Agnes Wightman WILKIE

Agnes Wightman WILKIE. Naval Nursing Sister78010 (Assistant Matron) RCN. HMC Ship Avalon.

Born 5 September 1904 at Oak Bluff, Manitoba to John and Helen Wilkie, of Carman, Manitoba. Enlisted 23 February 1942. Died at sea 14 October 1942 aged 30 on the sinking of Newfoundland Ferry Ship, Caribou by torpedo fired by a German U-Boat. Her body was recovered on a Newfoundland Beach.

At rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Image of headstone credited to Forrest Herr, Find a grave.

The following extract is from Canada's Nursing Sisters by GWL Nicholson, Samuel Stevens Hakkert & Company, Toronto, 1975

The only nursing sister of the three services to die as a result on enemy action during the war was Assistant Matron of RCNH [Naval hospital] Avalon. N/S Agnes W Wilkie of Carman, Manitobia. She was on of 137 passengers and crew members who were lost in October 1942 when Newfoundland Ferry Ship, Caribou, on which she was returning from leave, was torpedoed and sunk in the Cabot Strait. For more than two hours Miss Wilkie and her companion, Dietitian, Margaret Brooke, clung to a raft until the former lost consciousness in the chilling water. Finally, as the sea roughened, Miss Brooke could no longer hold on to her colleague, who slipped away from her benumbed grasp. The body of N/S Wilkie was recovered and interred with full naval honours in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, St John’s. Later her name was given to one the nurses’ residences in Halifax. For her heroic attempt to save the life of her comrade, Dietitian Brooke was awarded the MBE—the only naval nursing sister in the Second World War to receive this honour