Mary Elizabeth CUTHBERTSON.

Mary Elizabeth CUTHBERTSON. Nursing Sister (Lieutenant) VFX38746, Australian Army Nurses Service 2/10th Australian General Hospital. Born 5 March 1910 in Stirling, South Australia to William Melville Cuthbertson and Lillian Beatrice Cuthbertson, of 121 Burbank Street Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Enlisted at Melbourne, Victoria Australia aged 30 years and 5 months, occupation, trained nurse. Embarked Melbourne 29 July 1941 disembarked Singapore 17 August 1941.
She and sixty-four Australian nurses, wounded service men and 250 civilian men, women and children were evacuated on Vyner Brooke from Singapore on the 12 February 1942. The ship was bombed and sunk by Japanese aircraft of Bangka island east of Sumatra on the 14 February 1942. Some of the survivors reached the island only to be captured by the Imperial Japanese Army Some were imprisoned in Palembang and Muntok POW camps others were massacred including twenty-one nurses. On the 16 February 1942 the nurses were ordered to march into the sea and stand in a row where they were shot from behind. She was aged 31. Only one nurse survived, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel.

Attestation photograph