Nesta Summerhayes remembers Korea

– 3 December 2013 –

Born in Hobart in 1928, Nesta Summerhayes completed her nursing training at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, followed by nine months of midwifery training at the Crown Women’s Hospital in Sydney.

In 1952, Nesta was nursing injured soldiers from WWII in Hobart at one of the early repat hospitals. Shortly afterwards she joined the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps and agreed to go to Japan and Korea as part of the support nursing staff during the time when provisional peace had been called in the Korean War.

The nurses were sent to a Japanese naval base on the island of Honshu where many of the Japanese military buildings were taken over by the Britcom armed services.

They looked after recovering soldiers, sailors and airmen, with each division having its own wing of nursing support. The injured were flown from Seoul by the RAAF air ambulance across to Iwakuni.

From here the servicemen were transported by ambulance train which wound its way along the coast to Honchu.

The Australian nurses worked on three or four monthly rotations across to Seoul, from where Nesta retained her clearest memories.

And so 60 years after her time in Korea and Japan, Nesta and fourteen ex Australian servicemen travelled with the Department of Veteran Affairs to Seoul, to join in commemorations for the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Korean War ceasefire.

This was a journey of healing, which helped to put to rest memories fraught with a ravaged and war torn land.

Today Nesta lives in one of Vasey RSL Care’s independent living units in Heidelberg. She has been writing poetry for thirty years and has a five volume self-published set of original poems. She has two sons, three granddaughters and one great grandson.

KOREA 2013-10-22 by Nesta Summerhayes

I stand here now and gaze upon a sea of green.
Green … I had not known how many shades of life’s symbol there are …
My memory does not accommodate the bounty here.
The colours splashed upon the canvas of my mind speak of nature attacked,
Beaten and bruised into a palette of withered grass, scarred valleys,
The cruel sparkle of frozen earth, freozen sea,
The keen of a merciless wind.
As the days advanced, though, small sparks of resilience bloomed:
Sparse buds appeared, sparse blossoms bloomed,
weary hosts of humanity moved and tried to live, though hope was dulled.

But that was then, six decades past.

Into the maelstrom of chaos gallantry had come,
Had flown on the wings of the morning,
Had come with the might of the sea,
Had marched with the valour of sacrifice:
Inchon, Kapyong, Maryan San gave their blood
And so I stand now, this day of that time’s remembrance, in homage.
I stand at the nexus of gallantry.
I have gazed across the valley below.
I have lifted my eyes and central to my view
Have seen the Peak which rose out of that valley of turmoil.

A gentle breeze has brushed the sky
A benediction has kissed the earth.