Shortly after Great Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Australia’s Prime Minister Robert Menzies told his fellow Australians that ‘in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war’.
Thus began Australia’s involvement in the Second World War. A war that was to see Australian men and women serve in a variety of locations including the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Britain, Asia, the Pacific and Australia.
By 1940 almost 4,000 of Australia’s trained nurses had joined the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS). To join the AANS, staff nurses and sisters had to be a British subject domiciled in Australia and aged between twenty-one and forty.
The first nurses to go overseas were those of the 2/1st Australian General Hospital (AGH) in January 1940 with the Australian 6th Division. Their destination being the Middle East where the 6th Division were to relieve British troops who were being relocated to France. In 1941, there were also Australian nurses serving in Malaysia with the 8th Division, at Rabaul in New Guinea and Colombo in Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka.
With the entry of Japan into the war in late 1941, those nurses stationed in the Middle East were brought home whilst some of their colleagues serving in South East Asia and New Guinea would lose their lives or become Japanese prisoners-of-war.
On their return to Australia, the nurses were detached to the military hospitals which had been established across the length and breadth of the country including northern Australia. Many of these nurses, however, towards the end of 1942 were posted to New Guinea.
The Beechworth Health Service, because of the fifteen Ovens District Hospital trained nurses who served in World War One, has a strong link with the Australian Army Nursing Service. This link is further strengthened by seven women who served in World War Two, both at home and abroad, and who also did their nursing training at the Ovens District Hospital.
They were Caroline Ennis, Harriet Jenkins, Dorothy Lacey, Rita Nunan, Katherine O'Toole, Marion J Pittaway and Laura Sandwith. These are their stories.