Page 68 - The Gazette Autumn 2024

68 The Gazette QARANC Association
OBITUARY
Margaret’s life in
the footsteps of Florence Nightingale Major (Rtd) Enid Margaret Thomas ARRC
18 March 1933 – 4 July 2024
Major Enid Margaret Thomas ARRC (known as Margaret) died peacefully on 4th July 2024. Although diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2018, she had managed to stay in her own home with the help and support of some wonderful care professionals until the very end.
Margaret was born at Crookes in Sheffield in 1933, spending her childhood in Nether Edge. She attended Abbeydale Grammar School and had wanted to be a nurse since she was
a small child, eventually enrolling at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Birmingham in 1951, qualifying four years later.
At 22, Margaret applied to the Queen
Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps
- she was accepted and started her
illustrious 17-year career with the QA’s. In
her 2006 memoir, ‘In the Footsteps of Florence Nightingale’ she recalls preparing operating theatre supplies for Suez, avoiding the wrath of the President of Ghana, working with Canadians in a military hospital in Germany, toiling night and day in Singapore with casualties flown in from Borneo followed by some R&R in Penang.
Margaret was awarded the ARRC (Associate member of the Royal Red Cross) in 1972 in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, following four years work as liaison officer for HQ Western Command,
recruiting the next generation of army nurses.
Although this marked the close of her career with the British Army, she later found huge personal reward as a loving mother (to her only son Ian) and wife to her late husband, Alan. However, Margaret’s life continued to be largely defined by her experience as a QA, frequently being invited to speak formally about her army life to WI groups and at charity events near her home in
Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
Sadly, in recent years Margaret’s memory began
to fail, particularly following her 90th birthday, but remarkably, her memories of the QA’s have remained intact and very much alive.
A memorial service was due to be held on 6th September 2024, at St Peter’s Church, Edensor, Bakewell DE45 1PH.