PLC Remembers War Heroes

On Sunday 13 February, members of the Student Council, Saskia Boquest (Pipe Major), Lexie McMurtie (Drum Sergeant), Principal Ms Cate Begbie and other distinguished guests attended the Vyner Brooke Memorial in Bicton. This year’s event marked the 80th anniversary of the atrocities surrounding the sinking of the SS Vyner Brooke and the ensuing massacre of 21 nurses and one female civilian on Radji Beach, Bangka Island.

Our Student Council opened the service by carrying the Australian flag and two members of our PLC Pipe Band laid a wreath at the foot of the memorial. PLC Old Collegian and soprano singer, Sara Bevan (Macliver 1985) (pictured right) sang a beautiful rendition of the National Anthem.

PLC is the trustee of the Vyner Brooke Memorial at Point Walter Reserve, Honour Avenue, Bicton and together with the Applecross RSL Sub-Branch, we were able to honour these extraordinary women. This is their story.

The Vyner Brooke Atrocity

Eighty years ago, on 16 February 1942, a particularly brutal event occurred; something we would never have known about, had one person not survived.

After the war ended in 1945 that survivor, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, told the world what had happened on Radji Beach that day: the callous execution of 21 Australian nurses and one female civilian.

Newspapers dubbed it 'The Worst Atrocity of the War’, as they incredulously reported on the fate of the 65 nurses who were evacuated from Singapore aboard the SS Vyner Brooke on 12 February 1942. Most, for more than three years, had been listed as Missing or Presumed Dead.

Finally, their families knew what happened to their daughters who had enlisted not to fight, but to nurse the sick and wounded.

They heard how the Japanese had stalked the ship, ignored the Red Cross banners, and bombed it in the Banka Strait as it tried to make its way to Australia with their daughters on board. As it rolled over and sank, the Japanese flew overhead and strafed the water with machine gun fire, killing many.

Twelve of their daughters died then, by gunfire or drowning.

They heard 31 floated to places where they were able to surrender and spent the next three and a half years as Prisoners of War, during which eight died from illness and starvation. And they heard how 22 made it to Banka Island where they gathered under a Red Cross banner and treated the injured.

They listened as Vivian told them their daughters had tried to surrender to a Japanese patrol, but how that patrol ignored the Red Cross banner on the beach and marched the men in their party over the hill and slaughtered them. With latent horror they heard their daughters realised what was coming when they saw the patrol returning, wiping blood from their bayonets, and that their daughters resolved, when ordered into the water, to bravely meet their fate without a sound.

Then they heard their daughters walked together in that extraordinary silence - some holding hands, heads held high - as they died under a hail of machine gun fire.

Their families' raging grief played out in the years afterwards, as their daughters’ names were inscribed on memorials and Honour Rolls all over the country, and their broken hearts poured funding into stained glass windows, nursing scholarships, nurses’ book collections, children’s playgrounds, gardens, parks, and the planting of trees.

Of the 65 nurses on the Vyner Brooke, only 24 made it home. It was determined then, these nurses would never be forgotten.

Lest We Forget.