Victorians at War - Oral History Project

Sing Along
As Wilma Young discovered during her time in a prisoner-of-war camp, music, art and literature can be invaluable in coming to terms with traumatic experience in wartime. Wilma was sent to Singapore as a nurse during World War II. When the Japanese captured Singapore at the beginning of 1942, Wilma was evacuated on a cruise ship called the Vyner Brook. Unfortunately, the ship was attacked by the Japanese and sank in the Banka Straight. Wilma made it to shore alive but was taken prisoner with several of the other female nurses from the ship. She spent three years as a Japanese prisoner in Sumatra. During her time in the prisoner-of-war camp, her fellow prisoners established a choir. As Wilma recalls, when the choir sang, 'it was uplifting and took our minds and our thoughts out of prison camp and was a wonderful occasion'.
Soundbite		Soundbite
Music was also an intrinsic part of celebration, as Nancy Ormsby observed on the day World War II ended. In 1943, 17-year-old Nancy had joined the Australian Land Army, mainly because she was too young to enlist in the army. After some initial training at Mont Park and Werribee during which she was taught to milk cows, Nancy was sent to work on a dairy farm. By 1945 she and another Land Army girl were managing a dairy farm near Warragul on their own. Nancy was on 12 days' leave when the war ended on 15 August 1945. She travelled into Melbourne for the festivities and vividly remembers the commotion in the streets. People everywhere were hugging each other and dancing. Nancy remembers the music in particular that rang out as people sang to celebrate the joyous occasion. There was 'music everywhere, people were playing music, whatever they had and there was a, there was a truck trying, I remember this truck trying to get down Flinders Street, with people were jumping on and off and singing'.
Hear complete interviews with veterans in the "Personal Stories" section of the Archives