Olive Dorothy Paschke in uniform, from the State Library Victoria, Herald & Weekly Times Limited portrait collection.

Olive Dorothy Paschke RRC, (19 July 1905 – 15 February 1942) was an Australian army nurse who died in World War II.

Early life

Olive Dorothy Paschke was born at Dimboola, Victoria, the daughter of Heinrich Wilhelm Paschke and Ottilie Emma Kreig Paschke. Both of her parents were born in Australia. Her father was a farmer and a station agent. Olive Paschke earned her nursing certificate at Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital for Women and Children in Melbourne. She also held certificates in midwifery and infectious disease nursing.[1]

Career

Paschke worked as a hospital matron at Dimboola for four years, then in Melbourne at the Jessie McPherson Community Hospital. She joined the Australian Army Nursing Service in 1940, at age 35. She was posted to Malaya, to establish the 2nd/10th Australian General Hospital, in early 1941. In 1942 she was sent to Singapore to help convert a school into a 200-bed hospital. Soon her unit was converting nearby buildings and treating up to 600 patients at a time.[1] Paschke was recognized with the Royal Red Cross award in January 1942.[2]

In February 1942, Paschke and Irene Melville Drummond were the matrons supervising 63 nurses when all of them were sent back to Australia on a ship carrying hundreds of women and children, the SS Vyner Brooke. The ship was struck by a bomb in the Bangka Strait. Paschke's life raft never reached land, and all its passengers were considered lost at sea, presumed drowned.[1] Twenty-two of Paschke's colleagues, Australian nurses who reached land following the bombing of the Vyner Brooke, were executed by Japanese soldiers in the Bangka Island massacre.[3][4]

Posthumous honours

The Kranji War Memorial in Singapore

Paschke was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal by the International Red Cross Committee in 1951.[5][6] The Matron Paschke Memorial Sundial at her alma mater in Dimboola was dedicated in 1949.[7] Paschke's name is inscribed on the Kranji War Memorial in Singapore.[8]

Pashke Place in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm is named in her honour.[9]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Janice McCarthy, "Paschke, Olive Dorothy (1905–1942)" Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography (Australian National University 2000).
  2. ↑ "Royal Red Cross Award to Dimboola Nurse" Horsham Times (20 January 1942): 2. via TroveOpen access icon
  3. ↑ K. S. Inglis, Jan Brazier, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (The Miegunyah Press 2008): 347-348. ISBN 9780522854794
  4. ↑ Elizabeth M. Norman and Dorothy Angell, "Vivian Bullwinkel: Sole Survivor of the 1942 Massacre of Australian Nurses" Nursing History Review 7(1999): 97-112.
  5. ↑ "Posthumous Award for Matron" The Horsham Times (25 May 1951): 3. via TroveOpen access icon
  6. ↑ "Honors for Nurses" The Age (24 May 1951): 1. via TroveOpen access icon
  7. ↑ "Matron Olive Paschke" Monuments Australia.
  8. ↑ "Olive Dorothy Paschke RRC" RSL Virtual War Memorial.
  9. ↑ "Schedule 'B' National Memorials Ordinance 1928–1972 Street Nomenclature List of Additional Names with Reference to Origin: Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Special (National: 1977–2012) – 8 Feb 1978". Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Special. 8 February 1978. p. 13. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
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