Merle Farland (MBE)

Died 1988 82

Unsung Hero: Merle Farland MBE — Nurse, Coastwatcher, Legend

Merle Farland began her adult life teaching piano to children and working as a missionary nurse, a career path that would have continued if not for the outbreak of the Second World War, to which she responded with self-sacrifice, tenacity, and rare courage.

NATIVE OF CHRISTCHURCH

Born in Christchurch, 26 February 1906, Merle completed nursing training in 1934 and was posted to the Methodist Mission at the remote jungle-covered island of Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands, South Pacific.

Then the war came.

JAPANESE OCCUPATION

As Japanese forces occupied the Solomons in 1942 and other nurses evacuated, Merle stayed. She was the only trained medical person left to care for her patients, and she simply refused to abandon them.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary one-woman wartime stories of WWII.

On 18 November 1942, a B-17 bomber of the 26th Bombardment Squadron of the 11th Bombardment Group was shot down and ditched off Baga Island, near Vella Lavella. The crew included Major Alan Sewart, the commanding officer of the Squadron and Colonel Saunders, the commanding officer of the entire 11th Bombardment Group.

After the bomber went down, coastwatcher Jack Keenan sent for the only nurse he knew was still nearby—Merle Farland. Walking fourteen miles through the night along slippery coastal rocks, she crossed a river on the shoulders of a native guide, then paddled by canoe through Japanese-patrolled waters to reach the crash survivors, administering first aid and morphine by injection as the rescue plane shoved off.

She soon joined coastwatcher Donald Kennedy at Segi, scoring 22 out of 25 in her first target practice with a rifle, quickly mastering the top-secret radio codes, and at one point running the entire coastwatching operation solo while Kennedy raced off to rescue another downed crew.

Ironically, her extraordinary exploits alerted her superiors to the fact that she had not evacuated as preciously ordered, and on December 21, 1942, she was finally forced to evacuate—escorted out by a PBY Catalina and seventeen fighter planes, along with a group of Japanese prisoners. When she arrived at Tulagi and then Guadalcanal, the only woman among 30,000 troops, a delirious soldier looked up from his stretcher and said: “Now I know I am delirious.” A rumour swept the island that Amelia Earhart had been found alive.

After the Solomons, Merle served as a New Zealand Army nurse in New Caledonia, Guadalcanal, and the Middle East, and later aboard the hospital ship Maunganui. After the war, she took her unstoppable sense of purpose to the World Health Organisation, working across the globe.

Merle was awarded the MBE in 1947 and decorated by both Great Britain and the United States for her heroism.