terms of the Geneva Convention the women were unarmed non-combatants who had only entered a war zone for humanitarian reasons.

Embogi was tried for treachery and hung.

Years later, the bodies of May Hayman and Mavis Parkinson were exhumed and reburied at Sangara Mission alongside those of Margery Brenchley, Lilla Lashmar and Lucian Tapiedi, whose statue stands in Westminster Abbey along with a plaque to the mission women who died in Papua.

Each year on Martyrs' Day in September, Anglican churches around Australia remember all those Australians and Papuans slain by the Japanese in Papua and New Guinea.

The original buildings of Gona Mission were destroyed by bombs during fighting between Australians and Japanese troops. Subsequently, a new and more modern mission complex was built. A white-painted wooden cross remains from the old mission, and a stone altar near Popondetta commemorates the lives and deaths of May Hayman and Mavis Parkinson.

_The altar at Popondetta commemorating Frances May Hayman and Mavis Parkinson._

In total thirty-three Europeans were killed by the Japanese when they invaded Papua. Hivajapa, Lucian Tapiedi's killer, was overcome with guilt and converted to Christianity, taking the name of his victim and building a church dedicated to Lucian's memory.

Although unknown to the wider population of Australia, May and Mavis are remembered in the Anglican Church in Australia and elsewhere. May Hayman had been a parishioner of Canberra's St John's Church in the suburb of Reid. The church erected a stained glass window in her memory. She is also represented in a beautiful stained glass window at St Mark's, in Camberwell, Melbourne. Well-known Brisbane artist William Bustard commemorated May's life in a memorial in St John's Cathedral, and there is another icon commemorating various martyrs including May Hayman in St Nicholas's Church, Guildford, in Britain.

In Mavis's home town of Ipswich, a small, simple bamboo cross commemorating her is displayed near the altar in the Martyrs' Chapel in St Paul's Church where Mavis worshipped. Another bamboo cross commemorates May Hayman in Adelaide. Mavis's niece and namesake, Mavis Mathieson-Frame, told me that similar bamboo crosses were donated to Anglican churches in places where other murdered mission staff had worshipped.

The one bright note in this tragic story is that those bamboo crosses were donated in a spirit of reconciliation by Japanese bishops.

# ENDNOTES

#### INTRODUCTION

Pesman, Ros in _Duty Free: Australian Women Abroad, Travel and War_ , Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1996 states some sixty Australian nurses sailed for South Africa and the Boer War.

Quoted in King, James, _Virginia Woolf_ , Penguin, London, 1995, p. 231.

Martha Gelhorn, wife of Ernest Hemingway, is credited with this, but Martha's first report was filed in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, twenty-two years after Louise Mack filed hers.

Pesman, _op.cit._ , p. 89.

Claire Trestrail's contract with the QAIANS is held in the British Public Record Office, Richmond; other details of her work and life were supplied by her son, Peter Trestrail Swan. A Scottish Women's Hospitals doctor gave Claire Trestrail an excellent work reference when she applied for a year's contract with the QAIANS.

In order to raise funds for more ambulances and ward staff, John Masefield wrote a book of his war experiences titled _Gallipoli_ , published by William Heinemann in 1916 and reprinted four times. He went on to take his book on a fundraising tour of America.

Woolf, Virginia, _Mrs Dalloway_ , Penguin London, [1950], 1998, p. 71.

Adam-Smith, Patsy, _Australian Women at War_ , Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1984, and Bassett, Jan, _Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War,_ Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 40–44.

Adam-Smith, _ibid._ , p. 195.

Cited in Lake, Professor Marilyn (Department of History and Women's Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne), 'Women Armed for Struggle to Gain Equal Rights', writing in _The Australian_ for International Women's Day, May 1997.

Adam-Smith, _op. cit._ , p. 377.

At St George's, Ascot, Berkshire. Violette attended before World War II; I attended at the end of the war. A book and a film, _Carve her Name with Pride_ , commemorated Violette's heroic death in Ravensbruck.

#### CHAPTER 1: OLIVE MAY KELSO KING

Hazel King eventually became senior lecturer in History at the University of Sydney. She edited a collection of Olive's letters under the title _One Woman at War: Letters ofOlive King 1915–20_, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1986. The letters present some, but not all, aspects of Olive's life. It is important to realise these letters contain only those facts Olive wanted her father to know and concealed her love affair with a Serb officer. Pages 39–40 of Hazel King's book indicate clearly that Olive and Captain Milan Yovitchitch ('Yovi') were having a passionate affair and that there was considerable gossip about it in Salonika.

See entry for Olive King in Volume 9, _Australian Dictionary of Biography_ , Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1983. See also King, H. ed., _op. cit._ , p. 2, who quotes one of Olive's love poems. Olive refers to her French great-grandmother in a letter dated 6 April 1916.

See entry for Sir George Eccles Kelso King, in Volume 5, _Australian Dictionary of Biography, op. cit._

Eliza Hall was co-founder of the internationally famous Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

King, H. ed., _op. cit._ , p. 3.

By the time Miles Franklin joined the SWH in 1916 the skirt was shortened to mid-calf length to suit the active lifestyle of the female staff.

Letter to Sunny Waring, 14 May 1915, King, H. ed., _op. cit._

The account of Olive's escape from Guevgueli is taken from Hazel King's book, _op. cit.,_ pp. 19–20. Interestingly, Hazel bases it on a radio interview Olive gave, and notes that Olive did not give the full details in the letters to her father, hoping he would never learn she had escaped death by a few minutes. Olive King's interview is in ABC Radio archives.

It is interesting to compare Olive's enthusiastic account of life in wartime Salonika with the less enthusiastic descriptions provided by Miles Franklin who served with the SWH at Ostrovo and visited Salonika. See Susanna de Vries, _The Complete Book of Great Australian Women_ , HarperCollins, Sydney, 2003, p. 475.

Since Greek translations are based on phonetics, this is sometimes written as Mount Hortiach. Accounts of life at this hospital are in Gilchrist, Hugh, _Nightingales in the Mud: Digger Sisters of the Great War_ , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989, pp. 85–88, and _Australians and Greeks_ , Volume 2, Halstead Press, Sydney, 1997.

See King, H. ed., _op. cit._ , pp. 39–40.

See references to Olive's diary in King, H.ed, _op. cit._

Olive is not alone in admiring the Serbs greatly. Francesca Wilson, a Quaker aid relief worker with the Serbs, and Muriel Stobart, an SWH nurse who was on the March of Death over the mountains with the Serb Army, also noted the courage and bravery of the Serbs in World War I.J.I. Cudden in _The Companion Guide to Jugoslavia_ , describes the Serbs as courteous, tolerant and good-natured and an exceptionally good-looking race. See also Olive's letters to Kelso King for 1916 in King, H. ed., _op.cit._

See Chapter 2 for description of Dr Agnes Bennett and Dr Lilian Cooper.

Mrs Harley's death is recorded in _The Virago Book of Women and the Great War_ , Virago, London, 1999.

Letter to Kelso King, 18 August 1916, King, H. ed., _op. cit._

Letter to Kelso King, 20 April 1917, _ibid._

Details of the fire of 17 August 1917 from King, H. ed., _op. cit._ , pp 57–60, and from Misha Glenny's _The Balkans 1804–1999_ : _Nationalism, War and the Great Powers_ , Granta, London, 1999. Olive's description of the Great Fire in a twenty-two page letter to her father dated 29 August 1917 is, according to Thessaloniki's Byzantine Museums Authority, historically important as it is so detailed.

This is the same Jessie McHardy White who left Melbourne on the SS _Benalla_ with Alice Kitchen (see Chapter 3).

Letter to Kelso King, 12 October 1917, King, H. _op. cit._

See references to Olive's diary in King, H, _op. cit.;_ also letters to Sunny Waring for October–November 1917.

Interview with Irene Papadopoulos (Thessaloniki, Greece, 1997), who related stories her mother told her about Olive King's life in Salonika and her philanthropic work after the Great Fire.

The following description relies on correspondence from early 1918 reprinted in King, H. ed. _op. cit._ The letter in which Olive announces her intentions to marry is missing. Hazel assumes its existence (p. 81) based on Olive's next letter dated 24 April 1918, written from Vodena (Edessa) in northern Greece and referring to a 'shocked and horrified cable' from her father.

Interview with Irene Papadopoulos, _op. cit._

Letter to Kelso King, 25 April 1918, King, H. ed., _op. cit._

King, H. ed., _op. cit._ , p. 106; for Sir Charles Wade, see Volume 12, _Australian Dictionary of Biography, op. cit._

Letter to Kelso King, 6 June 1920, King, H. ed. _op. cit._

For years Olive King continued to send money to help the hospital's work with children suffering from cancer and other diseases. When Dr MacPhail retired in 1934, the privately funded children's hospital closed down.

Letter to Kelso King, 8 July 1922, King, H. ed., _op. cit._ ; likewise quotes and other descriptions about the wedding.

It is now generally believed that the assassin was a Macedonian but that the Croatians were involved at long range. The death of King Alexander still arouses great controversy, and there are various Serb and Croatian inspired sites on the Internet speculating over his death or disclaiming responsibility for it.

#### CHAPTER 2: DR AGNES ELIZABETH BENNETT AND DR LILIAN VIOLET COOPER

For Hegel's views on women, see _The Philosophy of Right_ and _The Phenomendogy of Spirit_ , various editions.

Curiously, Balls-Headley's _The Evolution of the Diseases of Women_ , Smith, Elder, London, 1894, was illustrated by a former female student, Dr Clara Stone.

See entry for W.C. Bennett, in Volume 3, _Australian Dictionary of Biography_ , Melbourne University Pres _s_ , Melbourne, 1968.

