Page 52 - QARANC Vol 16 No 2 2018

50 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Mrs Elizabeth Chick (nee Maclean)
4 October 1916 – 26 September 2017
Elizabeth Chick was born in Tobermory, Isle of Mull, in 1916. While working in domestic service, she applied to train as a nurse at Lewisham Hospital after she saw a newspaper advert placed by London County Council. When she was later evacuated to Stornoway from London, she received her call-up papers for war service.
After her first posting in England she was sent to Alexandria in Egypt. Here the hospital to which she was assigned received many battle casualties from the desert campaign. Elizabeth helped out in other hospitals before she was sent onwards by air from Cairo to Khartoum and then on to Asmara and Mai Habar. A British army dentist had told her and her group that the journey to Mai Habar would be impossible because of the state of the roads, and they passed evidence of fatal accidents on hairpin bends during their difficult journey to relieve two Territorial Army sisters. Once there they were greeted by the sight of snakes slithering down the steps up to the hospital!
At Mai Habar she nursed both British and Italian soldiers, and says that the Italian orderlies, who were prisoners of war, would often steal blankets from the patients’ beds! On secondment to another hospital in Mai Habar she nursed RAF personnel who had suffered heat injuries and tropical
diseases, where she found many challenges concerning their journey back to UK, and unfortunately, they had to remain at the hospital.
At the end of the War, Elizabeth sailed back to the UK in the St George, conscious of the enemy mines that still littered the sea routes. On leaving the service, she worked with a friend at Harefield Hospital in Middlesex, training nurses there who still had traces of TB in their lungs and were unable to train elsewhere.
A nearby RAF station ran dances, to which the nurses were invited.
Elizabeth was not enthusiastic about these, as she felt ‘they drank too much beer and neglected their guests’. The Matron of Harefield nonetheless insisted that Elizabeth and her friend should go to one, and it was here that Elizabeth met her future husband, Bill!
Elizabeth’s son, Michael, interviewed his mother about her wartime experiences in 1916 and had kindly provided the Association with a recording and transcript.
With thanks to Michael Chick.
Abridged from the summary of her life by James Turner
Mrs Kathleen Patricia Stephens (nee Bradley)
16 July 1922 – 17 August 2012
Patricia Stephens died on 17 August 2012 aged 90 years. She was born at Bacton, Norfolk on 16 July 1922 and spent most of her life in Hornsea, Yorkshire. On her 18th birthday in 1940 she began nurse training at Scarborough Hospital, and was awarded the Gold Medal when she qualified.
She joined QAIMNS(R) in March 1944, and in June of that year she landed at Arromanches in Normandy on D-Day +6. After serving in the tented 74th British General Hospital, Caen, she moved to Bruges in Belgium and then to Luneburg
in Germany, at which point Germany surrendered. She nursed ‘Lord Haw Haw’ who had a bullet in his bottom, and she was also invited to view the corpse of Heinrich Himmler.
Later in 1945, she was posted to India and stayed there until she was evacuated home in 1947 with a ‘strange disease’. She spent over seven months in Middlesex Hospital recovering, and was released from service in November 1948.
With thanks to Mr LC Stephens and Marie Floyd-Norris