Clarice Halligan

Halligan was honoured at the Last Post ceremony on 9 February 2020 at the Australian War Memorial. Her memorial is in the Singapore Memorial within Kranji War Cemetery, Augusta Australian Army Nursing Sisters Monument, Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat and Australian Military Nurses Memorial.

In February 1942, Halligan was evacuated from Singapore on the SS Vyner Brooke with the Australia Army nurses. Together with the 65 Australian nurses and over 250 civilian men, women and children evacuated on the Vyner Brooke from Singapore three days before the fall of Malaya. She was injured when the ship was bombed by Japanese torpedoes and sunk in Bangka Strait on 14 February 1942, leaving 22 nurses stranded on Bangka Island. The nurses were taken prisoners of war by the Japanese along with 25 British soldiers.

On 16 February 1942 the group was massacred. The soldiers were bayoneted and the nurses were ordered to march into the sea at Radji Beach, Muntok Island (now in Indonesia), where they were shot; she was 37 years old.

On 11 July 1940 Halligan enlisted at the A.A.M.C. Depot in Melbourne for the Australian Army Nursing Service. On 20 December 1940 Halligan joined the 2nd/13th Australian General Hospital serving in Malacca, Malaysia and Singapore following the Japanese advance.

In 1934 she travelled to Papua New Guinea as a missionary, landing in Port Moresby on 31 July 1934.

Clarice Halligan (17 September 1904 – 16 February 1942) was an Australian nurse, missionary, Australian Army nurse and prisoner of war during World War II. She was killed in the Bangka Island massacre on 16 February 1942.

Clarice Isobel Halligan was born in Ballarat, Victoria on the 17 September 1904. The daughter of Joseph Patrick Halligan and Emily Watson Chalmers, Halilgan had seven brothers and sisters.