LEA, Mary
Biography
Mary Lea was born in 1912 in Lymm, Cheshire into a farming family[1] [2]. She trained at Manchester Royal Infirmary 1931-1934, and also qualified as a Midwife[3] [4]. She joined the Territorial Army Nursing Service (TANS) and was granted an emergency commission as a Sister on the 30th May 1941.
Nursing Service in WW2
The walking stick suggested that she was posted to the Military Hospital in Geneifa, Egypt around 1941.
Geneifa
Geneifa was an Egyptian town about 200 metres from the Suez Canal. The road from Suez to Ismailia ran near Geneifa, as did the railway. The Fayed Camp, a large camp of tents and barracks, for Italian civilian internees who had been living in Egypt, was situated at the base of the distant hills. By October 1940 there were 5,940 internees in this camp.
Geneifa was also the main holding area for Italian Prisoners of War who were treated for sickness and injury in the British military medical system. There were several outbreaks of typhoid fever in the prisoner population which required mass inoculation, and medical and nursing care of the most severe cases[5]. Geneifa was a major logistics base and was supported by 19 British General Hospital.
Sick or wounded prisoners of war were cared for in the hospital which had specific wards for Italian and German prisoners. This picture shows one of the nurses with ‘her Italian orderlies’ at Geneifa. It can be assumed that these men were either medical orderlies captured and then allowed under the Hague conventions to continue caring for their sick and wounded compatriots, or were volunteers from within the prisoner population.
At the time that Sister Mary Lea was serving with 19 British General Hospital a photograph was taking of the nursing staff. Sadly it is not known whether she was in this photograph, or if so which was her.
The Hospital Ship Newfoundland
At some point between 1941 and 1943 Sister Mary Lea was posted to the Hospital Ship Newfoundland. The Newfoundland was a British Royal Mail ship requisitioned by the Royal Navy as a hospital ship. Vickers, Sons & Maxim, Ltd of Barrow-in-Furness built Newfoundland for Furness, Withy & Co of Liverpool[6]. Newfoundland spent the first part of World War II on her peacetime route, carrying wounded troops from the UK to Canada, and bringing the rehabilitated troops back home. After the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943, HMHS Newfoundland was assigned as the hospital ship of the Eighth Army.
At 5:00 a.m. on 13 September while under the command of Captain John Eric Wilson OBE, HMHS Newfoundland was hit by an air-launched anti-ship munition 40 nautical miles (74 km) offshore of Salerno. Sister Mary Lea was 1 of 6 British Army nurses killed outright. The story of the sinking of the Newfoundland is on the HMHS Newfoundland page.
All 6 nurses are commemorated on the Brookwood Memorial.
References
- ↑ England & Wales Births 1837-2006 - Volume: 8A; Page: 348; Line Number: 79
- ↑ 1911 Census for England & Wales RG14/21585/185
- ↑ British Journal of Nursing (1944) The Passing Bell, British Journal of Nursing, March 1944, p.29
- ↑ UK &Ireland Nursing Registers 1898-1968, Roll of Midwives 1945 p.179
- ↑ Boyd J. S. (1943). Enteric Group Fevers in Prisoners from the Western Desert. British Medical Journal, 1(4301), p.719–721
- ↑ Lloyd's Register, Steamers and Motorships. London: Lloyd's Register. 1935
