Australian Army Nurses
Australian army nurses prisoners of Japanese forces in the Dutch East Indies
david
In An Attractive Naivety, Armistice Darcy is one of 65 Australian army nurses evacuated from Singapore on 12 February 1942, just before its fall, on the SS Vyner Brooke. The following day, Friday the 13th, the ship was attacked by six Japanese bombers and sunk. Of those who made it to shore, 21 were savagely raped and murdered by Japanese soldiers on Radji Beach, Bangka Island. One, Sr Vivian Bullwinkel, miraculously survived the massacre, having been shot through her side, and would live to testify against the perpetrators at the Tokyo trials after the war.