Dame Margot Turner - Will To Live - Book by Sir John Smyth

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Click here to buy Dame Margot Turner was evacuated, with the rest of the hospital in which she served, to Singapore, ahead of the Japanese invasion in 1942. Unfortunately the ship she was evacuated in was sunk but she survived on a raft with another nursing sister. Between them they rescued six children and eight women. They had no food or water and all died but Margot Turner. She was rescued from the Ocean by a Japanese Destroyer only to be imprisoned as a Prisoner of War (POW). The Will To Live tells the story of how Margot Turner and her fellow prisoners survived under this brutal regime and prison camp privations for three and half years. Margot Turner survived and continued her British Army Nursing Career and eventually rose to become the Director Army Nursing Service from 1964 to 1968 and the Colonel Commandant of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps in 1969. The collection of photographs in the book Sisters In Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story has a photo of Dame Margot Turner taken during a survivors reunion. It also contains recorded recollections by Dame Margot Turner from the QARANC Collection held at the AMS Museum. She was made a Dame and was awarded the Royal Red Cross Medal and was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE). Sir John Smyth Will to Live: The Story of Dame Margot Turner was published in 1970 by the publishers Cassell. This biography was written by Sir John Smyth who is a holder of the Victoria Cross for his valour in World War I. Sir John Smyth also fought in World War II where he was awarded the Military Cross. He founded the Victoria Cross Association and has written many army and military books. View his other books. He was also called Jackie Smyth. Dame Margot Turner - Will To Live is now out of print but can be purchased from the online book shop Amazon. Click here to buy or for more information. Biography of Margot Turner Margot Turner underwent her nurse training at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, England, UK. She was a keen sportswoman and enjoyed playing a variety of sports such as tennis, golf, swimming and hockey. She would ride the Life Guards horses at nearby Knightsbridge. Between 1939 and 1941 Margot Turner was a theatre nurse sister of The Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) and nursed at the British Garrison Military Hospital in Meerut, India. However she wanted to become more involved in the war effort and requested a posting to Europe. She was refused many times because the surgeons in India wanted to keep their hard working theatre sister. Margot Turner persevered and eventually got a posting to a transit camp in Bombay which should then have given her an opportunity to be posted to Europe. Instead she was posted to Number 17 Combined General Hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to take charge of the operating theatre. At the time this was far from the dangers of war and servicemen and women enjoyed a peaceful life until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour on the 7 December 1941 and invaded the Pacific turning their attacks to the Malay Peninsula as well as Hong Kong and Luzon. On the night of the 8 December 1941 Kuala Lumpur was bombed and the hospital and staff, including Margot Turner, were evacuated to the Alexandra Hospital (BMH Singapore). Doctors and nurses worked around the clock caring for wounded and injured as they defeated Singapore against the invading Japanese troops. General Percival at Malayan Command Headquarters heard of the atrocities that befell the nurses at Hong Kong which included being repeatedly raped by the Japan Army and killings of nursing staff and ordered the immediate evacuation of the Allied troops Singapore female nurses of the QAIMNS and the Australian Army Nursing Corps (AANS). These nurses met at the Singapore Cricket Club on the 13 February 1942 where they were to be evacuated to the ship Kuala along with other women, children nurses, four matrons and some servicemen. Unfortunately some of the waiting nursing sisters were killed during an air raid as they tried to board the ship. The ship eventually sailed off but further danger awaited when the ship was bombed killing all four matrons. The crew and passengers abandoned ship and took to the sea with only two life boats and few life belts. Many drowned and more were machine gunned or bombed by the merciless Japanese planes. Margot Turner and some others eventually made it to the Island of Pompong. Other nurses on other ships were not so fortunate such as those onboard the ship Vyner Brooke who were also shipwrecked after bombing. They were able to remain in the water thanks to life jackets and were afloat for about 16 hours before being able to get ashore on Banka Island. In his book Heroines of World War II Eric Taylor describes their cold blooded killings of some nurses at the hands of troops from Japan. Unfortunately they were found by twenty Japanese soldiers who ordered them back into the water. They were then all shot dead with the exception of Sister Vivien Bullwinkel who survived by feigning death despite being painfully wounded. After the war she was able