Kate Luard

Kate Evelyn Luard, born on 29 June 1872 in the vicarage at Aveley in Essex and died on 16 August 1962, was a British nurse who served in the Second Boer War and the First World War and was awarded the Royal Red Cross and Bar. She paid her own way through nursing training by working as a teacher and governess, then trained at The London Hospital and at Kings College Hospital. She was among the first nurses to join the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, worked on ambulance trains carrying the wounded, and later served as Head Sister of No. 32 Casualty Clearing Station at Brandhoek during the Battle of Passchendaele. After the war she nursed at the South London Hospital for Women and was matron at Bradfield College from 1924 to 1932. She wrote two books drawn from her experiences, the Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, published anonymously in 1915, and Unknown Warriors, a collection of her letters.