A C T I V I T Y 6 The experience of Australian nurses in World War 2 F O C U S Q U E S T I O N What was the experience of nurses in World War 2? Your task To design a memorial to the nurses, and compare it to existing memorials. Background briefing Over 4,100 Australian nurses served in World War 2, in the Royal Australian Army Nursing Service (RAANS), Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service (RAAFNS formed in 1940), and Royal Australian Naval Nursing Service (RANNS formed in 1942). In her study of nurses in the AANS, Jan Bassett identified four main reasons why women were prepared to serve as army nurses: patriotism, a sense of duty, a spirit of adventure, and social pressure or expectations. They served in established hospitals, troop ships, camps and temporary hospitals, and on aeroplanes. They served in the Northern Territory (Darwin, Katherine, Adelaide River), the Middle East, Britain, Greece, Crete, Malaya, New Guinea, Ceylon, Eritrea, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Tobruk, Dutch East Indies, Japan, Balikpapan and Labuan. While nurses were kept away from the front lines as much as possible, they were caught up in the evacuation of Singapore, and many were in hospital ships which were attacked by Japanese forces, and many were murdered as they washed up on beaches from their sunken ship. A nurse was killed in the first Japanese attack on Darwin. Nurses were also caught close to the front line in the evacuations at Tobruk, Greece and Crete. But in the main they served behind the front lines, or in Australia. Fifty-five nurses were decorated, and 82 others were Mentioned in Despatches. 95 died on service 24 during attacks on hospital ships, 18 from illness, eight as Prisoners of War, and 21 murdered in the sea by Japanese troops after they had survived the sinking of their hospital ship. A 1984 study of returned servicewomen, the majority of whom were nurses, discovered that many were still suffering poor health as a result of their experiences. Using the evidence 1 Use the Background Briefing notes to mark the places where Service Nurses operated in World War 2 on the map on page 18. 2 Look at Source 6.1, the illustrations of aspects of nurses experiences in World War 2. a b What do they suggest about nurses service? If you only had the photographs as evidence of the war experience of service nurses in World War 2, how adequate do you think that would be? Discuss your reasons. 3 Look at Source 6.2. a What difficulties did the nurses face? b Decide what qualities you think service nurses would have had. 4 Look at Source 6.3. It is a wartime article, in a RAAF album. a Describe the tone of the article. b Summarise the image of the nurse which emerges. c Why might the messages of Sources 6.2 and 6.3 be so different? 5 Look at Source 6.4, an interview with Hilda Lumsden. a What qualities did Hilda Lumsden have as a nurse? b What do you think was the motivation which kept Hilda Lumsden going? c Do you think nurses shared in the mateship which the men speak about, or would you describe their relationship with the wounded differently? Examining representations of history 6 Look at Source 6.5, the official image of World War 2 servicewomen in the Australian War Memorial. a List the words or ideas about women s service which it creates in your mind. b Compare this image to the list of qualities of nurses you have developed. Do you think this is a satisfactory image for the nurses service? Why? 7 Look at Source 6.6, the description of the new official nurses memorial in Canberra. a List the words or ideas about women s service which it creates in your mind. b Compare this image to the list of qualities of nurses you have developed. Do you think this is a satisfactory image for the nurses service? Why? Applying issues to today 8 Australian women were not used in a combat role during the Second World War. In today s armed services, they are trained for such a role. Do you think this is appropriate? 9 Some people argue that ANZAC Day is not an appropriate national tradition for Australians - because it involves military events, because it excludes women, and because it does not reflect an image of Australia as a multicultural society. Do you agree with these claims? 43
Source 6.1 Photographs of nurses on active service Returning civilian and army nurses, prisoners of war of the Japanese for over three and a half years Patsy Adam-Smith, Prisoners of War, Penguin, Melbourne, 1992 Nurses Leaving Australia for the Middle East, 1940 History of Australia at War, AWM, vol 1 page 122 Australian Nurses being ferried ashore at Balikpapan History of Australia at War, AWM, vol 5 page 177 Nurses in the Northern Territory, History of Australia at War, AWM, vol 3 page 141 RAAF Nurses attending to wounded and injured during a flight to a hospital History of Australia at War, AWM, vol 5 page 10 44
Source 6.2 Conditions of service of returned servicewomen 5.2 The AANS served most widely; in Palestine, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Eritrea, Greece, Ceylon, Malaya, New Guinea and in Darwin. 5.3 By their very nature, medical units had to be located at or near the front line. Consequently many women on overseas service experienced considerable danger from enemy action. Hospitals in the Middle East were bombed as were those in New Guinea. Hospital staff were involved in the evacuation of Greece, Crete and Tobruk, coming under fire on several occasions, while the fall of Singapore saw 65 AANS servicewomen killed or captured by the Japanese, barely two dozen of them surviving to be released from POW camps at the end of the war. Eleven AANS nurses lost their lives when the hospital ship Centaur was torpedoed off the Queensland coast in 1943. Overall, some sixty servicewomen were killed while on active service in theatres of war. 5.5 In the overseas theatres, nursing staff especially faced a general lack of adequate facilities to cope with the demands made upon them. Middle East hospital wards and staff quarters were often merely tents, sometimes without even concrete flooring; in New Guinea and the islands, large thatched huts were used as wards and tents provided quarters for their staff. [S]taff in these hospitals often worked for fifteen or more hours at a stretch for days on end. 5.6 Disease, and the threat of it, were constantly present on overseas service. Nurses who fell ill themselves felt that they could not afford to take time off when their work was so vital although many experienced dysentery and other diseases which were rife in most areas. Having recourse to the medical cabinet, these women rarely reported sick with the result that accurate and detailed medical records for these servicewomen were not kept. 5.7 The susceptibility of the women to disease was exacerbated by the inadequate diet upon which they were forced to subsist. Tinned and dehydrated food was for many months the only fare available to those serving in New Guinea. Powered egg, bully beef, dehydrated potato, baked beans and the like were hardly the basis for a healthy diet, certainly not when considering the long hours and hard work required of women staff. 