Dorothy Grace Lacey

Dorothy Lacey was one of the unfortunate 2/1^st AGH nurses who took a previously unheard of seventy-eight days to travel from the Middle East to Australia. In early March 1942, they boarded the Laconia bound for Bombay where they transferred to three ships which then sailed in convoy to Colombo. At Colombo they were greeted by ships still burning in the harbour from a Japanese air attack the previous day. They remained at Colombo for several days before commencing the rest of their voyage, of which Helen Baker, one of Dorothy’s colleagues wrote:

‘In convoy and zigzagging we headed out into the Indian Ocean. Later we headed more to the west.... We spent a day in Mombasa with shore leave. We arrived in Durban and were billeted at a military hospital for two weeks while our ships were fumigated etc. The convoy then headed south to the `roaring forties' and then plunged our way home to Freemantle [sic]-a long, rough, cold trip with our one change of undies disintegrating from constant wear & washing-we lived out of our 18 inch travelling suitcase through that 78 days.... ‘

The oldest of three children, Dorothy was the daughter of William James Lacey and Alice Maude Matthew. She was born in May 1914 at the Woolshed, north west of Beechworth where her father was an engine driver.

When she was about twenty, Dorothy successfully applied to become a probationer nurse at the Ovens District Hospital. As a probationer, she was provided with a uniform, received free board and lodging and paid a salary. The training took three years with a preliminary examination after eighteen months and then senior examinations at the end of the next eighteen months. The matron at the time was, Agnes Moglia, a former World War One nurse who also had trained at the Ovens.

After being awarded her certificate in April 1937, Dorothy nursed in Melbourne before accepting a position at Warracknabeal. The Horsham Times dated 7 February 1941 contains a little snippet which reads ‘Sister D Lacey of the Warracknabeal District Hospital staff, has been accepted for service with the A.I.F. ‘

Dorothy returned briefly to north east Victoria to nurse at the 106^th AGH at Bonegilla before embarking for overseas service in June 1941. On arriving in the Middle East she was attached to the 2/1st AGH for two months, then transferred to the 2/7^th AGH for three months and finally returned to the 2/1st AGH in October 1941.

After disembarking the Duntroon with the 2/1^st AGH at Adelaide in May 1942, Dorothy took some leave in Melbourne before returning to nurse with the 2/1^st AGH which was in the process of taking over the Morris Infectious Diseases Hospital at Northfield in South Australia.

The engagement of Dorothy Lacey and Captain Laurence Cecil Snook also with the 2/1^st AGH was announced in the West Australian newspaper on 7 August 1942. That same month, they married in Perth, Western Australia.

The mother of five children, Dorothy died from cancer aged fifty-one in Myanmar (previously Burma) in June 1965. Her husband, an agricultural scientist, was at the time working for the United Nations.

Sources

Guns and Brooches; Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War Jan Bassett, Oxford University Press, 1992. p. 131.

Dorothy Grace Lacey, Service Record Number VX53660, National Archives Australia.