Sister Margaret Lamont Adams, VFX66028, Australian Army Nursing Service...

...was born the 8th of December 1913 at Melbourne, the daughter of Thomas Lamont Adams and Gertrude Margaret Adams of 70, Paxton Street, East Malvern, Victoria. Margaret took up nursing and did her training at the Children’s and Women’s hospitals. For a time she was on the staff of St George’s Hospital, Kew, England.

Some time after the outbreak of war, she returned to Australia and enlisted on 13 November 1941, at the A.A.M.C Depot, William Street, Melbourne as an Australian Army nurse, aged 27. Her attestation form gives that her occupation as a Staff Nurse, number Y.15479, single and of the Presbyterian faith.

On the 17th of the month, she was taken on strength as a Staff Nurse and detached to Camp Hospital, Dandenang.

From the 28th of January 1942, to the 4th of March 1943, Margaret was embarked upon the Dutch Hospital Ship Oranje. Following a period of leave, she and eleven other nurses embarked at Sydney on Hospital Ship Centaur on the 17th of March.

At approximately 4 am on Friday 14 May 1943, the Centaur was off Brisbane at Point Lookout, on Stradbroke Island, heading north when she was struck without warning by a torpedo from the Japanese submarine I-177, commanded by Hajime Nakagawa . Of the 332 people on board, 286 lived were lost, including eleven of the twelve nurses on board.

It would be thirty six hours before the sixty four survivors were found, but Margaret was not amongst them, she has no known grave and is one of 747 names remembered on the Sydney Memorial; she is also remembered on the Nurses’ War Memorial Chapel in Westminster Abbey, London.

The sinking of the Centaur caused public outrage as the sinking of a hospital ship was contrary to the 1907 Hague Convention and was therefore a war crime. However no prosecution followed in postwar war crime tribunals. In 2009, the wreck was discovered.