Wartime nurse from Willenhall who carried wounded soldier to safety dies aged 93
When a fire bomb hit the roof of the Royal Hospital during the war, nurse Mercy White - all 5 foot 2 inches of her - threw a wounded soldier over her shoulder and carried him to safety in the basement.
One of the last surviving pre-war nurses to train at the hospital, Mercy passed away at her Willenhall home in January, aged 93.
Hospital historian Roy Stallard said she was wonderful: "I cannot begin to praise her enough. She was a most wonderful example of nursing, and bright, and popular."
Sir Stephen Moss, who also trained as a nurse at the hospital, wrote to Mr Stallard and said Mercy 'was the epitome of high nursing standards'.
Starting her schooling in Willenhall, she went on to attend Bilston Girls' High School and while there was accepted for nursing at the Royal Hospital, aged 18.
Beginning her studies in 1939, before the outbreak of the Second World War, Mercy and the other nurses had to help with the charity giving.
This involved collecting donations which would be taken back to the hospital office and 'poured on the table', Mr Stallard said, to make up the wage packets.
A popular spot to collect had been the Bilston steelworks at lunch time, where the morning shift was leaving and collecting their pay as the afternoon shift was arriving and doing the same, and the nurses' collections 'did very well'.
Back then the hospital was run with voluntary donations made by groups such as churches, Rotary and Masons.
In 1943 the 'new wing' at the hospital, made up of eight wards, featured a flat, tar roof and was about 500 yards from a commercial power station.
Mr Stallard said it is believed the Germans were trying to bomb the power station but hit the hospital's flat roof.
Not wanting to use the lifts but needing to get the patients, who were wounded soldiers, down to the basement Mr Stallard said Mercy carried a soldier on her back.
Progressing from staff nurse to junior sister, and eventually running the outpatient department and paediatrics nursing services, Mercy stayed with the Royal her whole career, retiring in the 1980s.
Remembered as a fair boss and a hard worker, she was a founding member of the Royal Hospital Nurses' League in 1953, and in 50 years never missed a reunion.
Mercy, who never married or had any children, left the bulk of her estate to Acorns Hospice.
