This is actually two stories – one deals with the past, the other with the present. It is about history, memory and the gaps left in between.

The first part of the story revolves around Dorothy Elmes, or ‘Bud’, the great aunt of the author, Georgina Banks. Bud was an Australian Army nurse who, along with Vivian Bulwinkle and others, found herself on board Vyner Brooke, as it attempted to escape Singapore in the wake of the British surrender to the Japanese.

The ship is heading south when it is attacked and eventually sunk. Some of the nurses, sailors and civilians manage to make it ashore onto Bangka Island. Eventually, they realise they need to surrender if they are to survive. A group of civilians and children leave first to make contact with the Japanese authorities, while the nurses stay on the beach to look after the sick and wounded. When the Japanese arrived, the remaining men were taken away and killed. The remaining nurses and one civilian were marched into the sea and shot. Vivian Bulwinkle was the sole nurse to survive.

What makes this story more poignant are the letters that Bud writes while overseas, which gives us a vivid picture of who she is and what she does. These letters are the starting point of the author’s journey of discovery as to what really happened on that beach and makes up the second part of the book. This story challenges the accepted belief of how the nurses died, and how the Australian military authorities tried to ameliorate the distress of the families and consequently, left out or deleted some of the events which precluded the death of the nurses.

Back To Bangka brought back a story my mother told me. She too was in Singapore when the Japanese were sweeping through Malaya. She was also on one of the last convoys to leave Singapore. In her case, rather than heading south, her convoy (of five ships) headed west to Ceylon. She and her then four children reached Ceylon, but they were on the only ship that did arrive. The story of Bangka could easily have been my mother’s story.

Georgina Banks

This is a well-written and very moving story. One which has been forgotten. It’s about a group of very courageous women and the story of the perseverance of the author to find the truth.

Reviewed by Anthony Llewellyn-Evans