See entry for Agnes Bennett in Volume 7, _Australian Dictionary of Biography,_ Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1978. Information about Dr Bennett also comes from her diary and papers held in the Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, ref. 1346/357–8—the main source for C. Manson and C. Manson's _Dr Agnes Bennett_ , Michael Joseph, London, 1966. See also _Dictionary of New Zealand Biography_ , www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb

See entry for Dr Lilian Cooper in Volume 7, _Australian Dictionary of Biography_ , _ibid._ See also Morgan, S., _A Short History of Medical Women in Australia_ , Rigby, Adelaide, 1970, and Gandevia, B., _An Annotated Bibliography of the History of Medicine in Australia_ , Royal Australian College of Physicians, Sydney, 1984.

There is, at the time of writing, no extant documentary proof of a lesbian relationship between the two women, although in that era even a hint of lesbianism was shocking.

Dr Eleanor Bourne was the first Queensland woman allowed to study medicine but Dr Cooper was the first woman to practise in the state.

Williams, Lesley, M., _No Easy Path:The Life and Times of Lilian Violet Cooper_ , Amphion Press, Brisbane, 1991.

See de Vries, Susanna, _The Complete Book of Great Australian Women_ , HarperCollins, Sydney, 2003, pp. 357–377, for the story of Mary McConnel and the Brisbane Children's Hospital.

See Lorraine Cazalar's chapter on Dr Lilian Cooper in _Women in History_ , Australian Institute for Women's Research and Policy, Griffith University, Brisbane.

Dr Bennett's experiences as an Army surgeon in Cairo are related in Volume 2 of Gilchrist, Hugh, _Australians and Greeks_ , Halstead Press, Sydney, 1997, p. 132, and are based on her journal in the Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Auckland. However, the text mistakenly shows Dr Bennett going to Cairo from Paris, while her journal mentions that she disembarked at Alexandria and travelled from there to Cairo.

Gilchrist, _ibid._ , pp. 134–135.

They would not be released for four months and were treated very badly by their captors.

Agnes Bennett papers, _op. cit._

On a visit to northern Greece, I was told how for years afterwards the slopes of the Peak of the Buttercups were littered with skulls and skeletons, guns and equipment; and that walking over them, the fingers of dead men snapped like twigs.

Williams, _op. cit._ , has the best description of Dr Cooper's war service of any of the books and articles written about her.

Agnes Bennett papers, _op. cit._

Details from the diary of Sister Laura Grubb, attached to BMH Salonika, cited in Jan Bassett's _Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War_ , Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992.

Manson, C. and Manson, C., _op.cit._

Within a few months, revolution would erupt in Russia and these soldiers would be fighting each other.

It is believed that the fact that Dr Mary Garis's fiancé had been killed in action at Gallipoli was what motivated her to enlist with the SWH.

Details of Dr Cooper's medals from Werlich, R., _Orders and Decorations of all Nations, Civil and Military_ , Quaker Press, London, 1974. Most accounts of Dr Cooper's life mention her Order of St Sava, which was held in far higher esteem than the Russian order, which was given out in fairly large numbers. Werlich refers to more than 5000 Russian decorations awarded by the Tsar in the early years of World War I.

For the story of Miles Franklin at Ostrovo see Susanna de Vries, _op. cit._ , pp. 431–506.

#### CHAPTER 3: SISTER ALICE ELIZABETH KITCHEN

Alice Kitchen's journal entries start on 19 October 1914: 'Came on board at 12 noon...moved out 2 pm and dropped the pilot outside the heads.' Their convoy had no escort and would not have any protection from cruisers until they reached Albury. Alice's journal was never published but donated anonymously after her death to the State Library of Victoria with no details about her childhood or her life after World War I.

The Nominal Shipping Roll for the _Benalla_ cites the names of the three nurses who sailed with Alice. Butler, Colonel A.G. in _The Official History of the Australian Army Medical Service in the War 1914–18,_ 3 Vols, Australian War Memorial, Melbourne, 1943, and Bassett, Jan in _Guns and Brooches: Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War_ , Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992 both comment that the minimum age for a nurse was twenty-five. In World War I, 1947 nurses were between thirty-one and forty, and ninety-one (including Alice and the other senior nurses on the _Benalla_ ) were over forty. Most returned home in poor health and many experienced financial problems. Due to a clerical error when Alice enlisted, some documents show her age as younger; one gives a date of birth indicating she was in her twenties, although her discharge sheet gives her correct date of birth.

Alice only mentions twelve ships sunk in her journal.

An identical situation took place in February 2003 when Australian service personnel en route to Iraq refused vaccination against anthrax and were sent home.

Braga, Stuart, _Anzac Doctor_ , Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1999, pp. 123–124.

Peter Weir's film _Gallipoli_ , although a wonderful evocation of battle scenes, was incorrect in showing nurses with 'bobbed' hair. In 1914–15 nurses were not permitted to bob their hair, which they wore pinned up or plaited and wound round the side of their heads in a style known as 'earphones'. Nor were they permitted to dance in public or wear calf-length skirts until 1916. See the story of Miles Franklin in World War I in de Vries, Susanna, _The Complete Book of Great Australian Women_ , HarperCollins, Sydney 2003.

A statement in the diary of General Sir Ian Hamilton.

See Les Carlyon, _Gallipoli_ , Macmillan, Sydney, 2001, pp. 3–53.

C.E.W. Bean, in his official history _The Story of Anzac from the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign, May 4 1915_ , Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1933, insisted that New Zealanders had started the riot and the Australians joined in.

Howitzers fired large shells horizontally at much greater distance than machine guns.

Carlyon, _op. cit._ , and Braga, _op. cit._ , pp. 192–194.

See entry for Sir Neville Reginald Howse in Volume 9, _Australian Dictionary of Biography_ , Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1983.

Braga, _op. cit._

Young, Margaret, ed., _We are Here Too: Diaries and Letters of Sister Olive L.C. Haynes_ , Australian Down Syndrome Association, Adelaide, 1991, confirms Alice's complaints about late pay for nurses as well as soldiers.

Austen, Ronald J, _Cobbers in Khaki: The History of 8th Battalion_ , Slouch Hat Publications, McCrae, 1997.

Alice makes a veiled reference to this woman, who was discharged from the Army in a catatonic state. She is also mentioned in the letters written home by Sister Olive Haynes, quoted in Young, ed., _op. cit._

On supplies, see Goodman, R., _Hospital Ships_ , Boolarong Press, Brisbane, 1992.

Descriptions of casualties from Masefield, John, _Gallipoli_ , William Heinemann, London, 1917, pp. 134–140.

Unfortunately Alice's correspondence was not donated to the State Library of Victoria along with her journal. A notice of Major Tubb's death in battle was between the pages of Alice's diary. Information on Major Frederick Tubb, VC, from Wigmore, Lionel, _They Dared Mightily_ , Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1963.

Additional information about Harefield Park Auxiliary Hospital from Butler, _op. cit._ , pp. 269–270. Butler cites twelve doctors and forty-two nurses as working at Harefield. The Nissen huts that housed the hospital staff had been paid for partly by private donors and partly by the Australian government. The Australian War Memorial contains a history of the hospital filed under Document/Harefield Park Hospital.

Sisters Kitchen and Elizabeth 'Pearl' Corkhill were recommended for medals but someone, possibly Matron Bessie Pocock, an old enemy of Alice, must have turned down Alice's recommendation because Pearl Corkhill received a medal in September 1918, but Alice did not.

The exact number will never be known.

These are archived in the State Library of Victoria along with the leather-bound copies of Alice's hand-written journal.

The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages for the state of Victoria does not hold a birth or death certificate for Alice Elizabeth Kitchen. However, there is an entry for her on the website of the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

#### CHAPTER 4: JOICE NANKIVELL LOCH

Writing Joice Loch's biography, _Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread,_ Hale & Iremonger/Tower Books, Sydney, 2000, I was frequently puzzled as to why accounts by Joice's former housekeeper, Fani Mitropoulou, and her Swiss assistant, Martha Handschin, and others differed from accounts in Joice's autobiography, _A Fringe of Blue,_ John Murray, London, 1968.
There were other discrepancies. The dust jacket of Joice's autobiography explained how 'a gift' for narrative journalism took Joice to England in early 1918, where she married Sydney Loch. I was surprised when told by British authorities that they could not find a wedding certificate for Joice. I eventually found one showing Joice and Sydney were married in Melbourne six months later than the date cited in her autobiography. Other aspects of the trip to Cyprus that Joice undertook and described here do not tie in with records or with Sydney Loch's papers.
Joice received a contract from John Murray to write her autobiography only a few months before she fell head-first from a balcony and collapsed onto stone paving. As she was suffering concussion and memory loss, friends of her later years who lived near her in Greece, the well-known archaeologist Dr Philip Sherrard, then compiling of _Athos: The Holy Mountain_ (Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY, 1985), and a retired editor, Katherine West, completed Joice's autobiography from the notes and correspondence of Joice and Sydney. Inevitably there were discrepancies which have, in some instances, been hard to sort out.

De Loghe [Loch], Sydney, _The Straits Impregnable_ , Australasian Author's Agency, Melbourne, 1916.

The name of Sydney Loch's contact in the British Secret Service was not revealed by Joice or Sydney in their book _Ireland in Travail_ , John Murray, London, 1922, in order to protect him. In _Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread, op. cit.,_ I referred to the secret agent as Major X.

Sydney Loch papers and journal, MS 2948, National Library of Australia; letter from Joice Loch to Bob Croker-Poole (cousin), private collection, London.

