More about Mabel Lee Milne

For reasons unknown Mabel is not listed on the original Dundee Roll of Honour.

Sister Mabel Lee Milne MiD TFNS

Mabel was not only DRI trained but was also a native of Dundee having been born to parents James Milne,  a Railway Clerk,  and to Mary Milne nee Lee at 2 Abbotsford Place, Peddie Street, Dundee on 8 January 1886.

She was an early volunteer to the Territorial Force Nursing Service,  TFNS, and was called up to serve at No 2 Scottish General Hospital in Craigleith Edinburgh on 6 Oct 1914.   This is now the site of Western General Edinburgh.  Mabel served there throughout the period 1914 to Feb 1917 apart from a 3 month sabbatical in 1916 when she returned to the family home,  by then in Perth,  as her father James was nearing the end of his life.  On her return to service in Edinburgh she volunteered for service overseas and was posted to France with No 58 (Scottish) General Hospital in St Omer,  by this time a prominent Hospital and Base area for the BEF and previously, earlier in the war, the HQ of the BEF.

September 1917 was a month whereby German air activity increase and early in the month there was a series of air raids of varying intensity and causing casualties in the hospital and wider base areas.  This was followed by a relatively quite spell where enemy air activity caused little or no problem.  However on the night of the 29 September a large raid developed dropping some 60 bombs in St Omer,  6 of these hit no 4 Stationary Hospital causing damage to the main Dental facility for the BEF and 3 hit wards and accommodation of no 58 (Scottish) General Hospital killing and wounding patients,  Medical and Nursing Staff, including Mabel who was initially seriously wounded and admitted to No 10 Stationary Hospital but sadly succumbed to her wounds.

The Nursing staff who were killed were all from 58 Scottish Gen Hospital are being so were all Scottish by birth

Staff Nurse Agnes M Climie TFNS  from Renfrewshire

Probationer, (VAD), Daisy K M Coles from Peebles

Probationer, (VAD), Elizabeth Thomson from Kirkudbright

Sister Mabel Lee Milne TFNS of Dundee

I have deliberately listed them this way to respect the photograph (see attached images),  termed Nurses Row,  (Row 6B) at Longuenesse Souvenir Cemetery near St Omer.

Why ??

Because this is the manner in which they lie,   now at peace,   the VAD’s flanked by their qualified Nursing Sister and Staff Nurse.  In death much as they would have been in life VAD’s  mentored and supported by their qualified colleagues A very poignant image

These Nurse casualties were all mentioned in Field Marshall Douglas Haig’s Despatches of 21 Dec 1917