Annie's Day
War took everything.
Love never had a chance.
Until now.
As an Australian Army nurse, Annie endures the brutalities of World War II in Singapore and New Guinea. Later, seeking a change, she accepts a job with a British diplomatic family in Berlin, only to find herself caught up in the upheaval of the Blockade. Through it all, and despite the support of friends, the death of a man she barely knew leaves a wound that refuses to heal, threatening her to a life without love.
Years later, Annie is still haunted by what she’d lost—and what might have been. Her days are quiet, but her memories are loud. When a dying man’s fear forces her to confront her own doubts, she forms an unexpected friendship that rekindles something she thought she’d lost: hope.
Annie’s Day is a powerful story of love, war, and the quiet courage to start again—even when it seems far too late.
Who is Annie?
In retrospect, I think, subliminally, I based Annie on my mother. Tall, feisty, kind, a bit sharp tongued at times. The novel uses Mum’s postings as a nurse in the Australian Army Nursing Service to Singapore and New Guinea in World War II as a map, but does not follow her actual life. Like many people of her generation Mum did not speak about her war experiences in any depth, brushing off questions with, “Oh, sweetie, it was years ago. I can’t remember.” Which, I suppose made it easier to write the book, because I did not have her stories in my head.
Annie May Cutler wants to experience life away from the family farm in rural New South Wales, and is determined not to wait at home for a suitable husband to appear. She instead goes to nursing school, with her mother’s blessing but much against her father’s wishes. Her mother dies not long after she starts at Prince Henry Hospital in Sydney, and thereafter her relationship sours even more with her father, Ian. He loves his daughter but is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to show any emotion, other than disinterest. She has a close relationship with both her brothers, who favour their mother in temperament.
Choosing a profession that demands total obedience and dedication is perhaps a strange choice for someone as fiery and resistant to rules as Annie, but she loves nursing despite the long hours and seemingly endless regulations.
With the outbreak of war, again defying her curmudgeonly father’s expectation of returning home to help, she follows her brothers into the army. In order to join the Australian Army Nursing Service, women had to be over 27, single, and along with a general nursing certificate had to have one nursing specialty. After basic army training and along with Iris, her schoolfriend and Verna, who she meets on her first day at nursing school, Annie is posted to Singapore, and during the sea voyage discovers the unrelenting unpleasantness of seasickness.
Nothing prepares them for the destruction and despair of the bombed island. Two horror-filled weeks later they are evacuated. Annie, Verna and Florence, a nurse who shared their cabin on the trip to Singapore, are allocated to the Empire Star. Iris will sail on the Vyner Brooke and, for the rest of her life, Annie’s sense of responsibility for her friend is guilt-ridden, believing had she not encouraged Iris to sign up, she might still be alive.
Still reeling from the fear of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service attacks while fleeing Singapore, Annie’s sense of fair play is tested when they arrive in Freemantle, West Australia, and are met by women holding out white feathers—symbolising cowardice. The image, along with flashing lights, which remind her of tracer fire, stay with her all her life.
Friendships again sustain her when war moves the nurses to New Guinea, where added to battle wounds, the revulsion of tropical diseases confront the women. Humour and banter relieves tensions among the nurses, but Annie’s inability to suffer fools silently, and a general dislike of authority, can trigger a sharp tongue which sometimes gets her into trouble. She is though gentle and empathetic to those in pain, of whatever kind, and understands the anguish of death both for those doing the dying, and those who are left to deal the loss.
For that reason Annie refuses to countenance falling in love but, as Auntie May tells her, “Love whacks you around the head like a breaker dumping you in the surf.” And it does.
With the war finally over, Annie has no desire to go home, and so again looks for adventure and along with Florence, decides to follow her younger brother to England. She’s tired of nursing—not the physical caring for people but the mental fatigue of the ongoing problems faced by civilians and military alike. A nannying job for a diplomatic family takes her to Berlin where, again, her dislike of rules gets her into trouble.
Back in London, life throws different challenges her way, but her capacity for deep friendships sustain her—those friends being the only people from whom she will take advice.
Throughout the novel, friendship, loss, hope and love are the overall themes.
Annie is a strong woman, and someone I think Mum would have liked!
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| Image (c) Apple Gidley |
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