Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

From Pauline Connolly

On October 20 1914,  the 12th Battalion AIF embarked  from Hobart on the troopship Geelong.  They were accompanied by Australian army  nurses;  Sister Janet Ella  Radcliffe.  She was above average height, but very slim, weighing only eight stone and was 31 years old.

Sister Janet Radcliff  was mentioned in dispatches in September 1916, for her  hospital work  under   dangerous conditions  at Abbeville.  She  finally returned to Tasmania  in March 1919,  discharged  due to ill-health after serving throughout the war.   When it was offered,  she applied retrospectively   for an £8 Warm Clothing Allowance.  The payment  was to  cover garments  she had purchased during her time  in France . On November 22 1921, after numerous letters back and forth, she received the following  response from the Army District Finance Office in Hobart;

‘With reference to your application for the Warm Clothing Allowance, I have to advise you that I am in receipt of advice from our central office, to the effect that as you were not in France during the winter of 1916-1917 your claim has been disallowed.’

Janet died the following year, aged 39.  An obituary published in the Illustrated Tasmanian Mail (December 14, 1922) paid tribute to her extensive war service, noting that it had been the cause of her premature death:

‘Miss Janet Radcliffe [sic] did long and strenuous work, leaving Tasmania in the first months of the great struggle, and did not return until it was over. She so overtaxed her strength that she returned quite broken in health. All hoped for a continuance of her busy, useful life, but it was not to be. Sister Janet Radcliffe is one more of the gallant war-workers whose life has been given for the cause.’

A treasured item passed down through  Janet’s family  is a brass dish, fashioned from a bomb shell by one of the diggers she had cared for. Its simple inscription reads;

To Miss Radcliff from your friend 25/12/18