Annie Murray

Annie Cargill Knight (nee Murray; 10 April 1906 - 4 November 1996) was a Scottish nurse in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Knight was the daughter of a tenant farmer and one of eight children. She became active in the Communist Party after she finished her training as a nurse. She was one of the first British volunteers to arrive in Spain on the side of the Spanish Republican Government during the Spanish Civil War.

Biography Annie Cargill Murray was born to George Wilson Murray and Anne Cargill in 1906 in Aberdeen, one of eight children who grew up in rural Perthshire, including brothers George Murray and Tom Murray, one of two Scots awarded special citations from the Republicans for their efforts during the Spanish Civil War. Murray trained as a nurse at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in 1936. While there, she protested with other nurses about the pay and working conditions.

Murray joined the Communist Party and went to Spain, as soon as her training finished.

She was followed to Spain

Before Murray left Barcelona, she witnessed an act of atrocity: "We found a whole lot of children, of dozens of them, with their hands off, completely off. The Italians had dropped anti-personnel bombs marked "Chocolatti". The children were picking up these things - they hadn't had chocolate for years - and they just blew their hands off. This Spanish surgeon that I worked with, he was in tears. We all were."

She later said that the Spanish Civil War was the most important thing in her life, and that she did not regret going and "the Spanish war had a great impact on me" and she first worked with the republican forces in a small hospital in Huete

She found Spanish doctors and equipment were very good, and she arranged for more equipment supplies to be sent from London, through the British Medical Aid Committee.

Murray found the Spanish people were good to the volunteers, although housing of local villagers was primitive compared to her home experience, and food and coffee was limited and of poor quality. She did get home leave and letters during the war and a break where Spanish people looked after nurses near the sea.

When Franco's troops entered Barcelona Murray left with patients invalided out and treated them in France briefly before heading for London in 1939. She worked in Dulwich Hospital. She went on to work for the Civil Defence in London before returning to work in a nursery in Stepney, an east end district of London and finally working near Mount Pleasant.