The main source for information about the English community living in Bucharest in World War II (and general conditions there) is Olivia Manning's _Balkan Trilogy._ Filmed as _Fortunes of War_ with Kenneth Branagh, the trilogy is regarded as the classic account of the Balkans from the British point of view. Since 1960, various editions have been published by Random House, London, under different titles. The Bucharest part of Manning's story is called _The Great Fortune_ (1960) and documents the period when Olivia, who was press secretary to the British Legation, and Joice saw a great deal of each other.
Additional information comes from Dilks, David ed., _The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, OM_ , _1938–45_ , Cassell, London, 1971; and Deletant, Professor Dennis, 'A Balancing Act', article on King Carol in _Current History_ , Vol. 42, June 1992. Cadogan was head of the Balkan Desk at the Foreign Office under Lord Halifax. The writings of R.D. Smith, British Council lecturer and husband of Olive Manning, famous for putting on performances of Shakespeare in Rumania as the Nazis advanced, also record the period.

For an account of the escape of interned Poles in Bucharest, see Olson, Lynne and Cloud, Stanley, _A Question of Honor:The Kosciuszko Squadron,_ Alfred Knopf, 2003. This book also mentions two women who supplied the Poles with forged passports. These may have been Joice and Lushya. That Joice supplied the money for the printing press used by the forger to create the passports is confirmed in Sydney Loch's journal but deliberately omitted from the Lochs' reports to the Society of Friends' War Victims Committee in London as the Quakers would have been horrified.

See Manning, _op. cit._ , and Deletant, _op. cit._

Paul, Prince of Hohenzollern-Rumania, _King Carol II: A Life of My Grandfather_ , Methuen, London, 1988.

Like Joice Loch, Francesca Wilson was not a Quaker but a sympathiser and someone with wide humanitarian interests. Francesca saw what the Lochs had been doing and sent back a glowing report to the Society of Friends in London, praising the Lochs for helping the Polish become self-supporting. See Wilson, Francesca, _In the Margins of Chaos_ , John Murray, London, 1948, for a descritptions of the Lochs.

Russia and Germany had signed a secret pact to carve up Rumania between them, just as they had done with Poland. Bessarabia had been part of Russia until the Brest-Litovsk Treaty following Russia's withdrawal from World War I, which was why the Russians considered the oil was rightfully theirs.

Deletant, _op. cit._

Loch, J., _op. cit._ pp.172–173.

Deletant, _op. cit._

'Nigel' is the pseudonym given to him by Olivia Manning. He was the spymaster for British Intelligence in Bucharest, an Old Etonian, snobbish, too talkative, disliking women and not liked by Manning.

Joice never disclosed the name of the high-ranking German officer or the name of the Jewish scientist for whom she risked her life.

Details of this incident come from Joice's letters to Lady Moran, to Gerald Palmer, and to the Croker-Poole family, private collections, London.

Loch, J., _op, cit._ Quoted in full in de Vries, Susanna, _Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread: The Story of Joice NanKivell Loch, op. cit._

Olivia Manning records Nigel's death in _The Great Fortune, op. cit._

This account is reconstructed from Sydney Loch's papers and journal, _op. cit._ , reports he sent to the Society of Friends, Friends House, Euston Road, London, and Joice's (sometimes unreliable) autobiography, _A Fringe of Blue. op.cit._ See also Loch, Joice NanKivell, _The Hopping Ha-penny_ , J. Methuen & Son, London, 1956. The story of the Lochs' Operation Pied Piper and their selfless work in refugee camps in Palestine is also related in Greenwood. J. _Quaker Encounters: Friends and Relief_ , Vol. 1, William Sessions, York, 1975, and in Wilson, R.C., _Quaker Relief: An Account of the Relief Work of the Society of Friends 1940–1948_ , Allen & Unwin, London, 1952.

The plot to assassinate Magda Lupescu and King Carol is cited in Paul, _op. cit._ Carol spent the rest of his life in exile in Portugal with Lupescu. The month before he died they married. Their bodies have been recently exhumed and returned to Bucharest for burial in separate plots.

Loch, J, 1968, _op. cit._ , p. 185.

 _Ibid._

For the full story of the Katyn massacre of Polish reserve officers, mostly educated men who would have resisted Polish communism, see Davies, Professor Norman, _Europe: A History,_ Pimlico Press, London, 1997, pp. 1004–1005. Only in 1990 did Mikhail Gorbachev finally admit Soviet responsibility for the massacre of Katyn.

Cited in Greenwood, _op. cit._

Loch J., 1968, _op. cit._ , p. 210.

#### CHAPTER 5: SISTERS SYLVIA MUIR, VIVIAN BULLWINKEL, JOYCE TWEDDELL, BETTY JEFFREY AND THE OTHER 'PARADISE ROAD' NURSES

Information in this chapter comes largely from interviews with Sylvia Muir in 1998–1999, and Vivian Bullwinkel in 1999; published accounts, including Betty Jeffrey's _White Coolies_ (see note 3); Pat (Gunther) Darling's _Portrait of a Nurse,_ Don Wall, Mona Vale, 2001; Norman Manners' biography, _Bullwinkel_ , Hesperian Press, Carlisle, WA, 2000; and interviews with the nurses' relatives and friends. Also, Sylvia Muir's unpublished journal in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

From 1975 to 1980, Joyce Tweddell worked in the same Brisbane hospital as my late husband, Dr Larry Evans. Florence Trotter lived near me on the slopes of Brisbane's Mount Coot-tha. I visited Florence's small neat home to take her flowers. Florence was in pain and unable to talk at length. However, I learned how she, Joyce and Sylvia remained close all their lives and how much support the others gave Florence when she became ill.

From p. 23 of Betty Jeffrey's memoirs, _White Coolies: A Graphic Record of Survival in World War Two_ (1997), one of the first accounts of the Bangka Island Massacre, published in 1954 by Angus & Robertson, Sydney.

 _Ibid._

The film _Paradise Road_ loosely adapted from Betty's book, and directed by Bruce Beresford, opens with a group of attractive Australian nurses enjoying themselves at a dance in the ballroom of Raffles Hotel. Sirens wail as Japanese planes approach. Chandeliers shatter and plaster falls from the ceiling as a bomb explodes and the guests fling themselves on the floor. Sylvia Muir pointed out that this scene was entirely imaginary and created to provide a dramatic opening to the film. In reality, by the time the Japanese started bombing Singapore, the wards were so crowded that AANS staff were working double shifts and matron had issued orders forbidding staff to leave the hospital compound so, even when off duty, they could be summoned to the wards to help out.

Jeffrey, _op. cit.,_ p. 2.

Interviews with Sylvia (Muir) McGregor, at the Wesley Hospital, Brisbane, 1998–1999.

On the raft with Matron Olive Paschke were Sisters Annie Trenerry, Gladys McDonald, Hilda Dorsch, Mary Clarke and Caroline Ennis. They may have drowned or landed on some other island and been murdered by Japanese soldiers.

Telephone interviews with Vivian (Bullwinkel) Statham, 1999.

 _Ibid._

 _Ibid._ Also Sister Bullwinkel's statement to the International Military Tribunal, 29 October 1945 1010/424 Australia War Memorial, Canberra (Webb War Crimes Commission). In her evidence to the Tribunal, Vivian Bullwinkel stated that she did not hear shots but the Tribunal put this down to her being in a state of shock.

Sylvia and Betty called Colonel Yamasaki 'Saki' or 'the Sadist'. Other women's memoirs called him 'Siki'. What Sylvia describes was a traditional Japanese torture.

Basset, Jan in _Guns and Brooches_ , Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, says 28 nurses attended the club, wearing their ugliest outfits.

Manners, _op.cit._ , pp. 118–119 cites Blanche Hempsted and Val Smith, a heavy smoker, as the nurses who pretended to have TB.

The Army nurses did not understand the Japanese code of _bushido_ or realise what a cultural gulf divided them. For a explanation of _bushido_ , see Russell of Liverpool, Baron, _The Knights of Bushido: A History of Japanese War Crimes_ , Cassell, London, 1958.

Some earlier memoirs do not agree with the franker accounts by Sylvia and Wilma Oram (see note 23). That four nurses did become 'comfort women' to save the rest. Army nurse Jessie Simons in _In Japanese Hands_ , Heinemann, Melbourne, 1985, implies that although the women were threatened with starvation, they stood up to their captors and were released. Harassment by Japanese officers is confirmed in Kenny, Catherine, _Australian Army Nurses in Japanese Prison Camps_ , University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1986. Jan Bassett, _op. cit._ , states that eventually reports of European women being used as 'comfort women' reached higher authorities in Tokyo, who closed the 'social club' down.

Jeffrey, _op. cit._ , pp. 148.

 _Ibid_ , p. 149–150.

Telephone interviews with Vivian (Bullwinkel), Statham, _op. cit._

The Tribunal that Vivian attended in Tokyo is often referred to as a war crimes tribunal (the title of the Nuremburg Tribunal in Germany). The Tokyo Tribunal's official name was the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which commenced hearings on 3 May 1946. It was also known as the Webb War Crimes Commission. Proceedings of the Tribunal were published on 20 December 1946 and included Sister Bullwinkel's detailed evidence.

Information provided by Mrs J. Griffiths, Joyce Tweddell's niece; information about Joyce in Caloundra provided by Dr Mervyn McNee.

Telephone interviews with Vivian (Bullwinkel) Statham _op. cit._

For an account of Wilma Oram's life, see Angell, Barbara, _A Woman's War: The Exceptional Life of Wilma Oram Young_ , New Holland Publishers, Sydney, 2002.

Information about Betty's life after her return to Australia was supplied by Gwen Friend, who produced a commercial radio drama series with Betty Jeffrey adapted from _White Coolies_ in the 1950s, personal communications 4 and 5 December 2003; and Betty Jeffrey's great-niece, Emily Malone, personal communications 6 and 7 December 2003.

Jeffrey, _op. cit._ , p. 148

Sylvia's diary and drawings are also in the Australian War Memorial, along with other nurses' personal items, including the uniform Vivian Bullwinkel was wearing at the Bangka Island Massacre and her medals.

