Publisher's Synopsis
Growing up in Broken Hill, New South Wales, Vivian started work at a local hospital and joined the Australian Army Nursing Service in World War II. When the Japanese attacked Singapore in 1942, she and 64 other nurses were ordered to evacuate, but soon their ship was bombed by enemy aircraft. Some of the women drowned, but Viv made it to Radji Beach on Bangka Island, off Sumatra, with 21 of her nursing colleagues. There Japanese soldiers forced the women to wade back into the sea, and as Vivian felt a bullet slam into her back, she fell face down into the water then waited to die as the soldiers bayonetted survivors. Somehow Vivian lived.
