Page 4 - QARANC Vol 14 No 11 2015

2 QARANC THE GAZETTE
DANS Foreword
The Corps is as busy as ever since the last edition of your Gazette, despite the drawdown of permanent operations to TOSCA in Cyprus and TORAL in Kabul where we have primary care nurses deployed. Our commitment to Operation GRITROCK helping to control the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone has also reduced with the last elements of the force withdrawing in November. QAs have also been actively supporting the Ghurkhas following the earthquakes and landslide in Nepal. HCA Course 01/15 raised £2138 towards the Disasters Emergency Committee and were well supported by all staff at Defence Medical Services (Whittington) and by the local community. This an incredible achievement considering that Pte Tamang and his colleagues were in training at the time! Maj Owena Pozzi- Gurung deployed on Operation MARMAT during the early stages of the recovery operation and Maj Lynda Ricketts is poised to deploy with elements of 36 Engineer Regiment to continue the disaster relief effort. Congratulations go to Lt Col Paul Jackson for his appointment to be the first first Nurse to be appointed Commanding Officer of a Medical Regiment and to Maj Jan Dodd, who also joins him as the Regiment 2 i/c making it the first all nurse Command Team of 5 Armoured Medical Regiment. This is not a record of all of your achievements of course and you all need to report what you and your colleagues are doing so that it can be recorded either here or on the ever growing web-site. There are of course academic awards along with state honours and promotions gazetted in this edition.
Army Transformation continues at a pace with the nursing team here in AMD working with their colleagues in Capability Development, Training, Personnel, the Army Medical Services Corps Col (Col Ashleigh Boreham L/RAMC) and the Organisational Development Team; in order to get the Corps in the right size and shape to continually support these interesting and varied operations. The Army Nursing Vision was launched at DANS Symposium in May and this gives you the strategic and operational level direction that you need to make sure that you are ready to deploy. This applies equally to the Regulars and Reserves and I would encourage our Retired members to engage with their affiliated units because your operational experience and ethos will contribute enormously to the development of our young soldiers and officers who may be preparing to deploy on operations similar to yours. The current situation in Nepal reminds us of the huge relief effort that went into Operation NIGHTINGALE following the earthquake in 1988 with 2 Field Hospital reinforcing BMH Dharan (Guy et al, 1990). Which segways me nicely into recognising Maggie Barclay Cooke’s successful campaign to get 2 Field Hospital and the rest of the follow-on force recognised for their operational service in the South Atlantic six years before. They are now entitled to wear the South Atlantic Medal without Rosette and many have already received their medals. We intend to mark this victory with a formal presentation of medals to our veterans by a VIP later in the year. Congratulations to Maggie for engaging with Parliament through her local MP and tenaciously fighting to win the recognition that this important group of people deserve.
Operation REFLECT. You have all heard me talk about engaging with the past to shape the future and that is what Op REFLECT is all about and I am very pleased that the Heritage Sub-Committee is now up and running. Lt Col (Retd) Keiron Spires and Alison have done a tremendous amount
of work setting the conditions for a wider Heritage Group that will hopefully attract everyone who is interested in the work of our Corps and its forebears. I commend you to read their first column in this edition of the Gazette and there will be a lot more material appearing on the Association web site and associated Wiki page. Op REFLECT is the Army’s codename for all WW1 commemorations taking place over the next few years and we have already seen some significant activity with more to come. 205 Field Hospital will hopefully get to the Loos battlefield in October where they will cover the contribution of the Scottish Divisions in that action 100 years ago. There will also be Edith Cavell commemorations in October to mark the centenary of her execution in Brussels. Although Cavell was not an Army nurse but rather working for an International Organisation, she and her team contributed to the military effect by treating and evacuating over 200 British, Belgian and French soldiers that would have been killed or captured if her team were not there. Others such as Elsie Inglis Scottish Women’s Hospitals were Non-Governmental Organisations hopefully we will be in a position to explore the Whole Force Concept then as part of 205’s conceptual study and contribute further evidence to our Heritage and learn from it. There will be a regular column in the Gazette to keep you up to date with new discoveries and to make it easier for you to find interesting historical stuff! This activity will also help to support the AMS Museum which continues to do a fantastic job with minimum staff but a growing army of volunteers. One of the major projects is identifying and cataloguing Army nurse memorials and Lt Col Simon Davies has put much effort into WW1 (reported in the last edition) and WW2 memorials found in his hospital in Stoke.
The Association continues to do its great work and many of the events that are recorded in your Gazette and on the Web Page have been supported by the Association providing assistance with personal contributions for sport, arduous training, conceptual studies (aka battlefield tours) and commemorative events as well as benevolence to name but a few. The Chair and the Board of Trustees are working furiously on your behalf behind the scenes to keep all of this running smoothly and ensuring that your money is well spent. Despite this we are still struggling to recruit our Reserve nurses and health care assistants in to the Association, however, this might change when the Day’s Pay Scheme is brought in for the Army Reserve. In the meantime I urge all Reservists to sign up now rather than wait in order to enjoy the benefits of membership mentioned above.
Finally, the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps celebrated its centenary on 29 July at the War Memorial in Wellington. Lt Col Lee Turner is the current Director and many of you will remember him as a serving QA officer. Maj Michelle Williams another ex-QA laid a wreath on behalf of the QARANC to reflect their birth from the QAIMNS in 1915.