Sister Mary Elizabeth Cuthbertson – Second World War
RSL Victoria remembers the sacrifice of Sister Mary Elizabeth Cuthbertson who gave her life in service of her country during the Second World War.
Mary Elizabeth Cuthbertson, known as “Beth”, was born on 5 March 1910 in South Australia, one of four children born to William and Lillian Cuthbertson.
The family moved to Ballarat when Beth was a child where her father worked at Myer Woollen Mills. She attended Ballarat High School before beginning training as a nurse at Ballarat Base Hospital in 1929 and then completing further study at Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne.
Beth returned to Ballarat and in August 1937 her engagement to Dr John Scholes was announced in the Sun newspaper. Dr Scholes was a highly regarded young doctor who had established a local practice in Ballarat.
Tragically, he was seriously injured in a car accident before they were able to be married. He spent months in hospital recovering but collapsed and died in March 1938.
Despite her heartbreak Beth continued to work as a nurse and with the outbreak of the Second World War she became a staff nurse with the Australian Army Nursing Service from 3 September 1939.
Formally enlisting in 1940 she was posted to the 7th Australian General Hospital in December 1940 and worked in Army hospitals in Melbourne and Puckapunyal.
She embarked for Singapore in August 1941, at that time thousands of miles away from the front lines of Europe and North Africa but in the shadow of the growing threat of war with Japan.
Beth was on leave from the 10th Australian General Hospital in Malaya when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. She returned to her unit on 10 December as the Japanese began to advance through Malaya.
Beth continued to serve as the Army hospitals evacuated from Malacca and Johor Baharu to Singapore in the face of the Japanese advance. On 8 February 1942 Japanese forces landed in Singapore and the situation for allied forces became hopeless. The decision was made to evacuate Australian personnel from the island.
On 12 February 1942 Beth was one of 65 Australian nurses among the 181 evacuees who boarded the Vyner Brooke, one of the last ships to leave the island. The ship attempted to escape through the Banka straight to Sumatra but was attacked and sunk by Japanese aircraft.
Beth and around 150 survivors were forced into the water in the Banka strait and attempted to swim to shore on Banka Island. Some made it to land within hours, while others spent as much as two and a half days in the water.
The survivors, having failed to get assistance from local villagers, decided to formally surrender to the Japanese, with a group setting off to hand themselves in. Beth and other nurses remained on the beach tending to the injured.
On 16 February Japanese troops came upon the Beth and the other survivors at Radjil Beach. After being informed by an officer from the Vyner Brooke that they wished to surrender the Japanese soldiers shot and bayoneted the men and forced the women to wade into the sea before shooting them from behind. The only survivor amongst the nurses was Vivian Bullwinkle who feigned death when a bullet passed through her body, missing her internal organs. She was eventually captured and would spend three and a half years as a Prisoner of War.
Beth’s family did not know about Beth’s fate until they finally received a telegram from the Australian Army Nursing service two and a half years later telling them that she was missing presumed drowned.
In September 1945 Sister Vivian Bullwinkel was released from captivity and told the story of Beth’s murder by Japanese forces.
Sister Mary Cuthbertson is one of more than 36,000 names listed on the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat.
When the Memorial was opened in 2004 her sister, Joan Charles, recalled the pain of not knowing what had happened to Beth at Banka Island. She told the Ballarat Courier that the Memorial “means so much to me. Beth has never had a grave, she was shot in the water and left there. It was a terrible thing for my parents to wait for the news. We only knew that Beth was missing. It really was a terrible time for our family.”
The family of Beth Cuthbertson have established a scholarship for nurses in her honour.
RSL Victoria pays tribute to Sister Mary Cuthbertson, her family and all those who have sacrificed in the service of their country.
Lest we forget.
