The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (NFX70527) Sister Kathleen Margaret Neuss, Royal Australian Army Nursing Service, Second World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by , the story for this day was on (NFX70527) Sister Kathleen Margaret Neuss, Royal Australian Army Nursing Service, Second World War.

NFX70527 Sister Kathleen Margaret Neuss, Royal Australian Army Nursing Service
Executed 16 February 1942
Story delivered 7 April 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Sister Kathleen Margaret Neuss.

Kathleen Neuss was born on 16 October 1911 to John Henry and Mary Catherine Neuss of Ballarat, Victoria. Her grandfather, Samuel Perry, was a veteran of the Eureka Stockade. When Neuss was young, the family moved to take up farming land north-west of Inverell in New South Wales. John Neuss worked to become a well-known farmer in the area, serving briefly as president of the District Council of the Farmers and Settlers Association.

Neuss attended Bannockburn Public School, travelling to school on horseback with her father and sister. In 1927 and 1928 she attended Inverell High School, and initially hoped to be a school teacher. She did not pass the entrance exam, and instead trained as a private nurse at Inverell Hospital and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. By the time the Second World War broke out she was living in Cremorne, Sydney.

On 17 December 1940, at the age of 28, Neuss enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service and was placed in the Emergency Unit at Victoria Barracks in Sydney. She was given a farewell at the Inverell local hall on 20 January 1941, and embarked for Singapore on the SS Queen Mary a month later. There she joined the 2/4th Casualty Clearing Station in Kajang and the 2/10th Australian General Hospital, and also served for a time with the 2/13th AGH.

Neuss was working on the Malay Peninsula when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in February 1942. Once the fall of Singapore became inevitable most Australian personnel were evacuated from the island, but the 2/10th AGH remained until 12 February, when they, too, were evacuated. Neuss was one of 65 Australian nurses who left Singapore aboard the Vyner Brooke, but two days later the ship was bombed by the Japanese.

Neuss was hit in the hip by shrapnel from a bomb blast, and had to be helped up on deck by her friends Wilma Oram and Mona Wilton, themselves already wounded. They all but carried her to a lifeboat where gave her life jacket to her friend, Pat Gunther, who ended up surviving as a prisoner of the Japanese. Many lives were lost in the sinking. Some were helped into lifeboats, some swam, while others clung to rafts. Those who could made for the nearby Banka Island.

Some of the survivors travelled from the beach to the nearest port to formally surrender to the Japanese, but Neuss was among the 22 Australian nurses who remained to tend the wounded.

On the morning of 16 February a group of Japanese soldiers arrived on the beach. The wounded men were ordered to march around a headland, where they were killed.

The remaining nurses and one civilian woman were ordered to walk into the sea. When the water reached their waists the Japanese opened fire with machine-guns. Of the 22 Australian nurses ordered into the sea all but one were killed, including Kathleen Neuss. She was 31 years old.

Kathleen Margaret Neuss is commemorated at Memorials in Inverell and Ballarat, and on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with some 40,000 others from the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Sister Kathleen Margaret Neuss, who gave her life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.
Christina Zissis
Editor, Military History Section