north east regional extra | February 23 - March 1, 2022
nemedia.com.au
1.
February 23 - March 1, 2022
80 years and we do not forget By BELINDA HARRISON THE order had come through that Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) personnel and the wounded, sick and seriously ill, must be evacuated from ‘Fortress Singapore’. The fighting on the Malayan peninsula was at its fiercest and retreat to Singapore Island was not an option; the Japanese were advancing and there was no chance of holding the island any longer. In February 1942, the Empire Star and Wah Sui ships took 72 members of the AANS and hundreds of patients and civilians from Singapore. The last ship to leave was a Britishregistered cargo vessel weighing 1670 tons and built in 1928 named the SS Vyner Brooke. Normally she carried only 12 passengers, but on the night of February 12, 1942 she sailed south with 181. Joining the 47 crew members were civilian men, women and children, the 8th Australian Division AIF and the last 65 Australian nurses and physiotherapists in Singapore who had been working in the 2/4th Casualty Clearing Station (CCS), the 2/10th and 2/13th General Hospitals (AGH). Sister Dorothy (Buddy) Gwendoline Howard Elmes and Sister Caroline Mary Ennis had been stationed at the 2/10th Australian General Hospital and were on the SS Vyner Brooke that night. The pair may have known each other prior to enlisting, even though Caroline enlisted in Melbourne in August 1940 and Buddy in Sydney in December 1940, their mothers were both residents of Cheshunt, and the women only a year apart in age at 26 and 27 respectively. If not, they surely got to know one another during the 15 day sail to Malaya after enlistment or during their time at
◆ BEFORE: Malacca, Malaya, 1941. Picutred are (back, from left) Joy Bell, Dorothy Gwendoline (Buddy) Elmes, Pat Gunther; (front, from left) Beryl Woodbridge, Betty Pyman, Nell Keats of 2/10th Australian General Hospital. They are holding air raid equipment. PHOTO: Australian War Memorial
the 2/10th AGH. When the Vyner Brooke left Singapore, it was ripe for an air attack and the Japanese had established their proficiency in such fighting. Late in the afternoon of February 13, while taking shelter near a small island, a single Japanese aircraft attacked, but there were no serious casualties so at
sunset, the captain made for the Bangka Strait, headed for Palembang in Sumatra. The patrolling Japanese warships detected the Vyner Brooke and at 2pm on February 14, multiple Japanese aircrafts attacked once more. The passengers had put on their life belts and tin hats and taken shelter below decks, lying face down on the
ground as the planes sent their bombs, blowing out the side of the ship. Shards of glass and shrapnel rained down, cutting legs, buttocks, arms and heads open indiscriminately. The ship listed dangerously and the nurses rushed to help each other and the other wounded passengers - carrying them up ladders to the deck and
putting field dressings on as best they could before lowering them over the side, down more ladders and into lifeboats to escape the sinking mass. The ship rolled and lurched towards a sinking life boat full of women and children and nurses Wilma Oram, Mona Wilton and Jean Ashton.
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