She did not become a nurse because of the war. She was already one.
By the time Margaret Notley arrived in Algiers in late 1943, she had been a qualified nurse for eight years. She had trained in London, worked in Kent during the Dunkirk period, served at two RAF stations in England, and held two nursing qualifications — one of them unusual in the order it was taken.
The war did not make her a nurse. It gave her somewhere to go.
The qualifications
Four documents survive, all from 1950. They are reissues — the NHS required re-registration across the entire profession that year, and nurses were asked to obtain certified copies of their original qualifications. The 1935 and 1938 originals do not survive; these 1950 reissues are what remains.
RSCN — Registered Sick Children’s Nurse Registered 28 June 1935. Registration number 2839. The certificate is ornate — the General Nursing Council’s formal style, the kind of document that was meant to be framed.
SRN — State Registered Nurse Registered 25 November 1938. Registration number 94913.
The sequence is notable. The RSCN — sick children’s nursing — is the more specialised qualification. The SRN is the senior general registration. She took the specialised qualification first, then the general one. This was the less common route: most nurses qualified as SRN first and added specialisms later. That she went the other way suggests she had a specific intention early in her training and broadened her scope afterwards.
Both qualifications were renewed in October 1950 — confirmed by the GNC retention receipts, each bearing the same date: 4 October 1950. The NHS required re-registration across the whole profession that year, and the renewal suggests she was keeping her qualifications current.
The fees: £1 11s 6d for the RSCN; £2 2s 0d for the SRN. Both paid on the same day. She kept both.
The postings
The chronology of Margaret’s nursing career, pieced together from the autograph book entries and the documents:
Pre-1940 — Charing Cross Hospital, London. Confirmed by a typed farewell entry in the autograph book. This was her pre-war posting, civilian nursing in central London.
1940 — Military hospital, Hythe, Kent. The autograph book entries cluster around a departure date of 20 June 1940 — three weeks after Dunkirk. The entries suggest a posting under pressure, people dispersing quickly.
January 1941 — RAF Halton, Buckinghamshire. An entry in the autograph book gives this date and location.
1941–1942 — Night Sister, Station 4, RAF Hospital Cosford, Shropshire. The Cosford entries are the most numerous in the book — this was clearly a significant posting. The OUR NOTLEY poem was written here, in December 1941.
Late 1943 — No. 2 RAF General Hospital, Maison Carrée, Algiers. The posting at which she met Walter.
The photographs
One photograph is confirmed as North Africa — the reverse is annotated in Margaret’s own hand: Ward B.I. / No. 2 R.A.F. General Hosp. / North Africa / April 1944.
Ward B.I., No. 2 R.A.F. General Hospital, North Africa. April 1944. Annotated on the reverse in Margaret’s hand.
The ward is orderly. The occasion has the feel of something slightly formal — a photograph arranged, not a snapshot. Margaret is in white nursing uniform, surrounded by patients and RAF personnel. Whatever the ward had seen in the months before, on this day in April 1944 it was calm enough for a photograph.
A second photograph from the same period survives, showing Margaret with two nurses and a patient outdoors — the setting appears to be England, likely from her time at Cosford or Halton.
Margaret with colleagues and a patient outdoors. England, assumed c. 1941–42.
Further photographs from her wartime postings are gathered below.
Margaret at her overseas posting, c. 1943–44. The reverse reads: “In my opinion — the best effort so far.”
Margaret with colleagues outside an ornate building, Mediterranean posting. Date unknown.
Nursing sisters, formal group portrait. Date and location unknown.
Ward party, nurses and service personnel. Date and location unknown.
Her father’s story is in the Notley family section. John Leonard Notley, born Kamloops, British Columbia, killed at Ypres 1917. Margaret was three years old. By 1920 she was living with her mother Clara in Kamloops; she returned to England sometime in the years before she began her nursing training in the mid-1930s.
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