Local Heroes: Enid Lee
Little Mother Major
By Colleen Morton
With only a primary school education and training in needlework behind her, Enid Lee showed single-minded determination to equip herself for service in The Salvation Army.
In 1948, after 14 years service as a Salvation Army officer in NSW and Queensland, Senior-Captain Enid Lee, a petite and shy 38-year-old single officer, left Australia to serve in the Celebes, Indonesia. For the next 10 years, Enid Lee worked alone on that island, caring for the sick and dying. In the constant struggle to both cure their bodies and tell them of her God, she earned the title of “Little Mother Major”.
Her spiritual calling
Enid Lee was born on 3 January 1910. Her father had been an officer in his single days but had resigned because of ill health. Due to family circumstances he was unable to reconnect with a Salvation Army Corps (church) but after moving to the south-western Sydney suburb of Belmore, the Lee family began attending Belmore Salvation Army. As the eldest child in a family of eight, Enid often played the role of “mother” when a new baby arrived. From an early age she enjoyed her involvement in Salvation Army children’s and youth meetings and yearned to know more about God.
Her family’s financial situation meant that Enid needed to start work soon after her conversion. Her work situation, doing needlework, was difficult but as a young Christian she stood by her beliefs and defended her association with The Salvation Army. Finding another job would have been easier but Enid chose to stay. Her determination to stand firm in her faith was to be her strength in future years. At a youth meeting with a visiting evangelist, Enid, then in her early 20s, was deeply moved by the song:
Just as I am, young, strong and free,
To be the best that I can be
For truth and righteousness and Thee,
Lord of my life, I come.
Enid knew God was calling her to become a Salvation Army officer. She joined the Faith session of cadets in Melbourne for 10 months of training before being commissioned as a pro-lieutenant on 14 January 1935.
During a college spiritual meeting she felt a conviction to work as an officer in China. Later when the training principal asked her if she had any special qualifications for such work, Enid replied she did not but still felt sure God was leading her to overseas service.
Gaining life experience
Enid had two short corps (church) appointments at Gosford and West Wallsend. She shared these with another female officer and they learned valuable lessons from each other. Whether it was travelling by pony to visit farming families or learning administrative skills, Enid was keen to be the best she could be.
Then followed appointments to Salvation Army hospitals where she gained her nursing qualifications. She saw this as another step to overseas service. While alone on duty one night at the Marrickville Mothers’ Hospital, where she trained as a nurse from 1936-39, a tornado swept in from the sea. The roof was lifted off, the trolleys and trays were flung into the air and within minutes the whole place was knee-deep in water. Due to her calmness and presence of mind she saved a baby from drowning in his cot and calmed the anxious sufferers. ‘Things don’t happen like that every day,’ she recalled, ‘but God let me be on duty to teach me always to be prepared for an emergency. A missionary never knows just what is around the corner.’
Disappointment before dreams fulfilled
Enid was appointed to the Rockhampton Mothers’ Hospital in northern Queensland from 1940-1942 but the heat of a tropical climate together with the pressure of hospital duties took their toll on her. Her vision of service on the mission field receded before the doctor’s report on her health: ‘Nervous breakdown, slight heart affection, four months rest. Light Salvation Army work. No more hot climates.’
After four months rest the doctors gave Enid the all-clear and she immediately wrote to her leaders asking to be sent to China. In reply the Army said it was not sending any more officers there. Bitterly disappointed she thought about resigning and seeking another path to China but a visit from a probationary-lieutenant thanking her for her kindness, understanding and encouragement led Enid to tear up her resignation letter.
Some years later, Enid met Major Melattie Brouwer, an officer from the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) who had spent part of World War Two in a Japanese internment camp. Melattie told Enid of the conditions of the people in her country and of the need for nurses. A few weeks later Enid received a letter from Gladys Calliss, a fellow cadet in training college, who had just arrived in the Dutch East Indies on her way to a Central Celebes appointment. Gladys had seen many Chinese patients at a hospital and wrote: Was your call for China or the Chinese? While the door to China had firmly closed for Enid, here was another door opening. Enid spent that night in prayer and the next day wrote to headquarters applying for service in Indonesia. Within a matter of weeks all her papers were cleared and she set sail for the Celebes.
The Army in the Celebes
The international spread of The Salvation Army to the remote island of Celebes followed the pattern of Acts 1:8 – ‘You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ The Army spread from London to Amsterdam when Captain and Mrs Joseph K. Tyler, English officers, and Lieutenant Gerrit J. Govaars, a gifted Dutch teacher, commenced Salvation Army work in Amsterdam on 8 May 1887. Operations soon spread throughout the country and reached the Dutch East Indies in 1894.
In 1909 Govaars, by then the territorial commander of Java, was in turn invited by the newly-stationed governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, A.W.F. Indenbury, to assess the possibility of opening missions among the pagan Toradja tribe of Central Celebes. The work of The Salvation Army expanded into this region after Govaars became the first Christian to preach the gospel in Kulawi. Enid went to these same people who had little background in Christianity but were mostly animists worshipping nature spirits.
En route to the Celebes, Enid visited Djakarta’s Salvation Army centres including the training college. From Djakarta and her quick exposure to the mixed culture of the Dutch and Malayan people, Enid sailed for Makassar, the port of Central Celebes where she worked for a few months at a Salvation Army maternity clinic. This was a time of intense familiarisation with the language, customs and worldview of the people she would serve for the next 12 years. How different from her Australian upbringing and life as an officer in Queensland and rural NSW. She was now immersed in an unfamiliar culture and sleeping on the veranda of the overcrowded maternity hospital without either security or comfort. No wonder she said of those first days: I was terrified.
