Hot 'n' High
14th Jun 2024, 12:04
Posted for interest. It's outside mainstream D-Day really so started this. There's also a news clip on BBC i-player - Points West evening news on 13/6 about 2/3rds through. https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/pioneering-nurses-the-flying-nightingales-remembered-80-years-on/
Deep Throat
14th Jun 2024, 12:30
‘The Flying Nightingales’
‘Good God!’
This was the incredulous reaction from the beachhead master when Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) Nurse Iris Bower arrived on Juno Beach early on 11 June 1944. With fellow nurse, Mollie Giles, she travelled on a tank landing craft, becoming one of the first women to set foot on the D Day beaches. She was later awarded an MBE for her work.
Posted for interest. It's outside mainstream D-Day really so started this. There's also a news clip on BBC i-player - Points West evening news on 13/6 about 2/3rds through. https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/pioneering-nurses-the-flying-nightingales-remembered-80-years-on/
https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/blog/flying-nightingales/
https://assets.rafmuseum.org.uk/app/uploads/2021/01/CL122_IWM.jpg
Corporal Lydia Alford and LACWs Myra Roberts and Edna Birkbeck; each travelling in an RAF Douglas Dakota.
Two days after Iris, three nursing orderlies departed from RAF Blakehill on the first casualty evacuation flights to Normandy.
It was 13 June, one week since D Day.
The moment of their return was captured by an official RAF photographer.
The welcoming party of newspaper correspondents dubbed them the ‘Flying Nightingales’ and the name stuck.
They were the first British women on active service to be flown into a war zone.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/fa99/live/98e80570-2980-11ef-87fa-0b5bc4da7c72.png
Cpl Lydia Alford (L), and LACWs Myra Roberts (C) and Edna Birkbeck (R), were the first three nursing orderlies of the Woman's Auxiliary Air Force to fly to France
BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6pp46vkqv5o