Harriet May Jenkins

Harriet, affectionately known Bab, was born on 10 November 1901 to Edwin McLaren Jenkins, a road foreman with the Borough of Portland, and Margaret Ann Connery. She was the eldest of three children. Harriet initially attended All Saints School and later furthered her education at Loreto Convent, where she earned her intermediate certificate in 1920.

In late 1921, she began her nursing training at Portland Hospital. However, she resigned in February 1923 due to the hospital’s declining patient daily average, which resulted in insufficient training opportunities.

September 1923 saw Harriet secure a position as a second year trainee at the Ovens District Hospital. However, in November 1925, when she applied to the Royal Victorian Trained Nurses' Association (RVTNA) to sit for her third-year exams, her application was rejected. The association required her to continue her training for another year. The hospital's secretary, Neil Sutherland, sought the help of local state politician Albert M. Zwar, who lobbied the Victoria’s Chief Secretary, ultimately resulting in Harriet being allowed to sit for the exam.

Harriet qualified as a general nurse in January 1926 and in February of that year she returned home to Portland to nurse her ill mother.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, she qualified as a midwife. She spent nearly a decade nursing at Portland Hospital, followed by two years at Ouyen Hospital, and then for a brief period at Casterton Hospital before enlisting in February 1941. At the time of enlisting, she was a thirty-nine-year-old woman of average height, with a fair complexion, grey hair, and grey eyes.

For most of 1941 she nursed at the 29th Australian Camp Hospital, (ACH) at Darley near Bacchus Marsh. Darley was an AIF training centre with a sixty-eight bed hospital.

Conditions in camp hospitals were difficult. Often there was no accommodation for nurses, hygiene was poor, medical and nursing equipment and supplies scarce and sometimes patients had to be treated under canvas or in converted unlined huts without proper heating. At the camp hospitals, nurses besides being responsible for patient care also took on the training of nursing orderlies.

In April 1942, Harriet was posted to a camp hospital at Geelong. In 1943 she was then sent to a hospital at the 13th Australian Prisoner of War Camp known as Camp 13, at Murchison in Northern Victoria.  Camp 13 was the largest purpose-built POW camp in Australia, serving as the headquarters and point of control centre for all Australian POW camps nationwide. Approximately 4,000 Prisoners of War, mainly Italians and Germans were detained at Camp 13.

Promoted to captain in October 1943, Harriet was transferred to the 112th AGH at Brisbane, also known as Greenslopes military hospital. The 112th was a 1,600 bed hospital that treated not only wounded soldiers but also those suffering from tropical diseases like malaria and dengue fever. Nurses fortunate enough to work at a base hospital like Greenslopes had the opportunity to extend their expertise in new and challenging fields such as facio-maxillary and plastic surgery.

Despite Harriet’s almost four years’ service with the Australian Army Nursing Service, her age and her Class II medical classification may have accounted for why she was not posted overseas.

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