Mary Ada Wallace was a nurse and ambulance driver with St John’s Hospitallers, saving lives on the front lines. No one would dare fire in her direction intentionally as she drove between allied and German trenches providing trauma care and taking all sides soldiers behind the lines for further medical treatment.
She told us a lot of shooting just stopped when the doctors and nurses arrived in their muddy trucks with the big red crosses emblazoned on the sides.
Nice story about your stepfather’s mother. I’d like to think that she was representative of the nurse(s) who cared for my great-uncle who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in France during WWI. He was wounded in battle on September 2, 1918, taken to #14 General Hospital in Wimereux, France, where he died 8 days later. He’s buried in Terlincthun British Military Cemetery, one mile north of Boulogne.