Enid became a VAD nurse and this saw her working at Fort Pitt Military Hospital in Chatham. Her service card notes that she was engaged in November 1916 and served fulltime for 7½ months, with her service ending in October 1917.
A Lieutenant in the 4th Company, Hampshire Regiment of the Royal Garrison Artillery – George Frederick Nuthall – had sustained a gunshot wound on 29th April 1917, probably in the late evening – his medical card records a compound commuted fracture to the left leg and foot which was crushed to a pulp and haemorrhaging; this could not be controlled. He was treated by a Field Ambulance and transferred to a Casualty Clearing Station where he was treated, but the result was an amputation. When stable he was repatriated to Dover from Boulogne on the Hospital ship Jan Breydal on 7th June 1917.
Family oral history tells us that he developed gangrene in the wound and required a further amputation, finding himself in hospital for some time whilst he convalesced, recovered from the operations and was supplied with what he always referred to as his “tin leg”.
Whilst in the hospital he met a VAD nurse. They fell in love and kept in touch. They married on 22nd April 1919 at St Mary’s Church, Caterham – her home town by this time. By this time her father, David Charles Tyrie, stated himself on their wedding certificate to be a gentleman – a man of independent means.
After the war they settled in Dover where George (who was known to his friends as Peter) bought a poultry farm and became a farmer. They had a daughter Elizabeth (known as Betty) born in 1923 and then a son, David, in 1932. Peter and Enid built some houses on land they owned, near Dover and, at a time when cars were a luxury, they had one each! Together they moved around, living in Bromley in Greater London and then Redhill in Surrey. When David’s prep school was evacuated to Devon, Peter and Enid (and Betty, who was Assistant Matron at the school) all went as well.
(Source Imogen Middleton, Surrey Heritage Family story contributed by Sarah Nuthall, on behalf of David Nuthall, Peter and Enid’s son.)