War hero nurse: Agnes MacLeod

A nurse from Alberta, Agnes MacLeod, became one of the most honoured nurses in World War II. In 1943 Agnes MacLeod was presented with the Royal Red Cross by her majesty the Queen for her service during the war, and was also honoured in the George VI birthday awards. She had spent three years of constant work in the stress of wartime nursing and others might have considered that she had done her duty. But later on that year, back at work, she was wounded in Sicily by enemy shelling, but she didn't quit then either. She served as matron of a Canadian hospital in Belgium until November of 1944 and was then transferred to the Mediterranean where she was a senior matron until the end of the war.

Agnes MacLeod had graduated in 1927 in the first Bachelor of Science in Nursing class at the University of Alberta. She went on to earn a Masters degree in Nursing Education from Columbia in 1932 and served as Director of the University of Alberta's School of Nursing beginning in 1937. She joined the Royal Canadian Army Corps in May of 1940 and was placed in charge of one of the casualty clearing stations in Dorking, in the south of England. Just over a year later she was appointed Matron of the Canadian Neurological Hospital in Basingstoke. That position held the rank of Captain and by the end of the war she had been promoted to Major.