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14 May 1908 to 13 September 2000
A survivor of a Japanese prisoner of war camp, army nurse Betty Jeffrey was a lifelong champion of nurses who died at war. One of 32 army nurses who survived the sinking of the evacuation ship Vyner Brooke in January 1942, Ms Jeffrey then spent the next three and a half years incarcerated on Bangka Island until her release in 1945.
When she returned to Australia, Ms Jeffrey was found to be suffering from severe tuberculosis and spent nearly two years recovering in hospital.
Upon her discharge from hospital, she and her friend and fellow survivor Vivian Bullwinkel began to fulfil a promise they made in captivity, to honour their colleagues who died and `do something so they would not be forgotten'. Together they raised 120,000 to establish the St Kilda Road Nurses Memorial Centre, where Ms Jeffrey...