The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of Major Susan Lee Felsche, Royal Australian Army Medical Corps

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Alison Creagh, the story for this day was on Major Susan Lee Felsche, Royal Australian Army Medical Corps,

Major Susan Lee Felsche, Royal Australian Army Medical Corps Accidentally killed 21 June 1993 Photograph: P01763.001
Story delivered 14 September 2017

Today we remember and pay tribute to Major Susan Lee Felsche.

Susan Lee Stones was born in Brisbane on 24 March 1961. An excellent student, at 17 she began studying medicine at the University of Queensland. Here she pursued her interest in military medicine, and enlisted in the Naval Reserve, rising to the rank of petty officer.

Her family encouraged a strong sense of community service from an early age. In 1983 she joined the army undergraduate scheme, which offered the prospects of challenging and rewarding service for medical officers. Following her graduation in December 1984 Dr Stones spent two years working in remote Queensland before being posted to the 5th Military Hospital at Duntroon in 1987.

It was here that she met, and later married, fellow army officer Klaus Felsche. Susan combined a busy military career with part-time study and after hours work in the emergency departments of local hospitals. In 1991, she was promoted to major and became a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. She was posted to the Directorate General of Army Health Services before being posted as the Medical Officer in Charge of Clinical Services at the 1st Military Hospital at Yeronga. Her commanding officer there described her as “a spirited
woman with a great love of life, a doctor protective of her patients and an officer with a shining career ahead of her”.

On 17 May 1993, at the age of 32, she deployed as the medical officer to the 4th Australian Staff Contingent to Operation Cedilla, the Australian presence with the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. The UN Mission involved monitoring the ceasefire between rebel separatists and the Moroccan army, and the identification and registration of voters, largely in refugee camps. The proposed referendum would resolve whether the Western Sahara would become independent or be incorporated as part of Morocco.

Felsche coped admirably with the challenges of living in the Sahara, living in basic conditions and driving through the shifting sands with the ever-present threat of landmines. Her commander noted: “I am yet to meet a more professional and competent doctor in the Army. She was totally dedicated to her profession and the well-being of our contingent.” She was attached to the Swiss Medical Unit based in the Western Sahara Capital, Layounne. In June Major Felsche was based in the remote Awsard post, some 800 km from United Nations Headquarters, and conducted many of her medical visits to the southern team sites by air.

On the morning of 21 June, she boarded the plane for a routine visit to the Dougaj team site with her Swiss and Norwegian UN colleagues. Shortly after take-off the plane veered to the left and the nose dropped; the aircraft cartwheeled into the ground and the spare fuel tanks caught fire. A civilian UN employee saw the crash, extinguished the flames and
pulled her free, but she died that morning in the medical treatment room of a Moroccan Army camp. She became the first Australian woman to die on overseas service since the Second World War, and the second Australian soldier to die on a peacekeeping mission.

Her remains were returned to Australia, where she was buried at Cleveland with full military honours following a service at the Trinity Uniting Church, where she had taught Sunday school for 15 years and had been married five years earlier.

The Australian contingent renamed its “Kangaroo Club” canteen the “Major Susan Felsche Bar” in her honour, and on 6 May 1994, shortly before it withdrew from Western Sahara, a remembrance ceremony took place at a memorial dedicated to her and the other crew who had died in the accident.

Each year the Royal Military College awards the Major Susan Lee Felsche Memorial Trust prize to the best RAAMC graduate. She was posthumously awarded the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld medal.
Her name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with the names of 102,000 Australians who died serving their country in operations overseas.

This is but one story of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Major Susan Lee Felsche, who gave her life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Miesje de Vogel Historian, Official History of Peackeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations