The Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force

The Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) was formed in March 1941. It was instrumental for changing the role of Australian women in war. With the creation of the WAAAF, women were no longer restricted to voluntary support activities and nursing. The WAAAF opened the door for women to participate directly in military tasks, albeit in a supporting capacity.

Fig.1 Recruitment Poster 

Fig.2 WAAAF recruits Adelaide, South Australia.

Initially the main employment for the women was in the area of wireless telegraphy, but once Japan entered the war in December 1941 increasing demand for men to take on operational tasks forced the recruitment and re-muster of WAAAFs into an increasing range of categories.

Of 120 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) trades existing during World War 2, women were employed in 72; WAAAF officers and airwomen performed such diverse functions as flight mechanics, armament fitters, aerial cinematography, chemical warfare research as well as the more conventional roles of mess steward, cook, administrative officer and clerk. They performed aerodrome soil testing, carried out mustard gas decontamination trials and acted as landing control officers for parachute training. WAAAFs were aircraft fabric workers, flight riggers, stores hands, aircraft plotters, and they taught aircraft recognition to aircrew trainees.

WAAAFs served in 273 RAAF units located in all parts of Australia including Port Pirie; where in June 1943 there were just over 100 WAAAF attached to No. 2 Bombing and Gunnery School; by January 1945 there were 148 WAAAF as part of No. 3 Aerial Observer School personnel strength.

The women of the WAAAF were in fact mostly young girls, more than two thirds of them were below the age of 21 when they joined. They came from all walks of life; they were city and country girls. Although the majority came from the more populous states, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, 2,651 came from South Australia, 3,345 from Western Australia and 836 from Tasmania.

They served almost exclusively in Australia, although a very small number of them transited through New Guinea and the Solomon Islands for a limited period of time carrying out their duties.

Numbers increased from 1500 women at the end of 1941 to over 18,000 in late 1944. With the end of the war, the WAAAF was demobilised. 

Sources:

The Age, Melbourne, Vic, Wednesday 26 February 1941 

RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, The Home Front. Mainland Australia and the Southwest Pacific Area 1939- 1945

The Armour Boys

James and Martha Armour nee Maloney of Hallam Street, Ellendale, Port Pirie had three sons who all volunteered for the Great War.

Walter James Armour of the 50^th Battalion was killed in action in France at Mouquet Farm on the 16^th August 1916 and is commemorated on the Port Pirie World War 1 Gates. He has no known grave and is “Known Unto God”.

Private Walter James Armour 

George Frederick Armour of the 12^th Battalion returned to Port Pirie a Military Medallist. He served at Gallipoli, before being wounded and then gassed in France.

Roy Douglas Armour of the 10^th Battalion also served at Gallipoli, where he was wounded as he alighted from the landing boat. He was wounded a further two times in France before returning to Australia and lived to 87 years of age.

Roy writes to his parents below...

Hospital, May 1^st, 1915.

Dear Mother and Father,

This leaves me doing real well. I was in the landing party on the 25th of April and was slightly wounded in the left foot. The wound is healed up now and I expect to leave hospital soon and am anxious to have another go at the Turks. We left Lemnos on the 24th (it is about 3 or 4 hours' run from the Dardanelles). After stopping at Tenedos got into destroyers and then made our final dash for the landing place. 

We arrived there (at about 4 o'clock on the morning of the 25th) about 200 yards from the waters' edge. We then got into the small boats and rowed ashore under a heavy fire from the Turks, who were waiting for us on a hill a few yards inshore, and I can tell you they did pour the bullets down on us. They looked like a heavy shower of rain on the water all round us. But owing to the bad light, and them being bad shots, they did not manage to do a great deal of damage. 

All the same I will never forget those few moments as long as I live it was hotter than hell. At last our boat touched the shore and we all hopped out as quickly as we could. Just as I was about to take the leap I got it in the foot. I scrambled to the foot of the hill and got under a bit of cover with the other chaps who were wounded. Then our lads fixed their bayonets and made a charge which drove the Turks back as fast as they could run. When the sun rose and things were getting a little bit lighter they started to put the shrapnel into us, but they didn't get it all their own way. Our men o-war had a little bit to say in the matter, and when they started it was goodbye Turkish batteries. They broke things up like fun. 

