Page 28 - QARANC The Gazette Spring 2023

28 The Gazette QARANC Association
with came about in the 19th Century, with a typical uniform from the period on display.
In 1901, as you will know, the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) – forerunner of the QARANC – formed under the patronage of the wife of Edward VII. Those military nurses were present for the First World War casualty clearing stations. Jason also explained the casualty evacuation chain, and how prior to this, casualties would lay on the battlefield until the conflict was over.
Dame Maud McCarthy was Matron in Chief of the nursing service during WWI and her letters form part of the museum’s collection. We also looked at a tableau of casualty clearing station, with an original Studebaker horse-drawn ambulance waggon that could transport about six injured men.
The Victoria Cross is, as we know, the highest honour that can be bestowed for bravery for serving personnel. It was instituted after the Crimean War in 1856 and the Army Medical Services has the second most VCs in the British Armed Forces. Among those on display at the museum is a VC that had been buried in a time capsule by the Queen herself and lay under Netley Hospital until 1966. In future, Jason is keen that the Museum should tell the personal stories of medical service personnel who received the VC and what they did.
2022 being the anniversary the 40th anniversary Falklands conflict, I was particularly pleased to see those events had been commemorated at the museum. Jason spoke about the QAs who went
out on 19th June as part of 2 Field Hospital and confirmed there had been a lot of interest in the anniversary.
From here we moved to World War Two and the modern era, including the humanitarian work which still goes on today. It was noticeable how the uniforms had evolved
If people want to come and volunteer, we’re always happy to have that discussion
over the years, with hemlines initially down to the ankles, which would have been impractical as nurses jumped from carriage to carriage aboard hospital trains.
Jason also drew my attention to the display on tropical diseases, describing these as “one of the problems the Army has always encountered, in the environments it has gone into – so tropical medicine has always been a research area.”
From here we stepped through to the back office to take a closer look at some items from the collection. The first was an Ascensions Register, which was the inventory of objects that came into the QA Museum from 1955. Occasionally the recorder has made little are little sketches just to illustrate what the item looks like.
We looked at Dame Maud McCarthy’s correspondence relating to all aspects of nursing during World War One. This was part of the record of how the administration worked, so that the knowledge was there for future generations. Jason explained that, not surprisingly, the Museum’s substantial archives attract a lot of interest from academic researchers. This was especially the case during the WWI centenary.
Dame Margo Turner, the heroine of World War Two, whose ship was torpedoed and spent time in a Japanese prisoner of war camp (later inspiring the TV drama Tenko) has donated various items. Among these is her ‘This is Your Life’ red book from 1978, when she was the subject of the popular ITV series, then presented by Eamon Andrews. It contains pictures of her meeting various guests. Jason also dusted off, Dame Margo’s scrapbook, in which she kept press cuttings, including from Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in
1953.
The Museum is also home to every copy
of the QARANC Association Gazette since the very first issue, which was published in