Grey tropical working dress : Staff Nurse V Bullwinkel, 2/13 Australian General Hospital

Vivian Bullwinkel’s nursing uniform still bears the tear made by a bullet sustained during the Japanese massacre of prisoners at Banka Island in 1942. She would be the sole survivor of a horrifying slaughter.

As a staff nurse in the Australian Army Nursing Service Bullwinkel was posted to Malaya with the 13th Australian General Hospital (AGH). When the Japanese invaded in December 1941 the AGH withdrew to Singapore, and Bullwinkel and 65 other nurses were evacuated aboard the SS Vyner Brooke on 12 February, days before the island fell. Two days later the ship was sunk by Japanese aircraft. A large group of survivors, including Bullwinkel and 21 other nurses, made it ashore at Radji Beach on Banka Island. The group elected to surrender to the Japanese, and while the civilian women and children left in search of someone to whom they might surrender, the nurses, soldiers, and wounded waited.

When the Japanese soldiers came the men were taken away and shot, the officers bayoneted, and the nurses made to wade into the sea. There the Japanese machine-gunned the nurses from behind. A bullet struck Bullwinkel in the back, missing her vital organs, and she pretended to be dead until the Japanese had gone. She hid with a wounded British private for 12 days before surrendering once again.

They were taken into captivity, where the private soon died. Bullwinkel was reunited with survivors of the Vyner Brooke. She told them of the massacre, but never spoke of it again during the war lest it endanger her as a witness. Bullwinkel spent three and a half years in captivity before her release enabled her to tell her story. She was one of just 24 nurses from the Vyner Brooke to survive the war.