to identify the officers who gave this unjust order and they were found guilty at a war tribunal. Brenda McBryde in Quiet Heroines: Nurses of the Second World War describes how they and their Matron, Miss Drummond, were witnesses to a Japanese atrocity were soldiers ordered all their male prisoners including the wounded over the brow of a dune where they were bayoneted to death. They then ordered the women into the sea where they were machine gunned to prevent any of them becoming a witness to their earlier barbaric attack. Other ships were bombed and destroyed by the Japanese and some survivors were rescued by the ship Tanjong Penang. The Captain asked some of the nurses who had made it ashore to board his ship to care for the wounded and injured. This was a hard decision for the nurses to make because the Japanese Air Force and Navy were still attacking the ships but Margot Turner and some of her colleagues volunteered and boarded the Tanjong Penang and worked non stop tended to their new patients. Later that night of the 18 February 1942 they were attacked by a Japanese Navy warship. During the shelling some of the nurses were injured such as Sister Beatrice le Blanc, many of their patients died during the attack. The ship went onto her side and suddenly sank taking with her many that were in her hold. Some, like Margot Turner and Sister le Blanc managed to jump into the sea and made their way to two lift rafts that a crew member had managed to get off the ship before she sank. Together they tied the lift rafts to each other and set about rescuing the living that were floating amongst the dead. The two nurses bravely rescued fourteen women and children but there was not room on the rafts for all of the them so they stayed in the water hanging on to the rope handles and organised a rota for the less wounded to take turns in the water whilst others rested in a life raft whilst holding a child or having one sat on their knees. Sister Beatrice le Blanc stayed in the water despite a large buttock wound and loosing a great del of blood. By dawn she appeared ashen and Margot Turner heaved her onto a life raft only to discover her friend was dying. She died later in the afternoon. Margot had no option but to say a prayer for her and the other dead before sliding them gently to the Java sea. The survivors were now able to stay in the life rafts with just a few clinging to the ropes. Sadly other survivors soon died in the hot sun from dehydration, from their injuries and their wounds. This included all the children. By the night of the 19 February 1942 only Margot Turner and one other woman, Mrs Barnett, were left alive. They spotted some driftwood and managed to get two pieces that could be used as makeshift oars and slowly paddled their way to a nearby island. This was painful work and their bodies were full of painful open sores, blisters and patches of raw skin. Mrs Barnett's makeshift oar slipped and as she reached out to grab it she fell into the water but did manage to grab a life jacket. She shouted to Margot not to leave the life raft to rescue her and she was swept away. Margot Turner was now alone and to conserve her energy she lay down and prayed. It later rained and she was able to drink some rain water caught in her mouth and some she caught in a compact mirror she had in her pocket. She became rain soaked and sucked her grey dress for extra non salty water. She later found some seaweed drifting past and ate this. Four days later she saw a passing warship and feebly waved. Unfortunately it was a Japanese ship. They threw down a rope but she was too exhausted to climb it so a sailor climbed down and tied the rope to her emaciated body and the crew pulled her up. Fortunately the warship had a Japanese doctor who spoke English and had been trained in an American hospital. He nursed her back to health by leaving her in the shade and feeding her a weak solution of tea with a little whisky before building up to a milky drink. His nurses tended to her wounds and took off her grey salt soaked uniform that was chaffing her skin and dressed her in a clean shirt and trousers. Learning that she was a nursing sister the doctor tried his best to see to Margot Turner's welfare, even carrying her off on a stretcher himself with the help of a sailor when they docked at Muntok port. He was ordered to take her to the civilian prisoner of war camp where he saluted her and had to leave. His ship did not leave for four days and he visited Margot each day and on the fourth day gave her a wrapped present - her grey dress neatly folded and freshly laundered. This was the last day she saw him. Her strength soon returned and this helped her survive a terrible ordeal in this Japanese prison along with other nurses such as Sister Vivien Bullwinkel who survived the shooting massacre and had been captured making her escape through the jungle. Life in the prison camp was harsh for the QAs and fellow prisoners. They had to sleep on concrete floors and take turns sleeping on the few straw mattresses. There was little chance to sleep because the brutal guards would rap their feet with their torches or hit their legs as they passed. Food was minimal and mostly consisted of a few helpings of watery rice and a few pieces of octopus tentacles with only one mug of water a