Mona Margaret Anderson TAIT

Mona Margaret Anderson TAIT. Nursing Sister (Lieutenant) NFX76281 AANS attached to 13th Australian General Hospital. Born 6 February 1915 at Booval, Ipswich, Queensland, Australia to Robert and Maggie Alexandra Tait, nee Ripley, of 100 Derby Street, Cooks Hill, New South Wales, Australia. Enlisted 19 August 1941 at Victoria Barracks, Sydney, N.S.W., aged 26 years and 6 months. Embarked for Singapore from Australia 7 September 1941, disembarked Singapore 15 September 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 27. Only one nurse survived, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel.
Commemorated on the Singapore Memorial, Singapore




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