The new sculpture of nurse Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel was created in association with the Australian College of Nursing Foundation will mark the first representation of a specific nurse or a woman on the grounds of the Australia War Memorial.
In 1941, Vivian Bullwinkel enlisted as a volunteer nurse in the Australian Army Nursing Service during the Second World War. She sailed for Singapore in September after being assigned to the 2/13th Australian General Hospital. When Japanese forces landed in Malaya in December and moved southward, Bullwinkel’s battalion was forced to flee to Singapore. Bullwinkel and 65 other nurses boarded the SS Vyner Brooke to leave the island on February 12, 1942, when the island’s brief defence ended due to defeat.
The ship was sunk by Japanese aircraft two days later. At Radji Beach on Banka Island, a group of medics, men, women, and kids made it ashore. The following day, roughly 100 British soldiers joined them. Bullwinkel was one of them. The group decided to hand it over to the Japanese. The nurses, troops, and injured waited as the women and children from the civilian population searched for someone to whom they might surrender.
After killing the males, Japanese soldiers signalled for the nurses to jump into the water. Then they opened fire on the nurses with a machine gun. Bullwinkel was shot, and until the Japanese left, he feigned to be dead. She spent 12 days in hiding with a wounded British private before surrendering again. The personal passed away shortly after they were brought into custody. The SS Vyner Brooke survivors and Bullwinkel were reunited. She informed them of the massacre, but nobody discussed it further until after the war for fear of endangering Bullwinkel, who had witnessed it. Bullwinkel was held captive for three and a half years.
In 1947, Bullwinkel left the military and was appointed director of nursing at Melbourne’s Fairfield Hospital. She committed her life to nurse and paying tribute to those who died on Banka Island. She worked tirelessly to raise money for a nurses’ memorial and served on several committees, including one for the Australian War Memorial Council and another as president of the Australian College of Nursing.
Bullwinkel gained accolades and distinctions in the decades following the war, including the Florence Nightingale Medal, an MBE, and the AM. Through her service, she exemplified the qualities of compassion that Australian Defence Force nurses embody.
