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Alfreda Wilhelmina Krichauff (later Thrush)

1905-1987

Captain, Royal Army Medical Corps, WW2
 

Summary

Alfreda Krichauff was a South Australian medical practitioner in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) from 1941 to 1946. She was practising medicine in England when war broke out in September 1939. There was no point returning to Australia seeking to serve, as women doctors were not welcome in the Australian Army Medical Corps.

Krichauff served in England at Chester Military Hospital and then in India, primarily in Karachi and Dehra Dun. While in the RAMC, she married the Reverend Harold Clifford Thrush, a RAAF chaplain from Adelaide, in London in May 1945.

Captain Alfreda Thrush relinquished her RAMC commission in May 1946 and returned to Adelaide soon after. She retained the honorary rank of Captain.

After the war, Dr Thrush was an honorary ophthalmologist and refractionist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the wife of the rector of St Cuthbert’s Church Prospect. Her health remained compromised due to illness contracted in India during the war.

Dr Thrush died in Adelaide on 22 October 1987, aged 82.

She is commemorated under her unmarried name of Alfreda Krichauff on the WW2 Honour Board at St Peter’s Girls’ School, Stonyfell, SA.

Before the War

Born on 13 April 1905, Alfreda Wilhelmina Krichauff was one of the two children (1s, 1d) of Edward William Krichauff (1858-1925) and his wife Emilie Clara nee Eimer (1868-1938). Her father, a government surveyor, had been appointed chairman of the South Australian Lands Board in 1902, and was subsequently a trustee of the State Bank. (Edward’s father was Friedrich Krichauff, a prominent colonial figure and parliamentarian). Emilie was the daughter of George Valentine Eimer, part owner of a German language newspaper in South Australia.

Alfreda’s parents sent both children to private school. Alfreda attended St Peter’s Collegiate Girls’ School in North Adelaide for at least her senior schooling (1918-23). She went on to university, beginning an arts degree but switching to medicine in 1925.[1] Krichauff enjoyed a busy social and sporting life as an undergraduate, competing in intervarsity sports and winning numerous swimming awards. Perhaps as a consequence her academic career suffered and she had to retake various examinations.[2] When the medical faculty determined that she be re-examined in all final year subjects yet again in November 1933, she took pre-emptive action. She and her mother sailed for England, travelling 3rdClass, so Alfreda could sit the medical examinations conducted in London by the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians. Attached to West London Hospital, Krichauff passed the requisite examinations in 1933-34, and qualified MRCS and LRCP.

Alfreda remained in the United Kingdom. She worked at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary, very likely with the pioneering eye surgeon Tudor Thomas.[3] She returned to Australia in 1935 via the United States visiting her in-laws, including her sister-in-law a public health nurse.[4] Back home in Adelaide, she was house surgeon first at the Adelaide Hospital (where conditions had prompted resignations by previous staff) and then at Queen’s Home in Rose Park where the speciality was mothers and babies.[5]

In 1937 Alfreda took a 1stClass passage to Canada and by 1939, she was in England once more. She held a position in the Western Eye or Ophthalmic Hospital, a small specialist hospital in Marylebone Road London for adults and children.[6]

Her plan to study public health was interrupted by the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939.[7]
 
War Service in England and India

Alfreda remained in London after war broke out, working at the Western Ophthalmic Hospital and connecting with the Australian Women’s Voluntary Service organised by Lady Eileen McCann, wife of South Australian Agent General in London.[8]

On 30 May 1941 Alfreda Krichauff joined the Royal Army Medical Corps with the rank of lieutenant.[9] She could have returned to Australia but it would have been all but fruitless to offer her services in the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) because to all intents and purposes it did not accept women doctors.[10] By contrast, women doctors in England were able to volunteer for regimental and/or hospital duties in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) from 1939 and from 1942 they were called up as their male colleagues.[11] As well as having the opportunity to use their medical skills in the war effort, women in the RAMC enjoyed pay and conditions equivalent to unmarried male doctors. By early 1942 there were around 200 women doctors working in the RAMC including several from Australia and North America.[12]

Alfreda Krichauff was not the first Australian woman doctor to serve with the RAMC: several Australian women had deliberately travelled to done so in World War 1 including South Australian Phoebe Chapple who had been awarded the Military Medal.[13] In early 1940, Mary Thornton, a Victorian radiologist rebuffed by the AAMC, travelled to England and was appointed to the RAMC.[14] Krichauff enjoyed the advantage of being on the spot; Dr Mary Thornton travelled from Australia, commenting she ‘curse[d] the Australian military authorities whose refusal to accept service from women doctors had forced me across the world ...’[15]

Krichauff was the second Australian woman doctor to have such a position in World War 2.

