The Norman Gooding Collection

A Great War M.B.E. group of five awarded to Driver Christabel Nicholson, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps, later Women’s Legion, who devoted the first two years of the Great War to the care of wounded and sick Belgian soldiers

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, M.B.E. (Military) Member’s 1st type, silver, hallmarks for London 1919; 1914-15 Star (C. Nicholson. F.A.N.Y.C.); British War and Victory Medals (C. Nicholson. F.A.N.Y.C.); Belgium, Kingdom, Medaille de la Reine Elisabeth, bronze and red enamel, good very fine (5) £400-£500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Norman Gooding Collection.

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M.B.E. London Gazette 3 June 1919.

Christabel Nicholson was born in Loughton, Essex, around 1895. Qualified in first aid and home nursing, she was amongst the earliest entrants to the F.A.N.Y., serving in France from 5 December 1914. Mentioned several times by author Pat Waddel in FANY went to War, Nicholson was one of the original party at Lamarck Military Hospital in Calais. Here she attended to hundreds of Belgian troops wounded at the Battle of the Yser, and yet more suffering from typhoid.

Under the command of Mrs. McDougall, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry succeeded in creating a 100-bedded hospital which functioned through the ingenuity of the staff to raise money for the purchasing of dressings, beds and comforts. In March 1915, Zeppelin bombs fell into the yard of the hospital. With other staff looking after the patients, Nicholson and Miss Hutchinson went out with a motor ambulance to help at the Central Station. As Lamarck gradually evolved into a base hospital, Nicholson soon found herself driving every morning to the Clearing Station to assist in transporting the wounded who arrived from the front by train; the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Review (1914-17) held in the Women’s Work collection of the IWM, notes that on one occasion ‘there were 400 cases entrained at Calais, and Miss Nicholson and Miss Cluff, with Miss Marshall and Miss Hutchinson as Orderlies, drove their motor ambulances 125 miles to the destination of the train, unloaded their cases from midnight to early morning, and then motored back to rejoin their unit.’

Transferred to a new camp for Belgian convalescents known as the Camp du Ruchard, Nicholson spent the early summer of 1915 in ‘truly awful’ conditions with the men badly housed and surrounded by mud. She transferred to the Calais Convoy in 1916, becoming one of their first British drivers, before returning to England and joining the Women’s Legion in a supervisory capacity - likely the motorised transport department. Awarded the M.B.E. for her service with the Women’s Legion, she married Captain V. A. Haskett-Smith of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders in 1921.