Physical description

Book has a red white and Malaya 1941, Nursing Sisters of cover, tile printed in white and author's name printed in black on front cover. On the front cover is a coloured black and white photograph "Malaya 1941, Nursing Sisters of 2/4 Clearing Station, 8 Division. Title and author's name also printed in white on spine. The back cover has a summary of the book

Publication type

non-fiction

Inscriptions & markings

At the bottom of the front page is a printed black and white donation sticker: black Maltese cross in circle, "This book was donated to Alfred Archival Association Nursing Division by" Prof Dot Angell (handwritten in black ink) Also previous catalogue number handwritten in black ink on this label. At the top of this page, the previous owner, Vivienne Bulwinkle has written her name. Opposite the title
page eight other surviving nurse POWs have signed their names

Summary

n 1942 a group of sixty-five Australian Army nursing sisters was evacuated from Malaya aboard the Vyner Brooke, a few days before the fall of Singapore. Two days later their ship was bombed and sunk by the Japanese. Of the fifty-three survivors who scrambled ashore, twenty-one were murdered and the remaining thirty-two were taken prisoner. The book is the engrossing record kept by one of the sisters, Betty Jeffrey, during the three grueling years of imprisonment that followed. It is an amazing story of survival and deprivation in the harshest of conditions.