Grace McDougall

Grace McDougall or Grace Alexandra Smith or Grace Ashley-Smith (3 June 1887 – 19 January 1963) was a British officer of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). She is credited with reinventing that organisation and with being the first khaki bride. She gained British, French and Belgian medals.

Life

McDougall was born in Aberdeen in 1887. Her name was Grace Alexandra Smith but she created the surname of Ashley-Smith. She attended Albyn School before spending a year at Aberdeen University. She then went to a Belgian convent for two years to learn French. She was a sportsperson and she won an Empire Medal for her shooting in 1911.

She joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) because of the word "Yeomanry" in the title as she wanted to ride horses. The FANY was formed to both rescue the wounded and to administer first aid from horseback. Their founder felt that a single rider could get to a wounded soldier faster than a horse-drawn ambulance. Each woman was trained not only in first aid but signalling and drilling in cavalry movements.

At the start of 1912 2nd Lieutenant Lilian Franklin and McDougall (Sergeant-Major Ashley-Smith) won a power struggle with the FANY founder Edward Baker and his daughter, Katie.Before the First World War started in 1914, Ashley-Smith was sure that the FANY had a useful role and she intended to find it. She and Franklin are credited with reinventing the FANY after the disagreement with the founders had been settled. An elaborate uniform was replaced with more practical khaki; astride riding and a new training regime was introduced; they acquired a horse-drawn ambulance; and made all-important contacts within the British military.

First World War

McDougall was at sea ''en route'' to Cape Town when war was declared on 4 August 1914. On the ship back from Cape Town, she met the Belgian Minister for the Colonies, who suggested the FANY’s services would be welcomed. McDougall felt strongly that the FANY had an important role to play. The FANY quickly followed up on their military contacts, but British military opinion was still that the Front was no place for a woman.

In the face of some discouragement, McDougall took herself to a British military hospital in Antwerp and drove a Belgian ambulance. The Germans rapidly over-ran Belgium. When Ghent was taken by the German army the British left. However McDougall refused to be evacuated, so that she could care for a fatally-injured British soldier. She tended him until he died.

Captured by the Germans, McDougall wrote home expressing (in a letter to her mother) a frank desire to blow up the nearby German Aerodrome with dynamite which she felt was more achievable than “getting their big guns”. After some days in captivity she managed, with assistance, to escape and return to London where she gathered reinforcements and equipment, realising the FANY’s services would be enhanced by having their own transport.  She happened upon an exiled Aberdonian garage owner there and persuaded him to donate an ambulance. In France that she met her future husband who, coincidentally, had also recently travelled from South Africa.

McDougall took the first small troupe of six FANY nurses, dressers, and a driver (her brother) to Calais on 27th October 1914.  In Calais they found hundreds of wounded men on stretchers on the quayside, and hospitals were overflowing. The FANY were allocated premises in a former convent school at Lamarck in the Rue de la Rivière which had already been set up as a temporary hospital. There they tended to the wounded and nursed victims of typhoid fever. Thousands of casualties from the front were passing through hospital facilities in Calais in the course of evacuation to England. Conditions were harsh and resources inadequate to the task. The FANY were there for two years. tending the wounded and dying in overwhelming numbers. From these beginnings, the FANY branched out into their intended function, taking ambulances up to the front line to tend the wounded.

She was said to be the first bride to marry whilst wearing Khaki at her wedding at All Saints' Church in Maidenhead, on 22 January 1915.  

The British refused to engage the FANY for some time. In summer 1917, McDougall offered the services of the corps to the French. Many FANY units were established along the Western Front, under McDougall’s overall direction. By 1917, however, the War Office moved to close these down. McDougall’s solution was to enlist with her staff as soldiers in the transport corps of the Belgian army.

At the end of the war, many members of the FANY in Belgium were reluctant to leave their life together and return home. McDougall's decision was made for her because her mother was critically ill and she had to return. It fell to McDougall's second in command, Mary Baxter Ellis, to demobilize the FANY and send them back to civilian life at home. The decision was made after seeing soldiers returning from the war and unable to get work as mechanics and it was felt that men should have the jobs.

Recognition

* Ordre de la Couronne (Belgium)
* Ordre de Leopold II (Belgium)
* Mons medal
* 1914–18 service medal
* Victory medal
*Croix de Guerre (silver star; France)
* Médaille d'honneur (France)
* Médaille des épidémies
* Médaille secours des blessés militaires
* Médaille de la reine Élisabeth (Belgium)
one of the few women to earn the rosette to the Mons star.

References

;Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:McDougall, Grace
1887 births
1963 deaths
People educated at Albyn School
People from Aberdeen
British women in World War I
Female nurses in World War I
World War I nurses
First Aid Nursing Yeomanry people