day to drink. Diseases and illnesses were rife and many POWs died. Margot suffered from poisoning from her boils from the sea water which spread to her lymph glands and these had to be lanced by a blunt scalpel in unsterile conditions by one of the POW doctors. In March 1942 Margot Turner was well enough to be moved, though by stretcher to Palembang in Sumatra where she was cared for by Dutch nuns. Once healthy she took part in camp life such as gathering fuel for cooking and carrying bags of rice and caring for the sick. During inspections by the guards, which were called Tenko, she and other Prisoners of War had to stand for hours in the sun until the guards had considered their counting finished. Many would collapse in the heat from exhaustion and get beaten by the guards. Margot had her front tooth and lip burst open when a Japanese officer considered her disrespectful for not bowing low enough. In October 1942 Margot Turner and three other nurses were volunteered by the Japanese to work in a local hospital which was run by Dutch and Indonesian doctors. This included the Dutch Dr Hollweg the former Red Cross representative in Palembang and his wife. Margot was placed as the theatre nurse working with a Dutch surgeon and quickly learnt to speak the Malay language. The other nurses were fellow QA Mary Cooper and Colonial Sisters Jenny McAllister and Mrs Olga Neubrunner (cited in Quiet Heroines: Nurses of the Second World War by Brenda McBryde). All went well for many months and this gave the four nurses the chance to eat better and even shop at the local market for the patients. In March 1943 the Dutch doctor who was head of the hospital was throw into jail by the Kempei Tai (Japanese Military Police) for no reason and a Japanese doctor was placed in charge of the hospital. Disciple became really tight and on the 6 April all four nurses were arrested and placed in the local prison alongside murderers and thieves for no obvious reason. All items were removed from their personal possession including their white muslin nursing dresses and they had to wear a white sarong. They were placed in separate small cells with little food or drink and had to watch other prisoners being tortured and executed. Two Dutch doctors died from beatings. Months later the nurses were placed together in a larger cell and this allowed them to care for each other. One nurse called Jennie seemed to be suffering from Typhoid fever but was nursed back to health. They stayed together until the 22 September 1943 when they were taken to an internment camp for women and one of the nurses died in the camp hospital a few days later. The three surviving nurses and the women of the camp were transferred to Palembang but some died on the boat and train journeys because they were packed so tight in carriages with no ventilation and locked doors and windows in intense heat. At the new camp food rations were even scarcer and many died from malnutrition and the vermin ridden conditions. Dysentery, Banka fever (cerebral malaria) and beriberi claimed more lives as did the Tenko parades and savage beatings and punishments. Margot Turner somehow survived until on the 20 August 1945 the prison guards started to look after their charges, even giving them fourteen pigs to cook and eat. The women ate each part of the pig to build their strength up, not knowing what was going on. They did not know that the Germans had surrendered to the Allies and that the Japanese would soon surrender because Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been bombed with the newly invented atomic bombs and their troops were being driven back by an advancing Allied force. Nor did they know that officers were commanded to destroy any evidence of ill treatment of prisoners, including starving figures. All the women were wafer thin with protruding bones and bloated stomachs from rice diets. Many Japanese troops and officers either fled the prison camps or killed themselves by their own swords by hara-kiri. Allied troops searched out for prison camps and freed the POWs and interned civilians, arresting any guards still alive. In September 1945 an American airplane had spotted the camp in which Margot Turner and her fellow nurses were still surviving and dropped off food parcels until Allied land troops or could reach them and clear areas for airplanes to land. These life saving parcels contained fresh bread and much needed medical supplies. On the 17 September an Australian aircraft airlifted Margot Turner and the other camp occupants and took then to safety. Margot Turner was eventually taken to Singapore after three years and seven months of cruelty and imprisonment by the Japanese. She and her fellow former captives received medical and dental care at Alexandra Hospital, the BMH Singapore. By coincidence the sister who treated her was one that she had trained with at St Bartholomew's Hospital in london. Her friend did not at first recognise her because she looked so thin, emaciated and had two of her front teeth missing. After treatment Margot Turner sailed for England on the 26 September 1945. The sea voyage took a month during which time she rested and recuperated more before spending six weeks of leave with her mother at Hove. Margot Turner returned to serving with the QAIMNS and then the QARANC