5.8 Added to the hardships created by inadequate facilities, poor food, and disease were those engendered by the climatic extremes experienced and the sometimes inadequate clothing issued to protect the women from it. Those VADs and members of AANS posted to Palestine were surprised to encounter not hot, dry conditions but the torrential rain and freezing cold of winter, where the areas surrounding the tents and buildings soon became a sea of mud. For suitable warm clothing they had to rely in part upon parcels from the Salvation Army and other charity groups in Australia. Service in North Africa saw the servicewomen exposed to more conventional desert conditions extreme heat, no rain, and quantities of dust and sand. In the South West Pacific Area, rain, mud and floods were common conditions of service but some servicewomen were still required to wear dresses, stockings, and lace-up shoes as part of their uniform. 5.9 servicewomen were paid less than their male counterparts, ranging from about two thirds of the pay at lower ranks to one half at the highest. Study of Returned Servicewomen of the Second World War, Department of Veterans Affairs, April 1984 Source 6.3 The Nightingales of New Guinea Sister, can I have a drink, please? Sister, my head hurts. Sister, can you spare a minute? Sister, stay and talk to me. Sister. It might be any hospital ward or tent or a transport plane, carrying sick and wounded back from a forward strip to the comfort of a base hospital a strange little world of sickness and pain, flying through space, eight, nine, ten thousand feet above the earth and the sea, where there is just room for Sister to move up and down between the tiers of stretchers. In the plane Sister doesn t wear the traditional starched dress and immaculate white flowing veil. She wears instead khaki slacks and a shirt, a fur-lined flying jacket and a forage cap. She s atebrin-yellow*, too, but to the boys on the stretchers she s more beautiful than the most glamorous pin-up girl. She s cheerful, matter-of-fact, just as efficient as though she were in a modern hospital ward. Her presence brings a sense of safe, normal, everyday things and faraway homes. In September 1944, only a few weeks after the R.A.A.F. Air Evacuation Service had begun duty, a transport plane evacuating a load of American casualties had to make a forced landing on the sea fourteen miles off the New Guinea coast. American ducks working a few miles away saw the accident and came quickly to the rescue. With the crew, last to leave the sinking aircraft, was a small R.A.A.F. flying nurse Senior Sister Nancy McBean, of Melbourne. She would not budge until all her patients were safely transferred to the ducks. Sea water was lapping the aircraft as the last patient was taken off, but Sister McBean was too busy concentrating on the wellbeing of the patients to notice it. Some people called it high courage and devotion to duty. She thought it was just getting on with the job, nothing to make a fuss about. To the boys on the stretchers, they will always be remembered as the Florence Nightingales of New Guinea. RAAF Log, Australian War Memorial, 1944 [*Atebrin was an anti-malarial drug that turned the skin yellow] 45
Source 6.4 Interview with Hilda Lumsden, a nurse in Papua New Guinea I worked sometimes in the medical ward and sometimes in the surgical ward and we were very busy, and I always remember going in evening duty, there was one sister to about 70 patients, and the boys who could get up and about, they helped us look after the patients. Some of them were very badly wounded, legs in traction, and we always had this great help from the up-patients. I always remember early 43 getting the boys off the Kokoda Trail, you know who had been in their clothes for ages and some of their boots had just rotted off. It was like heaven for them to get washed and cleaned and put into bed. But always these big heavy boots encrusted in mud were there as a reminder of what they had been through. I think the physical wounds were the worst because our boys were very tough mentally, they really stood up to it wonderfully well, they just wanted to be cured as soon as possible and on their way home. I think if they were well enough they wanted to get back into it but if they were badly wounded they then had to be transferred home, and we all like to go home. I got lots of letters from home because our mail was not delayed. It was always a lovely surprise, the mails and the parcels from family. It wasn t really lonely, we lived four in a tent and we made our tents comfortable but we had to watch for insects. I remember on night duty once I went back to get a book from my bed and as I lifted the pillow there was a nice big scorpion under my pillow; we always had to worry about things like that. It was very hard when someone died in your arms. But when a person died, you knew the moment they died, but I always felt that their soul just left and you were only left with the body. It was hard always to have somebody die. I had always been to church but it made me feel that there must be more in life to lose such beautiful young men. I always felt that their souls left their bodies... I did feel hatred towards the Japanese although strangely enough I had a Jap prisoner in a tent just off the ward with a bad gunshot wound to his leg and I used to go out with an orderly to dress it. He was the same to me as one of our own wounded, but I couldn t help saying to him, will somebody look after our boys like that and you could see this blank look come over his face because I suppose he didn t know what would happen, and probably realised it wouldn t happen. One of the boys wrote to me. His life had been so altered because they thought he was dead. The girl he had been in love with had married; these things happened so much. I m afraid once you get out of the army and you marry and go into another life, memories grow dim after 50 years, but I never forget the absolute feeling of being in a family with the army. They cared for us and we cared for them. I m interested in the younger generation and I think it is time they realised that if it hadn t have been for the young people who fought and died and were wounded, many whose lives were absolutely changed, we wouldn t have Australia as it is now. Interview 1995 AANS 46
Source 6.5 The National Nurses Memorial, Canberra Robert Lewis Robert Lewis National Planning Authority, Camberra 47