December 1942 School Magazine

llrisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

December, 1942

December, 194:!

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

WENDY WRAGGE (nee Marley) has a War Job in London and is keeping ·up her writing . DULCIE LEVY, enthusiastic Committee Member, is now "Literary Secretary" io Dr. N. Gutteridge. Also manages to find time _to help at the Union Jack Club. GWEN RISSON (nee Spurgin) has important War jcb in Melbourne. Is in -charge of Laboratory tests in Munition Factory. PATRICIA MOONEY (nee Prior) is a Lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps, -and is continuing her work as a masseuse· after her marriage. We hear - from Mrs . W'. Newman Thomson (nee MURIEL RAMSAY), who -lives at Cashmere Hills, Christchurch, New Zealand and whose war work -activities include camouflage netting and Red Cross work. Every week a -consignment of flowers, jams and preserves is sent to the Red Cross Stall- -all being products of Muriels delightful garden . Another war effort is look- ing after a well stocked vegetable garden to help combat the shortage. Mrs . BLAKE (nee Edith Rowett) who managed to escape from Malaya be- .fore its fall, is now in Brisbane. AILSA NEWMAN is also doing important war work in a munitions factory in _M8lbourne. • MARJORIE ALLSOP is a Lieutenant (Masseuse) in Army Medical Corps. :Stationed in Nth . West. Q'land. The following is a letter written by Captain Alma E. Hartshorn, A.W.A.S., ·who is do.ing such valued work in that organisation. "It is just a little over twelve· months ago since I was asked whether I ;should be interested to become an officer in the A.W.A.S. The idea then came -as a comple-te surprise to me, though the possibilities it opened up certainly .gripped the imagination! Still, not even in my wildest imaginings did I fore- -cast anything like the variety of experiences which were to come· my way in ·-the next few months . We few original officers of the A.W.A.S . have seen our organisation grow from the tiny nucleus we ourselves made up to the thous- -ands we now include . Such rapid e-xpansion has inevitably meant serious .qrowing pains at times; we've met problem afte·r problem until we were tempted to believe that we had run the whole gamut of possibilities, but not so! :Fresh ones continue to arise . My_own work was, until recently, that of "Q" staff officer at Headquarters; it involved inspection of quarters for our pe-rsonnel, arranging transport, order- ing and issuing all sorts of supplies, taking inventories of goods in properties we were occupying and a thousand and one odds and ends which are com- ·prehended under the term "quartering", which really only means housekeeping -on a grand scale. About four weeks ago I was transferred to the position of Chief Instructor ·at the Training Depot. My chief concern now is with personnel, and I find it .-absorbingly intere-sting and infinitely varied. Here, in Training Depot, the very raw recruits are given their introduction to Army life by a programme of drill, physical training and lectures on a variety of subjects, after which they -are posted to units where they do the jobs for which they enlisted, thus releas- ing men for duty in field units . I have two other "Old Girls" closely associated with me in my work on ·training, Lieut. A . J. England (nee Joyce· Allen) as Adjutant and Quartermaster, -and Alice Down as Regimental Sergeant Major."

Extract of a letter written by Miss Ena Dalton, from Mataranka (N.T.) to Mrs. E. Wetherell. She writes of the first raid on Darwin. "My Office was in a building next to Naval Headquarters. The Head- quarte-rs of the A.R.P. were situated in the same building as our Office. So I was in the middle of things for a while. We knew nothing until we heard the alarm go at the Anti-Aircraft camp some distance away, then the siren went and there was a dull explosion . The Ack-Ack guns wasted no time in going into action and we ran for shelter. We stopped for a minute to look up at the planes circling overhead. They were- much too high to distinguish any markings or anything. Mr. White, the Chief Clerk of our Branch had, with great foresight, constructed a she-lter in the back yard of the Office only the previous week. It was a very good shelter, con- structed of oil drums and a 400 gallon tank, and had three· compartments- each one an oil drum. Drums full of gravel were placed all round the tank. It was a very strong concussion and blast-proof shelter. I dived into the drum, as least I did not do it as gracefully as that word. implies, having to hold the top of _the tank and lever myself into the drum_ There was a bit of a struggle at first as I am not so slim. Anyway I finally- got in and lay on my side with my legs cramped up. Two other members of the Staff (male) and a black boy were in the other two compartments. We alL talked and ·laughed a lot; trying to guess where the bombs were falling and to· count the explosions from the Ack-Ack Battery, but they were too fast for us . Those lads were firing a she-ll a minute for most of the time . They certainly- deserve a lot of credit for the show they put up. It was the first time in action_ against the enemy and they we·re all very young, some being under eighteen_ years of age. They did not flinch-just went into action like old veterans . After the planes had dropped the·ir bombs, they decided on 'fun and games '_ Flew all over the place-strafing. The Headquarters near us got more than its fair share of it. The planes dived down over us for about half an hour. It is not a nice feeling to be _lying in a hole and not to be able to see anything,_ just to listen to planes diving down and strafing. The Navy was very cool; the·re was a machine gun near our fence-about fifty yards away from where- we were. We heard the Officers tell the· men to keep their heads down and then . give them the order to fire . They were all as cool as possible; there was . no panic or disorder there. The planes disappeared from the town and the A/A guns ceased firing ancf the men got out-but I was not allowed to leave the shelter. It was dreadful lying there and not know what was going on. A.R.P . men came across to see how I was getting on, but they would not let me out as the "All clear" had.: not gone . After much questioning and many rude remarks, I was allowed out.. Some of the Military Police came ove·r and asked if there was a woman in the- Office. I still did not know what had happened to the women at the Post Office. 'Then someone told me about it and I realised why the men had taken such: care of me." Extract from a letter written by :r-'larjorie Walker, V.A.D.. A.I.F., Abroad. 1o her mother at Toowong. "It is a love-ly afternoon here; from the front door of my tent I look out towards the sea, over which the sun is setting, tinting everything with the gor- geous colours so oftten seen in this country-red-gold and orange. This is such a colourful place, even my tent is a rich deep brown and as for the little town nearby, with its solid cream and red buildings, the green of the cypress trees 43

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