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May 8, 2003
By Dr. Lynne Dunphy
As this year winds down, a year of post 9/11 stress and trauma, a year of gearing up for war in Iraq, a year of actual war, death, and destruction in Iraq, we are all reminded of the dangers of life, of trauma and risk. Thus, in this Nurses Week, 2003, it seems fitting to remember the lives of trauma and the lives of risk of Vivian Bullwinkel and a small band of Australian Army Nursing Service Women (AANS) on a deserted Pacific Beach in February, 1942. The same morning that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, they also invaded Malaya, where the 2/13th Australian General Hospital Unit was stationed, supporting British troops. By the end of January, 1942, hospital personnel were forced to retreat to Singapore, along with the British troops. The British had little chance. By February 8, 1942, an effort was underway to remove as many wounded and nurses as possible, out of the path of Japanese troops, storming their way across the island of Singapore. As the Japanese began their final assault on Singapore, Vivian Bullwinkel, a tall, slim, blonde, blue-eyed Australian nurse, and sixty-five other Australian nurses, under the leadership of Matron Drummond, were ordered to board the SS Vyner Brooke. Wearing gray and scarlet uniforms, as well as Red Cross armbands, the women boarded the small, gray vessel. Designed to hold twelve passengers, it now contained 265 frightened men, women, children and the 65 Australian nurses. The nurses spent the night huddled on the deck, watching the fires ashore foreshadowing Singapore's surrender.
The next day, Japanese aircraft bombed their vessel, and shot bullet holes in all the life rafts. By 2 pm that afternoon, the ship was sinking and all were ordered to abandon ship. "Take off your shoes and get over the side quickly, girls," said the Matron. "We'll all meet on the shore." Bullwinkel and her shipmates used their hands and bits of wreckage as paddles. Spotting a fire on shore, they headed toward it, reaching the beach around 10 pm. Soon, a lifeboat of 20 British servicemen joined them on shore.
The next morning, a group of Japanese soldiers marched up the beach. They ordered the servicemen to march, leaving Matron Drummond and her 21 nurses on the beach. Anxiety gripped the group at the sound of gunfire down the beach. Shortly, the detachment of Japanese returned, and sat down on the beach to clean their rifles and wipe the blood from their bayonets. They then stood up, and directed the nurses to do the same. "Not one women cried, not one women whimpered, not one tried to run away" (Norman and Angell, 1999, p. 103). Soon, the soldiers were pushing them into the surf, still dressed in their gray and scarlet uniforms, still wearing the Red Cross emblem, the emblem of life, on their sleeves. And then the soldiers opened fire, with their machine guns…..
Bullwinkel survived the massacre. Hit in the hip and stunned, she slipped beneath the water and played dead. She recalled, "They just swept up and down the line and the girls fell one after the other" (Norman & Angell, 1999, p. 104). Bullwinkel bided her time, eventually crawling into the jungle where she encountered a British soldier, Ben Kingsley, a survivor of the massacre of the British soldiers. He was wounded. Bullwinkel now had a patient, a reason to survive. After 2 weeks in the jungle, the two turned themselves into a Japanese concentration camp on the island. Careful to hide the facts of what they had witnessed, saying they had just washed up on shore; the two were taken prisoners of war. Kingsley died a short time afterward from his wounds (he had been bayoneted). Bullwinkel would survive three years and eight months in captivity, determined to bear witness to what had happened to her fellow nurses. Twenty four nurses, out of 65, would survive the years of captivity. Once back in Australia in 1945, Bullwinkel at last got to tell her story. "Australian Nurses Massacred. Mown Down in Cold Blood" was the headline. Fifty years later, she returned to the Pacific island of Banka, site of the massacre, for the dedication of a shrine to the fallen nurses, erected at the site of the massacre.
Let us always remember. Let us be inspired by this true tale of danger, trauma and risk, and the fallen nurses who lived such lives in nursing. Nurses Week is the time to honor our fallen colleagues and to honor our best dreams for nursing and all it can be, to honor our colleagues, our patients and ourselves.
Norman, E. & Angell, D (1999). Vivain Bullwinkel: Sole survivor of the 1942 Australian nurse massacre. Nursing History Review, 7, 99-112.
About the Author: Dr. Lynn Dunphy is the Graduate Program Coordinator at the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, Florida Atlantic University. You can e-mail your comments or questions to Dr. Dunphy at ldunphy@fau.edu
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