Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Dorothy was born in Kalgoorlie WA on 7 April 1913. After her mother Alice’s early death, Dorothy was raised in the Coolgardie Convent, while her father Jeremiah worked in a nearby gold mine.

A trained nursing sister, Dorothy joined the Australian Army Nursing Service, a unit of the 2nd Australian Infantry Force, in August 1941. The women of AANS were recruited as soldiers, sworn to”…resist His Majesty’s enemies…”

Dorothy was almost immediately posted to Australian military hospitals in Singapore.

With the surrender of Singapore to the Japanese inevitable, Dorothy boarded the refrigerated cargo ship Empire Star on 11 February 1942. With regular accommodation for only a handful of crew, Empire Star was loaded with RAF equipment and an estimated 2,160 people, including 139 army nurses, and 35 children.

Under escort by the light cruiser HMS Durban, and the anti-submarine vessel Kedah (a converted Penang ferry) Empire Star and the cargo ship Gorgon left Singapore harbour in the early houses of 12 February 1942.

At 0910 hrs in the Durian Strait south of Singapore, six Japanese dive-bombers attacked the convoy. Anti-aircraft fire shot down one aircraft and damaged another, which broke off from the attack. Three bombs hit Empire Star, killing 14 people and wounding 17. She was set afire in three places, but her firefighting equipment was not disabled.

Firefighting parties extinguished all three fires. Australian nurses tended the wounded. As aircraft machine-gunned the ship, two nurses, Margaret Anderson and Veronica ("Vera") Torney, threw themselves upon wounded soldiers to protect them from further injury.

At intervals over the next four hours, swarms of Japanese twin-engined bombers continued to attack the ships. While sustaining more damage, the Empire Star evaded many more bombs by what was recorded as "violent evasive action". On 13 February those killed aboard Empire Star were buried at sea. That same day the ship and her evacuees safely reached Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. She underwent emergency repairs and 48 hours later continued to Fremantle, where she arrived on 23 February.

The Red Cross met the ship and distributed clothes and other essentials to the evacuees, as they had brought very little with them. Dorothy herself was immediately drafted into the unit responsible for the repatriation of the evacuees. Only later was she given recuperation rest at an Army nurses’ hostel.

In September 1942 numerous members of the Empire Star’s company were decorated for their part in the evacuation, including Margaret Anderson (George Medal) and Veronica Torney (Military MBE).

Their nursing colleague, Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel, AO, MBE, ARRC, ED, sailed out of Singapore on the same day on another ship, SS Vyner Brook, along with 65 other nurses. Their ship was sunk by torpedo on 14 February 1942. After reaching shore with a large group of survivors, Vivian became the sole survivor of the infamous Banka Island Massacre, in which her group of Australian nurses were forced into the sea and machine-gunned to death. Vivian was hit by a bullet, but feigned death, only to be recaptured and imprisoned for three and half years by the Japanese.

Both Empire Star and HMAS Durban were both subsequently sunk by enemy action in other theatres.

After demobilisation in 1944 with the rank of Captain, Dorothy went on to follow her nursing career in Perth and Wittenoom, WA. In the early 1950s, she married an older man, Theodore (Tom) Campin (WX15702), a WW2 army mechanic who had seen extensive service in the Middle East and New Guinea.

Theodore’s first wife, Kathleen, died in Narrogin WA in 1949, her early death reportedly influenced by the stresses of the war years.

During the post-war years Dorothy regularly visited her mother’s grave in Boulder (WA) Cemetery, and kept close contact with her cousin, Private William John (Jack) Sheehan (WX12583) and their extended family.

Following her husband Tom’s death in 1981, Dorothy finally retired to Toowoomba, Qld, to be near her brother, Joe, Petty Officer (Radio Mech) Joseph Patrick Sheehan F3734, who served in the RAN during WW2, and his family. Dorothy died in Toowoomba in 2009 at age 96.