Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Edna Fowles was a highly intelligent person who, had she been born in a later time, her full potential might have been realised. Edna was born on 27 August 1921 in Brisbane to parents Edgar and Mable. Edgar was a senior meteorologist whose job led the family to move with some frequency. Not long after Edna was born the family moved to Melbourne where her prosperous uncle recognised her intelligence. He offered to pay for her to attend medical school but the family talked him out of this arguing that it would be a waste of money as she would marry and have to look after her family. Educated at Manningtree Road Stat School Glenferrie Melbourne Edna dux her class. Upon leaving school she obtained a clerical position at a Japanese trading company, T. Iida in Little Collins Street Melbourne. In this position Edna learnt coding and decoding private commercial material. Having a curious mind, Edna enrolled in a commercial course at Bradshaw’s Business College which covered bookkeeping, shorthand, typewriting, business principles. Wanting to understand more about the business that employed her, Edna also took up studying Japanese for two years with one of the years at Melbourne University, possibly under Senkichi 'Moshi' Inagaki. When war broke out, and the WAAAF was formed, Edna was number 160 on the list of first volunteers. On 3 October 1941, at the age of 20, Edna became an ACW Telegraphist and undertook Morse code training. In August 1942, after nearly a year in the WAAAF, Edna applied for commissioning to become a Cypher Officer which, though recommended, for unknown reasons did not progress. In March 1944 Edna received notification that she was posted to Brisbane to an unnamed unit. Edna’s first impression of ATIS were the two guards her scrutinised her identity card at the entrance they then pointed her to a large building were again two guards requested her ID. One of the first people that Edna ran into was a student from her Japanese classes in Melbourne. She always wondered if he was the person who recommended her for a position in ATIS. Edna was allocated to the Information Section with one her duties being to check POW evaluations. Late in the war Edna and two other Australian service women were requested by MacArthur to join his HQ in Manila. The ladies made it as far as Darwin before the Australian government found out about this request and they were refused permission to leave the country. If they had of progressed overseas this would have meant a pension and later in life a DVA Gold card. This and the chance to serve overseas was lost.

At the end of the war FSGT Edna Fowles was working in MacArthur’s old Brisbane HQ when she received a tap on the shoulder and told that she was to be discharged. Gone was the adventure, the highly secretive world of intelligence and her group of friends. Before she left the WAAAF, Edna signed a piece of paper that stated that she would never divulge what she did during that war or any of the secrets she knew. Following the war Edna completed a course under a scheme for veterans at Melbourne University and gained qualifications as a Speech Therapist, but was unable to find work in Melbourne so that is when she decided to take up a position with the Victorian State Electricity Commission (SEC)at Mt Beauty. It was here that she would meet Ian Noel Barwick an ex-RAAF FSGT Motor Transport Driver who had not long returned from the BCOF. The two married on 1 September 1951. Ian was working as the Transport Supervisor of the Victorian SEC before forming his own company, Barwick Transport. As work with the Snowy Mountain Scheme wound down Ian, Edna and their two sons moved to NSW eventually retiring at Port Macquarie. When asked by her sons for details of what she did during the war she replied that she had signed an oath to never divulge the details. Her sons pointed out that Sidney Mashbir had written a book on his time with ATIS perhaps she could tell them now. Edna responded that that was up to him, she would not tell. The family moved to the northern beaches of Sydney, before Edna and Ian retired to Port Macquarie. Ian died on 2 April 2007 at the age of 92 and Edna on 24 October 2019 aged 98