| Description | Research paper compiled by Alan Sutton on the life and genealogy of Gladys Alma Seeley.
Gladys Alma was a Sister in the Queen Alexandra Imperial Medical Nursing Services Reserve (QAIMNSR) in WWI and WWII. Though born in Chesterfield in 1888, she spent her early years living at 63 Norfolk Street, Rotherham, an address she also used when entered in the UK and Ireland Nursing Registers. She died in Rotherham in 1968. She was born Gladys Alma Smith parents to parents Kate Morrison and Henry Smith, a Parkgate draper. She was then baptised as Gladys Alma Morrison, but was informally adopted by John Seeley, Kate's second husband, and took his name from at least 1911.
Sister Gladys Alma Seeley of the QAIMNSR was awarded the Royal Red Cross 2nd Class in 1919 for 'valuable services to the British Forces in Egypt' in WWI. She was stationed at the Citadel Hospital in Cairo. In WWII she was involved in Operation Dynamo and made several channel crossings to Calais and Dunkirk to recover the wounded. During the last of these, the Hospital Carrier Paris on which Gladys Alma was serving was bombed near Dunkirk and eventually sank. The Sisters and crew escaped in lifeboats; the Sisters' lifeboat was itself bombed and the whole were attacked by planes firing machine guns. The Sisters and crew were eventually picked up and returned to the UK onboard a tug. Sister Seeley was badly injured in the attack and was reported first as 'wounded' and then as 'dangerously ill' in casualty lists. In May 1941, Sister Gladys Alma Seeley was invested with the Royal Red Cross 1st Class at Buckingham Palace by King George VI.
Gladys Alma died aged 80 in Moorgate General Hospital on January 25th 1968.
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