On 14 September Hayden Lennard set off to search for the Australian nursing sisters. He was optimistic in his cable of 15 September 1945. He still expected to find all sixty-five of the Australian nurses in the camp in Sumatra.

This collection of five cables transmitted to Australia by reporter, Hayden Lennard reveals the horror of his discovery as he unfolds the story of the few surviving nurses and their three and a half years ordeal.

On 16 September 1945, Lennard and his party met the surviving women at the railway station near their camp. His cable sent to Australia on 17 September 1945 reveals the awful discovery that only 24 of the original 65 nurses were still alive.

Lennard’s next cable reveals the details of the murder of the nurses on Banka Island in February 1942 as well as his meeting with them at the railway station near Lahat, Sumatra.

Lennard’s cable account of Vivian Bullwinkel’s uniform which still had the bullet holes from her shooting on Radji Beach, Banka Island, three years beforehand. Sister Bullwinkel’s uniform can be seen on display at the Australian War memorial in Canberra.

After the group of 23 survivors from the Vyner Brook had managed to reach the shores of Banka Island, Japanese soldiers ordered 22 of the nurses and one civilian woman into the sea where they were machine-gunned. Sister Vivienne Bullwinkel, the only survivor of the shooting, lay in the water until the Japanese troops had left the beach. Unable to survive in the jungle, she later surrendered and was interned with her colleagues on Banka Island and later on Sumatra for the remainder of the war.

Hayden Lennard’s description of the reaction of the recently liberated Australian soldiers in the hospital in Singapore when they saw the appalling condition of the 24 surviving nurses.