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Love Story First World WarLove stories of the First World War of British nurses and soldiers Despite the horrors and hardships of war love blossomed between the QAIMNS (Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service) nurses and soldiers of the British Army. Many QAs fell in love with their patients and soldiers who worked at the hospitals or Field Dressing Stations. The book It's a Long Way to Tipperary: British and Irish Nurses in the Great War  by Yvonne McEwen tells of the love between composer, poet and soldier Ivor Gurney and nurse Annie Drummond. They met when he was evacuated to Bangour War Hospital near Edinburgh in Scotland.
Here is a collection of First World War love stories. Edward Boulton and Hilda Ward Our first love story from the First World War was kindly narrated by the grandson (Andrew Fyfe) of Edward Boulton and Hilda Ward. His grandparents met at British Military Hospital Alexandria in Egypt and here are the events that led to their meeting: Captain Edward Boulton served in the Rifle Brigade and was aboard a ship in the Mediterranean during the Great War. His ship was torpedoed and he was injured. Fortunately the ship took some time to sink and he was able to be rescued. He was placed on a stretcher because of a serious leg injury and wound. Before he abandoned ship he asked his friend to take some photographs with his camera. This included a photo of his men leaving the sinking ship and going into the life rafts, jumping into the water (where sadly many lives were lost) and of himself on the ship lying on the stretcher despite his painful wounds. The next picture in the album were of Capt. Boulton wearing a dressing gown on crutches in BMH Alexandria with a British military nurse on each arm. One QA officer and nursing sister appears more and more in the photograph collection which is thought to be dated to 1914 to 1915 and this included visits to the pyramids and temples and swimming in the Red Sea. Captain Edward Boulton was unmarried and aged nearly forty and soon fell in love with Sister Hilda Ward. Captain Boulton recovered from his wounds in Egypt and was repatriated back to Britain though he would always walk with a limp. He had survived WWI and found love. He married Hilda Ward in Marylebone and was then dispatched to Falmouth in England, where he commanded a gun battery overlooking the harbour for the rest of the war. After World War One he retired from the army a received a disability pension from the Government. In 1918 their first child, Andrew's mother, was born in Falmouth. A QARANC wall plaque and shield is available to buy through Amazon. The QA shield is hand made and ready to hang on the wall. . Buy Now. 
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Hilda Ward QAIMNS A bit of background about Hilda Ward QAIMNS: Hilda Ward was born in 1882. She was the youngest child of a well to do father who was the Managing Director of Stead and Simpson in Leicester. Hilda was bored by this life of considerable luxury and left home, against her father’s wishes, to become a nurse. Hilda Ward trained at the London Hospital and for many years assisted a famous eye specialist at Moorefields Eye Hospital in London before going to Egypt with the British Army as a QA Nursing Sister. The photos of Captain Edward Boulton and Sister Hilda Ward are with their daughter in the UK and Andrew, who works in the USA, hopes to be able to make copies soon. Bigamy Some QAs were not as lucky in love as Hilda Ward. Some soldiers and officers took advantage of the love of the nurses and during the daily struggle of life and death of war created an urgency to marry so that they could make love to their new sweethearts. Bigamy was a common occurrence and many wives left behind in Britain were unaware that their husbands had remarried without a divorce. Some of these bigamists had no intention of leaving their wives at home and only wanted a sexual relationship as some comfort of war. Others may have fallen in love with their new wives but were killed in action and only found out about the other wives when they padres or COs returned effects and send letters of condolences to the registered next of kin. In her book A Nurse's War  Brenda McBryde recalls one such whirlwind romance in which Mary MacDonald, a QA sister from the Highlands of Scotland, fell in love with an Artillery Captain. He was later killed in action and she received his personal effects from a dispatch rider. She took some comfort from these and that her lover had given his life for his country and men until a padre arrived to ask for the items back because they had been sent to her in error. They should have been sent home to his wife in England. Mary had to had his effects over, after taking out her love letters o him. She later learnt that he had also become engaged to a French woman.
Second World War RomancesNurses in the Second World War also found romance with soldiers. For example Betty C Parkin was a member of the QAIMNS(R) serving in a military hospital in Cairo when an engineer officer called Stanley of the recovery unit came to her ward. They fell in love and despite his dangerous job of going into minefields and battlefields such as the battle of El Alamein to retrieve weapons and vehicles for salvaging and burying the dead and her frequent postings to other field hospitals and hospital ships around the world they married, served out the war and had two beautiful daughters before his sad and untimely death from an illness caught in the desert. More about their remarkable lives be read in the book Desert Nurse: A WorldWar II Memoir  .
If you would like to contribute a love story involving a QA nurse then please contact me. The Real Tenko The latest book about British Army nurses and nursing describes a dark chapter in the history of the QAs. The Real Tenko: Extraordinary True Stories of Women Prisoners of the Japanese  by Mark Felton is an account of the fall of the Far East to Japan. It comprehensively covers war atrocities performed by the Japanese troops to women stationed in places such as Singapore and Hong Kong. This included Sisters of the QAs who were stationed in hospitals such as
BMH Bowen Road Hong Kong and
BMH Singapore. Read the Qaranc.co.uk review or
Buy Now
with free delivery available.
View more British Army Nursing Books - with free delivery available. If you would like to contribute to this page, suggest changes or inclusions to this website or would like to send me a photograph then please e-mail me. The photos and pictures on this page have been kindly sent to us for inclusion on this page. If you would like to contribute photographs then please contact us. For the official Army QARANC webpage please go to www.army.mod.uk/home.aspx For the QARANC Association website please go to www.army.mod.uk/army-medical-services/qaranc/9884.aspx *********************************************** Help Needed A reader of Qaranc.co.uk is researching the exhumation of Heinrich Himmler in Luneberg, Germany circa 1945-46. He thinks that two nurses from the QAIMNS attended the exhumation due to the poor state of health of Walter Schellenberg. He would like to learn if any of the nurses kept a diary of the events leading up to the exhumation or sent any personal letters home to friends or family that may have provided an insight into Walter Schellenberg and the exhumation. Please contact Qaranc.co.uk if you have any information. Qaranc.co.uk have recently learnt about two former Military Hospitals that we would like to write about. These are the British Military Hospital at Wuppertal in Germany and BMH Benghazi. If you know any information, would like to share your memories or have photographs that we can use on the site then please contact Qaranc.co.uk A reader is writing an article about the demise of the Military Hospital for the RAMC Magazine and seeks some help. There was, in Kuala Lumpur, a hospital called BMH Kinrara. He would like to know when it opened and closed, what happened to the buildings and the staff. He thinks that Kinrara closed as Terendak opened and that the staff were transferred across to 34 Company RAMC? He would also like any information about the Military Maternity Hospital, Penang. If you can help then please contact Qaranc.co.uk There is a lovely photo of three QA Midwives from the 1960s about half way down on the Royal Herbert Hospital page. If you can help with information about the Maternity Unit in Woolwich or identify the QA Officers then please contact Qaranc.co.uk The BMH Dhekelia has new photos which includes a stunning picture of the demolition of the original building and some staff photos. The contributor would like some help with the date it was demolished and would love to hear from anyone who worked with her relative. |
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