Beschreibung:

A Rare WWII Royal Red Cross POW Group of 5 awarded to Sister Kathleen Mary Jenkins, Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve, survivor of the sinking of SS Kuala during the evacuation of Singapore, taken POW by the Japanese and subsequently awarded the ARRC for services at the Bankinang POW Camp, comprising: Royal Red Cross, G VI R, 1st Issue, Associate’s 2nd Class Badge (ARRC), reverse engraved (1946), 1939-1945 Star, The Pacific Star, Defence and War Medals, 1939-1945, medals unnamed as issued, group court mounted for display, the first with bow above. The first toned, if a little unevenly, good extremely fine. (5) RRC London Gazette 13.06.1946 (208541) Miss Kathleen Mary Jenkins received an emergency commission as Sister into the QAIMNS(R) on the 30th of May, 1941, and presumably having worked at Alexandra Hospital, she is recorded as being present at the evacuation of Singapore aboard the SS Kuala - this vessel subsequently was bombed and machine gunned by the Japanese on the 14th of February 1942, being sunk with many other QAIMNS nurses who had been ordered to evacuate. Surviving the sinking of this vessel (where some 300 of an original complement of roughly 500 were killed), according to the account of a similar survivor, that of Mrs Brenda McDuff, she reached Sinkep Island, and then managed to reach Sumatra where she appears to have continued nursing along the ‘escape trail’, where she was eventually taken POW at Padang by Japanese forces in 1943. She was interned at Bankinang camp and survived the war, being listed as serving in the camp hospital team in the Fraterhuis. Following the war she was awarded the ARRC on the 13th of June, 1946, presumably for her valuable services rendered in the POW camp at Bankinang. Sold with original RRC box of issue by Garrard & Co, with named King’s Letter to Miss K M Jenkings, ARRC, copy London Gazette mentions, and a quantity of research mentioning her name as aboard the SS Kuala and the evacuation of Singapore.