Page 46 - QARANC Vol 18 No 1 2020

44 The Gazette QARANC Association
Obituaries
and Valerie when my husband died very young and ever since then.
Valerie’s Christian faith was very deep and her total rock. This was shown so often by her support, help and love given to so very many people and animals over the whole of her life. All of which was done quietly without any thought of self or reward. This accounts for the reason she had such
a very large group of friends from all her many interests and so many paying their respects at her recent funeral. It also supported her when she nursed her mother devotedly when she was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and later when she herself was diagnosed with the same in 2011.
Her joy in her family, Katherine and her son Rory, Christopher and Alison
with Amelia and Poppy was always very plain to see. They and of course John, returned so much of that love to Valerie in recent sad months and are comforted to know that at last she is at peace, a life always lived in the Service of others.
Dorothy Griffiths, Midland Branch
Betty Jenkins (nee Sinnatt) 30 January 1920 – 1 November 2019
To put readers in the picture, I should perhaps say that I started my general nursing training in June 1939 in Jersey, Channel Isles, where I lived, just before war was declared. In view of the expected German occupation in June 1940, I was evacuated and with special dispensation from the GNC (General Nursing Council), I was allowed to continue my training in England. This I did at the Royal Free Hospital in London, but after three years of nursing during the Blitz, I decided I’d like a change and joined the QAIMNS in November 1943, because I was now an SRN.
After two months in Oxford learning how the Army ‘did it’, I and about thirty others travelled by train to Scotland, embarked on the Clyde, destination unknown, but which later turned out to be India. I was hoping to go to Italy!
From Bombay, now Mumbai, four of us had a forty eight hour journey to Secunderabad, in Southern India and a few miles from Hyderabad. The hospital, previously an army barracks, had only been opened three weeks before we arrived and was only one of three in the area of about three square miles, although we had no contact at all with the other two hospitals.
Our living quarters were quite excellent and consisted of a living room, bedroom and down a couple of steps to a small room with a tin bath and loo, into which one always looked before use. Why? Fear of snakes and we were told to look in our shoes for scorpions – their stings are vicious. These quarters were in blocks of six or eight. There were several blocks and we each had our own bearer, but shared a dhobi for washing our clothes.
Betty in her QAIMNS Reserve uniform