Nurse in Royal Army Medical Corps. An appreciation
Born: July 14,1924;
Died: March 19, 2017
MAY McNicol, who has died aged 92, helped many people in her life. During the Second World War, she served with the Royal Army Medical Corps, the specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families. Later in life she visited the old and infirm and was always read to give a helping hand.
She served with the RAMC as a nurse and was stationed in Wales towards the end of the war. Over the months that she was there, she would collect the regimental badges of the men she nursed, who came from all over the world, and attach them to the inside of her nurse's cape. Her family have kept the cape and are now looking for an appropriate home for it in a museum or military collection.
May McNicol was born in Glasgow on July 14, 1924 to Anne and William McDougall and attended secretarial college until the Second World War disrupted her education. After joining the RAMC, she was sent to Swansea where she stayed from 1944 to 1946. Many of the patients she tended there gave her the insignias which she then stitched into her cape. Her uncle, Major P D E Galer, later took the time to identify all but 30 of the insignia, and numbered and listed them.
After the war, Mrs McNicol worked for a time in a bank. She met the love of her life Andrew McNicol at a dance in Woodend Tennis Club in Glasgow. They started a family in 1951.
She was a creative homemaker who was good at cooking, sewing, knitting, gardening and enjoyed her tennis until the age of 80. She loved beauty and had a Glaswegian sense of humour.
She moved a lot in her life. In 1956, the family emigrated to Toronto, Canada where they lived for three years; they then moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Sackville, New Brunswick, Victoria, and Qualicum Beach. The last part of her life was in Vancouver at Churchill House and Inglewood Care Centre.
She was a beautiful woman and had a charming, vibrant personality. She was blessed with a wonderful singing voice and loved to sing with Andrew, a gifted musician, who was known for his piano playing.
Both May and Andrew sang in numerous church choirs. They loved to entertain and brightened the lives of many people. May McNicol was a very kind, generous and compassionate person.
She also like to help others and visited elderly people when she could. In the last few years she needed support and care herself and all the love she gave out in her life came back to her in the form of all the wonderful care she received from her family, special companions and Inglewood Care Centre.
She will be remembered with so much love and deeply missed by many.
She requested an intimate celebration of her life at home with her immediate family. She requested that her ashes, along with Andrew's be buried in the family plot with her parents in Sackville, New Brunswick. She supported many charities, particularly underprivileged children.
May McNicol was predeceased by her beloved husband Andrew Murray McNicol. She is survived by four children, Linda, Eve, Valerie, and John McNicol, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
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