Page 18 - QARANC The Gazette Spring 2023

18 The Gazette QARANC Association
‘I don’t know where my life would be without sport’
Mary Wilson, who received a QARANC Association grant to take part in elite para badminton in Japan, shares her remarkable life story of setbacks and successes
In 1986, Mary Wilson was a carefree 22-year-old, working in a bar in Glasgow, “ducking and diving” and yet to find her calling in life. Ironically it was an appendicitis that helped her find her path, and it wouldn’t be the last time that adversity would open new doors for Mary.
She explains, “I went into hospital and was put in a ward with mainly elderly ladies. My treatment for the appendicitis was fine but I looked around and saw that these ladies weren’t having any time with the nurses to talk to them about things, the nurses were too busy. So that was the point at which I decided I was going to do mental health nursing.”
Mary got married and was accepted on to a nursing course in Edinburgh, but during the second year she put it on hold to accompany her husband to South Africa, where he had got a job with a gold mines contractor. Mary found work in Johannesburg with a cargo company, which she “didn’t enjoy at all.”
“I loved it out there, but it was very dangerous,” Mary reminisces. “I carried a pistol with me all the time and had a German Shepherd and a rottweiler for protection. White females, when they went out in the car, were allowed to drive through red lights because there was so much hijacking and murders. I loved the warm weather, the food, and the outdoor swimming pools, but it wasn’t very safe.”
Apartheid had not yet ended, and Mary fell foul of the strict segregation rules. A delivery man came to
I carried a pistol with me all the time and had a German Shepherd and a rottweiler for protection
Mary’s office, having just fled from a train where a gang had got on board with machetes and attacked the passengers. Mary said, “He was shaken-up, so I asked him to sit down and have a drink of water. One of the Afrikaner employees went past and saw a black guy sitting in my office, and I got ripped apart for that. It wasn’t allowed.”
Mary returned to Scotland in 1991 and applied to the army to become a military police officer. There were no vacancies, but she was told that, if she completed her nursing qualification, the Army would take her. So, in April 1993 she was accepted as a psychiatric nurse and posted to Woolwich.
From there, Mary was sent to Hong Kong, where she suffered a nasty injury. “One night a drunk soldier got into the ward and was going to kill his wife,” reveals Mary. Unbeknown to him, she had already returned to the UK, but he managed to get through security and attacked a doctor. Mary helped to pin down the deranged man but “got a bit of a kicking” in the process.
She ended up with a ruptured stomach and her bladder stopped working. Mary underwent a “big operation” and a hysterectomy. She had to get a stoma put into her body. Thankfully, the procedure was able to be reversed and her bladder started working again. She continued with postings to Gosport and then to Belize, for seven months, where regiments were delivering jungle survival training.