English War Nurse Receives Legion of Honour

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 31, 6 February 1937, Page 14 (Supplement)

English War Nurse Receives Legion of Honour

Miss Hilda Turner, of Ixworth, Suffolk—tho “Florence Nightingale” of Verdun—was recently publicly invested with the Legion of Honour by the French Government for her work during and since the war in the stricken land round Verdun. Before a vast crowd around Charny war memorial, M. Lecourtier, Senator of the Meuse, pinned the medal on Miss Turner’s coat, while the local fire brigade stood to attention as a guard of honour. The Mayor of Charny, says a Reuter message in the Dailj' Express, told the crowd how Miss Turner had won the war medal which she wore on her coat. Miss Turner, he recalled, volunteered as a hospital nurse in August, 1914, reached France in July, 1915, and worked in a hospital pear IJar-ie-Duc during the terrible days of tho onslaught on Verdun. After service in Malta and Salouica she was demobilised and came to Charny in October, 19J9, when the people wero beginning to creep back to tho ruins of a district where even the subsoil had been laid bare and where nothing would grow. With several other courageous Englishwomen—Miss Kenart, Miss Scmpili and Miss Chatcauiort—Miss Turner opened a big army hut, which served as hotel, shop, dispensary, infirmary and restaurant. There was even a chapel, with a brass shellcase as bell. Day and night, medicines and food ia her haversack, Miss Turner tramped tho battlefields, bringing first aid and good cheer. For two years she stayed amid tho wooden shacks. Then she left to found a school for nurses in Yugoslavia. She returned to Charny in 3925, and has been working there ever since with a French assistant, Mile. Thonon.