Elaine Balfour-Ogilvy, 14 January 1912 - 16 February 1942

A brief description of the life and Second World War service of Elaine Balfour-Ogilvy, Australian Army Nursing Service 2/4 Casualty Clearing Station. There is an emphasis on her singing and the joy it brought soldiers. Sister Balfour-Ogilvy, along with sixty-three other Australian Army nurses, escaped from Singapore aboard the SS Vyner Brooke on 12 February 1942. The Vyner Brooke was sunk by Japanese air attack off Banka Island, Sumatra, on 14 February. Two of the nurses were killed and nine others, who escaped on a raft, were never seen again. A party of twenty-two Australian nurses landed from a lifeboat on the north coast of Banka Island where they were captured, along with other survivors, by Japanese soldiers. They were forced to wade out into the water and then machine gunned. Sister Balfour-Ogilvy died in this massacre from which there was only one survivor - Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, 2/13th Australian General Hospital.