Aileen Palmer was born in Australia in 1919. She was the eldest daughter of writers, Vance Palmer and Nettie Palmer. Aileen attended Melbourne University and in 1934 she joined the Communist Party of Australia.

Palmer graduated with a degree in French and German in 1935. She was staying with her parents in a small village near Barcelona when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936. Palmer moved to London and became a member of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, an organization that had been set-up by the Socialist Medical Association and other progressive groups. Other members included Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, Hugh O'Donnell, Lord Faringdon, Arthur Greenwood, Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, Harry Pollitt, Mary Redfern Davies and Isobel Brown.

Soon afterwards Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit was appointed Administrator of the Field Unit that was to be sent to Spain. According to Tom Buchanan, the author of Britain and the Spanish Civil War (1997), "he disregarded a threat of disinheritance from his father to volunteer." Palmer went with the unit as an interpreter. Her biographer, Sylvia Martin, pointed out: "Aileen became one of the International Brigaders who worked on the frontlines of the conflict. She quickly added Spanish and Italian to her fluency in English, French and German and so was able to assist the doctors and ambulance drivers in several languages as the field hospital to which she was attached moved to the various battle sites attending to the wounded, sometimes hundreds in a day. Living under appalling conditions and in constant danger, she maintained a cheerful outlook in letters to her family."

Palmer worked closely with Kenneth Sinclair Loutit until until the International Brigades were withdrawn at the end of 1938. Palmer returned to London and during the early stages of the Second World War she worked as an ambulance driver. Later she was employed by Australia House.

In 1945 Palmer moved back to Australia. She developed a reputation for heavy drinking and at the age of thirty-three she suffered a mental breakdown and spent the next ten years in mental institutions, rehabilitation clinics and the family home in Melbourne. She remained a committed political activist and travelled on peace missions to Vietnam and China.

Palmer remained a member of the Communist Party of Australia and provided translations of the work of Ho Chi Minh and To Huu. She also published articles and poems in journals and a volume of her own poetry, World Without Strangers? appeared in 1964.

Aileen Palmer died in a psychiatric institution in 1988. from "Spartacus Educational"