Like all women in the RAMC, Krichauff had to pass the medical examination and receive the ill-fitting khaki uniform and the RAMC badge. After being introduced to the ways of the British army at a hospital or training depot, she was posted to Chester Military Hospital in Liverpool Road with the 19thCompany RAMC in 1941. Regarded as relatively safe from German attack, Chester was the location of many hospital beds for wounded and convalescent troops. Krichauff would also have treated women in the rapidly expanding Auxiliary Territorial Services.[16] 

She was promoted from lieutenant to captain in February 1942.

In mid April 1943 she embarked with 17 British General Hospital (17 BGH) for an unknown destination. In her diary she recorded her dismay that there had not been time to marry ‘HCT’ before departure. ‘HCT’ was the Reverend Harry Clifford Thrush, a chaplain with the RAAF in England, from Adelaide like herself, and a widower older than she. They had met up England though were probably known to each other in Adelaide through family and friends.

After a two month voyage, Krichauff disembarked in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 11 June 1943 and was posted to Dehra Dun at the foot of the Himalayas in the Northern Command District of India. Her entire deployment in India was in hospitals the Northern Command, in Lahore, Karachi  and Dehra Dun. Hospitals in the Northern Command took sick and wounded Indian and British troops from conflict areas in the Middle East, Persia and Iraq, and the North West Frontier on the Indo-Afghan border. Dehra Dun was the site not only of 17 BGH, but also of internment camps holding Italian prisoners of war and a hospital for their treatment.

Krichauff reached Dehra Dun on 15 June and was billeted with several other RAMC women doctors in a private home. She began in the minor surgical wards of 17 BGH, and got them into a working order that pleased her. Language barriers made communication with her Indian patients very difficult. She treated young Ghurka soldiers who to her amusement ‘always look as if they are enduring the sufferings of the damned’.[17] Off duty she met other women doctors and the senior nurses at the hospital, found the local church and attended as regularly as possible, tried to overcome her fear of snakes and made short forays into the town and surroundings. She was not enthusiastic about her posting.
In early July as the monsoon rains began Krichauff developed first one, then a series of illnesses that left her ‘feeling rotten and looking worse’.

Sore throats, diarrhoea and vomiting (‘D and V’) and a persistent fever plagued her but proved very difficult to diagnose and treat. She spent weeks off duty and/or in hospital where she was frustrated by the spasmodic attention and erratic attitudes of her doctor colleagues and the nurses and by the ever-changing treatment regimes to which she was subjected.

During her illness she was informed that she was posted to Karachi and despite her reservations about her fitness to travel, arrived there safely on 6 August 1943. She worked in her area of expertise, eyes, probably in No 6 Base Hospital which had an ophthalmology treatment centre. Within weeks however she was ill again and hospitalised with diarrhoea and persistent fever.  She became depressed, ‘overwhelmingly miserable.’ On 19 September she recorded that she had been in India 100 days, 77 of them sick. From faraway England HCT advised her to buck up and she tried to obey. She was hospitalised again, treated for various illnesses then sent to convalesce. During her convalescence she was informed she was being sent to Lahore with other doctors to undertake a month’s specialist training in anaesthetics, and she was pleased.

Krichauff was successful at the course though not always impressed by the calibre of the senior anaesthetists in the several hospitals to which her group was trained. Her health was relatively good and she took opportunities to sightsee. She arrived back in Karachi on Christmas Eve 1943.
She returned to her hospital to find she had little to do and was effectively being sidelined. On 24 January she was told she was being posted to Dehra Dun again. After another bout of illness following her tonsillectomy and a blazing row with her commanding officer who questioned her competence, she took the train to Dehra Dun and arrived on 22 February 1944.

Krichauff’s work at Dehra Dun was often in the POW hospital, and involved Polish and Italian doctors and patients whose formality and politeness appealed to her. Language barriers receded over the delicious coffee and cake they produced. She was often at 136 Base Hospital which had 1000 beds for Indian troops. From her diary it is clear she worked hard. She often treated patients in the eye ward, did administrative work and travelled between hospitals in the town. There were references to a social life, a good friendship or two, and local sightseeing. She continued to suffer bouts of ill health (‘D and V’, ‘feeling putrid’) though they seemed less consuming than before; they certainly did not fill the pages of her diary. A diagnosis remained as elusive as ever.

Krichauff’s diary entries in Dehra Dun were brief; many were just the date and count of days in India. Sometimes it was because there was ‘nothing exciting to report’, sometimes because she was run off her feet. On the first anniversary of her arrival in India she wrote:

Saturday 10.6.44 430 365 

One year in India It seems longer sometimes but much less at others. Was O M O [Orderly Medical Officer] + kept running all day. Ankle still swollen – one month now or even more.

In July Alfreda relapsed into poor health (‘D and V’, migraine). Malaria and heart murmurs were suggested. Examinations by senior physicians sometimes happened, sometimes not. She longed for a clear decision about her fitness for service. On Sunday 20 August 1944, she slept in after an exhausting day as OMO, missed church, played bridge and met the new anaesthetist. That was her last diary entry in India or anywhere else. 

It is not clear when Alfreda Krichauff returned to England, or where she was posted on her return. She presumably resumed work in British military hospitals as far as her health permitted. Then on 14 May 1945 as the war in Europe ended, she and HCT, Harry Clifford, married in London. She retained her commission in the RAMC for another year and only relinquished it ‘on account of disability’ in May 1946 when she was repatriated home. She retained the honorary rank of captain.

Alfreda’s service in India seems not to have been particularly happy or satisfying. Her chronic sickness was debilitating. She did some sightseeing and certainly purchased Indian fabrics, and table cloths and mats for her married life after the war. Her train journeys between Bombay, Dehra Dun, Lahore and Karachi introduced her to Indian trains and some of the Indian countryside. While at Dehra Dun she escorted patients on a 100 kilometre trip:

Friday 7.4.44 367 302

Went to Chakrata about 7,000 ft up in the Himalayas in ambulance with 3 patients. Quite the windiest toad I have met Orderly awful sick. Didn’t feel too good myself at times Beautiful scenery + snow + things.

Such entries were rare. There were times when she seemed happy and relaxed – in the congenial company of the convalescent depot near Karachi for example – but more often she seemed isolated, particularly when the mails from home were erratic. She was devout but often burdened by her determination to fulfil her religious obligations, attending services when she was far from well or pressed for time.    

Krichauff’s illness appears to have been amoebic dysentery, a condition that would affect her for the rest of her life.[18]
 
After the War

Alfreda’s husband Harry Thrush arrived back in Australia in September 1945 and resumed duties as rector of St Cuthbert’s Prospect in Adelaide. The major Adelaide dailies announced his return, his marriage and his bride but in his first pastoral letter to his flock he made no mention of Alfreda as if to avoid any reference to his private life.[19] Alfreda’s repatriation took longer; she was welcomed by the St Cuthbert’s congregation in June 1946.[20]

Now married and with impaired health, Alfreda gave up her pre-war round of medicine, travel and life abroad. Harry resumed his parish duties and she took up her new role as a rector’s wife. In 1947, she became a clinical assistant in ophthalmology at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, an annual appointment she held into the early 1950s.[21] She was a member of the South Australian Medical Women’s Association, though not a prominent one like her fellow St Peter’s Girls’ Old Scholars Dorothy Sorby-Adams and Mary Burnell (nee Angel).[22] She resumed connections with school friends and spoke about her war experiences to the St Peter’s Old Scholars’ Association while Harry regularly conducted its church services for several years.

Harry retired in 1959 and he and Alfreda made at least one more trip overseas. He died in 1975, aged 82. Alfreda died on 22 October 1987 in the Adelaide suburb of Hazelwood Park, aged 82. Her funeral was conducted at St Saviour’s Anglican Church, Glen Osmond.
 
 
 

