D-Day nurse remembered 80 years after death

A service has taken place in Surrey to mark the 80th anniversary of the death of a nurse who helped to save the lives of 75 wounded men in World War Two, before she lost her own.

Sister Dorothy Anyta Field, from Lower Kingswood, died alongside Sister Mollie Evershed, from Soham, Cambridgeshire, when the hospital ship they were on struck a mine off the French coast on 7 August 1944.

A wreath-laying ceremony took place at St Andrew’s Church, Kingswood, in memory of Sister Field, who was known as Anyta, on Wednesday.

Surrey military historian and RAF veteran Tim Richardson said: "They both had the chance to save themselves but they didn't.”

Mr Richardson said Sister Field was a professional nurse before the war and joined the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service.

He said the ship was taking wounded British Canadian soldiers and German prisoners of war from the Normandy beaches back to Southampton and on to hospital for further treatment.

But the ship hit a sea mine and the nurses started saving patients. They got 75 men off the vessel.

“They kept on going back to try and get more and then the ship went down taking with it in total 106 men including 11 German prisoners of war," he said.

"They went up to the limit and beyond it, in an attempt to look after their patients, but they lost their lives in the process, an incredibly brave thing to do."

The two nurses were included in the Standing With Giants installation that overlooks Gold Beach in Normandy, marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The D-Day landings by the Allied forces during World War Two saw 156,000 troops land on the coast of France on 6 June 1944 and marked the start of the campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied north-west Europe.

The installation contains 1,475 silhouettes, each representing a life lost.

It will be in place behind the British Normandy War Memorial until the end of August.

All the silhouettes will be brought home apart from those of the two nurses, which will remain.

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