SERVICES
Mary Cooper
1919 – 1946 
Military Nurse in World War II
The family lived in Magheross, Carrickmacross. Educated at Magheross National School and Viscount Weymouth Grammar School in Carrickmacross. Patrick Cooper, her father, was a Veterinary Surgeon with a practice in the town. Sister Mary Cooper, a nurse with Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, was evacuated during the ‘fall of Singapore’ in 1942. She died in a Japanese prison camp from the combined effects of starvation, brutality and tropical diseases. She continued to nurse her fellow prisoners during captivity. Mary was one of 650 Irish citizens serving with the British armed forces who became prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army in 1942, known as Far East Prisoners of War or FEPOW. Mary is buried in Jakarta War Cemetery, Indonesia; only her name was added to the family grave in St Finbar’s Church of Ireland graveyard.
Image courtesy Pat Dennif McKnight personal collection