[1]Dorothy Sorby Adams, several years ahead of Krichauff at St Peter’s Girls, graduated MBBS in 1922 and went on to be a prominent doctor in South Australia, as did Krichauff’s contemporary Mary Angel (MBBS 1931). 
[2]Krichauff, Alfreda Wilma, Student Card (University of Adelaide Archives).
[3]Advertiser, 15 July 1941, p4; https://www.mddus.com/resources/publications-library/insight/spring-2016/vignette-pioneering-eye-surgeon-sir-tudor-thomas-18931976 (accessed 4 October 2017).
[4]News, 3 October 1935, p2.
[5]Advertiser, 20 September 1935, p26; News, 30 January 1937, p5.
[6]SPGS, Chronicles, 1939, p55; http://www.ezitis.myzen.co.uk/westerneye.html (accessed 3.8.2017). She renewed contact while she was there with a St Peter’s Girls’ old scholar, Violet Ferris, who had joined the Sisters of the Church an taken the name Scholastica.
[7]Advertiser, 15 July 1941, p?
[8]St Peter’s Collegiate Girls’ School Old Scholars Magazine, 1939, p55; Advertiser, 30 December 1939, p21.
[9]https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/35496/supplement/1325 (accessed 26 October 2017).
[10]There were anomalies, for example, the women were listed as ‘Women’s Forces employed with the RAMC’ rather than in the RAMC. See Mary Kent Hughes, Matilda Waltzes with the Tommies, OUP, 2nded., 1944. Using her unmarried name Thornton, she travelled to England in 1940 and gained a commission in the RAMC. There was no mention of Krichauff in her memoir. See also Susan Neuhaus and Sharon Mascall-Dare, Not for glory: a centenary of service by medical women to the Australian army and its allies, Brisbane, Boolarong Press, 2014.
[11]E. Moberley Bell, Storming the Citadel: The Rise of the Woman Doctor, London, Constable and Co, 1953, p185; Albertine Winner, The British Woman Army Doctor, unpublished address, nd, p7.
[12]Supplement to the British Medical Journal, 11 April 1942, p60. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2160604/pdf/brmedj04037-0031.pdf (accessed 5 October 2017).
[13]Susan J. Neuhaus and Sharon Mascall-Dare, Not for Glory: a century of service by medical women to the Australian Army and its Allies, Queensland, Boolarong press, 2014.
[14]Mary Kent Hughes, Matilda Waltzes with the Tommies, London, Oxford University Press, 2ndedition, 1944.
[15]Kent Hughes, Matilda Waltzes with the Tommies, (p41).
[16]http://www.qaranc.co.uk/armyghosts.php (accessed 26 October 2017). See also https://www.chesterwalls.info/infirmary.html 
[17]Alfreda Krichauff, Diary, 22 June 1943 (private collection). Subsequent extracts are taken from the same source.
[18]Information from her family.
[19]News, 12 September 1945, p2; Advertiser, 14 September 1945, p7; Parish Paper of St Cuthbert, No 275, November 1945 (State library of South Australia).
[20]Supplement to the London Gazette, 28 May 1946, p2552; Advertiser, 18.June 1946, p3.
[21]Thrush, Alfreda Wilma, Appointment Card, Hospitals Department, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Record of Services of Honorary Medical and Surgical Staff. Royal Adelaide Hospital Archives. Her family recall her driving her Morris Minor into the hospital two or three days a week.
[22]She was a financial member at least between 1959 and 1969. South Australian Medical Women’s Association, SRG 512/1/3, State Library of South Australia.

KRICHAUFF Alfreda Wilhelmina MRCS LRCP

1905-1987

Alfreda Wilhelmina Krichauff was born on 13th April 1905, in Norwood, SA.   She was the daughter of Edward William Krichauff, a government surveyor, and Emilie Clara, nee Eimer.  Her father was also the chairman of the South Australian Lands Board and a trustee of the State Bank. Krichauff was educated at St Peter's Collegiate Girls School in North Adelaide. She began an arts degree at the University of Adelaide, but changed to medicine in 1925. She excelled in intervarsity sports and won many swimming awards. Krichauff was required to re-sit her final medical examinations, in 1933. Instead of sitting them her mother took her to England to sit the conjoint medical examinations of the RCS and RCP, which she passed qualifying MRCS and LRCP in 1934. Krichauff remained in England and worked at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary, where she gained an interest in ophthalmology. She returned to Adelaide in 1935 and became a house surgeon at the Adelaide Hospital and then at the QVMH. Planning to study public health she returned to England, via Canada, in 1939, where she worked at the Western Ophthalmic Hospital.

While still in England, Krichauff, joined the RAMC, on 30th May 1941, at the rank of lieutenant.  Female medical practitioners in the British Army had pay and conditions equal to those of male medical practitioners. Unlike the AAMC, which would not accept female medical practitioners in their ranks, forcing some Australian female doctors to travel to England to serve with the RAMC. By 1942, there were approximately 200 female doctors in the RAMC, including those from Canada and Australia. Krichauff was posted to Chester Military Hospital with 19th Coy RAMC, followed by a posting to India, serving in the British military hospitals. She contracted amoebic dysentery, while in India, and returned to England. Krichauff married Australian Squadron Leader Harold Clifford Thrush, in May 1945.  He was a chaplain with the RAAF and a widower with an adult daughter. Before the war, he was Rector of St Cuthbert’s Parish at Prospect, SA. Krichauff relinquished her commission in May 1946, after returning to Adelaide at the end of 1945.

Following the war, Krichauff continued to have poor health and became a clinical assistant in ophthalmology at the RAH, an appointment she held until the 1950s. Her husband had returned to his position as Rector of St Cuthbert's Church. She was a member of the South Australian Medical Women's Association and gave talks about her war experiences. Her husband died in 1975 and Alfreda Wilhelmina Thrush, nee Krichauff, died on 22nd October 1987, at Hazelwood Park, SA.  There were no children from the marriage.

Source

Blood, Sweat and Fears III: Medical Practitioners South Australia, who Served in World War 2. 

Swain, Jelly, Verco, Summers. Open Books Howden, Adelaide 2019. 

Uploaded by Annette Summers AO RFD