Olive Paschke

Olive Dorothy Paschke (1905 to 1942) was an Australian army nurse who died in the Second World War. Born at Dimboola, Victoria, she trained at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital for Women and Children in Melbourne and held certificates in midwifery and infectious disease nursing. She was matron of a hospital at Dimboola for four years and then of the Jessie McPherson Community Hospital in Melbourne before joining the Australian Army Nursing Service in 1940. Posted to Malaya in 1941 to establish the 2/10th Australian General Hospital, she helped convert a school in Singapore into a 200-bed hospital that treated up to 600 patients at a time, and in January 1942 she received the Royal Red Cross. In February 1942 she was a matron on the SS Vyner Brooke, which was bombed in the Bangka Strait; her life raft never reached land and she was presumed drowned. She was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1951.