Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Lieutenant Eileen Mary Short QFX22911- 2/10th Australian General Hospital - Wooroolin WW11 Honour Board
Eileen Mary Short was born 15 Jan 1904 at Maryborough, Qld, daughter of Henry & Bridget Short. The short family lived on the farm, Por 43, which farm backed on to the Logan and Ritchings properties and was sold to Jack Sophus Jessen about 1938. Henry Short selected this property in 1895 so was one of the very early settlers.
Eileen and her siblings, John, Isobel & Clarence were educated at Wooroolin State School. (Pupil number 228) then Eileen trained as a Nurse at Kingaroy General Hospital. The Kingaroy General Hospital Booklet 1914 - 1981 states that Eileen was also a sister on the hospital staff for some years. The memorial to her in the White Room at the Kingaroy RSL states that she was a Sister at Mailtland and Matron Isisford Hospital.
In1941 Eileen joined the Australian Army in Toowoomba. A fabulous photo of Eileen, together with Vi McElnea and Val Smith, waving out of a train carriage window at Brisbane on the occasion of leaving to join the AANS was featured in the Courier-Mail 24 Aug 1941.
When the nurses in the 2/10 Australian General Hospital left Australia they were posted to Singapore, where they served until mid-February 1942 when they were ordered to leave due to the threat of the advancing Japanese army.
The nurses left Singapore on the small and inadequate coastal steamer, the Vyner Brooke. The ship, which was packed with sixty five nurses and more than two hundred civilians and military personnel, set sail for Sumatra via the Bangka Strait. Two days later the Vyner Brooke was bombed by Japanese aircraft and sank. Many Nurses either drowned or were shot by the Japanese but the remaining thirty two nurses were interned as POWs for three and a half years. Eight nurses died in the POW camps, and twenty four nurses eventually returned home to Australia. There is a photo of Eileen in the AWM Archives that shows her lying in a hospital bed in Singapore after her release from the truly awful Belalau camp – she has become a tiny, emaciated figure. She was discharged from the AANS in early April 1944.
After regaining her health Eileen served as Matrons of hospitals at Richmond, Augathella and Isisford. Her last years were spent on her property Karinya at Duleen near Dalby.
Eileen died at Dalby General Hospital on Anzac Day 1976 at the age of 71 years. Members of the Dalby RSL formed a guard of Honour outside St Mark’s Lutheran Church and the pall bearers were ex-prisoners of war.
Lest We Forget