Ruth Hannah DICKSON. Nursing Sister 223772 QAIMNSR.
Born 15 May 1890 at Carrowcolman, County Tyrone to Joseph Alexander and Lydia Ann Dickson, nee Simpson of Eglish, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.
1911 residing with her parents and siblings at Carrowcolman, occupation, farmer’s daughter.
She trained as a nurse at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, Ireland 1916-1919.
1930 she departed alone from London port bound for Shanghai on ship, Rawalpindi, disembarking at Shanghai 21 February 1930. occupation, missionary. She departed from Kobe on ship Rawalpindi, disembarked at London Port 29 August 1923 occupation missionary nurse. Her forwarding address was Carrowcolman. She served as a field nurse in China and Singapore.
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 off 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 on the east coast of Sumatra. 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 was picked up by the Japanese and died in a Japanese POW internment camp of malaria at Palembang, Sumatra 24 December 1944 aged 54.
At rest in Jakarta War Cemetery, Indonesia previously laid to rest in Muntok Cemetery.
She is also commemorated Moy War Memorial, The Square, Moy, County Tyrone
Wills and Probate, Ancestry -
Ruth Hanna Dickson of Carrowcolman, Eglish, Dungannon, County Tyrone. Died 24 December 1944 at The Womens Internment Camp, Muntok, Sumtra. Her effects went to Thomas Ernest Dickson, Farmer.
Photograph credited to Friends of the Somme Mid Ulster Branch.
Her full story can be read here -
cas_id=845
https://www.roll-of-honour.org.uk/d/html/dickson-ruth-hannah.htm
