A veteran’s wounds may curtail aspects of their sexuality, or ability to build a family.
Psychological distress, arising from battlefield violence, can engender damaging sexual fixations and behaviours.
War trauma causes harm, directly and indirectly, long after the cessation of hostilities.
Jan and seven other young women from her camp were forcibly installed at a brothel called 'The House of the Seven Seas' at Semarang. She was 21.
Jan O'Herne 1941
Bandoengan, Java
…I have forgiven the Japanese for what they did to me, but I can never forget. For fifty years, the 'Comfort Women' maintained silence; they lived with a terrible shame, of feeling soiled and dirty... I hope that by speaking out, I have been able to make a contribution to world peace and reconciliation, and that human rights violation against women will never happen again.
— Jan Ruff-O'Herne
United States congressional hearing 2007
Well done Australia, c 1918
presented to Private Arthur Reynolds, 7th Battalion, 1st Australian Division in recognition of serious wounds received at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915
Classical representations of women were often used to personify Britain and its colonies—reinforcing an idea that the British Empire was the natural heir of Rome. Women were viewed as agents of civilisation who would rehabilitate brutalised war veterans with love and family life.
Symbolising Australia as a Vestal Virgin was a Eurocentric allusion of the ‘young’ colony’s future promise—ignoring the continent’s ancient indigenous history and geography.
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