Personal communication Emily Malone, _op. cit._

Betty Jeffrey's obituary on the Australian War Memorial web page www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/nurse_survivors

#### CHAPTER 6: MAVIS PARKINSON AND SISTER MAY HAYMAN

The story of the Mission and the two women has been told with variations by Hodge, Dr Erroll, _The Seed of the Church_ , Anglican Board of Missions, Sydney, 1992; Rowland, E.C., _Faithful unto Death: The Story of the New Guinea Martyrs_ , Anglican Board of Missions, Sydney, 1962;Tomkins, Dorothea and Hughes, Brian, _The Road from Gona_ , Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1969; Benson, James, _Prisoner's Base and Home Again:The Story of a Missionary P.O. W._ , Robert Hale, London, 1957; and _The New Guinea Diaries of Bishop Philip Strong, 1936–45,_ ed. David Wetherell, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1981.

After the deaths of May and Mavis, as Bishop of Brisbane, Bishop Strong attracted a great deal of criticism for not _insisting_ all women serving on missions in Papua return to Australia. From a statement made towards the end of the bishop's life, it seems that the murders of those who stayed at their post preyed on his conscience.

For more information, see Paull, Raymond, _Retreat from Kokoda_ , Hamilton, London, 1960.

Quoted in Tomkins and Hughes, _op. cit._

Benson, _op. cit._

Although it seems unlikely that a broadcast from Papua would have reached as far as Ipswich, various publications by the Anglican Board of Missions suggest it did.

Benson, _op. cit._

 _Ibid._

 _Ibid._

The letter is now in the archives of the Anglican Church in Brisbane and is quoted with the permission of Mavis Mathieson–Frame, niece of Mavis Parkinson.

Information supplied by Graeme Barron, Lieutenant Smith's cousin.

Benson, _op. cit._

 _Ibid._

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, proceedings published 20 December 1946 (Webb War Crimes Commission) revealed the truth. This was the commission to which Vivian Bullwinkel had given evidence of war crimes.

Reports of the behaviour of the Papuan soldiers differ: some accounts credit them with heroic behaviour; others report several soldiers running away when the shots were fired.

From the reports of various anthropological expeditions to the remote Upper Dobodura area, it seems that Embogi's grudge against local missionaries was due to the fact they had tried to prevent certain sexual practices, once part of traditional initiation ceremonies. Head hunting, according to anthropologists and ethnographers, had already died out in that particular area.
For details of feuds between pagan and Christian Papuans and tribal ceremonies and customs in pagan villages at the time of World War II see Sandall, Roger, _The Culture Cult, Designer Tribalism and Other Essays_ , Westview Press, Boulder, Col., 2002.

Aitere was unclear in his statement to the International Military Tribunal about the exact date. He stated the women were killed between 13 and 16 August 1942.

Lieutenant Smith was eventually found by Papuans who handed him over to Embogi. According to Tomkins and Hughes, _op. cit._ , p. 45, a Japanese diary records he was beheaded.

# INDEX

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

_Aberdonian_ (transport ship), 149–150

Africa in World War I, 24

Aitere (Papuan), 275–276

Albania, 18, 23, 44, 62

Alexander, _Crown Prince of Serbia_ Greater Serbia, 33–34, 35, 48–49

SWH, 83

Yovitchitch, _Captain_ Milan, 29, 34, 42, 55, 57, 64–67, 91

Alfred Hospital (Melbourne), 204

All Saints Anglican Church (Sydney), 31

Allen, Barbara M., 38, 40, 42

Allies Field Ambulance Corps (AFAC), 9–12

Ambrosius, _Father_ , 160, 173, 190

ambulance drivers

AFAC, 9–12

ambulances, 53, 81 _see also Bridget_ ; _Ella the Elephant_

Australian Field Ambulance, 135

at Dobraveni dressing station, 89–90

field hospitals _see_ field hospitals massacred at Doiran Lakes, 19–22

military hospitals _see_ military hospitals

at Ostrovo base hospital, 84, 86–88

in Salonika, 16–17, 23, 53

Serb Army, 31, 38–40, 53, 57

at Troyes field hospital, _15_ , 15–16

women as, 10, 12, 25

American Farm School (Thessaloniki), 159, 195, 196

Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea, 259–260, 271, 275

Antonescu, Ion, 174

Anzacs _see also_ Australian Imperial Force (AIF)

Anzac Day, 151

Australian war graves, 154

_Benalla_ (troopship), 98–101, 105, 117, 128, 130

casualties at Gallipoli, xviii, xx, 81–82, 111–117, 126–127, 140

Dardanelles plan, 101, 106–107, 110–112, 133, 135

deaths in World War I, xx, 152, 154

in France, 93

in Greece, 189

No 1 Anzac Corps, 142

in Salonika, 24

tented hospitals on Lemnos, 120–121, 134

Tubb at Lone Pine, 137–139

venereal diseases, 103, 110

war injuries _see_ soldiers war injuries

war veterans, xx, 155, 201

Arab allies in World War II, 173, 191

Arnissa (Greece) _see_ Ostrovo base hospital

Arnotts Biscuits (company), 59

Artsa (Serb mechanic), 25, 26, 32, 38–39, 45, 53–58

Ashton, Jean, 233

Asiatic Annie (German-made gun), 123

Atkinson, _Magistrate_ J., 261, 262, 263–264

atomic bomb, 238

Austcare, 197

Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS)

8th Battalion, 117

Australian General Hospitals, 204–207

Bangka Island memorial, 251–253

clothes and uniforms _see_ clothes and uniforms

deaths in World War I, xvii, 132, 144–146

deaths in World War II, 209, 216–219, 231–235, 241–242, 245

in Egypt, 81–82, 114–116

enlistment, xvi, 202–203

in France, 141

in Japanese camps, 201, 221–236, 252

married women, xix–xx pay, 103–104, 153, 155

Royal Medical Corps, 107

rules and regulations, xxiii, 99, 149

Southwell Gardens (London), 150

working conditions, 144–145, 146–148

Australian engineers in Salonika, 17–18

Australian Field Ambulance, 135

Australian Flying Corps, 53

Australian General Hospitals, 92, 105–110, 112–117, 140–141, 204–207 _see also_ military hospitals

Australian Imperial Force (AIF) _see also_ Anzacs

3rd Division, 57

7th Battalion, 137

8th Battalion, 98–101, 105–106, 110, 111, 115–117, 128, 131, 140, 154

11th Battalion, 138

Australian war graves, 154 becomes No 1 Anzac Corps, 142

deaths in World War I, xx

formed, xiv, 8, 105

in France and Belgium, 81, 159

rules and regulations, xviii–xix

Victoria Crosses, 139

Australian Institute of Radiography, 243

Australian Medical Association, 95

Australian War Graves Commission, 154

Australian War Memorial, 246, 249

Austria in World War I

invasion of Serbia, 7–8, 23, 28, 34–35

Ostrovo base hospital, 92

in retreat, 53, 57, 59, 88

Serb Army, 16–18, 83, 85, 86

Auteuil (France), 81

Awoda, Simon Peter, 257, 266

Bakumbari (Papua), 270

Balkan campaign, 16–22, _54_ , 57, 83, 90, 92

Balls–Headley, William, 72

Bangka Island (Sumatra)

Bangka Island Massacre, 214–221, 236, 240–241, 245, 249, 249–252

Bangka Island memorial, 245, 251–253

Bangka Strait, 210–213

Japanese prison camp, 213–214, _214_ , 233–235, 259

_Paradise Road_ (film), xxiv, 198, 249–250

Barratt, _Lieutenant_ Rupert, 99, 110, 112, 117, 154

Barrett, _Colonel_ (later _Sir_ James) J.W., 109

Barthou, Louis, 67

Bates, Daisy, 6

Battle of the Coral Sea, 264

Bean, C.E.W., 111

Beard, Alma, 217–218

Bedford, _Miss_ Josephine, 35–36, 78–80, 87–91, 94–95

Belgium in World War I, xix, 8, 35, 81, 154

Belgrade, 23, 55, 57, 59, 60, 62, 65, 92, 179

Bell, _Matron_ Jane, 107–110, 116–118

_Benalla_ (troopship), 98–101, 105, 117, 128, 130, 155

Bennett, Agnes Amelia, 73

Bennett, _Dr_ Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd _(1872–1960)_

