Not in her wildest dreams would Sister Caroline Ennis ever have thought she would be a passenger on the legendary Queen Mary, an 80,000 tonne luxurious ocean liner. However, in early February 1941, Caroline was one of forty-three nurses attached to the 2/10th AGH who boarded the Queen Mary at Pyrmont dock, Sydney.

The oldest daughter of Hugh Martin Ennis and Mary Josephine Carter, Caroline’s early years were spent on a grazing property near Prairie in Queensland and at Cheshunt in north east Victoria’s King Valley.

She began her three year nurse’s training in 1933 at the Ovens District Hospital and passed her final exams in April 1936. Before enlisting in August 1940, she nursed at the Wangaratta District Hospital and at Westham, a private hospital in Rowan Street, Wangaratta.

The nurses of the 2/10th AGH were all members of the AANS. Prior to their departure, they had been medically examined, inoculated against typhoid fever and smallpox, issued with their uniforms, identity discs and pay books. They were also required to have a last will and testament.

The Queen Mary docked at Seletar, a British Naval Base in Singapore on 18 February 1941. After disembarking, the 2/10th AGH went to the Colonial Service Hospital located at the city of Malacca in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula.

Except for an eleven day attachment to the 2/4th Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) in January 1942 at Kluang, Caroline nursed continually with the 2/10th AGH. Contact between the Australian and Japanese armies commenced in the middle of January, leading to the 2/4th CCS treating thousands of casualties. On one night alone they treated over 2,000 wounded.

Caroline rejoined the 2/10th AGH on 17 January by which time the hospital had relocated to the Oldham Hall Mission Boarding House and the nearby Manor House on the Bukit Timah Road in Singapore. This was not the wisest choice of location because in February, the Bukit Timah Road became the route of entry for the Japanese into Singapore. The Japanese attacked the 2/10th from the ground and from the air, leading to deaths and injuries to staff and patients alike. British Lieutenant General Arthur Percival’s predications, that the British Commonwealth forces would smash the Japanese on their invasion of Singapore, proved to be spectacularly inaccurate.

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The dawning of 12 February 1942 saw sixty-five Australian nurses from the 2/4th CCS, the 2/10th AGH and the 2/13th AGH remaining in Singapore. Little did they know that the fall of Singapore was imminent, in truth it was only three days away.

That morning, after being informed that the 2/10^th AGH was almost certainly surrounded by the Japanese, Matron Paschke gathered her nursing staff together. She told them, they had only a few minutes to collect their belongings as they, along with other nurses from 2/4^th CCS and 2/13^th AGH, were to be evacuated immediately. This was greeted with howls of protest but Paschke remained steadfast. Perhaps she too had heard the rumours of how nurses in Hong Kong had been brutally raped by the Japanese. She was also well aware that any nurse who refused to obey the order to evacuate would be court-martialled.

As the nurses were being driven to the docks, the Japanese were already on the ground and in the air. Forced to take cover in St. Andrew’s cathedral, the nurses sat quietly ‘while an air raid raged and ack-ack guns echoed loudly through the church’.

During their first night at sea, the nurses slept on the deck mercifully unaware that the Vyner Brooke had lost its convoy and was left to make its own way through minefields.

At two o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday 14 February 1942, the ship’s siren sounded when ‘six planes collected themselves into formations of three and proceeded to bomb us’. This was the beginning of the end for the Vyner Brooke. Time and time again it was bombed.

‘We had been told to see that every civilian person was off the ship before leaving it ourselves. Believe me, we didn’t waste time getting them overboard! Nobody was anxious to linger on a burning and rapidly sinking ship.’

After a brief respite, the planes returned, machine gunning the deck and the lifeboats, leaving only two lifeboats to get away safely.

As the Vyner Brooke rolled and disappeared beneath the waters of the Banka Straits, Caroline Ennis sat in a packed raft holding two small children. Assisting to keep the raft afloat, was Sister Betty Jeffrey, who later while incarcerated in a Japanese prisoner of war camp wrote of that night: ‘Later on we saw motor boats searching for people in the darkness; we shouted to them, but they missed us. We eventually came in close to a long pier, but were carried out to sea again. We saw a fire on the shore and knew the lifeboats had made it, so we paddled furiously to get there.’ They were so close to the pier that they could see their colleagues, in fact they could even hear them talking; but the elements conspired in the form of a storm and blew them back out to sea again.Meanwhile the two small children, a Chinese boy about four and an English girl about three, slept in Caroline Ennis’ arms. Not to be deterred, they tried again to land near a lighthouse but ‘they missed it by a narrow margin’. They ‘seemed helpless against those vile currents’. When trying to land at the lighthouse for a second time, the currents drew them back out to sea again.

Mistaking Japanese boats for rocks, they paddled towards them only to find themselves surrounded by boats, ‘each one packed with armed Japanese soldiers; ... They looked hard at us, spoke to us in Japanese, then away they went ... All this left a pretty awful taste in our mouths, for we then realized we didn’t have a chance of getting away from them ..’

The next morning, 15 February 1941, much to their collective dismay, not only were they as far out to sea as when the Vyner Brooke sank, but they were also miles further down the coast. To lighten the raft’s load, Sisters Jeffrey and Harper joined two Malay sailors in the water. ‘We were all coming in well, we four swimming alongside and keeping a bright conversation about what we’d do and drink when we got in – then suddenly the raft was once more caught in a current which missed us and carried them swiftly out to sea. They called to us, but we didn’t have a hope of getting to it; they were travelling too fast for us to catch them.’

All those on the raft, including twenty-eight year old Caroline Ennis and her two small charges, were never seen again.

What Caroline and her fellow nurses, those who had drowned at sea, those who were soon to be murdered on Radji Beach and those interred as Japanese prisoners of war for more than three very long years, did not know, is that their deaths and suffering could have been avoided.

On at least three occasions before the fall of Singapore, a senior medical officer with the 8^th AIF Division, Colonel Alfred Derham, pleaded with General Gordon Bennett, the commander of Australian forces in Malaya, that the nurses be evacuated. His requests ‘were refused on the grounds that civilian morale would be undermined’.

Of the sixty-five nurses who boarded the Vyner Brooke, twelve were lost at sea, twenty-one were shot and killed on Radji beach by Japanese soldiers, eight died in Japanese prisoner of war camps and twenty-four returned home to Australia in October 1945.

Sources

Caroline Mary Ennis, Service Record Number VFX 38751, National Archives Australia.

White Coolies, Betty Jeffrey, Angus & Robertson 1954.

Some Tasmanian nurses – An Anzac Story, Peter Henning, http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php/article/some-tasmanian-nurses-an-anzac-story

© Anne Hanson, 2013 annehanson1@bigpond.com