Wartime nurse’s exploits win young vote
THE 100 year 10 students who packed into Miranda RSL on Tuesday for the sub-branch’s modern history symposium didn’t look inspired when Joan Fisher took the podium.
Ms Fisher, 88, had a tough act to follow.
Kerry Cattell had just spent 20 minutes speaking about his time working in counter-intelligence in the Duc Thanh district of Vietnam in 1970-71.
Mr Cattell finished his address with a summation of the last few weeks before he flew home.
“I would wake up in the night with the machine-guns firing at the edge of the compound and I would roll over in my little bed and think, not now, not now,” he said.
Ms Fisher’s address about her time with the Australian Army Women’s Medical Service promised to be worthy but a little less exciting by comparison
- Living history: Thomas Sewell, Danielle Caton, Ashleigh Neal and Ben Martin examine military memorabilia at the Miranda RSL Sub-branch’s modern history symposium. Picture: Jane Dyson
Ms Fisher volunteered to work with the Red Cross in 1939, aged just 19.
She spent time in hospitals in Australia and on a Dutch cruise liner offered to the Allies for a hospital ship. It was nicknamed Mae West because “she had anti-roll sides and was very curvaceous,” she said.
“Holland had fallen to the Germans so the Germans felt they had a right to her.
“Now and then we’d be followed but Mae was one of the fastest hospital ships in the world and we’d pour on the speed, zig-zagging to avoid them. “That was when you’d see the best of young people.”
St George and Sutherland Shire Leader – 07/08/08
It’s good to see Australian youth being taught about our history, to come into contact with those who put their lives on the line to provide the peace and security now enjoyed by Australians.
1970-71.
Mr Cattell finished his address with a summation of the last few weeks before he flew home.
“I would wake up in the night with the machine-guns firing