aviation research, 94

awards, 35–36, 71, 91, 93–94

British Army, 82

brothers, 80–82, 91, 92

clothes and uniforms, 84, 88, 89

contracts malaria, 91–93

death, 94

early years, 73–75

Ostrovo base hospital, 83–86

Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, 93

studies medicine, 72, 75–77

SWH, xv, 17, 81

Bennett, Bob, 82, 92, 93

Bennett, Sarah (née Darling), 73–74

Bennett, William Christopher, 73, 74, 94

Benson, _Rev._ James, 257, 261–268, 271–273

Bepore (Papua), 257

Beresford, Bruce, 249

beriberi, 225, 234, 238, 241

Beshitch, _Mr and Mrs_ , 48–49

Bessarabia (Rumania), 165–166, 177

Billyard–Leake family, 150

Birdwood, _General Sir_ William, 112

Birrell, _Surgeon–General_ William, 106–107, 133

_Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread_ (de Vries), 197

Boer War, xiii, 126

Bolton, _Colonel_ William ('Bill'), 99, 100, 106, 112, 117, 128

Bolton, _Lieutenant_ Jack, 99

Bolton, _Private_ Hunter, 99

Bosnia, xiv, 48

Boulogne (France), 141

Bowen, Stella, xvi, xxii

Brenchley, _Sister_ Margery, 263–264, 277

Bridges, _General_ Bill, 104–105, 115

_Bridget_ (ambulance), 33, 43–49, 51, 59, 60

Brisbane, Qld, 78–80, 94–95, 202–203

Britain in World War I

air-raids, 151

Australians and, 103, 118–119, 145

British Expeditionary Force, 142

British Military Police, 110

_British Official Secrets Act_ 1911, 108

Salonika, 17, 24

Britain in World War II

Bangka Island Massacre, 216–219

British Consulate in Mersin, 183–185

British Intelligence, 159, 167–172, 175

Bucharest, 167

Dunkirk, 165, 187

Singapore, 207–208

War Office, 172–173

Broken Hill, NSW, 203

Brooke, Rupert, 114, 116

Brown, _Mr_ (Lochs' American friend), 176–177

Bryant, _Colonel_ , 121

Bryce, _Dr_ Lucy, xxii

Bucharest (Rumania) _see_ Rumania in World War II

Budapest (Hungary), 171

Bukovina (Rumania), 165, 172

Bulgaria in World War I

Great Fire of Salonika, 42–43

at Guevgueli, 20–22

Ostrovo base hospital, 92

in retreat, 88

Serb Army, 16–23, 85, 86

Yovi wounded by, 29–30

Bulgarians in World War II, 167

_Bulletin_ , 58

Bullwinkel, _Sister_ Vivian ('Bulli') _(1915–2000)_

awards, 198–199, 247, 251

Bangka Island Massacre, 214–221, 240–241, 245

Bangka Island memorial, 251–253

Japanese prisoner, 232, 233, 237

Malacca, 204

marries Frank Statham, 251

state memorial service, 253

survivor guilt, 201, 219, 246

_This Is Your Life_ (TV show), 250–251

training, 203

_Vyner Brooke_ , 209–211

_White Coolies_ , _248_

Buna (Papua), 260, 261, 266, 267, 272

Bush Brotherhood, 259

Bustard, William, 278

Byzantine Museums Authority, 197

Callan Park Hospital for the Insane, 77

Cambridge all-women's colleges, 12, 17–18

Canada in World War I, 17

Carol II, _King of Rumania_ , 160–164, 166–167, 172, 174, 178–179, 196

Casson, _Sister_ , 217

casualty clearing stations (CCS), 112, 122, 137

Chambers, Nora, 231

Champion, Alan, 261

Changi, 239

Charitas nuns, 222, 250

Château de Chanteloup (France), 14–15, 19

Chatham Islands (Australia), 94

China in World War II, xxi

Churchill, Winston, 106–107, 140, 177

Citadel Hospital (Cairo), 110

_Clan McGillivray_ (troopship), 110

clothes and uniforms

AANS, 99, 103–104, 116–118, 129–130, 141, 203, 209, 229

Agnes Bennett's, 84, 88, 89

AIF, 99

Alice Kitchen's, 104, 105, 129

Japanese prisoner of war camps, 212, 223, 227–229, 231, 249

Joice NanKivell Loch's, 161

Olive King's, 9, 12–13, 17, 19, 27, _28_ , 31, 37, 40–41, 65–66

in Rouen, 148

in Salonika, 23–24

wartime clothing, _xv_ , xix

Constantine of Greece, _King_ , 18

Constantza (Rumania), 173, 178–182

Cook, Joseph, xix

Cooper, _Dr_ Lilian Violet _(1861–1947)_

appearance, 78

awards, 35–36, 71, 90, 91, 95

Brisbane practice, 79–80, 94–95

Czerna River dressing station, 90

death, 95

Dobraveni dressing station, 90

Ostrovo base hospital, 83, 87–89

studies medicine, 72, 77–78, 80

SWH, xv, 81

Corfu (Greece), 48

Corkhill, _Sister_ Pearl, 151

Coulter, _Captain_ Graham, 99, 110, 140

Cracknell, Ruth, 249

Crespigny, _Colonel_ de, 140

Crete in World War II, 188–189

Croatia, 48, 53, 64, 85

Cunningham, _Colonel_ , 115

Curtis, _Sister_ , 150

Cyprus

in World War I, 67

in World War II, 163, 173–176, 183, 187–190

Czerna River dressing station (Greece), 90

Czernowicz (Rumania), 165–166

Dale, _Captain_ Frank, 99, 110, 117

Dalmatia, 48, 53

Dardanelles plan, 101, 106–107, 110–112, 133, 135 _see also_ Anzacs; Gallipoli

Darling, Sarah, 73–75

Davis, Win, 225, 229

de Crespigny, _Colonel_ , 141

De Havilland aircraft, 67

dehydration, 112, 128–129

Derok, _Colonel_ , 32, 35, 48, 51, 56–58, 60, 66

Dickenson, _Lieutenant_ , 269

Dobraveni dressing station (Greece), 90–91

Dobruja (Rumania), 167

Doiran Lakes massacre (Greece), 20–22

Dresdner Bank, 177

drinking water _see_ food and water shortages

Drummond, _Matron_ Irene, 203, 204, 207, 209, 210, 216–219, 236, 245, 246, 252, 253

Dryburgh, Margaret, 231, 250

Dunkirk, 165, 187

Eastern Orthodox Church (Serbian), xiii–xiv, 16, 31, 33, 34, 40–42, 47, 52, 65

Edinburgh University Medical College, 75

Egypt in World War I, 81–82, 93, 101, 110, 112, 136, 139

_Ella the Elephant_ (ambulance), 9, 11–13, 17–19, 21, 25, 31–33, 59

Embogi (Papuan), 275–276, 277

_Emden_ (warship), 100

_Empire Star_ , SS, 208

Eroro Mission (Papua), 262, 264

Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital (Melbourne), 246, 251

Fanning & NanKivell (company), 158

Ferdinand, _King of Rumania_ , 65

field dressings, 125–126

field hospitals

ambulance drivers _see_ ambulance drivers

Australian Field Ambulance, 135

Auteuil (France), 81

casualty clearing stations (CCS), 112, 122, 137

Cyprus, 188

Czerna River dressing station, 90

Dobraveni dressing station, 90–91

Guevgueli dressing station, 19–22, 26, 30, 39

Ostrovo base hospital, 35–36, 83–92

Rouen Australian Auxiliary Hospital, 141, 142–148

Salonika, 17, 91

Skocivir dressing station, 90

SWH, 12, 81

tented hospitals on Lemnos, 120–121, 134

Troyes field hospital, 14–16 Yellac dressing station, 91

Fisher, Andrew, 8

flu epidemic, 53

food and water shortages, 62–63, 87, 88–90, 112, 115, 120, 122, 132, 133–134, 145, 184–185, 212, 214, 223–225, 227

_Forsyte Sage_ (Galsworthy), xviii

Foster, _Judge_ Alfred, xxiii

Fowler, _Captain_ John, 99

France in World War I

8th Battalion, 140

Balkan campaign, 17, 48–49, 82, 85

Dardanelles, 121

field hospitals, 14–16, 81, 85, 142–148

Germany, 8, 10–12, 35, 92, 137, 140

northern France, _147_ , 152, 159

war graves, 153

France in World War II

Consul in Mersin, 184

resistance, xxiii–xxiv

Vichy government, 165

Franklin, Miles, 84, 91

Franz Ferdinand, _Archduke of Austria_ , xiii, 7, 67

Franz Joseph, _Emperor of Austria_ , 17, 53

Freeleagus, Alexander, 197

Freeman, Dot, 225

French, _General Sir_ John, 13

Friend, Gwen, 249

Friends war relief organisations _see_ Quaker war relief organisations

Gallipoli (Dardanelles)

Anzac Cove, 111, 116, 117, 122–132, 135, 136, 139–140, 142

Bolton's Ridge, 117

British troops, 83

casualties _see under_ Anzacs

Dardanelles plan, 101, 106–107, 110–112, 133, 135

despatches, 96, 135

evacuation, xviii, 82, 116, 140, 142, 165

French troops, 17

Ghurkhas and Irish troops, 138–139

Howse, 110–112

Lemnos Island _see_ Lemnos Island

Lone Pine and Nek, 137–139

map, _133_

Suvla Bay, 137–139

_Gallipoli_ (Masefield), xviii

Galsworthy, John, xviii

Gardam, Shirley, 225

Garis, _Dr_ Mary, 90

Gartside, _Colonel_ 'Jock', 99, 105, 128

_Gascon_ , _see under_ hospital ships

Geneva Convention, 201, 218, 277

George I, _King of England_ , 151

Germany in World War I, xxi, 8, 11, 16, 17, 22, 83, 85, 92, 119, 122–123, 129, 153

