BRITISH NURSE - Liverpool Echo 12/04/1917

LIVERPOOL LADY'S WORK AND SACRIFICE

It will be of interest to many in and near Liverpool to learn of the honour paid by our gallant allies to a young Liverpool lady. Miss Maude Millicent Wilson, daughter of Mr and Mrs Alex Wilson of Eleanor-road Bidston, on the outbreak of war joined the V.A.D. and duly passed all the necessary examinations. Shortly afterwards she was offered an appointment as nurse (infirmiere) at the great hospital started by the English residents at Mentone for the French wounded. She took up this position at the beginning of 1915 and from that date devoted herself to that excellent work.The hospital is the splendid Imperial Hotel and is fitted to take about 500 wounded.

Here Miss Wilson worked with such energy and capacity that she was promoted to the position of infirmiere major and appointed to the charge of the great operating theatre and radiograph room, in which so many extraordinarily successful operations have been performed by the skill of the great surgeon, Dr Le Blanc.

Unfortunately, the strain of such work was extreme and Miss Wilson was struck down with pneumonia, death resulting from heart failure on the 27th March. Her illness and death were the occasion of a display of affection and regard which is almost unique. The patients, on learning of the serious nature of her illness, themselves imposed a rule of absolute silence, for fear that the noise of a great hospital might disturb one to whom many of them owed much. When her death took place many of the men completely broke down from grief.

Her funeral was the occasion of an extraordinary demonstration of affection and admiration. From the highest to the lowers there was but one wish, to do honour and homage to one who, as they themselves expressed it, had died on the field of honour as surely as any solder in the Allied armies.