I got on board the hospital ship about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and no sooner had I got to bed than I was sound asleep. When I woke up we were on our way to Alexandria. The way we were looked after on board was wonderful. The Sisters were as good and kind as any women in the world. They never seemed to want a rest they were going night and day. When we arrived at Alexandria we entrained for Heliopolis and went into hospital for a day and then shifted to Mena. Fred is still fighting. I hope to see him when I go back, which I hope won't be very long. I will be well there by the time this letter reaches you. I will write again before I leave. I will close now with love to all at home. 

Goodbye, Your loving son, Roy

Source: Port Pirie Recorder and North Western Mail, SA, Wednesday 9 June 1915 

Nurse Julia Mary Crosby

Julia was born to Walter Thomas & Ann Crosby nee Cameron in Armagh near Clare, South Australia on the 3^rd October 1876. She was a former resident of Port Pirie, South Australia where her mother still resided when the Great War broke out.

Fig.1 Sister Julia Mary Crosby AANS

Julia trained for 3 years in nursing at Adelaide General Hospital in South Australia; was a Sister at the Grosvenor Public Hospital in Fremantle, Western Australia and at the outbreak of war in 1914, she was serving as Matron at the Boulder City Hospital in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

She volunteered with the Australian Army Nursing Service on the 24^th May 1915 aged 38 and was attached to the 3^rd Australian General Hospital. She embarked overseas from Fremantle aboard the RMS Mooltan that had left Sydney on the 15^th May with units of the Australian Army Medical Corps.

Fig. 2 RMS Mooltan

Julia saw service in Egypt, Lemnos, England and France. She would have attended lectures, done first aid, paraded and attended field camps. 

All of this ill-prepared the nurses for the harsh conditions in a field hospital.

They were thrown into the deep end and they had to learn ‘on the job’ how to cope with shrapnel wounds, mustard gas, shell shock, frostbite, trench foot, dysentery, gangrene and all manner of surgical nursing. This was accompanied with strict military routines, nursing in tents and an extreme lack of food, supplies and equipment.

Fig.3 Australian Nursing Sisters aboard RMS Mooltan 1915
Julia ~ Back row far left

Nurses also had to escort convalescents to Egypt, England or Australia, they wrote letters home for ill soldiers and became adept at sourcing and scrounging supplies and extras for those that they cared for. Writing to Miss McEwen (Secretary of the Port Pirie Red Cross Society) from the 3rd Australian General Hospital in Abbassia, Cairo, Egypt, on February 15^th 1916, Julia writes…

“I received your letter on February 4^th, and the parcel of Red Cross goods on February 12^th. I cannot adequately express thanks for all the nice things you have sent to us. We are having cold, wet weather just now, and any useful things are most expensive. I think the people in the shops here imagine that they can charge Australians any price they like. We have been here three weeks.”

“Our home and the medical officers’ quarters formed at one time portion of a certain potentate's harem. Judging by the size of it he must have had more wives than Solomon. It has a great stone wall 30 ft. high all round, and when the huge heavy gates clang together at night and close us in we feel as if we were in gaol. When we were in tents, we were not very comfortable, especially on cold, windy days. However, we fared much better than our men. What a trying time they had at Anzac, and then what a disappointment it was to all of them to have to leave. It was so nice to be able to fit the boys out with good warm shirts, socks, scarfs, and so forth.”

Fig.4 Mention in Dispatches

In November 1918, Julia was ‘Mentioned in Dispatches’ by Sir Douglas Haig as a name deserving of special mention when she attached to No.2 General Hospital Julia returned to Australia on the 15^th May 1919 aboard the transport vessel Tras-os-Montes. She continued nursing as a Matron at Picton Lakes Settlement, New South Wales until her death on 10^th August 1941.

