"Queenie Rixon, who has died aged 105, served with the Queen Alexandra’s Territorial Army Nursing Service (TANS) during the Second World War and saw active service on the front line in Africa, Europe and the Far East. She was born Margaret Jones (always known as Queenie) on March 3 1911 at Caernarvon. Her father abandoned the family when she was still a young child and after her mother died of tuberculosis when Queenie was 13, she was sent to live with an aunt in Cardiff. It was her mother’s death that inspired her to go into nursing and she initially trained at the Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, from 1930 to 1934. Following another year’s training (as a midwife) at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary, she then joined the TANS, after being shocked by reports of the horrors of the Abyssinian War. On the outbreak of the war, she was deployed to Tripoli as a nursing sister in a mobile hospital and throughout the North Africa campaign she was moved back and forth across the desert between the front lines." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/09/13/queenie-rixon-wartime-nurse--obituary/
