British Forces

Sister Elaine Balfour-Ogilvy

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The face of an angel. The photograph on this post is of Sister Elaine Balfour-Ogilvy, 2/4th Casualty Clearing Station. She was the daughter of Harry and Jane Balfour-Ogilvy, from Renmark, South Australia. Elaine was killed in the Banka Island massacre in WW2. She was among the last group of 65 Australian nurses to leave Singapore on the merchant vessel Vyner Brooke on the 12th of February, 1942. The ship was sunk by Japanese aircraft in Banka Strait. 22 nurses came ashore on Banka Island and when they were discovered by the Japanese on the 16th of February, 1942, the nurses, including Elaine, were ordered to walk into the water and were shot by machine gun. Sister Bullwinkel was the only nurse to survive the massacre and gave evidence of the massacre at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 1947. Lest We Forget. Taken from fb/Photograph and information comes from the Australian War Memorial. Image file number AWM P01021.001.