Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen Best

Nora Heysen, Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen Best, (1944, oil on canvas, 76.6 x 57 cm, AWM ART22216).

In April 1941, as the Germans advanced down the Greek peninsula, the fighting around the 2/5th Australian General Hospital grew more intense. There were constant enemy air raids, and hospital supplies and food was running out. Matron Kathleen Best, affectionately known as “KB”, was ordered to prepare her nurses for immediate evacuation on 23 April. Because transport was limited, not everyone could leave immediately, and Kathleen was asked to choose 44 women to leave first: 39 would have to remain behind with her. She came up with a plan to help decide who would go and who would stay:

I asked them to write on a slip of paper their names and either “stay” or “go” and hand them to me … Not one Sister wrote “go” on the paper. I then selected 39 sisters to remain [with me].

With the railway line destroyed, the departing nurses put on their helmets, piled into trucks and headed towards the harbour, where fishing boats ferried them out to a waiting ship. One nurse recalled, “We had to judge the gap, and leap to the destroyer, equipped with tin hat, respirator, great coat, and a very tight mid-length skirt.”

The nurses left behind in Greece struggled on despite the air raids. Finally, in the early hours of 26 April, they too were evacuated to Crete, and then to Egypt. For her courage and efficiency throughout the evacuation, Kathleen was awarded the Royal Red Cross.

Find out more about Kathleen Best here.