Sourced from Oppenheimer's own research and archival material from the Australian War Memorial, Australian Red Cross archives and State Libraries, Australian Women and War contains accounts of women such as Nursing Sister Nellie Gould in the Boer War and Angela Rhodes, the first Australian Military female air traffic controller to serve in Baghdad during the second Gulf War. The book also contains little known accounts of women such as Nurse Ethel Gillingham, one of the only Australian women to be a POW in WWI, and the group of Australian teachers sent to South Africa during the Boer War to work in the internment (concentration) camps.
At the outbreak of World War I, 129 women were registered as medical practitioners in Australia, and many of them were eager to contribute their skills and expertise to the war effort. For the military establishment, however, the notion of women doctors serving on the battlefield was unthinkable. Undaunted, at least twenty-four Australian women doctors ignored official military policy and headed to the frontlines. This book explores the stories of the Australian women who served as surgeons, pathologists, anaesthetists and medical officers between 1914 and 1919. Despite saving hundreds of lives, their experiences are almost totally absent from official military records, both in Australia and Great Britain, and many of their achievements have remained invisible for over a century. Until now. Heather Sheard and Ruth Lee have compiled a fascinating and meticulously researched account of the Great War, seen through the eyes of these women and their essential work. From the Eastern to the Western Fronts, to Malta, and to London, we bear witness to the terrible conditions, the horrific injuries, the constant danger, and above all, the skill and courage displayed by this group of remarkable Australians. Women to the Front is a war story unlike any other.
When Patsy Adam-Smith wrote Australian Women at War in 1984, her aim was to tap into the memories of all the 'brave, modest, forgotten women' while they were still alive, in order to honour them. Now, for the first time, this iconic volume is republished for an entirely new generation of readers. This magnificent work is a history of how Australian women have responded to war - from 1900, when the first nurses sailed to the Boer War, to 1945 and its aftermath. Recording the achievements of our women for all time, it tells of their bravery, self-sacrifice, endurance and devotion. Australian Women at War is a tribute to Australian women.
Profiles the grit, determination and selflessness of 11 outstanding Australian women serving in the two World Wars. This book focuses not only on the outstanding courage these women displayed in battle, but also on their personal struggles and accomplishments - proving they were as heroic in life as they were in war.
A moving story of love, loss and survival against the odds by bestselling author of The Last of the Bonegilla Girls, Victoria Purman. It was never just a man's war... Melbourne,1942 War has engulfed Europe and now the Pacific, and Australia is fighting for its future. For spinster Flora Atkins, however, nothing much has changed. Tending her dull office job and beloved brother and father, as well as knitting socks for the troops, leaves her relatively content. Then one day a stranger gives her brother a white feather and Flora's anger propels her out of her safe life and into the vineyards of the idyllic Mildura countryside, a member of the Australian Women's Land Army. There she meets Betty, a 17-year-old former shopgirl keen to do her bit for the war effort and support her beloved, and the unlikely Lilian, a well-to-do Adelaide girl fleeing her overbearing family and theworld's expectations for her. As the Land Girls embrace their new world of close-knit community and backbreaking work, they begin to find pride in their roles. More than that, they start to find a kind of liberation. For Flora, new friendships and the singular joy derived from working the land offer new meaning to her life, and even the possibility of love. But as the clouds of war darken the horizon, and their fears for loved ones - brothers, husbands, lovers - fighting at the front grow, the Land Girls' hold on their world and their new-found freedoms is fragile. Even if they make it through unscathed, they will not come through unchanged... MORE PRAISE 'a well-researched and moving story' - Canberra Weekly
Australian Heroines of World War One tells the story of eight courageous women through diaries, letters, original photos, paintings and specially drawn maps. These women had the courage and strength for which the Anzacs are renowned and the compassion and tenderness that only a woman can bring. Sister Hilda Samsing from Melbourne became a whistleblower when nursing aboard the hospital ship Gascon, outraged by the bungled evacuation of wounded Anzacs. She defied censorship and kept a very frank diary, reproduced here for the first time.In 1914, Louise Creed, a Sydney journalist, was caught in the besieged city of Antwerp and made a hair-raising escape from a German firing squad.Brisbane's Grace Wilson, ordered to establish an emergency hospital on drought ridden Lemnos Island, arrived there to find suffering Anzacs but no drinking water, tents or medical supplies. Grace and her nurses saved the lives of thousands who had been wounded at Lone Pine and the Nek.In France, Florence James-Wallace, Anne Donnell and Elsie Tranter nursed near the front line in Casualty Clearing Stations, treating soldiers with hideous wounds or blinded by mustard gas. In 1918 they had to deal with an epidemic of Spanish flu, killing some nurses. These brave women returned to Australia but their heroism was quickly forgotten. Two of these women received such meagre pensions they died destitute. Publication of this book with its numerous illustrations has been facilitated by a generous donation from Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, keen that these stories become known to Australians of all ages. This is an updated editon with additional information on some of the nurses supplied by their relatives after they read the first edition.
Presents the funny, tragic and intensely personal stories of over fifty women who were deeply involved in the Vietnam War, in both the combat zone and the home front. Moving, enlightening and sometimes shocking, ordinary women reveal how they surmounted crises, overcame abuse and discovered their real potential.
Olive King was born in Sydney in 1885. She offered her services as an ambulance driver soon after war broke out in 1914. She joined a small private organization early in 1915 and went to Belgium. In May 1915 she joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals and her letters, until now unpublished, date from that time. She joined the Serbian Army in 1916 and subsequently rose to the rank of sergeant. Driving on hazardous roads to the Front and to the Adriatic coast, she was often in danger. She was awarded a Serbian silver medal for bravery, and later a gold medal. Her letters not only give a picture of daily life under wartime conditions and in the immediate post-war years. They also show how a woman of the time regarded herself and her place in society.
Australia's War, 1914-18 explores Australia's involvement in the First World War and the effect this had on the nation' s society. In this very accessible book, Joan Beaumont, Pam Maclean, Marnie Haig-Muir and David Lowe focus on: where Australians fought and why; the tensions and realignments within Australian politics in the period of 1914-18; the stresses of the war on Australian society, especially on women and those whom wartime hysteria cast in the role of the 'enemy' at home; the impact of the war on the country's economy; the role played by Australia in international diplomacy; and finally, the creation and influence of the Anzac legend. Once dominated by the battlefield and official accounts of the war correspondent and official historian, C.E.W. Bean, Australian writing on the war has acquired a new depth and sophistication. Studies of the home front reveal a society riven by divisions without precedent in the nation's history. This single volume will be invaluable to tertiary students and of enormous interest to the reader concerned with the social, political and military history of Australia.
Save Our Sons tells for the first time the full story of the Save Our Sons movement of Australian women who banded together to oppose conscription during the Vietnam War. In 1965, angered by the Menzies' government's decision to conscript young men to fight in the Vietnam War, a group of Sydney housewives issued a national 'distress call - SOS - to mothers everywhere'. Their clarion call was answered by women across Australia, who formed groups of their own in Townsville, Brisbane, Newcastle, Wollongong, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Of varying ages, backgrounds and religious and political persuasions, they united under the Save Our Sons banner, determined to end the so-called 'lottery of death'. In 1965, nobody envisaged this would take eight long years, or that some would be jailed in the process. Set against a backdrop of percolating social change in Australia, Save Our Sons is the first national history of the SOS movement and those who answered its call.