Germany in World War II, 153, 160–172, 182, 184–185, 187, 190–191

Girl Guides Association (NSW), 64

Gluckstein family, 177–180, 188–189, 191–192

Goebbels, _Dr_ , 167, 177

gold bullion from Rumania, 179–182

Gona Anglican Mission (Papua), 257–269, _258_ , 277

gonorrhoea, 103

Gould, _Matron_ Nellie, xiii, 103–104, 108, 118, 129

Great Depression (1930s), xx

Greece in World War I, 16–22, _54_ , 83

Greece in World War II, 189, 196

Greek Orthodox refugees, 159

Groppi's Tea Rooms (Cairo), 105, 135

Grylls, Florence, 84

Guevgueli dressing station (Greece), 19–22, 26, 30, 39

_Guildford Castle_ , _see under_ hospital ships

Gumendjie Bridge (Greece), 32

Gunther, Pat, 228

Haifa (Palestine), 177–179, 190–192

Haig, _General Sir_ Douglas, 142, 146

Hall, Eliza, 6

Hamilton, _General Sir_ Ian, 107, 110, 112

Hamilton, _Private_ John, 139

Hamilton, Vic, 203

_Hampshire_ , HMS, 142

Harefield Park Hospital (England), 150–153

Harley, _Mrs_ , 13–14, 30, 32–33, 37

Harper, Iole, 213, 221–222, 223–224, 234

Hay, Isabelle, 7

Hayman, _Sister_ Frances May ('Merry') _(1906–1942)_

escape from Japanese, 266–274

Gona Anglican Mission, 257–266

murder, 276

Haynes, _Sister_ Olive, 116

Hébrard (French military architect), 55, 62

Hegel, George, 72

Hempsted, Blanche, 229–230

Hempsted, Pauline, 225

heroism, xxiv–xxv

Hertzegovina, 48

Hewitt, _Sergeant_ , 267

Heysen, Nora, xxi, xxii

Hiroshima (Japan), 241

Hivajapa (Papuan), 264, 278

Holland in World War II

Dutch in Sumatra, 214, 222–224, 228, 230–231, 237, 241

German invasion, 165

Hong Kong, 208

Horty, _Admiral_ , 165

hospital equipment, 107, 143–145

hospital ships

British, 81–82

Chinese, 208

Gallipoli, 111–112, 114

Galsworthy, John, xviii

_Gascon_ , xviii, 96, 106, 111, _118_ , 118–140, _124_ , _125_ , 142, 155

_Guildford Castle_ , 111

Manunda, 240

_Neuralia_ , 135

procedures, 119, 123, 131–132

Red Cross flag, 150

_Sicilia_ , 120, 122–124

'special' nursing, 131, 139

staff conditions, 129–132, 135–136

Hotel Gazelli (Mersin), 183–184

House, Charlie, 195

Howse, _Colonel_ Neville, 101–102, 103, 104, 106, 110–111, 112

Hugo, _Colonel_ , 120, 130

Hungary in World War II, 165, 167–172

Ierissos (Greece), 196

Ilias, _Major_ , 121, 130, 136

Imbros Island (Dardanelles), 111, 133

India in World War I, 24, 125, 145

Ingham, Qld, 158, 197, 202

Inglis, _Dr_ Elsie, xv, 12, 30, 75–76, 81, 83, 85

International Red Cross

awards, 196

Bulgarians, 22

canteens, 40, 62

food parcels, xxii, 106, 233, 241

Japanese, 217, 228, 231

Polish refugees, 193

transport ships, 150

US, 53

volunteers, 105, 113

Ipswich, Qld, 256, 278

IRA, 159

Iran, _Shah of_ , 193

_Ireland in Travail_ (NanKivell and Loch), 159

Ireland in World War I, 152

Iron Guard (Rumania), 172–182, 191–192

Irving, _Sister_ , _206_

Isivita (Papua), 268

Istanbul (Turkey), 173, 182–183

Italy, 17, 184

Jacobsen, _Sister_ , 146

James, _Major-General_ 'Digger', 253

James, Nesta, 221, 237, 251

Japanese in World War II _see also_ Bangka Island (Sumatra)

Europeans killed in Papua, 276

Pacific campaign, xxi

Papua New Guinea, 259–263, 270–276

prisoner of war camps, 221–236, 252, 259, 273

Singapore, 206–214

treatment of women _see under_ women in war

Jeffrey, _Sister_ Betty ('Bet' or 'Jeff') _(1908–2000)_

awards, 199, 247, 249

clothes and uniforms, 249

death, 200, 250

early years, 204

Japanese prisoner, 221–222, 223–224, 234

later career, 247–250

Malacca, _206_

_Matron_ Paschke, 213

Nurses' Memorial Centre (St Kilda), 247–248

Singapore, 206–207

_This Is Your Life_ , 250

_Vyner Brooke_ , 210–211

_White Coolies_ , _248_

Jessie McPherson Hospital (Melbourne), 203

Jewish persecution in World War II, 164, 179, 181, 182, 191

John Murray (publishers), 159

Johns Hopkins Hospital (Maryland), 80

Johnston, George, xx

Joyce Tweddell Building (Brisbane), 244

Kalamaria (Greece), 24

Kanakas (indentured labour), 158

_Kanowna_ (troopship), 155

Kapunda, SA, 203

Karageorge (Serbian royal family), 29, 33–34, 91 _see also_ Alexander, _Crown Prince of Serbia_

Kelso King, _Sir_ George

Alexander's wedding, 65

death, 67

family life, 4–9

International Save the Serbs Fund, 60–61

letters to Olive King, 38, 55–56, 63

Olive King's letters, 12, 22, 31, 34–35, 39, 47–48, 51, 55, 59–61, 67

reunion with Olive King, 64

Save Salonika appeal, 47, 55

Serb Comforts Fund, 40

Kennedy, _Sister_ Mary, xix–xx

Kennieson, Betty, 236, 250

Kerr, _Sister_ Agnes, 84, 91

Kerr, Jenny, 217–218

King, _Lady_ Alicia ('Belicia', née Kirk), 6–7, 60, 64–65, 68

King, _Sir_ George Kelso _see_ Kelso King, _Sir_ George

King, Georgina, 5–6

King, _Dr_ Hazel, 3, 6–7, 64, 65, 68

King, Irene Isabella (née Rand), 4

King, Nicholas, 7, 64, 65

King, Olive May Kelso _(1885–1958)_

AFAC, 8–12

affair with Artsa, 54, 56–58

affair with Yovi, 25–28, 37–38, 41–42, 52, 64–67 _see also_ Yovitchitch, _Captain_ Milan

Alexander's wedding, 65–66

ambulances _see Bridget_ ; _Ella the Elephant_

in Australia, 64–65, 68

awards, xvi, 1, 3, 22, 47–48, 64

chauffeuse, 14, 30, 32

clothes and uniforms _see_ clothes and uniforms

in Corfu, 48–50

in Cyprus, 67–68

death, 3, 68

education, 4–5, 26, 42

in France, 11, 14–16, _15_

Great Fire of Salonika, 43–48

Guevgueli evacuation, 19–22, 26, 30, 39

health, 36–37, 64

inheritance, 6, 11, 28, 33, 39–40, 51

in London, 61–62

in Salonika, 16–24, 42–43, 54

Save the Serbs canteens, 40, 55, 58–59, 61–64

in Serb Army, _28_ , 30–32, 36, 38, 40–41, 58, 62

in Serbia, 59–60, 62–63, 64

sport, 5, 7, 27

SWH, xv–xvi, xix, 12

King, Selwyn, 8, 56–57, 58

King, Sunny _see_ Waring, Sunny

King's School (Sydney), 31

Kingsley, _Private_ Pat, 220–221, 240

Kirk, Alicia _see_ King, Alicia

Kitchen, _Sister_ Alice Elizabeth _(1873–1950)_

in Australia, 154–155

awards, 97, 155

_Benalla_ (troopship), 99–101

clothes and uniforms, 104, 105, 129–130

in Egypt, _102_ , 134–135

8th Battalion, 99, 105–106, 110, 140

in France, 141–148

_Gascon_ , xviii, 96, _118_ , 118–140, _124_ , _125 see also_ hospital ships

health, 149–150

_Kanowna_ (troopship), 155

letters of condolence, 116, 130, 151

1 AGH Heliopolis, 107–110, 112–117, 140

patients' deaths, 128, 130–132, 136, 137–138

Tubb _VC_ , _Captain_ Frederick H, 137–139

Kitchen, Mary Collway, 98

Kitchen, William Barratt, 98

Kitchener, _Lord_ , 101, 106–107, 142

Kokoda Track (Papua), 260–264, 270

_Koningsberg_ (warship), 100

_Kyarra SS_ , 116

Lady Lamington Hospital for Women (Brisbane), 79

Lae (New Guinea), 260

Lake Ostrovo (now Lake Vegoritis), 85, 87

Lashmar, Lilla, 263–264, 277

League of Nations, xxi, 66

Lemnos Island (Dardanelles), 110, 111, 120–121, 128, 133, 142

Lempriere, Janey, 98, 100

Lewis, Dr Sybil, 83

Lilian Cooper Aged Care Centre, 95

Loch, Joice NanKivell _(1887–1982)_

author, xvi, 158–159, 169, 193, 195

awards, xxiv, 157, 161–162, 196

birth, 158

Camp of a Thousand Orphans, 192–194

clothes and uniforms, 161

death, 197

Ierissos earthquake, 196

medical clinics in Ouranopolis, 195–196

Operation Pied Piper, 173–193, 196

Polish refugees, 160–163, 165, 166

rug-weaving cooperative in Pirgos, 159–160, 195, 196

spy mission to Hungary, 167–172

with Sydney Loch, _163 see also_ Loch, Sydney

_Warszawa_ , 186–188

Loch, Sydney

British Army, 192–194

death, 195

Joice and, 172

Operation Swordfish, 173, 175, 178, 183–185, 188, 189

refugee work, 159–162

Loebok Linggau (Sumatra), 234–236

London School of Medicine, 78

Lone Pine (Dardanelles), xx, 137–139

Longreach, Qld, 201

Lupescu, Magda, 161, 172

Lushya, _Countess_ , 160, 162–163, 173, 179–180, 182, 183, 185, 186, 190, 191, 194–195