when it reformed to the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps. Click here to buy The Will to Live - The Story of Dame Margot Turner Her first military hospital posting was to The Queen Alexandra's Military Hospital Millbank, London. In February 1946 Margot Turner was awarded the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her wartime service. Margot Turner went on to have a distinguished career with the QAs in many UK and overseas military hospitals, rising through the ranks to become Brigadier, the highest rank for a QA. In June 1965 Brigadier Margot Turner was awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). Her military rank and title became Brigadier Dame Margot Turner. Brigadier Dame Margot Turner was honoured with the position of QHNS (Queen's Honorary Nursing Sister). In 1964 Brigadier Margot Turner became the Director Army Nursing Service and Matron-in-Chief (Army) for the QARANC until 1968. In 1965 Brigadier Margot Turner was awarded with a plaque in recognition of her distinguished service to military nursing by the Chief of the United States Army Nursing Corps in Washington. In October 1967 the QA Training Centre in Aldershot was officially opened and Brigadier Dame Margot Turner escorted the Colonel in Chief, Princess Margaret, who officially opened the centre. After retiring Brigadier Dame Margot Turner was appointed to the position of Colonel Commandant of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps in 1969 and served until 1974. Dame Margot Turner died in December 1993. Click here to buy The Will to Live - The Story of Dame Margot Turner More QARANC Book Reviews. A QARANC wall plaque and shield is available to buy through Amazon. The QA shield is hand made and ready to hang on the wall. . Buy Now. Findextrawork Since leaving the QA's we have done an assortment of self employed work and jobs, some which only take an hour a week, others have been full time. We have written about these at our other website Findextrawork at www.findextrawork.co.uk where we share the information for free to help others with information and resources about earning more money. Visit Findextrawork for more information. The Real Tenko The latest book about British Army nurses and nursing describes a dark chapter in the history of the QAs. The Real Tenko: Extraordinary True Stories of Women Prisoners of the Japanese by Mark Felton is an account of the fall of the Far East to Japan. It comprehensively covers war atrocities performed by the Japanese troops to women stationed in places such as Singapore and Hong Kong. This included Sisters of the QAs who were stationed in hospitals such as BMH Bowen Road Hong Kong and BMH Singapore. Read the Qaranc.co.uk review or Buy Now with free delivery available. View more British Army Nursing Books - with free delivery available. If you would like to contribute to this page, suggest changes or inclusions to this website or would like to send me a photograph then please e-mail me. The photos and pictures on this page have been kindly sent to us for inclusion on this page. If you would like to contribute photographs then please contact us. For the official Army QARANC webpage please go to www.army.mod.uk/home.aspx For the QARANC Association website please go to www.army.mod.uk/army-medical-services/qaranc/9884.aspx ********************************************* Help Needed** A reader of Qaranc.co.uk is researching the exhumation of Heinrich Himmler in Luneberg, Germany circa 1945-46. He thinks that two nurses from the QAIMNS attended the exhumation due to the poor state of health of Walter Schellenberg. He would like to learn if any of the nurses kept a diary of the events leading up to the exhumation or sent any personal letters home to friends or family that may have provided an insight into Walter Schellenberg and the exhumation. Please contact Qaranc.co.uk if you have any information. Qaranc.co.uk have recently learnt about two former Military Hospitals that we would like to write about. These are the British Military Hospital at Wuppertal in Germany and BMH Benghazi. If you know any information, would like to share your memories or have photographs that we can use on the site then please contact Qaranc.co.uk A reader is writing an article about the demise of the Military Hospital for the RAMC Magazine and seeks some help. There was, in Kuala Lumpur, a hospital called BMH Kinrara. He would like to know when it opened and closed, what happened to the buildings and the staff. He thinks that Kinrara closed as Terendak opened and that the staff were transferred across to 34 Company RAMC? He would also like any information about the Military Maternity Hospital, Penang. If you can help then please contact Qaranc.co.uk There is a lovely photo of three QA Midwives from the 1960s about half way down on the Royal Herbert Hospital page. If you can help with information about the Maternity Unit in Woolwich or identify the QA Officers then please contact Qaranc.co.uk The BMH Dhekelia has new photos which includes a stunning picture of the demolition of the original building and some staff photos. The contributor would like some help with the date it was demolished and would love to hear from anyone who worked with her relative.			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