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Pauline Blakeborough died on the 1st August 2017 after a fulfilling 86 years of life. Her extensive life time work in the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC) better known as the "QA's" brought her in contact with Sue Potter, a fellow QA, who went on to found the Milton Hospice which was opened by HRH Princess Diana in 1989. The Milton Hospice has now become part of East Anglia's Children's Hospices (EACH).

Pauline Cynthia Davis was born in Bovington, Dorset
where her father was a Sergeant Instructor in the Royal Tank Corps, on
the 4 December 1930.

At the outbreak of World War II, the eight year old Pauline was living with her mother and father in Ankara, capital of neutral Turkey, where her father was attached to the British Embassy.  At that time there was no international school in Ankara, so for a while Pauline was home-schooled by her mother Cynthia with the help of a French tutor, but then a teacher was sent out from England to school the children of Embassy staff (all ages together).

When Pauline was eleven, her parents decided to send her away to a school near Durban in South Africa.  Pauline travelled in the company of a family friend whose two children were already at school in South Africa.  The two of them travelled overland by train through Turkey, Lebanon and Palestine to Egypt where they waited in Alexandria
for a ship.  From there an ocean steamer took them south through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean.  Following reports of German U-boats in the area, the Captain avoided putting in to Durban; instead taking a southerly detour and eventually berthing at Cape Town.

Pauline spent the next three years at the boarding school near Durban, with the long holidays spent with a pair of elderly sisters.  Once the war had ended, Pauline returned to England to complete her education at Tiffin’s Girls’ School in Richmond.

In 1947 Pauline's father was posted to Egypt and his wife and daughter came with him. Pauline initially helped out in the British Army library, before obtaining a position at the British Army Hospital.  When a year later the family moved to another garrison town, Pauline was given such a glowing reference by the first hospital that she was immediately taken on as an assistant at the local military hospital.

After two years in Egypt, the family returned to the UK and a house in Epsom.  Pauline had by now decided that she wanted to be a nurse, and applied to train at St Thomas’s Hospital in London at the [Florence] Nightingale Training School.  Once she had completed her training, she
stayed at St Thomas’s for another two and half years, becoming a Charge Nurse in the Operating Theatre.

Unfortunately I don't know if Pauline was ever reunited with Sue Potter. However, I know that Pauline was an avid supporter of EACH and even in her later years when her short term memory was poor she never forgot her nursing roots or her former army colleagues or indeed the support of children with life limiting illness.

As a keen cyclist and a participant (or medic) in numerous national and international charity cycling events this was a fitting memorial  celebration of a life well lived and in the service of others. 

Thank you

Jeremy Blakeborough

https://www.each.org.uk/support-us/events-diary/details/ride-for-life-2017