Royal Naval nursing in Scotland and Ceylon in the Second World War: Official histories, memoirs and a representative microhistory

The Second World War was an important, but under-researched, transitional period for naval nursing. This article describes one sister's experience and sets it against the narrative in official histories and wartime memoirs and art. Margaret Wallace, a Scot from the skilled working class, was within the demographic that the service's Victorian founders hoped would be attracted. She worked in representative wartime facilities: the largest British auxiliary naval hospital, a secret multi-national naval base, the Headquarters of South East Asia Command in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and Haslar, the iconic Royal Naval hospital. She experienced many of the defining characteristics of military nursing during the war: revolutions in medical practice including near-magical cures by the new antibiotics, an urgent need for tri-service and cross-national working which upset centuries of tradition, the censorious attitude of some regulars to civilians drafted in as temporary officers and social mixing in the twilight of Empire.