PNGAA Library
Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF) Nurses: Patrick Bourke
The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF) was a volunteer force of approximately 2,000 men, raised in Australia shortly after the outbreak of the First World War to seize and destroy German wireless stations in German New Guinea in the south-west Pacific.
Nineteen Nurses served with this unit:
| Sister Jessie Neilson Burns Sister Ethel Macquarie Cook Sister Mary Katharine Curtain Staff Nurse Elizabeth Agnes Dever Sister Edith Beck Dickson Matron May Gibbon Staff Nurse Elizabeth Henry |
Sister Catherine Elizabeth
Lethbridge T/Matron Elizabeth Mosey Nurse Frances Mary McIntosh Nurse Isabel Clare McIntosh Sister Marian Adelaide MacLean Sister Agnes Bissett Nelson |
Sister Winifred Agnes Newell Sister Annie Harvey Provan Matron Flora Robertson Sister Beryl Randall Sampson Sister Henrietta Emily Williams Sister Mabel Gladys Wiseman |
Like many of the nurses at Rabaul during WWII, a number of these AN&MEF nurses came from country NSW and Queensland. As they were civilians their names are not included on war memorials, although a number of them did enlist as army nurses later and were recognised for their war service.
The AN&MEF nurses were eventually granted a Rabaul medal for their service. They were on the HMAS Grantala, Australia's first hospital ship in WWI. During her short RAN service, HMAS Grantala supported the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force landing at Rabaul and was later recognised with the battle honour ‘Rabaul 1914’.
Nurses names and photos are from Jennifer Baker’s website, Looking for the Evidence.
For more information and photos go to: https://sites.google.com/site/archoevidence/home/ww1australianwomen/an-mef-nurses
Patients and Nurse: Convalescent soldiers at
the Military Hospital at Namanula, Rabaul
Sisters’ quarters at the Military Hospital, Namanula,
Rabaul. From left to right: Sister Catherine Elizabeth
Letherbridge of Mitchell, Qld; Sister Agnes Bissett Nelson of Glen Innes, NSW; Sister Marian Adelaide MacLean of Maytown, Qld;
and Matron Flora Robertson of Bathurst, NSW