By Lisa Nault, Army Public Affairs with files from Sean Whitcomb
Saint John, New Brunswick — International Women's Day creates an opportunity to highlight the contributions of the many Canadian women who have served, like Marjorie Whitcomb (née Horsnell). Attracted by a sense of adventure, Marjorie joined the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps as a Nursing Sister in 1949 at the age of 23.
“When I got the call that I had been accepted I didn't want to go to Toronto alone for training, so I told them I would only go if my friend Jan [Moore] could come, too,” she recalls. “I didn't know you could ask that sort of thing in the military, but they took us both!”
In 1951, she was deployed to Japan to work at the Commonwealth General Hospital in Kure where she treated survivors of nearby Hiroshima alongside her friend, Jan.
“We worked very hard and saw the damage that had been done by the atomic bomb. We met some of the survivors, some of them had been badly burned in the blast. I made a lot of friends, and some of us kept in touch after the war, but all the girls I knew well have passed away now.”
During the Korean War, Marjorie spent 2 months working at a hospital in Seoul, Korea, treating wounded soldiers. She vividly remembers the appalling conditions in which Koreans displaced by the war lived and the daunting effort of trying to provide them with some form of medical care. Despite these dire realities, Marjorie and her fellow Nursing Sisters found levity…
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