100 years on, remembering nurse Nellie Spindler, a woman among 10,000 men

Liz Howard-Thornton dressed as a British Red Cross ward maid and Scott Knowles as a Britsh army medic. Picture by Simon Hulme

Staff Nurse Nellie Spindler died while tending to injured soldiers, when the casualty clearing station to which she had been sent was hit by German artillery.

Yesterday, a few weeks short of the centenary, students from her home city of Wakefield assembled at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds to commemorate her life in verse and song.

Miss Spindler, who was 26, was one of five nurses concussed by the explosions. She died later from an injury to her chest. More than 100 officers, four generals and the Surgeon-General attended her funeral. The position of her grave earned her the title, a woman among 10,000 men.

The students read their own work, as part of a project by the Wakefield academic and nursing historian Christine Hallett. Her latest book, Nurses of Passchendaele tells Miss Spindler’s story and that of Sister Minnie Wood, also from Wakefield, who held her as she died.