Australian Army Nurses

The Australian Army Nursing Service provided skilled nursing care to Australian soldiers from the early years of the Commonwealth through the First and Second World Wars and the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan. This topic explores the service, sacrifice and professional achievements of Australian military nurses at home and overseas.

Vivian Bullwinkel

David Gormley-…
Vivian Bullwinkel was the sole survivor of the massacre of 21 nurses on Bangka Island in World War II. She spent the following three and a half years in Japanese internment camps in Sumatra. She appears in An Attractive Naivety, and in reading her diaries, notebooks, and her testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials in December 1946, I was struck by her extraordinary courage and leadership. Her story is told in my historical novel, An Attractive Naivety.
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