Page 66 - QARANC Spring 2024

66 The Gazette QARANC Association
OBITUARY
A fond farewell to
Aldershot Branch’s
oldest member
Mrs Kay Milne (1921-2023) has died aged 101 after a life well lived. She is fondly remembered by friends and colleagues, and family including her goddaughter Annie, whose husband Colin Sheaf provides this tribute.
It is remarkable live to the ripe old age of 101, not least to do so while retaining your most important faculties. Kay Milne achieved this and remained excellent company, right until the end, as she has always been.
Born Kathleen Nerrie on 7 November 1921 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Kay was the second of six children (five girls and one boy) for her Presbyterian parents. Her childhood was noisy and happy, and she often talked about her much-loved dog Snowball sleeping under the table in the warm kitchen.
Kay’s father, Arthur, died in 1935 aged just 56, leaving her mother to raise six children single-handed, which she did with great devotion, commitment, and success. Kay and her siblings greatly enjoyed playing on Downhill Strand Beach on the Atlantic coast north of Derry and Coleraine.
In 1939, she started her nursing career by training at her local hospital in Londonderry when she was 18 and became engaged to a fellow medic at the hospital. But tragedy struck once more, when her fiancé was killed serving in the Army Medical Corps in Italy. Kay nevertheless volunteered for the Army’s
She remembered with great pleasure their honeymoon in Scotland at Braemar, where they enjoyed walking in the beautiful Highlands
Kay was so happy when visited by serving QAs in uniform
Queen Alexandra Imperial Nursing Auxiliaries in 1945 and met her husband to be, Kenneth Milne, a Aberdonian rising fast as an eye specialist in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
Ken was the youngest of five brothers of whom four would become doctors. He was appointed Honorary Eye Surgeon to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in 1974, affording Kay invitations to some memorable formal occasions.
Kay and Ken were married on 14 July 1948 at Strand Road Presbyterian Church when she was 27. She remembered with great pleasure their honeymoon in Scotland at Braemar, where they enjoyed walking in the beautiful Highlands. Her nephews and nieces enjoyed receiving postcards from Auntie Kay from the many places she was visiting for work and holidays, including Canada, Australia, and Jerusalem.
Travelling back to their medical employments in Singapore in June 1956, Ken and Kay found themselves sitting in the same row as a fellow doctor,