Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Women also Serve..

THREE LAST-WAR SISTERS still on military duty, watching old AIF. men making basket ware. L. to R.: Matron J. M. Hart, Sub matron E. J. Garvin. and Sister E. M. Behrens.
Sisters of last war still nursing soldiers
No other women in Australia could be more envious of the nurses who are going overseas with the Australian forces than thirty-two busy, cheerful women at Randwick Military Hospital.
All of them, including the matron and sub-matron, were war nurses during the last war, and many of them have been tending the illnesses and injuries of soldiers ever since.
Many of them served in advanced hospitals near the battle front and know at first hand the horrors and heart-breaks of war, but all of them say, "We'd love to be going again."
All of them are extremely reticent about their experiences. "It was all part of our job," they say,"we don't want to talk about it."
Sister E. M. Behrens superintends the occupational therapy department. Trained at Albury Hospital she became a war sister in 1916, serving in Egypt and England. She has worked and studied in America for some time and joined the staff at Randwick in 1935.
As well as members of the old A.I.F., these nurses are also looking after members of the new AIF., the Air Force, and the Navy.
"They're much the same as their fathers and uncles," said Matron Hart. "They're all very good kids, and on the whole are very well behaved patients.
"This is a very happy place. So many of ourselves and our patients have been here for a long time, and we are like a friendly family. Our old patients are so cheerful that they are a lesson to us in patience and good spirits."

The Australian Women's Weekly Saturday 07 December 1940 page 23 (Abridged)

SOMEWHERE in South America are Sister Norris and Sister Behrens, who bought a hospital in Goulburn after their return from the war, and did so well that they booked on an American liner for a world's tour, but upon reaching Honolulu happened on Sister Bassetti with a hospital of her own, and looking for two trained assistants.

The temptation was too great, the two left the ship, cancelled their passages and settled in the tropics with their old companion for a twelve-month, and beat it for Valparaiso, and, crossing the Andes, ended up somewhere in Buenos Aires, where they were caught up in the vortex of the life of the Argentines and where they disappeared for a little while only, let us hope.

Norris, Behrens, Simpson, and"Tommy" Thomson—all of the Fourteenth—were affectionately known to the soldiery as the "Charlie Chaplin Family," and they left for the war together from Sydney Hospital.

The Australian Women's Weekly Saturday 27 January 1934 page 24