Helen Gillespie

Brigadier Dame Helen Shiels Gillespie was a British military nurse, matron and nursing administrator, born in Edinburgh on 26 March 1898. After schooling at George Watson's Ladies' College she trained in nursing at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow from 1921 to 1925. In 1926 she joined Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service and served in India from 1927 to 1932 and again from 1934 to 1939. During the Second World War she served in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and afterwards she worked at the War Office and with the British Army on the Rhine. She received the Royal Red Cross in 1947. From 1952 until her retirement on 31 July 1956 she was Matron-in-Chief of Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps and Honorary Nursing Sister to The Queen, and she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1954. She died on 25 August 1974.