Doreen Violet DUNLOP

Doreen Violet DUNLOP, nee Bedford. Nursing Sister 363771 QAIMNS.

Serving in Singapore in 1942.

Born 1902 to Frederick William Bedford (Corporal, Royal Army Service Corps, who died 1922) and Edith Eva Andrine Bedford, nee Kinipple.

Wife of Major Alexander Louden Dunlop, M.D., R.A.M.C., of Sungei Patani, Kedah, Malaya.

1911 residing with her mother and siblings at 11 Park Terrace, Cross Lane, East Gravesend.

She was a passenger on (Evacuation Ship) SS Kuala which had escaped from Singapore a day before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. This ship was sunk 12 hours later by Japanese bombers on 14 February 1942 near Pom Pong Island. Many women and children were killed on the ship itself, but the Japanese continued direct bombing of the sea whilst the survivors, who were desperately trying to swim the few hundred yards to safety on the shore of Pom Pong Island. The bombing continued even onto the Island itself as the survivors scrambled across slippery rocks and up the steep slopes of the jungle tangled hills of this small uninhabited island in the Indonesian Archipelago. She died within minutes of getting into lifeboat off Pom Pong Island aged 40.

Commemorated on the Singapore Memorial