Not For Glory: A Century of Service by Medical Women to the Australian Army and its Allies

Abstract

82 BOOK REVIEWS relied heavily on input from the APS and a conference organiser specialising in the pain management area, and that project funding came from a pharmaceutical company active in the pain relief medications sector. Judged on the restricted time to completion, this book can be seen as a valiant effort. One cannot help but wonder however what heights it might have reached had its production time been less constrained. ANN WESTMORE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Susan J. Neuhaus and Sharon Mascall-Dare. Not For Glory:ACentury of Service by Medical Women to the Australian Army and its Allies (Salisbury, Brisbane: Boolarong Press, 2014). ISBN 9781925046663 (PB). B&W and colour illustrations, xxii + 322pp. Not For Glory: A Century of Service by Medical Women to the Australian Army and its Allies is a vital contribution to the history of Australian medical women at war. It spotlights the lives of nonnursing women who performed exceptional professional work in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, and places them centre stage in a brief but compelling collection. The authors are award-winning Canberra-based journalist Susan Mascall-Dare, currently military public affairs officer in the Australian Army Reserve, and Susan J. Neuhaus, an Adelaide-based surgeon who has worked for twenty years in military medicine. Their experience brings great credibility to this work. As Neuhaus has pointed out, nursing is the dominant narrative of women’s service in war. This book challenges that narrative by unearthing the strikingly overlooked contribution of women doctors, physiotherapists, medical scientists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, and dieticians in medical units of the Australian Army over the past one hundred years. The writers have sourced extensive research material from archives, journals, and women’s magazines, as well as through interview. The book opens with an introduction to the earliest pioneer women physicians in military medicine dating back to Ancient Greece, and follows with chapters documenting the contributions of Health & History ● 17/2 ● 2015 83 Australian women medicos in World War I through to contemporary operations in the Middle East. Duly recognised is Dr Phoebe Chapple, the first Australian and only woman doctor to receive the military medal in World War I for gallantry in the field, and Captain Carol Vaughan-Evans, the first woman awarded the medal for gallantry for service during the massacre of civilian refugees in Rwanda in 1995. The book ends with an inspiring piece about Brigadier Georgeina Whelan, a current example of how far women’s roles within the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps have evolved since its inception. As we live through present World War I commemorations, these important stories about the pioneer Australian woman doctors who wanted to serve in this war, but were rejected by their own army, need to be especially remembered. They show how determined these women were to use the professional training they had gained at immense personal sacrifice, and the creative ways they circumvented the rejection they experienced at every step of their careers. Defying convention by using their own money to travel overseas, these women doctors served with distinction in non-nursing military roles with Australia’s allies under atrocious conditions, yet the British Army never formally gazetted their rank for their wartime roles, or allowed them to hold commissions. The writers adeptly illustrate the severe consequences of this discrimination, which resulted in their absence from the official Australian histories of Australian Army medical services in World War I. If even one of these published stories is now retold, it will be a step towards a more balanced narrative of the Australian women surgeons, doctors, and pathologists who served in Britain, France, Belgium, Malta, Egypt, and the Western Front. This book has broad appeal and would interest military and medical historians, as well as readers wanting to know more about Australian women’s history. How many Australians are aware, for example, that pioneer woman pathologist Captain Elsie Dalyell received a military OBE in World War I? Or that medical scientist Major Josephine Mackerras bred mosquitoes to reduce malaria in soldiers during World War II, and had her recommended MBE rejected? These women should be household names in Australia, yet due to prejudice from the medical profession, the military, and the society...