Laura Gamble

Laura Gamble ARRC (4 September 1887 – 1939) was a Canadian nurse who served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps during the First World War.

A 1910 alumna of the Toronto General Hospital School of Nursing, Gamble joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps as a Nursing Sister, enlisting on May 4, 1915.[1] She expected that her experience in a Toronto hospital would be an asset to the war effort.[2] She served on a hospital ship in the Mediterranean[3] and at hospitals in Greece, France, and England.[4] She arrived on the Greek island of Lemnos after the Allies had already suffered heavy casualties as a result of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.[5]

Canadian nurses were the only nurses of the Allied armies that held the rank of officers.[2] She was awarded the Royal Red Cross 2nd class in 1917 for her show of "greatest possible tact and extreme devotion to duty".[2] This was awarded to her at Buckingham Palace during a special ceremony for Canadian nurses.[2][6] She also received the British War and Victory Medals.[7]

She was recalled to Canada after the war and served as Matron of St. Andrew's Military Hospital, Toronto. She was among the first nurses to take a new course in public health from the University of Toronto and worked for the Toronto Department of Public Health as Acting District Superintendent.[5]

The diary she kept during the war is conserved at the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa.[8]