Source: The State Library of New South Wales

The Old Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company 
Virtual War Memorial Australia

Trove Australia: Register, Adelaide, SA Saturday 1 April 1916

Port Pirie Red Cross and World War 1

¹In response to the outbreak of World War 1, the Australian Branch of the British Red Cross Society (Australian Red Cross) was formed on the 13th August 1914 in Melbourne, Victoria. Within days, state based divisions were formed across the country. 

ʸThe Port Pirie Red Cross ‘circle’ had their first meeting on Tuesday 18^th  August 1914 when a meeting convened by the Mayor, in absence of the Mayoress, addressed 60 people in the forming of a local committee to immediately undertake the following duties.

(1) To co-operate with St. Johns Ambulance Society in the formation of units.

(2) To enrol men and women having first aid and nursing certificates to be allotted to recognised voluntary aid detachments and transferred to the A.A.M.C. for service in Australia.

(3) To organise work parties for the making or collecting of hospital comforts and clothing.

(4) To collect money to equip detachments and for other Red Cross purposes.

ʷWhat enormous work-loads and challenges it would confront in its first four years – from nursing the shattered victims of war to supporting their dependants; initiating national tracing services, searching for the missing and sending news from the front to anxious families at home.

Fig.1,2,3. Part South Australian Red Cross Information Record of Patrick John Brusnahan.

This was sustained by the volunteer work of thousands of members, mostly women, through a branch network that extended across the country. By June 1918, South Australia claimed 369 circles. Throughout the war, industrious members sewed, knitted, baked and raised significant funds for the Australian Red Cross. Patterns had been obtained from Government House for larger garments; head bandages, bed socks, flannel belts and roller bandages occupied the attention of the initial working committee. The call was put out for old linen, particularly old sheets that had been first washed, boiled and ironed. Further articles that were made and donated included; flynets, handkerchiefs, scarves, mittens, washers, pyjama coats and trousers, singlets and shirts.

²Sandbag sewing and other voluntary work was carried out by other bodies such as the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Salvation Army, the League of Loyal Women and the Fighting Forces Comfort Fund. Fifty thousand fly-nets were made for horses in the Palestine campaign by South Australian school children, whose Patriotic Fund also raised £85 000.

³In September 1915, 1,400 sandbags were sent to the Ordnance Department at Keswick Barracks in Adelaide. The majority of these were made by the men of the town working in conjunction with the Port Pirie Red Cross branch. On Tuesday 28^th  September 65 men from the Broken Hill Associated Smelter met together and sewed 103 bags in an hour; the necessary material having been purchased by the workers.

ʷPost-war Australian Red Cross was fully involved in the care of returning sick and wounded soldiers, establishing convalescent homes, hostels and sanitoria, in agreements with the Department of Defence and Repatriation. A network of Anzac Hostels provided care for the totally and permanently incapacitated, such as amputees, nerve and shell shock cases. The effects of gas were especially horrendous, and death came cruelly, ultimately from chemical pneumonia and pulmonary oedema. Valiant Red Cross Voluntary Aides nursing such patients night and day well learned the truth of Lady Munro-Ferguson’s words, ‘Peace will not close the hospitals; the sick and wounded will be the last to demobilise; therefore Red Cross workers must be the last to quit their posts.’

Sources:

¹Melanie Oppenheimer, Professor of History, Flinders University and Australian Red Cross Centenary Historian. 

² SA History Hub

³ ʸTrove Australia :The Wooroora Producer, Balaklava, SA, Thursday 20 August 1914 

Port Pirie Recorder and North Western Mail, SA,Thursday 20 August 1914  

ʷ Redcross.org.au

Shrapnel

Shrapnel got its name from General Henry Shrapnel of the British Army's Royal Artillery, who, during the Peninsular War, invented an exploding shell that broke apart when it was detonated; showering a deluge of bullets, or sharp, dangerous shards of metal into anything or anybody in close proximity.

Shrapnel is really a flying cannon, which shoots its charge while in flight or explodes on contact. Its speed of 500,000 feet per second is produced by a pressure of from 30,000 to 35,000 pounds per square inch from the power that expels it from the gun. Its bursting charge exerts a pressure of from 20,000 to 25,000 pounds per square inch. The metal of its case has a tensile strength of 135,000 pounds in the square inch, and an elastic limit of 110,000 pounds per square inch.