MacArthur, _General_ Douglas, xxii, 260

MacAuliffe, _Padre_ , 134

McConnel, Mary, 79

McCrae, John, 154

Macedonia, 17–18, 23–24, 34, 83

McGregor, Colin, 205–206, 242

McHardy White, Jessie, 45, 98

Mack, Louise, xiv, xvi, xix, 74

_Maclaren King_ (launch), 262

MacPhail, _Dr_ Katharine, 55, 64, 65

McPhee, _Colonel_ , 99, 128, 133

Malacca, 204–207

malarial mosquitoes, 36–37, 87, 91, 134, 196, 226–227, 233–235, 249, 257

Malaya in World War II, xxi, 206–207, 210, 217, 221, 259

Malone, Emily, 247, 249

Malta in World War I, 136–137, 139

Manners, Norman, 253

Manning, Olivia, 167

_Manunda_ , SS, 240

Marie, _Princess of Rumania_ , 65–66

_Marquette, SS_ , 17

Mary, _Queen_ , 151

Masefield, John, xviii, xx

Mater Misericordiae Hospital (Brisbane), 79

Mathieson, _Captain_ Frank, 99, 115–116

Mathieson Frame, Mavis, 277

Mayo Clinic (Minnesota), 80

medical equipment and supplies, 107, 143–145, 208, 210–211, 224–225, 234, 237, 241–242

medical officers and surgeons, 130, 143–144

medical orderlies, xviii, 81–82, 114, _125_ , 131

Medical Society of Queensland, 79

Mena House (Cairo), 101, _105_ , 107

Mersin (Turkey), 173, 175, 178, 182–187

Mexico in World War II, 164, 191

Michael, _Crown Prince of Rumania_ , 172, 174

Midway Island, 264

military hospitals _see also_ field hospitals

AGH _see_ Australian General Hospitals

British, 82, 93, 141

in Egypt, xiii, 110, 136, 139

Mena House (Cairo), 101, _105_ , 107

Mount Hortiack British, 24–25, 31, 43, 44–45, 83, 92

Redbank, 203

mines, floating, 190, 191, 210

Mittelheuser, Pearl ('Mitz'), 202–207, 211, 225, 227, 234–236, 245

Monastir (Greece), 32, 39, 58, 86–87

Montenegro, 48

_Mossoul, SS_ , 17–18

Mount Hortiack British military hospital _see_ military hospitals

Mount Kaimaktsalan (Greece), 24, 31, 39, 86, 87, 88, 89

Mount Olivet Hospital and Hospice (Brisbane), 95

_Mrs Dalloway_ (Woolf), xix

Mudros Harbour _see_ Lemnos Island (Dardanelles)

Muir, _Sister_ Sylvia _(1915–1999)_

awards, 199

Bangka Island memorial, 251–253

clothes and uniforms, 212, 223, 229, 231

Japanese prisoner, 200–201, 222–226, 228–230, 234–236

Malacca, 204–207

marriage and family, 242–243

Singapore, 207–209

survivor guilt, 201

_This Is Your Life_ , 251

_Vyner Brooke_ , 209–211

youth, 201–203

Muncaster, _Dr_ Josephine, 83

Muntok (Sumatra), 213–214, 220–221, 233

Muslims, 16

Mussolini, Benedito, 184

_My Brother Jack_ (Johnston), xx

NanKivell, Geoff, 159

NanKivell, George, 158

NanKivell, Thomas, 158

Nek (Dardanelles), xx, 137–139

Nellie (Eurasian trader), 250

_Neuralia_ (hospital ship), 135

New Guinea, 260 _see also_ Papua New Guinea

New Zealand, 77, 93

Newdegate, _Sir_ Francis, 151–152

Newman, _Father_ , 262, 263, 264

newspaper reports, 135, 239, 245, 247

Nicholas, _Tsar_ , 34

Nurses' Memorial Centre (St Kilda), 247–248, 253

oil, 162, 164–166, 172, 191

Oitanandi (Papua), 271

Oram, _Matron_ Grace, 99, 118–119

Oram, Wilma, 205, 228, 233, 247, 250–251, 252

Orita, _Captain_ , 242

_Osmanieh_ (transport ship), 111

Ostrovo base hospital (Greece), 35–36, 83–92

Ottoman Bank (Jerusalem), 194

Ouranoupolis (formerly Pirgos, Greece), 159–160, 195, 197

Pacific Islands, 158

Palembang

Choral Society, 231–232, 250

prisoner of war camp, 226–227

Palestine in World War II, 163, 164, 173, 177, 183, 186, 189–194

Palmer, _Signals Officer_ , 267

Papadopoulos, _Mrs_ , 54

Papua New Guinea, 243, _258_ , 277 _see also_ Gona Anglican Mission

Papuan Infantry, 274

_Paradise Road_ (film), xxiv, 198, 249

Parkinson, Mavis _(1915–1942)_

education, 256–257

escape from Japanese, 266–274

Gona Anglican Mission, 258–266

letter to parents, 266–270

murder, 276

Parkinson, Mr (Mavis' father), 263–264

Paschke, _Matron_ , 207–210, 213, 228, 236, 252

Passchendaele (France), 92, 93

Pearl Harbour, xxi–xxii, 259

Percival, D.K. ('Mimi'), 38, 40, 42

Peters, _Sister_ 'Pete', 116, 120, 123

Pilsudski, _President of Poland_ , 196

Pirgos (now Ouranoupolis, Greece), 159–160, 195, 197

Poland in World War I, 159

Poland in World War II, 160, 163, 187–189

Polygon Wood (France), 137, 146

Popescu, _Doamna_ , 164, 174, 178, 182, 191

Popocatepetl (Mexico), 7

Popondetta (Papua), 272–276, _277_

Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), 260, 261, 263, 264, 271

Portugal, 172

Pratt, _Sister_ Rachael, 131, 139

press, 135, 239, 245, 247

Prichard, Katherine Susannah, xvi

_Prince of Wales_ , SS, 210, 216–217

Princep, Gavrilo, xiii

Prisoner of War Association, 243

Puckapunyal, Vic, 203

Quaker war relief organisations, 55, 59, 62, 159, 160, 165, 167, 171, 173, 175–176, 183–184, 193

_Quambi_ (Woollahra house), 52

Queen Alexandra's Imperial Army Nursing Service (QAIANS), xvi–xvii

Queensland Meat Preservative Company, 59

Queensland Medical Women's Society, 95

Rabaul (New Britain), 259

Radji Beach Massacre _see_ Bangka Island Massacre

Rand, Irene Isabella _see_ King, Irene Isabella

Raymont, Wilhelmina ('Ray'), 225–226, 229, 234, 237

Red Cross _see_ International Red Cross

Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service, xxii

Redlich, _Rev._ Vivian, _259,_ 264–265, 277

refugees

from Bessarabia, 166

Camp of a Thousand Orphans, 192–194

eastern Poland, 196

Greek Orthodox, 159

Jewish, 160–161, 173–193, 177, 187

in Papua New Guinea, 260–261

Polish, 159–163, 165, 166, 173–193, _194_

Reid, Caroline, 83

Repatriation General Hospital (Heidelberg), 246

Rogers, _Sister_ , 150

Rosanove, Joan, xvi

Ross, Robina, 84

Rouen (France), 10–12, 141, 142–148

Royal Anthropological Society of Australia, 6

Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), 82, 107

Royal Australian College of Surgeons, 95

Royal Australian Nursing Corps, 246

Royal Brisbane Hospital, 202, 244

Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh), 76

Royal Flying Doctor Service, 94

Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, 93

Rumania in World War II, 64–65, 160–167, 172–182 _see also_ Iron Guard

Russia in World War I, 17, 34, 90, 159 _see also_ Soviet Union

Sageri (Papua), 270

St Andrew's Cathedral (Sydney), 31

St Demetrios (Salonika), 40–41, _46_

St John's Cathedral (Brisbane), 278

St Mary's Anglican Church (Kangaroo Point), 95

Salamaua (New Guinea), 260

Salonika

Great Fire, 42–48, 53

homelessness, 55, 62

later Thessaloniki _see_ Thessaloniki

Mount Hortiack _see under_ military hospitals

Serb Officers' Club, 27, 33, 39, 46

Salter, June, 249

Samsing, _Sister_ Hilda

_Benalla_ (troopship), 98–100

in Egypt, 104, 105, 110, 140

in England, 150, 152

in France, 141, 142, 144, 150

_Gascon_ , xviii, 117, 121, 125, 134

returns to Australia, 153

Sangara Mission (Papua), 263, 264, 268, 277

Sarajevo, xiii, 61

Sarawak, 209

Sarrail, _General_ Maurice, 17, 50

Scandinavia in World War II, 165

Scott, Dr Jessie, 83

Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH) for Foreign Service

Charilaos, 25

establishment, xv–xvi, 81

field hospitals _see_ field hospitals

Macedonia, 83–85

Mrs Harley, 30, 32–33

pay, 84

rules and regulations, xix, 12–13, 25, 27, 30, 38, 84

Serb Army, 25

Trestrail, _Sister_ Claire, xvii

Sea of Marmara, 112

Serb Army

Balkan front, 16–18, 25, 34–35, 83, 90

casualties, 87

Corfu, 48–49

Kelso King's fund, 35

'March of Death', xiv, 18, 28

rules and regulations, 30–31

Serbian Medical Services, 84

SWH, 25

Serbia

Austrian invasion, xiii–xiv, 7–8, 23, 28, 34–35, 53, 59

Greater Serbian plan, 35, 48–49

homelessness, 59–60

under _King_ Alexander, 64

Macedonia, 83

Sexton, _Dr_ Helen, 81

Shapovitch, _Captain,_ 46

Siai (Papua), 270–271

Siberian labour camps, 193

_Sicilia_ , _see under_ hospital ships

Sima, Horia, 179

Simons, Jessie, 251

Singapore, 206–207, 214, 220, 239

Singleton, Irene, 225

Skocivir dressing station (Greece), 90

Slovenia, 53, 64–65

Smith, _Lieutenant_ Arthur, 271–273

Smith, _Colonel_ Ramsay, 107–110, 115

Smith, Val, 226, 229, 234

soldiers' war injuries

abdominal wounds, 127, 128, 136

amputations, 82, 126–127, 140, 148

blinded by gas, 153

burns, 138–139

cerebro-spinal fever (meningitis), 149

dehydration, 112, 129

dysentery, 82, 102–103, 128–129, 132–134, 136, 184–185, 234

enteric fever, 115, 128–129, 136

fear of pity, 151

frostbite, 139–140, 148

gangrene, 82, 112, 140

infestations of fleas and lice, 126, 129–130

patients' deaths, 128, 130–132

plagues, 86–87, 91, 133

septic wounds, xviii

shell shock, 115, 126–127, 144, 149

stretcher cases, 125

syphilis, 102–103, 109

trench fever, 148

trench foot, 87, 148

trench warfare, 81, 126, 142, 146, 152, 202

typhoid, 82, 100, 115, 129, 136, 184, 188

typhus epidemic, 90

war as mass murder, xvi, xviii, 96, 114, 139, 152, 154

_Solitary Pedestrian_ (NanKivell), 159

Solomon and Gluckstein's Bank, 177

Somme (France), 148

Southwell Gardens (London), 150 Soviet Union in World War II, 165–166, 175, 177, 192–193 _see also_ Russia in World War I

