Studio portrait of VFX65911 Lieutenant (Lt) Sister Kathleen Carew Gardner, 115 Australian General ...

Studio portrait of VFX65911 Lieutenant (Lt) Sister Kathleen Carew Gardner, 115 Australian General Hospital. After enlisting, Lt Gardner spent five months at Heidelberg Hospital, Vic, before being posted to the Dutch Hospital Ship, Oranje. Her first journey was to Port Said, Egypt, where 650 patients were loaded from barges onto the deck using cranes. The couple first met when Capt Menzies, of the 2/7th Battalion, was evacuated from Papua New Guinea to the 115th Australian General Hospital at Heidelberg, Vic, for the treatment of a wound to his knee in February 1943. Sister Gardner was the nurse in charge of his ward, and the two soon became friends. They announced their engagement on 14 May 1943, the date of Capt Menzies birthday and also the day the Centaur, a hospital ship, was sunk off the Queensland coast by a Japanese submarine, killing many of Sister Gardner's close friends. The couple were married on 26 June 1943, and Sister Menzies was discharged from service several months later.