Obituaries Margaret Purves, born 25 November 1934, died 12 September 2021 MARGARET PURVES, GC, who has died aged 86, was one of the youngest recipients of the Albert Medal, later translated to the George Cross, awarded when she was 14 for her bravery after she plunged into the sea to save two boys from drowning. She was relaxing with some friends visiting Sully Island near Barry, South Wales, on Saturday May 28 1949 when she noticed that a party of Scouts from Cardiff, aged between 11 and 15, had become cut off from the causeway which led to the mainland by the swiftly rising tide. Most got across safely, but two of the boys were forced off the causeway by the strong tide. The leader of the Scout party, Tony Rees, 18, returned to help the elder boy, Richard Wiggins, 13, but in the struggle, he too became exhausted. Watching from the beach, Margaret Vaughan (as she then was) saw the difficulties they were in. Although earlier she had found the water too chilly for a swim herself, she undressed and struck out towards them, covering some 30 yards in cold, rough water and against strong currents running on a rising tide. She towed the boy to the shore while he supported himself by clinging to the straps of her costume and Tony Rees’s coat. At about 10 feet from the shore a lifebelt was thrown in which the boy was placed by the other two, and the three reached the shore safely. According to the citation in the London Gazette, Margaret Vaughan’s action probably saved the life of the Scout leader as well as that of the elder boy Wiggins. Margaret Purves at the 75th anniversary of the George Cross medical centre at Minden garrison. She also worked at Cheltenham General Hospital as night sister in charge of the intensive care unit. After 29 service moves, in 1983 Margaret Purves and her husband settled at Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, where she became chairman of the local Conservative Association and served on the town and county councils until 1989. Margaret Purves’s husband, John Purves, died in 2007. Her son and two daughters survive her.
Lt Col (Retired) Michael Charles Smith, born 7 March 1938, died 6 January 2021 Scribe: By Col Geoffrey Simpson
Margaret Purves and her husband John Purves In 1957 she was commissioned into the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps as a lieutenant and posted to the Cambridge Hospital, Aldershot, before further postings to Mauritius, Kenya, Catterick and finally Hanover in Germany, where she met Capt John Purves of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). They married at Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff, in 1961, six months to the day after their first meeting. As Margaret Purves, she held various jobs – nursing in Singapore, card-punching for the Inland Revenue in Ottawa, serving as deputy editor of the REME house magazine, The Craftsman. An extract from Margaret’s memoirs from 1976 – Eventually we received a posting back to Arborfield, and had to leave the Headquarters (24 Airportable Brigade) and the close family we had made there. I was eager to get back to work, and managed to get a job as assistant editor of the Craftsman magazine – the REME house magazine produced monthly. For this I had to become a clerical officer in the Civil Service. The office was about 250 yards from the house, and the working conditions were good, a small organisation with a retired Brigadier as Editor, and another young wife as my assistant. Life was good, the children were all happy at their schools, and came home frequently for weekends and holidays. As Arborfield was the home of REME in the UK, we were always getting visitors from our past, and there was always a lot going on. Returning to Germany in 1977, she became sister in charge of the
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It is with great sadness that I have to report the death of “Mike” Smith who I had known well since 1962 when we first met in Singapore. About three years ago, he was diagnosed with Follicular Lymphoma which is a not too serious blood cancer. He was checked regularly, but in January 2020 it had developed into Diffuse Large Cell Lymphoma, a much more serious cancer but one that can often be successfully treated. The chemotherapy was shrinking the cancer but the drugs conflicted with his heart treatment and sadly, the cancer won. Mike although born and bred in Portsmouth, was educated at the Royal Hospital School in Ipswich after which he trained as a Mechanical engineer with de Havilland’s. After graduating from Portsmouth University, as one of the last intake of National Servicemen, he Commissioned into the Corps. Later, as a “regular” in 1962 he was posted to Singapore to 10 Infantry Workshop where I happened to be serving too. Initially he picked up what is often a poisoned chalice in that he was appointed as the MTO, but we served very successfully together in the 10 Infantry Workshop detachment during the conflict in Brunei in 1963 and we became firm friends for over 59 years. Whilst in Singapore, we both started to sail dinghies and we crewed very well together in many races including the Singapore to Changi race which consisted of a fourteen mile beat into the over 25 knot monsoon winds in a 12 foot long Firefly dinghy. He later served on an airfield project in Thailand before going to BAOR as EME to the Royal Fusiliers in Osnabruck – a soccer
