Page 46 - QARANC Vol 20 No 1 2022

46 The Gazette QARANC Association
Obituaries
‘A unique and remarkable woman’
Major (Retd) Norah Bryson (nee Letch) 24 February 1921 – 23 July 2021
Major (Retd) Norah Bryson (nee Letch), who has died at the grand old age of 100, began her long and distinguished life on 24 February 1921.
She was born in Gosport, near Southampton, an only child, to a mother in her forties and a father in the army. Her father died serving in Ireland whilst Norah was still very young, so her mother was her only close family.
After leaving school, Norah was accepted as a Pupil Nurse at the Isolation Hospital in Southampton, quite a baptism of fire for a young girl. It was dangerous work, nursing people in isolation wards with some of the most serious diseases at that time, many of them brought straight from ships that had docked in the port; sometimes nursing patients in Iron Lungs.
Unfortunately, Norah was infected during her second year and became very ill, unable to work for several months, which meant she missed her Staff Nurse Exams and had to wait another year to take them.
After qualifying as a Staff Nurse and Registered Fever Nurse in 1941, Norah transferred to Southampton General, gaining a wide range of experience whilst the city was a major target for bombing raids. She qualified as a Ward Sister in 1944 and took charge of a Men’s Surgical ward on D-Day, admitting and treating a steady stream of seriously injured soldiers straight from the battlefield, many with severe burns.
In 1947 she transferred to St. Mary’s Hospital in Portsmouth as a Pupil Midwife, she qualified, and then served as a District Midwife in Guildford for a while before returning to Southampton General as a Ward Sister.
Norah’s mother died in 1949, leaving her alone, with no family, so she applied for a Commission into the QARANC, and the Army became her new family in 1951.
Norah trained at Tidworth and was posted to Singapore in 1952. It was during her year serving there that she met Thomas Bryson, whom she