Storyteller Tuesday Challenge: The Bangka Island Massacre

Australian Nurses killed in WW11

Each week, Genealogy Matters publishes a challenge for anyone interested in family history called Storyteller Tuesday Challenge. The challenge is that your post should be 350 words or less and should directly address the prompt for that week.

Prompt

MILITARY MARVEL - Tell about an ancestor who was in the military.

Was the ancestor in a specific battle? Find the story behind the war and use as the backdrop for your ancestor’s story. What might he/she have experienced?

Ellenor Calnan

My second cousin once removed, was a casualty of WW11, when she died in the waters off Singapore in 1942.

Ellenor Calnan known as Ellen or Nell, was born at Culcairn NSW, Australia in 1912, to parents, William CALNAN and Mary O’BRIEN. In 1941, at age 28 years, Ellenor enlisted into the Australian Army, as a military nurse, and served on the 2/10 Australian Nursing hospital ship, HMS Vyner Brooke.

The ship had on board, military personnel and 62 nurses, who were being evacuated, when it was bombed by the Japanese, and sank in Banka Strait, on 14 February 1942. Two nurses died in the bombing, twelve were lost at sea, and the remainder safely reached the shore, off Indonesia, along with other passengers who survived. Ellen Calnan was one of the nine nurses who was lost at sea.

On land, under the sign of the Red Cross, the nurses who survived the bombing at sea, began to tend to the injured passengers from the ship. On discovering that the island was occupied by the Japanese, one of the officers from the ship surrendered the survivors.

A group of 20 Japanese soldiers, then arrived at the makeshift hospital, and ordered all injured men who could walk, to walk a short distance away out of sight of the hospital. Immediately the nurses heard gunfire. The Japanese soldiers then returned, and ordered the nurses to walk into the sea. They were then shot in the back, by a barrage of machine gun fire.

Sister Vivian Bullwinkell survived the gunfire, by pretending to be dead, and and was washed up unconscious, onto the shore. She was eventually captured and became a POW of the Japanese for two years. She survived this, and told her story of the massacre at War Crimes Trials. This tragedy was unknown to anyone in Australia, until Vivien Bullwinkell arrived home in 1945 and was able to tell the story.

There were newspaper articles in papers right across Australia. Somehow, along the way, this story was forgotten about, and has only recently been brought to public attention again.

There is further information about this tragedy in a post I wrote for Anzac Day.
See below:

Ellenor Calnan - Australian War Memorial

The Australian nurses, including Ellen Calnan, who left Australia in January 1941 to staff the 2/10th Australian General Hospital in Singapore. Photo was taken in the grounds of the hospital, just before they left Australia. Ellenor Calnan is in the second row, eight from the left.

Sources:
Sources:
Australian War Memorial
Virtual War Memorial/Bangka Island
wikipedia.com

Further Reading:
Remembering the fallen of the Banka Island Massacre – Australian College of Nursing
ANMC | Honoring Nurses Past, Present and Future
Angels of mercy: Uncovering the secrets of the Bangka Island massacre – RN Breakfast – ABC Radio National