Exhibition: In Focus: The Flying Nightingales

This exhibition tells the stories of the ordinary women, trained in the nursing style of Florence Nightingale, who were thrust into the arena of war during D-Day.

During the War, the Royal Air Force Air Ambulance Unit - dubbed the Flying Nightingales – was formed. Drawn from the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), many Flying Nightingales had nursing backgrounds and worked as orderlies, helping to move supplies and servicemen across the country. During planning for the Normandy invasion, they were asked if they would be prepared to head into the scenes of battles to treat injured soldiers, deliver equipment and help to bring casualties home.

Among the women featured in the display:

Corporal Lydia Alford responded to a call for those with a medical background to train for air ambulance duties. Before very long at all, she picked up her ‘Mae West’ life jacket, parachute and medical panniers and boarded a plane to France to save wounded soldiers. Alford continued flying for the rest of the war, venturing further and further into Europe.

When Corporal Elsie Beer made her first flight to France on 18th June 1944, she became the fourth Flying Nightingale. During her service, Beer amassed nearly 400 flying hours across Europe, helping to evacuate both British and German casualties to the UK. Beer encountered danger often, not least when shot at by a sniper while walking back to her airbase.

In 1940, having grown up in poor circumstances in Wiltshire, Phyllis Bull jumped at the chance to join the WAAF. By 1942, she had been promoted to Corporal and was posted to RAF Marston Moor, North Yorkshire. She experienced the tragedies of war, including the plane crash which killed her boyfriend Bernard, a wireless operator and gunner based at another local air base. Bull went on to become an Air Ambulance orderly, making hazardous journeys to take equipment and supplies to France and bring back injured men.