The island of Celebes, now known as Sulawesi, is the world’s 11th largest island, surrounded by Borneo to the west, the Philippines to the north, Maluku to the east, and Flores and Timor to the south. It has a distinctive shape dominated by four large peninsulas stretching into the surrounding seas. The centre of the island is ruggedly mountainous so that the island’s peninsulas have better connection by sea than by road. For the next decade Enid Lee lived and worked here, travelling on horseback or by foot into the steamy mountains to visit the people she knew God had called her to serve.
There are six different tribal groupings in Celebes, each speaking their own language and each living in geographical isolation. Enid knew she would have to learn both Dutch and Malayan, the common languages, in order to be able to do her work properly. In those first months a young local woman coached her in Malayan while Enid taught her English and at the same time a European officer taught her Dutch. Enid needed to know not only conversational speech but also the medical terms, weights and measures in each language as she knew she would be living in isolated areas away from English-speaking assistance.
Two Australians reunited
After the few months in Makassar, Enid travelled by boat to the sea port of Donggala where she joined Gladys Calliss and together they covered the 35 kilometres to The Salvation Army headquarters at Kalawara by horse-drawn cart. The very next day they set off on a two-day journey on foot to Kulawi, a remote village in the highlands where Enid would be based at her mission and medical clinic. From here Enid would travel to nearby villages to meet with the village headmen and seek permission to set up clinics to treat mothers and babies, give out medicines, deal with various medical emergencies and assist the local Salvationists in the schools and corps (churches.)
The two Australian friends stayed together for a week before Gladys returned to her own appointment. Enid was now alone with the Toradja people where she soon adapted to life in village huts, becoming part of the communities and learning to fry bracken fern leaves in coconut oil; to boil young leaves from the paw-paw and pumpkin or, as an alternative to concoct a dish of young bamboo shoots in coconut milk.
Little Mother Major
Enid completely identified with the Indonesian people and, in addition to her clinic work, was responsible for six Salvation Army corps (churches) as well as seven day schools and a number of remote centres. She had many adventures as she travelled down the deep ravines and across rivers, often slipping in mud and being drenched in torrential downpours. She did, however, hate the snakes that seemed to be everywhere. On one occasion she was speaking at an officers’ meeting in a small crowded hut. The officers squatted on the floor and Enid was concerned that as some of them had travelled through the forests for three days to attend, she needed to give them fresh motivation and make sure her message was inspirational. She was, therefore, pleased to note that they seemed to cling to her every word as they kept their eyes focused on her the whole time she spoke. Just after the benediction was pronounced she was amazed when the men drew their knives, rose to their feet and came towards her. They reached past her and slashed to death a venomous snake that had been coiled on the bamboo rafter above her head the whole time she had been speaking.
During Enid’s time at Kulawi she seemed to attract young people to her care. Soon her house needed extensions to accommodate the dozen or so Javanese, Chinese and Celebeans who for various reasons were staying with her. The young men accompanied her on tour while the young women guarded her at night. As all of her ‘family’ were hoping to go one day to Djakarta to train as Salvation Army officers, Enid coached and mentored them for the future.
Enid was promoted to the rank of major and became known as the Little Mother Major within the local Salvation Army. The government of the island, impressed by the work she was doing, issued instructions that the headmen of each village should supply carriers for her trekking. The demands upon Major Lee increased as new opportunities opened up. She secretly wondered at times whether her health would stand the strain. The weariness of her body spurred on by a zealous spirit, the battle against unutterable loneliness and the continual self-giving of love in the care of her people often depressed her; but always she found grace sufficient for her need.
After eight years in Central Celebes, Enid Lee was asked to move to another part of the island – to a different tribal group in the northern peninsula and, therefore, a new language. The government of Indonesia had provided a house for this work and wanted The Salvation Army to send an officer. For two years Enid worked with the help of an Indonesian nurse among these people who had no knowledge of Christianity and little experience of a white woman. The children would run away from Enid and many refused her medicine and her ministry. Then a period of instability came to the Celebes region and Enid was compelled to leave. She took up an appointment as matron of the William Booth Hospital in Surabaya, Java, where she served for almost three years before her health gave way and she needed to leave Indonesia altogether.
International appointment
In October 1960, Enid was appointed to International Headquarters in London as the Women’s Social Secretary. She served there for four years before returning to Australia in August 1964 as assistant matron at Hillcrest Hospital, Merewether, where she had worked over 20 years previously as a young nurse.
Enid then had appointments in social centres at Chelmer Women’s Home, Samaritan House, Mackay, The Repose, Balmain and Bethesda Hospital, Marrickville. She retired from active service on 3 January 1970 after almost 35 years of corps officership, nursing, institutional management and international consultancy in Australia, Indonesia and Great Britain. Her life was a selfless story of being a ‘mother’ to the sick, unwanted and lost.
Good advice
When interviewed on a Christian television program in 1967 the then Brigadier Enid Lee was asked what message she would give to young people thinking of service in The Salvation Army. She replied that they should firstly give themselves to God and make sure they were in God’s will. Secondly, they should train themselves in some skill they could use in God’s service. These comments summarised Enid’s own life – being sensitive to God’s will, patiently up-skilling herself for service and then persevering in her various appointments despite hardship and frustration.
Six years after retiring Enid married Brigadier Alfred Chambers on 19 June 1976 and lived in The Salvation Army retirement complex at Gosford. Two years after the death of her husband, Enid Lee was promoted to glory on 9 December 2004, aged 94, always to be remembered as the Little Mother Major.
FURTHER READING
Carr, Irene. Little Mother Major – The Story of Enid Lee.London, Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, 1960.