Cynthia Cooke, born June 11 1919, died April 20 2016

 

Cynthia Cooke.

Born June 11 1919, died April 20 2016

 

Cynthia Cooke, who has died aged 96, nursed newly released PoWs and later became Matron-in-Chief of the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service.   

 In January 1945 Cynthia Cooke was a nurse at the Royal Navy hospital at Herne Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, when she volunteered to staff the makeshift hospital facilities onboard the aircraft carrier Formidable. Over the next few months Formidable steamed more than 100,000 miles and carried nearly 14,000 former PoWs to Sydney as well as returning troops from the Far East. 

On her first mission, after battling through a typhoon, Formidable collected some 1,000 emaciated Australians from Manila. Loading the men in their weakened state from landing craft to Formidable took three days, and in order to load one former prisoner, suffering from tuberculosis of the spinal column, Cynthia Cooke helped to manufacture a body-length plaster of Paris case which incorporated stretcher poles. On October 24 Formidable sailed for Papua New Guinea to collect 1,254 Punjabi soldiers who were in an even worse condition than the Australians, most suffering from malaria and severe eczema. 

Though antibiotics and antiseptic treatments were available, the best treatment for most men was curry, which they cooked themselves on the flightdeck. There was only methylated spirits to clean ulcers and Cynthia Cooke would warn through a translator that it would hurt. It was, however, translated to the patients as: “If doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t do any good.” Cynthia Cooke returned to Britain in the escort carrier Queen. 

In order to go on watch in the sickbay she used to cross the flightdeck to avoid the mutual embarrassment of seeing the ship’s company half-naked in the messdecks. But when, on one occasion, a gust of wind nearly blew her overboard, she was subsequently always carefully chaperoned through the messdecks A guardsman’s daughter, Cynthia Felicity Joan Cooke was born on June 11 1919 at Bealings, Suffolk, and educated at Stockwell County Secondary School, south London, where the first headmistress, Rosa Basset, had introduced the Dalton Plan, which gave pupils the freedom and opportunity to develop initiative and self-reliance.  

In 1938 Cynthia Cooke began training at Tite Street Children’s Hospital, Chelsea. She worked as a theatre sister during the Blitz, and in 1943 joined the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service (QARNNS), beginning her career at the Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar.   There, before D-Day, she cycled to the hospital past columns of Canadian tanks, where the men greeted her with cries of “Hello, Sugar! Are you rationed?” 

In late 1944 she travelled to Australia in a troopship carrying some 4,000 Royal Marines. Post-war Cynthia Cooke served in the sickbays at RNAS Dale in Pembrokeshire, where a young national serviceman, David Attenborough, gave her a hand-drawn chart to help identify seabirds. She served in naval hospitals in Chatham, Hong Kong, Malta and Plymouth, and was principal tutor at the Navy’s training school from 1970 to 1973. 

As Matron-in-Chief of the QARNNS, from 1973 to 1976, she lived in an official residence at Haslar where she interviewed all budding new sisters – she accepted one girl who arrived for her interview in a party frock, because “she had made an effort” – and resisted all attempts to disband the nursing service. Cynthia Cooke was conferred with the Royal Red Cross in 1964, became Commander of the Order of St John in 1974, and was appointed CBE in 1975. 

In retirement she returned to Suffolk, where she cared for her mother who lived until she was 102, and supported good works, including the Royal British Legion for Women, blood donors, and her parish church.