Spanish influenza, 152

Sri Lanka, 210

Stalin, Josef, 166

Statham, Frank, 251, 253

Stirling, Mary, 84

Stirling (Scotland), 76–77

stretcher bearers, 138–139, 146

Strong, _Bishop_ Philip, 259–262

suffragettes, 12, 30

Sumatra _see_ Bangka Island

_Sydney_ , HMAS, 100

_Sydney Morning Herald_ , 58

Syer, 'Mickey', 203, 250

Symons, _Lieutenant_ William, 139

Szabo, Violette, xxiii–xxiv

Tapiedi, Lucian, 264, 277

Taube aircraft, 123

_Telegraph,_ 58

therapeutic radiography, 243–244

Thessaloniki (formerly Salonika), 62, 159, 195, 196 _see also_ Salonika

_This Is Your Life_ (TV show), 250–251

Throssell, _Captain_ Hugo, 139

Tionda (Papuan), 275–276

Topkapi Palace (Turkey), 182

Torres Strait Islands, 243

transport ships _see under individual names_

Transylvania in World War II, 167, 168

Treaty of Versailles, xx–xxi

Trestrail, _Sister_ Claire, xvii

Trotter, Florence ('Flo'), 202–203, 208, 223–224, 250–251

Troyes field hospital (France), 14–16

Tubb, _VC_ , _Captain_ Frederick H., 137–139, 146, 154

tuberculosis, 229

Tucker, Ella, 121

Tulcea (Rumania), 180

Turkey in World War I, 111, 117, 122–123, 135, 137, 140

Turkey in World War II, _176_ , 182

Turner, Ethel, 74

Tweddell, _Sister_ Joyce ('Tweedie') _(1916–1995)_

awards, 199

'comfort women', 228

death, 200, 244

Japanese prisoner, 214, 230, 235–236, 238–240, _235_

Malacca, 204–207

therapeutic radiography, 243–244

training, 202–203

_Vyner Brooke_ , 209, 211

uniforms and clothes _see_ clothes and uniforms

United States in World War II, xxi, 164, 176–177, 261, 265, 267, 269

Upper Dobodura (Papua), 273–274, 275

Venizelos, Eleutherios, 18

Victoria Cross (decoration), 137–139

Vietnamese orphans, 250

Voluntary Aid Detachment workers (VADs), xv, 8, 16, 18–21, 23, 62, 83–84, 99, 143–144

Vyner Brooke, _Sir_ Charles, 209

_Vyner Brooke_ , SS, 209–211, 214–216, 221, 222, 228, 245, 250, 251

Wade, _Sir_ Charles, 61

Wake, Nancy, xxiii

_Wanganella,_ SS, 204–205

war crimes tribunals, 241

Ware, _Bishop_ Kallistos, 197

Waring, Harold, 4, 65, 67

Waring, Sunny (née King), 4, 7, 22, 32–33, 37, 47, 59, 61, 65, 67

_Warszawa_ (troopship), 186–188, 190–191

Webb War Crimes Commission, 274

Wesley Hospital (Brisbane), 200

Westminster Abbey, 277

_White Coolies_ (Jeffrey), 233, 248–250

White, _Matron_ Jessie McHardy, 46, 98

Wight, _Sister_ , 217

Wilhelm, _Kaiser_ , xiv, 153

Wilson, Francesca, 165

Wilson, _President_ Woodrow, 53

Wilton, _Sister_ Mona, 216

women in war

as ambulance drivers, xvi, 10, 12, 25

as army nurses, xvii, 103, 107–110

'comfort women', 200, 228–231

decoders, xxii

employment at home, xxii–xxiii

German atrocities, xiv

on hospital ships _see_ hospital ships

Japanese treatment of, 200–201, 203, 208, 213–214, 224–227, 236–237, 241–242, 260–261, 263, 264

in medicine, xv, xvi, 72, 75–81, 95

reporters, xiv, xix, 74

rules and regulations, xviii–xix

transport drivers, _xxi_

VADs, xv

war artists, xxii

Women's Employment Board, xxii–xxiii

Woolf, Virginia, xvi, xix, 4

World War I _see under individual countries_

Yamasaki, _Colonel_ , 201, 225, 229, 232, 236–237, 241–242, 246

Yariri, _Father_ John, 269–270

Yellac dressing station (Greece), 91

YMCA, 40

Young, Wilma _see_ Oram, Wilma

Yovitchitch, _Captain_ Milan

affair with Olive King, 25–30, 37–38, 41–42, 52, 64–67

Alexander, Crown Prince of Serbia, 34, 36, 42

career, 48, 51, 57, 66

Corfu, 49–50

death, 67

engagement, 29, 33–34, 55, 57

Greater Serbian plan, 35, 48–49

Mrs Harley, 33

Ostrovo base hospital, 91

photograph of, 3–4, _29_

wounded, 29–30

Ypres (France), 146

_Zealandia_ (ship), 204

# ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank Irene Papadopoulos, who provided stories her mother related about Olive King's stay with her in Salonika (Thessaloniki); my good friend, Michael Wilson, former high commissioner to Papua, for his background information on Papua and for material on Serbia from his time as Australian ambassador to that country; Dr David Ritchie for medical information; Reit Dekker for information about Dutch women imprisoned by the Japanese; Mrs J. Griffiths and Mervyn McNee for information about Joyce Tweddell; Mavis Mathieson-Frame, Graeme Barron and Jenny MacLennan, OAM, for information on Mavis Parkinson, Sister May Hayman and Lieutenant Arthur Smith; and Joyce Welsh for information on Joice Loch. Thank you also to Barbara Angell, author of the biography of Wilma Oram, for putting me in touch with Gwen Friend, Betty Jeffrey's radio producer, and to Gwen Friend who kindly shared her memories of Betty with me; also to Emily Malone, great-niece of Betty Jeffrey.

I am also indebted to Mavis Parkinson's niece, Mavis Mathieson-Frame for permission to print a large part of her aunt's last letter; to Glenda Murrell, Diocesan Archivist of the Anglican Archives Centre, Church House, Anne Street, Brisbane, for help with research; the Anglican Board of Mission—Australia Ltd for permission to use photographs and text from _The Road to Gona_ ; and to the Rev. John Cuffe for drawing the story of Mavis Parkinson and May Hayman to my attention. Excerpts from Alice Kitchen's diary have been reprinted with permission from the State Library of Victoria.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and the author and publishers apologise in any case where this has not been possible.

I would also like to thank my literary agent, Selwa Anthony; my assistant, Marusia McCormick; my husband, Jake de Vries, for map design and photographs; and the team at HarperCollins, a publisher that supports writing the hitherto ignored histories of some great Australian women.

This book has taken a long time to research and compile, covering as it does so many women and so many different fields of battle. It has been fascinating to write but at times disturbing for me, who as a child lost my home during the bombing of London in World War II and detests war and its effects.

Biographies are more than just paper and string, they are ideas about and investigation of past lives and past eras. I am grateful to all those who have helped by furnishing information, loaning books and allowing me to reproduce photographs and correspondence.

Susanna de Vries

Brisbane, 2004

# About the Author

SUSANNA DEVRIES is an art historian and lectures for the Continuing Education Department of the University of Queensland. Born in London, she studied art history, literature and history at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Madrid. With her late husband, Dr Larry Evans, an Army psychiatrist, Susanna was involved in research projects on treatment for soldiers suffering shell shock and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

An Australia citizen since 1975, Susanna has been the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship to study Renaissance art in Italy and has written extensively on art and history both here and overseas. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1996 'for services to art and literature'. In 2001 she was awarded a Tyrone Guthrie Fellowship to write in Ireland by the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Her biography of Joice NanKivell Loch, _Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread: The Life of Joice NanKivell Loch, Australia's Most Decorated Woman_ , won the Sligo Non-Fiction prize and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Non-Fiction award.

Susanna is the author of the following books, several of which have won awards: _Historic Brisbane_ ; _Historic Sydney_ : _The Founding of Australia_ ; _Pioneer Women, Pioneer Land_ ; _The Impressionists Revealed_ ; _Conrad Martens on the 'Beagle' and in Australia_ ; _Ethel Carrick Fox_ : _Travels and Triumphs of a Post-Impressionist_ ; _Strength of Spirit_ : _Australian Women 1788–1888_ ; _Strength of Purpose_ : _Australian Women of Achievement 1888–1950_ ; (part-author) _Raising Girls and Parenting Girls; Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread_ : _The Life of Joice NanKivell Loch, Australia's Most Decorated Woman_ ; and _The Complete Book of Great Australian Women._ She is currently working on her next book, which is about Australian women in the outback.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

# Copyright

**HarperCollins _Publishers_**

First published in 2004

This edition published 2010

HarperCollins _Publishers_ Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

A member of the HarperCollins _Publishers_ (Australia) Pty Limited Group

www.harpercollins.com.au

Copyright © Susanna de Vries 2004

The right of Susanna de Vries to be identified as the moral rights author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the _Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000_ (Cth).

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers.

**HarperCollins _Publishers_**

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10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022, USA

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

De Vries, Susanna.

Heroic Australian women in war: astonishing tales of bravery from Gallipoli to Kokoda.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978 0 7322 7669 0 (pbk.)

ISBN: 978-0-730-49141-5 (ePub)

1. World War, 1914–1918—Australia—Participation, Female.

2. World War, 1939–1945—Australia—Participation, Female.

3. Women in war—Australia—Participation, Female.

4. Women—Australia History—20th century. I. Title.

940.3082

Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are from private collections.

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