Top Stories
Nurses visit the original
By LEUT Christina Heath

Volume 50, No.4, March 22, 2007
 
WWII NURSE: Edna with her husband Fred, SMNMED Ben Karamanis and LEUT Heath.
Photo: ABPH Paul Berry
 
RAN nursing sisters from Balmoral Naval Hospital at HMAS Penguin wound back the hands of time to a by-gone era when they visited one of the Navy’s originals recently.

The nurses journeyed to the RSL veterans village, at Narabeen, to visit Edna Faulkner, who celeberates her 95th birthday on March 29.

“Edna is one of the Navy’s originals,” said LEUT Christina Heath.

“She is one of the last surviving RAN Nursing Sisters who were not only the first trained nurses to join the RAN but the first women officers to join the RAN.”

Edna was thrilled by the visit, which gave her the opportunity to recall her glory days as a nurse in the RAN.

In 1942, Edna decided to apply for service in the proposed new Royal Australian Naval Nursing Service (the RANNS).

Due to the deployment to the war in the Pacific of Sick Berth Attendants, (SBAs - the forerunners of the modern day Navy Medics), trained nurses were to be employed to fill in land-based vacancies.

Out of 80 applicants Edna was one of the 15 registered nurses originally chosen.

“We were busting out of our skin to join the RAN’s new corps,” she said with crystal clear clarity.

Edna remembers her first day in the RAN, her commissioning day, as if it was yesterday.

She was commissioned on October 1, 1942, and started work at the RAN Hospital Canonbury which was commissioned on the very same day.

“Life was not without its moments of drama at the hospital,” she said.

Edna remembers the RANNS officers being called up in the middle of the night to do duty when it was suspected that Japanese submarines were in Sydney Harbour.

This happened two or three times. Alert was high as the Japanese midget submarine raid on Sydney Harbour had occurred only five months prior to Canonbury’s commissioning.

Edna was in the RAN for three-and-a-half years, during which time she met her husband Fred, and when they were married in 1945, they were the first inter rank marriage in the medical services for the RAN.