“Full of energy and charm. Even in uniform she dressed with flair. She was very good at achieving the impossible.”
Widowed by the war in 1941, having moved to the Middle East as a member of the Australian Comforts Fund to be closer to her husband Barbara (Biddy) Moriarty dedicated herself to caring for other soldiers by joining the Australian Red Cross Society’s field force in Egypt after losing her husband. Returning to Australia the following year, Biddy travelled the country in her capacity as a member of the Red Cross, where she proved herself to be a strong and vibrant leader and was promoted superintendent in under a year.
Sent back to the Middle East in 1943 to help recovered prisoners of war, she was quickly promoted to Senior Superintendent and then Commandant before working with the Australian Imperial Force in 1945 to repatriate former Prisoners of War (PoW) after the German surrender. Always one to find a way to bring comfort or a smile to other people, she gifted sprigs of wattle to the freed Australian PoWs. Shortly after returning home with a shipload of liberated men, Biddy Moriarty was recalled to lead a Red Cross contingent in Singapore to assist in repatriating Australian PoWs who had been held by the Japanese. Recalling them to be “a group of men just as we found them… naked to the waist, ulcered [sic] limbs roughly bound, stomachs distended by bad diet; but every friendly face grinning and animated,” Biddy returned to Australia with the released men and was discharged from the Red Cross.
In 1947 Biddy Moriarty was awarded the Florence Nightingale medal for her services.
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