The heavy armament of a field army comprises field guns and field howitzers. They all fire shrapnel shell and high explosive shells, the former being provided with either time or percussion fuses. The chief difference between a field howitzer and a field gun is that the shell used in the former is heavier, contains a larger bursting charge, and has a steeper angle of descent. 

Fire from howitzers, therefore, is more searching; the angle of descent of the shell may be as steep as 1 in 1. For this reason they can fire from behind steep cover, and can therefore be well concealed; they can also be very effective against men in entrenchments, and can continue with safety to support the advance of infantry, by firing over their heads much longer than can field guns. Shrapnel shells are hollow, containing as many bullets as possible, together with a bursting charge sufficient to open the shell, release the bullets, and give enough smoke to show where the shell burst. The bullets spread over an area about 25 yards wide by 200 yards long.

Common shells are filled with lyddite, which consists of picric acid, melted, and poured into the shell, where it solidifies. It is detonated by an exploder containing picric powder. The shell breaks into a number of pieces, with jagged edges, and the wounds resulting are more terrible than those from shrapnel bullets. The effect of a high explosive shell is more local than is that of shrapnel, the radius being only 1 about 25ft. Heavy artillery fire bigger shells than do field artillery, and at a longer range. The extreme range of British field artillery using percussion shell is 9,000 yards, and of heavy artillery 10,000 yards. Artillery fire accounted for nearly 70% of the casualties in The Great War.

Fig.1 Shrapnel’s irregular shape did more damage to bone and soft tissue than a bullet. Because each Projectile dragged clothing and dirt into the wound, infection usually followed.

If the word shrapnel doesn’t yet conjure up a feeling of death and destruction, look no further than Shrapnel Valley on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The valley got its name because of the Turkish shells which began bursting over the area soon after the campaign landings commenced.

Shrapnel Valley was the main passage up to the front line by which Anzacs took up supplies and also took up duty in the trenches. As the Turks realised that this had become the road up to the front, their guns rained shrapnel shells down upon the area. These shells were said to make a particular whistle before they burst showering those below with lethal pellets; and that as the shells could be heard coming soldiers passing through the valley had the chance to take cover. What a ‘hot place’ it must have been traversing through the valley and up the steep slopes; with nothing but a hail of shrapnel and rifle bullets along its path.

Each day losses were heavy, as Turkish snipers killed and wounded hundreds of men. They commanded and controlled the valley from high ground 180 metres above sea level at places like Dead Man’s Ridge and the Bloody Angle; which overlooked the whole length of Monash Valley. The Turkish name for both Shrapnel and Monash Valleys was Korko Dere (Valley of Fear).

Along the gully at certain intervals there were stacked sandbags which provided a little cover, and one had to dodge from one lot to another, before the Turkish bullets found their mark. This sniping was at its worst during the early hours of daylight when the sun was behind the Turkish marksmen. It must have been made all the more harder carrying a load of ammunition or water and stepping over dead mates lying right along the gully.

In October 1915, a New Zealand soldier from Gallipoli arrived at Mount Felix Hospital, Wonton-on-Thames with forty nine distinct shrapnel wounds.

Shrapnel Valley Cemetery (also known as Shrapnel Gully Cemetery, Military Burial Ground or West Monash Valley Cemetery) is the largest of the original cemeteries at Anzac (Lone Pine Cemetery contains more burials but it was created after the war). It was established at the head of Shrapnel Valley, near a major thoroughfare to the front line. It covers an area of 2836 square meters. There are 527 Australian burials, 28 British burials and 72 soldiers from unknown troops. As a first cemetery was formed during the Gallipoli campaign but it was enlarged with the addition of the independent graves in 1919. Today there are 683 burials in this cemetery and 598 of them are identified. Lest We Forget.

Sources:

Port Pirie Recorder and North Western Mail, SA, Monday 24 August 1914

Port Pirie Recorder and North Western Mail, SA, Monday 18 October 1915